Since 1933, the Australian Women’s Weekly has been Australia’s highest-selling women’s magazine. And from birthday cakes to barbecues, the Weekly taught generations of Australians what to eat and how to cook it at home.

Drawing on recipes, food editorials and readers’ memories, Lauren Samuelsson’s A Matter of Taste: The Australian Women’s Weekly & Its Influence on Australian Food Culture is a celebration of the Weekly’s essential role in the development of Australian food culture.

On this deliciously nostalgic episode of Gleetalks, Lauren talks to historian Professor Michelle Arrow about how the Weekly encouraged us to be adventurous, to experiment in the kitchen, and to try new ingredients and flavours, stimulating an eclectic, Australian way of eating which is still reflected on our tables today.

Like what you heard? Buy your copy here: gleebooks.com.au/product/matter-o…an-food-culture/

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit.

In her seventh novel, Theory and Practice, award-winning writer Michelle de Kretser bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes making and unmaking fiction as we read and expanding our notion of what a novel can contain.

In this episode of Gleetalks, she chats to Professor Elizabeth McMahon of the University of NSW about this mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame, of theory and practice, where art and life intersect.

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In the Nineteenth Century, the Russian and British played what was dubbed the Great Game for strategic influence in Central Asia.

Today, the players have changed. Combine Putin’s Ukraine folly and American isolationism and, China now has the chance to project its power globally, as the US did from the early Twentieth Century. What are the implications and consequences, especially for Australia?

In this episode of Gleetalks, Australia’s former ambassador to China Geoff Raby AO talks to broadcaster Geraldine Doogue about his new book Great Game On: The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy, which explores these geopolitical forces and strategic questions.

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From Palm Beach to Cronulla, Mount Druitt to Bondi, Sydney is a city made for swimming.

Over a calendar year, lifelong swimmer, educator and writer Chris Baker swam at iconic beaches, municipal pools, harbour baths, tidal rock pools, bushland lakes and a backyard pool,

In this episode of Gleetalks, he talks to curator and broadcaster Michaela Kalowksi about his book Swimming Sydney: A Tale of 52 Swims, a valentine to the beautiful obsession of swimming in the world’s most beautiful city, and how storytelling is the best way to navigate life’s emotional currents.

The 1970s. The era of flares, treads, Gough… and the founding of Gleebooks – but that’s another story!

It was also the age of the advent of feminism, rampant police and political corruption, and the rise of drug-fuelled organised crime in Australia, where Nugan Hand, Mr Asia and Robert Trimbole became household names.

In this episode of Gleetalks, investigative journalist Ronni Salt talks to Gleebooks Events Manager Sunil Badami about the intrigues and politics in her new crime thriller, Gunnawah, featuring a colourful cast of characters and gripping escapades in Trimbole’s old Riverina stomping ground.

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Renowned Australian physician and academic Dr Norelle Lickiss AO discusses her collection of essays "On the Kindness of Strangers and Other Essays: Musing on Medicine as a Human Science" (40South, 2024).

Drawing on her long and acclaimed career as a doctor, teacher and scholar, these writings cover a range of topics, from the practice of medicine, to art, philosophy and death.

Many of the pieces have been published elsewhere in professional journals, while others are more personal, and they offer a fascinating glimpse into the life and work of an extraordinary Australian.