SeedPod Productions

Not quick enough to be sudden; too sudden to come to terms with: how do we find dignity in death? Interview with Jos Hall from Dying With Dignity This piece discusses death, dying and grief. First broadcast on 11 December 2017​ The doctor talks about ‘active dying’; ‘non-active dying’; ‘range of life’; ‘treatment options’. We speak in months, weeks, days. He’s professional and factual. ‘Three to n...

Fractured Voices; Muted Voices; Healing Voices Recorded 25-28 August 2017 First broadcast September 2017 ‘Distant Voices’ is a non-linear soundscape that captures the texture, emotion and feel of QPF2017: it takes you there. The three-acts: Fractured Voices; Muted Voices; Healing Voices, honour the 2017 theme, and pay tribute to the writers, activists and poets of this continent and beyond. Record...

Fair Rights for Sex Workers because everyone has the right to be safe at work and come home at the end of their shift 4ZZZ’s ‘Brisbane Line’ and 3CR’s ‘Stick Together’ talk to Elena Jeffereys from  Respect Inc. (QLD) and Jane Green from Vixen Collective (Victoria) about sex work and how these  collectives organise in a space which has legal barriers faced by no other group of Australian workers. F...

Interview by Alan (aged five); recording by Sally (mum); production and editing by Craig First broadcast 20 December 2018 The National Rugby Sevens Championship is an annual rugby union event that includes senior and junior teams in men’s and women’s divisions. Competitors include national Indigenous representative teams, state- and territory-based teams, and representatives from the Australian Ar...

First Broadcast in 2018 Brisbane-based writer Bri Lee’s memoir  Eggshell Skull  is her story through the Australian legal system, as a policeman’s daughter, law student, judge’s associate and complainant.  Eggshell Skull  is a fierce memoir, and its haunting appraisal of modern Australia illustrates how ‘justice’ looks very different — depending on who you are and where you’re from. It was a swelt...

First Broadcast in 2017 “The smoke got thicker and darker and then it seemed to be coming from everywhere, swirling around until it blackened the entire town.” —  The Coal Face  by Tom Doig In February 2014, the open cut coal mine surrounding Hazelwood Power Station caught fire and burned for forty-five days — that’s over 1000 hours; one-and-a-half months; six weeks. The town of Morwell, home to 1...

First Broadcast in 2017 The following piece discusses death, dying and grief. “There were flies in the kitchen, cane toads in the driveway, golden orb spiders in the Camellia and mosquitoes in the window blinds. Currawongs, butcher birds and magpies sang and shat in the frangipani tree while lizards hunted on the pool tiles. At night possums crawled along the brush fence and bats fought over green...

First Broadcast in 2017 The battle for Australia's tropical rainforests In December 1983 a small group of local Daintree residents formed a peaceful protest when the Douglas Shire Council, with the support of the Bjelke Petersen State Government, commenced work on a road from Cape Tribulation to Bloomfield in Australia’s tropical north east, about two hours north of Cairns. As an aside, Bjelke Pet...

First Broadcast in 2017 In 2015 Australia lost vibrant writer, editor and activist Kat Muscat at the age of 25 (1990–2015). A stone-cold scallywag, Kat was a formidable writing talent who taught all those she touched how to love each other better with kindness and empathy. Her writing embodied her personal mantra: Defiance, Feminism, Empathy. It’s tempting to see the terminology we’re raised with...

First Broadcast in 2019 This piece discusses mental illness, death and dying, and may contain content that some people find disturbing. If you need help please call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Sonia Orchard ’s third book  Into the Fire  is a beautifully written and deceptive page turner, that’s also difficult to read at times. It follows Lara, Alice (Lara’s best friend) and Crow (Alice’s partner). The n...

Frist Broadcast in 2016 The annual Kat Muscat Fellowship develops young female and feamle idenifying writers and editors from around Australia. The Fellowship offers professional development up to the value of $3,000 for an editorial project or work of writing by a young person and aims to continue Kat’s legacy and further develop the future of defiant young Australian women. Bri Lee, recipient of...

