Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason lost the annual Downs family hosted hot cross bun competition, but Inger's political team comprehensively won the federal election, so we figure we came out even.

There's a bulging mail bag with lots of interesting questions from listeners - some of which we could even answer.

Then we chat about the first ten months of our business 'On The Reg Team'. What lessons has Jason learned about being an entreprenerd? loyalty wont save your Higher Ed job... so how do you start your own thing (even if it's just a lifeboat for now).

Clearly we had a lot to say because Inger's AirPods gave up before the end! (Inger snippity doo dah'd over half an hour... Sadly, you don't get to hear about Jason painting his boat)

Things we mentioned:

• The first hot cross bun episode (where Jason accidentally bought secular buns)
• Guardian episode on Australia's obsession with sexy (!?) hot cross bun varieties
• Jason's pictures of the HCB off and trophy
• #DemocracySausage price list on Instagram
• Inger's pictures of her election day work for Pocock
• List of reading for nurses going into academia (thanks Sally-Anne Wherry!)
• Timing app and Co-Typist + our TextExpander book
• MaxQDA tailwind AI assistant and Consensus
• Goblin tools
• Do the work by Steven Pressfield
• Inger's enshittification post
• Xero and Paris Financial

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here (scroll down to enter your email address)

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

We're back! It's been six weeks - sorry about that!

Jason was finally struck down by covid... for the first time. Yes, really! Now he finally understands what everyone is complaining about. There's a lot to catch up on: the election, a digression into 'Married at first sight' and what happens to a sander when you use it for 6 hours straight on your boat hull.

We get half way through a very full mailbag, before getting on to our dissection of chapter one of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This is the third time we've talked about this book, and we're only now doing Habit One: proactivity ... look, we have a lot to say! Check out episode 17, where we discuss how the book is really Mormonism pretending to be productivity, and chapter 38 where we talk about chapter three.

Be warned - it gets very deep and meaningful. In fact, we get so into it that we forgot to do a two minute tip! We'll make it up to you, we promise.

Things we mention

• Previous discussions of 7 Habits: episode 17 and chapter 38
• Academic Mean Girls
• Inger reckons Andy Kirk is your go to for Data visualisation
• Back to Zero - the paper
• Book: The voices within: the history and science of how we talk to ourselves
• Book: Team Dog
• Book: The presentation of self in everyday life
• The Valley of Shit (blog post about Jason when he was doing his PhD)
• Book: Striking Ore: the rise and fall of union power in the Pilbara
• Book: Enemy Fe

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here (scroll down to enter your email address)

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Longtime listeners who have been asking for Jason to read another romance novel: Inger has delivered! Jason reads Rebecca Yarros's 'The Fourth Wing' and only throws up a little bit in his mouth :-)

After a bit of mail bag, we go deep on the subject of reading: how much of it there is; how tedious academic reading can be; how tired this reading makes us; the feelings of Guilt when you read for pleasure; and the myth of 'keeping up with the literature'.

Finally we talk about how many books we own: how much is too many and when/how should you slim down a collection? Inger feels better about her massive collection when she compares herself to Umberto Eco, and Jason has a mild panic attack at the idea of putting together a display shelf.

We finish with a tribute to the late, great Professor Peter Elbow (one of Inger's most beloved writers about writing) and a two minute tip about buying study aids.

Note, we were going to try to put out a video version of this one - but there were technical problems. Hence the references to showing the camera books. We will try again next time.

What we talked about

• Cornell template technique
• Note taking Matrix instructions
• Umberto Eco in his 50,000 book library (video evidence!)
• Marie Kondo's life changing magic of tidying up
• Rebecca Yarros - The Fourth Wing
• Writing without Teachers

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here (scroll down to enter your email address)

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Inger and Jason have been on summer holidays. Jason's family acquired a 10 year old ginger cat, while Inger has committed to #puppyproject and put a deposit on a dangerously adorable, small fluffy puppy. Prepare for a lot of pet talk this year!

In the mailbag there's a good description of a workflow with Todoist and a lively discussion of bullet journals. The work problems segment was produced with the help of Inger's work Husband, Claude who (it seems) has a frighteningly good grasp of the problems of late stage capitalism. We're talking about the pressures of the sector, work burn out and health, so if you'd rather not listen to that, skip to our reading segment where Inger convinces Jason to read another romance novel!

