Latest / The Front / How we made the smash-hit Sick to Death podcast

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How we made the smash-hit Sick to Death podcast · The Front

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Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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Speaker 1: It's Friday, March thirteen, twenty twenty six. Don't look down
0:14
Speaker 1: your nose at patriotism. That's the blunt message to Labor
0:18
Speaker 1: from one of its own stars. South Australian Premier Peter Malanowskis.
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Speaker 1: He's seeking reelection at the March twenty one state election
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Speaker 1: where one nation is polling strongly, and Malanowskis says Labor
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Speaker 1: must respect voters with fears about housing and immigration. Two years,
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Speaker 1: five hundred gigabytes of audio and more than two hundred
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Speaker 1: voice actors, The Australian's podcast adaptation of Headley Thomas's best
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Speaker 1: selling book Sick to Death is nearing its conclusion. It's
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Speaker 1: the story of the havoc wrought on the Queensland medical
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Speaker 1: system by the incompetent surgeon Jayant Patel twenty years ago.
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Speaker 1: And there's still more to come. Today and our production
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Speaker 1: team get together to discuss this epic project and why
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Speaker 1: it still resonates. In twenty twenty six, The Australian's national
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Speaker 1: Chief correspondent, Hedley Thomas was walking among the mango trees
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Speaker 1: at his Brisbane home. When I called him to ask
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Speaker 1: what he was working on. It was late twenty twenty
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Speaker 1: two and Hedley had taken some leave to work on
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Speaker 1: his book about his blockbuster investigation, The Teacher's Pet. Headley
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Speaker 1: suggested we bring to audio one of his earlier books,
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Speaker 1: Sick to Death. Well, we've published sixteen whopping episodes so far,
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Speaker 1: with two more bonus episodes to come. Today, Hedley and
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Speaker 1: I are sitting down with our audio lead, Jasper League,
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Speaker 1: senior producer Kristin Amiot, and producer Karina Berger to talk
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Speaker 1: about this huge undertaking. I should know by now to
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Speaker 1: expect that when Headley Thomas calls up with an idea
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Speaker 1: that he says is going to be quite simple, that
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Speaker 1: it's actually not going to be anything of the sort.
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Speaker 1: He said that about Shandy's story, which turned into an
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Speaker 1: epic multi season investigative podcast, and he said the same
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Speaker 1: thing about Sick to Death. It's a bit of a hybrid.
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Speaker 1: It's an audiobook with a full cast acting out all
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Speaker 1: of the two hundred plus roles in this book. But
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Speaker 1: it's also true to the traditions of true crime podcasting,
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Speaker 1: with follow a journalist unraveling the truth about a big scandal,
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Speaker 1: in this case Headley's reporting on the activities of doctor
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Speaker 1: j And Patel, a surgeon who tricked his way through
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Speaker 1: Queensland Health in the beginning of the twenty first century.
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Speaker 1: Heavy I think this would have been a smaller undertaking
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Speaker 1: if we've done what a lot of audiobooks do, which
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Speaker 1: is just have you read the whole thing? Why did
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Speaker 1: you want this to be a full cast production?
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Speaker 2: Have you tried to do an Indian accent?
3:01
Speaker 3: No?
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Speaker 1: I would never do anything.
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Speaker 2: All jokes aside, it would have been very challenging and
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Speaker 2: I don't think very satisfying for listeners to have heard
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Speaker 2: just my voice droning on hour after hour trying to
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Speaker 2: voice act for the nurses and doctors and administrators, and
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Speaker 2: of course for doctor Ftel and other overseas trained doctors,
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Speaker 2: the judges and victims, and nurse Tony Hoffman. I mean,
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Speaker 2: there were so many people who were part of this,
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Speaker 2: and I think that while incredibly ambitious by us to
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Speaker 2: involve I don't know how many voice actors were there
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Speaker 2: more than one hundred, more than two hundred.
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Speaker 3: I think that if we can insult the spreadsheet that
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Speaker 3: was made very early in the piece, there's definitely more
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Speaker 3: than two hundred lines in that spreadsheet. There is our
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Speaker 3: wonderful colleagues here at The Australian who have been pulled
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Speaker 3: off the newsroom floor more than once to come and
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Speaker 3: do voice acting for us. There are my parents, my partner,
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Speaker 3: Jasper's partner, Claire's kids, everybody who fit the bill for
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Speaker 3: one of those characters appears in this series.
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Speaker 1: One of my children actually got sacked from her role
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Speaker 1: in this production because of Headley's incredibly high, i would say,
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Speaker 1: potentially unreasonable standards.
