October 29, 2025 • 31 mins
Who are we now, five years after COVID first shut the world down?
From lockdown memories to hybrid work, empty campuses and vanishing “weak ties,” the conversation explores what we’ve gained, and what we’ve lost, since 2020.
Amanda recalls driving to work with a permission slip as an “essential” broadcaster, while Anita reflects on the chaos of moving her clinical teaching and therapy sessions online. They discuss:
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How lockdowns reshaped teaching, work, and home life
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Why we may never return to full campus or office culture
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The collapse in vaccination rates and rising distrust in science
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The new culture of “boundaries” and why saying yes still matters
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Whether convenience has replaced connection—and what that means for friendship and community
The Double A Chattery podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor/patient relationship is formed and this podcast is no substitute for professional psychological or other medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The use of information in this podcast is at the listener’s own risk. Listeners should seek the help of their health care professionals for any medical conditions.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is for general information only and should not
be taken as psychological advice. Listeners should consult with their
healthcare professionals for a specific medical advice.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well. Hello, I'm Amanda.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Keller and I'm Anita mcgreeer, and welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
To Double A Chattery. Anita, can I congratulate you on
your incredible hair today?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
You and I have most of the time i've known you,
you and I both had short hair. I don't have
an option because mine just stops growing when it gets
to a certain level. Your hair is now shoulder length.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I know.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
It's crazy, isn't it. And I decided it because it's
usually curly and I was thinking, well, I wonder what
it would be like if I tried straightening. So I
took you know, I don't know how long, and the
back is probably curly still. I have no idea, but
what I can see of it, yeah, straight.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
And it's it is.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
It's quite long. You've achieved what we've always wanted hair
with options. Yeah, you could put in a scrunchy, you could.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Put it back.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I know, Anita, you're living the hair dream.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I am living the dream yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, Okay, now we're going to talk today about something
that you brought to the table in light of your
teaching experience. But I think there's so much to discuss.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's you know that you know, thinking about you know,
everything locked down in March basically of twenty twenty saying
you know, we have this pandemic. Here we go and
nobody knew. I still remember thinking, oh, it's going to
be two weeks, you know, like it was like we
all thought it was going to be something small. And
(01:56):
then I was actually thinking about it, is that like
when did it? And it hasn't ended technically because there's
still COVID and very variants around, but like how has
it changed us? And I was thinking about like who
was I? Who were we before COVID? Who are we
now other than just you know, four or five years older.
(02:18):
But it's but I guess my question in thinking about
it is how how has COVID changed who we are
as a culture, as a society, And.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Just isn't because there's that phrase we all think we're
back to normal, but what is back to normal? What
will has permanently changed? And what have we permanently lost?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
And part of our conversation and thinking about this amount
is that COVID in some ways, it didn't affect your
day to day in some ways in that you still
came into work every day.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
And embarrassingly, I had a slip of paper in case
I was pulled over by the police when we were
allowed to leave our homes to say that I was
allowed to leave my home, that I've was not an
emergency worker, but I was and essential. That's the sort
I'm lookingole, which seemed hugely embarrassing to me, and lot
of all the hard work everyone was doing, but us
being constant and available and riding the wave with our listeners. Yes,
(03:13):
I came into an office every day.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
You were an essential part of keeping the normalcy of it.
Whereas for me, my life got absolutely upended in that
it at the same time as I had to go
and flip all the teaching that I was doing, which
is all very experiential from being in the classroom.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Experiential meaning what in this context.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Doing role plays, we're like lots of discussion and interaction
and having that done in person to having to go
and figure out how to create breakout rooms and those
kinds of things. So for teaching, So thinking about I
needed to shift that. But I was just thinking that
the like the clinic, the university was pretty good and
(04:02):
on the ball about how to manage classrooms and shutting
classrooms down and you know, getting everybody zoom accounts and
doing that kind of thing. But I had to go
and nobody from the university was telling me about when
to close the clinic. And I remember having a conversation
with my colleague who was at the time the head
(04:23):
of the clinical clinic, and nobody was giving us any information,
and I remember kind of saying, I'm going to just
boil the plug here, We're going to go and close it.
And we had to figure out and then and then
actually even harder, and gosh, bless my son, you know, Ben,
the paramedic, because he was in London at the time
(04:44):
where you know, the COVID was raging in a way
that it hadn't touch pre vaccination, pre vaccination, so that
when we did start opening there, you know, he was
able to go and send me a lot of information
about the NHS was doing, the National Health Service in
the UK was doing around the pandemic because we didn't
(05:08):
have any protocols and so I was creating stuff you
know on the fly, trying to go how do I
keep people safe? How do I you know, and vulnerable
clients students. It was madness.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I remember something that it would never have occurred to me,
but you said that keeping your clients, your students safe,
not just physically, but they still needed to see their clients.
They needed to see people who needed mental health care
but from they were working from home, but you had
to make sure that they weren't showing their own bedrooms.
(05:41):
And often if you're say you're a psychology student, forensic
psychology student, you're in a sharehouse. Maybe you had to
the only space you've got that's private for a client
to be heard might be in your bedroom, but you
can't show any identifying features about.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yourself well and just managing like it was horrid for
me to go and when I was seeing clients, like
I actually had to have a boundary about I am
not going to see particular types of offenders while I'm
in my home. It like, even if I could be
deidentified and all that kind of stuff, it was bringing
(06:16):
my work into the home in a way that it
had never brought it into the home before.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And it was psychologically you struggled with that.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
It was really hard to move from seeing a client
and then just you know, turning around and you know,
having a conversation with somebody like with a regular divers. Yeah, yeah,
but it was it was very different, you know. It
was just it was confronting in a thousand ways.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
And well, this is a thing too, and we'll get
on to talk about other parts about who we are
post COVID, But unilife is now will forever be hybrid,
and maybe it was going that way anyway, but I
lament that for my sons. And there's no campus life.
