Out Of The Box

Sean Sweeney gained Australia's attention as being the big, bearded AUSLAN interpreter for the NSW Rural Fire Service during the 2019 - 2020 Australian bushfire crisis. Sean was born as the first hearing baby on his mother's side in four generations. He's grown up immersed in Sydney's deaf culture and community and knew how to sign before he could speak.

Ricky Simandjuntak is the manager of Western Sydney drill group, OneFour. Despite pressure from police, they have become an international sensation. Ricky has been a feature in the recent renaissance of Western Sydney's creative scene with his label and lifestyle brand, Sydney Romantics. | Producers: Bre Jones and Rebecca Merrick

In the 1970s, a group of women decamped to Amazon Acres in Northern NSW to create a small society completely free of men. Amber Jackson was one of them. As a kid she grew up with her Mum in a feminist hippie commune guided by the mantra: no men, no meat, no machines. Amber will be appearing at All About Women at the Sydney Opera House in March. | Producers: Bre Jones and Rebecca Merrick

When Susan Francis was a baby, she was privately adopted from a doctor's practice in Newcastle, NSW. In her 30s Susan went on a search for her biological parents. It would take her 20 years and all around Australia. When she finally met them, they turned out to be nothing like she expected. Susan's memoir The Love That Remains is out now through Allen and Unwin. | Producers: Bre Jones and Rebecca Merrick

Ron McCallum is the former Dean of the University of Sydney Law School, the chair the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Geneva, and a senior Australian of the year. He is also completely blind, in fact, he has never been able to see. His memoir is called 'Born At The Right Time'. | Producers: Bre Jones & Rebecca Merrick

Joey is joined by A'isyiyah - activist, community organiser and vocalist of SMAC nominated, anti-colonial hardcore group Arafura. Before music, A'isyiyah spent their childhood fighting for their family's rights to stay in Australia. It's this context that has informed a lot of their politics, expressed through music and otherwise. Arafura have just released a self-titled EP available via Bandcamp. All proceeds from the digital sales go to the Firesticks Alliance. | Producers: Bre Jones & Rebecca Merrick

Osman Faruqi is a journalist and commentator. And in that pursuit, he’s been exposed some of the most vitriolic, tactical abuse that Australia’s far right are capable of producing. Os has also had a stint as an engineer-in-training, been a political operator, and of-course has spent some time on the airwaves at FBi Radio. Producers: Bre Jones and Rebecca Merrick

Jane Caro is now known best for her advocacy as a writer and public commentator but it all started in the no rules, man’s world of Australian advertising in the 1970s. Now with over 8 books behind her, including a memoir and a fiction series she has become synonymous with her advocacy around education reform and feminism. Producers: Rebecca Merrick and Bre Jones

From South West Sydney, Avani is weeks away from taking over as the presenter of Triple J’s youth issues and current affairs program, Hack. Like many figures in the Australian media landscape, Avani got her chops right here at FBi Radio before she spent nearly three years as a reporter in the wild north at ABC Darwin. Producers: Bre Jones & Rebecca Merrick

Clare Bowditch has an impressive stack of achievements to her name: seven albums, an acting career, a stack of ARIA’s, and a Rolling Stone Magazine ‘Woman of the Year’ nod. But away from the public view, she’s overcome childhood grief, found a way to manage anxiety and embraced life in just about a million ways. Her memoir, 'Your Own Kind of Girl' is out now. Producers: Rebecca Merrick & Bre Jones

Debra Keenahan is a psychologist, academic, artist and activist. Currently undertaking her second PhD, she explores themes of Dehumanisation and the Disability Aesthetic throughout her work in both academia and visual art. Debra also has dwarfism and her experience of being Othered, sometimes with extreme cruelty, looms large in her work. It also gives her a unique perspective of humanity at its best and its worst. Debra’s works Being Debra and #Belittled are currently showing at The Big Anxiety Festival, presented by the University of NSW. Producers: Bre Jones and Rebecca Merrick

With an estimated 40,000 hours of music programming under her belt, Gayle Austin is Australia’s first female rock DJ. A true trailblazer, Gayle started working in Sydney radio in the late 1960s, producing for the shock jock John Laws among other icons of the airwaves. She then became an on-air icon herself, as a founding presenter of the ABC’s radical, underground youth station Double J in 1975. Producers: Bre Jones and Rebecca Merrick

