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This is the BBC. This

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BBC Sounds,

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music, radio, podcasts.

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Hello, welcome to the podcast The Shortcuts.

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I'm Josie Long and today is about

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how words can be taken

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apart and remade and

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in doing so

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we can change the whole

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world.

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Shortcuts, this is. Sound

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found. Stories true.

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Encounters brief. Adventures

0:39

radio. Today, new

0:41

word order.

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What if I told you that I am able

0:51

to bring the seed to Paris? What

0:54

were the three words that we established

0:57

at the beginning of this conversation?

0:57

Honey

1:00

on these flowers. Honey on this

1:02

fruit. Sweetness for a body

1:04

mind in search of liberation poems.

1:08

Painting, candle and table.

1:10

See, nothing wrong with her grey matter.

1:14

Because my microwave oven is magic.

1:20

Imagine

1:23

if we called doors portals or

1:26

decided to use acoustic motorbikes instead of bicycles.

1:31

Reframing your language is reframing

1:33

your conception of the world and how

1:35

you relate to it. And in

1:37

this reimagined world, what

1:40

would we prioritise? Who

1:42

would we include? And what would

1:44

we forget?

1:50

In our first sonic arrangement, we

1:52

lean into memory and friendship. June

1:56

Katz is a Canadian jazz singer. Patricia

1:59

Hirsch is a Canadian jazz singer. Trish is her caregiver and

2:01

informal archivist. Together

2:03

they've been friends for nearly 50 years, much

2:07

of which has been documented by Trish, who's

2:09

now committed to preserving the quality of

2:11

June's vibrant, independent life well

2:14

into her 80s. The

2:17

producer of this piece, a lovely

2:19

way to spend an evening, and Patricia's

2:21

daughter, Dara Amelia, became

2:24

obsessed with how her mother's prompts from the

2:26

past, set to the background

2:28

sound of June's records, would bring

2:30

their shared history, pouring back into

2:32

the

2:32

present. This

2:35

inspired Dara's ongoing contemplation

2:38

on the role of female friendship as archive,

2:41

and reflects on the relationship she shares with

2:43

her closest friend, and emerging

2:45

Chinese-Canadian poet,

2:47

Xiao Yue Shan.

2:51

Do you remember when we met? I

2:54

remember when we first met. Most ridiculous

2:56

evening we started a buck in a rabbit. So,

2:59

why not? Why not?

3:03

And here we are, fourth floor. Fourth

3:07

floor, toiletries and lingerie.

3:10

Frigrid in here. Remember when they used to

3:12

do that? They used to literally have a collar.

3:15

Well, in New York, you must have been in

3:17

Macy's at this time. I was sad. I

3:19

heard all that. Fourth floor. Toiletries,

3:23

women's wear. I

3:26

conceal a lot of my talent. Yes.

3:29

Well, thank God.

3:34

My foot is so strong enough. Uh-huh.

3:38

Okay, here I go, huh? Yeah.

3:41

Tell me when you're ready. Think

3:44

I'm ready. Okay. Transferring

3:46

of the jars. But...there.

3:51

Okay,

3:51

let's do three words. Candle,

3:55

table, painting.

4:00

candle table painting. candle

4:04

table painting. candle table painting.

4:07

candles on the table near the painting. candles

4:11

table painting. candle

4:14

table painting. okay.

4:18

hey gogol. play tune

4:20

cats.

4:21

sure. tune cats from

4:23

spotify. you never know

4:26

which little speaker. he

4:28

talks through that. I told him

4:30

earlier to play it on living

4:32

room speaker and that information

4:34

stayed.

4:39

I was sitting in a bar. what was the bar,

4:41

do you remember? Cecil. it was a big

4:43

pub. it was at the Cecil Hotel,

4:46

very popular. and they had poets

4:49

evening and artists evening. clear

4:51

on the other side of the room was a table

4:53

with these women and young women.

4:55

about five of them. Trish

4:58

told my friend Barney, who

5:01

is that woman? I want to meet her. I

5:04

could hear across the room you were holding

5:06

court. everybody was laughing and I went I

5:08

have to know her. at the Cecil.

5:11

funny. interesting

5:13

to hold court there. special. funny

5:15

woman. that's how it went.

5:18

but you said. what

5:21

did I say? tell her

5:24

I got a headache. tell her I

5:26

have a headache. tell her I have a

5:28

headache. it was eyeballing me. like

5:32

a member of the lesbian tribe. in

5:35

my jokey New York way. I said tell her I have a

5:38

headache. not tonight dear. a

5:41

headache. it takes

5:43

some people a long time to get that. but

5:46

that's okay. I

5:48

thought it was very funny. and

5:50

the rest is history.

