The Wheeler Centre

Hear from one of the country’s most acclaimed authors, Kate Grenville, on her dazzling new work of non-fiction – a colonial-era cold case that’s part locked-room mystery, part captivating exploration of a writer's imagination navigating the blurred boundaries between fact and possibility.

The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters begins with the discovery of an unassuming bundle of letters in an archive. On closer inspection, they reveal a complex and curious tale of victims, villains and small-town secrets. Was schoolmaster Joseph Connor savagely beating the students in his care? Or was he the victim of a small-town vendetta? And what went so terribly wrong between him and his daughter?

Fearlessly grappling with complicated histories and the strange textures of the past, Grenville once again reveals how great stories can emerge from unassuming archival fragments. Join her in conversation with Santilla Chingaipe as she lifts the lid on this fascinating true story. 

Originally presented on Thursday 1 October 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.

Featured music is 'Traveling Again' by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.

The official bookseller was Ramona Books.

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India’s great chronicler of memory, family, identity and belonging sits down with host Mridula Nath Chakraborty to discuss her luminous, genre-defying books and extraordinary literary career. 

Originally presented on Wednesday 12 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.

‘Anything worth doing transcends borders,’ writes Geetanjali Shree in her 2022 International Booker Prize-winning novel, Tomb of Sand. This sentiment also encapsulates her career to date. An author writing in Hindi, with her gaze firmly fixed on the lives and concerns of Indian characters, Shree tells the kind of polyphonic, big-hearted stories that chime with universal truth.

From Our City That Year, an evocative tale of love, loss and the indelible marks left by time, to the poetic and formally inventive short stories in the collection Once Elephants Lived Here, to the lauded Tomb of Sand, Shree’s work offers readers insight into the rich plurality of the world.

Join her for a conversation about the ascendency of South Asian literature, the life-changing impact of winning the International Booker Prize and how storytelling connects us across backgrounds and borders.

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Tech critic Cory Doctorow on the broken promise of the utopian internet, the systems that sustain it and what it might take to reclaim a more open digital future. With host Professor Lisa M. Given, Director, Centre for Human-AI Information Environments at RMIT University.

Originally presented on Tuesday 25 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with Now or Never and RMIT University.

You’re not imagining it: the experience of being online is getting worse. Services degrade, platforms shift and what once felt open and useful becomes harder to recognise. What was once good is now… shit. This is not a glitch. In fact, it’s by design. ‘Enshittification’, a term coined by tech critic Cory Doctorow, names what is already happening.

In this talk, Doctorow outlines how major platforms like Facebook, Amazon and X are structured to follow this trajectory. First, users are drawn in with convenience and connection. Then, advertisers are invited into the system. Finally, the experience itself is stripped back in the pursuit of profit.

Featured music is 'Traveling Again' by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.

The official bookseller was Brunswick Bound.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

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What does it take to keep showing up to the blank page? Award-winning author Alice Pung offers reasons for optimism in this year’s E. W. Cole Lecture.

Originally presented on Thursday 6 August 2026 by The Wheeler Centre, supported by the E. W. Cole Foundation.
 
Two decades ago, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, a funny, loving and irreverent portrait of a migrant family’s everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of her beloved debut, Pung presents this year’s E. W. Cole Lecture on a subject near to her heart: the fundamentals of writing and the circumstances under which writers practice their craft. Drawing on knowledge earned from writing 15 books across contemporary fiction, YA, children’s literature and non-fiction, she examines the work that goes into the act of creation and what it takes to carry on writing, day after day.  

Pung speaks on the quiet power of turning up through crises, changing political situations and changing tastes, and what makes it all worthwhile: how writing – and reading – can help us make sense of our lives, and the world at large, now more than ever.

The official bookseller was Amplify Bookstore.

Featured music is Br1ghter (Instrumental Version) by Tape Machines.

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An unmissable episode for Slow Horses fans, writer Mick Herron unveils the next instalment in his phenomenally successful Slough House series with host Jason Steger. 

Originally presented on Thursday 21 May 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with RMIT University.

Spies lie. They betray. It is what they do. Readers were first introduced to Jackson Lamb and his team of misbegotten secret service agents in Slow Horses, an offbeat spy story filled with biting satire, murky morality and political prescience.

In Clown Town, the latest instalment of the series, the ugly side of state security threatens to come to light as the disappearance of a mysterious book and the death of a sadistic former IRA informant has secret agent River Cartwright asking some uncomfortable questions. Filled with blackmail, covert operations and cover-ups that go all the way to the top, this page-turner sees the slow horses embroiled in their most high-stakes spy games yet.

