Good Reading Podcast

What many of us fear, especially as we hit our forties and fifties, is not being as quick of mind. Not remembering as well as we used to. By our 60s and 70s we worry there's nothing we can do and that we are falling helplessly into an abyss which leads to dementia.

Dr Norman Swan, one of Australia's most trusted doctors, shows us that we've been thinking about brain ageing the wrong way. It doesn't need to be about decline and deficit. It's about how to help our brains adapt, become resilient and maintain cognitive function - and it's much more than what we eat, how we exercise or our genes.

Dr Swan has interviewed people from around the world in their 90s and 100s who still have remarkable cognitive function. These cognitive super-agers have very different life stories, but it turns out that underneath they're pretty much the same, with lessons that will help us all in our 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Dr Norman Swan about why the changes in the brain as we age are more about adaptation than decline, why our genetic make-up isn't as influential on our brain health as we might think, and how the lifestyle choices we make contribute to our brain health.

When the Wet comes to Wyndham, bones wash down with the loose shale of the surrounding Bastion ranges. Year round, lost spirits wander this tiny port town on the northern tip of Western Australia. Some say they belong to the forgotten inmates of an apartheid hospital, built here in 1936 on the foundations of Social Darwinism and eugenics, theories that would reach their horrifying climax in the Holocaust. 

The Wanted and the Unwanted is the story of the Wyndham Native Hospital, born from a maelstrom of personal animosities, ambitions and beliefs and from the warring spirits of the early twentieth century. It is the tale of a hospital built three miles from a town that banned Aboriginal people, a place where men, women and children were imprisoned, left untreated and subjected to experimental treatments without their knowledge and against their will. And it is the story of those who resisted and survived to transform Three Mile into a place of hope and a site from which a new Wyndham would emerge.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Annabel Stafford about the 'great Australian silence' that obscures our sense of history, the vision and the reality for the Wyndham Native Hospital, and about the cast of white bureaucrats, doctors and politicians who shaped our dark past.

When A.J. 'Sandy' Mackinnon sailed a tiny dinghy through twelve countries from North Wales to the Black Sea, he survived pirates, the English Channel, international incidents and all the disasters, big and small, that can befall a little boat on a long voyage. Those adventures became his beloved bestseller The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow.
Decades later, that trip is a happy memory and Sandy is firmly back on land – until a message from a stranger presents an opportunity too good to refuse. Sandy picks up where his first voyage left off, sailing and rowing single-handedly around the coast from Romania to Venice. From Istanbul to Ithaca, Mount Olympus to the ruins of Troy, he finds himself immersed in the legends of antiquity, plays chicken with mercurial border police, and is saved more than once by the kindness of strangers. He recounts it all with his unbreakable enthusiasm and self-deprecating humour, taking the reader on a hilarious and unforgettable adventure.
In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to A. J. 'Sandy' Mackinnon about the reincarnation of that little mirror dinghy the 'Jack De Crow', the remarkable people he encountered on his journey from the Danube Delta to Venice, and why it's not curiosity alone that drives Sandy in his travels and his storytelling.

The Memory Tapes is a new podcast from the National Library of Australia that brings history to life through the voices of the people who lived it. Drawing on one of the nation’s most significant oral history collections, the series explores remarkable stories of resilience, innovation, creativity, migration, activism and everyday life. In each episode, oral historian Dr Shirleene Robinson AM combines firsthand accounts with expert storytelling to reveal the people behind Australia’s history.

From Nobel Prize-winning scientists and pioneering artists to community leaders, workers and families, The Memory Tapes offers listeners a rare opportunity to hear Australians tell their stories in their own words. These recordings capture not only historical events, but the emotions, memories and experiences that give them meaning. Through ten themed episodes, the podcast opens a window into the National Library’s extraordinary Oral History Collection, inviting audiences to discover the voices that have shaped Australia’s past and continue to inspire its future.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Dr Barbara Lemon about why oral history is an essential part of the Australian record of our history, how the emotional truth contained within these recordings communicates something beyond mere facts and opinions, and how listeners can access The Memory Tapes podcast and book through the National Library of Australia's website.

World War II Berlin. Freyja Bremer, a patriotic museum assistant, marries Kaspar Voigt, an ambitious SS scholar, to protect her father. Yet she is unaware her husband is instrumental in Himmler’s twisted quest for Aryan supremacy. As she strives to safeguard the priceless Priam’s Treasure from air raids, Freyja falls in love with Darien Lessing, an archaeologist who exposes the moral decay beneath the Regime’s myths. Her awakening drives her into perilous resistance – aiding a Jewish doctor and his wife, Darien’s sister – while uncovering Kaspar’s role in the SS’s darkest programmes, which subvert history to justify invasion, abduction and murder. As Berlin collapses into chaos and bloodshed, Freyja, caught between duty, deception and desire, must risk everything to preserve truth in a world built on lies.

Fables & Lies shines light on lesser-known aspects of the Nazi Regime. It gives voice to the complex moral struggles of German women, the forgotten resistance of Gentiles married to Jews, the dangers of contested history, the evils of Himmler’s racial studies programme and the unsung bravery of German museum curators who saved their nation’s treasures.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Elisabeth Storrs about creating historical fiction in a world where history is contestable, the compromises women and families were compelled to make under the Nazi regime, and the often overlooked consequences of World War I that sowed the seed for World War II.

Paperback and digital editions of Fables and Lies can be found at Booktopia: https://www.booktopia.com.au/fables-lies-elisabeth-storrs/book/9781835744086.html