Raising Boys in the Twenty-first Century

With special guest:

• Steve Biddulph AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable
  

It was hard enough to raise boys in the 20^th Century. What are the new challenges facing parents who want to raise their sons to be the open-hearted, kind and strong men they can be?

Our guest today has revised and updated his classic parenting book released in 1997, a book that is found in over three million homes around the world. There is a lot of new information and surprising research for Steve to draw on in his new book Raising Boys in the Twenty-first Century. There is a new understanding of hormonal changes as boys turn into men, changes that mean the age from 6 to 14 is when fathers count the most.

We know the world is in a lot of trouble and in many ways we have failed our boys. The suggestion from Steve to counter that failing is the most important part of his book and very simple. Dads or Dad figures simply need to spend some time, to just be around their boys particularly when they are between the ages of 6 and 14. Modelling is vitally important even if the role model doesn’t know he is doing it.

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From Little Things Big Things Grow

With special guest:

• John Stapleton
  … in conversation with Bill Kable
  

John Stapleton is a legend at Dads on the Air. In the year 2000 while working as a journalist he became involved with a number of fathers who struggled to see their own children because of the machinations of the Family Court. Worse still, because of the legislation no-one in the broader community knew what was going on. So John resolved to shed some light on the problem through a community radio program run on a shoestring from 2GLF in Liverpool New South Wales after giving the program its name. Here we are 18 years later still going strong.

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Ballet Brothers

With special guest:

• Jake Burden
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Jake Burden tells us that everyone can dance. For those with a particular ability and the drive to do all the hard training that goes with being a dancer on the stage Jake tells us there are all sorts of rewards.

On the flip side of these benefits there remains an element in our society that thinks dancing is somehow unmanly, that only young girls should express themselves in this way and because male dancers are seen as different they can be subjected to bullying. This is where Jake Burden steps in to provide a safe haven as the creator of Ballet Brothers, based in Newcastle New South Wales.

Jake is the creator and director of Ballet Brothers an independent organisation aimed at supporting and encouraging boys who love to dance. Jake has experienced bullying himself but because of his love of dancing he did not let that stop him achieving his goals. Now he wants to let boys know that if they are passionate about dance they are not alone. As well as training boys to become better dancers Jake provides a support network and a platform for male dancers of all ages from around the world to share experience and wisdom with each other.

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Woo’s Wonderful World of Maths

With special guest:

• Eddie Woo
  … in conversation with Bill Kable
  

We hardly need to do an introduction for our guest today. Eddie Woo has become very well-known through regular television appearances and YouTube lessons as one of the leading teachers in the world. The Government has recognised this by recently appointing him as a “super teacher” so that he can visit schools around NSW and inspire the teachers to inspire their students.

Ever thought that you were just no good at Maths and anyway what good is Maths in everyday life. Our guest today begs to differ on both counts.

Eddie says Maths is for everyone and he has lots of ways of convincing you that not only is Maths fascinating but it underlies everything in the universe. Yes Eddie Woo comes to Dads on the Air and adds to the audience on his YouTube channel Wootube where he has been viewed a staggering 25 million times.

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Roadies

With special guest:

• Stuart Coupe
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

We have always heard about the sex and drugs of the rock’n’roll lifestyle but few of us get any access to this hidden part of the music industry. Until now

Stuart Coupe has lived in the music world for over forty years and by getting the roadies, these unsung heroes, to open up we can find out both the good and the bad sides of this life on the road.

Stuart tells us one of his motivations in doing the research and writing his latest book Roadies: The Secret History of Australian Rock’n’Roll was to preserve the stories from the early days because the roadies have had some casualties and he does not want the stories to disappear with the last of the original roadies. Not only does the lifestyle take a toll on the roadies’ physical health but the toll on family life is intense. The roadies will often be away from home for 10 to 11 months of the year because the show has to go on.

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The Children’s House

With special guest:

• Alice Nelson
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Alice Nelson has produced a topical work with enough discussion points to keep us busy for a long time in her new book The Children’s House.

The title of the book comes from a kibbutz in Israel. The kibbutz movement arose in Israel after the horrors of Nazi Germany, partly as a way of allowing parents to work for the new state of Israel while ensuring that their children would be properly cared for. But does the idea of communal parenting go too far? This is just one of the ethical questions raised in The Children’s House.

From Israel we travel to Rwanda and finally to the world’s melting pot in New York. It is there that we discover the different forces prevalent in modern families with all their mysteries and complexities. In speaking to Alice about her characters we get even more depth into the non-traditional relationships revealed in her book. There are some real surprises in store for the reader.

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Murder at Myall Creek

With special guest:

• Mark Tedeschi KC AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is the well-known former Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales and author of Murder at Myall Creek, Mark Tedeschi.

Mark has written a deeply moving account of the massacre of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children in 1838 which led to a trial that defined the nation of Australia. If the law of the land in Australia was to have any credibility, if the principle is that we are all equal before the law, then this is a watershed case.

