Latest / WHAT I'VE LEARNT / What I've Learnt - Summer Series Gems (January-Febuary) (2022)

Transcript

What I've Learnt - Summer Series Gems (January-Febuary) (2022) · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, welcome to the Whether Flight Podcast.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Luke, one of the producers of the show.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: As a producer, I love my work, and helping Deborah and our team share so many wonderful stories.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: From food to fashion and art to music, we've got you covered.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: This week we brought you a little treat.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: With an amazing start to 2022, we are gonna highlight some of our favourite moments from these amazing guests.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: So sit back and enjoy.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_06: Sam Gowing put food as medicine on the map in Australia by using her unique blend of nutrition, fine dining, and business expertise.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_06: Before it was the zeitgeist to heal through food, Sam worked for nearly 20 years with people all over the world on improving their health and well-being as Australia's leading spa chef and an award-winning clinical nutritionist.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_06: She's renowned for her nutritional wisdom and for being a powerful influencer among healthy lifestyle audiences.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_06: And so how much has the conversation changed since you started out?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_06: Like in in that sense, because now everybody, you know, it's just particularly in Melbourne, although at the moment that's another story which we'll touch on, but I've, you know, I interview a lot of people who have really embraced and completely it's become an ongoing discussion, which it was growing up, I don't, because you and I are similar genre, um, it really the conversation is now what are you eating?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_06: Where are you going?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_06: You know, um, who's opening a new restaurant, whether it's Chris Lucas or to put it into context for you, when I left school, uh actually probably a bit later, by the mid 80s, we'd go out to nightclubs after restaurant service.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: And I only had two other mates that I knew in our social circle who also worked in the restaurant business.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_05: And we would, you know, meet them at one o'clock in the morning and they'd be, you know, fresh faced as I would be, and our other mates would be completely trashed because they'd been out all night on a Saturday night and we were just catching up, you know.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_05: So that was let's say the mid 80s, and it wasn't very fashionable to work in restaurants because everyone else was either at uni or they were maybe just plates in order to get through university.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_05: But when I started out, you know, to work in a restaurant was a real trade, it was a real craft.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_05: And I was trained by the European waiters and uh formal professional wait staff in a restaurant that my father had accumulated since Jackson's and right through to his other restaurants, and they taught me the fine art of restaurant service and table service.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: And these days it's not taught so much, it's not, there's not a training, and there's not, I'm not saying that there's not wonderful tapes and so forth, but there's not kind of a um front-of-house formal training the way that I had, and I was immersed in it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_05: And uh the European waiters, of course, would fly to Australia that immigrate in order to continue their trade in the hospitality industry, and that's kind of changed, you know.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_05: That canvas is um has a different paint on it now.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_05: And it's not that it's bad, it's just different.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's uh with the decline in fine dining in the late 80s with after the recession, what we saw was a rise in kind of more bistro dining, and so that became a little bit more mainstream, and there was something for everyone.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_05: You know, a Caesar salad was once an exotic restaurant dish, and all of a sudden it turned up on a plate on a Sunday brunch.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_05: And to be honest, it's still there for many, many restaurants and in usual circumstance.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_05: So the bistrofying of Australian cuisine really happened at the end of the 80s when people couldn't afford those$38, you know, Gowings Restaurant East Melbourne two hat dishes.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe they weren't that expensive then.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_05: So they weren't delicious, yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_05: And everything kind of stabilized and it's still very much there.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_05: But of course, fine dining, also due to the Mastership effect, has really um increased as well.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_05: So the number of three hat restaurants in Australia have increased, whereas a few years ago they were decreasing, give or take the pandemic, which is a really difficult discovery.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_06: And on that note, I think that's a really good point.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_06: In fact, we've been having quite a few discussions around that, because you've sort of had this, um, and you referred to that notion of the fine dining.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_06: And it used to be, and when you and I were growing up, and I'm assuming it was similar, except that obviously you had a restaurant you could go to every night, but it was much more a special event, a milestone event to go out.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_06: Then there's been this complete shift into you go out three nights a week if you want, you know, it doesn't have to be super expensive, but you know, oh, there's a new restaurant in Brunswick, or there's a new restaurant.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_06: So that's very, very Melbourne and very Sydney, and in fact, all over Australia.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_06: So then it's slammed by this pandemic.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_06: And as well as, and we will touch on that, the effect on hospitality workers, which is another travesty in itself.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_06: You've now got people thinking about it, thinking, do I really need to go to that restaurant?