Reversers! Welcome to Sunday morning and to the third episode of the Radio Reversal Podcast.

Today’s episode is the third and final instalment of our introductory mini series, Learning Out Loud, and it follows on from last week’s sampling of our joint podcast launch party with fellow fresh Zed-casters Paradigm Shift on Sunday 24th September 2023. For that event, we welcomed our incredible community of listeners and contributors to join the RR collective (Anna, Nat, Shreya & Han) and Paradigm Shift’s Andy Paine for a wholesome-as-heck live-radio-style mixtape.

Last week we heard from Kevin Yow Yeh, Prof Chelsea Watego, and Dr David Singh, along with a poetry performance by Jonathan Sriranganathan. They each helped us dive headfirst into some meaty discussions about community radio-ing and community organising, and the possibilities that come from being less “public intellectuals” so much as (as Prof Watego so aptly put it!) “nerds on the frontline.” This was accompanied by the slightly chaotic fun of everyone’s favourite experimental house band, It’s Science And Feelings - aka Jodie Rottle, Matt Hsu, and me (Han).

The soundmaking-as-kinmaking continues throughout today’s episode, which features performances by protest-as-pedagogy singer-songwriters Phil Monsour and Andy Paine, along with Lamisse Hamouda performing a poem by Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba along with her own work.

To gear you up for the density of all this brilliance, Nat and I got together to recap our favourite moments of the launch, and to engage with some of the thinking about making art that is entangled with politics. We dig into “companion thinking” - an extension upon Sara Ahmed’s idea of “companion texts” (found in her 2017 book Living a Feminist Life) - and the article by me and my companion thinker & bestie Jodie Rottle, “Companion Thinking in Improvised Musicking Practice.” Other texts mentioned in this intro include Julietta Singh’s Unthinking Mastery, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable Series novels, Joyful Militancy by carla bergman and Nick Montgomery, and the work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Don’t worry, this is not the last substantial reading list you’ll get from us (you’re welcome)!

Following the performances, Andy and Lamisse sit down for a chat along with radical poet, musicker, and political nerd Jonathan Sriranganathan about making art and making change. This is a deep and insightful discussion not to be missed, exploring some of the challenges to making bold statements and experimental works in an age of Everything Is Forever On The Internet. Picking up the themes of fumbling through artmaking in public, It’s Science And Feelings close us out with some more sonic theory-making.

We are so incredibly grateful for the support we have received, both on our launch day and as we put these first podcast episodes out into the world! Thank you for tuning in, please do subscribe - here, and on your favourite listening apps - and send this episode to any friends you think might need a bit more Radio Reversal in their life. We also very much value your feedback and thinking in-company with us, so please do dive into the comment section and let us know your thoughts.

Until then, and as always, in solidarity,

Han (for the Radio Reversal Collective)