David Boarder Giles was born in Melbourne in the year of Reagan's election (1980), but his mother soon whisked him away to Disneyland and conservative California when he was 10. Boo. It took him a while to finally make his way back home. David witnessed many interesting cultural curios during his teenage years in the States, which probably informed…

Jack Brady has done nearly everything there is to do in life, or so we think. From joining the Air Force at 17, to becoming a trainee dive master, an anthropologist and an English teacher in China. Let's throw in a comedian for good measure. Jack was born in Upper Ferntree Gully in 1970, but soon after their parents upped sticks and moved all the w…

What a thrill to have the very talented Tia Kasambalis join us on the show this week. If you haven't heard of Tia, you have probably seen his artwork around the streets of Melbourne, in a newspaper, or maybe even on the telly sometime over the last few years. Tia is one of those talented artist-activists that make up the Workers Art Collective. Che…

What a gun - Rosie Heselev. At 30, she is the founder of Australia's first national prison newspaper, About Time. The paper is intended to be a narrative shift about prison and prisoners, with the hope of it eventually being completely produced by peers. It is off to a great start, having just released its second edition. Rosie got to learn quite a…

What a delight to have the lovely Sonia Randhawa on the show this week. Sonia is the current producer-presenter of 3CR's Wednesday Breakfast, but she has been around community radio a lot longer, starting up a pirate station in Malaysia some years back when she lived there with her Punjabi father and English mother who met in Liverpool in the 60s. …

Chris Phillips is a serious person who is big on personal pledges. He grew up a strong Catholic in Box Hill, but didn't take 'the pledge'. He did it tough at tech school in Abbotsford before moving into a carpentry apprecticeship at 16. At some stage, Chris became a committed union organiser for the Building Workers Industrial Union, tackling poor …

Daryl McDonald is a man who will live to 100, at least, but he grew up dodging magpies in Geelong. Now he is the co-presenter of Breadline, a program of the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, broadcasting on Mondays at 6pm, here on 3CR. Daryl works on the advice line at the AUWU, letting people know about their rights as Social Security beneficia…

Folks may know this week's guest, Justin DeLeeuw, via his gold toilets which have been spotted around Preston and most consistently on Google Maps at 'Modern Art - Not a Fan', a rather interesting parcel of grass on a median strip on St Georges Road. Justin and other assorted activists, including members of the Renters and Housing Union (RAHU), hav…

Why is it so difficult to conduct research on the West Papuan Noken? How does an item of Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO) relate to nationalism? Who exactly owns cultural heritage? These are the questions our guest this week is grappling with in his thesis at the University of Melbourne and his name is Louis Liedel. Louis is interested in cult…

This week we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the West Papua Office in Docklands - the only office in the world housing members of the West Papuan transitional government. There you will find its Foreign Affairs minister, Jacob Rumbiak, who has been in the struggle for his land's liberation since he was a young boy and who spent 10 years in …

Mars on Earth. That's where this week's guest has been and she joins us to talk all about it. Sally ventured to Antartica this year, prompted by her deep concern for sea-level rise, having lived her whole life by the water. She got to see a lot of cold, blue water, icebergs, penguins and seals on her epic voyage across the Roaring Forties with 350 …

We sure wish Duff would write a book about his stay in an abandoned resort behind Cape Tribulation and his cosying-up with a cassowary. We might have to settle for his sci-fi, end of the earth epic about 4 blokes who return from the forest to find they are the last humans alive. In Warrnambool. Those old enough may know Duff as the fella who pie-fa…

Serial pest, Leon Zembekis, joins us on the show this week. He is our newly-appointed elder guest wrangler and we are so happy to welcome him to the Radical Australia team. Leon has always respected his elders and the wisdom they impart. He has worked for the Greens for a long time and grew up with a staunch Greek mum who knew how to keep the counc…

What a treat to have Gus Nossal on the show this week. He joined us on the phone from his home at the last minute. What a trooper. For the uninitiated, Gus is an Australian legend who has been bestowed with many titles and was on the telly all the time back in the day as scientific public intellectual. Gus says that public communication is vital. H…

Don Sun is a proud Sunshine boy from the 50s and has been around the community radio scene for decades. He penned the Admin Watch column in Farrago, University of Melbourne's student magazine, back in the day when he studied political philosophy and saw student unionism up close. He roadied for Lou Richards at Channel 7 and turned the quarter light…

What are they like - these two muggins. These oafs. These silly sausages. Diggaling deep, shovelling the cash, doing what they can for their beloved 3CR. A hold-tight-to-your-seats thrill ride as these two oompalompas freestyle for your heartfelt pledge to keep the door open to anyone and everyone who has ever done anything good for the wider world…

Sue Bolton is almost peerless when it comes to having clear working memory and deep knowledge of Australian politics the last 40 years. She can tell you the details of so many leftist campaigns, what the issues were that were being caused by government and business, and key decisions that were made. Her knowledge is really quite astounding. We retu…

