For over three decades Dr Norman Swan has been answering the questions Australians have been asking about the medical and lifestyle issues that concern all of us. With his trademark honest, straightforward approach Dr Norman Swan brings it all together in this one-stop handbook that helps us get to the truth.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Dr Norman Swan about the real Mediterranean diet, living younger longer and the importance of a wholistic approach to health and wellbeing.

Dr Norman Swan takes on the wellness 'bullshit' in So You Think You Know What's Good For You?

After a 30-year absence Agnes is returning to Australia, the country of her birth, at the behest of her aging, narcissistic mother. Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy she now entertains a hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories encouraged into the light. Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast a long shadow over her existence, affecting her ability to grasp at life fully, to develop sustained relationships and to appreciate her own sense of self-worth.

In a leafy suburb of Sydney, a chance meeting in front of her early childhood home resurrects memories of a traumatic event. This represents the moment young Agnes starts to realise, and repress, feelings of confusion, cruelty and alienation from those who should love her the most. Agnes – A childhood betrayed and reclaimed is the revelatory, true account of one woman’s determination to grapple with - and heal - the ills that have beset her past.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Judy king about how a memoir becomes a novel, why remembering can influence the shape of a novel, and how creativity can lead to redemption.

Judy King on a childhood betrayed and reclaimed in 'Agnes'

For the launch of Good Reading's new podcast, sponsored by Pantera Press, we're joined by author of the Rowland Sinclair mystery novels, Sulari Gentill. She tells Angus Dalton about being turned away by the White Australia Policy, finding stories in the stars, her dapper amateur detective and the unsolved mystery of the Pyjama Girl Murder.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/good-reading-podcast/id1402922430?mt=2

Sulari Gentill on the Pyjama Girl Murder, Australia's Fascist New Guard, and stories in the stars

What happens when a burgeoning movie star is killed on the set of a blockbuster zombie flick? Melbourne crime writer Sarah Bailey is back with her unforgettable character, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock, who has left her small regional town in favour of the big smoke. Sarah talks to Angus Dalton about women in the police force, books for boys, and why she's drawn to crimes on display.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/good-reading-podcast/id1402922430?mt=2

Crime on Display: Sarah Bailey on a movie set murder and her divisive detective, Gemma Woodstock

Besides gambling destinations like Macau or Monaco, Australia has the highest amount of poker machines per capita in the world. New South Wales was the second jurisdiction - just behind Nevada in the US - to legalise pokies, and a Sydney manufacturer continues to be at the forefront of pokie machine design and production. 

Drew Rooke's 'One Last Spin: The power and peril of the pokies' is a shocking investigation into the gambling's industry's power over politicians. It lays out how governments line their pockets with the billions fed to poker machines while gambling addicts' lives fall apart, and how the industry uses NRA-style techniques to block legislation that would help addicts, yet stem their profits.

In this podcast, Drew talks about the techniques poker machines use to beguile gamblers, the science of pokie addiction, and how his faith in the government to protect Australia's most vulnerable has been lost.

Get the book here: https://bit.ly/2KR6a5Z

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/good-reading-podcast/id1402922430?mt=2

Australia has pokies the way America has guns: Drew Rooke's investigation into the gambling industry

'Scrublands' by Chris Hammer begins with a young priest, Byron Swift, shouldering a high-powered hunting rifle and opening fire on his congregation in the tiny, drought-stricken town of Riversend. Martin Scarsden, a Sydney Morning Herald journalist, is sent to profile the town a year on from the massacre and discovers that there's far more to the killings than was initially reported.

Here Chris talks about his 30-year career as a journalist, his investigation into the families affected by the Millennium Drought, which influenced his choice of setting, and copping tough love from Australian crime writing legend Peter Temple, who lectured Chris at university.