For not enough of campus life. You're not having the
thrill of group lectures in the back and the forth
(07:06):
and the smell and the noise and someone's stomachs grumbling
and you laugh at them and you're meeting them for
a coffee afterwards.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And you fall in love. So you fall in love
and you get your heart broken.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And college life, Uni life, where's it gone.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I lament that more than anything in that, you know,
we were moving towards that where there's you know, everything
gets recorded. I mean not at the graduate level where
I'm teaching, but i't undergraduate. Everything is all the slides
are made available, the you know, the lectures are all
made available. Everything is there, and so students don't actually
(07:44):
really have to attend unless they want to actually be
in the lecture and having a discussion, and if they're
willing to forego that, then they can just watch it
at their leisure.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And I guess, though, with he's being so expensive, students
have jobs now.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yep, yeah, many students have jobs. Many students are trying
to you know, eco to living and kind of finding
ways to get through a program. So you know, when
I went to university, it was you know, four years
full time, and then it was two years full time,
and then you know, that's kind of what it looked like.
(08:22):
And now it's quite rare to have. I think it's
more rare to have students going in full time to
a to a program.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And some things just in terms of life. I mean,
we'll never again sneeze into our hands. Isn't it gross
that we ever did that? Cough and cough into our hands,
and we'll ow out birthday candles on a cake and
then's everyone eat this. I've just blown mispittal all over it.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And well, coughing has become the new farting. I think
you know that that really like somebody coughs in a
room and everybody kind of looks and just.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
A cough everyone.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I've had, I don't have. I don't have this, don't
have to just.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Hay fever, you know, like it's just yeah, there's you know,
or sniffles or that kind of things. There is a
real and I don't know whether that's going to go away.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
We used to have an ad campaign in Australia soldier
On and it was it might be for cuadrill, doesn't
matter how sick you are, you push through. We are
the antithesis of that now and probably rightly so. Maybe
we've gone the other way in terms of the hybrid
student life, but also the hybrid work life for a
lot of women, even though they had to do the
(09:26):
bulk of the educating at home when the schools were
closed terrible, but family life had a better balance. When
you cut out the commute, when you cut out the
limited hours of an office, all of that was some
of that was much easier, particularly for women, and then
officers wanted everyone to go back. Peter Dutton's election campaign,
the Liberal Party wanted to ratify that the backlash was
(09:48):
incredible and he withdrew that and part of his campaign
it doesn't work for women to go back full time
necessarily to an office.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well, I mean, part of it is that during CO
it was probably harder on women because well, or or parents,
because kids were getting home schooled, and and and and
everybody was trying to go and share one laptop or
one you know, home computer, and you know, there was
a thousand things that were happening that made it very
(10:18):
very difficult. But now that you know, kids are back
in school. Even though there was a real issue about
kids saying I don't want to I actually want to
work from home, you know, I want to school from
home and not actually go back to school full time,
there was you know, there was a number of movements
that have happened, and it's interesting to think about what's
(10:39):
happened with this work from home because now there are
companies who are saying you must attend X number of
days a week. Like my son here in Sydney needs
to be in at work at least I believe two
days a week and can work the other three at
home if he chooses.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But it's but imagine the businesses that miss out when
you were from home, and not just your friendships, your culture,
the brainstorming, the coffee shops, the sandwich shops, the small
communities that build up around offices and around little towns.
If everyone's at home, what happens to our sense of community.
You know, I met my partner, I met Harley at work.
(11:19):
So many of my big friendships have come through working
with people. This is all shifting. And I guess all
the online dating it's just shifting everything.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm just kind of trying to picture hardly and you
flirting a on a zoom call and you know, everybody
else is watching, and you're kind of going, hey, Harley,
you're on mute.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
No, And on paper, he wasn't what I was chasing.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
No chasing.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, it's like the chemistry that so all that we're
talking about that is, you know, for dating, but also
for friendships. It's the fristle of friendship that you get
at an office.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
One of the things that I think is is lost
or hounspin lost or was lost over COVID was like
we made we were able, most of us to maintain
our strong ties. Like we went and we played you know,
wordle or you know whatever you know online with friends
and family. We we got together, we we made sure
(12:16):
that those relationships stayed strong. But what we lost are
those what are called weak ties. The barista that that
you know, used to know you and what you would drink,
and you know, would greet you every morning, or at
least kind of acknowledge your existence. And and now like
because you know, I think there's a lot of people
(12:38):
who were just do they call it the Great Reckoning
or something where a whole bunch of people just have
kind of moved out to you know, the seaside, you know,
into small towns and then they quit jobs at twenty
saying what am I working for?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
There was all that I drew down on this super
to be able to do it? Yes, were their lives
five years later.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Big questions about, you know, and how do you get
back in when you have a you know, a CV
that says, yeah, for the last five years I was
living on a beach. You know that that probably isn't
going to you know, be as appealing to an employer, but.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
You can understand why that thinking happened in the midst
of an apocalypse. I'm going to choose my mental health
and where does that leave you now. Also, the big
thing that fall out from all that is the low
vaccination rates. The low This is the stuff that really
worries me is the distrust we now have in authority.
It started with We've spoken about this on our podcast
(13:37):
before and that incredible book doppel Ganger that we wrote
that we wrote That's how I remember it Anita by
Naomi Kline, where she looks at the big separation in
society during COVID that valid questions were being asked, should
I trust this vaccine, I'm pregnant? Should I take this vaccine?
Should I worry that my kids are growing up wearing masks?
(13:58):
What are they missing by not going to school? Valid
questions that were being asked that we were so dogged
not to answer. You either stayed at home and followed
the rules, took the vaccine, or you weren't one of us.
And so no one answered those questions. And when there's
a vacuum, the fringe comes in, and they really came in.
They have really come in. Those conspiracy theories and all
(14:21):
of the anti vax kind of stuff has gone from
fringe to the center of our power. Now you have
RFK Junior, who is a vaccination skeptic, a science skeptic.
Doctor Fauci has been discredited by the President.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh he's got he's got body guards now not you know,
from the French people who were thinking that he did
a disservice to people over COVID, which is alarming, alarming.
He basically gave his life first to you.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Know, prevent preventing polio.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
And then COVID. I mean, this man should be given sainthood.
