The Minefield (ABC). This episode was recorded in the wake of the AFP’s raid on a NewsCorp journalist and the ABC’s offices. The preceding week the presenters discussed the raids, but in this excellent episode “What if the greatest threat to a free media was from within?” they discuss instead the avalanche of the trivial, which allows important questions to hide in plain sight. I’ve found myself thinking about this episode a lot.
Root of Evil Episode 1 Saved by the Ghetto. This is a true crime series about the Hodel Family and their connection with the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, known posthumously as ‘The Black Dahlia’. Do I really want to listen to another series about a dysfunctional American family? I’m not sure that I do.
Revolutions Podcast. We’re off and running again- this time with the Russian Revolution. But before Mike Duncan gets to Russia, he’s taking the scenic journey but starting off with Karl Marx and the International Working Men’s Association.
Onate’s statue. Source: Wikimedia/Flickr Mario 1952
99% Invisible. This is a really good episode! I’ve had Onate’s Foot on my phone for ages, and I finally got round to listening to it, and then wished I’d done so earlier. In 1998 an envelope landed on a journalist’s desk containing a photo of a bronze foot sawn off a statue in New Mexico. The statue was of the Spanish conquistador Onate, whose 400th anniversary was coming up, a matter of great pride to the Hispanic community, especially in the face of discrimination by the European community (I’m worried that I’m using the wrong terminology here, and if I am, I’m sorry.) But Onate’s arrival had had more sinister ramifications for a group of New Mexico’s native people four hundred years back when he ordered all men to have one foot cut off – hence the envelope. What ensued when planning a new statue was another battle- this time about statues and commemoration. The webpage gives the gist of the podcast- but why not just listen to the podcast?
Saturday Extra (ABC) Geraldine Doogue is away at the moment, so Saturday Extra is in the very capable hands of Hamish Madonald. In Boris, Brexit and the British ruling class, Simon Kuper, a columnist with the Financial Times draws links between the major British politicians (on both Tory and Labour sides) who attended Oxford University, and the varying influence of History and PPE degrees on their later careers. Absolutely fascinating.
And on the same program, Is immigration a form of reparation? is a challenging listen. And while you’re there, you may as well learn a lobby group who are not as quiet as they used to be, after Scott Morrison’s victory, in Who is the Australian Christian Lobby?
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 