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_06: It's it's there's a whole shift happening.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_06: People are thinking about saving money in a different way.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_06: People I interview and speak to, it's really a question of how is this going to be restored, you know, and and whether it will shift to somewhere in between what it was when we grew up and what it became in the last, let's say, decade.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_05: I think we'll see, you know, the post-pandemic menus will reflect like they always have, menus have always reflected economic status.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll see probably a leniency, but a consolidation of what's available at least for a year or so on post-pandemic plates, you know, nationwide.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I won't talk about the rest of the world because I'm not as versed as I am in Australia.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_05: But you know, things will rise up again.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I remember when I left school and I bombed out of art school, and my father threw me into a job at the only breakfast cafe in South Yarrow or that side of the river, and it was called Middons.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_05: And he said, give her a job, you know.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: She understands restaurants.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I didn't know a thing.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_05: And here I am, microwaving croissants and you know, taking orange juice out.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like 17.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm like, man, who's going to come out for brunch and breakfast?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_05: Why don't they have a home?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_05: And look what happened with brunch, you know.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_05: Oh no, and massive, massive sector and part of the day parting, as we call it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, we've seen that cash flow that comes for restaurants, that those that serve brunch, you know.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you can pay$28 for smashed avocado in Byron Bay, let me assure you, you know, plus a Sunday server.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_05: So we'll see, you know, where the margin has to rise.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_05: And most restaurateurs, and I'm I'm sure whoever you know discuss it with in the future will tell you that, you know, on many restaurants there's about a 5% profit margin.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why, you know, I mean, that's on a good day.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_05: So it'll be really dependent on how the um wholesale market stabilizes with primary from a primary producer perspective, to the cost of goods, of course, and how um other associated costs are for French wine and French cheese, for example.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we're currently uh uncertain about the um French Australian trade uh um opportunities, I should say.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_05: So that could well inflate the price of you know champagne, which would be a travesty for us all.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_06: Testing testosterone, a fierce focus on fitness, and exploring the impact of partying too hard on your health, are just some of the themes the successful nine-to-five fitness guru Gabrielle and his team focus on.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_06: Social media savvy, they podcast, train, and inspire others to stay fit using science-based fitness strategies.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_06: You know, it's interesting.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think that that it's appealing as well because there's a big focus on mental health as well with men?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think this is a really important strategy to help young guys, even like yes, we were in the COVID world, but even before that, to empower themselves and to, you know, does it change?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think sort of the chat around mental health?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_06: Is it does it open up that discussion, being able to be in a gym or or have connections with trainers?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_06: And, you know, what's your thoughts around that?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_06: And have you guys seen that happening?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: I think like being fit and confident in yourself is an antidepressant in itself.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure how medically qualified that is, but I definitely think it is a huge impact on your mental health to be living a healthy lifestyle, eating the right things, kind of progressing to the physique that you want and being confident in yourself.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: I think that plays a huge role, not to mention having those lifestyle factors like is going to boost your testosterone, and testosterone regulates the male's mood, motivation, a lot to do with mental health.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: So um, I can speak anecdotally as well.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like I went through my first breakup with like a long-term girlfriend.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously, you know, your heart's broken and everything, and you come back, and this is like your transformation.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, like I trained transformed myself into a completely different person and I improved on so many different levels, both inside and outside.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think definitely living that kind of lifestyle just does wonders for your mental health.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_06: I think that's a really good point that you raise, Gabe, because I think that we talk a lot about resources for women.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_06: And yeah, obviously, like I've interviewed Hunter from The Man Cave and I've done lots on men's mental health.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_06: And there's certainly a correlation and it makes a lot of sense.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_06: And your personal story that you reflect on, have you seen that with other guys that you know?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_06: And do you encourage them to sort of use that as a resource?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've I've seen quite frequently on TikTok content like a guy gets their heart broken.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: So this is like their time to get motivated into the gym and kind of tend to some sort of beast.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've seen quite a bit of that, and I think it's pretty common.