Sonic Gathering Place Melbourne Jail: Creating peaceful spaces in the midst of city chaosOn this Radiothon show we explore the beginnings of the show Communication Mixdown with John Langer, and the ambience of cities with Jordan Lacey. And we encourage listeners to donate to keep community strong and keep 3CR on air for another year. Communication Mixdown? What's that?John Langer, the person who started Communication Mixdown in 2016, tells Judith about how the name came about and the themes the show has covered over the years, from terms like 'fake news' which emerged at the beginning of the Trump era, to how climate change has been communicated to the public and the increase in surveillance-the digital panopticon. While communication is a huge topic, the show comes together around the idea of  communication within power relationships-asking questions like who gets to speak?, who doesn't?, the importance of community languages...and lots more! How does a city makes you feel?Jordan Lacey chats with Judith about what he means by the ambience of a city, how we experience the city "from the position of our own sensing body", and how sound artists in Australia and internationally have worked to create peaceful spaces in the middle of busy cities, not necesarily to hide city sounds, but to transform them. And what about Community Radio Stations? How do they contribute to the ambience of a city? Well, sounds coming out of car windows in Fitzroy...or sounds emerging from a boat on a river in Berlin, just for starters. You can check out Jordan's paper Cities are made from more than buildings and roads. They are made from ambiances-how a city makes you feel here

Murdoch and mushroomsThis week Communication Mixdown looks at two very different forms of communication. We begin with Dr Victoria Fielding on the Murdoch media's campaign to support Net Zero emissions by 2050 and to educate the Australian public about climate change. Victoria's anaylsis of Newscorp's coverage of the floods in Queensland in 2022 tells a different story.In the second half of the show Professor Katie Field tells us about new research which suggests that mushrooms have the ability to communicate with each other and that fungi has an electrical 'language' all its own, "far more complicated than anyone previously thought" and "might even use 'words' to form 'sentences' to communicate with neighbours".

‘Social media is full of dead people. Untold millions of dead users haunt the online world where we increasingly live our lives. What do we do with all these digital souls? Can we simply delete them or do they have the right to persist?’ These questions are posed in the blurb on the back of a new book called Digital Souls: A Philosophy of Online Death by Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University, who talks to Reema Rattan about his excellent recent book.

Seeking Asylum: Our StoriesOn November 30th the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre here and Black Inc. Books here  launched Seeking Asylum: Our Stories, a book that features the voices of people who have lived the experience of seeking asylum in Australia. Twenty-three people tell us why they had to leave their country of origin, how they came to Australia and the challenges they faced when they arrived. Each story is different; each story is remarkable. Truly, as it says on the cover, 'the voices Australia should hear'.Dr Ghofran Al-nasiri's story is featured in Seeking Asylum: Our Stories and her photo is on the cover. Ghofran tells Judith about her life in Iraq before the family was forced to flee, why education is so important to her and her commitment to social justice. Now a lecturer and researcher at Victoria University, Ghofran remembers the people who helped her to achieve her dream and the woman who was there at the right moment,  She put her hand on my shoulder and said "You'll be fine". Ghofran also speaks about the volunteer work she does with students who have come from similar backgrounds to her own.

"This is a major economic risk for us": Jake Whitehead on the inadequacies of the Morrison government's new electric vehicle strategy On November 9th the Morrison government announced it's new electric vehicle strategy here, to coincide wiith the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, but it's not the strategy Australia needs to meet its COP26 emission targets and take the country into a sustainable future. Dr Jake Whitehead and his colleagues, Jessica Whitehead and Kai Le Lim from the University of Queensland, have written a paper for The Conversation entitled  As the world surges ahead on electric vehicles, the Morrison government's new strategy leaves Australia idling in the garage here. Jake joins Judith on Communication Mixdown to discuss the problems with the Federal government's new electric vehicle strategy and calls for an honest conversation about what's needed. Dr Jake Whitehead holds a joint position as the Tritium E-mobility Fellow at the University of Queensland Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation here and School of Civil Engineering.

You look up at the stages and you see very few women: Women and girls at COP 26During the second week of the climate summit COP 26, a day was allocated to gender equality and the empwerment of women and girls in climate policy and action. Betty Barkha, a PhD candidate at Monash University's Centre for Gender, Peace and Security here, and Katrina Lee-Koo, Associate Professor in International Relations at Monash, spoke to Judith about their paper COP26: why education for girls is crucial in the fight against climate change here.Women and girls at COP 26; "More clean energy means more mines": The challenges of making a just transition to a renewable energy future More clean energy means more mines: the challenges of a just transition to a renewable energy futureNick Bainton is an Associate Professor in Social anthropology at the Universiy of Queensland who specialises in the social aspects of large-scale resource extraction. His work has a broad focus on the Pacific and Papua New Guinea in particular. Nick and his colleagur Deanna Kemp, Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at he Universiy of Queensland here, have written an article for The Conversation entitled More clean energy means more mines-we shouldn't sacrifice communities in the name of climate action here.Nick joined Judith on Communication Mix down to discuss the concept of a just transition to renewable energy and the difficulties of achieving it.

(Image: Angie/Flickr)Books that offer readers the chance to try to change their lives or selves for the better seem to be proliferating. Given their prevalence, it’s likely you or someone you know has bought or borrowed from a library some kind of self-help book. And maybe it’s even helped solve whatever problem you or they were struggling with. But do self-help books really help? Can they do harm? And are they really increasing in number like they seem to be to me? Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne, Nick Haslam and philosopher Damon Young discuss whether self-help can actually help.

Peace Building in Africa and Beyond: Creating partnerships in Australia and the Democratic Republic of CongoThe Raising Peace Festival was held from September 16th to September 26th, 2021. The Festival celebrated International Peace Day, September 21st, and was organised by International Volunteers for Peace (IVP), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the The Quakers and  the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN). The Festival featured presentations from 37 organisations and went for eleven days with a thousand people attending.Today Comunication Mixdown features two organisations that gave presentations at the Raising Peace Festival; the Great Lakes Agency for Peace and Developmment (GLAPD) and HandUp Congo, in particular their Emergency Medicine program. Judith chats with Dr Nadine Shema, a co-founder of the Great Lakes Agency for Peace and Developmment, Lucy Hopgood-Brown, a co-founder of HandUp Congo and Dr Vera Sistenich, leader of the Emergency Medicine Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Urban foraging: Edible plants, caring for the environment and creating community Urban foraging is an idea that has been taken up by many celebrity chefs but for Alexandra Crosby and IIaria Vanni, from the University of Technology Sydney it's much more. Together they've established Mapping Edges, a transdisciplinary research studio that explores the relationship between plants, people and the urban environment. Their paper Rosemary in roundabouts, lemons over the fence: how to go urban foraging safely, respectfully and cleverly was published in The Conversation on October 5th, 2021. Alexandra and Ilaria join Judith on Communication Mixdown to talk about their research, the relationship between people and plants and their best forage experience.

Political philosopher Charles Mills died on September 20. Mills was a major figure in philosophy for bringing white supremacy to the fore in his work, changing the way we speak about race. Reema Rattan talks to race scholar Debbie Bargallie, who used Mills' work extensively in her book Unmasking the Racial Contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service, and philosopher Helen Ngo about his work, legacy and the relevance of his ideas in Australia.