The Drawing Room

Reggie Watts is a beat-boxer and musician, using loops of his voice to craft live improvised works that sound like tracks from the best album you've never heard.

He's also a comedian, one half of the electronica group Wajata, a television host, actor, and the bandleader on the Late Late Show with James Cordern.

In the Drawing Room, Reggie talks about putting a band together, the power of absurdism, and how improv allows him to surprise everyone — even himself.

What Rhymes With Cars and Girls, Tim Rogers' first album away from You Am I, was a triumphant release that was eventually turned into a stage musical, and saw Tim pick up an ARIA Award.

But it seems that Rogers has unfinished business.

His new album with The Twin Set, Tines of Stars, Unfurled, is more than a sequel: it's an album in conversation with the original, with each song talking back to one of those earlier tracks.

Olympic Girls, the last album by New Zealand band Tiny Ruins, took them around the world and solidified Hollie Fullbrook's reputation as one of the best songwriters around.

Now a new album, Ceremony, is on the way, and in the Drawing Room, Fullbrook shares the inspirations behind the record, and how she collaborated on a very unusual project with the novelist David Mitchell.

From The Go-Betweens to his own solo albums, Robert Forster is one of the great figures of Australian music.

His latest album, The Candle and the Flame, is another triumph. It's also an intensely personal record, recorded in the wake of his wife's diagnosis with ovarian cancer.

The master of Australian Americana, Henry Wagons, has just released a new solo album, South of Everywhere, and is heading off to stages around the country.

On RN Drive, Henry talks about finding inspiration after lockdown, LA writers rooms, and whether we need a better term for international flavours of Americana.

Sport is meant to be the healthiest thing in the world, and professional athletes operate at the top levels of fitness.

So why do women at the top level face stress fractures at three times the rate of their male peers? And why is disordered eating so common among this cohort?

Lauren Fleshman was a professional runner: a college phenomenon and a multiple-time National Champion in the 5000m race. Now, in her new book, Good For A Girl: A Woman Running In A Man's World, she looks back on her career, and examines what needs to change so that sport is healthy for women: in body and mind.

A professor of English at Harvard, a Pulitzer prize winner and a staff writer at The New Yorker, Louis Menand brings a careful eye to the big picture of history.

In his latest book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he's looking back at a time when the US became the cultural force in the world — and at the figures who helped to shape that time

A professor of English at Harvard, a Pulitzer prize winner and a staff writer at The New Yorker, Louis Menand brings a careful eye to the big picture of history.

In his latest book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he's looking back at a time when the US became the cultural force in the world — and at the figures who helped to shape that time

This is meant to be an age of amazing potential for artists. Global streaming promised access to huge audiences and self-publishing the potential for personal control.

So why are artists earning less than they used to? And how have a smaller and smaller number of companies come to control the distribution of books, movies, and music?

Rebecca Giblin is a professor at Melbourne Law School and the Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia.

Cory Doctorow is a best-selling author and activist

Together they're the authors of Chokepoint Capitalism, which looks at why these promises have never been realised, and what we can do to change the system.

Hannah Arendt was one of the foremost political theorists of the 20th Century.

Perhaps best known for the phrase 'the banality of evil', Arendt wrote extensively on power, freedom, and the importance of individual action, and she remains a key figure of moral philosophy.

In her book, Hannah Arendt, Samantha Rose Hill has taken a fresh and fascinating look back at Arendt's life and work. She's also published a collection of Arendt's poetry.

Ahead of her appearance at Adelaide Writers Week, Hill talks about the importance of experience, the meaning of 'understanding', and Arendt's significant sense of humour.

With decades in the business and multiple Grammy nominations, Eric Bibb is one of the enduring voices of the blues — and what a voice.

Over his latest two albums, Dear America and Ridin', he's looking at America and what it means to be a part of the history of that country.