In episode 10 of James and Ashley Stay at Home, we get real serious – or as serious as it’s possible for James and me to get.
We talk about our respective diagnoses and how these illnesses erupted in our lives. James has chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, a neurological disorder that’s quite rare.
CIDP has had a significant and ongoing impact on his life, but James is determined not to make it part of his identity. His challenges in even speaking about it are why it took us three separate attempts over multiple months to record this episode.
And while this episode was recorded remotely as usual, we actually got to hang out in person in Coonabarbran, proving that we don’t stay at home all the time (even if it often feels that way).
It’s been a big podcast week! Two interviews about How to Be Australian were also released.
The first, with superhost Dani Vee of the Words and Nerds podcast (which is coming up to 200 episodes), is possibly the most cross-cultural Australian/Canadian conversation imaginable, with a strong focus on the weather and spider stories.
Dani shares an excellent spider story that settles one of the great Aussie debates: whether or not hunstmans bite. She also shares a story about visiting family in the Netherlands, who announced, “We’re all going to the beach today because it’s 16 degrees!” As a Canadian I can imagine myself saying this. As an Australian, I think it’s nuts.
As someone who has grown up in Australia, it was such an insight to see how we’re perceived from the outside.
Dani Vee, Words and Nerds episode 196
Dani also asks what is perhaps my favourite question ever: why do you write?
The other interview is with Paul Barclay for ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas.
This in-depth discussion gets into Australia’s cultural quirks, the concept of belonging, the importance of uncovering and acknowledging buried histories, and of course, the Hollywood kookaburra con.
We also talk about adulthood, and get into the core of the book: ‘Part of the process of really settling into adulthood was realising that these images I’d held in my head, the things that I’d believed were going to make me happy — were not actually going to make me happy.’
Paul asks a great question about my search for identity in Australia, and how it connects to a childhood spent moving around.
Something had happened that had disrupted my ability to belong. And I think that’s partly what propelled me to go live in places like South Korea and Peru and Mexico, because of course I didn’t belong there, that was obvious to everyone, and we could just move forward from that understanding.
If these conversations make you keen to get into How to Be Australian, you can get a copy now wherever you are in the world.
Order the book now from
Your local bookshop | Booktopia | Amazon | Outside Australia
