Storyology 2018: Prep yourself with our podcast playlist

kate prendergast
The Walkley Magazine
8 min readJun 6, 2018

Prep yourself before you wreck yourself at this year’s Storyology festival. We can help: the Walkleys team have put together a Storyology speaker playlist, curated for your listening pleasure and anticipatory glee. Listen to Melissa Lucashenko spin a yarn on The Moth, Bri Lee talking with the grandpop of ABC radio Phillip Adams, and Hedley Thomas as he presents his ongoing, chart-topping investigative series, The Teacher’s Pet.

Our panelists are hosts and presenters, investigative journalists and writers. And they have some powerful stories to tell. Listen below — then listen in live at Brisbane Storyology (July 27–28). Tickets are on sale now, with discounts for students, MEAA members and pensioners.

Rachael Brown

Trace (ABC Radio, 5-part series)

Trace is the first serialised true crime podcast produced by ABC News. For creator and host Rachael Brown, it took years of investigating, interviewing, approvals and research. Dogged in its pursuit of the facts, compassionate in the handling of its subjects, the podcast investigates the cold case of Melbourne woman Maria James, who was found brutally murdered in her home in the ’80s. Over five episodes*, and with the help of retired detective Ron Iddles, field experts and Maria’s two sons, Brown re-examines the evidence and unearths new details involving pedophile priests, allegations of satanic cults and police bungling. The podcast, which aired last year, prompted over 80 emails with tips and leads sent in from listeners. Encouraged, the James brothers brought the case to the Supreme Court in March, seeking to reopen the inquest. This hope was quashed a month later, with the judge ruling it was beyond the court’s jurisdiction. The brothers are now seeking to order a new inquest.

Rachael Brown is an ABC investigative reporter and former Europe correspondent. She won her first Walkley in 2008 for Best Radio Current Affairs Report; Trace won the 2017 Walkley Award for Innovation.

*Update: On June 13 of this year, the Trace series relaunched after new evidence was found.

See Rachael Brown at the session Killer Stories: True crime podcasts (Sat, July 28).

Trent Dalton

The Theory of Objects (The Australian, 6-part series)

Not to objectify him or anything, but Trent Dalton is more than just a pretty face. He’s also a ripper raconteur. In The Theory of Objects, Dalton travels across the country to unlock the rich and fascinating stories contained in a miscellany of objects — from “a canoe the length of a cricket pitch” to the humble, treasured items that belonged to the father of Mao’s last dancer, Li Cunxin. But what for? Because, says Dalton, “I believe the things we keep say something about who we are, where we’ve come from, where we’re going.”

Trent Dalton is a writer for the Weekend Australian Magazine, with two Walkleys under his belt. His debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe, is coming out this month. (“I can barely speak for the beauty of it,” says Caroline Overington, who is launching the book in Sydney.)

See Trent Dalton at the session This Book Changed My Life (Fri, July 27).

Catherine Fox

Stop Fixing Women (Best Practice, ABC RN, 16 minutes)

In the book that won her the 2017 Women’s Leadership in Media Award, Catherine Fox argues that society’s obsession with ‘fixing’ women to solve gender-based problems is completely wrong-headed. Rather than tell 51% of the population that, if they want career success, they have to embody a “masculine norm”, instead we have to “focus on the entire workplace, and the people with the power to [enact] change”. Most of these people happen to be men — the patriarchy put them there. It’s a compelling thesis and response to the ‘lean in’ argument, and one which Fox speaks on eloquently here with ABC’s Richard Aedy.

In addition to Stop Fixing Women, Fox has authored Better than Sex: How a Whole Generation Got Hooked on Work and The F-word: How We Learned to Swear by Feminism. She is also a journalist.

See Catherine Fox at the session Power shifts: Identity, diversity, #MeToo (Sat, July 28).

Peter Greste

Peter Greste: The first casualty (Sydney Writers’ Festival, 50 minutes)

In 2014, along with two other Al Jazeera journalists, Peter Greste was charged with terrorism and sentenced to seven years in an Egyptian prison. Of the 400-plus days he spent incarcerated, the day this incomprehensibly unjust verdict came down was, he says, the worst. A panelist at the 2018 Sydney Writers’ Festival, Greste speaks here with fellow correspondent Hugh Riminton on the book that has come out of that brutal experience, The First Casualty, as well as the war being staged on multiple fronts against investigative journalism world-wide.

Peter Greste has received multiple awards for his reporting, including a Walkley bestowed while he was still in jail. This year, Greste began his position as UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communications at the University of Queensland.

See Peter Greste at the session This Book Changed My Life (Fri, July 27).

