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LISTEN TO OUR MOST RECENT PODCASTS
Aaron Smith's new memoir holds up a unique mirror to Australia. What he sees is at once amazing, disturbing and revealing.
The Rock explores the failings of our nation's character, its unresolved past and its uncertain future from the vantage point of its most northerly outpost, Thursday Island. Smith was the last editor, fearless journalist and the paperboy of Australia's most northerly newspaper, The Torres News, a small independent regional tabloid that, until it folded in late 2019, was the voice of a predominantly Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal readership for 63 years across some of the most remote and little understood communities in Australia.
The Rock is a story of self-discovery where Smith grapples to understand a national identity marred by its racist underbelly, where he is transplanted from his white-boy privileged suburban life to being a racial and cultural minority, and an outsider. Peppered with his experiences, Smith gradually and sensitively becomes embedded in island life while vividly capturing the endless and often farcical parade of personalities and politicians including Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott.
In this episode, Aaron Smith joins Max Lewis to unpack his thoughts around The Rock, and how his time on Thursday Island has shaped his life.
Hailing from two sparsely populated nations on the far edge of the former Empire - neighbours that are siblings in spirit, vastly different in landscape - Australian and New Zealand crime writers offer readers a blend of exotic and familiar, seasoned by distinctive senses of place, outlook, and humour, and roots that trace to the earliest days of our genre.
Southern Cross Crime is the first comprehensive guide to modern Australian and New Zealand crime writing. From coastal cities to the Outback, leading critic Craig Sisterson showcases key titles from more than 200 storytellers, plus screen dramas ranging from Mystery Road to Top of the Lake. Fascinating insights are added through in-depth interviews with some of the prime suspects who paved the way or instigated the global boom, including Jane Harper, Michael Robotham, Paul Cleave, Emma Viskic, Paul Thomas, and Candice Fox.
In this episode, Craig Sisterson joins Gregory Dobbs to chat about how he began his love with crime, and his experiences founding the Ngaio Marsh awards and Rotura Noir.
It is 1953 and Melbourne society is looking forward to coronation season, the grand balls and celebrations for the young queen-to-be. Tilly Dunnage is, however, working for a pittance in a second-rate Collins Street salon. Her talents go unappreciated, and the madame is a bully and a cheat, but Tilly has a past she is desperate to escape and good reason to prefer anonymity.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Farrat and the McSwiney clan have been searching for their resident dressmaker ever since she left Dungatar in flames. And they aren't the only ones. The inhabitants of the town are still out for revenge (or at least someone to foot the bill for the new high street). So when Tilly's name starts to feature in the fashion pages, the jig is up. Along with Tilly's hopes of keeping her secrets hidden...
In this episode, author Rosalie Ham joins Gregory Dobbs to chat about returning to Tilly Dunnage and the residents of Dungatar, 20 years after readers were first introduced.
Tim Flannery’s new book The Climate Cure: Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of Covid-19 marks a change in attitude toward those in government and the lack of action in the fight against climate change.
'The Federal Liberal/National Party is the last blockage in the fight against climate change,' says Tim Flannery. While state governments and local councils are doing great things in advancing clean energy prospects, the Federal government is holding the entire country to ransom – there are just 25 sceptics in this Federal Liberal/National Party.
Gregory Dobbs talks to Tim Flannery about the challenges and the solutions to the climate emergency and busts a few myths along the way.
Ground-breaking music educator Dr Anita Collins' new book The Music Advantage draws on the latest international neurological research to reveal the extraordinary and surprising benefits of children learning music. Music plays an important role in brain development that promotes learning, concentration and the ability to persevere with challenging tasks.
Gregory Dobbs talks to Anita about the value of singing to your baby and why sound is one of the most valuable senses in cognitive development. Discover why learning music as a child supports and promotes learning and is a critical component in learning to read. 'Music learning', says Dr Collins, 'promotes confidence and persistence, and creates a culture of lifelong learning that has benefits right through to adulthood.'
