The Drawing Room

Do you sometimes wish you could be more persuasive in the workplace ... or the family home?

The art of persuasion is often painted as Machiavellian but author Michael McQueen's new book Mindstuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds argues that in our ideology-driven and polarised age, certainty has taken the place of curiosity and open-mindedness has given way to stubbornness. 

Guest: Michael McQueen, Author

There's one industry that has been portrayed in film and books more than any other and yet very few people ever have first-hand contact with it. Jana Monroe is a trailblazing female agent and criminal profiler of serial killers in the famous behavioural science unit at the FBI.

She is also the one who trained Jodie Foster in her role for The Silence of the Lambs to understand what it's like to deal with serial killers as your day job. She's written about her experiences in Hearts of Darkness

Guest:Jana Monroe, Author

There’s a certain mystery that parents have. Who were they before you? What did they do? How did they think?

Journalist Rachelle Unreich thought she knew her mother Mira’s life well - her upbringing in Czechoslovakia, her time in concentration camps during World War 2 and the life she created after migrating to Australia. She ended up finding out much more through interviews with her shortly before her death which formed her book A Brilliant Life. 

Guest:Rachelle Unreich, Author 

What does democracy mean to you? 

It's a simple enough question but the answer is often a lot more difficult. 

Astra Taylor realised that looking at insecurity within the American democratic system could be a way of uniting people and co-founded The Debt Collective. Her new book The Age of Insecurity explores that idea in detail.Guest:Astra Taylor, Author and Organiser

You carry around a camera in your pocket every day. Documenting both the important and mundane moments - from weddings to a receipt you might need later. It’s your story but also our story.

Now, these collections are digital, but over the last decades, people have donated their photos from shoe boxes, mantel pieces, photo albums and negatives to the New South Wales State Library.

The library’s new ‘Shot’ exhibition showcases 400 photos taken between 1845 and 2022 giving us a history of Australia and the art form itself.

Guest:Geoffrey Barker, Curator of 'Shot'

Studies show that we really do like the sound of our own voice, with people rating the sound of their own accents highly on a list of ‘social attractiveness’, but it also helps us project our sense of identity and relate to others.

Rob Drummond’s own accent has been described as ‘vanilla’ - an admission he makes in his new book You’re All Talk: Why We Are What We Speak.

Guest:Rob Drummond, author and linguist

In 2009 comedian Dara Ó Briain was described as “television broadcaster Sir Terry Wogan's heir apparent as Britain's favourite Irishman…”

Conversely, and as a testament to his own modesty, he once described himself as looking like "one of Tony Soprano's henchmen, on a bad day"... I don’t know which one comes with more pressure.

He is in Australia on tour at the moment and he’s picking up where he left off before the pandemic with his show ‘So Where Were We’.Guest:Dara Ó Briain, Comedian

David McBride was a lawyer in the Australian army who leaked classified information to the ABC that revealed allegations of war crimes by special forces in Afghanistan.

But who was he before that? and what makes a man willing to risk everything, to tell the truth. His autobiography  ‘The Nature of Honour’ is out now.

Guest:David McBride, Author