At the time of the massacre it was only 50 years since Captain Arthur Phillip and his first fleet arrived in Australia yet the inhabitants of the country for the previous 60,000 years were under threat of genocide from the new arrivals.

There were many in the community who were sympathetic to all Aboriginal killers and this was expressed in the editorials of the major newspapers such as The Sydney Herald (before it added “Morning” to its masthead). Against this background there were some heroes that stood up against the general view of the free settlers, the squatters, the military, the emancipists, the newspapers and even the convict population which still amounted to 36% of the population. Principal among these was John H Plunkett who as Attorney-General at the time had the duty to prosecute the eleven convicts and former convicts who were put on trial for murder.

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How to Buy a Home

With special guest:

• Emily Power
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Today we catch up with one of the many young people struggling with the biggest purchase of their lives. For the young men trying to support a family and progress their careers at the same time, buying a first home means pressure.

Our guest today is not only an expert commentator on real estate but she is also trying to purchase her first home in Melbourne.

Emily Power is a regular on TV and radio but we did not know her secret project of getting herself on the first rung for home ownership. Emily avoids the smashed avocadoes but has some tips that have worked for her in joining the crazy housing market we see in Melbourne and Sydney.

If you do not know what is a “debt trap” and how to escape it then listen in. Emily tells us in How to Buy a Home: From Debt to a Deposit what some of the terms used by banks and lawyers really mean.

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Australia Reimagined

With special guest:

• Hugh Mackay AO
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Australia has had a well-documented and unprecedented run of economic growth but this has not translated into a happy, harmonious society. Our guest today is Hugh Mackay who describes the current level of anxiety in Australia as an epidemic.

The level of income inequality in Australia is growing, public education is under-resourced and our children are falling behind when compared to other first world countries.

And at a time when we need them most we are losing faith in our major institutions namely the Church, our elected parliamentarians who are supposed to be acting in the country’s interest, the major banks and even the families who give us security. Right now all of these are under threat. Over half of marriages end in divorce in the first ten years leaving children in the lurch. The two Royal Commissions that have investigated banking and before that institutional abuse of children have revealed some of the worst abuses of power.

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Profiles in Hope

With special guest:

• John Brogden AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Even talking about suicide would have been frowned upon a few years ago. Mental illness is still not attractive but we need to do it.

How can we ignore a situation where 63,000 people attempt suicide every year in Australia? In 2022 there were 1200 road deaths in Australia. The rare shark deaths lead the news cycle for days and yet 3300 people die by suicide every year in Australia. On average 9 Australians die every day and three out of four of these people dying are male. The highest proportion of these males are between forty and fifty years old. The suicide rate went down a little during the Covid pandemic but the numbers have gone back up and are very stubborn.

We talk today with John Brogden about possible solutions. One thing we should be agitating for is a massive public campaign about the causes of suicide. This approach has been extraordinarily successful in the area of cancer treatment particularly breast cancer in wormen.

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The Healthy Baby Gut Guide

With special guest:

• Dr Vincent Ho
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

This has been going on for a long time and until now people have been unsure as to what should be done. We are talking about allergic reactions which range from coughing and sneezing through to anaphylactic shock and even death.

In his book The Healthy Baby Gut Guide, Dr Vincent Ho shows us a way to turn back the booming allergy outbreak. At the moment almost one in five Australian children have allergies which take the form of eczema, asthma, hay fever and severe responses to certain types of foods, think peanuts.

Dr Ho tells us his passion for doing something about allergies arose when his own daughter became a patient. A parent feels scared and powerless when a child has an allergic reaction. And there is no shortage of advice, sometimes dubious about what should be done. At last there is some clear and authoritative guidance allowing a confident decision to be made about the good health of our children.

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Friday on My Mind

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

George Young made his name internationally by writing with his best mate Harry Vanda a song we can all sing along to more than 50 years after its release. So it was a natural choice as the title of Jeff Apter’s book Friday on My Mind: the life of George Young.

George managed to get a ticket to The Beatles Sydney performance in 1964. He decided right then that he was going to be in music as a career but it was not going to be a straightforward ride as we learn in Jeff’s book.

We hear from our special guest today about the toughness of all the large Young clan. Eight of them arrived in Australia as Ten Pound Poms. They needed that toughness firstly as they grew up in a dreary part of Scotland. Then when they abandoned their life in Scotland they needed to be tough once again when they arrived in the Villawood Migrant Hostel in Sydney. Villawood was not the land of milk and honey they had seen on the posters. It was after a fight in the hostel that George met Harry strumming a guitar and the nucleus of The Easybeats formed.

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Mackenzie’s Mission

With special guest:

• Jonny Casella
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Before we hear from Jonny about the ground breaking medical mission inspired by little Mackenzie Casella we need to find out about Jonny and Rachael’s journey.

Fortunately not many of us face the tragedy and trauma that Jonny did after deciding to become a father. And having been through this valley of having a beautiful baby then losing her not many parents are prepared to speak candidly about what it all means.