5:51

then we got married and

5:53

had three kids. we

5:55

did not get that. that's how it

5:57

all started. you like that?

7:59

And you struggle with table

8:02

and I was pointing to it under

8:04

the table like this and you went, wood!

8:08

And I thought, oh God, our cover

8:11

is blowing. You laughed so hard.

8:14

No. So, wood. Tables are

8:17

made of wood. You aced the

8:19

test but they wanted to lock me up

8:23

for cheating in a memory

8:24

test. And you were

8:26

great. There's something very

8:28

beautiful about watching two people

8:30

in dialogue when they have a long shared

8:33

history. You get to watch

8:35

them throw all these sentences back and forth

8:37

at each other and they all start with the word, remember?

8:41

Number one, remember when we

8:42

met.

8:50

But what really moves me about

8:53

this trading of the past with the

8:55

present is that it moves it's not

8:57

only just an affirmation

9:00

about your experience, but

9:02

it's also inviting the past into

9:05

the room so that you can talk to it again,

9:08

so that you can engage it

9:10

again and so that you can be changed by it again.

9:14

I

9:14

can only

9:17

give you country walks

9:19

in springtime

9:25

and a hand to hold when

9:29

leaves begin to fall.

9:35

So what's kept you two together for over 47

9:37

years? I

9:40

don't know, more like sisters, you

9:42

know. We fight and

9:46

laugh and I

9:48

used to go to her house after a date

9:50

and sit on her bed when she was sleeping.

9:53

She wanted to know what the evening was like

9:56

and did I sing or did this happen

9:58

or that?

11:56

When

12:00

you weren't here, Jia, we tried to recount

12:02

the three words. I bet you did

12:05

one here. What are the three words, Jia?

12:08

From the start? Plant, candle,

12:10

and table.

12:11

Painting. Painting,

12:15

candle, and table. A

12:21

little more. Okay.

12:25

Do you two remember

12:27

how you first met? 47 years

12:31

ago. I

12:35

can barely remember. Last

12:38

week. I

12:40

don't know how we met. Oh, yes!

12:43

At a bar.

12:50

You heard the voices of June Katz and

12:52

Patricia Hirsch, and words from

12:55

Xiao Yue Shan, Anna Francesca

12:57

Jennings, and Alma Simba, produced

13:00

by the slightly more formal archivist,

13:02

Dara Amelia. That

13:06

three simple words could be so

13:08

meaningful, could be a key

13:11

to determining whether your memory

13:13

is good enough to live independently, what

13:16

your future and your freedom looks like. Those

13:19

words

13:19

have a power that I had never appreciated

13:22

or understood before.

13:29

We're now going to hear some audio spell

13:31

work by the writer and producer,

13:33

Ev Marie Boucher. By

13:36

harnessing the power of sound, Ev

13:38

Marie discovers its magical properties

13:41

and how it can be used to transform

13:43

the world's music, tuning

13:45

it into a better place to live. All

13:48

she needs is a microwave. This

13:52

is the magic of waves.

13:56

What if I told you that I

13:58

am able to bring the city? Paris.

14:06

I think I'm going to add a few

14:08

more figures. I

14:14

can also slow down the waves. Speed

14:26

up seagulls more

14:30

and more through

14:33

secret music.

14:44

I can even imagine a sound to

14:47

what has none. Invent

14:50

the sound of darkness. Make

14:56

you hear a red sound. A

15:01

sweet sound. A

15:05

transparent sound through

15:08

which we can heal. I

15:14

am also able to abolish time,

15:16

to regain my voice as a child,

15:21

to make absent people sing, to

15:24

resurrect

15:35

the dead. The

15:43

dear voices that have fallen

15:45

silent.

15:48

With such powers, I

15:50

would like to compose another reality, where

15:53

humanity wouldn't have screwed up, where

15:56

we would still have a possible future.

17:58

that

18:01

you want to be well. You

18:06

show sweetheart that

18:09

you want to be well. That

18:15

you want to be well.

18:19

That you want to be well. That's

18:25

so cool. I'll not tell you that much. We go

18:27

for kabbalah. We are your one, right,

18:29

right. We are your four.

18:30

Oi mi, magpah

18:33

dalay mi. Honey

18:35

on these flowers. Honey

18:37

on this fruit. Sweetness

18:40

for a body-mind in search of liberation

18:42

poems. Free yourself from pathology.

18:45

Free yourself from ableism. Free

18:48

yourself from ableism.

