EPISODE 944: THEIR SHOUT

Welcome to the Jevons Paradox.

Dec 16, 2024

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Hi and welcome to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the Substack that is currently putting the Pop in its title with my month-long pop-up trip to the land that I love, Australia.

I see there have been a lot of additions to the Wow this week. Welcome one and all. I hope you make yourself at home.

This is my third time trying to write this episode. When it comes to Australia and me, there’s always too much I want to say. I could spend a very happy afternoon writing just about flora and fauna of Australia—people, can we talk about the kookaburra?—or the country’s current political situation. I literally spent my first two weeks here hunting for my favorite Australian newspaper, a little weekly called The Saturday Paper, which always features strong arts and political reporting.

(In fact they had a couple fascinating stories this week that might be of interest to Americans, one about an Australian billionaire cozying up to Trump who actually seems to be not-a-lunatic-or-monster, and the popular-with-the-right-wing New Zealand P.R. firm the opposition leader has hired to run his party’s election campaign next year, which specializes in deepfakes and disinformation, but don’t get mad, they’re just there to be “playful and make some noise,” like when they changed the British Conservative Party’s Twitter handle to “factcheckUK” during a leadership debate, gosh, kids today, don’t they do the darnedest things?)

My other impulse seems to be to deluge you with lots of facts about Australia, which before this month is out may happen because there is so much to share—like the fact that I just spent 4 days in a state that is twice the size of Texas, and it isn’t even the biggest state in Australia. (You say you want something Texas-sized? Adorable. I’ll have mine Queensland-sized, please.)

But for the moment I’m going to try and control myself. If you’re wondering what Australia is like, here’s some of how it is for me.

The Light On The Hill

One of the great Australian production companies is a little comedy outfit called Working Dog Productions. You might know them from the movie The Dish, which is about the crew on the satellite dish in Australia responsible for the world seeing the images of Neil Armstrong and company walking on the moon. (You’re welcome.)

Working Dog has produced a number of darkly-funny television series about politics and journalism over the years. Among them is a series called Utopia, which focuses on the office staff of a governmental organization responsible for overseeing infrastructure projects. It’s got a bit of The Office to it, in that everyone except for the boss and his second-in-command are absolutely mad. But the real heart of the show is its cutting analysis of office and political culture. Check this out.

As each episode gets crazier and crazier, with boss Tony Woodford (Rob Sitch) and his COO Nat Russell (Celia Pacquola) further and further trapped in the insanity being foisted upon them by the political hacks while desperately trying to do the very important job that they’ve been given, I get almost as uncomfortable as I do watching The Bear. (True story.) And yet, every time I come to Australia I hope there’ll be a new season to watch. And there was!

If you watch through to the last clip on that link, you get to see Mike McLeish, who plays the minister. Sixteen years ago when I first came to Australia, McLeish played one of the country’s great prime ministers, Paul Keating, in a hilarious musical called Keating! Paul Keating was (and still is) an outsized figure in Australia, by turns vicious, brilliant, devastatingly hilarious, and visionary.

An example: One day in Parliament, Keating’s opponent pushed him to call an early election. His response is one of the most well-known lines in Australia.

I honestly love this man.

At the end of the musical, as Keating waits on the results of the election that will toss him out, McLeish sings a song, whose title comes from a very famous speech of another Australian prime minster, Ben Chifley, which Keating quoted. In the midst of this very funny show, it’s quite touching.

These are the Drugs I’m Looking For

About a month ago I was diagnosed with pneumonia, which turned out probably not to be pneumonia at all but really bad bronchitis. By the time I arrived in Australia it had mostly gotten better, but within a day of finishing my antibiotics I got a cold which had me needing to go to the chemist (aka the pharmacy) for drugs.

Google had told me I’d be able to find Mucinex DM in a certain store, but that was of course nonsense. None of the brands at Chemist Warehouse in fact corresponded with American brands. None of them seemed to have the shiny “drink/eat/buy me” labels you find in the States, either, which is pretty fascinating.

But as a result I wasn’t quite sure what to buy. So I asked the chemist. She pointed me to a set of drugs that are meant to kill nasal drip. “This should help,” she said. But then she looked at me and asked, “Or would you like something stronger?”

My friends, I have no idea whether I needed something stronger, but it didn’t matter. The sheer novelty of a pharmacist offering me drugs that I could not just find on the shelf was so great, I had to have them.

