Gleetalks from Gleebooks

By daytime, Ukraine is a sophisticated European country going about its business, and Kyiv seems like an enchanting city. But by night, the sirens roar, and the war begins. Acclaimed former ABC Global Affairs Editor – and now ABC News Americas Editor – John Lyons doesn’t write about geopolitics or military strategy in his evocative book A Bunker in Kyiv , published by Harper Collins Australia . In...

Despite the swathe of destruction and demolition in recent decades, Sydney has some architectural gems: the State Library of NSW, the State Theatre, Hyde Park’s Anzac Memorial and more.  And adorning these iconic buildings is the exquisite work of three Italian brothers whose ornate and beautiful mosaic, terrazzo, and marble work constitutes up to 90% of Sydney’s early 20th Century marble and terr...

Nick Kaldas is a cop's cop. From investigating war criminals to taking down global drug operations, Kaldas has seen the worst humanity can offer. But he's also seen which human qualities can lead to greatness. An immigrant boy from Egypt who rose from beat cop to become one of the most senior police officers in Australia. In this episode of Gleetalks , Kaldas talks to former detective, aut...

We all love Indian food, but why aren't garam masala or tamarind as common as soy sauce and tomato paste? It’s a question answered by Masterchef winner Justin Narayan in his cookbook Everything is Indian , published by Murdoch Books , drawing on his Fijian-Indian heritage. Think: roast potatoes with masala flavours, MasterChef-certified chicken curry tacos, the best pizza ever and a cardamom-h...

Australian political leaders have bent the knee for decades, placing the ANZUS treaty at the centre of the nation’s security. AUKUS has become the latest symbol of strategic solidarity. For Australia’s governments, of whatever political persuasion, America continues to define the global rules-based order. Now that the American people have elected Donald Trump as the forty-seventh president, how wi...

Australian politics is shifting. The two-party system was broken at the last federal election, and another minority government is a real possibility at this one. Politics-as-usual is not enough for many voters. In this timely episode of Gleetalks (Gleetalks Link) George Megalogenis traces the how and why of a political realignment in his Quarterly Essay: Minority Rule: The New Shape of Australian...

One hundred years ago, a New York bookseller Gabriel Wells, committed a crime against history. He broke up the world’s greatest book, the Gutenberg Bible, and sold it off in individual pages, which he marketed as Noble Fragments. Half a century later, Sydney journalist Michael Visontay stumbled upon a mysterious legal document that linked Wells to his own family and changed its destiny. In this ep...

Since 1933, the Australian Women’s Weekly has been Australia’s highest-selling women’s magazine. And from birthday cakes to barbecues, the Weekly taught generations of Australians what to eat and how to cook it at home. Drawing on recipes, food editorials and readers’ memories, Lauren Samuelsson’s A Matter of Taste: The Australian Women’s Weekly & Its Influence on Australian Food Culture is a...

It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. In her seventh novel, Theory and Practice, award-winning writer Michelle de Kretser bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes making and unmaking fiction as we read and expanding our notion of what a novel can contain....

In the Nineteenth Century, the Russian and British played what was dubbed the Great Game for strategic influence in Central Asia. Today, the players have changed. Combine Putin’s Ukraine folly and American isolationism and, China now has the chance to project its power globally, as the US did from the early Twentieth Century. What are the implications and consequences, especially for Australia? In...

From Palm Beach to Cronulla, Mount Druitt to Bondi, Sydney is a city made for swimming. Over a calendar year, lifelong swimmer, educator and writer Chris Baker swam at iconic beaches, municipal pools, harbour baths, tidal rock pools, bushland lakes and a backyard pool, In this episode of Gleetalks, he talks to curator and broadcaster Michaela Kalowksi about his book Swimming Sydney: A Tale of 52 S...

The 1970s. The era of flares, treads, Gough… and the founding of Gleebooks – but that’s another story! It was also the age of the advent of feminism, rampant police and political corruption, and the rise of drug-fuelled organised crime in Australia, where Nugan Hand, Mr Asia and Robert Trimbole became household names. In this episode of Gleetalks, investigative journalist Ronni Salt talks to Gleeb...

Renowned Australian physician and academic Dr Norelle Lickiss AO discusses her collection of essays "On the Kindness of Strangers and Other Essays: Musing on Medicine as a Human Science" (40South, 2024). Drawing on her long and acclaimed career as a doctor, teacher and scholar, these writings cover a range of topics, from the practice of medicine, to art, philosophy and death. Many of the pieces h...