Bad Boy Boogie

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Bon Scott as his name might suggest was born in Scotland but after his parents signed up to be £10 Poms he arrived in Australia at the age of 6 to a new life. That short life was filled to the brim and Bon provided plenty of his own commentary on his wild adventures before and during his time with the world beating rock band AC/DC.

Our guest today is writer Jeff Apter the author of Bad Boy Boogie, a new book published by Allen & Unwin. Jeff is very familiar with the AC/DC story having previously written about other members of the band the Young brothers and original bass player Mark Evans. When we speak with Jeff again today we are able to go behind the scenes to find out how Bon fitted in so quickly and easily with the Young brothers in their closely guarded troupe. We find out more about the real Bon Scott, his wild side where a party could go on for days but also how many women who came into his orbit described his as a real gentleman.

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Still Standing

With special guest:

• Chrissie Foster
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

This is the story of how Chrissie Foster responded and refused to back down when confronted by an all-powerful secretive protected institution. Chrissie Foster’s family tragedies and the tepid response by the Catholic Church changed her from living a life of domestic harmony and peace in a totally unexpected way.

No doubt when the choice of schools had to be made for their daughters there were discussions between Chrissie and her husband Anthony. Because of Chrissie’s background being raised and educated in the Church they chose a Catholic primary school. Years later they discovered what their daughters had endured.

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The Kindness Revolution

With special guest:

• Hugh Mackay AO
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

When we looked forward to 2021 we also looked back on the disaster of the national bushfires season of 2019/20. That changed us but we did not expect the floods and then the ongoing impact of Covid 19.

Our guest today is Hugh Mackay who has been listening to what the community thinks and says for over 60 years as the country’s pre-eminent social researcher. Hugh draws on this immense experience to see where the community is now and what comes next.

It may turn out that The Kindness Revolution is Hugh’s last non-fiction book to grace our book shelves so we should all listen up. In his usual articulate way Hugh sees that the horrors of 2020 and 2021 have in fact set the scene for a kindness revolution.

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Far from Home

With special guest:

• Rosie Ayliffe
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

All Hell broke loose on that night in 2016.

When we speak with Rosie Ayliffe about her book Far from Home we hear firsthand how her loving 20 year old daughter Mia was put in harm’s way in a backpacker hostel. We hear how Mia and another backpacker who tried to protect her were both killed by another resident in the middle of a psychotic episode. What made it even worse is that Rosie was far away on the other side of the world in England when this nightmare unfolded. Rosie’s dreams of a future life involving her daughter Mia were gone.

Rosie thought that her daughter was working in a healthy environment on a farm in outback Queensland in order to comply with the Australian government’s visa requirements for an extended stay in Australia. After being told by the local Police in England about her daughter’s tragic death Rosie decided immediately to come to Australia and get to the bottom of what had happened.

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High Adventure

With special guest:

• Mike Allsop
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Mike Allsop was worried that marriage would spell the end of the adventurous life he had been living. He also had experienced a difficult family upbringing himself. So when he met the love of his life he certainly did not rush into that long walk down the aisle. But these days he has the “full disaster” with his wife Wendy and three beautiful children. And there are lessons to be learned from Mike’s progress that we can all appreciate.

Talking to Mike makes you feel like you were there with him when he reached the summit of Mt Everest with nobody in front of him. We learn about the setbacks when he was getting ready to run 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents starting with his belief that he wasn’t really a marathon runner.

This love of setting and reaching goals started when he was a child and he saw an Air New Zealand jet passing overhead. He had the goal of becoming a pilot and finished up getting his pilot’s licence before he had his motor vehicle licence. By gaining the confidence of some airline pilots he went on to achieve his dream.

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Guy Tai Shanghai

With special guest:

• Eric Johnson
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The number of American men who have completely left the workforce to raise children has more than doubled over the past decade according to a New York Times report on census data. And many others serve as primary caretakers for their families while maintaining freelance or part-time jobs.

This situation is reflected in cosmopolitan cities around the world where expat wives are taking up new jobs and bringing with them their families. In previous times it was usually the men who arrived in foreign cities to start work and their wives were labelled Tai Tais or trailing wives. These Tai Tais were unlikely to find work because of visa restrictions and language barriers so they dedicated themselves to running the home, perhaps with some domestic help.

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From Fiji to The Voice

With special guest:

• Voli K
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In the program today we speak to Voli K who distinguished himself by being a standout performer singing on the TV program The Voice.

iTaukei is what the Fijian people call themselves and we have a picture in our minds of what this means. We may think of the Fijian Rugby team or other representative sportsmen who are built like trees and run like gazelles. We also think of their big smiles in black faces saying Bula a thousand times a day.

