Sep 18, 2018
Surprisingly for a conversation that includes death, intensive care, cannibalism, colonial guilt, poverty, fleeing the Holocaust and being kicked in the shin by small children Helen Zaltzman and Lisa manage to laugh their way through this episode with one entertaining story after another from ‘The Benign Dictator of the Podcasting Republic’. Travel highlights include Hawaii, Australia, Tasmania, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Peru, Utah, Vegas and a hot tubs-taxidermy themed hotel.
On this episode we cover:
Being the benign dictator of the Republic of Podcasters
The Allusionist and Answer Me This
Lisa’s perspective on Helen’s travels
Her world trip that ended in intensive care in Tasmania
What actually happened
Nanny from Count Duckula
Not taking her own illness seriously
A neck full of pus
The importance of breathing
The importance of not poisoning your own blood
Podcasting from hospital
Making friends on the ward – Marge and Colin and Marge and Colin
Kath and Kim and the Sullivans
Tasmania – Hobart, racism, homophobia and the bad old days
The squeaky clean artier days – Bruce Wayne’s Tasmanian cousin
Successful white British exports – racism, colonialism…
Melbourne’s monumental changes
Fiji apologising for eating the Reverend Baker
Australia, Iceland, Newfoundland
Cheese making in Bruny Island off Tasmania
Controversial sixth form art
Being close to death far from home
The pleasures of being in hospital
Kids kicking you in the chin and maybe the shin
Helen’s spectacular scar
Are we now in the after-life?
Not talking about wombs and bowels
Quitting jobs and homes to go travelling
Finding it hard to opt-in to Trump-times
Are Trump fans decent people?
Being kicked out their flat by a Dallas-dwelling landlord
Japanese Knot Weed scuppering home-owning
40 year olds on a gap year
USA, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Hawaii
Finding Hawaii sensational and wanting to visit more Pacific Island nations
Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan
Skipping New Zealand and Canada
Taking the ferry to Melbourne and driving to Sydney
Koalas and dead kangaroos
The privilege of being western travellers without prejudice
Travelling with a British guilty conscience
How English has wiped out languages around the world
The abuse of aboriginal communities
Different international shit situations
Being reminded that we are rich
Her South African Lithuanian heritage
Eastern European and Jewish emigration to South Africa
‘Jews weren’t the worst off’ in South Africa
Supporting the regime with silence
Travellers to Germany between the wars ignoring the problems
Her uncle being Nelson Mandela’s accountant
Her father, sculptor Zach Zaltzman, moving to England in the swinging sixties
No money for family holidays
Helen’s voice failing
Oxford University and knowing big words
Her low-on-aristocrats, brutalist concrete lump of a college (St Catherine’s College Oxford)
Arni Jacobson and swan chairs
The confidence of public school kids and low-jeopardy lifestyles
Americans and their confidence
Finding travelling a real confidence killer because every situation is unfamiliar
Feeling like a massive idiot
Feeling like a welcome outsider in Japan
Feeling like her identify is almost vanishing
Travel planning with road-trip spreadsheets
Medical conferences in the US with her medical physicist husband Martin Austwick
Great American road-trips
Colorado, Utah, Vegas, Nevada, Reno, San Francisco, California, deserts, beaches, rainforests, Eccles cakes, Yellowstone National Park and a hot tubs and taxidermy themed hotel.
Fur bikinis, Oxfordshire, the Crazy Bear Hotel, bears in the Cotswolds, Bavarian themed towns and a museum 50,000 nutcrackers
Leavenworth, Washington State, in the Cascade Mountains and the Alps
Sexy nutcrackers and the Private Nutcracker Museum in Cornwall
Winthrop Cowboy Town and the town of Helen
The town of Chessy near Disneyland Paris
Utah, Mars, red rock, pointy rock and stripes
Having a job that is portable
Taking the Allusionist Live on tour
Dicey wifi in China
Timing the tour with bat season in Austin Texas and whale migrations on the East Coast
Being well received by American podcast audiences
How the ‘British Accent’ is loved to a certain extent
Ricky Gervais
How National Lampoon’s Vacation (Holiday Road Vacation by Lindsey Buckingham) kicks off all their road trips