He shouldn't be having to have a bodyguards against the
French who were out to get Holt's And.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This is the thing that happened, isn't it that QAnon
who began as an anti Hillary Clinton device, accusing her
falsely of running a pedophile ring. Then when they were
looking for more ammo. Of course, these conspiracy theorists are
going to find it in terms of the way COVID
was handled, in terms of vaccine, in terms of who
released the virus, et cetera, et cetera. So those fringes
(15:30):
came further and further in and in, and they found
new fodder, as I said, right to the top now
of political life.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And the reality now is that vaccination rates are going
down in America.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But here as well as we're seeing measles again.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Seeing measles again, I actually am starting to get notifications
at UNI that, you know, people with measles who were
infectious were on campus at a certain time, and which
is what I used to get for COVID. You know,
we used to get those notifications and now we're getting
me notifications. But it also means like kids in daycare
going into schools, that kind of thing, that you know,
(16:07):
these are vulnerable little people and they're not getting that
herd immunity that is required. And I mean, I don't
know about you, but I absolutely remember as a young
school kid. You know, all of us would just line
up and there was the school nurse who always looked
like Nurse Ratchet from you know that terrible.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Movie One Flew Over the co Is that one. We
all went hysterical, she's fainted. There was someone who would
go burkoh and just collapse. It was the drama of
the day. You had to do it.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You had to do it. And everybody stood in line,
and you know, the girls all held hounds and the
boys tried to be really tough and you know, like
but that was that was the norm. And now it
seems as though, you know, parents are doing things like
either not vaccinating or stretching the vaccination times out, or
you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
And I think where anti sides we've there's something else
that's happened post COVID that I'd really like your opinion on, Anita,
and it's about we were all in all through that
(17:21):
we were told look after yourselves in a way, it
was stay at home and nurture yourself, and that's now
brought us to a point where we have boundaries that
may not be in our best interest anymore. We're so
strong with our boundaries, this new generation are honoring our
own needs and we're canceling plans for me time. So
(17:41):
just some of the notes that I've seen on this,
we've gone from don't pour from an empty cup to
don't pour it all unless it's one hundred percent convenient,
and that's, as we know, not how friendships are done.
And sometimes showing up when you're tired, when it's inconvenient,
when it's not about you, is what friendships need. We're
seeing a whole generation of kids living in their bedrooms
(18:02):
and adults living in their lounge rooms. And when you
think back to the greatest moments of your life. They're
not you seeing at home having a glass of wine
watching a television show. They're being out in the community.
Everyone wants a village, but no one actually is willing
to be part of one anymore. What do you see
as that social fallout?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I you know, I I don't just think it's the
younger generation that's done this. I think it's affected pretty
well all of us in the whole lockdown, the whole
kind of rethinking. And I think that especially our generation
probably rethought it in a different way as well, because
(18:42):
they were saying that COVID was affecting you know, people
who were over sixty, over seventy, over eighty in different ways.
And so I do think that there was this, you
know a lot of fear beast decisions about whether we
were going to go out, how we were going to
do that, making different choices like we it used to
(19:03):
be that, you know, there was some social event and
you go, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll do that.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, I said I'd go, and I will even if
I feel sick, I'll go, yeah, if I can't be
ball that I'm titled god, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Or even if it's inconvenient, a little bit inconvenient. I'm
still going to go because, you know, it could be
I'm attending a friend's book launch because it's it's important
to them. It's not important to me. Nobody's even going
to see me there. You know, I'm not going to
be able to talk to the host it's going to
but I'm going to go to go and show my
support for my friend.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
These days, canceling is such an easy option, it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Really is, and I and I do wonder about how
that works around friendships, you know, because I do think
that you need to go and well, I was going
to say sacrifice a bit, but it isn't. It's it's like,
sometimes you're going to be inconvenienced about things that are happening,
or you know, you know that your friend has a
(19:57):
you know, is going to ask something of you that
may actually put you out of your comfort zone. Yes, yes,
you know, is my response to that. But I think
say yes, yeah, but I think people are choosing to
kind of say no, I don't want to, I don't
feel like it. I'm you know, they're making fear based decisions,
and that's alarming. It also makes me think that both
(20:20):
you and I are in a in a service industry
really that we are here to serve the public. So
both for me as an educator, but as a psychologist,
I am here to serve people. And if I just
if I made the decision to say, oh, it's inconvenient
for me to come in today, I'm not quite up
to it. You know, how does that work?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Like, how does it like it?
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Or if you said, well, I don't really feel like
getting up at four in the morning and going on
the radio and talking, how does that work? You know?
And I don't mean to sound you know, back in
my day, you know kind of thing. But I do
wonder about are tolerance for any type of distress, any
(21:05):
type of uncertainty, any type.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Of inconvenience, inconvenience And it's too easy now social settings
work settings to say yes and then at the last
minute say no, I'm not coming.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yeah, yeah, And I you know, personally, I feel quite
disappointed when I've made, you know, a plan with somebody
in the last minute they kind of go, oh, well,
I'm not going to And because I've made the effort,
you know, I was willing to make the effort. And
it's hard not to have judgment about and why aren't you,
(21:37):
why don't you, why don't you want to go in
and go forward with this?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And it's because everything takes effort. We talk a lot
about relationships taking effort, but not just romantic relationships, friendships,
And I want to it shouldn't all be about you
and your pleasure in it. Yeah, you sometimes have to invest,
but you know.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
But what I'm hearing is everybody says it should be
about my pleasure. It should be about my my needs
being for you know, my cup being filled my you know,
and and I there's a part of me that I
get that, and it's it's not real. It's that's not reality.
Is is that you get to go wander through life
(22:18):
with everybody filling your cup and you having no obligation
or responsibility to the community, to others. Yeah, as you know,
as I'm thinking about this amounta I am kind of
feeling like an old fart in saying this, But you
know all the things that I've said, but I really
think that there is this we're going to have. There's
(22:39):
going to be a reckoning around how we there. I
said it, I said a reckoning Amouanda. But I think
that there will be a reckoning about how we, you know,
how we're going to actually connect with others as a community,
as a society, as a culture.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
So interesting, and we talk a lot about we all
acknowledge that it takes work for a relation ships to work,
and you acknowledge that you have to put in in
an office or for your profession, for your job, but
also for your friendships. I don't think anyone acknowledges anymore
that some of those you know not take an obligation
(23:15):
meet me halfway.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, yeah, I really hope that we can find ways
of reaching out, taking the initiative, that we can actually
find that connection, because I do think that the pandemic
took a lot away from us, and I'm hoping that
I don't know that we will find a tidy way
(23:37):
to come back to the new normal, whatever that is.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Someone I've always loved about you is no matter what
I say to you, you say, yes, you know. We
were going to go and do some writing, remember this one.