Rowland G Schultz entertains us muchly this week with his poetry and one of his flamenco guitar tracks. He called in on the phone from Sydney and entertained us with many poems. Rowland acquired a brain inury through a transport accident some years ago and this precipitated a very difficult period of his life. We talk about what it is like to lose …

These days, this week's guest, Ron Guy, is an artist activist for the cause of Western Sahara, the last colony of Africa. Earlier, he supported the cause of East Timor before it gained independence. Ron has been a union delegate for the AWU and was the OH&S officer at Dow Chemicals. He has had a long interest in the trade union movement, starting w…

Arborist and life-long rock star. That's this week's guest, Andrew Matters, calling in from Adelaide. Andrew has been shaping, saving, planting and assessing trees for over 20 years. He loves planning and planting gardens and is currently crushing on the Crepe Myrtle tree. He spent his young adulthood in Sydney with a panel van and a band - Neptune…

Jeannie Erceg was one of 5 residents who resisted the demolition of their homes on the Barack Beacon public housing estate in Port Melbourne just a little while ago and says 'They can't make me disappear. I can say what I want'. Jeannie says the estate had a 'friendly feeling' and it was a 'wonderful community'. Like every resident on the estate, J…

Greg returns on the blower from Queensland to the Radical Australia studio talking about his new research on West Papua and its shady colonial history. Definitely one for the enthusiasts and for anyone wanting to enlighten themselves about colonial wars on the doorstep of our nearest neighbour. Freedom for West Papua.…

I want to lead the way in having difficult conversations says this week's guest, Ruth Clare. Ruth is perhaps best known either for her acting job in a genital herpes commercial or for her memoir about growing up with her returned serviceman father. One lighthearted and one serious fact about Ruth and we straddle both ends in our conversation with h…

Pauline Klemm is the woman behind the social media juggernaut, The Baba Desi Story, on Facebook, where she has taken some stunning pictures of Belgrave wizard, Baba Desi. She has been taking pictures for the last 6 years after coming to care for her brother's camera when it came into her possession. It was a sliding door moment and Pauline learnt t…

Antoinette Pitt used to roadie for 73 Bob Bob and was Australia's first female wrestling referee. She is a woman of many surprises. Antoinette is a nurse and an executive for Australian Progressives who have 6 pillars of E's: Ethics + Empathy + Evidence + Equality + Engagement + Empowerment. Learn all about Antoinette's goth phase in Lilydale and h…

This week's guest, Ribke Ovide, is a volunteer at the the West Papua Office in Docklands. She has been living in Australia for the last couple of years, coming here on a scholarship to further her studies in aviation mechanics. Ribke hails from Timika in West Papua and speaks 4 languages. She was born in 200. Her faith is very important to her, as …

This week's guest, Tim Hollo, is kind of like Green royalty in Australia. He heads The Green Institute, a think tank focussed on transformative issues in the green space, he founded Green Music Australia, he was the communications director for Christine Milne, and he has been at the environmental game since university in the 90's. His first love, h…

In case you missed it - here is the second part to our talk with Kutcha Edwards. Kutcha is a legend of 3CR, steering our annual Beyond the Bars NAIDOC prison broadcasts for many a year. In this chat, we are taken on a trip down the memory lane of aboriginal Fitzroy of the 1990s. From the MAYSAR/ Fitzroy Stars Youth Club gymnasium and Uncle Herbert …

We are thrilled to broadcast a couple of chats we recently had with the mighty Kutcha Edwards. This week, we learn the origins of Kutcha's name and some things about his early life. Kutcha tells us that he was born before The Referendum and politics has played a big part in his life. Kutcha went to high school in Taralgon before moving to the city …

A life full of mentors and a-ha moments. That has been the story of this week's guest, Rob Brown, a big tall Scotsman indeed. Rob was born in 1960 in the Gorbals, tenement housing in Glasgow, sharing one toilet among five families. That's just how things were. Rob's mother scrubbed the steps of the school on her hands and knees with a brush. That's…

We spoke with this week's guest, University of Sydney Professor of Law, Simon Butt, on Indonesia's Presidential Election Day. Simon came on to talk about some of the legal infrastructure in Indonesia, during the pre-1998 Suharto era and now. On paper, Indonesians have more legal rights than Australians, but corruption runs right through the system.…

This week's guests, Mecedes Zanker and Joe Lorback, are members of the Renegade Solidarity Audio Force crew who have been involved in all kinds of local radical activism, from #freeassange, to Melbourne's Palestinian motorcades, the Park Hotel protest actions and every Sunday Palestine rally to date. Joe joined us from his weekend at the Women's te…

This week's guest, Alexandra, has had an interesting life so far, most of that spent in England with radical collectives. She is a dancer who grew up in Canberra. Alexandra is currently our Wednesday afternoon reception volunteer and has an interesting story to tell. Thanks for being with us, Alex.3CR volunteer, activist, dancer による

