Under the Sun with Mell and Ben

As Black Lives Matter protests spread across the world and statues of historic oppressors are toppled, Australia is forced to face its own national shame. The Aboriginal population in this country are the most incarcerated people on earth and more than once a month an Aboriginal person dies in police custody or in jail.

In this mini-series, we explore the flawed legal system and lethal attitudes that contribute to Aboriginal deaths in custody. We go further back to try and understand the legacy of European invasion and the frontier wars. Throughout the series we will try to centre Aboriginal voices and resources and include a number of interviews with Tasmanian Aboriginal activists.

In part one we attend a vigil in Hobart and hear from Caleb Nichols-Mansell about what needs to change. We look into specific cases of Aboriginal deaths in custody and what they have to say about Australia's police and legal system.

**Content Warning: This episode contains descriptions of racial violence and the names of Aboriginal people who have died.

*Content Warning* This episode contains explicit descriptions of racist language and acts. 

Since the outbreak of Coronavirus, there has been a marked increase in overt racism toward Asian people in Australia. The perception of Coronavirus as a 'Chinese virus' has led to physical attacks, verbal abuse and racial slurs graffitied onto streets and homes. 

Contagious disease causes us a great deal of fear and can easily arouse suspicion towards others. This is multiplied when we perceive that threat as coming from 'outside' of what we consider our 'group'.
 
Of course by the end of March it was more likely that you would catch Covid-19 from a Spanish or Italian visitor, and you were twice as likely to catch it from an American than someone from China, but that didn't stop the racial vilification. 

Why? Because race had already become a signifier for disease in this crisis, and that idea stuck. The idea that disease belongs to the 'Other' is not only persistent but also provides a convenient scapegoat for irresponsible governments and frightened populations. Turns out this sort of thing has a long long history. 

This week Mell and Ben (and UK correspondent Ben Man) talk about the history of associating disease with 'Otherness', all over the world. More specifically we discuss the history of Chinese immigrants being associated with disease in Australia. 

Look after each other everyone. 
Mell and Ben

This week we're taking a little break from our regular programming. Cohost Ben is in the final week of semester at the Conservatorium of Music, so we're using the time to talk about the music Ben makes for this podcast. What makes good podcast music? what role does music play in our lives? and how does one study music from a distance during lockdown? 

This week Ben is away, and Mell talks to guest host Simon about the recent anti-lockdown protests in Sydney and Melbourne. There was an array of different beliefs driving these protests, ranging from libertarian style concerns for privacy and personal freedoms, through to ‘anti-vaxxers’ and ‘5G Truthers’. 

 We look into one relatively recent conspiracy theory which seems to be driving much of the protest movement in the US and Australia, called QAnon. There is a lot of resonance with older conspiracy theories, but QAnon benefits from a ‘crowdsourcing of narrative’ that gives it the fluidity to adjust its ideas and gather mass appeal. There are also some fairly extremist religious, and very troubling racial elements lurking in mix. 

News media is suffering during the Coronavirus Pandemic, but this is nothing new. For over a decade in Australia media revenue from advertising has been falling every year. Countless journalists have lost their jobs in all sectors of news media. Analysts are forecasting the extinction of local news outlets due to the drying up of funds and an inability to modernise. 

 During this time of reduced consumption and movement, hospitality, retail and travel companies have been withdrawing their advertising from news organisations. The Economist has forecast that in Britain this could speed up the decline in revenue from 8% to 30%. Australia, which has the same rate of decline, will likely see the same. 

 Not only this, but many countries are becoming less safe for Journalists during The Pandemic, with China and Iran detaining journalists for speaking out about the virus and Egypt expelling those who question official infection rates. 

 Now, more than ever, we need fast and accurate information, so that we can make informed decisions for our own safety and that of others. These times show us that independent and truthful journalism is of the utmost importance. As journalist Stan Grant observed in an article for The Conversation recently, if China had had a free press, perhaps news of the virus would have emerged sooner and it could have been stopped from spreading across the world. 

This week we discuss what sort of shape global economies are in as a result of Coronavirus and what economists are saying about how things might turn out in the near future. In light of some predictions about a possible Depression in the United States, we look back at the Great Depression of the 1930s. We also touch on Degrowth, one of the ideas that has been thrown around, in light of calls to change the existing economic model. 

In a couple of weeks the Australian government is set to release a new app designed to trace to spread of Covid-19. This week we discuss how the tracing app works, and try to weigh up the invasion of privacy with the potential benefit. We recall our government's dubious record with data privacy law and talk about some of the problems we might encounter with the safety and effectiveness of the app. 

In a wave of fake animal news surrounding Coronavirus, today we discuss real incidents of nature flourishing in the absence of human occupation. Ben talks about the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and all the wonderful creatures that lurk there. Mell discusses Chernobyl, and the scientific debate about wether the animals are affected by the radiation. This recording is missing a section where we talk about the fake animal news around Coronavirus and extract the true from the false. You can hear the full epsiode on our upcoming podcast, available soon wherever you get podcasts.

This week we discuss the heated generational tensions that have flared up especially in light of the global pandemic. Generation wars are not new, turns out, but they do get particularly savage during times of social insecurity. 

In our very first episode, we delve into the history of diseases on earth, how they have affected society and what we have learned from them, going back in time to the 1918 Flu Pandemic that killed more people than World War One, and further to the recurring curse of Small Pox and its effect on indigenous populations during European colonisation. We also discuss the unparalleled media saturation of our current pandemic, and the conflicts and abuses of power that can arise in the midst of such confusion.