You'll never look at mandated company fun the same way after this episode, especially when it becomes clear that inter-departmental politics can get its own body count.  Prof Narelle Lemon, who is now at Edith Cowan University, joins us again to dissect episode seven of Severance. There's so much in this episode - the action is really heating up. Milcheck tries his best to keep a lid on the simmering tensions, and only earns himself a bite from Dylan. There is no Ricken in this episode, but he is till present in his absence.  Everything seems to be heading in a bad direction - but ..read more

Worker solidarity is the theme of this episode, and in celebration, we invited Anitra's current boss, Geoff Stringer. Don't worry though - he's not going to rat us out to the higher ups. The team dissect episode: What's for Dinner. This is the episode where Inger had to text Anitra all the way through because it was so damn tense. Plans are made, dreams are broken - most importantly, certain people are at the 'find out' stage of the Fuck Around journey. And we are here for every delicious moment! Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in the suggestion box (well, the rev ..read more

We saved this one for Anitra's co-worker and Director of Digital Experience, Joyce Seitzinger, because it is the infamous "bring-your-baby-goat-to-work" day episode.  There is also a lot of Ricken in this ep, which gives us an excuse to talk about our favourite academic. Anitra compares Ricken to Yoda while Joyce points out that the comparison works only if Yoda were really really self-involved. Plus, mysterious baby goats. Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in the suggestion box (well, the review section of whatever platform you are on right now). Send us an ema ..read more

Love is in the air in episode six of Severance, where inter-departmental politics is platonic. Sort of. Maybe. Bert and Irv grow closer, Mark and Helly take the work flirt to the next level and Devon has a mysterious encounter in the local park...  Anitra's work colleague and future novel co-writer Chris joins us this week to dissect the many Kier mystery kinda-reveals. He also gives us a word to describe that spooky feeling of buildings that should be full of people, but aren't. A word we all need after lockdown for sure. Our office door is always open so please leave your commen ..read more

In Episode Three of Severance, work friendships take a dark turn and we discuss it all with Anitra’s ex-and-current-coworker, Senior Learning Designer Miriam Renoyldson.  Anitra mangles the word 'cishertrowhitemaletriarchy', which Miriam then neatly illustrates by pointing out that all the five founders of the University of Melbourne Business School were white men named John. We discuss how corporate bingo cards is the ultimate act of symbolic violence, and Inger warns about buying white shirts to power dress at work. Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in the sug ..read more

In this episode we are joined by Inger’s ANU colleague and fellow podcaster Will Grant and we are talking about how no one wants to go into the break room. Like, ever.  We dissect Cobel’s (unasked for) freelancing — ‘wet work’ at Petey’s funeral — and whether or not she is getting any stock options. Will disturbingly points out the ways humans are never very far away from choosing violence. Our office door is always open so please leave your comments in the suggestion box (well, the review section of whatever platform you are on right now). Send us an email at inger@thesiswhisperer.com or ..read more

We focus on Episode Two of Severance and are joined once again by our friend and academic wellness expert Professor Narelle Lemon. We delve into the topic of corporate gaslighting and how the work of MDR is the best description ever of analyzing student experience survey results. Along the way we touch on the unique grief caused by corporate restructures and deconstruct the strategies used to give purpose to purposeless work. In much the same way as Ricken outs Mark S for being severed, Inger outs Anitra’s secret past as CD cleaning kit seller of the month. Our office door is always open so pl ..read more

Welcome to episode one of Academics talk about Severance': the Apple TV show that has a lot to say about Work. We hope this series helps you cope with fact that season two seems to be infinitely delayed, or maybe just stuck on the Severance Floor. For our first episode, we reunite the band from Academics Talk About the Chair (at least some of us) and delve into Episode One: Helly's sub-optimal onboarding experience. We are joined by our friend and expert on academic wellness, Professor Narelle Lemon, of Explore and Create Co. We explore the concept of emotional labor, the unique experience th ..read more

Inger, Megan, Anitra and Narelle continue their episode by episode forensic  examination of 'The Chair'. This time we're examining episode four: 'The last bus in town'. We're joined, again, for this episode by Dr Bertha Chin, senior lecturer from the Swinburne University of Technology in Sarawak, Malaysia. Bertha ups our intellectual heft as a scholar of fan studies and Fandom - and huge David Duchovny fan (he even inspired her to do a PhD in the first place!).  Ji Yoon solves an almost insolvable problem in this episode, but it immediately doesn't matter as she's caught up in the ..read more

Coming soon to this channel, will be a new series of ‘academics talk about…:  Season one, which you’ll find by scrolling down in this feed, was ‘Academics talk about The Chair’ - the excellent Netflix series about a small liberal arts college starring the wonderful Sandra Oh.  Academics talk about the chair was a Covid lockdown project that kept me, my sister Anitra, and our two academic friends Narelle and Megan, sane during the insane year. Since 2021 I’ve since kept this podcast feed going as a place for my special projects, most recently, 'Your brain on writing'. People have bee ..read more