Interview Highlights: Tess and Polly on new series 'Nothings off Limits'

Recently Sam Colley jumped into the 'Talking Vision' studios to speak to the presenters of Vision Australia Radio's new podcast series 'Nothings off Limits' to understand the need for such a series and why the community is craving a discussion on the topics covered. Learn more about the series by visiting the Vision Australia website: https://www.visionaustralia.org/nolimits 

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
Welcome to this podcast made possible by Vision Australia Radio.
Your community radio station visit via Radio dot org for
more information on Vision Australia radio and our

S2 (00:12):
podcasts on Sam Kiley. And you're listening to Talking Vision
on Vision Australia radio associated stations of age and the
community radio network. If you'd like to find out more
about the program, like where to find your local radio
frequency or listen to past programs, you can find all
this info and more on the Talking Vision web page.

(00:34):
Just tight. Talking vision into your search engine. Or you
can find the program on the podcast app of your
choice or through the Vision Australia Library. And now please
enjoy my interview with Polly Goodwin and Tess Herber. I
started by asking some Polly about nothing's off limits and
what the podcast was all about.

S3 (00:54):
Yeah, so I'm happy to take this one. So it's
a series where we get experts and people with lived
experience to come and discuss topics with us that are
ones we typically avoid talking about, but that are really important.
So all of those subjects that are kind of awkward
or embarrassing, or just maybe not something that people who

(01:15):
are around, you know, the answers to. So the programmes
are driven by our guests. So it's a real treat
for me and tests to kind of learn lots of
things and also share that knowledge with the with the
listeners as well.

S4 (01:29):
Yeah, you're right, Polly. I would agree with that. It's
been such an education and we're also hoping that because
we know that we've only got, you know, 30 minute episodes.
So we're hoping that these will just be the starts
of some of those conversations that people may not have
had before, and that we can point people in the
right direction for some extra resources and information. So it's
a project that's very close to our hearts, and we're

(01:51):
very excited about that.

S3 (01:53):
Absolutely right. And I've never felt so short than it
does when we're trying to do one of the episodes,
not it.

S4 (02:01):
I always feel like such a mean you having to
win them down.

S2 (02:08):
But there's some there's ten episodes in total, isn't that right?
So you've got a total of three minutes to fill.
So that's, you know, if you look at it that way,
there's plenty of plenty of things to chat about.

S4 (02:21):
Not a bad way to look at it at all.

S3 (02:24):
I like that, but it's still not going to make
the 30 minutes long enough. I have to say

S4 (02:29):
that

S2 (02:30):
that's totally fair enough. So I guess, Polly, where did
the idea come about for nothing's off limits? Was it
something you'd been thinking about doing for a while, or
was that a bit more of a spontaneous kind of thing?

S3 (02:44):
Oh, this has definitely been brewing a while. One of
my colleagues who has unfortunately or fortunately gone off on
maternity leave, this was kind of a pet project of
hers that she'd been kind of waiting for the right opportunity.
I guess one of the the challenges of the NDIS
kind of format where everything's based around a goal that

(03:04):
makes it quite hard to have some of those conversations
with your service provider around non goal oriented topics. Some
of those may be organic conversations that you naturally have,
or maybe you just don't even feel comfortable having that
conversation with your service provider. So there were lots of
kind of conversations in hallways with clients around how I

(03:26):
wish we knew a bit more about this, although I
hadn't realised that so-and-so didn't know about that. So that
was kind of the the seed. And then then fortunately,
we got some funding through the NDIS Information Linkages Capability
Building grant, which was just that's when we kind of
went forward with it and thought, Right, let's do this
and let's do it as well as we can.

S2 (03:46):
Okay. And Tess, did you have anything to add? How
did you get involved with with the podcast?

S4 (03:53):
Well, it's a strange story. So I have had the
pleasure of interviewing people for talking vision. And one of
them was the lovely Polly and Polly I interviewed. I
interviewed Polly about a couple of things, and one of
them was Nothing's off limits and we just had this
wonderful interview chemistry, one of the most fun interviews I've

(04:15):
ever done. And they approached me and I'd heard, of course,
I'd heard about the podcast because I'd been interviewing Polly.
I just thought, Oh, how wonderful. You know, we're just
talking about they were talking about so many things that
just I had never heard get talked about before. From
a blindness and vision perspective. I thought, Oh, this is
just fantastic stuff. And so when Polly approached me now,
I think it was early this year, January perhaps to

(04:37):
ask if I would be her co-host. I was absolutely
delighted because I knew what a wonderful project this could be,
and I've been so proud to be a part of
it as a and as a colleague, as a volunteer.
It's just been fantastic.

S3 (04:50):
Yeah, Tess made the fundamental error of being just way
too amazing when she interviewed me.

S2 (04:55):
Absolutely true.

S3 (04:57):
And it's funny. I remember we were kind of thinking
about Who do we? The co-host and every single person
said test his name straight off the bat, so when
she said yes, he would just doing cartwheels.

S4 (05:08):
I'm sort of curious now is to who mentioned me
as a person.

S3 (05:13):
Only good things were said, Don't you worry about it now?

S2 (05:17):
Well, Tess, you mentioned the the topics that you heard
that were going to be discussed. So what sorts of
topics will you both be covering in the podcasts that
people can look forward to hearing about over the next
next nine weeks now?

S4 (05:34):
So the first episode covered nutrition and exercise physical well-being.
The next episode will be about staying safe inside and
outside the home. We're going to be covering topics including
mental health, personal care, so managing menstruation and getting rid
of unwanted body hair. It's a whole whole fantastic topic.
Our dating relationships, accessing adult entertainment. Polly, what else are

(05:56):
we covering? I'm sure I've forgotten a few.

