Good Reading Podcast

Psychiatry registrar Doctor Hannah Wright, a country girl with a chaotic history, thought she had seen it all in the emergency room. But that was nothing compared to the psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital. Hannah must learn on the job in a strained medical system, as she and her fellow trainees deal with the common and the bizarre, the hilarious and the tragic, the treatable and the confronting. Every day brings new patients: Chloe, who has a life-threatening eating disorder; Sian, suffering postpartum psychosis and fighting to keep her baby; and Xavier, the MP whose suicide attempt has an explosive story behind it. All the while, Hannah is trying to figure out herself. In this episode Gregory Dobbs talks to Anne Buist and Graeme Simsion about the importance of shining a light on the frontline of mental health through fiction, exploring the challenges of illness and treatment for both patients and professionals, and giving a voice to the spectrum of people dealing with mental illness.

Matilda, Jo, Penny and Cressy are all women at the top of their game; so imagine their surprise when they start to be personally overlooked and professionally pushed aside by less-qualified men. Only they're not going down without a fight. Society might think the women have passed their amuse-by dates but the Revenge Club have other plans. After all, why go to bed angry when you could stay up and plot diabolical retribution? Let the games begin... In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Kathy Lette about why women are so drawn to revenge, why Australian women make the best heroines and embracing the journey through menopause and discovering the paradise beyond.

Acclaimed wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta has been mugged by whales, touched by a baby whale and covered in whale snot. In Humpback Highway, Pirotta dives beneath the surface to reveal the mysterious world of humpback whales — from their life cycle and the challenges humans present, to why whale snot and poo are important for us and the ocean. Plus the cutting-edge new technologies that allow us to see where they swim, listen to them talk and spy on them underwater. Whether you’re a whale lover or you’re simply curious about the underwater world, 'Humpback Highway' will inspire and give you a new respect for these majestic, marine giants. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Vanessa Pirotta about how she became a whale scientist, why Australia's 'humpback highway' is key to understanding whale behaviour, and Vanessa also tells us what kind of parents whales make, and what the future holds for this incredible species.

'All Time High' is a comprehensive guide on how to enter the cryptocurrency market as a complete beginner and to prosper. Cryptocurrencies have the power to radically transform not only our financial lives, but our personal freedom, sovereignty and mindset. Powered by blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies offer a new way for investors to create wealth and a potential early retirement without having to be a trader, have financial knowledge or a prior skill level. Sydel Sierra has documented this success blueprint in five easy steps and within each part are the practical tools to discover the power of this asset class. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Sydel Sierra about what exactly is cryptocurrency and why it is so important in the financial world of the future, why Bitcoin is the foundation of this asset class but why holding a portfolio of cryptocurrencies is crucial in finding success in investment, and why good research is critical when exploring this investment class.

For years the firefighters of New York’s Engine 99 have rushed fearlessly into hot zones, saving countless lives and stopping devastating blazes in their tracks. They’ve also stolen millions from banks, jewellery stores and art galleries. With their inside knowledge and specialist equipment, they’ve become the most successful heist crew on the East Coast. Their newest member, Andrea ‘Andy’ Nearland, is not what she seems either. She’s an undercover operative, hunting the men of Engine 99 for a host of crimes – including the murder of an off-duty cop and the disappearance of a mother and child. As the clock counts down to the gang’s most daring heist yet, loyalties begin to fray and mistrust boils over. Andy’s career is all smoke and mirrors, but infiltrating this crew of ‘heroes’ might prove to be her most dangerous job of all . In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Candice Fox about the challenges of setting her latest crime thriller in the ultimate setting of New York's legendary boroughs of crime, why the opening pages of a heist caper are so important, and why perfectly harmonious criminal gangs are boring.