Oh I've been a holiday writing our so called books. Instead,
I said, hey, I've been I've got a ticket to
go the iHeart Music Festival in Vegas. Do you want
to come? And you said yes, yes, And so that's
that part of it too, is just say yes, whether
(24:02):
it's a meeting a friend for a drink, having a
cup of tea with a girlfriend, whatever it is, maybe
we need to get back to occasionally like you do
when you're twenty. It doesn't matter if you're sixty.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Say yes, yeah, oh absolutely, I am fourth out.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All right, let's say yes to glimmers.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
That's anita.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Do you have a glimmer?
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I do? I do. Mine is about my, well, our friend,
miss Elizabeth Burns, sometimes known as Muffy, who has a
superpower that is unmatched.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And so tell me that she didn't take the jewels
from the louver. That's not her cat burglar superpowers. Yeah, well,
she better shared a lot. I think that, Yeah, I
think that that could be what she did. But this
is what we're getting for Christmas, I guess. Yeah, this
is a little different, okay, but that her and I
had gone swimming on last Sunday and had gone to
(25:11):
Cougie and I had a picture up in my car
and parked on one of those absolutely vertical streets and
I had made the decision I was going to park
on the going downwards and there was a parking spot
just in front of the no parking sign, and I
had parked just maybe a meter back from it so
that nobody would park in front of me.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
I thought, yay. We went for a lovely swim at
the women's baths, came back and not only had somebody
parked behind me with about a millimeter no okay, a
little bit more than that behind me, but this guy
had parked in front of me as well, illegally but
again very very little room.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And you're facing down a high day.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Like pretty well a vertical thing, and my car, well,
I got a new car since then, lovely, but this
car you would go and and kind of have a yes,
a little bit of time before it fulls in.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I feel like I'm going to throw out.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I was so near that, Amanda, I was so near that,
and and I was like, what are we going to do?
And and Elizabeth has extraordinary parking ability.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
See when God gives out the talents, who knows where
they go?
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Who knows? But she was like, she goes, do you
want me to go and get you out? And I
was like mmm mm hmmm, because I would have actually
had to wait until the person ahead of me had
left because there was just no way that I would
not have hit his car, and.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
H'd flown to the airport and gone to Peru.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Probably, so I was so not only did she go
and take get my car out of that tiny little
spot without hitting anybody. She she looked at me, she goes,
do you want to just get in and have me drive?
And I went, uh huh, because I mean, she should
have been traumatized by it. I was trying gramatized by it.
(27:00):
But she went and she has that amazing superpower. I
love Elizabeth for many reasons, and that's just one of them.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
It's nothing like the it reduces you to being a kid,
and that sort of thing happens. I'd be the same
in that circumstances. If I park strangely badly, I'm in
a situation I can't get out of. If I've gone
up a one way street and it's blocked and I
have to reverse down therefore we'll drives on other side,
I just want to stop and cry. Yeah, I can't
(27:28):
deal with it, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And I know.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
I mean I learned to drive in Canada on icy roads,
and I'm not a terrible driver, but that particular situation
just would have brought me to tears.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It would have.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, I don't know what I would have done without Elizabeth.
Good on you'l Lizabeth. Yeah, Elizabeth and my friend. Yes,
I'm going to raise a glimmer for you that recently
there was the Australian Talent Index Reports.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Ah, yes, Anita, I've been named queen of universe.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yet again.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I've summarized it there. Yes, I was so chuffed by this.
So there's a thing that comes out every year, the
Australian Talent Index Report, and looks at all facets of
the media, and it's a gauged They interview a whole
lot of actual people, real people, not industry people, real
people who are asked how they feel about you, why
they feel like that, et cetera, et cetera. And I
(28:25):
was named Australia's top broadcaster male or female. I was
surprised and chuffed. Thank you for bringing it up, because
I only had to write on a piece of paper
and push it towards you a few times they mentioned this,
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh, I think it so well deserved, Amanda. And it
really is a testament to your time and energy and
effort that you've put in over all these years.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Well, thank you, thank you, and a great level of
that story. My brain goes to anti glimmers in a way.
I'm filming the second series of The Piano at the moment.
If you love series one, you're going to go crazy
over series two. The stories are so beautiful, the settings
are lovely, the music, the people we've met have just
been extraordinary. And we were filming on the weekend and
(29:14):
I'd drink, as you know, a thousand cups of tea,
go to the toilet every ten minutes. Yeah, bladder of
a budget, well well documented. But I'd been miked up
very early in the morning. I was drinking hot tea
in freezing location, drinking hot tea all morning, and at
lunchtime twelve thirty, I thought I've to go to the loose.
So I asked the sound records to unhook my microphone.
(29:35):
So he took the microphone pack off. It's like a
packet of cigarettes. That six a year back. I just
had the cord and we had to film. We were
filming in a market, so I had to go to
public toilet. That's all fine. I got there, my pants
got caught and I was going quick because my body
was saying, oh, finally you're in a loop, and I
thought this cord is going to go into the loop.
So by the time I hooked that out, finally got
my pants undone my body, I just said, that's it,
(29:57):
we're going and they never happened. Pretty much wet myself,
and so then I came out. Luckily it was raining
outside because I could say to people, oh wow, I
had dark pants on, so it may not have been
able to tell, but I could say, oh wow. Because
I had to sit on a piano stool, I thought, God,
I've got to sit down now. And so the horror
(30:18):
of this, I sat next to this. I had to
sit next and chat to this charming woman who was
ninety three and a half and I sat next to her,
and I was the one who left a wet patch
on the seat. A ninety three and a half year
old woman was able to hold it together better than
(30:39):
I could. So that's what you get when you top
of Australian tell an Index report Anita. So it comes
with the territory.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Well done you. I thought you were going to tell
me that the make was on while you were here.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
No, no, no, I've learned to switch that off twice
in my career. I've forgotten it was on there, and
the whole pack electronics have dropped into the loo. Oh
that's a terrible moment to come out and tell the
sound records, Hey, I've got something to tell you. Oh awful.
But at least that didn't happen. Everyone on that set
would have preferred it be my dax than the technology.
