Gareth Evans in conversation

Gareth Evans in conversation

Gareth Evans was a representative for the Australian Labor Party in both the Senate and the House of Representatives for twenty-one years, from 1978 to 1999. During that time he served as a member of Cabinet for fourteen years in the Hawke and Keating governments, including seven and a half as Foreign Minister, a role in which, it is univerally acknowledged, he excelled.

After leaving politics he became President and CEO of the International Crisis Group from 2000 to 2009, during which period the organisation grew to become the pre-eminent international non-government organisation (NGO) working on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict.

He is presently the Co-Chair of the international advisory organisation The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), from 2010 to 2015 he was Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Canberra-based Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, and remains the Patron and Emeritus Convenor of the Asia Pacific Leadership Network on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He is also the Chancellor of the Australian National University.

He has written or edited eleven books including A Cabinet Diary, Inside the Hawke-Keating Government, and the new book he discusses in this podcast Incorrigible Optimist.

Shelley Davidow in conversation

Shelley Davidow in conversation

Shelley Davidow is the author of Whisperings in the Blood, a memoir in which immigrant voyages, repeated from one generation to the next, form the basis of an extraordinary story that explores the heartache and emotional legacies created by those who leave their homelands forever. It tells the story of her grandfather, Jacob Frank, who leaves his village in Lithuania to sail to America, of her mother, leaving America to go to South Africa, and her own voyage repeating these and other journeys before settling in Australia. Shelley now lives on the Sunshine Coast.

A C Grayling in conversation

A C Grayling in conversation

A C Grayling is a genuine example of that much bandied about thing, a most remarkable man. Born in Rhodesia, raised in Nyasaland, he discovered a love for philosophy at the age of twelve, going on to study at ever more prestigious institutions, culminating in Magdelene College, Oxford.

Apart from being the author of thirty books he writes widely on contemporary issues, including war crimes, euthenasia, secularism, the legalisation of drugs and human rights. He founded the New College of The Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London, where he is presently the Master, and was, just this year, awarded the Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to philosophy.

His most recent book, The Age of Genius, the Seventeenth Century and the Invention of the Modern Mind, argues that the mind-set of modern times was established in the 1600s, amid terrible war and great injustice. His contention is that, despite such turmoil, this was the period in which ideas of magic and revelation, and the dead hand of religious law, first gave way to science and the rational, leading the way to the Enlightenment and the modern world as we know it. It is a work of philosophy but also of history, following the lives of some of the most significant figures from the period.

Malachy Tallack in conversation

Malachy Tallack in conversation

Malachy Tallack is from the Shetland Isles, as far north in Scotland as you can go. He attracted a lot of attention with his first book, 60 Degrees North, an account of his journey around the world along the line of the 60th latitude. It was a book that Robert MacFarlane described as brave and beautiful, chosen by BBC Radio 4 as Book of the Week. He was in Australia to promote his new work, The Un-Discovered Islands, a study on islands of imagination, deception and human error. Also well-known as a singer songwriter with four albums to his name, in the final ten minutes of this podcast Malachy plays a couple of his songs.

Kári Gíslason in conversation

Kári Gíslason in conversation

Kári Gíslason was born in Iceland. He’s the author of four books, two non-fiction and two novels. The Promise of Iceland tells the story of return journeys he’s made to his birthplace, while Saga Land: The island of stories at the edge of the world, co-written with Richard Fidler, is an account of visits they made together to the places where the Icelandic sagas actually took place. It won the Indie Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2018.

Here he discusses his new novel, The Ashburner. Kári comes back onto the stage to answer questions at the end of Richard Fidler's podcast.

Richard Fidler in conversation

Richard Fidler in conversation

Richard Fidler is best known these days for his Conversations with Richard Fidler on ABC radio. Conversations is the most podcast program on the ABC, with 1.8m podcasts downloaded a month, which, by any standards, is a lot of podcasts.

