#1533 Does That Ever Work For You

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People who knock on your door asking you to change your religion, or to believe in the impending apocalypse. Infomercials. Pick up lines. Detox diets, click bait and pop up ads. There are things that people try again and again that you think would never work but they must sometimes, or surely people wouldn’t bother. Today on All The Best we’re asking: Does That Ever Work For You?

Takedown

David Blumenstein is a Melbourne based cartoonist. On November 6 last year, he went down to St Kilda Pier to wait for Julien Blanc to arrive. Julien’s an American pro pick up artist and, when he tried to run workshops in Australia became the target of one of the most successful anti-PUA campaigns ever, collected around the hashtag #takedownjulienblanc. So successful that venue cancelled on him in the face of the outrage, and then he tried to hold the workshop on a boat. David sits down with our EP Heidi Pett to talk about his evening on a pier with pick up artists and protesters. You can get the comic book here

Produced by Heidi Pett

Mate

What does it mean when somebody you wanna date calls you mate? This story is from our mates (who we also probably wanna date) over at Private Parts, a brand new audio art project by Irit Pollak and Elin Andersson. They call it a collective memory bank that explores identity and perception from a gender perspective, and you can find them at partlyprivate.com and in iTunes. Go on.

Produced by Irit Pollak, Elin Andersson and Izzy Roberts-Orr

Music by The Twerps

The Dog Ate My Homework

There’s a program called Writing Workshop here in Sydney – they do workshops, on writing, for kids in school. It’s run by a guy called Bernard and  he’s got this great thing where if the kids miss a class, they have to write this totally outlandish excuse letter, telling the story of why they couldn’t make it. It probably works better than “the dog ate my homework”. We got them to come into the studio one Sunday and record them for us.

Thanks to all the kids who took part, Amy, age 12, Belle, age 16, Julia, age 18, Annalise, age 10

Produced by Zacha, age 38 & Lily, age 24