In this program Jonny opens his heart to take us through the seven short months that he spent with his daughter Mackenzie while she battled with a genetic disease known as SMA (spinal muscular atrophy).

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Paul Kelly

With special guest:

• Stuart Coupe
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Paul Kelly is woven into the fabric of Australia. But it was not always so, as our guest today Stuart Coupe tells us. After first picking up a guitar at the age of 18 and writing his first song at 20, it did take a while and a number of rejections before Paul Kelly was accepted as a performer.

In his book called Paul Kelly: the man, the music and the life in between, Stuart shows that he knows his subject well; so well that he can add this book to the canon on Paul Kelly’s life which already includes Paul Kelly’s lengthy autobiography.

It is exciting to delve into the good and the bad parts of Paul Kelly’s life. From a big and loving secure family, who were motivated on the big issues of the day, Paul has emerged on the national scene. He is our storyteller but he could also have been one of our favourite sportsmen if things had turned out differently. Paul showed a lot of ability in cricket, Australian Rules football and also tennis. All that Australian sporting life as well as a taste of University and hard manual labour has informed what he can tell us about ourselves.

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The Champagne War

With special guest:

• Fiona McIntosh
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The beautiful cover of this book gives us a clue. This is a bubbly story thoroughly researched and elegantly told by our guest today Fiona McIntosh. Fiona’s new book The Champagne War takes us to the Champagne region of northern France during the First World War to tell us the story of individuals caught up in the conflict.

Fiona tells us how she came to write the book through a chance meeting with a local winemaker in a village of the region. This gave her the inspiration.

Once on the path to tell the story there was no escaping the horrifying events such as the gas warfare that left so many dead or permanently injured. There is the uncertainty of looking at the future when war has come almost to the back fence. And there is also the unexpected when the combatants can put their weapons down briefly and have a civilised interaction.

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Being Black ’n Chicken, & Chips

With special guest:

• Matt Okine
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Matt Okine’s book Being Black ’n Chicken, & Chips is based on his award-winning stand-up show and is at once heart-breaking and hilarious.

Matt provides a bird’s eye view of life as a 12 year old when things start unravelling, just as that boy/child is working out some important stuff. He is working on the relationship with his father that has never really developed; there is a potential heart stopping girlfriend on the fringes; and there is a girl next door who is more of a friend than his male companions. Finally and most importantly he has to negotiate the changing relationship with his mother.

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The Little Book of Cosmic Catastrophes

With special guest:

• Dr Sara Webb
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The title of this program may look as though it will make us doom struck or at least a little gloomy but strangely it does not. This might have something to do with our guest who is so bright and cheery talking about these biggest of the biggest of issues.

Dr Sara Webb has written The Little Book of Cosmic Catastrophes (That Could End the World) for a general audience who will be able to get a better understanding of where we have come from and where our Earth and humanity itself will go.

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The Resilience Project

With special guest:

• Hugh van Cuylenburg
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When Hugh van Cuylenburg went to India as a volunteer teacher he did not expect to be on the receiving end of the learning process. At first reluctant to even be in India he soon found that he was learning from his students how to develop the psychological foundation for success in all educational and physical pursuits.

Hugh’s trip finished up being full of surprises. He was surrounded by so much poverty yet there was also happiness and contentment. Working on his observations Hugh was able to develop The Resilience Project for application in Australia and backed up his approach with technical qualifications obtained by completing a Master’s Degree at University.

In Australia many school children are anxious and depressed. They spend too much time looking at their mobile phones and other devices. Individual sports people such as some of our leading cricketers are needing to take time off to improve their mental health and sporting teams have earned a reputation for misbehaving when they seem to have everything presented on a platter. So if something is going wrong here what can be done.

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Lifespan

With special guest:

• David Sinclair PhD AO
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To is a visionary book in a fast moving field. In fact when we talk to Dr David Sinclair for today’s program we discover that there have been some amazing developments in the scientific research of aging even since the book was written.

The immediate response of some people to aging research is that death at a certain age is the natural order of things. Perhaps you might hear that someone has had a look at old age and now does not want to lengthen this time in that person’s life. But would we want to go back to the time not so long ago when life expectancy was more like 40 than the current 80? What if by controlling aging we could reduce rather than extend time spent in total dependency in a nursing home?

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Mentoring Men

With special guest:

• Simon Jarvis
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Who says men need help in today’s society?

Our guest today would answer by pointing to the shockingly high rate of male suicide with 7 out of 10 victims being male. Yet at a time like this it is hard to gain financial support for male issues because of the focus on other worthy causes. This is where Mentoring Men can make a difference and where Chief Executive Officer Simon Jarvis can build on the work by his predecessor and founder of the movement, Ian Westmoreland, a guest on Dads on the Air in November 2019.

Simon tells us that Mentoring Men is not a crisis centre. This is not for men who have gone over the edge in one way or another. The group aims to get in early with men who just need a non-judgemental ear, someone who may have experienced all this before and who might have a few tips to pass on.

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