National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project

With special guest:

• Gerry Georgatos
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

We are honoured today to have as our special guest a social warrior, Gerry Georgatos. Gerry is the founder of the National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project (the Project) set up in 2019. His colleague Megan Krakouer appeared recently on The Drum to talk about the work Gerry and she are doing with young Aboriginal offenders in Western Australian prisons. Footage has emerged of young children being hog-tied by prison guards and Megan spoke of the need for help.

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Patting the Shark

With special guest:

• Tim Baker
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Patting the shark? This does not seem to be a good life lesson but when we hear Tim Baker explain the title it all makes sense.

Surfers such as Mick Fanning have had to confront their mortality. Mick is an old friend of Tim’s and he faced a shark in front of the world’s cameras. Many of us saw him swimming next to a man eating shark in the shark’s own territory. Tim Baker has had to face a different type of mortal threat, namely a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. We do not know how we would react if confronted with this situation but Tim’s new book Patting the Shark takes us right into that world and he gives us a no holds barred account of what it is really like.

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Supporting Men and Boys in Tasmania

With special guest:

• Jonathan Bedloe
  … in conversation with Glen Poole

Jonathan Bedloe has been an advocate for men’s health and wellbeing for the past fifteen years.

Jonathan’s focus on men’s health and wellbeing has been a core passion since establishing a Men’s Shed in Hobart in 2005.

He previously worked for seven years as the Men’s Health Policy Officer with the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services. Jonathan has held voluntary board positions with the Australian Men’s Health Forum, the Tasmanian Men’s Shed Association and Tasmen.

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Missing, Presumed Dead

With special guest:

• Mark Tedeschi AM KC
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Mark Tedeschi has faced a number of cold blooded killers in Courtrooms and on many occasions has argued successfully that they should spend the rest of their days in prison. This is an enormous responsibility on behalf of the victims of these crimes but also of the whole community.

In writing his new book Missing, Presumed Dead Mark’s aim was to let the community know what is involved in a complex and lengthy criminal case such as the murder prosecution of Bruce Burrell. We get a glimpse of the determination needed to bring the felon to justice.

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SMS4dads

With special guest:

• Dr Chris May
  … in conversation with Bill Kable
  

Who ya gonna call?

Our guest today is Dr Chris May from the University of Newcastle and he has a simple message for new Dads with mobile phones. Sign up for SMS4 dads and you will get the advice you need to deal with the new challenges we face as a Dad. This is not limited to young Dads. The age range of Dads already accessing the service extends to the over 50 year olds.

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The Prostate Cancer Challenge

With special guest:

• Peter Dornan AM
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest is not squeamish about many things. He opens up to us today about what it is like to face a condition that we still do not like talking about, urinary incontinence. Incontinence affects men and women; it has been described as the most widespread yet least known and understood affliction in society today. This problem can seriously impact on your lifestyle, job, emotional wellbeing, exercise activity and most importantly, your sex life.

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Life and Death Planning for Country Properties

With special guest:

• Owen Catto
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our guest today is Owen Catto from The Regional Men’s Health Initiative of Western Australia.

Owen’s life as a farmer began when he worked on the family farm for 18 years with a small interest in that farming business given to him by his father. To back up this direct experience of conditions on the farm Owen also has a Bachelor of Business in Agriculture and has operated a farm consultancy business. When talking about life on the land we might say that Owen knows his onions.

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Private Bill: In Love and War

With special guest:

• Barrie Cassidy
  …in conversation with Bill Kable
  

It makes for a rare occasion when Barrie Cassidy goes to the other side of the microphone. Barrie is one of Australia’s most respected and experienced political journalists and we welcome him to Dads on the Air.

But we are not going to discuss politics in this program. We are going to find out more about Barrie’s father Bill who is the main subject in Barrie’s book Private Bill: In Love and War.

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From Bullied to Brilliant

With special guest:

• Karen Clarke
  …in conversation with Bill Kable
  

Have you been bullied? Has anyone in your family been bullied?

In her book From Bullied to Brilliant: How to artfully avoid fitting in, our guest sets out how to understand and deal with bullies. In the program today we get to hear directly from Karen Clarke how to bounce back and turn pain into gain when confronted by bullies.

We learn that bullying can be experienced by anyone at any stage in life and it is nothing to be ashamed of if you are the victim. It is one of the myths of bullying that the victim has shown some weakness that the bully seizes on but in fact bullies are often attracted to people who possess the very qualities they secretly or unknowingly admire.

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National Emergency – Suicide Rates for Our Men

With special guest:

• Anthony Smith
  … in conversation with Bill Kable and Ken Thompson

1901 male deaths by suicide were recorded in 2012 along with another 634 females meaning a total of 2,535 Australians lost their lives in this way. There has been no significant improvement in the period since these figures became available.

Our guest today, Anthony Smith, argues that these figures are conservative and the belief of the people working in this area is that the figure for men should be some 500 higher. Reasons for this conservatism include the shortfall in the number of Coronial enquiries and the general reluctance of Coroners to brand a sudden death as suicide because this only makes it harder for the surviving family members to deal with the tragedy.

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Keith Urban

With special guest:

• Jeff Apter
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our own Keith Urban is an enormous success in the biggest music market of all, the United States. Who knew? For some reason Keith Urban has never been really big or even acknowledged in Australia and today we get a few clues as to why that is so.

