Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
End of 2025 Reflections: Bondi, grief and AABHL2025
We return after a hard pause to sit with grief, public safety, and how quickly politics moves to claim tragedy. We point to real solidarity work, reflect on bioethics beyond the moment of death, and share plans for more focused conversations next year.
• pause explained and schedule intentions
• Bondi tragedy and the ethics of listening
• Australia’s uneasy multicultural story and safety
• grief, silence, and limits of social media
• solidarity via Jewish Council of Australia petition
• conference highlights on post-death values
• Luddite lens on AI governance in healthcare
• universities in crisis and ethical refusal
• last year’s themes of love, grief, empathy
• plans to follow up with guests and topics
Go to JewishCouncil.com.au and read the petition about not allowing this to divide us
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Wadarong peoples of the Kulan Nation in Geelong. We pay our respects to elders past and present. So yeah, well let's get to the thing. Um I don't really have a lot to say. I mean I've usually got a lot to say, but I don't really have a lot to say. Um I guess there are a few reasons why many reasons why we haven't done podcasts since September. We're almost like a half yearly podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Um We could just do a Christmas one every year.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. The Christmas special, and that's it. Uh but I did bump into someone the other, I bumped into a couple of people actually who have asked whether we were doing podcasts anymore. So I thought it would be good. And they and they said that in a um I think a concern that it was not gonna be happening anymore. So for the handful of people who may listen to this on a regular basis, wondering what's going on, uh, we yeah, just it's been a hectic time of year. Well, not time of year, since September.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it has it has uh well, I haven't really been having a hectic time, but I do tend to take a bit of the back seat when it comes to organizing. Sorry, Chris. Thank you, Chris.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, that's fun. That's not about we don't need a public discussion about workload. Um but yeah, I think um, yeah, I mean, I'd like to do it more, and hopefully next year things will be a bit more ordered. Such that that is possible. Um, but I guess also in addition to um wanting to allay people's fears that we were um not going to be doing the podcasts anymore. I don't know. I mean recent events by which I mean I guess Bondi um uh atrocities, terrorist attack. Um yeah, as I think we have said before, we're clearly not a current affairs um podcast. And certainly having only no episode since September, there is nothing particularly current about what we're doing. But I do think both of us um, you know, when we think of our own, I guess, ethics, bioethics, whatever kind of ethics we it is that we want to describe what we're doing, philosophy, it's connected to place as well. Yeah. And I think both of us in different ways have connections to Sydney. I mean, you're obviously still living, well, you're currently not in Sydney, actually, you're in Christchurch, um which has its own connection to these kind of grief and terrorist activities and the um uh terrorist attacks uh committed by an Australian over there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you know, the uh the I suppose social and political responses to both of those awful things have been really different, hey?
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:So um yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um I think as well, yeah. I mean those responses yeah have been very different, as you pointed out. Um and just how quickly things are getting politicized and weaponized in Australian politics.