What we do not think of is a white skinned Fijian. Voli K was born in Fiji and has the skin condition of albinism which affects a small proportion of Fijians, other Melanesians in the Pacific basin and people all around the world.

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Malcolm Young

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Malcolm was a younger brother of George Young guitarist and songwriter with The Easybeats. Music was definitely in the family but in such a fickle industry could lightning strike twice after the enormous success of brother George?

The Young family story starts in an economically deprived part of Scotland. Then seven of the eight members of the family became Ten Pound Poms and settled in a migrant hostel in Australia. One of the elder children continued to work as a musician in Europe.

After years of playing guitar in his bedroom Malcolm joined a band and later agreed to let Angus in, recognising at that early stage the genius of his younger brother. It was his sister who came up with the name for the band and that was never changed. It is arguable that their choice of music style never changed either, always driving rock’n’roll.

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A Better Death

With special guest:

• Dr Ranjana Srivastava
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Most people in our society try to avoid death and taxes. But at least in the case of our mortality it is a universal experience, a bookend of our life, part of being human.

Our guest today is Dr Ranjana Srivastava OAM who is an Oncologist working in the public hospital sector of Victoria. Ranjana packs into her daily life being a doctor, an award winning author, a journalist and also a family life with her husband and three children.

Yet her professional life as a cancer specialist revolves around dealing with a deadly disease, cancer. It often falls to her to pass on the unimaginable news that the person in front of her has limited time to live. Some doctors can’t imagine themselves doing this because they want to help heal a condition. Other doctors can’t imagine doing anything else and for this they have a special type of courage.

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An Unlikely Prisoner

With special guest:

• Sean Turnell
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

It is a special welcome to our guest today Sean Turnell. Sean survived for 650 days in Insein prison under the orders of the military Junta of Myanmar. In Sean’s new book An Unlikely Prisoner we hear how this unarmed University Professor who weighs 50kg wringing wet became a dangerous prisoner to a foreign government needing armed escorts wherever he went.

We hear from Sean that he was summarily arrested in his hotel before being confined to a small cell he shared with an enormous rat. Nothing could prepare a person for this ordeal and Sean did not see it coming. Yet as you will hear in this interview Sean maintained his faith in humanity, his sense of humour and mostly his health.

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The Boy Crisis

With special guest:

• Dr Warren Farrell
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The big issues of today include Hamas on the international stage, gangs of youths in our cities and disengaged sons in our families. Our guest today has found a common link in each of these and that is the preponderance of dad deprivation for both the boys and girls involved.

Dr Farrell has been researching for 11 years in order to produce his latest book and some of his findings are eye opening. For example we discover that the downward spiral of boys in the developed world is leading to physical changes. Young men of today have a sperm count of only 50% what their grandfathers had at the same age and it is dropping by 1.5% every year.

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Saving Lieutenant Kennedy

With special guest:

• Brett Mason
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Most Australians have some knowledge of the turning point in the Pacific war when the fear of invasion lessened. Most of us know something of the heroic story of Lieutenant John F Kennedy or JFK as he became known. Brett Mason in his book Saving Lieutenant Kennedy fills in the gaps in this amazing and hugely consequential story. These events literally changed the history of the world because if JFK had not survived it is conceivable that nuclear conflict could have erupted in the years that followed.

The story happens to involve an Australian who was also heroic, namely Lieutenant Reg Evans of the RAN. Reg Evans operated behind enemy lines knowing that if he were to be betrayed he would certainly be tortured and killed. Evans relied on his Solomons Islands friends who faced the same threats in what they were doing.

Evans and JFK were two very different personalities brought together in August 1943 in a way that echoes the discovery of Dr Livingstone in the African jungle. JFK’s words on being discovered on an uninhabited island of the south Pacific? “Man, am I glad to see you!”

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Parents Acting Badly

With special guest:

• Dr Jennifer Harman
  … in conversation with Bill Kable
  

Why is it that we never see young animals rejecting a caring parent in the way we see some children acting? The behaviour of the other parent may be the cause and this strange behaviour may be due to Parental Alienation.

Our guest today is Associate Professor Jennifer Harman who tells us that the problem of Parental Alienation is all too common and getting worse around the world yet it is still decried by some as “junk science”.

