Past Programs
Books - 2005
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002
Writing on the Mind – the power of story telling
01/10/2005
What is the narrative of our lives - and can we influence the way our story is told? Michael White is a psychologist and therapist who in the 1970s co-founded the internationally successful therapeutic technique known as Narrative Therapy. Barbara Brooks is a memoir writer, biographer, and lecturer in life writing. Both listen to stories and then fill out the spaces in between. They join producer Gretchen Miller in conversation.
Count Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Neurology and the Novel
09/04/2005
This week, get the garlic and crucifixes out as Natasha Mitchell digs for more curious tales of narrative and neurology. The late 19th Century horror classics, Dracula and The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde, offer unexpected insights into developments in brain research at the time, and the controversies it provoked. From double brains and literary lobotomies, to brain stems and missing souls - Dracula and Dr Jekyll were as much characters of science as of great literature.
Leaving You: A Cultural History of Suicide
05/02/2005
In 1938 historian Lisa Lieberman's grandfather, the son of an Austrian Rabbi, killed himself. It's a mystery that's long haunted her and one which sent her rummaging into the historical archives of self destruction. From Socrates to Sylvia Plath, post-revolutionary France to Auschwitz - suicide has been seen as both a personal and a political act. But Lieberman provocatively argues that modern medicine has stripped it bare of meaning and reason, and diminished individual responsibility for the decision to die. She joins Natasha Mitchell to share her unease...and historical insights.