In this episode, Alan Carter joins Max Lewis to talk about his experiences living in the Wakamarina Valley of New Zealand inspired the latest chapter in the Sergeant Nick Chester series, Doom Creek.
Now founder and CEO of the food rescue organisation OzHarvest, Ronni leads hundreds of staff and thousands of volunteers with the goal to nourish Australia. She serves in an advisory capacity to government and is an instrumental leader in changing federal laws to improve social justice and environmental policies.
A Repurposed Life is the story of how Ronni found her voice, her heart and her deepest calling. From her early years growing up under the brutal system of apartheid South Africa, to a socialist commune in Israel, Ronni finally settled in Australia to discover a profound new way of living. Shared with the humour, warmth and energy that have made her an internationally renowned keynote speaker, this heartfelt exploration of the choices that define us will speak to anyone seeking a more passionate expression of being alive.
In this podcast, Ronni joins Greg Dobbs to chat about finding her calling in OzHarvest, and the process of co-writing the memoir with her daughter-in-law, Jessica Chapnik Kahn.
In Stories of Hope, Heather Morris will explore the art of listening - a skill she employed when she met Lale Sokolov, the Tattooist of Auschwitz. It was her ability to listen that led him to entrust her with his story. Stories of Hope will examine Heather's extraordinary journey, in the form of a series of beautifully rendered tales of the people she has met, the remarkable stories they have shared with her, and the lessons they hold for us all.
In this episode, Greg Dobbs chats to Heather Morris about why she wanted to write Stories of Hope, and the experience of writing her first memoir.
Stephen Doyle arrives in Manchester from New York. He is an Irish-American veteran of the Civil War and a member of the Fenians, a secret society intent on ending British rule in Ireland, by any means necessary. Now he has come to seek vengeance.
James O'Connor has fled grief and drink in Dublin for a sober start in Manchester as Head Constable. His mission is to discover and thwart the Fenians’ plans. When his long-lost nephew arrives on his doorstep, he never could have foreseen how this would imperil his fragile new life – or how his and Doyle's fates would come to be intertwined.
In this episode, Booker Prize longlisted author Ian Mcguire joins Max Lewis to unpack his gritty new historical fiction novel, The Abstainer.
Leon Silver on the true family story of love and survival in his book The Miracle Typist
Conscripted into the Polish army as Hitler’s forces draw closer, Jewish soldier Tolek Klings vows to return to his wife, Klara, and son, Juliusz. However, the army is rife with anti-Semitism and Tolek is relentlessly tormented. As the Germans invade Poland, he is faced with a terrible dilemma: flee home to protect his family – and risk being shot as a deserter – or remain a soldier, hoping reports of women and children being spared by the occupying forces are true.
What follows is an extraordinary odyssey that will take Tolek – via a daring escape from a Hungarian internment camp – to Palestine, where his ability to type earns him the title of ‘The Miracle Typist’, then on to fight in Egypt, Tobruk and Italy. A broken telegram from Klara, ending with the haunting words, ‘We trouble’, makes Tolek even more determined to find his way home and fulfil his promise.
In this episode, Leon Silver joins Greg Dobbs to tell the true story of his father-in-law Tolek Klings that inspired his book The Miracle Typist.
Petronella McGovern unpacks her tense psychological thriller The Good Teacher
Every evening, Allison watches her husband's new house, desperate to find some answers. Every morning, she puts on a brave face to teach kindergarten. She's a good teacher, everyone says so - this stalking is just a tiny crack in her usual self-control.
A late enrolment into her class brings little Gracie. Allison takes the sick girl under her wing, smothering Gracie with the love she can't give her own son. When Gracie has a chance to go to America for treatment, Allison whips up the community into a frenzied fundraising drive.But as others start to question her judgement and the police arrive at her door, Allison wonders if she can trust herself. Has she crossed a line? How far will the good teacher go to save a life? And whose life will that be?
In this episode, Greg Dobbs joins Petronella McGovern to chat about her latest psychological thriller, The Good Teacher.