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_06: Well, it's good to know that there's another resource for men out there that I mean, many, many of them know it, but I think, you know, like hearing that anecdotally from you is really good to just to demonstrate that it's a real thing and it can be.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_06: But coming back to, you know, how I mentioned, and I just was asking you about that notion that do you have to go hardcore to be involved in your gym, or can you do sort of more, you know, medi medium uh style training?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I think like it's definitely you don't have to be a hardcore, what's called IFBB bodybuilder and you know, dedicating your whole life to it, which is kind of why we wanted to create what we did is you know, working smarter instead of harder.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't need to be in the gym every day training for three hours and taking it all extremely seriously.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: Like to be honest, I only train four days a week for about an hour and just prepare my kind of meal prep on the weekend or something like that and go shopping.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's you know a few hours of dedication, but it's certainly not unachievable, I think.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I think anyone who that's why it's called nine to five fitness is because this is techniques and practices that you can implement as your average nine to fiver who's working every day eight hours and kind of doesn't have a whole lot of spare time as you can implement these strategies to achieve your goals.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't think it's hardcore whatsoever.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_06: And in terms of um, you talk about meal prep, that's often the biggest challenge, yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_06: Um, because it's a matter of preparation.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_06: Do you um what would be just some quick tips that you'd give some of the some of our listeners about meal prep?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_06: Like in terms of are there some sort of shortcuts that you can yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I'd say my biggest tip is just to plan everything out.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a bit of a um Excel freak and I like everything organized.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: I literally have an Excel spreadsheet of everything I need to buy in the supermarket and how much it costs and what quantities.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to go to that extent, but I think just plan out like what you can visualize yourself eating during the week, you know.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, you might have to have three meals a day, four meals a day, whatever it may be.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: And you're just gonna plan out, okay, I'm gonna be cooking breakfast on that day, whereas I want my lunch and dinner to be already prepared.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: And then you kind of just ask yourself, what do I want to make?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: And if you want to get into the macro tracking and everything like that, then you can.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'd say just my biggest tip is preparation.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: And second one is just nutrient focused as well.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: So just consuming whole foods that are nutrient dense, and yeah, then you can also focus on your macronutrients too.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_06: Well, Sarah Andrews is a scientist, a designer, and teacher.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_06: Her unique background brings structured processes and original ideas to interior arts and design, which she's used to educate thousands of students around the world in her online school and in-person masterclasses.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it was really difficult, and you know, I had to rebuild my life.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_07: You know, money is a hard thing.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_07: It gives you freedom, it gives you a choice to what you want to do.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_07: I I couldn't afford to go and buy another boat.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_07: I couldn't afford to move to a cabin in the woods full-time because I had to work, you know.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_07: I I wonder if COVID and working from home could be a good culture shift for all of us.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_07: To be able to be more independent, to work for ourselves, you know, find entrepreneurship so you can, you know, at least work at the time of day and the place where you want to be, you know, those sorts of things.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_07: It was tough, and I I really searched in those years for what I wanted, which led me to finding the cabin.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_07: That's this that's how I ended up there.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_07: It was Tasmania wasn't at the time a place anyone wanted to go or move to or bought property in.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_07: It was still known as like a place that was a bit, you like if you were from there, you wouldn't say you were from there, that kind of vibe.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_07: But I'd always been so enamored with Tasmania.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_07: As a little girl, I would talk about moving there.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_07: And my parents who were sun lovers would say, you know, you're crazy.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um so the cabin I bought, which was incredibly cheap at the time because it wasn't hot property, was kind of my way to deal with things where I could go down there and rest and work with some good Wi-Fi, be outside of the world and then go back and when I had to, and kind of suffer through the normal things that most people have to do in their day-to-day life.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_06: That's clever though.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_06: Very clever that you actually found a way to still have your escape hatch, knowing that you had to deal with some elements of reality, which obviously meant you had to work to pay to live, which is obviously where we all get, you know, we get caught in that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_06: But that but work is also part of that healthy growth.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_06: And so you obviously realized you had to find that balance somehow.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_06: And that sounded like a great yeah.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_07: It's the best I could come up with.