SPEAKER_01:Um but like legit with within hours, hey, yeah, it was um yeah shockingly immediate, I thought.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah. And I think that's partly like you know, not wanting to rush into commentary on things. Um I did there was an article I saw, I didn't read it, I never read articles, I just read the headline talking about, you know, now's the time to listen and not sort of rush to comment and those sorts of things. But those sorts of articles are always written by people whose jobs it is to comment on things. Uh and while it's not our job, um, some people may think I comment on too many things. But um you know, for me as well, uh yeah, I mean I think that this is a sort of uh quite a decisive moment in Australian political life, uh in Australia's uh self-narrative about multicultural patching, I'd say multiculturalism patched over the top of um uh white, uh the you know, legacy of white Australia policy. Um you know, I think that without getting into sort of commentary and analysis, but also I guess making a few comments along the way, that um yeah, Australia has not been a safe place for Jewish people for a long time, long time before this um event, and not a safe place for Muslim people or Chinese people. Australia is not this like without sort of obviously there there are aspects of Australian multiculturalism that um should be acknowledged and celebrated, but it's not as if these things are uh without a background of racial prejudice and violence, um, and then to First Nations Australians as well. This whole nation is built on um, I know some people don't like this term, but uh a white supremacy, or at least the idea of uh a white race, and that's why you know initial Jewish migration and refugees in the 1930s were spurned, and some of the same legacy of the same political positions are now uh I guess wanting to ignore that to weaponize um these tragedies against other vulnerable communities and make other people feel safe, unsafe and unwelcome. But um I don't know. As I say, I don't really want to speak too much about all of this. I do want to reflect and read more.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, I mean for me, I think it um it was I think it I experienced it differently not being at home in Sydney um when this happened. I experienced it differently from my family members who talked about the um the real sort of palpable sadness in the uh following days. I've also got a real reluctance, I think, to comment about it because I really don't like a lot of the commentary that's happening and I don't want to contribute to it, and I also don't want to be criticized for saying things basically. I'm a scary cat. Um and it's uh it's a really awful and sad situation for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I feel I I do feel very badly for people who had their um even as you said that you know this is not a safe well, Australia is not a safe place for many people, but to have any feeling of safety um undermined or or kind of broken in some way is a is a a really difficult thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah, yeah, and I think um, you know, as you would know, because I've talked to you about this, but you know, personally for me, I was uh I guess um not and have not really been engaging with social media for a while. I mean for me it's a while since November when my friend Good Friend died. And I think for me that has uh prior so this that this happened um on the 25th of November, my friend Andrew Cooper died. Um, and maybe at another time I'll talk about that, but you know, that sense of grief, um it is I don't know, it it kind of makes you want to shut up. Uh it's nice to be with the people who know those people, and there is a sense of community, but there is also a sense of um desire to be um solitude rather than isolated, I guess. To be able to be quiet in your grief, yeah, and so I think then this happening as well, and people feeling a need to talk, and some people, you know, that's appropriate and good, but then there is in the vacuum that is left by others, then all sorts of things are said as well. So I guess all that I would say uh at the moment further on this, is I think today it is uh the Jewish Council of Australia um have put out a petition, and they are um obviously very uh invested in addressing anti-Semitism and uh wanting to do that from building solidarities across communities, particularly racialized minority communities uh and in coalition and solidarity with First Nations Australians. So um, yeah, if you go to JewishCouncil.com.au, uh you can see how they are framing this. And they also have a petition that they've released today about uh not allowing this to divide us. So if people are inclined to look at that petition and the way that they talk about this, I think is is worth um worth your time.
SPEAKER_01:Um difficult topic to move on from.
SPEAKER_00:It is a difficult topic to move on from. But I guess the good thing is we don't have anything to move on to, so we could uh we could just finish it there with um a note that we do plan on doing more podcasts. We have actually got a lot of people well, not a lot, we've got a few people who we were talking through the year of that we would do an episode with them, so we should probably should respond to those emails.
SPEAKER_01:Well, a good time, Christopher. It is the holidays, but yes, it would be um, you know, both of us have very recently been at the um conference of the West Relation Association for Bioethics and Health Law, um, where there are all sorts of really interesting um papers and discussions and so on. So, you know, maybe we could follow up um with some of those a bit more.
SPEAKER_00:Um well, to put you on the spot, is there one in particular? I mean, you don't need to name the people. Were were there was there anything in particular topic, or if you did want to talk about a specific paper that you found interesting?
SPEAKER_01:A stand out for me, a stand up for me that I have kept coming back to and sort of ruminating on and thinking about, um, which I love, um, was Vicki, Vicky and Wussels um talk about what happens after someone dies, you know, and in bioethics we do talk quite a lot about death. Well, we talk a bit about death, but we don't talk about what happens after death, uh, in my experience, anyway. You know, quite a lot of it is about um clinical ethics, like when is someone dead, that sort of thing. Um, but not really about what matters to who after someone's died and how we might best accommodate that or um acknowledge it, or I don't, you know, that that was a really interesting talk for me. And of course, Vicky's an amazing talker. So she somehow manages to um speak in full paragraphs and uh get ideas across really simply and beautifully. So it's it's um her talk is uh is one that I've kind of kept finding myself coming back to. How about you?