There is a lot more to Keith than the amiable coach we see in The Voice on Australian TV and our guest today can let us in on some surprises. In his new book Keith Urban our special guest Jeff Apter takes us from Keith’s birth in New Zealand to childhood days on the outskirts of Brisbane to being “discovered” while playing at the Bayview Hotel in Sydney and reaching the stage where he is asked to sing at the opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games. On top of that Keith has been married to Nicole Kidman since 2007 to add a bit of Hollywood glamour to his life.

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The Opera House

With special guest:

• Peter FitzSimons
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

As well as being a 20^th century marvel in its soaring design it remains a source of marvel that the Opera House was even conceived in the parochial, conservative backwater that was 1950s New South Wales.

One thing that was typical then and remains so is the Australian love for a gamble so it was a brainwave of the NSW government to think of financing the construction by way of a lottery. All of a sudden there were more than enough funds to do the work of construction.

But the bigger gamble was to construct a building like no other that would be on display at the heart of the city with techniques that had not been invented based on the imaginings and sparse drawings of a Danish architect who had never taken a building design through to completion.

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Mentoring Men

With special guest:

• Simon Jarvis
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Who says men need help in today’s society?

Our guest today would answer by pointing to the shockingly high rate of male suicide with 7 out of 10 victims being male. Yet at a time like this it is hard to gain financial support for male issues because of the focus on other worthy causes. This is where Mentoring Men can make a difference and where Chief Executive Officer Simon Jarvis can build on the work by his predecessor and founder of the movement, Ian Westmoreland, a guest on Dads on the Air in November 2019.

Simon tells us that Mentoring Men is not a crisis centre. This is not for men who have gone over the edge in one way or another. The group aims to get in early with men who just need a non-judgemental ear, someone who may have experienced all this before and who might have a few tips to pass on.

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Life in Limbo

With special guest:

• Matt Barwick
  … in conversation with Bill Kable and Ken Thompson

In his book Life in Limbo Matt Barwick says that men in their desire to be alpha-male typically hide behind an impenetrable wall of machismo. So if anyone asks “How ya going?” the response is most likely going to be a stoic “Yeah everything’s fine.” No-one must see any sign of weakness or fragility, particularly male friends. The result is that most men avoid open and honest communication about physical or mental health.

This book changes that expectation in a big way. Matt writes openly, candidly and even dispenses some laid back humour along the way in describing his own extreme personal experiences.

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Splitting

With special guest:

• Bill Eddy
  … in conversation with Bill Kable and Ken Thompson

The word Splitting brings to mind a number of possibilities but in Bill Eddy’s book it is not the obvious meaning of breaking up with a partner. Here we are looking at “splitting” meaning a defence mechanism universally seen in people with Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorders. It means unconsciously seeing people as all good or all bad and is especially prevalent when there is stress such as in a break-up with someone the person afflicted sees as critical to emotional survival.

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Daddy’s OK

With special guest:

• Dean Mason
  …in conversation with Bill Kable
  

In his book Daddy’s OK: Fathers’ stories of separation, divorce and rebuilding author Dean Mason takes us into the world of 14 families that have been through the trauma of separation and divorce. The 2006 Census showed that 50% of children in single parent families never have an overnight stay with the other parent, normally the Dad. But if our eyes glass over when contemplating the tens of thousands of Dads in this situation Dean brings it back to the individual personal level with these real life stories from his days as National Chairman of Parents Beyond Breakup (formerly Dads in Distress Support Services).

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So You Think You Know What’s Good for You?

With special guest:

• Dr Norman Swan
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Our health is such an important topic for all of us, maybe the most important.

But as our guest in today’s program Dr Norman Swan points out this sometimes leads to unnecessary worry about doing the right thing for ourselves. In fact the topic of what we should be worrying about is the one that comes up most often from his audiences. In his new book So You Think You Know What’s Good for You? Australia’s most trusted medical practitioner tells us what really is good for you and as a bonus what is bad for you.

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Convict-era Port Arthur

With special guest:

• David W Cameron
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Port Arthur is a beautiful setting for what our guest today describes as “misery of the deepest dye”.

In his new book Convict-Era Port Arthur David Cameron takes us back to the days before it became a convict settlement, before its charms were viewed in a completely different light by the British newcomers.

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Trust

With special guest:

• Chris Hammer
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Sometimes the world of fiction overlaps our day to day life. In speaking with our guest today Chris Hammer we find out that Chris is interested himself in how the characters in his new book Trust will deal with the real life problem of the Covid 19 crisis. As well as Covid there is reference in the book to the 2019/2020 bushfires that swept the nation in unprecedented fury.

One of the greatest charms in reading Chris Hammer’s best-selling books is that there is authenticity. For Australians that means familiarity with the settings on the coast and in rural areas for previous books. In Trust the setting is Sydney but not the postcard Sydney in the shadow of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is the real Sydney populated by real people. Overseas readers are also drawn to this picture of the real Australia and Chris is delighted that his work has been translated into other languages so people in other countries can learn about us.

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Heroes Next Door

With special guest:

• Samuel Johnson
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Samuel Johnson is well known to Australian television audiences. He has won the Gold Logie for his performance in the miniseries Molly.

But to others in the Australian community he is the hero who has raised over $10 million for cancer research. In that connection Samuel rode his unicycle around Australia in a fund raising effort and in the process of cycling 15,000 kilometres broke a world record. Clearly this man knows a hero when he sees one.

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