Past Programs
History - 2005
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Histories of Sexuality
29/12/2005
Sex is more than biology - and it changes over time.
Or rather, while who did what to whom has gone through various practices and fashions over the years - who was allowed to do what to whom, what was frowned upon, what was sanctioned and how it was talked about . . . all has a history. Sometimes a rather surprising history.
And in case you think this is an example of academics taking the fun out of everything by analysing it, think again.
Cultural historian Stephen Garton tells stories of "bundling" - socially sanctioned sexual play between adolescents - and discusses the role of virginity in the way land and property has been controlled.
So from the classical world to the invention of sexology in the nineteenth century, and the long tradition of pathologising sex that still has its impact today, Life Matters today placed sexuality in historical context.
This interview was originally broadcast on 18 May 2005.
Robin Grille
14/09/2005
Corporal punishment remains a vexed issue. On the one hand a good slap on the bum can be a quick, effective and relatively painless way to keep your child in line. On the other, there are people who believe hitting a child can permanently damage them and perhaps even our whole society.
Robin Grille is a psychologist and parent and he's in the anti-slapping camp. He's convinced that the way we parent our kids shapes both society and major world events.
Our Day to Day Ephemera
22/08/2005
Don't throw away those old travel brochures or invitations that remind you of a great holiday or a major event in your life. They may be impportant for future generations.
We look at the value of our day to day ephemera from the wedding invitation, theatre program - even junk mail.
Morris Gleitzman - Once
01/08/2005
Morris Gleitzman has written his 23rd novel for children called 'Once'. It is the story of Felix - a young Jewish boy growing up in Poland during the Holocaust. Cocooned in a Catholic orphanage he is blissfully unaware of the horrors taking place outside its walls. When he escapes he witnesses, and then becomes subject to, the atrocities being committed by the Nazis.
The Greeks in Australia
20/06/2005
Most of us would know that outside of Athens, Melbourne is by population the biggest Greek city on earth. That claim has in many ways come to represent the popular image of Greek-Australians.
Not surprisingly, the real history of the Greeks in Australia is a story with much more to it than that, and Anastasios Myrodis Tamis joined us on Life Matters to flesh out this fascinating story. It's a story that goes back to the very beginning of the nineteenth century; it helps us understand the complexity of the White Australia Policy and the shape of labour in Australia; it's a story that also informs politics, the transferance of cultural and religious traditions to Australia and, yes, it's much more than just a story of food.
He's the author of a new book called, appropriately enough, The Greeks in Australia, and it will be released through Cambridge University Press next month.
Anastasios Myrodis Tamis is Director of the National Centre for Hellenic Studies at Latrobe University and he spoke to Richard about this fascinating history.
Street Stories - Songs From The Gods
15/06/2005
On the island of Rhodes the walls of the ancient citadel separate urban and village islanders across the twin gulfs of time and culture. In a small village the 'wedding chanter' who maintains a tradition that has its roots in the worship of the Olympian Gods still provides music for weddings still held in the twelfth century village church.
In the medieval streets of Rhodes City a new generation of village youth sings the refrains of a national pop culture, as well as Europop and even the songs of America. as they serve the wants and needs of tourists who throng the World Heritage Fund listed site. Rhodes, through the forces of globalisation and a unified Europe, is rapidly changing.
The program explores through the medium of song the polarized communities of Rhodes and the forces that threaten thousands of years of musical and cultural continuity.
The Scarlet Mile: Prostitution in Kalgoorlie
15/06/2005
Tin sheds, wire, nineteenth-century tokens, and a complicated relationship with law and order and respectability . . . are all part of a changing (and sometimes oddly unchanging) history of prostitution in Kalgoorlie.
Kalgoorlie has long been famous for its goldmining, and its sex workers.
But the working girls and madams have an uneasy relationship with the rest of the town.
Historian Elaine McKewon joined us to talk about why the story of this street matters, both nationally and locally; and to explain the long-time story of "containment".
Children's Play and Folklore
24/05/2005
The Australian Children's Folklore Collection is important enough to to be put on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register along with documents such as the Mabo Manuscripts and James Cook's Journal.
This collection has benefited from the research of Dorothy Howard, an American academic who came to Australia in the 1950s to document the games, rhymes and jokes of children from around the conutry.
Histories of Sexuality
18/05/2005
Sex is more than biology - and it changes over time.
Or rather, while who did what to whom has gone through various practices and fashions over the years - who was allowed to do what to whom, what was frowned upon, what was sanctioned and how it was talked about . . . all has a history. Sometimes a rather surprising history.
And in case you think this is an example of academics taking the fun out of everything by analysing it, think again.
Cultural historian Stephen Garton tells stories of "bundling" - socially sanctioned sexual play between adolescents - and discusses the role of virginity in the way land and property has been controlled.
So from the classical world to the invention of sexology in the nineteenth century, and the long tradition of pathologising sex that still has its impact today, Life Matters today placed sexuality in historical context.
