Iron John

With special guest:

• “Athol”.  

This weeks show deals with American author, Robert Bly’s insightful interpretation of the Grimms brothers fairy tale “Iron John”.  “Iron John” tells the story of a boy who is mentored by a wild man thru various trials and tribulations to emerge a hero and eventually marry the King’s daughter.  

Iron John is also the name of a men’s group based in Sydney that meets regularly and deals with issues arising in its member’s lives. We are privileged to interview one of the members of this group who identifies himself as Athol. 

In his book, ‘Iron John; a story about men’ Bly interprets the original tale, explaining its relevance to the development of the pre-industrial male psyche whilst lamenting the failures of modern society to correctly initiate boys into manhood and the subsequent disastrous impacts upon the lives of modern men and women.

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Facts Versus Myths

With special guest:

• Sue Price.  

Once again we continue with the ever present need to put the record straight and expose the truth behind the myths and disinformation generally being presented in the media, regarding the many factors surrounding the family justice system.

Our editorial position is that, unless policies and programs are formulated as a result of sound research which is grounded in verifiable facts about the nature, extend and causes of the problems, we will never achieve a just and equitable outcome and separating families will continue to suffer as a result.

This week our guest is Sue Price of the ‘Mens Rights Agency’. As always Sue points out the urgent need for better reporting and the necessity for correct analysis of the operation of the current system and in particular the success or otherwise of the mediation centers which were set up by the Howard government, as a first point of call for broken families.

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Marriage Matters

With special guests:

• Warwick Marsh  and

• Bill Kable.

First we speak with the founder of the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, which is now Australia’s largest pro-father, pro-marriage and pro-family charity, Warwick Marsh.

Warwick, together with his wife and daughter, recently attended the Smart Marriages Conference in Florida, USA. During his US tour in July, Warwick met with leaders in the American fatherhood and marriage movement and recorded many interviews for TV and radio. He speaks with us about his recent tour and his passion to promote marriage and the virtues of staying together for better or worse.

Next we introduce the newest member of the Dads on the Air team, Bill Kable. Bill is a Sydney lawyer who is also a professional mediator with a mission to encourage fathers to take an active role in the lives of their children, and to ensure they remain in the lives of their children should parental separation occur.  

Bill speaks candidly about some of his own experiences with the family justice system, and how it fails non custodial parents and their children, especially in the area of non-enforcement of contact orders.  

Also in the studio were two other new members of the Dads on the Air team, Bill’s wife Catherine, a University lecturer and Trevor Miller, a retired ABC TV editor. All of whom have had extensive experience with the family justice system and realize the urgent need to ensure the nation’s children obtain real equal shared parenting time with both of their  parents, following parental separation.  Welcome aboard. 

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Heaven, Earth, Mankind and Happy Dads

With Special Guests:

• Professor Ian Plimer and
  
• Professor John Jenkins.

This week we opt for variety, beginning the show with one of Australia’s leading climate change sceptics Professor Ian Plimer, whose new book Heaven & Earth: Global Warming The Missing Science has topped the bestseller lists and is already into its fifth edition in Australia in a month. The author of seven books, Professor Plimer is somewhat taken aback to finally find himself the author of a bestseller. Not only are issues around global warming of intrinsic worth to fathers, the propaganda techniques used to convince the general population that only politicians can save us through higher taxes and greater government control is also of direct relevance.

We then move on to Professor John Jenkins, who has just completed a study on separated dads suggesting they should learn to relax, play and have more fun with their kids. For everybody’s sake.

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The Woman Racket

With special guests:

• Steve Moxon and
• Sue Price.

Steve Moxon is the English author of a new book called “The Woman Racket - the new science explaining how the sexes relate at work, at play and in society”. Notwithstanding its provocative title, The Woman Racket is a serious scientific investigation into one of the key myths of our age - that women are oppressed by the “patriarchal” traditions of Western societies. Drawing on the latest developments in evolutionary psychology, Moxon finds that the opposite is true - men, or at least the majority of low-status males - have always been the victims of deep-rooted prejudice. As the prejudice is biologically derived, it is unconscious and can only be uncovered with the tools of scientific psychology. The book reveals this prejudice in fields as diverse as healthcare, employment, family policy and politics: compared to the long and bloody struggle for universal male suffrage, women were given the vote “in an historical blink of the eye”

Also Sue Price, from the Men’s Rights Agency joins us to talk about the new Child Support Agency scheme to go through old income tax records in an attempt to bring some additional pennies into its coffers.

Plus the 5th and final instalment of the radio drama Hero Joe, produced especially for Dads on the Air.

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Dads in Schools

With special guests:

• John Andrianus and Dave Turnidge from the Boys in Schools Program, part of the Fathers in Communities Project at the Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle. Begun in February 2006, this 2-year project has 3 objectives: to create stronger families through supporting men in their roles as fathers, create a greater awareness for families and schools of the importance of the role of fathers and to provide guidelines and resources to assist in that work.

Also, Greg Andresen reports in from the Men and Family Relationships National Forum in Adelaide.

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What Men Don't Talk About

With special guests:

• Maggie Hamilton, author of What Men Don’t Talk About says “writing this book… was prompted by my growing unease at the many assumptions I had made about men. While I’d been happy to believe that… men were never vulnerable, when I took a closer look at men, I began to realise this wasn’t the case… I realised that the many dilemmas men grapped with, the pain they felt, were largely invisible.”
• Nick Gleeson from Vision Australia has two children, lost his sight when he was seven years old after colliding with a supermarket door. After successfully competing in the gruelling Comrades 90km marathon run in South Africa in 2000, he climbed the challenging Mt Kilimanjaro, highest peak in Africa and was the first blind Australian to make it to the summit.

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