A huge celebrity in her day, Kate Kelly was eventually forgotten while the reputation of the Kelly Gang graduated from folklore to cultural icon. Kate was a talented horsewoman and often ran decoy for the Gang and was present at the infamous gun battle at Glenrowan. In later life she changed her name in an attempt to escape the notoriety but her life ended in tragedy. Kate was found drowned in a lagoon outside Forbes but the circumstances around her death remain a mystery. In this episode, Grego...
Apr 11, 2021•19 min
'Remember' is the first non-fiction novel from neuroscientist and 'Still Alice' author Lisa Genova, which delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. In this episode, Heather Lewis chats to Lisa about the process of writing her first non-fiction novel, how she got started in neuroscience, and some mind-blowing facts about the brain.
Apr 06, 2021•27 min
This anthology of Australian surf writing celebrates the diversity of surf culture from epic surf adventures in Mexico to the relationship of humans with the sea and to Taj Burrows final campaign in Fiji. Featuring the writing of Sally Breen, Emily Brugman, Sam Carmody Madelaine Dickie, Jake Sandtner and Mark Smith, these non-fiction stories explore the passion, the fear, the joy and the pain of Australian surfing culture in Australia and abroad. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Madelaine ...
Mar 31, 2021•19 min
Catherine Leroy, Frances Fitzgerald and Kate Webb arrived in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968 at the height of the war. Leroy was a French daredevil photographer; Frances Fitzgerald a blue-blood American intellectual; and Kate Webb was the first Australian woman to report on the war in Vietnam. Together these three women permanently shattered the barriers to women reporting on war in a field of journalism dominated by men. You Don't Belong Here is the story of the lives and legacy of three journalists t...
Mar 25, 2021•27 min
Paula is a dedicated GP who witnesses the brutal murder of her friend and her children at the hands of their estranged husband and father. Paula is haunted by the thought that she couldn’t protect them when they most needed it. Soon after a patient with suspicious injuries attends her surgery and Paula is faced with a decision that could make this woman safe but also compromise everything her training as a doctor has instilled in her. The Family Doctor is a thrilling and provocative novel about ...
Mar 15, 2021•17 min
Helen Fitzgerald vividly portrays small town life, and a woman and a land in crisis in her latest thriller 'Ash Mountain'. Fran vowed she'd never return to Ash Mountain but circumstances draw her back to a blisteringly hot summer in the rural town of Ash Mountain. Confronting the past and dealing with future are sidelined by an impending disaster – a mega-fire is roaring towards Ash Mountain and it will expose all kinds of secrets in its wake. In this episode, Gregory Dobbs chats to Helen Fitzge...
Mar 03, 2021•22 min
After World War II, Sydney experienced a crime wave that was chillingly calculated. Discontent mixed with despair, greed with callous disregard. Women who had lost their wartime freedoms headed back into the kitchen with sinister intent and the household poison thallium, normally used to kill rats, was repurposed to kill husbands and other inconvenient family members. Yvonne Fletcher disposed of two husbands. Caroline Grills cheerfully poisoned her stepmother, a family friend, her brother and hi...
Mar 03, 2021•25 min
Susan Johnson exposes the truths and deceptions in relationships amid a blossoming online friendship between two women in 'From Where I Fell'. Pamela and Christhani live on different continents, but through a series of email exchanges the two women begin sharing the stories of their lives. Although temperamental opposites they soon establish a connection based on the common ground of grief, loss and new beginnings. 'From Where I Fell' is a funny and endearing story of how unlikely friendships ca...
Feb 28, 2021•18 min
Nora Fawn's daughter Hope disappeared four years ago and only maintained contact through her big sister Joy. But last night Hope rang Nora to say, 'I'm coming home, I'm getting married, the wedding is in three weeks and it's your job to organise it.' Desperate to regain her daughter's love and prove her worth as a mother Nora accepts the challenge. Through the medium of a discarded diary, Nora plots the hilarious and emotional journey to redemption through the rocky terrain of mother-daughter re...
Feb 28, 2021•27 min
Bec and Kate are sisters, but they couldn’t be less alike. Bec lives the domestic dream with her surgeon husband Stuart and three perfect children. So why is she so attracted to free-spirited Ryan? Kate’s life is hardly a dream. But when she meets Adam – tall, kind, funny – things start looking up. Until she finds out he’s been keeping secrets from her. Then there is the incident both sisters are desperate to ignore… Will they discover that some mistakes can’t be put right? In this episode, Max ...