Educating the Ancients
16/05/2005
Education in the ancient world was all about intellectual stamina. Like students today, the ancients started out learning the alphabet but as they climbed the steep hill of education it became a tough mental challenge to learn complex grammar and the art of rhetoric. Raffaella Cribiore has drawn on ancient papyri, shards of pottery and tablets to paint a fascinating picture of education in the ancient world.
NT Community Tourism
03/05/2005
Last week, Julie McCrossin was in the Northern Territory, with a Fred Hollows "See the World" project - and as our first item from the Northern Territory, we turned to an example of community tourism - from Manyallaluk.
Elders Manuel and Jessica explained just what they do, why it matters, and its ongoing economic and cutlural impact on their community.
Feature Interview - Helen Jefferson Lenskyj
02/05/2005
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj is a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.
Her book A Lot to Learn: Women and Education in 20th Century Australia and Canada is due to be released in Australia this month.
It is biography and autobiography written as social history.
This interview was first broadcast on Life Matters in August last year - and we decided to replay it in time for the book's release.
Gillian Nikakis: 'He's Not Coming Home'
05/04/2005
Gillian Nikakis was 18 months old when she last saw her father. After a series of volcanic eruptions in the city of Rabul in New Guinea, where they were living, she returned to Melbourne with her brother and Mother. It wasn't long after that the Japanese invaded Rabaul and her father went missing.
In this book Gillian attempts to find out what happened to her father, and in the process get to know him for the first time.
Feature I/V Rene Baker
31/03/2005
A member of the Stolen Generations, Rene Baker was removed from her family in 1952 when she was just four years old.
Told that her family didn't want her, Rene lived on missions until she was 18 then was sent to work as a domestic helper. She had lost her culture, her language and her family.
Bernadette Kennedy, met Rene in 1978 while working as a nun in a refuge for homeless women in Perth. They became friends and have remained so ever since.
In the late 1990's Rene undertook the journey to uncover the truth of her past and asked Bernadette to help her. In this book 'Rene Baker: File #28/E.D.P' Rene tells her story of removal and sets out the case that the forcible removal of Aboriginal children was unlawful.
That Ol' Black Magic
10/03/2005
Today we meet a star from the Golden Age of Radio, Lesley Hazlitt (formerly Piddington). You might remember her from the mental telepathy act she performed with her first husband Sydney. She talks about life as one-half of "The Piddingtons" and her relationship with a quintessential Aussie, second husband Jack Hazlitt.
Rare Trades
08/03/2005
The enduring need for people to make things with their hands is explored in Rare Trades, a travelling National Museum of Australia exhibition, now in Kalgoorlie.
Life Matters speaks to Mark Thomson, the author of the book on which the exhibition is based, about the people across Australia who maintain the tools and traditions of often ancient trades, exploring how and why they continue to work with their hands in a predominantly digital age.
Feature Interview - Ros Sharp
08/03/2005
Ros Sharp is a commercial photographer who believes in the power of documentary photography to capture both individual and regional histories. This passion is expressed in "Getting Married", photographs of a series of ethnic weddings, and in an extended photo series of her local Kings Cross community. She also happens to have photographed oilrigs and goldmines, not to mention "the crazy world" of polo around the world.
Feature Interview: Joe's War
18/02/2005
The stories of the footsoldiers of war - the ordinary folk who get caught up in extraordinary times - are not often told as fully as the account of 'Joe's War'.
Joe's War: My Father Decoded is a book written by a British broadcaster and writer, Annette Kobak, about her father, Joe Kobak, who lives in Newcastle, Australia.
It unravels not only the mysteries surrounding Joe's wartime years, but why this family - Annette was the only child - later functioned the way it did.
The Colombo Plan
15/02/2005
Following the enormous support and sympathy Australians have expressed for the victims of the tsunami, Life Matters explores the Colombo Plan and its role in the nineteen fifties in opening a bridge between Australia and Asia.
Australian political leaders conceived of the development aid that underpinned the Colombo Plan as a way of keeping communism out of Asia. In the Cold War climate of the nineteen fifties, this kind of engagement would ensure Australia's security from the dangers posed by the nations throwing off colonial shackles to the north.
The Colombo Plan allowed thousands of young Asian students to study here during the declining decades of "White Australia".
Street Stories: "Walking to Santiago, Part One: An Unpenitential Pilgrimage"
09/02/2005
"Shall I tell them I've been cheating again?" That's Veronica, one of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who have attempted to walk The Way of St James, across mountainous northern Spain. While contemporary pilgrims' reasons for setting out vary, many claim the journey changes their lives. In this feature, producer Nicole Steinke picks up her overladen backpack and sets off to walk 750 holy kilometres to Santiago.
Click here to see photographs from Walking to Santiago, Part One.
