Good Reading Podcast

In this series of interconnected essays Delia Falconer explores how it feels to live as a reader, a writer and a lover of nature in a era of unprecedented change.From an 'unnatural' history of coal to the effect of a seal turning up in a park just below her apartment Delia embarks on a searching and poetic examination about the meaning we can find in the change that is all around us. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Delia Falconer about why we are already using the term Anthropocene, observing the changing world around us and the implications of the double line-break in Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss.

Born evil or simply mad? Frederick Bailey Deeming was known and reviled across three continents. He spent years travelling under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible and the desperate.The Devil's Work raises fresh questions about Deeming's role in the Whitechapel murders and the identity of Jack the Ripper. In an era when spiritualism and a fascination with the afterlife was rife, Deeming's story attracted some of the world's most powerful and influential people, including Australia's second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin.In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Garry Linnell about one of Australia's most notorious criminals, the attraction of the big stories and bringing history to life in The Devil's Work: How Australia hunted and hanged the serial killer who shocked the world: Jack the Ripper.

As a child growing up in country Queensland Lisa Millar dreamed of having a big life. Now with years on the road as an ABC Foreign Correspondent behind her, she shares her moments of joy among the reporting on grief and tragedy.Lisa battled a debilitating fear of flying that threatened her life and career but only now has she been able to reflect on a joyful childhood, the journey that brought her here, and the change she has witnessed along the way.In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Lisa Millar about growing up in an aviation-obsessed family, facing her fears and embracing the big and the small moments in life.

Back after suspension, Detective Sergeant Robert Cardilini is immediately tasked with solving domestic violence cases. To complicate matters, his new partner is the eager and idealistic young Detective Lorraine Spencer.When a young woman is found bleeding and tied to a chair it leads to a sinister game of exploitation reaching the highest echelons of society. When Spencer goes out on a limb to unravel the mystery, the question is: will Cardilini be there to catch her?In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Rosalba Jeffreys about Perth in the 1960s, the return of Detective Sergeant Robert Cardilini and turning her husband's manuscript into a book.

Josie de Bray was a brothel madam who owned most of Roe Street, Perth from WWI up to the 1940s. This immensely readable social history uses the life of Josie de Bray as conduit into the lives of her friends and competitors – the many women who paraded in their petticoats on the verandas of Roe Street, and who were kept from the public view and were secret keepers themselves in the seamier side of town. In this episode, author and researcher Leigh Straw chats to Heather Lewis about the stigma of sex work past and present, and the process of writing The Petticoat Parade.

Australia has been directly involved in the nuclear industry for decades: from the establishment of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission in 1953 to the secret tests at Maralinga and the decision to export uranium in the 1970s and 1980s. Whether we like it or not we are part of the global nuclear industry and bear a moral obligation as guardian of around 30% of the world's uranium deposits. In Long Half-life, Professor Lowe exposes the fundamental challenges politicians and decision-makers face when their own time horizons rarely go beyond next year's budget or election. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Professor Ian Lowe about landmarks in the political debate around nuclear power, the importance of ordinary people in the decision-making process, and the continuing existential threat to the human race the nuclear industry poses.

Three housemates. One dead, one missing and one accused of murder.Melbourne journalist Olive 'Oli' Groves is obsessed with the 'Housemate Homicides' a story that set career in motion nine years earlier. When the one missing housemate suddenly turns up dead the whole story comes flooding back for Oli.Paired with enthusiastic and tech-savvy millennial Cooper Ng to reinvestigate the case, Oli is forced to confront both her past and the present in a new media landscape that's turned digital. Oli soon discovers that her search for the truth may find the answers lie much closer to home.In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Sarah Bailey about the life of a cold case in the news cycle, exploring the friction in generational differences and the challenges of creating a new character.

Tori Swyft wakes up in a Barcelona hotel room to a gruesome murder scene. With a splitting headache and no memory of the night before, her world is in turmoil. Could she really have done such a thing? If she didn't then who did?A man known only as The Voice phones her with revelations of a shocking video proving Tori is the murderer. Set within the seedy world of global politics and counter-espionage, Tori soon finds herself in a race against time to prove her innocence.In this episode, Gregory Dobbs chats to John M Green about the new breed of female spy, the real threat of technology in the arena of geo-politics, and his love affair with the city of Barcelona.

In this deeply personal reflection on women's lives and creative desires Nikki Gemmell explores the struggle she experienced in finding her own creative space. Dissolve is a meditation on those difficult times in establishing herself as a writer, but also a conversation with all young women who are seeking to fulfil their own creative desires.In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Nikki Gemmell about emerging from the humiliation of heartbreak in her early twenties, building confidence as a writer and how to 'un-lady' yourself.