SEASON 4
A new episode every Friday.
AF LIVE @ AWF
Yves and Clare are joined by Professor John Carty and Dr Jared Thomas from the South Australia Museum to learn how the museum is grappling with its collection of unidentified Indigenous human remains — an archive of bones — and explore how the museum’s historical artefacts can operate as a “cultural seedbank” to facilitate the memory of and reconnection with Indigenous knowledges.
AF LIVE @ SWF
Special live episode from Sydney Writers’ Festival! Yves and Clare are joined by literary biographer Bernadette Brennan and documentary filmmaker Tosca Looby, who have recently documented the life and times of two of the most influential women in Australian history, to learn how the archive shapes and limits the stories we tell about powerful women. How does the archive shape and limit the stories we tell about powerful women? What does it feel like to be immersed in the life of someone else? And what does it mean to celebrate powerful women when Australia is still in many ways a man’s country?
EP1: Break Every Rule
This week, Clare and Yves are joined by the spectacular Kate Grenville to discuss searching for secrets, fictionalising colonial history and Kate's latest non-fiction book, Elizabeth Macarthur's Letters (2022).
EP2: Rabbit Holes and Fence-sitting
This week, Clare and Yves are joined by Associate Professor Anna Clark, historian and author of Making Australian History (2022). How does one tell the history of history itself? Can we expand the very notion of the archive with a leap of imagination? The group discusses fateful timetable clashes, the opaqueness of deep time, and the limitations of chronology-obsessed History with a capital H.
EP3: Reading the Stars
This week, Yves and Clare are joined by Associate Professor of cultural astronomy Duane Hamacher, an astronomer specializing in Indigenous astronomy. Duane’s book, The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars (2022), is the product of 10 years of collaborative research with Indigenous elders. How does a boy from Missouri wind up reading the antipodean stars? What gets overlooked when knowledge is discredited as myth and legend? The group discusses outsiders, variable stars changing the history of science, and researching with ears open, mouth shut.
EP4: Any Bozo Can Read an Autocue
This week, Archive Fever gets meta! Clare and Yves are joined by journalist and broadcaster Tamara Oudyn whose latest ABC podcast series, ‘The Good Divorce’, tells the story of the seemingly elusive good divorce. Where does the research begin for a topic that’s still so taboo? The group discusses the key ingredients that make good talent, sources as a human archive, and balancing the light and shade in the world today.
EP5: The Temple of History
This week, Yves and Clare are joined by Dr Mike Jones, archivist, historian, deputy director of the ANU’s research centre for deep history, and author of Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum (2021). What dangers lie in sacralising the archive? Is it truly possible to allow everyone control over their own story? The group discusses the historian’s professional anxiety, patrolling the disciplinary boundaries of archival work, and a hidden code in paperclips.
EP6: Wounded in a Place You Can’t Locate
This week, Clare and Yves are joined by Dr Lauren Burns, aeronautical engineer and author of Triple Helix: My Donor-Conceived Story (2022). How do you move forward when you hit the research brick wall again and again? What if your greatest archive is your own DNA? The group discusses carbon fibre, what was hidden becoming obvious, and genetic bewilderment.
EP7: Institutional Heckling
This week, Yves and Clare are joined by British historian and disability scholar Lauren Pikó, whose work explores the cultural histories of landscape. Lauren is the author of Milton Keynes in British Culture: Imagining England (2019). How does one look at archives and research through a disability lens? The group discusses the importance of presence and absence, digitising the archive, and accessibility of institutional and archival research.
EP8: The Evidence of Your Failures
This week, Clare and Yves are joined by Emeritus Professor Judith Brett, scholar of Australian politics and political history and author of such award-winning books as Robert Menzies: Forgotten People (2016) and The Enigmatic Mr Deakin (2017) and most recently, Doing Politics: Writing on Public Life (2022). What does it feel like to be obsessed with the past? The group discusses the psychoanalytic journey from an obscure Viense poet to Robert Menzies, reading for patterns, and writing history as an act of reparation.