Empowerment through play - sport and recreation

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Anna-Marie 0:10

Hello, welcome to SpineCare's 40 Voices for 40 Years podcast, a podcast about childhood acquired spinal cord injury and dysfunction, produced by 2SER radio on behalf of SpineCare Foundation. We'll have families join us to swap tips and share their experiences on plenty of topics. I'm the executive producer for this podcast series. Anne Marie Reyes at the community radio station 2SER 107.3 FM. This podcast is titled Empowerment Through Play - Sport and Recreation.

Sebastian 0:49

As simple as what it is, because I see it so much, I'll see somebody come in and say, Oh, I could never do that, but I know that they can. And so seeing someone achieve something that they never thought that they could Yeah, is something that I love about my job, and I'm so lucky to get to do it every day. I think I just want to go back on my point to say, don't be afraid of going out and giving something a go, because that's the only way that you're going to learn.

Anna-Marie 1:14

And you just heard the voice of Sebastian Van Veenendaal, who is a highly skilled sport, recreation and leisure professional with a unique background in adapting activities for people with physical disabilities. But before that, you'll hear from our guest Joanne Hacken first. Joan is a highly experienced consultant physiotherapist with nearly four decades of expertise in pediatric and adult neuro rehabilitation. Her deep commitment to sports for individuals with disability is evident in her volunteer work as a classifier for IPC athletics, UCA para cycling and WTF para taekwondo.

Joan 1:58

So I'm Joan Hacken. I'm a physiotherapist, and I'm predominantly seeing children, but I do work with adults as well, and my background is really people with neurological conditions, so after spinal cord injuries or head injuries or with congenital conditions, for children or young people with cerebral palsy, and I know this is all in relation to spinal cord injuries. And I see a lot of people with spinal cord injuries through sport related activities I do. 

Anna-Marie 2:30

So can I ask Joan, how long you've been doing this?

Joan 2:34

Way too long. I just looked at the time and the year. I've been a physio for 39 years, so a very long time. And I've been involved with Paralympic sport and sport in general for people with disabilities or impairments since 99 so that's a very long time as well. 24 years.

Anna-Marie 2:53

Yeah, so you've spent decades of your career supporting young people with obviously complex conditions to be active. What do you see when a young person starts getting involved in sport? 

Joan 3:07

In that context, I think one of the things which is always so confusing is where to start - number one, where fit a young person in within just the local community sport clubs, because there's very few specialised sport clubs for people with an impairment or a disability. There are a few more targeted clubs for people in a wheelchair, and that would be my first choice. So there's New South Wales Wheelchair Sports Association. But I normally say to families, Look at what sport your child wants to do, because other kids try all sorts of different sports, and they can pick and choose what they like and what they good at, and over time, they tune down into particular ones. 

Obviously, when you have a disability or you've got impairments and there's activity limitations, you're a little bit limited in your choices, but you should still look at what you want first before you decide, oh, I can't do that. Try to link them in, basically.

Anna-Marie 4:05

And so if we look at mainstream sports, because a lot of young people become part of that, and it's actually encouraging school as well. In the school environment, is there a difference with your approach for a young person with spinal cord injury, for example, class sport or even PE?

Joan 4:21

No, I look at that as well - and it's about explaining that sports activities can be modified to include children in a wheelchair or children who might use a walking frame or crutches, or who might have poor balance but can still walk by themselves. So it's about giving the PE teacher or the classroom teacher, ideas of how you can do that, because they're all often really worried that the kids might hurt themselves. And having an impairment doesn't make you more prone to injuries, necessarily. Sometimes it does, but not often, so making the teachers and the sports teachers or the coaches comfortable with what is okay. 

And how you can do it really easily by modifying and just switching your head around in... Okay, instead of maybe modifying a game, why don't we just get everybody to sit on the floor? You don't always have a lot of wheelchairs accessible, but you might be able to do things sitting in a chair, sitting on the floor, and looking at it from the kids' point of view and actually asking them, How do you think we can modify this so you can participate? They often forget to ask the child. The child often has worked out in their head already how they can do it.

Anna-Marie 5:30

So you're advocating obviously accessible and adaptive design in sports. Why is this useful? And what perhaps go into more detail. What's out there at the moment? What do parents expect, or families expect at school?