4:17
Speaker 4: I know that details matter to Headley, and having worked
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Speaker 4: in a couple of investigations with him now, and I
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Speaker 4: think this particular story is so epic it deserved an
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Speaker 4: epic treatment in podcast form as well.
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Speaker 1: I did devour the book, but as always, my much
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Speaker 1: more meticulous and forensic partner in crime, Christian Amiet, who's
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Speaker 1: the producer of the Front and also the producer of
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Speaker 1: this podcast, digested the book with all of her intellect
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Speaker 1: and attention, and she was desperate to find out what
4:47
Speaker 1: had happened at the Curry Bizarre, what was going on
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Speaker 1: with Kristen.
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Speaker 3: This is something that our listeners will have heard by
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Speaker 3: this point that when I was going through the book,
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Speaker 3: and I think I was actually lulled into that saying
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Speaker 3: sense of security about this project as Headley when he
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Speaker 3: first pitched it, because we had just come off the
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Speaker 3: back of, as Headley said, the Teacher's Pet, we'd done
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Speaker 3: two inquiries off the back of Shandy's story Headley's other
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Speaker 3: investigative podcast. We had been probably for the better part
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Speaker 3: of two years at the Mercy of legal proceedings, where
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Speaker 3: the work is happening in the background of a very
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Speaker 3: dense and very important legal proceeding. So I looked at it,
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Speaker 3: this four hundred page pdf, and went, when have we
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Speaker 3: ever had the full story there to just record? And
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Speaker 3: then when I got to the point of sitting down
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Speaker 3: to read it, I thought, well, the first thing I've
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Speaker 3: got to do is extract the voice acting, And so
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Speaker 3: I started doing that, and I was pulling all of
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Speaker 3: these lines out every time I came across a new
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Speaker 3: character or a new line for somebody who I had
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Speaker 3: already met in the past. I'd put it into this
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Speaker 3: gigantic spreadsheet that now barely even loads because there are
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Speaker 3: so many lines and characters in it. But I kept
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Speaker 3: seeing these references to some sort of incident that happened
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Speaker 3: at the Curry Bizarre, and I was saying to you, guys,
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Speaker 3: I'm not getting to this fast enough. I have to
6:10
Speaker 3: know what happened at the Curry Bizarre. And it's really
6:13
Speaker 3: it doesn't appear until quite late in the series, but
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Speaker 3: it is. It's quite scandalous when it does appear. I
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Speaker 3: did think it was actually a really great encapsulation of
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Speaker 3: the failures of the Queensland Health bureaucracy in this story
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Speaker 3: and elsewhere, because that when whistleblowers like Tony Hoffman were
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Speaker 3: saying trying to raise their concerns with the higher ups,
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Speaker 3: with hospital administrators, there was nobody to be found, or
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Speaker 3: she was told repeatedly, everything's okay, don't worry about it.
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Speaker 3: You just go back to being a nurse. And then
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Speaker 3: as soon as they looked bad, or as soon as
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Speaker 3: they had an opportunity to make the people who had
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Speaker 3: exposed this scandal look bad, all of a sudden, affidavits
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Speaker 3: and statements were coming from every direction. Karina Burger is
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Speaker 3: an eminent lawyer in her own right now she's putting
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Speaker 3: her toe into the murky world of journalism.
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Speaker 1: She's working with Headley and ass as a producer. Now, Karina,
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Speaker 1: you had skin in this particular game too. You happened
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Speaker 1: to be an expert in overseas trained doctors. How did
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Speaker 1: that happen?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, I did, Claire.
7:14
Speaker 2: It's a funny story.
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Speaker 5: Back in two thousand and five, I was trying to
7:18
Speaker 5: wrap up my law degree and get an honors degree
7:20
Speaker 5: at the same time, and my supervisor desperately wanted me
7:24
Speaker 5: to do a thesis on pharmaceutical pricing and I couldn't
7:28
Speaker 5: think of anything worse and spending six months of my
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Speaker 5: life on that topic. So I politely declined and said, no,
7:34
Speaker 5: I need something with more of a human element. And
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Speaker 5: he said, oh, there's this situation unfolding in Queensland involving
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Speaker 5: an overseeings trained doctor, and how about you examine the
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Speaker 5: regulation of those doctors, using doctor Patel as a case study.