Named after a famous fictional character, librarian Bridget Jones was raised on a remote cattle station, with only her mother’s romance novels for company. Now living alone in Fremantle, Bridget is a hopeless romantic. She also believes that anyone who doesn’t like reading just hasn’t met the right book yet, and that connecting books to their readers is her superpower. If only her love life was that easy. When handsome Italian barista Fabio progresses from flirting with love hearts on her coffee foam to joining the book club she runs at her library, Bridget prays her romance ‘curse’ won’t ruin things. But it’s the attention of her cranky neighbour Sully that seems to be the major obstacle in her life. Why is he going to so much effort to get under her skin? She soon discovers that not all romances start with a meet-cute, but they might just end in happily ever after… In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Rachael Johns about how our idea of libraries as dull places is now a thing of the past, how exploring relationships and friendships are at the heart of what she writes, and why romance fiction endures by changing with the times.

Compassion continues Julie Janson’s emotional and intense literary exploration of the complex and dangerous lives of Aboriginal women during the 1800s in colonial New South Wales, which she began in Benevolence as a counter narrative to colonial history in Australian literature. Compassion is the dramatised life story of one of Julie Janson’s ancestors who went on trial for stealing livestock in New South Wales, and it is an exciting and violent story of anti-colonial revenge and roaming adventure. A gripping fictive account of Aboriginal life in the 1800s, Compassion follows the life of Duringah, AKA Nell James, the outlaw daughter of the Darug hero of Benevolence, Muraging. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Julie Janson about shaping the character of her ancestor Duringah, and charting her exploits as “the wild native thief”, and how juxtaposing the natural and spiritual worlds of the Darug nation with the terrible reality of life during colonial times illuminates the rich shared history of New South Wales.

'36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem', is a book-length poem that is an urgent, unsettling reckoning with identity and the violence of identity, embedded with racism, oppression and historical trauma. But it also addresses the violence in those assumptions – of being always assumed to be outside one’s home, country, culture or language. And the complex violence, for the diasporic writer who wants to address any of this, of language itself. Making use of multiple tones, moods, masks and camouflages, Le’s poetic debut moves with unpredictable and destabilising energy between the personal and political, honouring every convention of diasporic literature – in a virtuosic array of forms and registers – before shattering the form itself. Like his award-winning book, 'The Boat', '36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem' conjures its own terms of engagement, escapes our traps, slips our certainties. As self-indicting as it is scathing, hilarious as it is desperately moving, this is a singular, breakthrough book. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Nam Le about how his first love has always been poetry rather than the prose of his first book, 'The Boat', how the double-bind of the experience of living in Australia as a man with Vietnamese heritage and how it is reflected in his poetry, how language can be imperialist, even destructive yet continues to shape us as a society and as humans.

Most of us have done our time in the retail trenches, but service stations are undoubtedly the frontline, as Melburnian David Goodwin found out when he started working the weekend graveyard shift at his local servo. From his very first night shift, David absorbed a consistent level of mind-bending lunacy, encountering everything from giant shoplifting bees and balaclava-clad goons hurling cordial-filled water bombs from the sunroof of their BMW, to anarcho-goths high on MDMA releasing large rats into the store from their matching Harry Potter backpacks. Over the years, David grew to love his mad servo, handing out free pies and chocolate bars on the sly as he grew a backbone and became street smart. Amidst the unrelenting chaos, he eventually made it out of the servo circus - and lived to tell the tale. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to David Goodwin about what drew him to working in the wee hours at his local servo, the myriad of characters and space cadets he encountered along the way, and the how the people he met and the stories they had to tell changed his life. Sound effects by zapsplat.com

Robert ‘Goupong’ Anderson, was once the fastest man in Australia and world-record holder. Goupong, his little sister Dot, and his best friend Jonathan belong to the Ugarapul people, the Green Tree Frog tribe, and live with their families and others within the harsh confines of the Deebing Creek Mission – a place run by the malevolent Boss Man. Goupong and Jonathan are focused on winning the mission’s biggest running race that year, but when mysterious noises, unexplained occurrences and biblical events begin to plague the local area they are forced to investigate. Weaving fact with fiction, 'Robert Runs' explores the tough reality of mission life and the events leading up to the fateful day of the Deebing Creek Massacre. In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Mariah Sweetman about honouring the life and stories of her ancestors, finding the character of the young Goupong through her research, and adopting a story structure that brings different perspectives together to reveal the complexity of our shared history.