Podcasts

Tune in for a special “Nerds on the Frontline” edition of Let’s Talk – Black Knowledge, as Chelsea & David catch up with fellow radio-maker Han Reardon-Smith to talk book lists, writing as therapy, and the radical political possibility of intellectual work that is grounded in community, care, and collaboration. They talk through some of the books that have shaped their own lives, as well as the growing political literacy around neurodivergence and its intersections with race, gender, class, and sexuality. From “Another Day in the Colony” to “Joyful Militancy”, Chelsea, David and Han talk through the work that books can do in supporting the struggle for justice as it is waged across multiple frontlines, from this colony and across the globe.

Han Reardon-Smith (they/them) is “a white settler musicker, radio/podcast producer, community organiser, and thinker-scholar living on the unceded land of the Jagera, Yuggera Ugarapul and Turrbal Peoples.” Their work and thinking are “rooted in queer/trans and disabled collaborative and contaminative co-creation with other “holobionts with history” — soundmakers and artmakers, physical and social environments, ecologies, histories, complicities, and narratives, exploring the emergent possibilities of making-kin and finding agency within community (soundmaking as kinmaking: musickin). Han works as a postdoctoral research associate to Wiradjuri trans/non-binary Professor Sandy O’Sullivan on their project Saving Lives: Mapping the influence of Indigenous LGBTIQA+ creative artists in the Critical Indigenous Studies Department (Macquarie University, on Dharug Country) and as part of the Centre for Global Indigenous Futures. As a flutist and electronic musician, Han plays solo under the moniker cyberBanshee, and with Magan-djin’s radically inclusive symphonic pop collective Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra, as well as improv and experimentation trios Rogue Three and It’s Science And Feelings. They are one of the community organising thinker-troublemakers behind the Brisbane Free University, its Radical Reading Group, and its 4ZZZ community radio and podcast offshoot, the Radio Reversal Collective. Han also produces the podcast Saltwater Library with RMIT DECRA scholar Dr Rebecca Olive.

If you’re interested in getting involved in the BFU Radical Reading Group, you can find details here: https://brisbanefreeuniversity.org/bfu-radical-reading-group/