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Speaker 5: And so that was how I spent half of two
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Speaker 5: thousand and five researching and closely following Headley's articles. And
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Speaker 5: I remember getting so frustrated towards the end because I
8:01
Speaker 5: had to turn in my paper and Heady just kept
8:04
Speaker 5: on posting articles day after day, which necessitated me updating
8:08
Speaker 5: everything day after day, and I just had to draw
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Speaker 5: a line in the sand at one point and think
8:13
Speaker 5: I've done. But yeah, it's really strange now, twenty years
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Speaker 5: later to be working with Headley and to have had
8:20
Speaker 5: a small amount of involvement in the Sick to Death
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Speaker 5: podcast series.
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Speaker 2: But we didn't have any contact then. In fact, we
8:27
Speaker 2: didn't have any contact at all until twenty twenty four
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Speaker 2: when you wrote to us saying I love podcast. Can
8:35
Speaker 2: I help in some way?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, And I did not think it would
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Speaker 5: end up involving Doc to Death and Sick to Death
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Speaker 5: not at all.
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Speaker 1: What's it been like stepping into this story and you,
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Speaker 1: along with Kristen and our reporter Sarah Elks, have been
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Speaker 1: writing some of the stories that have been accompanying the
8:51
Speaker 1: role out of this show Sick to Death. What's it
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Speaker 1: been like participating and observing this story now from a
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Speaker 1: journalistic point of view?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, a different process because obviously now my role is
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Speaker 5: more about storytelling and less about legal analysis. But the
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Speaker 5: legal issues are still really relevant, and Headley and I
9:10
Speaker 5: have been working very closely on those over the last
9:13
Speaker 5: few days to prepare the final episode or two of
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Speaker 5: the podcast. But I suppose this storytelling function is a
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Speaker 5: different one to critically analyzing the law and critically analyzing
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Speaker 5: all the regulation of the doctors, and there's more of
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Speaker 5: a human element. I've been speaking with people like Tony Hoffman,
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Speaker 5: which is just amazing given I was writing about her
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Speaker 5: twenty years ago. To actually have a phone call with
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Speaker 5: her and get a better sense of who she is
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Speaker 5: as a person has just been incredible. But of course
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Speaker 5: now what we know twenty years on is the effect
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Speaker 5: that the whistleblowing has really had on her and her life,
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Speaker 5: and I've found that really upsetting, to be honest, coming.
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Speaker 1: Up why this shocking story is more relevant than ever
9:58
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six. While I've got you, I wanted
10:01
Speaker 1: to let you know you can listen to every episode
10:03
Speaker 1: of Sick to Death and all the Australians Award winning
10:06
Speaker 1: podcasts for free this weekend. That includes subscriber only bonus
10:11
Speaker 1: episodes and new episodes of Stick to Death. Plus you
10:15
Speaker 1: can experience all the Australians journalism for free across our
10:18
Speaker 1: website and app. Check us out at the Australian dot
10:22
Speaker 1: com dot au and we'll be back after the break. Jasper.
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Speaker 1: This was a truly epic production. You and I have
10:38
Speaker 1: talked on the front before about podcasting and audio as
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Speaker 1: a very human medium and why we believe, without any
10:46
Speaker 1: self interest at all, that audiences want to hear human voices,
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Speaker 1: human stories. This is a very human story. What's been
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Speaker 1: your kind of reflection on this, even as you were
10:55
Speaker 1: going through the ordeal of making this massive show, which
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Speaker 1: is like conducting a symphony, on what the story is
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Speaker 1: actually about, what it means?
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Speaker 4: Well, I think to make the comparison with a conductor
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Speaker 4: who's sounding up there in front of a symphony, the
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Speaker 4: point is to be up there, immersing yourself in the music.
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Speaker 4: It's not to be worried about what the second violins playing,
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Speaker 4: or if the viola player is going to play the
11:18
Speaker 4: melody in tune or something. And so I think, of course,
11:22
Speaker 4: there are a lot of moving parts with a project
11:23
Speaker 4: like this, and from a technical point of view, it's ambitious,
11:27
Speaker 4: but it would be a missed opportunity to get too
11:31
Speaker 4: bogged down in that without really appreciating the story and
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Speaker 4: kind of living in it in a way. And there
11:40
Speaker 4: were so many things I reflected on working on this podcast.
11:44
Speaker 4: I mean one of them was I would just hate
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Speaker 4: to do the wrong thing and find myself in Heavily
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Speaker 4: Thomas's crosshairs. I mean, I also wondered whether Heavily had
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Speaker 4: ever written anything that hadn't resulted in a royal commission
12:01
Speaker 4: or maybe the sort of key figure ending up behind bars.