Writer Ruby Hamad’s bread and butter is tackling big issues like identity and intersectionality. As the daughter of Syrian-Lebanese refugees, Ruby has experienced the breadth of what it means to belong to a marginalised group in Australian society. She’s resisted cultural expectations from her family, fought discrimination in the work place, and the othering that Australia often dishes out to migrant groups. Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo Paul Kelly - From St Kilda to Kings Cross Elvis Costello – Veronica Tracy Chapman - She's Got Her Ticket James Taylor - Fire and Rain The KLF - 3AM Eternal

Mornings radio star, Bridie Tanner, joins Out of the Box for our special Supporter Drive episode. From growing up in regional NSW, travelling around Australia in a protest rave as a young kid and coming to terms with the onset of her Mum’s mental illness at a young age, Bridie has brought a whole lot of life experience to the microphone. Become an FBi Radio supporter at fbiradio.com/support Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo

When protest broke out on the streets of Fergusson, Missouri in opposition to police violence against African American’s and other minorities, DeRay left a comfortable job as a school administrator and took up the cause of chronicling the resistance via Twitter. Not long after he has become one of the Black Lives Matter movements most high profile activists. Traveling the world with a cautious vision for truth and justice. Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo Beyoncé - Mood 4 Eva (feat. Jay Z & Childish Gambino) City Girls - Act Up Jazmine Sullivan - Lions, Tigers, & Bears Teedra Moses - Be Your Girl Harry Hudson - Yellow Lights

On this day 16 years ago, Stuart Buchanan was one of the many midwives and midhusbands who helped birth FBi Radio. In the early 2000’s, he was at the frontier carving out the relationship between music and the internet at inception. Once the General Manager of FBi, Stuart is now Head of Digital Programming at The Sydney Opera House where he continues to dedicate his life to the weird and wonderful future of sound. Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo Sugarcubes - Birthday (Icelandic Version) Osmani Soundz - Spiritual Masterkey The Emergency - We Got The Horror Kyu - Sunny In Splodges Bjork - Declare Independence

Glenn is a photographer and photojournalist with a purpose. For 25 years Glenn has carried the flag of human rights and environmental activism through his camera. It’s a passion and a mission that has quite literally taken him all around the world, from South Africa to central Australia, Botswana to Tahiti, and most recently through the Arctic waters where he was a photographer on the Sea Shepherd vessel, The Bob Barker, putting his life on the line to stop whaling. Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo Hugh Masekela – Stimela Bob Dylan – All Along The Watchtower Bob Marley – Get Up Stand Up Faithless – Mass Destruction Syl Johnson – Talking About Freedom

For 20 years Murray graced Australian televisions as the Red Wiggle. He played everywhere from regional NSW to New York’s Maddison Square Garden and became a much loved part of millions of childhoods. Since wrapping up with The Wiggles, he’s been busy playing with the DZ Deathrays, recording in the US with his band The Soul Movers and advocating for Australian music. AC/DC – Let There Be Rock Blondie – Rip Her To Shreds You Am I – Purple Sneakers Patti Smith – Free Money The Reels - Quasimodo’s Dream Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo

Hazem Shammas last year won a Logie for his role in TV show Safe Harbour, a drama which follows the story of five Australians who set out on a sailing holiday and encounter an overcrowded fishing boat of desperate asylum seekers. But it was a long trip to the podium one that goes right back to his Palestinian parents’ migration from a small village in northern Israel in the 1970s to an insurmountable challenge of being typecast as either a drug dealer or criminal on Australian screens. Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo DAM - Min Irhabi Pink Floyd - Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun Farid El Atrash - El Haya Helwa The Clash - White Riot Fairuz - Ya Tayr

Michael Mohammed Ahmad came of age as a young Muslim man in Western Sydney in the notoriously violent world of Punchbowl Boys High. This became the setting for his award-winning book a work of autobiographical fiction called The Lebs. He is also the founder and director of Sweatshop, a literacy movement in Western Sydney devoted to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse communities through literacy and creative expression. Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come 2Pac - Changes (feat. Talent) Akala - Fire In The Booth Matuse & Kazi - Salaam Tracy Chapman - Talkin' Bout A Revolution Producers: Bre Jones and Nicole De Palo