What I’m listening to: A lot of podcasts, I’ve been finding that relaxing. Because we’re sort of stuck a little; music’s fine but I’m enjoying hearing stories and chat. I’m listening to a podcast called Films to be Buried With by Brett Goldstein. He interviews famous people such as Ricky Gervais and Jameela Jamil, through to people that you might not be familiar with. The premise is you die and when you get into heaven they judge you and they want to hear about your life through film. What was the first movie you saw? What’s the film everyone thinks is terrible that you love? He’s such a lovely interviewer, he gets something out of everybody.
And my other favourite is The Guilty Feminist with Deborah Frances-White. She does live shows and interviews with amazing performers and asks them about how hard it is to be a feminist. Like I can be a feminist on the one hand, but on the other hand I find myself loving lipstick. Because I’m not doing anything to audiences — I do my show RocKwiz Live and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival that I’m the artistic director of was cancelled — it’s great to hear The Guilty Feminist because you hear people cheering and laughing. It’s a sound I miss.
What I’m reading: See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill won the Stella Prize. It’s a book about domestic abuse and power. I particularly wanted to read it now because I’m an ambassador at Our Watch, which is an organisation looking after women and their children in domestic violence situations, and we know that during this lockdown period, any kind of domestic abuse situation is really going to be amplified. It’s excellent journalism; she has really done her research.
What made me laugh this week: People are making some really fun things online. I have enjoyed that sports commentator from the BBC, Andrew Cotter, doing sports commentary with his dogs. He’s bored out of his mind because he’s not working, but he’s got two dogs and they do really innocuous things and he does the commentary. It’s never not funny. I just adore it.
During the crisis I’ve been thinking about: I think it would be typical of us as human beings to not take advantage of this great pause that we’ve had. It would be an absolute devastation if we don’t start going, OK, all of a sudden animals are coming back into areas, all of a sudden the air is cleaner. How can we keep as much of that happening as we can? Can we think about how our economy can be different? This is a great opportunity for people to be bold enough to make a better world. If we all go back to “normalâ€, I think that would be an absolute missed opportunity.
Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery airs on Wednesdays at 8pm on ABC and iview.