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Speaker 4: But I think that is a testament to the writing
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Speaker 4: and the attention to detail, and how it was such
12:15
Speaker 4: a fantastic world to live in for the couple of
12:17
Speaker 4: years that I've been working on this show, and there's
12:19
Speaker 4: so many incredible aspects to the story. There's so many
12:23
Speaker 4: aspects of the storytelling that I appreciate, and the whole
12:27
Speaker 4: thing is driven by such a fascinating cast of characters.
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Speaker 1: Chrissy, you're a podcast connoisseur, review podcasts, you're an expert.
12:35
Speaker 1: You listen to more of them than anyone I know,
12:37
Speaker 1: and of course you make podcasts here with us. What
12:40
Speaker 1: was your sense of this as just in terms of
12:42
Speaker 1: pure story and what it meant.
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Speaker 3: It was, actually, in my probably very unique experience, a
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Speaker 3: full circle moment again through the lens of Headley's reporting
12:55
Speaker 3: that was done in two thousand and five two thousand
12:58
Speaker 3: and six and the work that we had just done,
13:02
Speaker 3: particularly on the two commissions of inquiry, into Queensland fraught
13:07
Speaker 3: DNA lab and all of the issues that were going
13:10
Speaker 3: on there and still are to some degree. You could
13:14
Speaker 3: have taken either of those stories, which are very different
13:16
Speaker 3: in their own right, and interchanged the problems with the bureaucracy,
13:20
Speaker 3: the problems with secrecy, the problems with losing sight of
13:26
Speaker 3: what this is all for, which is for Queenslanders, for
13:29
Speaker 3: people who are unwell, who need help, for victims of crime.
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Speaker 3: So it's a pretty amazing view not only of Hedley's
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Speaker 3: reporting on health in Queensland and his obvious drive to
13:44
Speaker 3: deliver public interest journalism for Queenslanders, but it's also a
13:50
Speaker 3: cautionary tale for all of us. It's not a world
13:54
Speaker 3: that I would want to find myself in, certainly, and
13:56
Speaker 3: I think the more aware we can make people of it,
13:59
Speaker 3: even years down the track, then we're all better for
14:02
Speaker 3: it heavily.
14:03
Speaker 1: Something I've learned about you is that you never let
14:05
Speaker 1: a story go for good and bad. Sometimes I wish
14:07
Speaker 1: you would allow us to wrap up season twenty four
14:10
Speaker 1: of whatever shew it is that we're working on. But
14:12
Speaker 1: you are tenacious like no one else. Do you feel
14:15
Speaker 1: as though the story of Jant Patel is done?
14:18
Speaker 2: Now the story of doctor Patel is going to be
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Speaker 2: repeated over and over again, but with different people, different doctors,
14:27
Speaker 2: different health systems. And that's because systems improved for a
14:33
Speaker 2: while after a catastrophe like the one we had in
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Speaker 2: two thousand and five and the lessons that came out
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Speaker 2: of the subsequent Commission of Inquiry and so on. But
14:43
Speaker 2: then the bureaucracies and the politicians just revert back to
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Speaker 2: what they did very badly, what they did wickedly that
14:50
Speaker 2: led to the catastrophe in the first place. And that's
14:53
Speaker 2: why this story is so important again now twenty twenty
14:57
Speaker 2: one years later, to remind people, whether they're the doctors, nurses,
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Speaker 2: patients and journalists, that this happens, and that just because
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Speaker 2: this is two decades doesn't mean it won't happen again.
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Speaker 2: It will happen again. There will be across Australia now unqualified,
15:20
Speaker 2: incompetent and even fraudulent practitioners, and we have to be
15:24
Speaker 2: on the alert and we have to demand higher standards
15:28
Speaker 2: because if we don't, and that goes for reporters as well,
15:32
Speaker 2: who are questioning systems and bureaucrats, the norm will continue.
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Speaker 2: For me, reading my book, again and reading it into
15:43
Speaker 2: a microphone as the narrator. It was a really good experience.
15:49
Speaker 2: I had forgotten so much of what went on, and
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Speaker 2: I think that because the story also is interwoven with
15:57
Speaker 2: events in the newsroom that I worked in at the time.