Joan 5:45

It really comes down to the teachers. When you start to look at clubs, because of the Paralympics having been very well marketed in the media. I suppose a lot of people do understand that at the elite end, when your young one is older, and they competing as an adult. That there is competition out there, and there's a lot of sports which have their Paralympic side to it, or adapted side to it. And some parents do tend to look straight at competition, where really it's about participation first, and looking at How can the child participate? How can this young athlete do things? What do we need for it? What can we make something adaptive? Really easily? Can we adapt the environment or the rules rather than going straight for equipment? 

Because your child might not like it for very long, they might decide, No, this is not me, and you don't want to end up with high cost for expensive adaptive equipment.

Anna-Marie 6:43

You mentioned the wheelchair sports and then you also mentioned Paralympics. So is that the purpose of Come and Try days? 

Joan 6:51

Absolutely, it's to try variety of different activities. People are always surprised that sometimes it's really quite easy to adapt equipment. So most children with spinal cord injuries would be doing sport in a wheelchair in their everyday life. They might be able to walk with a walking frame or crutches. They might not be able to walk with for support to make movement efficient. Most of them would participate in a wheelchair or seated. But see, you don't necessarily need to sit in a wheelchair. You can sit on a bike, for instance, but you can sit in a canoe, or you can sit in a rowing boat, or there's quite a few sports where you can actually sit and do it, like archery or athletics, for the field events, you don't really need a very snazzy piece of equipment to get started and to give it a try. 

So those Come and Try days, they do tend to have some of the equipment available to give it a go, and then kids can actually work out sports they might not have even thought about and say, Oh, I actually really enjoyed doing that. Might do that for a little bit more. And that's where the wheelchair sports association comes in very handy, because they know where clubs are, which might have the equipment, which might be needed, or they might have ideas and how to adapt the person's own equipment, and they probably will also know where there are coaches who have already worked with other children with similar conditions, so they're a little bit more familiar and more comfortable in coaching those type of kids and integrating them into the rest of their community group.

Anna-Marie 8:22

So parents may ask for Paralympic classification. Are you able to walk us through this? 

Joan 8:28

For example, every sport has its own classification these days. It came from a system where it was very impairment based, and that's changed, because every sport is different, and your impairment can be a real disability in one sport and a fairly minor disability in another, just depending on what you need to do in your sport. So sports are now basically classification is per sport, and classifiers basically get trained per sport. Now I've been trained in a few sports, so I can classify, for instance, in cycling and athletics and Taekwondo. But in the past, studied football and Bucha, which were more sports for people with cerebral palsy. 

So first you need to try to support and when you know that the child really wants to go forwards and wants to compete in it, then you start to look at classification with most sports that doesn't really start till they're about nine, and that's when most kids really start to pick a sport, maybe a little bit more seriously. And I want to participate for a season or compete for a season. It's the minute you want to start competing, is when you need to start looking at classification. 

The unfortunate thing is that the system is really designed for elite athletes in an adult body. So sometimes applying it to a child who hasn't done a lot of training yet and is at a grassroot level, it seems very harsh, because might not be eligible to compete in a certain sport, and that basically means that it. Their activity limitation is not big enough so they can actually do more than where the cutoff point is, or they haven't really grown big enough yet or trained well enough to be able to classify them properly. So for young children, it's an ongoing process. 

We normally have a go at it, and then we might see them again in one or two years time or four years time, depending on the sport. So it's an ongoing process till they're either 16 or 18, and they actually do have a bigger body. They've trained more, and it actually makes it easier for us to classify which class they best placed in according to the rules. It's all rules based. It's like any sports rule. It's not something we make up, and we can't bend the rules either. That's sometimes a hard thing. Sometimes parents say, oh, but it's not fair, and it does look unfair, but it's really based for an adult system for elite athletes. So it makes it sometimes a bit hard for school sport. 

For instance, most kids can now compete from the age eight or nine in athletics if they have a disability, and they can represent their schools as an athlete with a disability. And school athletics is actually well organized, and athletics Australia is well organized. They've got a system in place. Classification happens at the events, but otherwise, classification normally happens at a competition. So if the child hasn't started competing yet, it's really hard to classify them. But what the physio can do their own physio, they can fill in a form available from the sport the child wants to participate in, and give us a bit of background. And those sports normally have classifiers. Look at that and give a professional class. 

So we can, from a fairly early age, give them an idea of where they might fit, but it's not set in stone till they're a little bit older. 