18:53

Aarek tatwakkolong king a koraktam one,

18:56

which means go and listen to what the

18:58

sea has to say. Your ancestor,

19:00

the sea. As

19:02

an indigenous person, I grew up by the sea.

19:05

That's where I go to wanangat, to contemplate.

19:08

I just watch the birds feed and the weather

19:10

change. Smell the sea

19:12

salt in the air and listen

19:14

to the rhythm of the waves. And over that time,

19:17

I could combine

19:19

the art and science that I needed to create. I'm

19:22

alde language glossary for use in

19:24

the mental health, addiction and disability sectors.

19:28

I mainly focused on whanau, on

19:30

families, on individuals, and

19:33

spent months talking to hundreds

19:35

of people, combining indigenous

19:37

knowledge and focus from

19:40

clinicians

19:41

with

19:42

the realities of what's

19:44

happening with people. I wanted to come

19:46

at them from the perspective of one,

19:49

Māori worldviews, but two, indigenous

19:51

worldviews and three, positive

19:53

worldviews, because we've got enough negative

19:56

stigma, discrimination, all those sort

19:58

of things.

20:03

One of the reasons I decided to start being more

20:06

vocal about my own neurodivergency

20:08

was because I didn't like the ways

20:10

in which people were carrying shame about it.

20:13

That stuff combined with a trauma background

20:15

is a challenge and

20:17

I just don't think it's anything that anybody

20:21

should be ashamed of and more of us just need to

20:23

talk about it. Being

20:28

ultimately is this radical

20:33

engagement with the potentials

20:37

of consciousness. Just

20:41

as there's no normal gender, there's no normal

20:43

mind, there's just neuronormativity.

20:46

There are socially and culturally

20:49

instilled ways of doing

20:51

cognition and those

20:53

can be queered. There

20:58

are modes of being like

21:01

being autistic for instance

21:03

which intrinsically queer that

21:06

and they're out of alignment with neuronormativity

21:09

and it's not about being neurotypical,

21:12

it's about no there are also distinctive

21:14

things my mind can do and distinctive pathways

21:17

and potentials that are

21:19

way beyond what autistic people

21:22

are taught we can actually do. When

21:25

I say neuro expansive, I mean

21:28

just like no limitations. I mean just black

21:30

autonomy. How do we want to identify

21:33

it or what accommodations do we

21:35

need? How do we help each other get those things?

21:40

The words that we use were

21:42

always a medical model,

21:45

always a deficit model. I

21:47

came up with the idea that really autism

21:50

is just about a different time

21:52

and space than other people and that's based

21:54

on a lifelong friendship with my autistic

21:57

mate. We'd go to the movies and

22:00

laugh at all the wrong moments and

22:02

I just thought, quite hilarious, all

22:04

it just meant was a different timing, pace,

22:06

a different life rhythm, and just

22:09

get your head around it, think about it differently. I

22:12

wonder a lot about how generations before

22:14

me went to their graves with the things that they

22:17

were struggling with. And they had

22:19

no help

22:20

and no one to assess or give them some sort of other tool. I

22:25

think it's interesting that generations have a lot

22:27

of different ways of thinking.

22:30

I wonder a lot about how

22:33

generations before me went to their

22:35

graves with the things that they

22:38

were struggling with. And

22:41

they had no help and no one

22:44

to assess or

22:46

give them some sort of other tool. I feel

22:48

like people colored with neurodivergency get

22:50

written off. It makes me really angry.

22:56

I just think about like the medical industrial

22:58

complex and I'm just like, how

23:00

are white men like the

23:03

ideal body mind? And

23:06

when we talk about diagnoses,

23:09

when we talk about autism or ADHD

23:11

or

23:12

other types of like neurodivergence, like

23:15

the people that have been studied the most are white cis

23:17

men. Like we are all so

23:20

very different. But within the context

23:22

of disability, I think that's important.

23:25

The neurodiversting

23:29

movement

23:30

is a civil rights movement. The

23:33

neuro minority group looking

23:35

to challenge systemic ableism. Neuroqueer

23:38

theory, again, about self

23:41

transformation and then about

23:43

cultural transformation and queer

23:45

and cultural norms. And that does

23:47

include queering ableist norms. It

23:50

is being able to think more creatively about who

23:52

we can be individually and as a

23:54

society. And so ultimately,

23:57

of course, that does tie back in with a discussion.

24:00

disability rights aspect, we

24:02

have to be able to imagine and create something

24:04

better than this.

24:07

Being Māori Hien Aotearoa,

24:09

you know, we're at the bottom of the statistics for

24:11

health and all the rest of it, as most Indigenous

24:13

peoples around the world.