(31:13):
Of course, when an eighty three and a half year
old's bladder beats mine, that's dreadful.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
It is dreadful.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
But anyway, that's kind of a glimmer, kind of well,
the fact that you can laugh, see the fact that
I can laugh about it is my glimmer on that
delightful note.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Shall we leave it?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I love you, I love don't make me laugh? Love
you two. I see you next time.
This podcast is for general information only and should not
be taken as psychological advice. Listeners should consult with their
healthcare professionals for a specific medical advice.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well. Hello, I'm Amanda.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Keller and I'm Anita mcgreeer, and welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
To Double A Chattery. Anita, can I congratulate you on
your incredible hair today?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
You and I have most of the time i've known you,
you and I both had short hair. I don't have
an option because mine just stops growing when it gets
to a certain level. Your hair is now shoulder length.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I know.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
It's crazy, isn't it. And I decided it because it's
usually curly and I was thinking, well, I wonder what
it would be like if I tried straightening. So I
took you know, I don't know how long, and the
back is probably curly still. I have no idea, but
what I can see of it, yeah, straight.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
And it's it is.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
It's quite long. You've achieved what we've always wanted hair
with options. Yeah, you could put in a scrunchy, you could.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Put it back.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I know, Anita, you're living the hair dream.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I am living the dream yourself.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, Okay, now we're going to talk today about something
that you brought to the table in light of your
teaching experience. But I think there's so much to discuss.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
It's you know that you know, thinking about you know,
everything locked down in March basically of twenty twenty saying
you know, we have this pandemic. Here we go and
nobody knew. I still remember thinking, oh, it's going to
be two weeks, you know, like it was like we
all thought it was going to be something small. And
(01:56):
then I was actually thinking about it, is that like
when did it? And it hasn't ended technically because there's
still COVID and very variants around, but like how has
it changed us? And I was thinking about like who
was I? Who were we before COVID? Who are we
now other than just you know, four or five years older.
(02:18):
But it's but I guess my question in thinking about
it is how how has COVID changed who we are
as a culture, as a society, And.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Just isn't because there's that phrase we all think we're
back to normal, but what is back to normal? What
will has permanently changed? And what have we permanently lost?
Speaker 1 (02:37):
And part of our conversation and thinking about this amount
is that COVID in some ways, it didn't affect your
day to day in some ways in that you still
came into work every day.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
And embarrassingly, I had a slip of paper in case
I was pulled over by the police when we were
allowed to leave our homes to say that I was
allowed to leave my home, that I've was not an
emergency worker, but I was and essential. That's the sort
I'm lookingole, which seemed hugely embarrassing to me, and lot
of all the hard work everyone was doing, but us
being constant and available and riding the wave with our listeners. Yes,
(03:13):
I came into an office every day.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
You were an essential part of keeping the normalcy of it.
Whereas for me, my life got absolutely upended in that
it at the same time as I had to go
and flip all the teaching that I was doing, which
is all very experiential from being in the classroom.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Experiential meaning what in this context.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Doing role plays, we're like lots of discussion and interaction
and having that done in person to having to go
and figure out how to create breakout rooms and those
kinds of things. So for teaching, So thinking about I
needed to shift that. But I was just thinking that
the like the clinic, the university was pretty good and
(04:02):
on the ball about how to manage classrooms and shutting
classrooms down and you know, getting everybody zoom accounts and
doing that kind of thing. But I had to go
and nobody from the university was telling me about when
to close the clinic. And I remember having a conversation
with my colleague who was at the time the head
(04:23):
of the clinical clinic, and nobody was giving us any information,
and I remember kind of saying, I'm going to just
boil the plug here, We're going to go and close it.
And we had to figure out and then and then
actually even harder, and gosh, bless my son, you know, Ben,
the paramedic, because he was in London at the time
(04:44):
where you know, the COVID was raging in a way
that it hadn't touch pre vaccination, pre vaccination, so that
when we did start opening there, you know, he was
able to go and send me a lot of information
about the NHS was doing, the National Health Service in
the UK was doing around the pandemic because we didn't
(05:08):
have any protocols and so I was creating stuff you
know on the fly, trying to go how do I
keep people safe? How do I you know, and vulnerable
clients students. It was madness.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I remember something that it would never have occurred to me,
but you said that keeping your clients, your students safe,
not just physically, but they still needed to see their clients.
They needed to see people who needed mental health care
but from they were working from home, but you had
to make sure that they weren't showing their own bedrooms.
(05:41):
And often if you're say you're a psychology student, forensic
psychology student, you're in a sharehouse. Maybe you had to
the only space you've got that's private for a client
to be heard might be in your bedroom, but you
can't show any identifying features about.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yourself well and just managing like it was horrid for
me to go and when I was seeing clients, like
I actually had to have a boundary about I am
not going to see particular types of offenders while I'm
in my home. It like, even if I could be
deidentified and all that kind of stuff, it was bringing
(06:16):
my work into the home in a way that it
had never brought it into the home before.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And it was psychologically you struggled with that.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
It was really hard to move from seeing a client
and then just you know, turning around and you know,
having a conversation with somebody like with a regular divers. Yeah, yeah,
but it was it was very different, you know. It
was just it was confronting in a thousand ways.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
And well, this is a thing too, and we'll get
on to talk about other parts about who we are
post COVID, But unilife is now will forever be hybrid,
and maybe it was going that way anyway, but I
lament that for my sons. And there's no campus life.
For not enough of campus life. You're not having the
thrill of group lectures in the back and the forth
(07:06):
and the smell and the noise and someone's stomachs grumbling
and you laugh at them and you're meeting them for
a coffee afterwards.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And you fall in love. So you fall in love
and you get your heart broken.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
And college life, Uni life, where's it gone.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I lament that more than anything in that, you know,
we were moving towards that where there's you know, everything
gets recorded. I mean not at the graduate level where
I'm teaching, but i't undergraduate. Everything is all the slides
are made available, the you know, the lectures are all
made available. Everything is there, and so students don't actually
(07:44):
really have to attend unless they want to actually be
in the lecture and having a discussion, and if they're
willing to forego that, then they can just watch it
at their leisure.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
And I guess, though, with he's being so expensive, students
have jobs now.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yep, yeah, many students have jobs. Many students are trying
to you know, eco to living and kind of finding
ways to get through a program. So you know, when
I went to university, it was you know, four years
full time, and then it was two years full time,
and then you know, that's kind of what it looked like.