But Richard had an earlier career, before he morphed into Australia’s best interviewer. He started out in the trio the Doug Anthony All Stars in the 80s, playing guitar in the ensemble with Paul McDermott and Tim Ferguson. All three of them have gone on to be significant figures in Australian cultural life, but at the time DAAS was an iconoclastic group who tore into, and apart, every taboo they stumbled across during the eighties and early nineties, and, I think it is fair to say, they bumped into a fair few. DAAS was, at the start, better known overseas than it was in Australia, at least until they joined up with the comedy show The Big Gig. The British comedian Al Murray said of seeing the group at the Edinburgh Festival in 1988, "they came onstage with the attitude of feral invaders … they were an insanely hot act who sang, cursed, sweated and insulted each other and their audiences with a level of commitment and polish that seemed exotically charged and almost transgressive…” Hard to imagine when you see the demure Mr Fidler sitting next to me on the stage here.

But he has morphed once again, now, into a historian. In 2014 he went to Istanbul with his son Joe and, on his return sat down to write an account of their travels while seeking out the location of many of the crucial moments in Byzantine history. Richard says of himself that the label is not appropriate, he is more of a history enthusiast than a historian, but you’d be hard pressed I think, once you’ve read Ghost Empire, to argue the point, for this is a history begging to be told, a history that picks you up and engages you on so many levels, demanding a rethink of how we view our past, and, really, there’s little else you can ask from a history book.

Elspeth Muir in conversation

Elspeth Muir in conversation

Tallking about her book Wasted, Text 2016

In 2009 Elspeth Muir’s youngest brother, Alexander, finished his last university exam and went out with some mates on the town. Later that night he wandered to the Story Bridge. He put his phone, wallet, T-shirt and thongs on the walkway, climbed over the railing, and jumped thirty metres into the Brisbane River below.

Three days passed before police divers pulled his body out of the water. When Alexander had drowned, his blood-alcohol reading was almost five times the legal limit for driving.

Why do some of us drink so much, and what happens when we do? Fewer young Australians are drinking heavily, but the rates of alcohol abuse and associated problems—from blackouts to sexual assaults and one-punch killings—are undiminished.

Mireille Juchau in conversation

Mireille Juchau in conversation

The World Without Us, Mireille's third novel, is set somewhere in the Hinterland of NSW's north coast, and concerns the Muller family, Stefan, Evangeline and their two daughters. Stefan, a beekeeper, is originally from Germany, while Evangeline grew up on a commune in the hills behind where they live. The story is woven around the absence of a third daughter, Pip, and the way they each deal with the grief her loss has provoked. At the same time it also braids within its cloth the radically changing landscape wrought by the work miners and loggers, as well as the mysterious failing of Stefan’s hives.

The novel has attracted remarkable reviews:

Alberto Manguel, writing in the Guardian says, Juchau’s style is perfectly poised, elegant and restrained. Almost any page of this astonishing novel offers proof of a writer of great poetic power… [it is] a revelation, a masterly story involving the refuge of silence, the fate of bees, and the shadows of old sins.

Magda Szubanski in conversation

Magda Szubanski in conversation

Magda Szubanski is one of Australia’s most beloved performers, most famous for her role in Kath and Kim as Sharon Strzelecki, but also for her work in the comedy sketch programs Fast Forward, the D-Generation, and, of course, as Esme Hoggett in the film Babe.

In this new and extraordinary memoir, Reckoning, Magda describes her journey of self-discovery from a suburban childhood haunted by the demons of her father’s espionage activities and the secret awareness of her sexuality, to the complex dramas of adulthood and her need to find out the truth about herself and her family. With courage and compassion she addresses her own frailties and fears, and asks the big questions about life, about the shadows we inherit and the gifts we pass on. Heartbreaking, joyous, intimate and utterly captivating, Reckoning, announces the arrival of a fearless writer and natural storyteller. It will touch the lives of its readers.

Paul Williams in conversation

Paul Williams in conversation

Paul Williams is Program Coordinator in Creative Writing at Sunshine Coast University and the author of several short stories and novels. His most recent book is Cokcraco, an exhilarating, playful and witty novel about writing, identity and literary KritiKs.

Some comments from reviews:

'Ever since Don Quixote, novelists have been taking the piss. In Cokcraco Paul Williams does exactly that, turning the full beam of his satirical spotlight on the civil wars in university departments, the cultish bunkum of literary theory, the self-obsession of creative writing courses and the self-flagellation of white liberal guilt… a strange, funny, intelligent and quite unforgettable novel. What Flaubert did for parrots, Mr Williams has done for the humble roach.' Jeffrey Poacher

Tim Flannery in conversation

Tim Flannery in conversation

Professor Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s leading writers on climate change. An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, he was named Australian of the Year in 2007.