Anna-Marie 11:48

Do you have any advice for parents who have a serious athlete on their hands? 

Joan 11:54

Number one is to find a club and start enjoying a sport first, getting your techniques under control, working with your coach, or coaches training, and then start to explore, how can we get classified? Who does it? And it all goes through the sports federations. It's not necessarily a physio who does it on their own. It's normally a panel. It's two or three people who classify. And it normally happens at an event, because it's not just a physical assessment. We actually need to see the child or the athlete do the sport to get a good idea about their functioning. It really doesn't happen that early on in the process. It's a little bit later on. 

So when they are becoming more serious and they want to compete, that's a good time to start to ask either to coach or look online and find a Sports Federation and send off questions about, How can I get classified? 

Anna-Marie 12:45

So to close off our discussion, are you able to share some favorite moments for you when a young person tries out world mobility for sport? 

Joan 12:55

For example... oh, there's too many. There's a lot, I think, as a physio and and as a classifier, it's wonderful to see a young person, and you put them in a class, and you see them train, and you see them improve, and then I suppose when they do well and they enjoy it, that's already an amazing achievement, and we enjoy it as much as they do, or their parents do. We really feel part of that. I think, to really top it off, is when one of the athletes you've either worked with, where you're classified along the way, and been involved with, when you see them win a gold medal or set a world record, that's really amazing, and it makes it all worthwhile, because as a classifier, we do those things as a volunteer, whereas a physio and we work with clients. 

Obviously, that's part of our profession and our business, but classification is actually still a volunteer job. So people often ask us, you know, why do you do it? It's because we do live with them, and you know that really makes it worthwhile seeing athletes having a great time and doing well.

Anna-Marie 13:56

And what about if, example, in sports or activity like dancing, do you classify that as well?

Joan 14:01

I personally don't, but they definitely have a system, pretty much everywhere, where there's a competition involved, where it is about winning medals or winning a place, and where there are besides just local competitions, maybe regional or nationally and internationally, most sports do have some form of classification, and we actually do in everyday sport as well. For instance, with football or soccer, it will be age groups. But if you go to judo, it will be male, female and weight groups, because you don't have 100 kilo person compete against a 50 kilo person in every sport, you already have some sort of classification system. 

What we look at with people with impairments or activity limitations is we're looking at the activity limitation and put them in groups where they similar, so their chance of winning is as much the same as the other person with an activity limitation. It's not about how well their recurring treatment functions. It's more about how well they've trained and their ability in doing well. And some people are natural athletes, and some are not. So some of those natural athletes will win, maybe a little bit more easier. But it's not a matter of turning up and winning because of your class. It's you turn up because you've trained and you want to compete, and you do your very best, and that's why you win, because all the other people in your group are similar to you. 

Anna-Marie 15:27

What was it like for you? Because it's been a long time that you're involved in this work. When there are challenges, for example, how do you handle them, or how do you get around them?

Joan 15:35

The whole system has improved over the years quite dramatically. So before we actually classify an athlete, we look way more at their background and make sure that we've got as much information on their activity limitations, how that came about. We don't have to go through a lot of questioning at the time when we see the athlete, and we can actually look at their physical abilities. That number one, makes it a lot more pleasant for us to deal with and for the athlete and the family as well, because it can be quite a painful situation if you're asked and what happened in your accident, and how did this happen? How did that happen? 

It's quite an emotional roller coaster, so we try to minimise that by having a lot of information beforehand so we can focus on what we're really about, and that's about participating in sport and competing. What we like to think about too is that, if a person has been involved in a sports club already, is that they know what the system is about, that they've read up a little bit so education of the family and the athletes, so they know already something about the rules. But if they don't, then we're open to explain that to them, and we don't make the rules necessarily. That's other people or committees who do that. 

So sometimes we do have to give them uncomfortable information and actually say you don't actually meet the rules. That can be really unpleasant. But if we can point out where those rules are and how we made that decision, it makes it a lot easier. So it is... it's about education along the way as well.