Kate Mildenhall talks dystopia, motherhood & the sailing trip of a lifetime in The Mother Fault
Mim’s husband is missing. No one knows where Ben is, but everyone wants to find him – especially The Department. And they should know, the all-seeing government body has fitted the entire population with a universal tracking chip to keep them ‘safe’.But suddenly Ben can’t be tracked. And Mim is questioned, made to surrender her passport and threatened with the unthinkable – her two children being taken into care at the notorious BestLife.
Cornered, Mim risks everything to go on the run to find her husband – and a part of herself, long gone, that is brave enough to tackle the journey ahead. From the stark backroads of the Australian outback to a terrifying sea voyage, Mim is forced to shuck off who she was – mother, daughter, wife, sister – and become the woman she needs to be to save her family and herself.
In this episode, Kate Mildenhall joins Max Lewis to chat about living in an almost-dystopia while writing 'The Mother Fault', the influences of her own motherhood on her writing, and almost dying while researching for the book.
S L Lim on desire, art and the power of resistance in Revenge: Murder in three parts
A family favour their son over their daughter ... Shan attends university before making his fortune in Australia while Yannie must find menial employment and care for her ageing parents. After her mother’s death, Yannie travels to Sydney to become enmeshed in her psychopathic brother’s new life, which she seeks to undermine from within …
Revenge is a novel that rages against capitalism, hetero-supremacy, mothers, fathers, families – the whole damn thing. It’s about what happens when you want to make art but are born in the wrong time and place. S L Lim brings to vivid life the frustrations of a talented daughter and vengeful sister in a nuanced and riveting novel that ends in the most unexpected way. It will not be easily forgotten.
In this episode Max Lewis joins S L Lim to talk the fiery follow up to 'Real Differences', the 'grubby compromises' we make in order to create art, and the inspiring work of the brit-pop band Pulp.
Meg Keneally on confronting (and escaping) the past in her colonial-era novel The Wreck
In 1820 Sarah McCaffrey, fleeing arrest for her part in a failed rebellion, thinks she has escaped when she finds herself aboard the Serpent, bound from London to the colony of New South Wales. But when the mercurial captain's actions drive the ship into a cliff, Sarah is the only survivor. Adopting a false identity, she becomes the right-hand woman of Molly Thistle, who has grown her late husband's business interests into a sprawling real estate and trade empire. As time passes, Sarah begins to believe she might have found a home - until her past follows her across the seas ...
In this episode, Meg Keneally joins Greg Dobbs to chat about her new historical fiction novel The Wreck.
Andrew Boe on Australia's flawed justice system in The Truth Hurts
Drawing on his experiences as a child of Burmese migrants fleeing a military junta and his evolution from a naive law clerk, too shy to speak, into a lawyer whose ponytailed flamboyance and unbridled willingness to speak truth to power riled many within the legal establishment, Andrew Boe delves into cases he found unable to leave behind. These cases have shaped who he has become.
Taking us from a case of traditional punishment gone wrong in the Gibson Desert to deaths in police custody on Palm Island and in Yuendumu in the Northern Territory - places where race relations are often stalled in a colonial time warp - to an isolated rural home, and the question of what is self-defence after decades of domestic abuse; to cases of children abandoned, 'stolen' and then fought over; and into prison interview rooms and courthouses around the country where Boe defended serial killers, rapists, child sex offenders, murderers as well as the odd politician - he holds fast to the premise that either every one of us is entitled to the presumption of innocence or none of us are.
In this episode, Andrew joins Max Lewis to expand on The Truth Hurts - explaining our misconception that the justice system is designed to find the truth, and the effect of the Black Lives Matter movement on this country's tragedy of Indigenous deaths in custody.
Jess Scully on how a better world is possible in Glimpses of Utopia
It’s hard to be excited about the future right now. Jess Scully asks, What can we do? The answer is: plenty! All over the world, people are refusing the business-as-usual mindset and putting humans back into the civic equation, reimagining work and care, finance and government, urban planning and communication, to make them better and fairer for all.