Australia’s Department of Home Affairs: a department no one wanted with a minister no one trusts — not even his colleagues In 2017 the Australian Department of Home Affairs was formed against all expert advice and against the grain of independent reviews and security analysts. As recently as 2015 (and 2008 before that) experts advised against it. The department’s creation was about internal power...

Unrepresentative views demonising people with physical and cognitive differences In 2017 a former Australian TV star was accused of sexual assault by many women. To defend his actions he claimed to suffer from ‘undiagnosed Aspergers’. Then a slew of un-informed personalities and politicians attacked people with physical and cognitive differences, calling for them to be isolated from our community....

Australia’s fake energy price debate (or “Coal is good for humanity”) During a 2017 debate about the findings of the  Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market  conservative politicians used fake concern about energy prices to argue that Australia needs more coal-fired power plants, despite experts saying that such infrastructure are likely to become ‘stranded...

Unrepresentative views on making it easier to discriminate against people Australia’s Conservative Government attempted to significantly change a section of Australia’s  Racial Discrimination Act  in order to weaken protections from racial abuse. Image Credit Photo by raphael beutel on Unsplash

The scandals just keep coming for Australia’s big four banks For months the Conservative governments of Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott resisted calls for a Banking Royal Commission. For perspective, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) broke an anti-terror law 56,000 times and Wespac broke the same law 29 million times. Australia eventually enacted a Banking Royal Commission. Image Credit Ph...

Climate-denial politicians on rising sea levels; flooding; and, for some reason, jelly During droning debates about climate change — which include, seemingly, every issue under the sun except for climate: e.g. energy generation, poor people in India, CPI, ‘the new normal’, the Greens party, ‘political correctness’, protecting jobs in mining over jobs in tourism, ‘clean coal’ — politicians send rep...

Unrepresentative views on refugees, migrants, and, for some reason, tax During constant, ongoing and seemingly never-ending debates about refugees, Australian politicians often repeat themselves by sending inconsistent and illogical messages. Image Credit Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

Malcolm Turnbull (then-Prime Minister) on the campaign trail in 2016 During his re-election campaign Malcolm Turnbull donned military clothing, toured a warship and spouted empty cliches. Image Credit Photo by Aneta Hartmannová on Unsplash

Magezi Jackson, Trader Suleiman, Prosper Businge and Kyaligonze Fred are members of Twerwaneho Listeners Club (TLC), which is an NGO based in Fort Portal, in the Rwenzori Region of Western Uganda. TLC makes weekly radio programs centred on human rights, capacity building, civic education, and the monitoring and documentation of human rights violations.

Radio Salmon in Colombia The Radio Salmon (El Salmón) project in Colombia mobilises socially sensitive dialogue, encourages critical and participatory processes in defence of dignity and diversity as identity elements of social reconstruction. Radio Progreso in Honduras Radio Progreso is an award winning radio station with over 60 years reporting on human rights, social exclusion and defence of th...

Shamael Al-Noor is a journalist working with Al-Tayyar newspaper in Sudan. Al-Tayyar is an independent Sudanese daily newspaper that was founded in 2012. Shamael Al-Noor regularly writes for Al-Tayyar where she criticises extremism and promotes human rights.

Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh is a blogger and Coordinator of the Vietnamese Bloggers Network. Since 2006, she has been blogging under the pseudonym of Me Nam (Mother Mushroom). She is known for her criticism of the government, including revealing corruption cases and human rights violations committed by the authorities.

Poonam Agarwal is a investigative journalist and human rights defender working for the online news portal The Quint, where she regularly covers stories related to human rights in India and the abuse of law by the powerful.

What do new romantic 1980s pop band Duran Duran , novelist William S Burroughs , new wave band The Buggles , post-punk folk band The Pogues , MTV, cinema, nostalgia, my novel Transition Events , possible worlds literary theory, retro-future histories, time loops, Alice in Wonderland , director Russell Mulcahy , Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memory (MEAM), and my niece have in common? A lot, as it...