Anna-Marie 17:06

You just heard from Joan Hacken there, sharing her extensive experience in working with young athletes with disability, from grassroots involvement to the Paralympics, she shed light on classification systems while emphasizing the importance of participation over competition. Joan also serves as an expert witness and is the director of her own physiotherapy practice.

and now over to Sebastian Van Veenendaal. Sebastian - or Seb to family and friends - shares innovative adaptations he's made for kayaking, and recounts the joy he's witnessed during snorkeling, surfing and scuba diving experiences. He's currently the business development and program manager at Sargood in Collaroy. Seb points out that recreational activities for kids with spinal cord injury are really up to personal interest and enjoyment. Here he also talks about kayaking and a few adaptations he came up with his sport,

Sebastian 18:11

I think, thinking back to our kids camp that we just ran the activities that I think were most enjoyed and were by everyone that was there were things like kayaking, snorkeling, surfing, we can start working towards things like scuba diving. We've taken people water skiing, sailing, rock climbing. The list is is really endless for what we can do. But thinking back to the beginning, there activities like kayaking are great because they're activities that can be done together as a whole family. So for kids, it's really nice to be able to do things with your siblings, with your parents, and with friends, being out on the water together. 

I think back two years ago when we first started kayaking with our guests at sargod, and we had the low budget here with what we could do, and we weren't able to necessarily go and purchase a lot of adaptive equipment. So when we first started out, I actually used some of our old office chairs here, and I cut the legs off them and made them like a just a legless seat, and went and got some foam stuck foam on the base and on the back to have a comfortable seating set up. And we're able to lift those seats and place them into a standard kayak that we could hire from our local kayak store down by the lake. And once we saw the kayaking was such a enjoyed activity by all our guests, we then went on to look at what type of modifications we could look at making more permanent. 

And we found these awesome kayaks that are homey kayaks, so they're a foot pedal, drop with your legs kicking pedals. And we modified them so that you use your hands instead. And so by moving your hands forward and back. It moves some small paddles that are underneath the kayak, and it propels you forward. It's a really easy way for someone to learn to kayak or to be out on the water without having to focus on the actual technical skill of holding a paddle, rotating your core and paddling. It just made it quite a simple process of being able to sit in a very stable kayak. That's one of our most loved activities. 

Anna-Marie 20:01

Snorkelling and surfing are also in Sebs list of recreational options. He shares his experience being back from the Para surfing world championships when there's also a push for it to become part of the Paralympic Games.

Sebastian 20:16

Snorkelling is a great one. We're so lucky to have Cabbage Tree Bay, just locally by us down at Shelley Beach at Manly, which is marine park. It's a beautiful place to go and take people snorkeling. Find snorkeling this interesting one that for a lot of people, once someone can feel water confident heading out and snorkelling with your head underwater is just a skill that you either can do or you can't do, not related to your spinal cord injury. And we'll take people into our ocean pool first and get someone comfortable with being in the water. We might use some small aids, like pool noodles to assist with flotation, and then we can head down and explore the ocean. 

And down at Shelley Beach, there's fish literally two metres from the shore. But one thing I will say with snorkelling and anytime you're going in the water, is if you're going to support somebody in the water, make sure that you're completely water, confident in yourself before going in the water to support somebody else. 

Anna-Marie

What about surfing? 

Sebastian

Oh, I've surfed my whole life, and so surfing for me, and taking someone in the water to experience the joy of catching a wave is probably one of the best parts to my job. I think it's, I think it's very easy to support someone surfing, but a lot of that comes down to the fact that I've spent a whole lot of my life in the water, but it's great, and kids are very easy to get out if you are water confident, to be able to take someone out surfing and to push them onto some small whitewash on foam surfboards, remembering that if you're going down to the surf, to always be between the red and yellow flags if you're going to go swimming down there and again, be really water-confident, but we've got some great equipment here at saga that we've worked with modifying by putting some straps on on the board, so some nice grab handles to work with that we can support people out on the water with. 

And yeah, like the joy of getting someone on a wave and to hear them scream when they're catching a wave, and to have that enjoyment is one of the best parts of my job. So December last year, I went to the World Championships for para surfing. It's been called para surfing now, and not adaptive surfing, as they're pushing to have it included in the Paralympic Games. One of my longtime clients, who's now a very good friend of mine, I took him back in the ocean pretty much sort of two to three months after his injury, when I met him in rehab, took him surfing, and have just recently got back from the Australian championships as well, where he where he won the Australian championships this year too.

Anna-Marie 22:24    

There's also scuba diving and water skiing. 

