Diversity & Belonging: This Australian Life Podcast

What does it mean to ‘belong’? In Australia, people experience racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and many more social injustices on a daily basis. For many people, they don’t just face one of these social injustices, but overlapping, intersectional forms of oppression. Whether their experience is in personal discrimination or structural biases, they are confronted with barriers to belonging, despite Australia’s diversity and ‘fair dinkum’ narrative.

Diversity & Belonging: This Australian Life dives deep into diverse stories of people grappling with the concept of belonging, and more importantly, how we can get there. Host, Dr Susan Sisko, is an academic and a psychologist who has devoted much of her professional career to advocating for cultural sensitivity and responsiveness in the fields of counselling and psychology.

Dr Sisko explains that “What has become apparent is that we need to look beyond the individual and look at the interconnections of peoples’ experiences in relationship to their environments and systems - to fully understand, heal and truly develop well-being for all.”

Talking through wicked problems

The podcast focuses a lens on Australians living through, working with, and fighting against ‘wicked problems’. Wicked problems are not (just) moral or ethical issues. The term was coined by Rittel and Webber in 1973 to describe modern issues that are difficult to define and essentially impossible to solve. Despite this Sisyphean problem, in Diversity & Belonging: This Australian Life, Dr Sisko and her guests tackle wicked problems head-on.

These important conversations provide a platform for lived experience and rigorous research. They stretch our understanding of what it means not to belong and how we can individually and collectively create change.

The podcast is currently released every two weeks and has a wide range of topics ready to binge, including postcolonialism, fat-shaming, racism and wellbeing, and heterosexism. You can find the podcast on your usual podcast provider by searching ‘Diversity & Belonging: This Australian Life’ or the links below.