We close out with a brief chat about Omnifocus (again!)

Things we mentioned:
Coton De Trulear (dog breed)
Tofu Eating Wokerati comment
Migoals daily planner
Todoist
Zoe Podcast
Generative AI for academics

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Inger and Jason catch up at the kitchen table... in Casa Downs this time. The sound on this one is ok, considering we were in a huge open space downstairs!

While Jack Downs washes Inger's new car, she catches Jason up on the first Shut up and Write symposium at Cambridge University. Jason tells Inger why Jack Downs is happy to earn 20 bucks by washing her car...

There's a bit of mail bag before the Work Problems segment, where the team talk about the idea of 'technology stacks', zero-ing in on OmniFocus as a project management tool.

Inger's read a shit ton of books and both have a two minute tip, for once. Happy Christmas listening everyone!

We talked about...

• If you’re interested in the idea of Bali Bootcamp, you can express interest here.
• Writing partners
• Inger’s new Volvo EX30
• Scrivener
• Zotero
• Obsidian
• Omnifocus
• Text Expander
• Tiny Take
• Buzzsprout
• ANU woes
• Omni show
• Checklist manifesto
• The art of explanation
• Extra Focus, the Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD
• Writing for Busy Readers
• Elastic Habits
• Paper about ChatGPT expecting you to be helpful: Usage-based constructionist approaches and large language models
• Mappify

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason is dying of a cold. Inger is surrounded by an ocean of redundancies at ANU. Anyone would think winter was coming, but no - it's the start of Spring (at least here in the Southern Hemisphere).

After a bit of mutual whingeing on the State of The World, the team zip through the mail bag. We answer a few burning questions about AI from listeners. There's also wise words from listeners on how to use MS Word properly to do cross referencing and such.

All good stuff. Thank you for making us smarter everyone!

In the work problems segment, Inger tells Jason all about her theory of why LLMs and AI are not going to take our jobs. Something, something Capitalism doesn't want us to have no money, something. To support her theory, she leans heavily on David Graeber's excellent book 'Bullshit Jobs' and of course, our friend ChattieG.

No time for what we are reading (again!) but Jason does drop the knowledge on 'OmniBuJo' and how to create custom perspectives that act like Bullet Journal spreads. Mostly though, we are just pleased we got through this episode with Jason fully coughing up a lung. Enjoy!

Stuff we talked about:
Chat GPT is the best teammate
Why people hide their use of AI
OpenAI is burning money
Bullshit jobs - the original essay
Bullshit Jobs - the book
Inger's notes towards a theory of LLMs and Bullshit Jobs

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

The OTR team have been travelling around the country, and around the world, delivering workshop goodness.

Jason was temporarily at the Canberra Branch of OTR Team on the way back from a Sydney gig, so Inger set up a podcast studio from the kitchen table to hear about his glamorous post-Latrobe life, complete with $10 cups of coffee in Hong Kong.

The team discuss the usual, you know AI in project management, writing and all that. ChattieG (ChatGPT) helped us with the work problems segment. Chattie had some thoughts why some people have a hard time doing the low key writing exercises Inger has in her workshops. Turns out, the perfectionism is real.

This one is off the hook people. We were constantly interrupted by meetings, Thesiswhisperer family members making coffee and the dishwasher being on in the next room.

Despite all this, the sound was... not too bad!

Things we mentioned
Rich Academic / Poor Academic

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason is living his best life, free of Latrobe - but Inger has immediately put him to work! On The Reg Team, their new consulting company, is struggling to life through multiple stages of paperwork. More to come...

The team talk about various doings, including Doen's Jnr's laundry skills, Inger's campaign to get a Puppy and getting caught up in the Blue Screen of Death global IT meltdown!

There's a full mailbag with some side dashes of Claude before the team embark on the central question: how can you be a less crap manager in academia? God knows, we need them - we have many Thoughts.

Reading hasn't been high on the agenda, but there's still a two minute tip or two at the end!

Stuff we mentioned:
Inger's blog post on how AI is saving her 12 hours a week
Alison Hardy's podcast
@thehulry on Threads
Open AI is Testing Its Powers of Persuasion - Wired Magazine

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on

- Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

- See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

- Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here (scroll down to enter your email address)

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site