Earshot - Abc Radio National

Behind the tragic firebombing of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub in Brisbane 1973, where 15 people lost their lives, lies another tale of two young children surviving the violence of their abusive father. Queensland journalist Frank Robson tells the story of Danny and Maggie Stuart and their Uncle John Stuart, one of the few people ever to show them respect and kindness, before he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the firebombing. A crime he said he never committed and a conviction aided and abetted by the false testimony of his own brother – Danny’s father.

How an imprisoned playwright helped create Australia’s most iconic internet meme. This...is democracy manifest.

As you enter the town of Lake Bolac in southwest Victoria, you pass a sign that says 'home of aquatic sports', but historically Lake Bolac is famous for its fine quality and abundance of kuyang or short-finned eels. Eels were the most important food source for indigenous communities in this area, but the records that are left are patchworked and few. Walk eel country, following the path of the eel migration and in the footsteps of human history.

Locals were devastated when their newspaper was axed, so they set up their own. Dynamo editor cum journalist Susanna Freymark tells the stories that really matter to The Richmond River community.

Indigenous and African migrant communities collide in the Northern Territory, as Sydney-born Brian Obiri-Asare explores what it means to be black in Australia

When the Black Summer firestorm hits her street, Cath runs for her life—leaving her partner Jack, who’s hellbent on staying to defend their home. Later, among the shock and the chaos, it hits her: Oh my god, where is Jack?

Landays is a powerful and subversive form of poetry in Afghanistan, performed by women. Part of traditional folk culture, the poems are oral and improvised. And for the women who give voice to them, there's a price to pay.

It might be the most famous recipe in Australia: flour, salt, a little red wine, and don’t forget a dollop of tomato sauce. Paul Kelly’s ‘How to Make Gravy’ — written as a letter from prison at Christmas time — has grown in popularity since it was first recorded 25 years ago. Using the song as a starting point, Earshot speaks with five previously incarcerated people about their experience in prison on Christmas day.

Ghezal is a journalist trapped in a safehouse in Kabul as The Taliban take over the city. Through the intimacy of voice messages she tells her story of searching for a way out of Afghanistan for her young family and the realities of becoming a refugee.

Ghezal is a journalist in Afghanistan and when her city Mazar i Sharif falls to The Taliban they come looking for her. She escapes to Kabul, joining the desperate crowds at the airport but unable to board a plane she returns to the city, her young family in tow, with nowhere to stay. She tells her story of fear and defiance through intimate voice messages recorded on her phone.

The Cat Empire’s style is impossible to pin-down. The most accurate description might be 'uniquely Melbourne'. The six-piece have earned fans worldwide through 20 years of raucous live shows and dogged touring. Before the original line-up play their final shows together the band reflect their incredible story.

Chinese-Australia singer, Rainbow Chan, returns to her mother’s village in Hong Kong. She meets some charismatic grannies who sing surprisingly subversive and feminist protest songs, known as bridal laments.

Three stories which explore brief encounters, chance meetings and the fleeting nature of life

It’s the perennial question: what's for dinner tonight? But for a rising number of Australians experiencing food insecurity during the pandemic, the question has taken on new meaning. As NSW emerges from lockdown, Earshot shares a portrait of the community group, Addi Road and discovers what we can learn from their hyperlocal response to the crisis.

It was a simple act, done in a less-than-simple way. When Johnny Danalis decided to return the “Star of Taroom”, an ancient Indigenous groove stone his father had souvenired in the 1970s, it was simply to give back what was taken. But when he decided to wheel the 160 kilogram stone 500 kilometres from Brisbane to Taroom he had no idea it had the power to teach its people’s history, draw Iman people back to country and heal old wounds.

What does your voice say about you? Not your choice of words, but all the extra information the voice carries, like our emotions, accents, even apparently our identity. Details that big tech and governments are more and more interested in each day.

Under the rule of President Erdogan Turkey has become the world’s biggest jailer of journalists.

Stella Nyanzi’s words are searing, she plans to topple a dictator with them.  She was imprisoned for her poem on facebook that called the President of Uganda, Museveni, a diseased foetus that should not have been born.  Her 18 months in prison have made her bolder, angrier and more determined to create change in Uganda.

Ma Thida is a major figure in the struggle for democracy in Myanmar.  A surgeon and writer she was initially happy to go to prison to gain experience to write a prison memoir.  However after years in solitary confinement it was only mindfulness meditation and books she had smuggled into jail that got her through.  She speaks to Earshot for this special series marking the anniverary of PEN International from an undisclosed location she has fled to after the February coup in Myanmar.

In this first program in a series marking 100 years of Pen International, the organisation that advocates for prisoners of conscience around the world, we investigate the disappearance of Uyghur poets into the detention camps of Xinjiang.