Grandparents at the Heart of Grand Gestures
SBS podcast Grand Gestures gets to the heart of our deepest multicultural Australian relationships – the one with our grandparents!
Comedian Lizzy Hoo is the host of Grand Gestures from SBS, an interview podcast with 10 notable Australians re-telling family stories and speaking about the special bonds they have with their grandparents.
There’s something special about the nonnas, zeidas and babushkas who have shaped not just the generations that followed them, but Australia itself. Grand Gestures features heart-warming and heart-breaking stories of grandparents who were second parents, confidants, heroes, and custodians of knowledge and traditions.
Australian comedian Lizzy Hoo describes the series as being “like a warm hug from your grandparents”.
“It’s full of warmth and stories that remind you of your own loved ones…especially as we get older, we start to realise our grandparents are the keepers of all the family stories and histories,” Hoo said.
Comedian Lizzy Hoo hosts SBS podcast Grand Gestures. Image supplied.
A tapestry of multicultural and multilingual Australia, Grand Gestures talks to the triumphs and challenges of settling in Australia, the migrant experience, and multi-generational, cross-cultural family life.
“There’s a lot of laughs, beautiful stories about happy times but also stories of overcoming life’s challenges like illness, disability and discrimination.”
Unique and personal, Grand Gestures has a diverse line-up of guests from former Masterchef contestant Alice Zaslavsky who shares a love of gardening, food and teaching that comes from her Georgian grandmother, to actress Pia Miranda who became a household name through Australian cult classic programme, Looking for Alibrandi. In this episode, Pia discusses what it means to deepen her connection to her nonno and nonna’s family and religion, including spending her 50th birthday in a Sicilian cemetery.
Singer-songwriter Emily Wurramara reflects on growing up going between her gagu (grandmother) in the Northern Territory learning Dreamtime stories and singing karaoke at her Filipino grandmother’s house, and Nadine J. Cohen shares what it was like after the death of her parents, when along with her sister, she was left with the responsibility of caring for her grandmother who survived the Holocaust, but whose mind returned to that time increasingly as her health declined.
Listen to the first episode above or subscribe on Spotify.