24:15

I feel like I haven't had enough discussions

24:17

with Black people about the combination

24:20

of neurodivergency

24:22

plus the stress of

24:24

just being a Black body in the world. It's

24:26

the beauty of those two things side by side,

24:28

but then also the terror

24:31

of I'm still going to be judged based

24:33

on these weird filters that people

24:35

have.

24:37

Like in the school system, for instance, it

24:39

just felt like such a beat down. There's

24:41

really only a couple degrees of separation

24:44

between me and some of my classmates that ended

24:46

up in prison, the drug industrial

24:49

complex. I feel so sad because

24:51

for a number of people that send the American prison

24:54

industrial complex, they're full of neurodivergent

24:56

people, especially Black folks.

24:59

Two neuromants is essentially

25:02

a verb, and

25:03

it means to fall in love with neurodivergency.

25:07

In creating neuromances, I wanted to create

25:10

not only a space that was abolitionist

25:13

and understood neurodivergency through an abolitionist

25:15

lens,

25:16

not only a space that was Black-led,

25:19

that was queer-led, but also

25:22

a space that acknowledged

25:25

diversity or divergence-y

25:28

rather with care

25:31

and as something that is beautiful. At

25:35

some point, all you have is

25:38

your ability to be able to place

25:41

yourself somewhere in your mind. That

25:43

I was probably masking, which

25:46

is something as a performer you

25:49

really plug into, and I feel art

25:52

and creativity really did a lot for

25:54

me because it allowed me to place

25:57

some of these traits somewhere. But I didn't

25:59

have

25:59

have a full understanding of how you can't just

26:02

place them somewhere and forget about them. They're

26:05

part of you. So you have to get to

26:07

know them, get to learn them, get

26:10

to love them. It's some sort of

26:12

re-parenting of self.

26:14

We can all find ways to

26:16

fall in love with those parts of ourselves, the parts of

26:18

ourselves we are told that are not

26:21

good enough, that are not acceptable, that

26:23

are not OK, that should not be here, that should not

26:25

exist, that need to die. Because

26:27

that's really what we're told. We are told

26:30

that this part of us needs to die, or

26:32

we're going to cast you away and we're going to make you

26:34

die. We're going to make you starve, we're going to make you

26:37

poor, we're going to make you suffer. And

26:39

to take those parts of us, to take ourselves

26:42

and love that, to understand that,

26:44

to care about that is a beautifully

26:46

healing thing.

26:48

And that doesn't mean that our experiences of neurodivergency

26:51

are easy, but there is a way

26:53

to have

26:54

care for those parts of yourselves

26:57

and care for yourself as a whole.

27:12

You heard the voices of activist Ngozi

27:15

Alston, creator of the term neuro

27:17

expansive. Dr Nick Walker,

27:20

creator of Neuro Queer Theory. Dr

27:22

Ned Halliwell, Dr Kerry O'Pay,

27:25

Matana Roberts, Ayana Goodfellow,

27:28

founder of Neuromancers, and

27:31

in

27:31

Tej's words, a darling spook,

27:33

writer, ghost whisperer and friend.

27:40

I am so thrilled even just

27:43

to read out the terms neuro

27:45

expansive, neuro queer

27:47

theory, neuro mancers.

27:50

And they for me feel crackling

27:53

with such potential and possibility.

27:56

And it is so clear to me how urgent

27:58

it is for us.

27:59

that decide that better words

28:02

and a better world is possible.

28:05

["Ave Maria"]

28:17

Thanks for listening to the show. I really hope you enjoyed

28:19

it. And if you did, you can find many more programs

28:21

to listen to and download at bbc.co.uk

28:24

slash Radio 4 or on the BBC

28:26

Sounds app. You can go through the Shortcuts

28:29

archive of some nearly 200 programs. And

28:32

I'm sure we have something for nearly

28:35

every one of your moods.

28:38

["Ave Maria"] Hi

28:41

Greg. Hi Greg. Hi Slice Bread team.

28:44

I wonder if you can help me. I'm Greg Furt and

28:46

my podcast Slice Bread is back

28:48

to run a whole new batch of promising sounding

28:51

wonder products through the evidence

28:53

mill. I'm quite a snorer. Just

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wondered if there's a product that could mean I could still

28:57

have a pint and a Friday and not snore. Do

29:00

these toothpaste do what they say on the label?

29:02

Is paying more for expensive shampoo

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really worth it? Each week I investigate

29:07

one of your suggested wonder products.

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Something that's promising to make you happier, healthier

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and find out if it is indeed the best thing

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if you have a suggestion or if you'd like to

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sunglasses, just go search for Slice

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Bread on BBC Sounds.