What is this podcast about?

 

(Academic) Workers talk about Severance recaps Season 1 of the Apple TV+ show Severance. But it’s really about work, because Severance has a lot to say about the contemporary workplace, modern slavery and the impossibility of work/life balance. Severance makes work weird, and academic work is already weird, so, it’s the perfect TV show to talk about the weirdness of not just the academic workplace, but all workplaces. 

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Hosts, Inger and Anitra are both academics and identical twins, who are both obsessed with Severance. This podcast is a chance to share all their thoughts and feelpinions about the show. Because, as Severance shows us, we spend a lot of time with co-workers, each episode features a current or former academic workmate, which helps with the twin’s identical sounding voices.

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Each episode discusses the kinds of work happening (which isn’t always obvious), which characters are candidates for employee of the week (or an HR problem), and thoughts on the production design of sets and costumes. There’s a special section dedicated to the one academic character on the show, everyone's favorite doctor (not the medical kind), Ricken.

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About the hosts.

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Inger Mewburn is a professor and Director of Researcher Development at the Australian National University. She’s the creator of The Thesis Whisperer, a popular advice site for PhD students and researchers. The site and associated social media feeds have around 100,000 followers.

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Anitra Nottingham is a Learning Designer and Head of Course Design for RMIT University Online and formerly Co-Chair of the School Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Anitra co-authored the Bloomsbury textbook The Graphic Design Process. and co-hosts the typography history podcast The Type Pod. She has many, many fewer social media followers than Inger.

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Why we did this podcast.

 

The first season of this podcast, ‘Academics talk about The Chair’ was a recap show of the excellent Netflix series about a small liberal arts college starring the wonderful Sandra Oh. Although we made the podcast as an excuse to get together during lockdown and talk about a show we loved, it garnered more than 5000 downloads from our audience of mostly academics and PhD students. People have been asking for a new recap series ever since we finished Academics talk about the chair, but it wasn’t until the Apple TV show ‘Severance’ came along that we felt moved to do a second season. 

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Severance is a dystopian sci-fi series on Apple TV set in an alternative ‘now’ - where workers can opt to have their work self and their home self psychologically split. The severed workers have two selves: an ‘innie’, who is always at work, and an ‘outie’, who is always at home. The innie and the outie occupy a single body, but live in very different worlds. The company who Severs its workers is Lumon, a global corporation with a history of having its fingers in many profitable pies. Severance is, perhaps, their attempt to create the perfect worker. But honestly, we’re not quite sure what Lumon actually does. 

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Ironically, in Severance, a show about work, we are never quite sure what the workers are doing. They simply stare at numbers on their 1970s style monitors, under the glare of fluorescent lights. So we talk about other forms of work we see being done - emotional work, invisible work, articulation work, managing up, down and sideways.

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Format and listening notes.

 

This show is a multi-friend conversation format in distinct segments, separated by relevant clips from the show. Inger and Anitra are identical twins, with spookily alike voices, they argued about who should be the ‘innie’ and who is the ‘outie’ and agreed to invite a current or former workmate along to break it up a little and make the show more fun. 

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At the start of each episode is a recap, complete with spoilers, then the team talks about the work that was done each episode: specifically ‘the work you do to do the work you do’. Amongst other things, Severance is a show that is interested in all the ‘extra work’ you have to perform in order to hold down a job in the contemporary workplace. While we don’t know what the Severance workers are doing, if you look closely enough, you can see all kinds of other work being done in each episode: invisible work, emotional work, relationship work as well as managing up, down and sideways.

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The discussion then moves on to the HR challenges for Lumon, where the team argues about who is the employee of the week and who might need to be performance managed. 

 

Finally, Severance is a beautifully designed show, so we all choose an outfit for the week and do ‘Ricken watch’ where we celebrate the wit and wisdom of the Severance character who is everyone's favourite corporate/academic self-help guru.

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Featured Guests:

Narelle Lemon – Inger's ex-co-worker and academic wellness expert, Edith Cowen University
Will Grant – Inger's co-worker at the ANU

Joyce Seitzinger – Anitra's co-Worker and Digital Experience Director at RMIT Online
Geoff Stringer – Anitra's co-worker and boss, Director of Course Operations, Learning and Design (COLD for short) at RMIT Online

Chris Cocking – Anitra's co-worker and Lead Learning Experience Designer at RMIT Online

Miriam Reynoldson – Anitra's ex- then not ex- co-worker, Senior Learning Experience Designer at RMIT Online

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What people said about our previous pod, Season 1: Academics talk about The Chair.

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“I suspect I’d find actually watching The Chair too painful, and love that I can listen to intelligent, interesting, humorous and informed women unpacking it instead. It means I’m not missing out on the content have the bonus of the local, contextual reflections. Thank you” — 5 star listener review on Apple podcasts.

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Future plans. 

 

This podcast was started with the plan of launching in the run-up to season two of Severance in April 2023. We did plan to carry on with season two, but with infinite delay, we may just look for the next show to talk about and come back to it. 

 

Some people have suggested we try Lucky Hank. 

 

We might. But we hated it.

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Go to the Episode Guide