A fashion brand for people who give a shit. That's how this week's guest, Nick Savaidis, decribes his label, Etiko, winner of an Australian Human Rights Award and the most ethical fashion brand in the country. Nick started making sports balls under the label before branching into clothing. He has always had a thing for the underdog and has used thi…

This week's guest, Gatwech Wal, is a war survivor from South Sudan. When Gatwech was 11 years old, he had to flee his village with his older brother and he spent 11 years in a refugee camp on the border of Ethiopia. We hear this story and what it was like. Since coming to Australia, Gatwech has worked incredibly hard to have a successful life and i…

On our last live show for the year, we welcome the return of popular guest, Robert 'Smokey' Wolfgramm. We find Robert in conversation with Joe about his PhD on the ethnic identity. Robert set out on his research to answer the questions 'What does it mean to be Fijian? What does it mean to be ethnic? How do we know who we are?'. Find out what answer…

Jill Lockwood is a community-minded gardener from the Dandenong Hills, currently volunteering her time at the Knox Environment Society in Ferntree Gully with all the other 'seedy ladies' and 'HAGS' cleaning seeds and preserving the indigenous flora of the area. Jill was born in 1944 at Epworth Hospital, worked in insurance and also as a medical rec…

Baba Desi. The Wizard. The Doctor. Desmond Bergen. He is known as many things and has been many things in his long life: jazzer, hippie, bodgie, pirate. In fact, he's 'been them all', he says. We are delighted to welcome Baba Desi to Radical Australia this week to share with us some tales from his long life of 94 years. Baba Desi was born in Wangar…

We are delighted to bring you a very special episode of Radical Australia this week, sharing it with you today on International Day of People with a Disability #IDOPWD, Sunday December 3. This week's guest is intellectual disability self-advocate, Colin Hiscoe. Colin has been an active member of self-advocacy group Reinforce for decades and his sto…

"Encouragement is a great thing in practise". We welcome back Percy Rogers to Radical Australia this week for the third and final instalment of our conversation with this amazing medical doctor who has done so much for so many across his years of medical practise in Australia. Percy worked until he was 86 years old. We take up this conversation at …

Imagine being able to boast that one of your claims to fame was getting yellow-carded in a soccer match against a young Maradona. Such has been the life of our lovely guest this week, Tommy Latupeirissa. Tommy's family comes from Maluku (Spice Islands) in Indonesia and they were a military family. Tommy was a young gun soccer player and represented…

"Advocacy never stops. It keeps going". We were treated to conversing with the lovely Ricki Spencer this week. Ricki is a trans woman, mental health and disability advocate from Footscray who has endured some really rough treatment in her life and she continues to hold her head up high. Ricki tells us that she was stigmatised and bullied throughout…

"Things are not going to change unless we do something about it. Don't sit on the sidelines. Become involved". Bevan did get involved in activism and quit his job to work on the Vietnam moratorium movement in the 1970s. It was when Bevan first went to Africa as an Australian Volunteer Abroad in 1965 that his eyes were opened to African independence…

This week's guest, Sue Smith, has been a trailblazer and a great friend to many in the disability self-advocacy space in Victoria and beyond for many years and has just recently retired. Sue leaves a great legacy. In 2008, Sue and friend began the Self Advocacy Resource Unit (SARU) at Ross House in the Melbourne CBD, an amazing resource supporting …

This week's guest, David Ayliffe, has had a busy life with lots of different projects and this made for a bit of a rowdy show! David was born in Sydney and spent many years in Queensland, at one stage working for Murdoch newspapers before joining a cult for 21 years after a born-again experience. He met his wife there and raised four children. Davi…

The lovely, bubbly, Kayla Cartledge joined us on the show this week to rally support for the YES vote and to tell us all the amazing community organising she has been up to on the Mornington Peninsula. Kayla is a Gurindji woman who grew up on Larrakia (Darwin) country, people known for their land rights activism. Kayla carries her mother's strong s…

This week's guest, Deborah Gough, started out life on a good footing, leading a school strike in Year 7 when the bubble taps didn't work on a really hot day. So they all went home. Fast forward to when she was 12 and it was then that Deborah first thought about the life of a journalist and what that could mean for her. Deborah was a clerk at The Ag…

Percy Rogers joins us again this week for Part Two of our special as we learn about his professional life as a doctor in Melbourne. Percy has done a lot to change the birthing experience for women in Australia. He was appalled at the treatment of pregnant women in hospitals many decades ago and ushered in breathing techniques that were non-existent…

This week's show is Part One in our interview series with Melbourne GP, health innovator and activist, Percy Rogers. Percy was a kindly GP to many people over many decades in Coburg and beyond, specialising in maternity health, but he started life in Western Australia in 1927. Percy grew up in Australia's experience of the Depression and the Second…