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_07: My wife at the time was not supportive because she was also a son lover and was not hot on the idea of Tasmania.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_07: Everyone in my life just said it was, you know, wasted money in terms of investment.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_07: The m the pro like having to be on the market for almost five years at that point, no one wanted to buy it, just kept dropping and dropping in value.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_07: And the amount of people I meet now who said I saw that and thought, oh, who'd want to live there or go there?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_07: You know, it's pretty amazing.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_07: But yeah, it just was the best I could come up with that I could manage with the funds I'd scraped together was just a small deposit on a very small, very remote, very cheap shack.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_06: And so Captain's Rest, did you name it Captain's Rest or was it named Yeah?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was I named it because it was never going to be a rental.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_07: It was always supposed to be somewhere I was for as long as I needed to be, you know, so I could felt like I could breathe and be happy.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_07: And so it always was called Captain's Rest because it was the first time I felt like since I'd been thrown back into society and and had to work to live and had to put on a brave face and pretend I wasn't sad and depressed, or that I felt like I didn't belong.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, it was the first time I got to just stop and stop saying where I wanted to be and create the world that I wanted around me and had some of my power back.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_06: Well, it's certainly a beautiful place and all, I mean, the the photos and I would love to come and visit you.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_06: It looks amazing and stunning.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_06: But the but you have to, in a sense, I can see from what you've created there, it is a real sanctuary.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_06: So there's an it's got a sense that you can relinquish a little bit there.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_06: That's what I'm seeing from even just from what I'm reading and talking to you.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't like that when I bought it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_07: It was a it was literally a shed with a um aluminium sliding window.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_07: And it was horrible.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_07: But it was mine, and I had a very small budget to make it basically the perfect world that I wanted, that I needed.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_07: So, you know, those giant windows I found on Gumtree, like the whole cabin was designed to be I basically was building a world for myself that I wanted to be in, which was probably half my boat and half my shack in Mexico put together.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_07: So that's a hybrid and refrigeration and heating and all the things I wished I had.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_07: But that's exactly what I did.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_07: That's what I wanted to do is create my own world where I could just be happy.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_06: Each of us has many stories to tell: stories of success, stories of disappointment, stories of love, and stories of loss.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_06: Tell me your story, allow me to sketch and paint it, then give it prominence so that you can use the art to share your story with others.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_06: Well, that was a quote from Mari Ryder, who is an Arunda artist in Alice Springs and has a very unique talent.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I'm very, very interested to talk to you about what you do because actually it's not unlike what I do, which is I write memoirs, and really what you're doing is you're capturing the legacy of story and family's heritage, but in painting, when did you first learn to paint?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_06: Tell me a little bit about that.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: I um used to sit and watch my mum, who is a well-known landscape watercolor paint artist, and I used to sit and watch her do her watercolor, and then she just started painting bushtacker, bush roots of this region, and using dots.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I just started doing my own.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_06: And how old were you when you did you used to sit with your mom and and did she teach you, or was it more just by osmosis where you just learned watching her?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I used to just sit and watch her do her paintings, and I was um early 20s when I used to sit and watch her, and then I just started doing my own in my own style.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_06: Well, your style is quite beautiful.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_06: It's a blend, and I can see a blend of ochre, sand, deep reds, beautiful greens.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_06: Are you inspired by the world around you?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_06: Because clearly there's some there's some stunning examples of nature and the way that you capture.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_06: I can even see the painting behind you is quite beautiful.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: I use um traditional colours to fill in my painting with dots.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that those colours are like the um colours around the bush around me in my country and all around the central region.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_06: And you love telling other stories, but tell me about yours first.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_06: How did you grow up and who obviously your mother inspired you, but were there other inspirations?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_06: Tell me a little bit about growing up for you and where you grew up.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: I um grew up at Santa Teresa Mission, which is about 70 K southeast of Alice.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up with my mum and my stepbad and my stepdad's family grew me up and went to school that day, and I my favorite subject was art all the way.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when I just started painting and still painting.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_06: Melissa Labosetta, an Italian-Australian artist based in Melbourne, is now a global ambassador for the Nonviolence Project Foundation, supporting unique educational programs to prevent and reduce violence around the world, and she's in very good company.