Feb 28, 2021•16 min
A young woman gets ready to go to a party. She arrives, feels overwhelmed, leaves, and then returns. Minutely attuned to the people who come into her view, and alternating between alienation and profound connection, she is hilarious, self-aware, sometimes acerbic, and always honest. And by the end of the night, she’s shown us something radical about love, loss, and the need to belong. In this episode, filmmaker and writer Madeleine Ryan joins Max Lewis to chat about her prismatic debut 'A Room C...
Feb 28, 2021•36 min
Michael Brissenden's second crime thriller Dead Letters brings counter terrorism expert Sid Allen into the sordid and complicated world of Canberra politics. From the seedy backstreets of 1980s Sydney to the corridors of power in contemporary Canberra, Sidney Allen must pursue the truth behind a baffling crime. Dan LeRoi, rising star of politics and Chair of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has been shot dead. But it's not all it seems. Life becomes complicated for Sid when he jo...
Feb 07, 2021•19 min
We're more connected that ever before says Maggie Hamilton and yet feelings of loneliness and isolation have never been more prevalent. We are now more affluent and busier and yet we are leaving our homes less and less as we become more dependent on technology to communicate. 'We've become strangers, exiled from people and situations that are meaningful to us.' says Maggie When We Become Strangers examines in detail all levels of human interaction and looks into the future with a warning for wha...
Jan 31, 2021•31 min
In secluded Devlins Reach, on the shores of the Hawkesbury River, three bodies are unearthed in an excavation site. When a wilderness expert, Park Ranger Taylor Bridges, is called in to assist local police, he soon discovers the town has an unsettling history – one to match Taylor's own haunted past. But the quiet location and picturesque beauty of The Reach are hiding something darker than Taylor could have anticipated. Within the town's tight-knit community of loggers, store owners and tight-l...
Jan 12, 2021•24 min
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 ...
Dec 07, 2020•26 min
Australian and New Zealand crime and thriller writing is booming globally, with antipodean authors regularly featuring on awards and bestseller lists across Europe and North America, and overseas readers and publishers looking more and more to tales from lands Down Under. 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...
Nov 09, 2020•30 min
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 Dung...
Nov 03, 2020•24 min
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 a...
Nov 02, 2020•29 min
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. ...
Oct 13, 2020•21 min
Sergeant Nick Chester has dodged the Geordie gangsters he once feared and is out of hiding and looking forward to the quiet life. But gold fever is creating ill feeling between prospectors, and a new threat lurks in the form of trigger-happy Americans preparing for doomsday by building a bolthole in the valley. As tensions simmer, Nick finds himself up against an evil that knows no borders and no depths. In this episode, Alan Carter joins Max Lewis to talk about his experiences living in the Wak...
Oct 07, 2020•18 min
As the owner of a successful events company, throwing away huge volumes of leftover food at the end of the day came with the territory. But when Ronni Kahn hit midlife, she found herself no longer able to turn a blind eye to her food waste problem. Hand delivering the untouched food to homeless shelters around Sydney became her renegade solution. Little did she know that fixing her small problem at work would lead her to unlock a hidden purpose at the very core of her inner life. Now founder and...
Oct 07, 2020•21 min
Heather Morris, author of the internationally bestselling novels The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey, grew up on a farm in rural New Zealand. On her way back across the paddocks from school, Heather would visit her great-grandfather and listen to his experiences of war - stories he told only Heather. From a young age Heather discovered that people would tell her their stories if she stopped and listened. In Stories of Hope, Heather Morris will explore the art of listening - a skill sh...
Sep 30, 2020•23 min
In 1907, Alice Mitchell was arrested for the murder of five-month-old Ethel Booth. During the inquest and subsequent trial, the general public was horrified to learn that at least 37 infants had died in Mitchell's care in the previous six years. It became clear that she had been running a 'baby farm', making a profit out of caring for the children of single mothers and other 'unfortunate women'. 'The Edward Street Baby Farm' retraces this infamous tragedy and a trial which gripped the nation and...
Sep 30, 2020•12 min
Manchester, 1867 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 forese...
Sep 14, 2020•22 min
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 extraordina...
Sep 13, 2020•17 min
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 ...
Sep 03, 2020•12 min
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...
Aug 31, 2020•18 min
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 h...
Aug 31, 2020•24 min
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 ...
Aug 27, 2020•19 min
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 ...
Aug 06, 2020•26 min