S3 (05:58):
Nick, you done really well. I was checking them off
as you were saying them. And so the last two
episodes I'm really excited about for all of the topics,
we kind of had an idea of some of the
things we might cover and then went out in our community.
What matters to you? What would you like us to
focus on? And so that's kind of how we got
the prioritisation of topics. But then two completely new subjects

(06:18):
that we hadn't thought about were also suggested by a
number of people. One is around this specific experience of
being low vision. Yes, as opposed to being blind. And
the other one is that sense of, I guess, kind
of leading up to your identity. You know, who is
your community? How do you engage with the different communities
and also around disclosure of your disability? So they were

(06:39):
two things we hadn't even thought about. But yes, that
been some of the most exciting episodes, actually. Absolutely.

S2 (06:45):
Awesome. It was an absolute pleasure to be involved with
one of the Vox Pops for the for being low vision,
for being, you know, not blind enough so cold. And
that some that's something I've always wanted to hear about
on the radio. So that was a very, very exciting
episode that I'm looking forward to having a listen to
down the track when it goes to air.

S3 (07:06):
And yeah, thank you so much for contributing to the
box pops. That was a genius idea of a fantastic producer, Jason,
who's thought about let us kind of pursue a box
pops question at the start of each of the episodes.
And it's been fantastic because we've managed to carve a
kind of a whole different range of perspectives in a
really short period, and it's really kicked off each each

(07:27):
episode really nicely. So thank you so much for contributing
to that, Sam. No problem.

S4 (07:32):
And you mentioned Jake's folly. I mean, what would we
do with that, Jason? He is just our go to man.
He edits. He edits for as he organizes the Vox Pops,
he makes sure we have all the resources that we need.
He he's like our creative director, keeping us in line.
I mean, you know, what would we do without him
and just such a wealth of knowledge like,

S3 (07:53):
Oh, it's been amazing.

S2 (07:54):
Shout out, big shout out to Jason Gibson.

S3 (07:57):
I salute. Yeah. This is my first time doing a podcast,
so I have just been writing, literally writing down all
of the amazing tips and guidance it's been given and
kind of doing that to learn the craft, I think.
But yeah, energizes.

S2 (08:11):
Hey, what are you hoping people get out of a
podcast like nothing's off limits? Was there a certain goal
you had in mind when you set out to create
the episodes?

S3 (08:21):
I think test, what do you think? For me, it
was about. There were a few goals I had in
mind behind this one was around kind of normalizing some
of these conversations and taking away some of the stigma
about around the mental health, around talking about menstruation and
talking about adult services, all things which, you know, don't

(08:41):
necessarily naturally come into the conversation, but they were really important.
So partly it was around destigmatizing and normalizing having that discussion.
It was about sharing information, and we've been so lucky
with our guests giving really generously of their time and
their expertise to share both expert information and also expert
from the perspective of lived experience and sharing some of

(09:03):
their strategies, which has been brilliant. But I think this
is very much with, I think Tess, we've worked out
that this is very much about starting a conversation, it's
not about ending it. So we hope that these episodes
will inspire people to kind of continue the conversation and
we'd love to hear what people talk about.

S4 (09:21):
You're right, Polly, and I've noticed as well how wonderfully
forthcoming our guests have been because some of these topics,
they're not easy. Some, some people, they can get a
bit squeamish around them, you know, topics like personal care
and accessing adult entertainment and in relationship red flags, body image.
They're difficult topics. And I've just appreciated how forthcoming people

(09:43):
have been. And I know that if I had been
younger and a podcast like this had been around, I
just would have thought it was wonderful because all of
a sudden I'd have all this information, all these insights.
I'd know that I wasn't going through, you know, things
like body image difficulties and. Difficulties with managing menstruation alone,
so that's why I think it's so important, because we're

(10:04):
literally we are covering ground that has not been covered
before to the best of our knowledge from a blindness
and low vision perspective, and that's very important in itself.
As someone who's blind myself, I've noticed that a lot
of the resources on some of these topics don't often
take into account blindness and low vision. And that's not deliberate.
It's just probably that I haven't thought about it

S2 (10:22):
all that just haven't had that experience. They haven't had that,
that lived experience where they can say, Oh, this is
how I sort of encountered this problem, and this is
what I did about it. As somebody who is blind
or have low vision, it doesn't really, as you said,
it's not really on their radar so much. So where
can people find the podcast if they'd like to listen

S3 (10:44):
to WW dot Vision Australia dot org forward slash no limits?
And as each episode gets broadcast on Vision Australia, radio
will also pop up there as a podcast so you
can listen to that whenever you like. Also on that website,
you'll find the list of resources that we've pulled together
to accompany each episode, and that's really designed to help

(11:05):
you explore a bit more includes all of the things
that our guests have referred to. So that's on there
as well. And of course, if you want to listen
that line, you can on Vision Australia Radio nine o'clock
every Wednesday repeated on Sunday evenings.

S2 (11:20):
Thank you so much to Sam Polo for for having
a chat with me today. It's been an absolute pleasure
catching up with you both and talking about these important
topics that that you'll be covering over the next two
months now.

S3 (11:34):
Thank you so much anytime, and thank you for all
your help with the show as well. It's been an
absolute privilege for you and me to hear about these
experiences and explore them. It's just been wonderful, so thank you.

S4 (11:46):
Absolutely, Polly, I completely agree. It's been one of the
most wonderful, rewarding projects I've ever been part of, and
thank you, Sam, for helping us to talk about it
and promote it.

S1 (12:06):
Thanks for listening to this Vision Australia Radio podcast, is
it via radio dot org to find out more about
our podcasts?