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_06: Joining other fellow non-violence ambassadors for peace, Yoko Ono, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Ringo Starr, Lionel Messi, Patricia Gucci, Una Chaplin, and many other artists, Melissa is a passionate advocate, creator, and mother of three whose art is sold around the world.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_06: The way that you own your sexuality and you reflect that other people's sexuality, there's a sense that I suppose you Make women very visible, like literally, when often women can be made invisible.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, you make it the you're the opposite.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_06: You've made them very visible and very powerful.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_06: But that's why you and I connect it.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_04: I look at you the same.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_04: You're very visible.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_04: You're very you look at what you're doing.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: I love what you are doing.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's um you and obviously you've done lots of things in your life.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: I've read uh many, many things that you've done with your your journalism, lots of different things, but you've found this and you're passionate about it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_04: So that in itself is an excess.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it is art.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_06: I agree with you.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_06: And I think I think women having voices and being seen is what you and I are about.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_06: And one of the things that you've done is you've carved this extraordinary.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_06: Now, I mean, a lot of your artwork is quite confronting for some people, not for you and I so much, but because it's quite brazen in its sexuality, um that in itself has a courage about it.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_06: So you've clearly found something very important here that you are owning.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_06: And there's an authenticity to that.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_06: Was there anyone who sort of particularly nurtured your art in the early years?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_06: Like how did you, how did this come to be that you created this?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, oh gosh, I wish I could.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_04: You know, my best friends, I have to say my best friends, because really my dad, he wanted me to be this cartoonist for the Herald Sun when I was 10.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: And that was his, you know, that that that was dad's thing, right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_04: Never would my dad have thought I was gonna get to here.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_04: I had to hide it for a long time because on top of everything we've just talked about, let's go back to being in year 10.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_04: My English teacher pulls me into the little one of the little rooms, belittles me, and says, I'm done, and I'm never gonna mount to anything because I copied, God, it's okay, but I copied the back of the book for this essay because I crammed this thing, and she knew so.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_04: She calls me in and she does.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_04: Now I never forgot that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: I was just with because we've got a group of my high school girls that we're all still in the close, and we were just talking about Miss White yesterday.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_04: She's gone to heaven.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_04: Not that I would bless you, Miss White, whatever, but she was a reason I didn't go to uni because I thought I'd do vale art.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_04: So, but it's a blessing in disguise because I found it my way.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_04: I wouldn't have been able to no one can tell me how to draw anything, actually.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_04: So it's probably been the best thing because you can't teach an artist to be an artist.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: Look, it's you can't teach that.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's not, I'm not going to be able to do it.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_04: It's intrinsic, it's there's something within.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_04: I agree with you.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_04: So she did a she did maybe the the best thing for me, but then I get to I I put it all under the cover.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_04: I did courses, I went and did um fashion design, stayed in hospitality for a while, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: And then I got to fall pregnant with my twins, and which was 14 years ago, and that 13 years ago, and that's when I went.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god, I'm gonna be home with two children, two babies.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: I can't do anything anymore.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna go and get my canvas and I'm gonna follow my dream.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_04: So then I'm got my husband going, then my dad's going, what are you doing now?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_04: What are you doing it now?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_04: It's too late to do your art now, it's too late.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: And I just went, bugger you all.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm going with this.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_04: And that was 12 years ago.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_04: So look at you now, babe.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_06: No, no, no, no, no, I love it.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_06: I love it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_06: But it is, it is true.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's interesting you describe that.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_06: It's sort of like you have to just single-mindedly, and I feel that that similarly, push your way through all of the emotional demands as a woman, be it be it, you know, our dedication to children, to family, all of that is very real and very powerful.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_06: But this what you've done is you've through quite a, I suppose, quite a tunnel that you've had to crawl through to get to where you want to be.