Meet the care workers reclaiming control in India and Lebanon, the people turning slums into safe havens in Kenya and Bangladesh, and champions of people-powered digital democracy in Iceland and Taiwan. There are radical bankers funding renewable energy in the USA and architects redesigning real estate in Australia, new payment systems in Italy and the Philippines that keep money in local communities, and innovators redesigning taxation to cut pollution and incentivise creative solutions.
Glimpses of Utopia is a call for optimism. Humans everywhere are rising up to confront our challenges with creativity, resilience and compassion. Harnessing technology and imagination, we can reshape our world to be fair and sustainable. Jess Scully shows us how.
Rose Carlyle on exciting twists and evil twins
Beautiful twin sisters Iris and Summer are startlingly alike, but beyond what the eye can see lies a darkness that sets them apart. Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of open-hearted Summer's seemingly never-ending good fortune, including her perfect husband, Adam. Called to Thailand to help sail the family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris nurtures her own secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But when she unexpectedly finds herself alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes.
Now is her chance to take what she's always wanted - the idyllic life she's always coveted. But just how far will she go to get the life she's dreamed about? And how will she make sure no one discovers the truth?
Written with the chilling suspense of The Girl on the Train and Before I Go to Sleep, The Girl in the Mirror is an addictive thriller about greed, lust, secrets and deadly lies.
In this episode, Rose joins Erin Christie to discuss what it's been like writing her first novel and releasing it during a pandemic, and how it was to create a family of siblings who share an intense rivalry, despite the lovely and supportive relationship she shares with her own sister.
AUGUST BOOK CLUB - A chat with Charlotte McConaghy
How far you would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica.
As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny’s life begin to unspool. A daughter’s yearning search for her mother. An impulsive, passionate marriage. A shocking crime. Haunted by love and violence, Franny must confront what she is really running towards – and from.
In this episode, Erin Christie speaks to Charlotte McConaghy about The Last Migration - and the incredible amount of research that went into it - launching a book in a pandemic, and leaning into the climate crisis.
'Beyond the Pale': Adrian Tame on his time at Australia's most notorious paper in The Awful Truth
Hailed as ‘a fearless exposer of folly, vice and crime’ when it first hit the streets in the 1890s, Truth was later condemned by a High Court Judge as ‘a wretched little paper, reeking of filth, injurious to the health of house servants and young girls’.
Adrian Tame knows that better than anyone as he worked for Truth for more than a decade as a reporter and news editor. In the years it was owned by the Murdoch family he worked alongside young Rupert as he cut his teeth on the shock horror scandals that graced the pages of Truth when it was selling a whopping 400,000 copies a week.
Funny, often outrageous and always thoroughly entertaining, The Awful Truth is a rollercoaster ride through an colourful era of newspapers and larger-than-life reporters that we will never see the like of again.
In this episode, Adrian joins Max Lewis to chat about revisiting his scandalous time at 'Truth' (including a Bikie story too shocking for the book), and his opinions on journalism today.
Paddy Manning shares the human cost of climate change in Body Count
Suddenly, when the country caught fire, people realised what the government has not: that climate change is killing us. But climate deaths didn’t start in 2019. Medical officers have been warning of a health emergency as temperatures rise for years, and for at least a decade Australians have been dying from the plagues of climate change – from heat, flood, disease, smoke. And now, pandemic.
In this detailed, considered, compassionate book, Paddy Manning paints us the big picture. He revisits some headline events which might have faded in our memory, and brings to our attention less well-publicised killers. In each case, he has interviewed scientists to explore the link to climate change and asks how – indeed, whether – we can better prepare ourselves in the future.
In this episode, Paddy joins Max Lewis to open up about his experience in writing the book, and how the current climate disaster and COVID-19 pandemic have more in common than we might think.
Julie Sprigg on the life of a physiotherapist in Ethiopia in Small Steps
As a child, Julie dreamed of being somewhere else, of making a difference. Now, she can’t wait to meet the nuns she will live with and the children she will provide physiotherapy for in Ethiopia.