Jennifer tells us that the scientific analysis of Parental Alienation is still at a beginning stage. The research is still focussing on the description of Parental Alienation because we have not yet reached the predictive stage. This is the normal scientific approach to research and can be compared with where we are up to with the topic du jour, domestic violence. However no-one denies the existence of domestic violence in the way they once did.

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Moment of Truth

With special guest:

• Prof Mark McKenna
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

In the Quarterly Essay Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future Professor Mark McKenna presents a significant contribution to the general debate and he is our respected guest in today’s program. At a time when Australians are searching for their national identity on Anzac Day and there is talk of a Republic once again Professor McKenna asks why has a dispute arisen regarding Australia Day?

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Tell No One

With special guest:

• Brendan Watkins
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

The title of this book Tell No One has an ominous ring to it. We can imagine sex offenders threatening their victims should the story ever get out. As Brendan discovered there may also be another reason for this instruction involving a power imbalance.

Brendan knew at a young age that he had been adopted but when he started looking for his biological parents he did not know if his conception may have resulted from a sexual offence or young love or something else. One thing that kept driving Brendan was his desire to know the truth wherever that may lead.

The first part of his story was surprising. His mother had been 27 when Brendan was born so she was not the teenager in trouble who adopts out her child under pressure from her family. Then the shock of finding out that his mother had been a nun, a bride of Christ. Having made this discovery Brendan was mightily disappointed when the Catholic agency acting as intermediary advised that his mother said they must never meet.

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Black Pearls

With special guests:

• Colin & Paul Tatz
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

This program is dedicated to the memory of Professor Colin Tatz.

Black Pearls: The Aboriginal and Islander Sports Hall of Fame is a celebratory book about the earth shattering sporting performances of our Aboriginal and Islander Australians since the arrival of the white man in 1788.

This handsome work is presented by the Aboriginal Studies Press. As our guest Colin Tatz explains, the book is also a Hall of Fame that unlike bricks and mortar halls can be on display in our own homes and carried around with us.

With its beautiful pictures and stories about its 276 members covering 36 sports this is a project that began in the Bi-Centenary year of 1988 after Colin spoke to some communities about the absence of recognition for these sports stars.

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Don’t Dream It’s Over

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Jeff Apter has written the definitive story of Neil Finn, one of the Finns, including some remarkable things about this Kiwi icon we claim as an Aussie.

Neil first appeared in our consciousness as a freaky member of the band Split Enz. He was the one up front singing I Got You which he also wrote. The band was not a one hit wonder but there were tensions among the members particularly between Neil and the leader of the band, his brother Tim, which cut short the life of the band.

Ultimately Tim gave his brother good advice, go and form your own band and this led to Crowded House arriving and taking over the world record charts.

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Fathers Reaching Out

With special guest:

• Mark Williams
  … in conversation with Bill Kable
  

Our guest in today’s program is Mark Williams who has been awarded “Inspirational Father of the Year” at the Pride of Britain awards. This is impressive enough but it also shows how far he has come since the birth of his son Ethan in 2004.

Both Mark and his wife Michelle suffered crippling anxiety after the birth and Mark hit rock bottom when he began to experience suicidal thoughts. And yet the reason for the torrent of negative emotions and spiralling depression had less to do with their son than the mental health issues that were confronting them. In hindsight Mark recognises that he had experienced a condition long recognised in mothers, that of post-natal depression.

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Driftwood The Musical

With special guest:

• Tania de Jong AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Something unusual for listeners today. Our guest is Tania de Jong who tells us about a new production called Driftwood The Musical. Tania happens to be the creator and producer of Driftwood The Musical as well as being one of the stars on stage. For her choice of song we have the special pleasure of bringing you a song Tania wrote and performed herself.

The story of Driftwood concerns Tania’s grandparents who survived Nazi atrocities in Vienna and eventually became artistic treasures in their adopted country Australia.

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The Power of Good People

With special guest:

• Para Paheer
  … in conversation with Bill Kable and Ken Thompson

Para Paheer was five years old when civil war between Tamils and the Sinhalese government started in Sri Lanka and continued for the next twenty six years. At the time Para did not know that the causes went back to 1830 when the Tamil people were imported to Sri Lanka to work on the plantations in conditions that were not far off slavery. Para had spent his childhood in poverty by Australian standards but when the war began conditions got even harder. Survival required courage, ingenuity and in Para’s case the kindness of strangers.

The inspiring part of Para’s story, as told in The Power of Good People: Surviving the Sri Lankan Civil War, is that he describes accurately and fully some of the horrors he witnessed and experienced personally yet he can focus his attention on the good things that people he has met along the way have done for him and his family.

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