He has held various academic positions including Professor at the University of Adelaide, director of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum and Visiting Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

His books include Throwim Way Leg, Here on Earth, The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers. Under the Gillard government he was appointed Climate Change Commissioner, with the specific task of communicating the science of climate change to the public, explaining the reasons why it is necessary to price carbon. In this podcast Professor Flannery talks about his new book The Atmosphere of Hope, which, in the lead up to the December talks in Paris, gives an overview of where climate science is now and what can be done.

Kate Holden in conversation

Kate Holden in conversation

Kate Holden is the author of the memoirs In My Skin and The Romantic, Italian Nights and Days. In My Skin was nominated for many awards and was published in twelve countries. Her stories and columns have appeared regularly in The Age as well as The Monthly, Cleo, New Woman and the Weekend Australian.

The biography on her website begins with the tantalising entry:

I was born in Melbourne in 1972 and, apart from some time in Rome, Shanghai and London, I have always lived here. I went to progressive community schools and the University of Melbourne, where I got an Honours degree in literature and classics. I had jobs as a dish-pig in a café in a patisserie, as a hair model and in a bookshop before turning to an unexpected career in heroin addiction and, a little later, as a professional sex worker.

Kate Grenville in conversation

Kate Grenville in conversation

Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most popular and best-known writers. Her novel The Secret River won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was short-listed for the Man Booker, the Miles Franklin and the IMPAC Awards. Her earlier novel, The Idea of Perfection, won The Orange Prize in 2001. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places and Joan Makes History.

In this podcast she discusses her new book: One Life: My Mother's Story, a deeply moving homage to her mother by one of Australia’s finest writers.

Olivera Cimic in conversation

Olivera Cimic in conversation

Olivera Simic is the author of Surviving Peace, a Political Memoir, a heartfelt account of life before, during and after the Bosnian War and the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Simić provides a greater understanding of the Balkan Wars while ensuring we don’t forget the horrors and enduring impact of any war. Combining an academic sensibility with personal experience she describes how she found the determination to build a new life when the old one was irretrievable.

John Birmingham in conversation

John Birmingham in conversation

John has taken the radical step of publishing the three Dave Hooper books all at once (none of this business of waiting around for a year for the sequel with Mr Birmingham).

The starting point for these books is our insatiable thirst for energy… out in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil rigs are working overtime. One of them (Deepwater Horizon, if you like) has drilled too deep. But what they’ve released isn’t oil, it’s all the monsters of mythology, and I mean all of them, spewing out of holes broken through the wall between the worlds. Fortunately, or perhaps not, one of the things that emerged has got itself killed by Dave Hooper, the balding, overweight, over-sexed safety manager on the rig, and, in the moment of dying, has transferred its nature and power to him. The three novels (which Birmingham coyly states, get better with altitude) Emergence, Resistance and Ascendance follow the journey Dave has to make to save humanity, and himself.

The thing about Birmingham is that he has no, or few, pretensions. This extravagant scenario becomes, in his hands, a witty, clever, incredibly fast-paced re-working of the super-hero save-the-world-action genre.

Ellen van Neerven

Ellen van Neerven

A conversation with last year’s David Unaipon Award winning author Ellen van Neerven about her debut novel Heat and Light. Ellen’s writing has appeared widely in publications such as McSweeney’s and the Review of Australian Fiction. She works at the State Library of Queensland as part of the ‘black&write’ Indigenous writing and editing project. She’s the editor of the digital collection Writing Black: New Indigenous Writing from Australia.

Henry Reynolds in conversation

Henry Reynolds in conversation

Mr Reynolds is in conversation here about his most recent book, Forgotten War. This work draws on the many studies undertaken in recent years to tell the story of the Frontier Wars, and to ask why it is there are no official memorials or commemorations to them; indeed, why it should be that it is even more controversial to discuss them now than it was a hundred years ago. Kate Grenville writes of the book: ‘A brilliant light shone into a dark forgetfulness: ground-breaking, authoritative, compelling.'