Hannah Gadsby
speaker
778 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 10 Sep
Hannah Gadsby’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So about eight years into my career, I started going, I don't make sense on stage anymore. And part of that was early on, you know, I do stand-up and then during festivals I'd work with like a gallery and do comedy art lectures. Now we worked out I wanted to do comedy art tours but turns out I'm not a natural leader.
So I'd be going, right, we'll go and look at this painting now and I'd go over there and I'd stand and everyone's like, oh, we'll go over here. Yeah. I'm like, no one's following me. So we work quite quickly. People have to be seated facing me, stuck. Stuck. And then they'll be, oh, you're actually quite interesting. All right.
So I do comedy art lectures and what I discovered there is I became what's known as a high status comic when I was talking about my special interests. Because I'm passionate. I'm talking as, you know, with my autism first. It's like, this is what I'm interested in. And, you know, people love these. They're really popular. And I love doing them. And I feel good on stage.
And I'm like, this is me being autistic. It's me, like, being funny as a, you know, without masking. And in my comedy, though, when I'm trying to explain myself and go, you know, like it's very hard for me to do observational humor because, like, I'm not looking at the same things as everyone. It's just like, you know, you know what it's like.
And people are like, no, no, what you're speaking of is not familiar. So you have to do a lot of explaining. And then so in that I folded in a lot of masking and then that becomes confusing as you get older and more mature and you like who you are. You're just like this is not a true representation of how I see the world or how I think people, you know, like I'm softening myself.
You know, I'm apologizing. I'm like, hey, it's weird that I'm like this, isn't it? And they're like, yeah, it is. And then eventually I just broke. I said, you know what? It's not. It's weird that you don't notice that people are different. And that very much informed my desire to stop being self-deprecating because I just wanted to be autistic.
I just wanted to go, hey, I've got some stuff to talk about and whatever feelings you have about what this is, you need to get over it because I've got things to say. And that is part of the reason. The other part of the reason is, come on. Like why, particularly women, why do we have to put ourselves down in order to speak in public? It hasn't changed.
I still get all the hate mail that you want, like take a pic. Like men have been trained not to like women who speak their mind in public. It's a thing. We're not going to change it soon. We're going to have to grin and bear it, but I may as well grin and bear it being confident. Yeah.
Fast Money Round.
Yeah, well, she said this thing. She's like, I'm really proud. I like impersonating my mum. I'm really proud that I brought my kids up without religion. I really am because I've raised five children with minds of their own. I'm really proud of that. And I'm like, well done, you mum. You pat yourself on the back. Good on you.
And I was just sort of like she's having like a moment and I missed it because, I think we know why. And so I said, oh, yeah, well, what? What parenting decisions do you regret, Mum? And there's a laundry list I thought she'd go. And we talk like that a little bit. Like I'll say to Mum, Mum, you used to scare the bejesus out of me when I was growing up.
She said, good, I didn't like you that much. And it's funny. Like we're being funny. It's quite Australian. I think this horrifies some American audiences when I say that. It's like it's fine. But...
She wasn't going there, so she was being thoughtful and then she just said a thing that blew my mind and it was the C that became my show, Nanette, where she's like, you know, the thing I regret is that I raised you as if you were straight. And I'm like, I just like, because when you, when you, the coming out story is all about, will people accept you?
And mum just did all this work and I didn't know. She went way back and she went to a place that not many people are at now. She's like pushing 80. And she's like, oh, I shouldn't have assumed you were straight. And I wasn't your friend. And I should have been. She said, I knew. I'm just committing to mum's voice here. She's like, I wanted you to change because I knew the world wouldn't.
And she's right. The world didn't change. And I was just sort of like because when you – When you're coming out, it's overwhelming. Like you're just ready for the rejection and it is all about you. It has to be all about you.
But the telling of our coming out stories, telling of a lot of trauma stories, we are freeze framing on that moment of trauma and we don't then have a lot of public discussions about these moments because we live in a punishment society. Like we don't give room for restorative justice, let's call it. And the art history informed that part of it for me.
So mum said this to me, but also because I was thinking a lot about proto-renaissance, I made these connections. And this is the gift of autism. Like you make connections. Your brain has more connections going on. And so in art history, I don't know if you know this, but it's a myth where people sort of like, oh, back in the day, not everyone could read. So they learnt from paintings and pictures.
And that is not correct. They learnt through oral storytelling. Stories would be told. Stories are familiar. And the art played a purpose of freeze-framing the stories into familiar parts of the stories, points of the stories. So, you know, the most famous one, I guess, is Christianity has been frozen to the crucifixion. Now there is a big story, but that is – the freeze frame is on that moment.
That is a big decision. Like, because from that freeze frame, you can leverage a lot of shame and guilt because that's like, that's your fault. But there are some great stories in that whole narrative, but that freeze frame and that, you know, in mythology, it's the same thing. It's like a lot of stories are freeze framed at the moment. A woman happens to be nude. That is a,
That is a strong freeze frame there. So art history has this tendency to freeze frame and I think generally our storytelling sort of circles trauma and then solves it in a whodunit kind of way and then we don't have stories that then talk about, hey, I went through trauma but I'm all right, like, This doesn't define me. Fuck me up for a bit. Sorry, language.
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