(08:22):
And now it's quite rare to have. I think it's
more rare to have students going in full time to
a to a program.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And some things just in terms of life. I mean,
we'll never again sneeze into our hands. Isn't it gross
that we ever did that? Cough and cough into our hands,
and we'll ow out birthday candles on a cake and
then's everyone eat this. I've just blown mispittal all over it.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
And well, coughing has become the new farting. I think
you know that that really like somebody coughs in a
room and everybody kind of looks and just.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
A cough everyone.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I've had, I don't have. I don't have this, don't
have to just.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Hay fever, you know, like it's just yeah, there's you know,
or sniffles or that kind of things. There is a
real and I don't know whether that's going to go away.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
We used to have an ad campaign in Australia soldier
On and it was it might be for cuadrill, doesn't
matter how sick you are, you push through. We are
the antithesis of that now and probably rightly so. Maybe
we've gone the other way in terms of the hybrid
student life, but also the hybrid work life for a
lot of women, even though they had to do the
(09:26):
bulk of the educating at home when the schools were
closed terrible, but family life had a better balance. When
you cut out the commute, when you cut out the
limited hours of an office, all of that was some
of that was much easier, particularly for women, and then
officers wanted everyone to go back. Peter Dutton's election campaign,
the Liberal Party wanted to ratify that the backlash was
(09:48):
incredible and he withdrew that and part of his campaign
it doesn't work for women to go back full time
necessarily to an office.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Well, I mean, part of it is that during CO
it was probably harder on women because well, or or parents,
because kids were getting home schooled, and and and and
everybody was trying to go and share one laptop or
one you know, home computer, and you know, there was
a thousand things that were happening that made it very
(10:18):
very difficult. But now that you know, kids are back
in school. Even though there was a real issue about
kids saying I don't want to I actually want to
work from home, you know, I want to school from
home and not actually go back to school full time,
there was you know, there was a number of movements
that have happened, and it's interesting to think about what's
(10:39):
happened with this work from home because now there are
companies who are saying you must attend X number of
days a week. Like my son here in Sydney needs
to be in at work at least I believe two
days a week and can work the other three at
home if he chooses.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But it's but imagine the businesses that miss out when
you were from home, and not just your friendships, your culture,
the brainstorming, the coffee shops, the sandwich shops, the small
communities that build up around offices and around little towns.
If everyone's at home, what happens to our sense of community.
You know, I met my partner, I met Harley at work.
(11:19):
So many of my big friendships have come through working
with people. This is all shifting. And I guess all
the online dating it's just shifting everything.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I'm just kind of trying to picture hardly and you
flirting a on a zoom call and you know, everybody
else is watching, and you're kind of going, hey, Harley,
you're on mute.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
No, And on paper, he wasn't what I was chasing.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
No chasing.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, it's like the chemistry that so all that we're
talking about that is, you know, for dating, but also
for friendships. It's the fristle of friendship that you get
at an office.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
One of the things that I think is is lost
or hounspin lost or was lost over COVID was like
we made we were able, most of us to maintain
our strong ties. Like we went and we played you know,
wordle or you know whatever you know online with friends
and family. We we got together, we we made sure
(12:16):
that those relationships stayed strong. But what we lost are
those what are called weak ties. The barista that that
you know, used to know you and what you would drink,
and you know, would greet you every morning, or at
least kind of acknowledge your existence. And and now like
because you know, I think there's a lot of people
(12:38):
who were just do they call it the Great Reckoning
or something where a whole bunch of people just have
kind of moved out to you know, the seaside, you know,
into small towns and then they quit jobs at twenty
saying what am I working for?
Speaker 2 (12:52):
There was all that I drew down on this super
to be able to do it? Yes, were their lives
five years later.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Big questions about, you know, and how do you get
back in when you have a you know, a CV
that says, yeah, for the last five years I was
living on a beach. You know that that probably isn't
going to you know, be as appealing to an employer, but.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
You can understand why that thinking happened in the midst
of an apocalypse. I'm going to choose my mental health
and where does that leave you now. Also, the big
thing that fall out from all that is the low
vaccination rates. The low This is the stuff that really
worries me is the distrust we now have in authority.
It started with We've spoken about this on our podcast
(13:37):
before and that incredible book doppel Ganger that we wrote
that we wrote That's how I remember it Anita by
Naomi Kline, where she looks at the big separation in
society during COVID that valid questions were being asked, should
I trust this vaccine, I'm pregnant? Should I take this vaccine?
Should I worry that my kids are growing up wearing masks?
(13:58):
What are they missing by not going to school? Valid
questions that were being asked that we were so dogged
not to answer. You either stayed at home and followed
the rules, took the vaccine, or you weren't one of us.
And so no one answered those questions. And when there's
a vacuum, the fringe comes in, and they really came in.
They have really come in. Those conspiracy theories and all
(14:21):
of the anti vax kind of stuff has gone from
fringe to the center of our power. Now you have
RFK Junior, who is a vaccination skeptic, a science skeptic.
Doctor Fauci has been discredited by the President.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Oh he's got he's got body guards now not you know,
from the French people who were thinking that he did
a disservice to people over COVID, which is alarming, alarming.
He basically gave his life first to you.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Know, prevent preventing polio.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
And then COVID. I mean, this man should be given sainthood.
