The Leap Year

Clem Baade is a public servant and performer. He has worked for the Department of Human Services for thirty years, and this year, like many others, he moved his work and his art online. For the very last episode of The Leap Year, Clem talks to Sally about working with the DHHS and Rawcus Theatre, and how poetry has helped him through the pandemic. 

With narration from Scott Limbrick and Robert Frost.

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Ed Caesar is a contributing writer to The New Yorker whose work has taken him on a number of adventures, while covering stories about the mysterious owners of London’s largest private residence, Russian money-laundering scams, and Mount Everest in his latest book, The Moth and Mountain. Speaking to Sally from lockdown in his home in Manchester, the UK, Ed talks about craving fun, feelings of restlessness and his approach to research. 

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Ramachandra Guha is an Indian writer and social commentator, whose work traverses environmental, social, economic, historical and political issues. Speaking to Sally from India, he discusses India’s coronavirus response, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approach to crises and the relationship between cricket and nationalism.

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Ahmed Dini is an African youth community leader, who lives in one of the nine Melbourne public-housing towers that underwent hard lockdown in July. In this episode, he speaks with Sally about the shock and the lingering implications for residents detained in their homes without warning, and about the dissonance between Victoria’s progressive self-image and the harsher reality laid bare by Covid-19.

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Hana Assafiri is the owner of the Moroccan Soup Bar, a Melbourne dining and community institution, employing vulnerable women workers. In this episode, she talks with Sally about the creative ways she and her colleagues connected, supported and nourished each other during lockdown – and how the pandemic has shifted her understanding of community and hospitality.

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The public health response to Covid-19 in remote Indigenous communities has been a remarkable success story of the pandemic in Australia. In this episode, Sally speaks with the former Northern Territory politician Alison Anderson, about how communities, health services and all levels of government worked together to keep Covid-19 out.

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When the New South Wales-Victoria border opened up on Monday, Veronica Haccou was among those who felt great relief. Veronica lives in Albury, New South Wales, and works in Wodonga, Victoria. She'd been navigating daily border checkpoints since July, just to go to work. In this episode, she talks with Sally about the stark, surreal contrast between the two border towns during Victoria's second lockdown and about the widespread exhaustion in a community that has lived through devastating bushfires and a pandemic in a single year.

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At the start of the year, 23-year-old Will Smith was pursuing his dreams in Boston on a competitive rowing scholarship. When he returned to Australia in March, he was diagnosed with Covid-19. Eight months on, he speaks to Sally about the effects of ‘long Covid’ and how the virus has changed the course of his life. 

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Dr Mario D’Cruz is a medical educator and practitioner, whose work is focused on spinal and mobility impairment. Mario himself was injured in a car accident 20 years ago and lives with quadriplegia. He talks to Sally about the challenges and upsides of the pandemic and about the complicated dynamics of care – as a doctor and as a person living with disability. 

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Rebecca Marshall is an inspector with Victoria Police. In this episode, she speaks with Sally about the chaotic first weeks of March; the pressures, dangers and heartbreaks of policing during Melbourne’s lockdown and her efforts to protect herself, her family, her workmates and the wider community from the virus.

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