Just A Spoonful

"I never would have posted it under normal circumstances." The first TikTok that Ruby ever uploaded went unexpectedly viral. Swifties were enraged and intrigued by her theory that Taylor Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, wasn't about any of the pop star's ex-boyfriends - it was actually about the Modernist poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. But something else was happening in Ru...

How do you name a chronic illness podcast? Is improv a cult? Remember when Twitter was good? We explore all this and more important topics on this episode of Just A Spoonful. Kaitlyn's guests this episode are chronically ill cinephiles Izzie Austin and Silvi Vann-Wall, cohosts of the Pill Pop podcast (presented by the Wheeler Centre). Izzie is a PhD candidate in Cinema Studies, and Silvi is the Fi...

JASP is back! For ME/CFS Awareness Day, Kaitlyn sits down for Just A Spoonful with disability advocate Kolt to chat about life with ME/CFS, the pressures on people with ME/CFS to seek 'cures', and the benefits and pitfalls of online chronic illness 'influencer' culture. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a complex, disabling disease that affects multiple systems in the...

My guest for this episode is playwright, screenwriter, director and doctor Sharmini Kumar, and we talk a little about being settlers in Australia, and her fraught relationship with the Western literary canon. Sharmini is the founder of AustenCon, an annual one-day convention for lovers of Jane Austen, which is actually happening tomorrow if you're listening to this as it comes out! This year's Aus...

Just A Spoonful's 2021 season continues with best-selling author, Aurealis Award winner, journalist, screenwriter and assistant film curator at the ACMI museum of screen culture: Maria Lewis! Maria is a stroke survivor (this year is actually her 10 year 'stroke-iversary') who thought they only happened to older people until she found herself in Emergency in her early 20s. We talk about the lifelon...

Just A Spoonful is kicking off a new 2021 season with Brisbane-based musician and broadcaster Scott Mercer, a JASP fan turned JASP guest. Scott was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in his late twenties, and obviously his very first thought was 'Sweet, now I'm eligible to be on Kaitlyn's podcast' (citation needed). The frontman of Slumlawwd talks about how playing music played a part in his diagno...

Robyn Lambird doesn't need your prayers, thanks! At the time of this interview, already an accomplished wheelchair athlete, public figure and the first visibly disabled adult to appear in a nationwide ad campaign in Australia, the 19-year-old is doing just fine. We chat about the amusing (and annoying) reactions people have to you when you're visibly disabled, going to stadium concerts in a wheelc...

The binary of healthy/sick is "lazy thinking", says tech innovation writer and researcher Bhavani Esapathi. The RSA Fellow and HuffPo blogger is passionate about shifting the narrative around chronic illness from "despite" to "because of". Without her severe Crohns and arthritis/spondylitis conditions, she would not be doing the exciting work she does today. Perhaps she wouldn't have travelled to...

“You're not like, you know, a REGULAR disability.” Carly Findlay fields all kinds of ridiculous comments about her appearance and her disability, ranging from the insensitive to the abusive. Some of them have taken her all the way to the Human Rights Commission. “It was a bit weird to be the top news story for a couple of days … It wasn't a good experience.” Carly lives with Ichthyosis – a rare, s...

"My first response was really, 'This is some kind of psychotic break, I'm having a delusion right now that my dream publisher wants to offer me a book deal.' I felt like that for quite a few weeks, actually." But it was not a delusion. Anna Spargo-Ryan's debut novel The Paper House was released today by Picador Australia, and it has already gone into reprint. Back in March this year, Anna sat down...

May 12th is the International Day of Awareness for ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), a gravely misunderstood neurological disease. Up to 598,000 Australians live with ME/CFS, yet there is very little research funding or specialist healthcare available for them. How is such a devastating disease so overlooked? Kaitlyn Plyley investigates in this special episode of Just A...

Just A Spoonful's first international guest! Jill Pantozzi is a US-based pop culture journalist and former Editor-In-Chief of The Mary Sue, known online by her moniker The Nerdy Bird. Jill talks to me ahead of her appearance at Contact2016 in Brisbane, where she is the International Fan Guest of Honour. We talk Batman V Superman, depictions of disability in the Marvel and DC universes, and what it...

"It was a weird superpower." This is how Leah Musch describes obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) to me, but only in certain contexts. It helped her retain an astounding amount of detail as the owner of The Happy Cabin clothing store in Brisbane. It also led indirectly to serious injury. While recuperating from her injury, Leah had an epiphany that would change her relationship to fashion. She sol...

"If you think we're brave, ask yourself why we have to be brave." My guest this episode is Miranda Sparks - comedian, radio personality, transgender advocate, and author of the superhero web serial Shimmerverse. Miranda talks to me about growing up as a tomboy trans girl, why "show, don't tell" is problematic for a writer with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and accessibility in highbrow literature. We...

Priscilla Sutton is a right leg amputee, but in 2010 she found she had too many legs. Obsolete prosthetic legs, cluttering up her storage spaces. So, she came up with a unique way of honouring her pre-loved appendages. Priscilla is the founder of Spare Parts, an initiative that united pre-owned prosthetic limbs with artists and exhibited the result. (Also, my first guest to have been once nominate...

"I couldn't get comfortable and was like, something's not right." Amy Dallas, founder and CEO of Brisbane fashion label Chronic Youth, has been living with chronic pain for seven years. She talks about the difficulty in getting a diagnosis, how living with her condition has made her question our culture of always being busy, and the creativity with which she has overcome challenges. For instance,...

Thousands of people read Thomas Violence's tweets every day - funny, cutting, and sometimes a live feed into the hectic mind of someone with rapid-cycling Bipolar Type 1 Disorder. The man behind the Twitter account is Benjamin McLeay: web developer by day, member of Brisbane bands The Keepaways and Dogbauu by night, and tweeting at all times. We talk about making plans when you can't plan your moo...

"Mania is seductive." Mike Day is the drummer for Brisbane band Mega Ogre, as well as the winner of the SLQ Young Writer Award 2014. He lives with Bipolar Type 2 Disorder and anxiety, and also a cat. Mike tells me about losing friends during manic stages, writing tips, Paddington Dads(TM), and why he wouldn't get rid of Bipolar. We also talk about weird movies you watch during insomnia, holding on...

Recorded at the 2014 National Young Writers Festival. My guest this episode is writer, editor, Creative Producer of Express Media and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome haver, Lefa Singleton Norton. We push through our festival brain fog to talk women in comedy, why there's no shame in watching Midsomer Murders, explaining your illness to your boss, and fading out of your own life. Lefa tells me how she got...

Is The Truman Show real? We go deep. My guest this episode is Brisbane writer Samuel Maguire, whose work has been published in Stilts, The Lifted Brow, and Scum Mag. Sam is living with Bipolar Type 1 Disorder and an anxiety disorder and uses The Lord of The Rings instead of sleep medication. We talk psychotic breaks, The Hunger Games, why Michelle Law is great, and mums reading your sad blog posts...

Is putting Michael Bay's name on posters good marketing for Michael Bay films? Really? In this post-Transformers: Dark of the Moon world, my guest for Episode 1 is filmmaker, TV producer and general sasspot Steph Dower, who lives with a permanent disability and has to fill out a form every five years confirming that it's still permanent. We discuss film editing, movies Ben Affleck shouldn't have s...