Apparently, in between the drugs that you can find on a shelf at the and those that require a doctor’s prescription, there are a set of drugs in Australia that a chemist can offer independently. Which, when you think of it, actually makes a lot more sense than the American system. Pharmacists go through years of specialized training, and yet rather than allow them to use that training in the States we basically turn them into prescription-fillers. They have all this wisdom and we just ask them to be customer service machines.

“Something stronger” worked great. So did the iodine-based liquid I was asked to gargle which immediately improved my sore throat, and the cough drops which though smaller than those we get in America lasted longer and had much greater effect. (And by the way, all together it probably cost $25 American.)

Cousins

When I arrived in Brisbane on Thursday, my friend Frank immediately took me on a tour of the city. Is there anything quite as wonderful as a friend who unexpectedly drops everything to show you around?

After we’d dropped my luggage off, we walked down from his house to the Brisbane River, where we waited for a boat to take us upstream. I enjoyed the ride so much, a couple days later I decided to take the boat as far up the river as it would go.

It was a blustery day, with rain appearing and disappearing all of a sudden. And at some point I found myself sitting next to a retired Australian couple. Pretty quickly we struck up a conversation.

As you might imagine, the next president of the United States figured prominently in our discussion. I suspect there is nowhere on this planet that you can go right now that he doesn’t. And consequently there was also that same old American waltz that takes place in the States where we try to figure out whether the person we’re talking to is crazy or not. I couldn’t quite tell with Michael; he wasn’t throwing flowers at Trump’s feet, but he also didn’t seem unsympathetic. As we talked on it became clear he was definitely voted for the more conservative party in Australia.

But I’ll tell you something: None of that mattered. The three of us just enjoyed chatting. It was so refreshing to be involved in a political conversation where the topic never overwhelmed the people involved, where we who were having the conversation never stepped valuing each other more than any positions any of us might have.

Michael and Lynn had lived in Brisbane for decades. They had a house in the suburbs, but when they retired they decided to sell it so they could buy a little place near the river. And you could see how happy that choice had made them.

At some point they prepared to get off the boat. As they rose to leave we introduced ourselves to each other. “Jim or James?” Michael asked me when I said my name was Jim. I’ve had this interaction many times in Australia. Many Australians seem to prefer proper names to nicknames. I don’t know why that is, and at first I enjoyed correcting people. But over the years their impulse to call me by my full name has kind of grown on me. It feels like an act of appreciation on their part, like maybe they’re seeing a fuller version of me than I am.

The boat pulled into the dock, and they stepped off. Then they did the most unexpected thing—they waited for the boat to leave, and stood there waving me off, waving hard and happily, like parents seeing their kid off on a great adventure.

Here I am, 55 years old (and looking every day and centimeter of it), and yet these two lovely people treat me like a son or a nephew.

There are a lot of reasons that I find Australia to be a special place. One of the best and most surprising is the experience that happens so often here of meeting strangers for a few minutes and walking away feeling like you just spent time with family.

Their Shout

When Michael rose with Lynn to leave the boat, he told me with a wink, “I’m shouting her a coffee.” I love that term, “to shout” someone something. Fundamentally, it’s an offer to pay. So at a bar here someone might say of the next round, “It’s my shout.”

But after visiting here so many times, I think the idea runs deeper than that. Whether it’s my friend taking me around Brisbane, a pharmacist offering me the good stuff, strangers waving me goodbye, or for that matter the Jesuits of Australia welcoming me back in their province, there’s a ready generosity among Australians that I find surprising and humbling. When I used to come visit my Jesuit friends I would try to convince them to let me take some Masses, just so I could feel like I earned my keep. At one point I told one of the great gentlemen of the province, a guy named John Prediville, how I felt uncomfortable just accepting their hospitality. “No one expects anything of you,” he responded, gently, like he was trying to help me release my grip.

My first year as a priest I was asked to be the confirmation sponsor for a kid in the parish where I worked. A part of that ceremony involves the confirmant being anointed with oil by the bishop presiding. Usually that amounts to just a little cross traced on the forehand.

But the bishop we had in Milwaukee, this incredible auxiliary named Richard Sklba, instead dipped his whole hand in the sweet-smelling oil and then slathered it on each person’s head. Truly, their hair came away slick with it. “God is recklessly extravagant in his love for us,” Sklba explained.

That’s what it feels like being here.

I’ll be back with more for subscribers later this week. Good luck with all the Christmas shopping! And thanks for reading.