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_06: And I think that's really interesting too, because you have the cultural challenges and particularly what you chose to be a specialist in.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, you're not painting cars.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_04: Or you can imagine my in-laws bless them, but I know they're still a bit like, oh, they can't even deal with it.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: But that it's okay.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: I don't, I don't put it in anyone's faces.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_04: Do you know what?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's the ones that are supposed to embrace it, are the ones that are supposed to embrace it.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_04: And they're the ones I create for.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's trillions of us, there's millions and millions and millions and millions of people out there that love what we do.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_04: I call, I say that to you, Deb, as well, because you don't worry about the ones, I don't worry about them anymore.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_06: No, no, if you don't want to listen or you don't want to buy, or you don't want to see, that's okay.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_06: You know, get off the page.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_06: Um, so tell me, um, you've done some work as an ambassador for the non-violence project.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_06: Is that right?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_06: Please talk to me about that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_06: That really is interesting.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_06: I'm very interested in that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_04: Did you?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_04: Because I was wondering, because it I'm proud of this project.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_06: He served 17 seasons as photographer and judge on the hit TV show America's Next Top Model, which airs in over 140 countries and hosted Oxygen Network's modelling competition series, The Face, starring alongside Naomi Campbell.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_06: Barker's presence in the fashion and entertainment industry has resulted in an array of exciting projects.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think the concept of beauty has changed, or do you think it's just no, I know 100%.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's 100% changed, you know, and I and I would also say that, you know, I mean, my own definition, I mean, I wasn't not like I was born knowing what it I what the right concept for beauty was.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember very specifically having a very big awakening.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I had become a photographer on top model by this point, and I had been asked by Make a Wish, the Make a Wish Foundation, to grant a wish for a girl who had um cancer, and she her wish was to be a model for the day, and she was a big top model fan, and she'd asked if I could do the photo shoot for her.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they came to me with this wish, and it was the very first wish I granted.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Her name was Nikki Mueller, and um I of course accepted, and I was you know excited, and we were doing this photo shoot in New York, and she flew in, and it was a big fanfare and making it her day very special.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this young lady was 14, I think, at the time, and she had had cancer, and her arm had been very badly damaged and had a very bad scar, and it was sort of wizened and stuck to her side, and one side of her body was quite scarred, and the other side was, you know, for lack of a better word, perfect, you know, it was not no scarred, looked normal.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I was photographing her in this dress that was sort of low-cut, and she faced me with the scarred arm, and she looked at me with these big blue eyes, and these, you know, these eyes that just had so much depth to them and so much experience at this you know short period of her life because of what she'd been through.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and I remember thinking, okay, I'll do a couple of pictures like this, then I'll turn her around and I'll photograph the sort of pretty side where it's perfect, you know, and because that's because you don't want to see the scars and all that kind of thing.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she then, you know, I I asked her if she'd turn, and she sort of said, Oh, I'd rather just I'd rather shoot from this side.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I was like thinking to myself, really?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, and literally she sort of read my mind.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: She said, This is this is why I'm here, you know, this is my story, and this is what makes me me.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: At that moment, I just looked at this girl's eyes, and I literally, my definition of beauty was changed like that.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I was just so blown away by it.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, she was like 100% right.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh my god, you know, yes, yeah, yes, you're you are.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is what it is, because I see the both the courage and the bravery in your big beautiful blue eyes, and I see the pain and the hardship that you've been through on your arm, and they're both there together, and that is what makes you beautiful and unique and special, and that will be my new definition of beauty going forward, will be the truth, and that is there's nothing more spectacular than that, you know.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I wrote a book called The Beauty Equation.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, on the back cover, there's a picture of her right there, you know, um, from that moment.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, she really helped me, you know, really consider what beauty was and define beauty for myself and and and put me on a mission to really help people, you know, discover their true beauty, which was really from the inside out.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was, you know, you can be as physically say attractive as you, you know, like with perfection if you look at, oh, the eyes should be here, the nose is this length, and size of the forehead, and the clan, you know, but all of that doesn't make a person attractive.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: It makes them, it can make them say physically pretty on paper.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: But what really you know makes us interested and like someone and find them charismatic is their personality, is their soul, is the way they react, is the way they talk, it's their sense of humor, it's their knowledge, it's their wisdom, it's the way they talk to you, it's their kindness, it's their grace, it's their humility, and it's those things, that package that makes us fall in love.