Like I'm A Six-Year-Old
Comedian Tom Ballard sits down with interesting and passionate people to find out what they do and what they believe in. It's kind of like Kitchen Cabinet except Tom can't cook.
Episodes
Oh hello.
As the title suggests, this is my little way of letting you know that I'm wrapping up Like I'm A Six-Year-Old once and for all. I've loved doing it - and thanks so much for listening to it and supporting it over the years! Bloody hell! - but I feel like after eight years, hundreds of conversations, a bunch of live shows, a pandemic and a book, it's time...
Ben Abbatangelo is a proud Gunaikurnai and Wotjobaluk man and a social commentator. He's the former deputy CEO of global non-profit AIME, has appeared regularly on The Project and th...
Larissa Baldwin-Roberts is a proud Widjabul Wia-bal woman from the Bundjalung Nations and has been a progressive activist since forever. She's a co-founder of the First Nations climate pressure group SEED Mob and is the current CEO of GetUp!.
In this conversation I ask Larissa about where her politics come from and how she thinks about political ideology. She outl...
John Quiggin is a widely-respected economist and professor at the University of Queensland. He's a former member of the Australian Government's Climate Change Authority, and he's written widely about the scourge of neoliberalism and privatisation.
I wanted to get John on the show to discuss the essay written by Treasurer Jim Chalmers for The Monthly back in Februa...
She's back! Economist, comrade and now author Alison Pennington returns to the show to discuss her debut book Gen F'ed? How Young Australians Can Reclaim Their Uncertain Futures.
We discuss how all the good jobs disappeared, our massively cooked housing market, replacing intergenerational warfare with class warfare and how young people can build political power un...
This week's episode brings you the conversation I had with some other generational voices at a live event at the public library in my home town, Warrnambool.
Alongside Zoomer and journalist Sharna Rogers, Xer and psychologist Dr. Jodie Fleming and Baby Boomer and celebrated aid worker Bob Handby AO, I discussed three big topics I explore in my book I, Millennial:...
Polly Hemming is a Senior Researcher at The Australia Institute's Climate & Energy Program.
Just this week she was giving evidence to a Parliamentary committee on the Labor Party's signature climate policy, the "Safeguard Mechanism" - which, I'm sorry to say, stinks. It stinks real bad.
Here Polly lays out exactly just how mu...
Oh hello. I am back again. Look at us.
This week I'm bringing you another taste of my debut book I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else, which is now out and about in the world. This is an extract from the chapter on privatisation - "From Our Warm, Public Hands" - which lays out just how much of our public shit has b...
Craig "Fozzy" Foster is a former Socceroo who has become not only one of Australia's most respected sports commentators and broadcasters, but also one of our most respected social justice advocates and human rights campaigners.
This episode is Craig's keynote speech at the 2022 Refugee Legal Annual Dinner, which I happened to MC online. It's followed by a brief Q...
My book I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else is out in the world! Gosh.
We launched it in Melbourne with a lovely event at the Easey Street Concert Hall in Collingwood, featuring me in conversation with my mate Osman Faruqi. Oz and I discussed the guts of the book and why I wrote it, and I read some bits out and took questions and we all had a great time. I hope you enjoy listening ...
This week I'm bringing you a taste of my debut book I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else. You'll hear the full prologue from the audiobook that sets the whole thing up and talks about me doing drugs.
The book comes out next week - you can pre-order it here.
I'm having book launches in MELBOURNE, SYDNEY and BRISBANE - check out the details and book tickets here.
Ben Schneiders is an award-winning investigate journalist at The Age and author of the new book, Hard Labour: Wage Theft in the Age of Inequality.
Over the past eight years, Ben's reporting has exposed the scourge of wage theft and worker exploitation in Australian hospitality, fast food, retail and agriculture. In Hard Labour, Ben summarises just how widespread and serious this problem is in Australian capitalism today, and lays ...
I'm back! Again! Sorry about the big gap between episodes. I am bad.
Leo Puglisi is a digital journalist who just so happens to be 14 years old. He founded what would eventually become the online news service 6 News Australia when he was just 11, and he's since grown it into a respectable independent media outlet that does pretty great journalism, and regularly puts mainstream "adult" media outlets to shame. During the 2022 electi...
As he gears up to run for Greens preselection to be an upper-house candidate in the 2023 NSW state election, Jim took some time...
In this conversation I discuss with Georgia Kelly's bizarro mind and political career, why she thinks the people of H...
In 2022 he's running to pick up another NSW Senate seat for the Greens (and it's actually possible!).
In this conversation I ask David about NSW politics' love of corrupt...
This week I'm bringing you the audio of a panel I appeared on, discussing the reason behind and ideas around the recent boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival.
I joined dozens of other artists in withdrawing from the Festival to protest its acceptance of $20k in sponsorship money from the Israeli embassy; a sponsorship which guaranteed Israel the honour of being a "...
Writer and journalist Johann Hari has returned to the show to discuss why our brains have melted.
His new book is called Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and it is a fascinating, depressing and insightful look at the "attention crisis" we're facing as a society. Johann tells me about just how bad this situation is, how much social media and technology is ...
Van Badham is a playwright, author and activist, and she's returned to the show to discuss her latest book, QAnon: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults.
Here Van lays out precisely what the QAnon conspiracy theory actually is, how it came into existence and how much it has shaped - and continues to shape - politics in the US and here in Austra...
James Button is a freelance journalist, ALP member and former speechwriter for the former prime minister Kevin Rudd. He recently wrote a three-part, in-depth series for Nine/Fairfax on "cancel culture": what it is, why it exists and what it means for the Australian Left.
In this conversation James and I go deep into his argument and the three pieces and try to cl...
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