But Julie has trouble sticking to convent rules and soon finds herself wondering how much difference a single physio can make anyway.
When she takes a teaching role at a university, Julie finally feels closer to fulfilling her dreams – training Ethiopia’s first physiotherapists, treating paediatric patients, and losing her heart to a handsome colleague.
Then civil unrest reaches the university, forcing Julie’s students to choose between their safety and their future. When it comes to being a part of change, why do all steps feel like small steps?
In this episode, Max Lewis joins Julie as she reflects on her time in Ethiopia.
Greg James & Chris Smith on the exciting finale of the Kid Normal series
Murph Cooper is famous … and he's not happy about it.Kid Normal and the Super Zeroes used to save the day in secret. But suddenly everyone knows who they are.
Oily villain Nicholas Knox has told the public that superheroes are dangerous. He wants to lock them all up and take over the world! *Cue evil cackling*
Murph must expose Knox's evil plan, or the world of heroes is doomed forever!
In this episode, Max Lewis joins Greg and Chris to chat about the Kid Normal series, and its thrilling final book.
In 2015, Eva Holland was forced to confront her greatest fear when her mother unexpectedly had a stroke and passed away. After the shock and grief subsided, Holland was sent on a deep dive into the science of fear, digging into an array of universal and personal questions.
On her journey, Holland meets with scientists who are working to eliminate phobias with a single pill, she explores the lives of the few individuals who suffer from a rare disease that prevents them from ever feeling fear, and she immerses herself in her own fears, including hurling herself out of a plane.
In this episode, Max Lewis chats with Eva Holland about her debut Nerve, to find out more about her journey into her own fears, and how she came out the other side.
On a night of raging winds and rain, Captain Cook's Endeavour lies splintered on a coral reef off the coast of far north Australia. A small disparate band of survivors, fracturing already, huddle on the shore of this strange land - their pitiful salvage scant protection from the dangers of the unknown creatures and natives that live here.
Watching these mysterious white beings, the Guugu Yimidhirr people cannot decide if they are ancestor spirits to be welcomed - or hostile spirits to be speared. One headstrong young boy, Garrgiil, determines to do more than watch and to be the one to find out what exactly they are.
In On a Barbarous Coast, Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick tell a story of what might have been if things went a little differently. The pair joined Max Lewis to chat about creating fiction from reality, and the importance of Indigenous perspective when it comes to the discovery of this land.
But this is no happy-ever-after tree change. Lecture halls, law reform and the arts are replaced with castrating calves, shovelling manure, fire-fighting and anti-gas blockades. In a place that attracts people who live by their own rules, Hayley must confront her limitations and preconceptions to forge her own identity.
Anna Austen has always been told she must marry rich. Her future depends upon it. While her dear cousin Fanny has a little more choice, she too is under pressure to find a suitor.
But how can either girl know what she wants? Is finding love even an option? The only person who seems to have answers is their Aunt Jane. She has never married. In fact, she's perfectly happy, so surely being single can't be such a bad thing?
The time will come for each of the Austen girls to become the heroines of their own stories. Will they follow in Jane's footsteps?
In this episode, historian Lucy Worsley chats to Erin Christie about her love of history and Jane Austen, and how she plans to pass this on to the next generation of young girls through her writing.
In the course of a lifetime, Jack will travel far, always caught between fleeing from and seeking those things he needs: a mother’s precious gift, a lover in a time of war, the loss of a child, a kind and steady woman.
And, across time and across continents, old Jack Muir will remember those who helped him become a decent man, a better father and a friend.
In this episode, Western Australian author Jon Doust chats with Greg Dobbs about Return Ticket, the final book in his trilogy that began with the Booker longlisted Boy on a Wire.
Beginning as a short-form web series, The Drop-Off by performing/writing duo Fiona Harris and Mike McLeish has been adapted to a full length novel. Max chatted about the journey from screen to page, and working together as a married couple.