Saturday Magazine

11 Jan 2025

Saturday 11th January, 2025: Van Badham on Elon Musk and the Meta-Verse

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Saturday 11th January, 2025: Van Badham on Elon Musk and the Meta-Verse

Macca and Nevena discuss Elon Musk’s childish behaviour and the Meta-verse with Van Badham.

Van Badham is a Melbourne-based writer, an internationally award-winning theatremaker and one of Australia’s most controversial social commentators. Formerly an academic in dramaturgy and cinema studies, she is currently employed as a weekly political columnist for Guardian Australia and as its Melbourne arts critic. Her work has been published by the UK Guardian, UK Telegraph, Vice Magazine, Australian Cosmopolitan, Fairfax, Daily Life, the Hoopla, Currency Press and Southerly, and she’s published chapters in books by Hardie Grant, Monash Press and UQP as well as a novel for PanMacmillan, Burnt Snow.

As a theatremaker, she is the recipient of three Premiers’ Awards for her stage writing, is a former Literary Manager of the Finborough Theatre, London, Artistic Associate of Malthouse Melbourne and a writer in residence at LAMDA, UK. In Australia, her previous commissioners include the MTC, Malthouse, Griffin, Merrigong, HotHouse, Terrapin and the Tasmanian Theatre Company. Her plays have been staged in professional productions across the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Austria, Iceland and Switzerland. She was the first Australian playwright selected for New York’s Summer Play Festival. Van has numerous radio writing credits with the BBC.

A committed unionist, feminist, environmentalist and human rights advocate, Van is presently the Chair of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Women’s Centre Trust, a member of the Victorian State Government’s Women’s Advisory Council and the Vice-President of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Victoria. She is a 2018 Ambassador for Melbourne’s Human Rights Arts and Film Festival, an advocate of the co-operative movement and active within climate action campaigns for Friends of the Earth, Victoria.

Van holds a BA/BCA (Hons) from the University of Wollongong, and a Masters from the University of Melbourne. Her personal interests include gardening, science fiction and Frankfurt School Marxism. She tweets via @vanbadham.