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And trust me, if you've fallen in love for any other reason, you're probably not gonna work in that relationship.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it is because of those things.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's the reason why we love our parents, it's the reason why our, you know, we can we you can love someone and fall madly in love with them, and it's because of that that story, not because of the way they look, because that's gonna change.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_06: Well, it is gonna change, and I love what you've just said because it's very much what I try to capture in this podcast, which is exactly that, which is people's souls, their stories.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_06: And I think one of the things about the next top model, which is everywhere, is that it does highlight the physical beauty, and I understand that.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_06: But what I love is that you acknowledge that, see that there's some, there's a role for that, but there's also a role for other photography or other forms of beauty.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_06: And I think it's really important, particularly for young people.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_06: I think one of the hardest things, you know, and I have daughters, and and I know you have a daughter too, it's just it's about trying to ensure that yes, we can hold up these notions of beauty, but as you've rightly pointed out, we must make sure that with this, as you say, this zeitgeist of, you know, whether it's next top model or certainly social media, which is ever present, that we balance.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_06: That's all.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_06: No one's saying, I mean, look, if you go back to time immemorial, there's always been a notion of beauty back, you know, BC.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, we're talking, it's not like that's something that's so um new.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_06: But what is new is an understanding that I think there's a dialogue, which you've referenced that we need to make sure that we keep having, because it's very destructive, otherwise, if if those notions of beauty are held up purely as physical.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_06: And that's that's the challenge of the modeling world, of the fashion world.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_06: And I do think, as you said, the dialogue is now much more about how you behave, who you are, you know, whether you're available to give with kindness.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think that is think we still have a long way to go, or do you think that that is something that is definitely evolving?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it's a it's always a work in progress, no matter what's going on.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the more educated we become in these things, the more we realize that there's more to achieve, right?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of, you know, it's one thing to give, say, you know, women the vote.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's another thing to realize that women's rights aren't even close to men's rights still decades later, right?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's it's it's not like, oh yeah, we've done it now, you know, it's it's all good.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a constant because it's you know, we we've we really on many things we're so far behind on equal rights, fair rights, fair treatment, and and just even being caring and kind, you know, people half the time.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Really, with what does that what does that actually mean?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how are we treating people fairly careful and with caring and love?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that you know, so and and ultimately it's also just about representation.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: It can boils down half the time too to business.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because you know, when you think about business, and I and I've I've said this many times about the fashion industry, when you make clothes and you only dress a model who's a sort of a certain size, a certain height, a certain look, and all the rest of it, how does that really translate to your audience of people who are actually buying your product?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and so therefore, you know, why would those people want to buy your clothes?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And if and because they know they're not sure that it's going to fit.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's sort of, you know, it's not gonna work.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of, you know, it just doesn't make any sense.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you bought a drink, a can of coke, for example, and the and the the area you'd have to drink from was this huge, massive hole, you know that when you pour the drink to your face, it's gonna go all over your face because it's a massive hole.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so they they they have to make it so that it fits and then we can all drink it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think with the fashion industry, I've said this so many times in the past, now of course it's happening, but you know, a real challenge to a designer is can you actually dress, make create clothes that that people can wear, your clients can actually wear, that doesn't have to be fitted or alterated, you know, that and how about sending your styles down a runway on models of different heights, sizes, colours, and all the rest of it, just like the population that you're hoping to dress.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can do that, you've you're truly a success, you know, a brilliant designer, you know, and uh and all you know, and using your imagination versus sort of on a certain only on one shape and size, you know, which obviously makes it much easier for the designer because he doesn't have to think outside that one box, you know, and he can just create around that one aesthetic.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, ultimately the world isn't built of one aesthetic.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the built- the world is built of many, many, and in fact, models hardly speak to a fraction of what the population looks like.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for listening.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Willow Lion Podcast comes out every Tuesday for more amazing stories from fantastic guests.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Check out the Willow Flynn Instagram for more updates.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as Deb would say, stay tuned, kind, and curious.