Bri Lee

Women and the Law (Late Night Live, ABC RN, 20 minutes)

More than 60% of law graduates are women. And yet, in our nation’s history, only five women have sat as judges in Australia’s High Court since it was established in 1901. “My friends and I call this the ‘myth of the trickle-up effect’,” says Bri Lee. Here, the former lawyer and break-out author talks with Phillip Adams on ABC Radio’s Late Night Live on women and the law — those who serve it, and those who are abused by it. Their conversation spans topics like the entrenched gender disparity in the industry, the justice system’s failures when it comes to handling cases of sexual assault, and Oregon’s forward-thinking You Have Options program.

Bri Lee released her debut memoir Eggshell Skull in May, and has been touring the country with it since. Lee also appeared earlier this month on The Drum.

See Bri Lee at the session Power shifts: Identity, diversity, #MeToo (Sat, July 28).

Melissa Lucashenko

My Grandmother’s Country (The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth, 14 minutes)

The long-running podcast The Moth is a platform for people around the world to speak their extraordinary, true-life experiences. In this episode, Indigenous author Melissa Lucashenko tells her story of being forced to move off her ancestor’s land with her daughter, straight into a life of poverty, hardship and yet — against the odds — hope.

Lucashenko’s story also appeared in The Guardian. She is the author of five books, and won the 2013 Walkley Award for Longform Journalism with her essay “Sinking Below Sight: Down and out in Brisbane and Logan”.

See Melissa Lucashenko at the session This Book Changed My Life (Fri, July 28).

Mark Schoofs

Live: From ‘The Art of the Deal’ to the Dossier (Trump Inc., ProPublica, 35 minutes)

In January 2017, BuzzFeed published an unverified Russian dossier. In it were explosive details claiming Russia had colluded with Trump during the 2016 presidential elections. (It also alleged that a secret ‘golden shower pee tape’ existed, with the US president starring.) The controversial decision to publish the document provoked Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen to file a lawsuit against the company earlier this year. Mark Schoofs, one of the two editors on the story, was listed as a defendant. (Cohen dropped the suit in April.) In this live recording from New York City, Schoofs talks with ProPublica’s Eric Umansky and WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein on the reasons behind BuzzFeed’s move, and why he thinks “Donald Trump is as an American phenomenon as you could possibly ever dream”.

Mark Schoofs is the investigations and projects editor for BuzzFeed News. While working at The Village Voice, he won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his series on AIDS in Africa.

See Mark Schoofs at the session Saturday Morning with the Papers (Sat, July 28).

Schoofs will also appear at the free Storyology Sydney event, How can investigative journalism projects change the world? (Mon, July 30).

Lenore Taylor

Common Ground (Guardian Australia, 5-part series)

Nobody expects Australians to agree on everything. In fact, the fact that we can disagree and debate issues important to our society is what makes us strong. But is it possible for individuals with wildly differing viewpoints to find common ground? Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor and social researcher Rebecca Huntley engage everyday Australians on hot button topics like climate change, euthanasia and the immigration to find out.

Lenore Taylor was appointed editor of Guardian Australia in 2016. Before that, she worked as a political journalist and leading commentator for almost three decades, scooping up two Walkley awards. She is also author of the book, Shitstorm.

See Lenore Taylor at the session Saturday Morning with the Papers (Sat, July 28).

Hedley Thomas

The Teacher’s Pet (The Australian, ongoing series)

One week after The Teacher’s Pet was released in May this year, it shot to the top of the iTunes charts. Presented by Hedley Thomas — chief national correspondent at The Australian and Gold Walkley winner — the series pursues a cold case investigation from the eighties in Bayview, Sydney, where Thomas believes the body of Lyn Dawson now lies. Along with her friends and two independent coroners, he believes Lyn was killed by her husband. A football star turned high school teacher, it took only two days after his wife disappeared for Chris Dawson to invite his student and babysitter to sleep in his bed.

Following on from Bowraville (the first podcast to win a Walkley), The Teacher’s Pet is a gripping new series from The Australian. Since it’s aired, new witnesses have come forward to speak their side of the story. Released weekly as the story continues to evolve, there is no telling how the series will unfold.

See Hedley Thomas at the session Killer Stories: True crime podcasts (Sat, July 28).

Storyology is the Walkley Foundation’s annual festival of journalism. Explore the full Brisbane program here, and follow on Twitter @walkleys with the hashtag #Storyology18.

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kate prendergast
The Walkley Magazine

Does socials for #FODI + #amidnightvisit. Published in The Lifted Brow + Overland + Neighbourhood Paper. Insta artist @ _tenderhooks.