Sebastian 22:28

Look, I'll throw water skiing out there as a great example. There's an amazing organisation, Disabled Waterski New South Wales, run by a great lady, Sharon Patterson, who's a quadriplegic herself. And they run a bunch of Come and Try days throughout the summer months of the year, and to anyone that wants to get involved in water skiing, I'd highly encourage to look up that organisation, get in touch with them, and try to go along to these Come and Try days, because they're fantastic being out in the water, being towed behind a boat. Yeah, it's an awesome activity. 

Anna-Marie 22:55

I also asked Seb about what can families do to be well prepared for having a good experience in the water, and this is what he had to say.

Sebastian 23:04

Yeah, look, the first thing I would say is make sure that you can be water confident. Everyone says it that learning to swim is a life skill that all Australians should learn how to do, and people with disability shouldn't be excluded from that as well. So the first step would actually be to contact your local Swim School and see if they have a disability swim program or something along those lines. There are some organisations that exist. There's one called Little Kickers that exists, Little Heroes I think it is that, particularly around the city. So being water confident is definitely the first thing, starting in a pool, first, to make sure that someone's comfortable being in the water, and then I would say, if you're confident and just having you go really and making a day of it down at the beach.

Anna-Marie 23:48

One of Seb's tips include the use of wetsuits, and he explains how useful it is when using them. 

Sebastian 23:56

Wetsuits are great. Not only do they provide warmth, which can be critical for people with spinal cord injury, that might have issues with thermoregulation. But wet suits can also provide buoyancy in the water as well, so to assist with flotation and can protect your skin. And so there's a couple of companies out there that can even make custom wet suits that might go all the way down the legs and have full, long legs with some extra padding on the knees, so that some kids might decide to crawl into the water across the sand, and it's just protecting our skin from hitting any rocks and getting any skin damage.

Anna-Marie 24:25

Seb says that equipment can also be adapted according to your needs, with different types of hand cycles.

Sebastian 24:33

I just finishing up running an adaptive mountain bike camp for people with spinal cord injury from Sargood. And it's really a golden age for adapted cycling at the moment now as well, with not only the NDIS being available in Australia now, which can help to provide support for funding for this equipment, but there's a whole lot more equipment available now as well, with hand cycles and how do we can get and so it's not now just about maybe riding on a path. You can now get out and ride fire trails and be out in the bush to ride a more diverse range of trails and types of trails. 

There's lots of equipment available. Some great companies now in Australia that are selling this equipment. I think the important thing for kids is finding a piece of equipment, though, that can grow with somebody. Because obviously kids grow fast, and so they're expensive pieces of equipment, so they get in a hand cycle, straight up, and then two years later to be grown out. Might not be the best option, but there is equipment now that can be modified, and it can essentially grow as your child grows. So there's different types of hand cycles. Some might have two wheels at the front and one wheel at the back, and others will have one wheel at the front and two wheels at the back. 

I think with kids, an important thing is working through the most simplistic type of cycle that you can do. So rather than overloading it with a whole lot of features, is drawing it back, and that might mean that you've only got a couple of gears, and your braking might be a back pedal brake, similar to kids learning to ride on two wheels, where they've got the old back pedal, skid brake as well. There's hand cycles that are made in the same respect to have quite a simplistic approach to cycling. 

Anna-Marie 26:02

When I spoke to Seb, he was right in the middle of mountain biking and talked about the great outdoors. Here he speaks of hiking that families can enjoy. 

Sebastian 26:12

Hiking is another great family activity that you can do as well. Many years ago, I did a hike with a bunch of guys with spinal cord injury in wheelchairs, and we went out and did a 10k hike, and actually brought all our camping equipment with us as well. And we worked together as a team to get all our camping equipment out there. And we used some various techniques to support with that hiking as well. And so one thing we used was a tethering system where I would be hiking at the front, and I had some ropes attached to me that were then attached to someone's chair behind me, and as they were pushing their chair, I'd be walking ahead. 

And so we were working together as a team, where I was able to provide a bit of assistance to the wheelchair user behind me, but it was also important they were pushing as well, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to have the effort to pull them through. 

Anna-Marie 26:57

And if you're into trails and national parks, Seb says that there's lots of trails that are starting to open up. He also shares an app called Trail Forks, where you can get more information.