Books mentioned in this podcast:

Scrublands by Chris Hammer: http://bit.ly/2uOwsvt
The River by Chris Hammer: http://bit.ly/2mFKoDC
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple: http://bit.ly/2v1JGEA
Truth by Peter Temple: http://bit.ly/2NDa1QM
Into the Night by Sarah Bailey: http://bit.ly/2JS0Ppv

Chris Hammer on Scrublands, reporting from Texas and Gaza, and tough love from Peter Temple

In Australia, judges are legally obliged to take a person’s apparent remorse into account when formulating their sentence, and yet how remorse is measured remains unclear. Kate Rossmanith’s new hybrid memoir, 'Small Wrongs: How We Really Say Sorry in Life, Love and Law', investigates legal, cultural, religious understandings of remorse and how they play out both in courtrooms and our personal lives. 

In this podcast, Kate tells Emma Harvey - a former writing student of hers - about comportment and composure in the courtroom, interviewing Supreme Court judges, and why we expect apologies, and ask for redemption, in our everyday lives.

Get the book here: http://bit.ly/2uX9FO8

Kate Rossmanith on investigating remorse, bias in the legal system and 'animating the soup'

‘It all started when a kid died.’ 

Meg Gatland-Veness is the author of the new Young Adult novel ‘I Had Such Friends’, a bold and heartfelt debut that is earning comparisons to ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’ and ‘Thirteen Reasons Why.’ 

In this podcast, Meg chats to Good Reading about growing up on Jaclyn Moriarty and Melina Marchetta, being a high school drama teacher, and why she believes it’s important to be upfront and honest in YA fiction.

Read more about 'I Had Such Friends': http://bit.ly/2BAaYZ4

Meg Gatland-Veness: 'It all started when a kid died'

'Our mother had a dark heart feeling'. So begins Karen Foxlee's new children's novel, Lenny's Book of Everything, a story of the beetle-obsessed Lenny Spink, a boy who can't stop growing, and an encyclopedia that broadens their entire world.

Karen Foxlee joins Angus Dalton to talk about her luminous, unforgettably moving book, and how her writing life began with sheets of butcher's paper in an outback mining town. 

Find out more about Lenny's Book of Everything: http://bit.ly/2qS4igT

Karen Foxlee on the world-broadening magic of encyclopedias

Lee Child sells one of his Jack Reacher thriller novels once every 20 seconds. There are at least 100 million copies of his books in print.

The legendary thriller writer joins Angus Dalton to discuss Tom Cruise's recently announced departure from the Jack Reacher film franchise, the exact reasons why books are always better than movie, and how the death of Child's father led to one of the most personal Reacher thrillers yet.

He also touches on air conditioning, why we have Rupert Murdoch to thank for his books, the influence of Stephen King on latest novel, and how a fight between Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne would go down.

Find out about Past Tense, the 23rd Jack Reacher story, here: https://bit.ly/2DwsrB2

Listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/good-reading-podcast/id1402922430?mt=2

Lee Child on Jack Reacher's fork in the road

At a local playground where his daughter was playing, writer Jeremy N Smith met a woman who turned out to be a cybersecurity expert and a seasoned hacker. They got talking about her life and Jeremy quickly became fascinated. 

His new book, 'Breaking and Entering: The extraordinary story of a hacker called Alien', is the result of that chance meeting. It's a fascinating profile of a daring hacker, a deep-dive into the history of cybersecurity, and a troubling wake-up call for those of us who'd rather not think about how vulnerable we are to hackers in our hyper-connected world.

Here Jeremy tells Angus Dalton about the death-defying form of hacking Alien was introduced to at MIT, and reveals why he's ditched using Google as a result of hanging out with hackers.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2NGVDYK
Listen on Google Podcasts: bit.ly/2MXSxQ8
About the book: http://bit.ly/2GOWBkG

Jeremy N Smith on befriending a powerful hacker called Alien

Book talk and author interviews aimed at helping you discover your next favourite read, presented by Good Reading Magazine.

Judy King on a childhood betrayed and reclaimed in 'Agnes'

The Good Reading Podcast