16:01
Speaker 2: It's intermingled with stories about my family and professional and
16:08
Speaker 2: personal friends. It's a really significant trip down memory lane too,
16:13
Speaker 2: and it was very touching and moving at times, and
16:17
Speaker 2: particularly in two thousand and five, as right near the
16:21
Speaker 2: pointy end of the health inquiry and all of the
16:24
Speaker 2: events that we were reporting on so carefully and closely
16:29
Speaker 2: back then, and my own mum, Diana, became very sick
16:33
Speaker 2: and was in a public hospital on the Gold Coast,
16:36
Speaker 2: and I was feeling quite guilty that I hadn't been
16:39
Speaker 2: spending nearly as much time with her as I should have,
16:42
Speaker 2: and that was partly because of well significantly because of
16:46
Speaker 2: the commitments to this case and this story. And we
16:50
Speaker 2: had young children at the time as well, and Mum
16:54
Speaker 2: died right at the time of the release of the
16:58
Speaker 2: final report in late October two thousand and five. She
17:02
Speaker 2: died in hospital, and I understood in a very personal
17:08
Speaker 2: way how shattering a sudden and unexplained death in a
17:14
Speaker 2: public hospital setting can be it b all home far
17:18
Speaker 2: too personally.
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Speaker 1: I think it reinforces the role of a journalist. When
17:24
Speaker 1: people are themselves in the middle of grief, they're not
17:27
Speaker 1: in the right place to be pursuing answers or pursuing justice,
17:32
Speaker 1: and their judgment might be clouded. That's the role that
17:36
Speaker 1: we as journalists play, to come in and be dispassionate
17:39
Speaker 1: and be dog good in a way that you were Headley.
17:43
Speaker 1: It's been a wonderful adventure. So thank you guys, and
17:46
Speaker 1: we'll just look out for Headley's next big idea.
17:49
Speaker 3: After a long and well deserved break.
17:52
Speaker 2: Thank you again for making it happen. This book although
17:57
Speaker 2: by Australian standards in two thousand and seven and was
18:00
Speaker 2: a best seller, the numbers of sales are minuscule compared
18:05
Speaker 2: with the listeners and the interest from the public who
18:11
Speaker 2: follow us now and want to listen to our podcasts.
18:15
Speaker 2: And therefore taking a very powerful and important case, a
18:20
Speaker 2: case study of a sick health system, and turning that
18:24
Speaker 2: into an audio production twenty years later, so that it's
18:29
Speaker 2: heard for the first time by many, many people, millions
18:34
Speaker 2: of people that will end up being ultimately over months
18:37
Speaker 2: and years. That's something that is really important. Maybe fifteen
18:42
Speaker 2: minutes before we started recording for this conversation, I finished
18:46
Speaker 2: listening to episode sixteen, the last one in the series
18:51
Speaker 2: that's based on the book, and I got to the end,
18:55
Speaker 2: I just thought, Oh, my god, that was just such
18:59
Speaker 2: an achievement, and by you all, and you in particular Jasper,
19:03
Speaker 2: having pulled together so much material, done thousands of edits,
19:09
Speaker 2: and I know Kristen and Steph wrangled a huge number
19:13
Speaker 2: of voice actors. I was really moved, and I just
19:17
Speaker 2: want to thank you all because I think you've done
19:19
Speaker 2: a stellar job. It was so much bigger than I
19:22
Speaker 2: thought it would be when Claire and I first talked
19:24
Speaker 2: about it, and now we're pretty much there, we're done.
19:28
Speaker 4: It's really lovely to hear. I mean, it's funny to
19:31
Speaker 4: think that we ever thought that this would be anything
19:35
Speaker 4: other than an enormous amount of work. You know, it's
19:38
Speaker 4: turning a three hundred and fifty page plus book into
19:41
Speaker 4: a podcast. I think when I first heard about it,
19:45
Speaker 4: I wasn't one of the people who thought, oh, this
19:48
Speaker 4: should be easy enough. Five panics actually, but I agree
19:52
Speaker 4: if it feels like a really huge achievement to get
19:56
Speaker 4: to the finish line. I think from the very beginning
19:59
Speaker 4: it was a very ambitious undertaking and so to have
20:02
Speaker 4: landed here is something to be proud of for all
20:04
Speaker 4: of us.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we've got two hundred and fifty unemployed voice
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Speaker 1: actors ready to go and Jaspers available to help. Thanks everyone,
20:15
Speaker 1: Sick to Death is live now wherever you listen. Our
20:18
Speaker 1: team on the show also included Stephanie Coombs, Leat Sammaglu,
20:22
Speaker 1: Slade Gibson, Sarah Elks, Neil Sutherland and many more. Normally
20:26
Speaker 1: we publish episodes early for our subscribers, and this weekend
20:30
Speaker 1: March fourteen and fifteen, new visitors to be Australian dot
20:34
Speaker 1: com dot au can listen to every episode for free,
20:37
Speaker 1: along with all our journalism. It's open house at The
20:40
Speaker 1: Australian and we'd love you to come and sample all
20:43
Speaker 1: our reporting from politics and crime to entertainment and culture.
20:47
Speaker 1: Check us out at the Australian dot com dot au