Sebastian 27:10

And the National Parks are fantastic at the moment, there's lots of trails that are starting to open up, and I would highly encourage people not just to look for a trail that says it's accessible, because often the trail that says it's accessible is going to be a short trail, and it might not give you that true experience of bushwalking. Whereas you can look on there's a great app called Trail Forks, and you can look at the trail forks app, and it can show you, maybe how much gradient there is in it, in a trail that's there. And that might mean that you might be able to go out and test some of that trail. 

A good example would be to even go out, maybe, if one of the parents wants to go out for a hike first, and they could go and walk it and say, Oh, great. There's one step here that I know that I can support this person up this one step. But hey, let's go and give this a trial after having tested it first. 

Anna-Marie 27:56

After this great list, there are still other options that Seb added.

Sebastian 27:59

Oh, look, the list is endless. There's things like archery, wheelchair sports are still fantastic. And obviously organisations like Wheelchair Sports New South Wales still exist, and getting kids involved in team sports is great. You can even get a bit more extreme and do things like rifle shooting out at the Sydney International Shooting Centre, fishing... snow sports are fantastic. We're just heading out of the snow season now, but Disabled Winter Sport Australia are fantastic with putting on kids' camps to get anyone out on the snow that wants to be able to ski. Yeah, the list is really endless. 

Anna-Marie 28:32

Seb shared some handy tips for kids and families who are curious about trying a new activity or want to get back to something that they've done before. 

Sebastian 28:42

First and foremost, I'd say, Don't be afraid of failure and just get out and give it a go. Kids are great to work with because they're already in that age of skill acquisition, and so they're fast learners. But yeah, get out and give it a go, would be my first tip. And secondly, find the activity that you're considering doing and go and contact the leaders in the field in that activity so they don't have to necessarily have disability experience. But let's say you want to go kayaking, and there's a local kayak shop that's nearby to you, go and contact that local kayak shop and ask if there's anyone that does kayak tours in the area that you might be able to join or be a part of. 

Same thing goes with, say, surfing, for example, it might be contacting your local surf school to see if you can get involved, but experts in the field are going to be able to modify their activities with a bit of prompting from maybe you to say, Hey, do you think we could put a bit of extra support here? But yeah, don't be afraid of failure as well. I've tried plenty of activities with people on the first time, it was a complete flop. But then we came back from that and we said, hey, what if we made some small changes here and small changes here, and then we'll go back and give it another go again.

Anna-Marie 29:45

It goes without saying that Seb loves what he does in his job. But in closing our interview, I did ask him why, and this is what he had to say.

Sebastian 29:55

As simple as what it is, because I see it so much, I'll see somebody come in and say, Oh, I could never do that, but I know that they can. And so seeing someone achieve something that they never thought that they could, yeah, is something that I love about my job, and I'm so lucky to get to do it every day. I think I just want to go back on my point to say, Don't be afraid of going out and giving something a go, because that's the only way that you're going to learn if you're interested about doing an activity. 

A simple Google search of anything could open up a YouTube page of someone's video that's explained that they've done something. I can almost guarantee that anything that anyone is thinking of doing someone has already done before. And so it's just about finding that information. And the internet provides that gold for us.

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Anna-Marie 30:39

And you just heard the voice of Sebastian Van Veenendaal there, and ending that interview. Seb is driven to solve problems through simple and strategic, creative solutions to provide access to people of all abilities. 

In this week's episode, you heard from guests Joan Hacken, who is a highly experienced consultant physiotherapist with nearly four decades of expertise in pediatric and adult neuro rehabilitation, her deep commitment to sports for individuals with disability is evident in her volunteer work as a classifier for IPC athletics, UCI para cycling and WTF para taekwondo. Joan also serves as an expert witness and is the director of her own physiotherapy practice.  

And also Sebastian van vienen doll. Seb is a highly skilled sport, recreation and leisure professional with a unique background in adapting activities for people with physical disabilities, with the strong attention to detail. Seb is driven to solve problems through simple and strategic, creative solutions, to provide access to people of all abilities. He's currently the business development and program manager at Sargood in Collaroy. You can find out more about their expertise in the show description online. 

And that ends this week's episode. You've been listening to SpineCare 40 Voices for 40 Years, produced by radio 2SER-FM. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This series is recorded in Sydney. We acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional owners and ongoing custodians of the land. Where we record this podcast, we extend our respect to the traditional owners of the lands that you and our guests join us from. I'm executive producer Anna Maria Reyes, see you in the next podcast.

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