The thousand year old pathway of the saint, or El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, as the Spanish know it, was for hundreds of years one of the great religious destinations of the world. In the Middle Ages, if you were Christian you walked to Rome or the Holy Land or Santiago.
The scallop shell marked trail wanders through mountains, vineyards and fields of new mown hay, as well as forests of oak and beech from any century. Overhead, however, there's a flight path between France and Spain and pilgrims often walk within sound, though not sight, of major roads. The countryside is studded with tiny villages where bars are as common as the sturdy Romanesque churches that loom above their villages.
In medieval times, Catholics believed in cause and effect; if you walked to Santiago, God would spare your sick child or forgive a particularly large and juicy sin. Today, it seems to our rather unspiritual journalist and fellow pilgrim, it's less the Catholics who believe in the direct intervention of God in their lives than the numerous New Agers making the Camino.
An Eye for Photography: The picture of Australia
31/01/2005
How does Australia look, and how did it look in the past? How do we see ourselves?
How Australians - and the world - have seen themselves has changed since the 1830s invention of photography.
The technology has changed - and even the way we stand in front of cameras, or what we choose to place on film (or tintype or glass plate or on a digital card) . . . all of that has a history.
And Alan Davies knows that better than most.
Davies is Curator of Photography, State Library of NSW - which means he looks after a collection of at least ONE MILLION images. He has written a number of books on the history of photography in Australia, including The Mechanical Eye in Australia . . . and his latest is An Eye for Photography: The Camera in Australia.
Davies joined us to discuss the pleasure and possibilities of photography, why it matters and what it can tell us about where we came from.
(There's also an exhibition of this latest collection on at the State Library, for those of you in Sydney.)
Show and Tell talkback
28/01/2005
Our talkback examines the importance of objects or treasures we gather over our lifetime, which become a repository of memory and can allow us to tell our personal stories and our family history to others - particularly our children and children's children.
Why do we collect the bibs and bobs - the ticket stubs, the rose petal, the fragment of cloth, the spoon or the old bucket; the seemingly meaningless mementos others will never understand on sight? Do we long to share their meaning? And what happens if they are lost?
Summer Season: Families on the Frontier
13/01/2005
On Life Matters, we regularly talk about families 'on the edge' - but families have existed on 'the edge' for a long time. One very important 'edge' - particularly in countries like Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada - is the Frontier.
The frontier is not so much a place, as an idea.
Traditionally, it was the place where the 'new' or discovering culture found its way into a brave new world. As such it's been the site for mythology and heroic nation building: the Wild West; the Gold Rushes; explorers and discovery.
More recently, the frontier has been understood as the point where cultures met - clashed, cooperated, intermingled and changed each other.
The frontier also matters because it has played such a strong role in the forming of national identity in places like the US and Australia, as well as having a very strong presence in popular culture (from Westerns to The Frontier House - and an Australian version, the 'Outback house' is in production in Australia).
Given all this, and acknowleding the family as an important site in the development of nationhood and civil society, historians have argued that it's worth looking at families on the frontier: to look at the role of domesticity; the history of the family; to better understand who we are and where we come from.
Accordingly, in August last year, a two day Symposium was held in Canberra, called 'Narrating Frontier Families in Australia and North America,' a collaborative project between Yale University, the ANU, the National Museum of Australia and Charles Darwin University.
At the time, we spoke to Prof Clara Sue Kidwell, Director, Native American Studies Program, University of Oklahama; and Prof Ann McGrath, Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, ANU.
Summer: Feature Interview: Eleni Gage Travels Back to Greece
05/01/2005
The 'renovating a house in a foreign land travel book' is now an established genre. Hapless foreigners discover the joys and exasperation of Italy/ France/ Spain (etc), in a beautiful town where they can feel superior to other travellers.
Well, Eleni Gage travels abroad and renovates a house - but frankly, her pilgrimage is in another league. She's not entirely travelling to a foreign country: she's a Greek-American, speaks Greek, and has travelled to Greece before.
Crucially, the house she's restoring is already and centrally part of her own family.
It's the house where members of the village - including her own grandmother, also named Eleni - were imprisoned and executed during the Greek Civil War.
Eleni the Younger is travelling into her own family history, and making a monument to her grandmother at the same time.
Summer: Feature Interview: Aidan Hartley's Feeling for Africa
04/01/2005
Aidan Hartley is a white Kenyan, whose family history encapsulates the colonial experience. He was also a foreign correspondent, covering a range of 'big stories' including events in Namibia, Somalia, Bosnia and others.
Hartley talks about his passion for Africa as home, the impact of his father's colonial-style adventuring on his identity, and the haunting effects of the 'hog-tied corpse of memory'. He also brings alive both the excitement of being a foreign correspondent, and the despair of having to 'feed the beast' of news in the face of tragedy.
Having been profoundly effected by what he saw in Rwanda, hegave up journalism, and eventually found love and peace in Kenya.
He still has his ghosts.