(There are so many things I could be writing about in this bonus right now. I’m so angry about so many things that some days I cannot cope with how full of rage I am and then I have to take a valium to calm down and then another one because the first doesn’t work. I was at the Dr the other day, ranting about injustice, and he had to take my blood pressure three times, then guide me through a relaxation technique to get an accurate reading. Instead of getting my blood pressure up about Indigenous over-incarceration and deaths in custody, our governments’ disgusting and petty two-tiered welfare system, and all the inequalities that get my blood all… pressurey? I’m going to write about something I love and something that helped.)
You know by now that I am, indeed, a complete nutcase.
(Ok, let me tangent here to say: I can call myself a nutcase, crazy, bonkers. You cannot. In the same way that sex-workers can call each other hookers and whores, but only we get to say that to each other. You don’t. Look, I don’t make the rules, I just try not to fall off the edges of them.)
On the 22nd of March, Australia went into lockdown. It was a Sunday. The government was doing weird shit like having press conferences at 9pm. I was anxious and paranoid as hell. I don’t think I had any valium at that point (my doctor only doles it out to me sparingly and though that is fucking shit ‘cause I often need it, I do understand why. I watched a friend detox from benzo addiction, and it was not pretty. You can, for realsies, die.) I was hitting refresh on the ‘Just In’ section of the ABC News page and on my Twitter feed when I got a text from our head manager: the dungeon was closed indefinitely. There went my job.
It’s estimated that over a million Australians lost their jobs that day or in the next couple of days as restrictions closed all inessential businesses (the exact number is hard to define as the numbers are skewed due to the weird fucking mess that is ‘JobKeeper’.) Despite social-distancing rules, that Monday and for the following days, there were queues at Centrelink offices (our welfare department) that lined whole blocks. Their website became completely inaccessible. Basically, everyone freaked out. And I, being a fucking bonkers person, freaked THE FUCK OUT. I mean, I have two short stories specifically about plagues. I’ve done some research into that shit.
But I knew the government would take care of us. They’re cruel, they’re petty, they’re mostly fucking corrupt, greedy idiots, but because their main voter base of ‘standard Aussies’ (white middle-class people) couldn’t work, they had to do something or we’d all be fucked. And they did. Even though the shitty welfare solution they created was two-tiered and with a bunch of fucking bullshit rules (to remind us that some people are a little bit more ‘deserving’ than others), they did it, so we were okay…ish. I knew they would. They HAD to. But they did take their sweet time getting it together, probably spending the extra days working out how to make it as shitty and cruel as possible.
Twitter was freaking out. The news was hectic. My head was spinning. Refresh, refresh, refresh. I could feel a manic episode coming on like lava surging beneath the caldera of a volcano. There was nothing else for it. I put my gardening gloves on, grabbed my headphones, and started scrolling through my podcast app, looking for something to listen to while I worked off the manic energy that roiled on top of my usual hyperactivity in our little garden.
I came across a podcast called ‘You’re Wrong About’, and thought, this sounds okay.
‘You’re Wrong About’ is two journalists, Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes, taking an event from the past, usually something the media blew the fuck up about, and giving it nuance, showing us the details outside of the headlines and standard narrative.
This was a little relevant to my interests at the time. At some point, during those twirly first days of isolation (twirly in my head, anyway) I had come out publicly and IRL-professionally as a sex worker. When I wrote my memoir (Money for Something by Mia Walsch plug plug plug) I had planned to stay pseudonymous/anonymous, but a few months before March and all that madness, I’d decided to just fuck it all and come out. My first three books are YA fiction, so this was kinda a big deal. It could destroy my ability to ever again write for a YA audience, which is way sad, but I couldn’t deal with having to hide it any more, or worry that it would come out via some other avenue. My agent made this weird face when I told her, like ‘oh, Marlee’. It is a face I am used to (from a lot of people.) And then she sighed and said, ‘can you at least wait until you have a pre-order button to announce it?’ Because, obviously, my true self is only okay if it can be used to sell books. Whatevs. That’s the business, or so I, a naïve bitch, have discovered.
My pre-order button appeared on March 23rd. And obeying orders, I came out. It was fine. But ask me again how fine it is after July 2 when the book is released, and I start doing publicity.
So, a podcast about the nuances of media shitstorms (which someone close to me professionally told me I was courting, in those exact words) and what they got wrong, or missed, or had no room for in a headline or a news article seemed pertinent.
But it wasn’t all that stuff that hooked me to ‘You’re Wrong About’. As I frantically gardened my way through the fear and uncertainty of the first few weeks of lockdown, Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes told me stories about the ins and outs of stuff I knew only from sensational headlines and 250-word news articles, or five minute TV news segments. There was a good backlist of episodes too. I’d line them up and listen as I gardened. I listened to Marshall and Hobbes explain the Satanic Panic as I ripped out my succulent garden to grow veggies. When I built several iterations of garden covers to keep mine and the neighbour cats from shitting in my new veggie garden, I learned about the nuances of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton Impeachment. The episode on the Obesity Epidemic kinda brought me to tears and I was glad I was wearing sunglasses as I furiously walked the specific and exact walking path I have created for myself during lockdown.
Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes aren’t just like, actually brilliant people (I’m talking super smart, sharp, and fucking on it.) They aren’t just hardcore researchers who seem to fucking love the collection and collation of information. They are these things, but they’re also fucking funny. And, most importantly, they do that thing the hosts of the best podcasts do, which is to cultivate a rapport with each other that extends out to you, so that it feels like you’re part of it. Maybe at lunch or on a long drive with two friends who both happen to be experts on extremely specific subjects and love to talk about them. It feels like you get to be a part of this friendship, and though you might not have anything to add, that’s okay, because it feels great to be privy to it.
Marshall and Hobbes have this way of making subjects that I didn’t really care about into something fucking fascinating. I never, ever thought that I’d be completely riveted to a two-part episode on Kato Kaelin, a bit player in the OJ Simpson case. But I was, and by the end of part one, I was hungry for more Kato. Their deep dive into Jessica Simpson’s memoir Open Book was a really nuanced exploration of the ‘sexy virgin’ marketing of pop stars in the late 90’s and early aughts. Their four-part series on the DC Snipers is really compelling listening. They’ve got a soft spot for misunderstood and complex women dragged through the media, like Marcia Clark, Anita Hill, Lorena Bobbit, Amy Fisher, and they have an excellent episode on Anna Nicole Smith. They cover a bunch of other topics too: sexting, homelessness, acid rain, Enron, the Challenger Disaster, Jonestown, the 2000 election, and so many more. It’s the kind of podcast that appeals to elder millennials (which I am - actually, I think I am the eldest of Millennials.)
In the first two weeks of lockdown, which sent me so bonkers that I actually don’t remember most of it, this podcast kept me grounded, it kept me laughing, and it taught me so much about what I didn’t know concerning things I thought I did know. Even though it’s very US-centric (and I’m an Aussie), the events in America obviously dominated the news here then, and they do now too. The eps that feature 90’s events stir memories and give me detail on things that I only saw the surface of on the nightly news.
I guess all of this is to say, thank you, Sarah and Michael, for helping me through a pretty nutso time. It sounds silly because you’re two people I’ve never met making a podcast on another continent, but your passion for getting to the guts of things was inspiring, and your shrewd analysis and quick wit made me laugh at a time that I really fucking needed it.