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, well I would agree, I would agree with that one. Um uh but for me to say something different. Hmm. One that I thought that was that I do, and I was actually just um talking to a PhD student of mine, um, was a paper that was looking at or critically looking at AI um through the tradition of the Luddites. Uh and I really wish I uh had the name of the presenter because that was a great paper.
SPEAKER_01:Um I remember the paper and not the presenter, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, so sort of reclaiming that sort of history of um of labor-oriented critiques of uh capitalist use of technologies to um undermine workers and their communities. Um so uh at a later date, I will have the full details of that. I see I put you on the spot and you were able to name the person and the topic, and then you uh sent it back to me and I was not able to deliver.
SPEAKER_01:I'll give you another one that I'm just gonna see if I can pull up the name of the book, and probably not because uh yes, I can. So in um uh a panel that I I mean enjoyed would be the wrong word, but a panel that made me feel strong feelings was um Stacey Carter, Chris Degling, Vickian Whistle, and Lindley oh no, I've forgotten.
SPEAKER_00:Lendley Anderson.
SPEAKER_01:Anderson, sorry, Lindley, I'm sure you're a listener. Um, talking about whether or not there might be an ethical response to some of the difficulties that are happening in universities for for so many of our colleagues, hey, who've been really profoundly and negatively affected by um by some of what's been going on um in Australian universities in recent years. Um, and one thing I did think uh was that Stacy talked about uh a book called The Hist A History of the Modern Australian University by Hannah Forsyth. And I would love to follow up on that. I'm saying it on this so that people can uh remind us to do that if this uh disappears from my head. But um, this looks like a fascinating book. Um yeah. So that's another one for me. I I feel deep disappointment and disillusionment with a lot of what a lot of um a lot of my colleagues have had to go through and uh would love the opportunity to just be angry about it. I think I don't have a very constructive response, but I think it's instead of I guess papering over some of these quite massive cracks, I think it's okay for us to talk about them and the way that universities tend to pit us against each other in the um in the kind of diminishing funding, diminishing jobs, diminishing everything, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yes. And in that time I have found that uh that paper was uh Melissa McCraddle.
SPEAKER_01:Um yes, shout out to Melissa.
SPEAKER_00:What can the Luddite movement teach us about governance of artificial intelligence in healthcare? Yeah, it was a good one. Um but yes, that the university one, and I think ties up actually with the similar kinds of themes here. Of um, you know, I think Melissa McCratden's paper sort of was getting into you know what is the relationship between work and life um and education, similarly with uh and and so not wanting to see these as you know completely instrumental value. Um so yeah, that was a good good conference.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And I guess the other thing though that I was thinking about with this uh episode is uh if you wanted something a bit more well-formed than this episode, dear listener, go and listen to our Christmas episode from 2024, which was also well, we're not this, we're not gonna name the same thing, but Love, Grief, and Empathy. Uh, because it was similarly reflecting on um those themes uh of sadness at this time of year. You know, Courtney, this is the third year uh since her death. Um, it does feel that, and and this is what we were talking about in that episode from last year, so about sort of being in this sort of summer festive period where at the same time all of these, you know, large scale, like what happened at Bondi, but then also our own personal griefs and tragedy all seem to coalesce at this time of year, and when you're supposed to also be wearing a funny hat and a funny shirt, chatting to and deeply missing people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a real incongruity there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that was nicely put, Jane, and I think we'll just uh wrap it up there. So Hopefully we're not making another episode in December 2026 without having done any uh previous. No, that's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01:Merry Christmas all or happy holidays or have a nice rest or be safe.
SPEAKER_00:Take care.