He shouldn't be having to have a bodyguards against the
French who were out to get Holt's And.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This is the thing that happened, isn't it that QAnon
who began as an anti Hillary Clinton device, accusing her
falsely of running a pedophile ring. Then when they were
looking for more ammo. Of course, these conspiracy theorists are
going to find it in terms of the way COVID
was handled, in terms of vaccine, in terms of who
released the virus, et cetera, et cetera. So those fringes
(15:30):
came further and further in and in, and they found
new fodder, as I said, right to the top now
of political life.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And the reality now is that vaccination rates are going
down in America.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But here as well as we're seeing measles again.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Seeing measles again, I actually am starting to get notifications
at UNI that, you know, people with measles who were
infectious were on campus at a certain time, and which
is what I used to get for COVID. You know,
we used to get those notifications and now we're getting
me notifications. But it also means like kids in daycare
going into schools, that kind of thing, that you know,
(16:07):
these are vulnerable little people and they're not getting that
herd immunity that is required. And I mean, I don't
know about you, but I absolutely remember as a young
school kid. You know, all of us would just line
up and there was the school nurse who always looked
like Nurse Ratchet from you know that terrible.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Movie One Flew Over the co Is that one. We
all went hysterical, she's fainted. There was someone who would
go burkoh and just collapse. It was the drama of
the day. You had to do it.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You had to do it. And everybody stood in line,
and you know, the girls all held hounds and the
boys tried to be really tough and you know, like
but that was that was the norm. And now it
seems as though, you know, parents are doing things like
either not vaccinating or stretching the vaccination times out, or
you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
And I think where anti sides we've there's something else
that's happened post COVID that I'd really like your opinion on, Anita,
and it's about we were all in all through that
(17:21):
we were told look after yourselves in a way, it
was stay at home and nurture yourself, and that's now
brought us to a point where we have boundaries that
may not be in our best interest anymore. We're so
strong with our boundaries, this new generation are honoring our
own needs and we're canceling plans for me time. So
(17:41):
just some of the notes that I've seen on this,
we've gone from don't pour from an empty cup to
don't pour it all unless it's one hundred percent convenient,
and that's, as we know, not how friendships are done.
And sometimes showing up when you're tired, when it's inconvenient,
when it's not about you, is what friendships need. We're
seeing a whole generation of kids living in their bedrooms
(18:02):
and adults living in their lounge rooms. And when you
think back to the greatest moments of your life. They're
not you seeing at home having a glass of wine
watching a television show. They're being out in the community.
Everyone wants a village, but no one actually is willing
to be part of one anymore. What do you see
as that social fallout?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I you know, I I don't just think it's the
younger generation that's done this. I think it's affected pretty
well all of us in the whole lockdown, the whole
kind of rethinking. And I think that especially our generation
probably rethought it in a different way as well, because
(18:42):
they were saying that COVID was affecting you know, people
who were over sixty, over seventy, over eighty in different ways.
And so I do think that there was this, you
know a lot of fear beast decisions about whether we
were going to go out, how we were going to
do that, making different choices like we it used to
(19:03):
be that, you know, there was some social event and
you go, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll do that.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Well, I said I'd go, and I will even if
I feel sick, I'll go, yeah, if I can't be
ball that I'm titled god, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Or even if it's inconvenient, a little bit inconvenient. I'm
still going to go because, you know, it could be
I'm attending a friend's book launch because it's it's important
to them. It's not important to me. Nobody's even going
to see me there. You know, I'm not going to
be able to talk to the host it's going to
but I'm going to go to go and show my
support for my friend.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
These days, canceling is such an easy option, it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Really is, and I and I do wonder about how
that works around friendships, you know, because I do think
that you need to go and well, I was going
to say sacrifice a bit, but it isn't. It's it's like,
sometimes you're going to be inconvenienced about things that are happening,
or you know, you know that your friend has a
(19:57):
you know, is going to ask something of you that
may actually put you out of your comfort zone. Yes, yes,
you know, is my response to that. But I think
say yes, yeah, but I think people are choosing to
kind of say no, I don't want to, I don't
feel like it. I'm you know, they're making fear based decisions,
and that's alarming. It also makes me think that both
(20:20):
you and I are in a in a service industry
really that we are here to serve the public. So
both for me as an educator, but as a psychologist,
I am here to serve people. And if I just
if I made the decision to say, oh, it's inconvenient
for me to come in today, I'm not quite up
to it. You know, how does that work?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Like, how does it like it?
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Or if you said, well, I don't really feel like
getting up at four in the morning and going on
the radio and talking, how does that work? You know?
And I don't mean to sound you know, back in
my day, you know kind of thing. But I do
wonder about are tolerance for any type of distress, any
(21:05):
type of uncertainty, any type.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Of inconvenience, inconvenience And it's too easy now social settings
work settings to say yes and then at the last
minute say no, I'm not coming.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yeah, yeah, And I you know, personally, I feel quite
disappointed when I've made, you know, a plan with somebody
in the last minute they kind of go, oh, well,
I'm not going to And because I've made the effort,
you know, I was willing to make the effort. And
it's hard not to have judgment about and why aren't you,
(21:37):
why don't you, why don't you want to go in
and go forward with this?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
And it's because everything takes effort. We talk a lot
about relationships taking effort, but not just romantic relationships, friendships,
And I want to it shouldn't all be about you
and your pleasure in it. Yeah, you sometimes have to invest,
but you know.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
But what I'm hearing is everybody says it should be
about my pleasure. It should be about my my needs
being for you know, my cup being filled my you know,
and and I there's a part of me that I
get that, and it's it's not real. It's that's not reality.
Is is that you get to go wander through life
(22:18):
with everybody filling your cup and you having no obligation
or responsibility to the community, to others. Yeah, as you know,
as I'm thinking about this amounta I am kind of
feeling like an old fart in saying this, But you
know all the things that I've said, but I really
think that there is this we're going to have. There's
(22:39):
going to be a reckoning around how we there. I
said it, I said a reckoning Amouanda. But I think
that there will be a reckoning about how we, you know,
how we're going to actually connect with others as a community,
as a society, as a culture.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
So interesting, and we talk a lot about we all
acknowledge that it takes work for a relation ships to work,
and you acknowledge that you have to put in in
an office or for your profession, for your job, but
also for your friendships. I don't think anyone acknowledges anymore
that some of those you know not take an obligation
(23:15):
meet me halfway.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, yeah, I really hope that we can find ways
of reaching out, taking the initiative, that we can actually
find that connection, because I do think that the pandemic
took a lot away from us, and I'm hoping that
I don't know that we will find a tidy way
(23:37):
to come back to the new normal, whatever that is.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Someone I've always loved about you is no matter what
I say to you, you say, yes, you know. We
were going to go and do some writing, remember this one.