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Hear from acclaimed author and broadcaster Stan Grant in this special edition of The Fifth Estate as he reflects on the fragility of words and why contemplation and philosophy matter in an era of increasing division, with host Sally Warhaft.

Originally presented on Tuesday 16 July 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with RMIT University.

Drawing wisdom from an array of thinkers and artists, including Plato, Simone Weil, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Aquinas and even Radiohead, Stan Grant’s expansive and philosophical new book When Words Fail Us invites readers to reconsider the meaning and necessity of silence in an age of noise, speed and relentless distraction.

Written after stepping away from public life, the book explores how words can fail to meet the moment in the context of Australia’s history, identity and political division. Grant offers a rare insight into how the power of listening can lead to connection, compassion and love.

Featured music is 'Different Days' by Chill Cole.

The official bookseller was Hill of Content.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

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Ed Coper explains how angertainment has co-opted our social media feeds and taken over our lives, in conversation with Sushi Das.

Originally presented on Wednesday 24 June 2026 by The Wheeler Centre and supported by RMIT University.

Social media is no longer a platform for connection – it’s a gladiatorial arena powered by an addictive mix of anger and entertainment. As a result, we’re being driven apart: our politics more extreme and empathy on the decline, while those who know how to game the outrage economy for clicks only become more powerful and influential.

In this illuminating in-conversation, pioneer communications expert and the strategist behind GetUp! – Australia's first major online political movement – Ed Coper sits down to unmask the architects of this new power. From manosphere gurus and tech oligarchs to political demagogues and corporate giants, he reveals how social media has evolved into an outrage machine that feeds on scandals, spectacle, extremism and notoriety to bait us into constant engagement.

Featured music is 'Different Days' by Chill Cole.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

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Celebrated writer and thinker Amitav Ghosh explores rebirth, regeneration and the cycles of life with host Dr Sreedhevi Iyer.

Originally presented on Wednesday 27 May by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with RMIT University.

Amitav Ghosh is one of India’s most celebrated writers. With a career effortlessly spanning fiction, non-fiction and reportage, his work is characterised by big picture thinking with an unwavering drive to bring the climate crisis into stark focus.

These qualities are on display in his captivating new novel, Ghost-Eye, a story that begins in mid-century Calcutta, with a child who claims to remember a past life and leaps to contemporary Brooklyn, where a middle-aged antiquarian is drawn into investigating a family mystery. As the two seemingly unrelated stories converge, Ghosh crafts a narrative that offers a powerful meditation on fate, meaning and the awakening of wonder.

Ghosh sits down with Sreedhevi Iyer to discuss his latest novel, what it means to write about the climate breakdown and his remarkable career to date.

Featured music is 'No One There' by Ava Low.

The official bookseller was Readings.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hear from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales as he discusses the importance of trust in our online and offline communities and how Wikipedia evolved into one of the internet’s most reputable sources of information. With host Sally Warhaft.

Originally presented on Wednesday 20 May 2026 by The Wheeler Centre in partnership with RMIT University.

When Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia more than two decades ago, he changed the landscape of knowledge forever – although at the time, almost no one realised it. Today, Wikipedia draws 11 billion monthly views in the English language alone.

In the current ‘post-truth’ era, the internet is a sea of disinformation, the rise of AI threatens to erode hard-won knowledge and facts are increasingly malleable. In his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, Wales shows us that it's more important than ever to return to the problem at the heart of it all: that without trust, we have no knowledge. And without knowledge, we can't fight back.

In this fascinating edition of The Fifth Estate, Wales sits down with host Sally Warhaft to discuss the importance of trust in our online and offline communities, how Wikipedia evolved into one of the internet’s most reputable sources of information and shares his optimistic take on the future.

The official bookseller was Hill of Content.

Featured music is 'Different Days' by Chill Cole.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Beloved humourist Kathy Lette joins host Elizabeth McCarthy to discuss her big-hearted, cheeky and deeply relatable novel, The Sisterhood Rules. 

Originally presented on Wednesday 25th March 2026 by The Wheeler Centre.

Full of laugh-out-loud humour and flashes of devastating pathos, Kathy Lette’s The Sisterhood Rules is a romp through secrets, scandal and the unbreakable – if occasionally exasperated – bonds of sisterhood. Twin sisters Isabel and Verity have always been inseparable – until Verity has an affair with Izzy's husband, leaving them hopelessly estranged. But when their mother goes missing, Verity and Izzy are forced to reunite to find her. From there, the problems only get bigger: their mother has a new younger lover and where there's a will … he'd clearly like to be in it. Can the sisters stop their mother from making a truly terrible mistake? And, while they’re at it, can they salvage their own relationship from the rubble?

The official bookseller was Hill of Content Bookshop.

Featured music is 'Lucy's Trail (Don't Give Up)' by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.