Oh I've been a holiday writing our so called books. Instead,
I said, hey, I've been I've got a ticket to
go the iHeart Music Festival in Vegas. Do you want
to come? And you said yes, yes, And so that's
that part of it too, is just say yes, whether
(24:02):
it's a meeting a friend for a drink, having a
cup of tea with a girlfriend, whatever it is, maybe
we need to get back to occasionally like you do
when you're twenty. It doesn't matter if you're sixty.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Say yes, yeah, oh absolutely, I am fourth out.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All right, let's say yes to glimmers.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
That's anita.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Do you have a glimmer?
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I do? I do. Mine is about my, well, our friend,
miss Elizabeth Burns, sometimes known as Muffy, who has a
superpower that is unmatched.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
And so tell me that she didn't take the jewels
from the louver. That's not her cat burglar superpowers. Yeah, well,
she better shared a lot. I think that, Yeah, I
think that that could be what she did. But this
is what we're getting for Christmas, I guess. Yeah, this
is a little different, okay, but that her and I
had gone swimming on last Sunday and had gone to
(25:11):
Cougie and I had a picture up in my car
and parked on one of those absolutely vertical streets and
I had made the decision I was going to park
on the going downwards and there was a parking spot
just in front of the no parking sign, and I
had parked just maybe a meter back from it so
that nobody would park in front of me.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
I thought, yay. We went for a lovely swim at
the women's baths, came back and not only had somebody
parked behind me with about a millimeter no okay, a
little bit more than that behind me, but this guy
had parked in front of me as well, illegally but
again very very little room.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And you're facing down a high day.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Like pretty well a vertical thing, and my car, well,
I got a new car since then, lovely, but this
car you would go and and kind of have a yes,
a little bit of time before it fulls in.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I feel like I'm going to throw out.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
I was so near that, Amanda, I was so near that,
and and I was like, what are we going to do?
And and Elizabeth has extraordinary parking ability.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
See when God gives out the talents, who knows where
they go?
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Who knows? But she was like, she goes, do you
want me to go and get you out? And I
was like mmm mm hmmm, because I would have actually
had to wait until the person ahead of me had
left because there was just no way that I would
not have hit his car, and.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
H'd flown to the airport and gone to Peru.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Probably, so I was so not only did she go
and take get my car out of that tiny little
spot without hitting anybody. She she looked at me, she goes,
do you want to just get in and have me drive?
And I went, uh huh, because I mean, she should
have been traumatized by it. I was trying gramatized by it.
(27:00):
But she went and she has that amazing superpower. I
love Elizabeth for many reasons, and that's just one of them.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
It's nothing like the it reduces you to being a kid,
and that sort of thing happens. I'd be the same
in that circumstances. If I park strangely badly, I'm in
a situation I can't get out of. If I've gone
up a one way street and it's blocked and I
have to reverse down therefore we'll drives on other side,
I just want to stop and cry. Yeah, I can't
(27:28):
deal with it, you know.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And I know.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
I mean I learned to drive in Canada on icy roads,
and I'm not a terrible driver, but that particular situation
just would have brought me to tears.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It would have.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, I don't know what I would have done without Elizabeth.
Good on you'l Lizabeth. Yeah, Elizabeth and my friend. Yes,
I'm going to raise a glimmer for you that recently
there was the Australian Talent Index Reports.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Ah, yes, Anita, I've been named queen of universe.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yet again.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
I've summarized it there. Yes, I was so chuffed by this.
So there's a thing that comes out every year, the
Australian Talent Index Report, and looks at all facets of
the media, and it's a gauged They interview a whole
lot of actual people, real people, not industry people, real
people who are asked how they feel about you, why
they feel like that, et cetera, et cetera. And I
(28:25):
was named Australia's top broadcaster male or female. I was
surprised and chuffed. Thank you for bringing it up, because
I only had to write on a piece of paper
and push it towards you a few times they mentioned this,
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh, I think it so well deserved, Amanda. And it
really is a testament to your time and energy and
effort that you've put in over all these years.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Well, thank you, thank you, and a great level of
that story. My brain goes to anti glimmers in a way.
I'm filming the second series of The Piano at the moment.
If you love series one, you're going to go crazy
over series two. The stories are so beautiful, the settings
are lovely, the music, the people we've met have just
been extraordinary. And we were filming on the weekend and
(29:14):
I'd drink, as you know, a thousand cups of tea,
go to the toilet every ten minutes. Yeah, bladder of
a budget, well well documented. But I'd been miked up
very early in the morning. I was drinking hot tea
in freezing location, drinking hot tea all morning, and at
lunchtime twelve thirty, I thought I've to go to the loose.
So I asked the sound records to unhook my microphone.
(29:35):
So he took the microphone pack off. It's like a
packet of cigarettes. That six a year back. I just
had the cord and we had to film. We were
filming in a market, so I had to go to
public toilet. That's all fine. I got there, my pants
got caught and I was going quick because my body
was saying, oh, finally you're in a loop, and I
thought this cord is going to go into the loop.
So by the time I hooked that out, finally got
my pants undone my body, I just said, that's it,
(29:57):
we're going and they never happened. Pretty much wet myself,
and so then I came out. Luckily it was raining
outside because I could say to people, oh wow, I
had dark pants on, so it may not have been
able to tell, but I could say, oh wow. Because
I had to sit on a piano stool, I thought, God,
I've got to sit down now. And so the horror
(30:18):
of this, I sat next to this. I had to
sit next and chat to this charming woman who was
ninety three and a half and I sat next to her,
and I was the one who left a wet patch
on the seat. A ninety three and a half year
old woman was able to hold it together better than
(30:39):
I could. So that's what you get when you top
of Australian tell an Index report Anita. So it comes
with the territory.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Well done you. I thought you were going to tell
me that the make was on while you were here.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
No, no, no, I've learned to switch that off twice
in my career. I've forgotten it was on there, and
the whole pack electronics have dropped into the loo. Oh
that's a terrible moment to come out and tell the
sound records, Hey, I've got something to tell you. Oh awful.
But at least that didn't happen. Everyone on that set
would have preferred it be my dax than the technology.
(31:13):
Of course, when an eighty three and a half year
old's bladder beats mine, that's dreadful.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
It is dreadful.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
But anyway, that's kind of a glimmer, kind of well,
the fact that you can laugh, see the fact that
I can laugh about it is my glimmer on that
delightful note.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Shall we leave it?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I love you, I love don't make me laugh? Love
you two. I see you next time.
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