Claim OwnershipThe Weekend Read
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Listen to Australia's best writers and thinkers read out longform essays from The Monthly magazine, the country's leading publication on politics, current affairs and culture.
51 Episodes
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For 31 years, there has been a rivalry – drawing on a divide so inherent and base – that it pits mate against mate.
We’re not talking about State of Origin, we’re talking about the Reclink Community Cup.
The football contest began in Melbourne, but is now held in cities across the country – with the Rockdogs, a team of not-so-athletic musicians, taking on the Megahertz, a band of various music media personalities. The winner claims the bragging rights.
Today, 2024 co-captain of the Rockdogs Anna Stewart will read her story, ‘Reclink Community Cup’.
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Guest: Digital content assistant, musician and 2024 co-captain of the Rockdogs Anna Stewart.
Over 90 years ago, a swiss astrophysicist theorised there was an unseen, unobservable force that sits behind the universe we know.
He called it ‘dark matter’, and today we’re not much closer to understanding it than he was.
But that could be about to change, as a group of Australian researchers are part of our most promising effort yet to uncover the nature of this unseen force
Today, Atticus Bastow will read his piece, ‘The search for dark matter’ from The Saturday Paper.
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Guest: The 7am podcast’s technical producer, Atticus Bastow
The 2024 Euros are just weeks away – with some of the best footballers in the world competing in an event that draws in hundreds of millions of viewers.
But the legacy of the last Euros is still an uncomfortable topic for many in England. Not only because they lost, but also the scenes of violence and hooliganism that led to a national debate and a new Netflix documentary.
Today, journalist Martin McKenzie-Murray reads his piece from this weekend’s edition of The Saturday Paper.
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Guest: Journalist, Martin McKenzie-Murray.
Today, columnist Elizabeth Farrelly will read her piece about our modern cities and how they relate to the history of how humanity has imagined the perfect city.
Farrelly is one of Australia’s foremost writers on urban development and the communities of our cities – having earned devoted readers at the Sydney Morning Herald and now at Schwartz Media, inThe Saturday Paper.
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Guest: Columnist Elizabeth Farrelly
Today, author and editor Sophie Cunningham reads her piece from a recent edition of The Saturday Paper.
Australian author Georgia Blain chronicled her battle with cancer in a monthly column for The Saturday Paper, sadly passing away in 2016.
Blain is remembered in this piece by her friend of over two decades, Sophie Cunningham – championing her legacy as a writer of rare talent, with a clear-eyed gaze, and a capacity to talk about sadness without self-pity.
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Guest: Author and editor, Sophie Cunningham
On the Las Vegas strip, in a sea of casinos, sits an enormous dome that lights up the sky.
It’s called The Sphere and it’s a performance venue where punters are dazzled by 54 thousand metres of LED screens capable of showing 256 million colours, in a display so overwhelming that some concertgoers faint.
Writer Elmo Keep travelled to Vegas to see her favourite band U2 play at The Sphere in their inaugurating residency. There she found in equal parts, a religious experience and a hyper capitalist nightmare.
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Guest: Writer, Elmo Keep
Today on the show, journalist Ange Lavoipierre will be reading her piece from a recent edition of The Monthly.
In the suburb of Newtown, in Sydney, two support groups almost diametrically opposed are asking essentially the same question: how much sex is too much for one person?
In one group, the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting welcomes those who are ashamed about the size of their sexual and romantic appetites. For the other, an ethical non-monogamy night allows space and discussion for those who can’t get enough.
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Guest: Journalist Ange Lavoipierre
Today on the show, writer Jane Gleeson-White, with her piece from a recent edition of The Monthly.
In inner-city Sydney, the heart of the urban jungle, Jane meets environmental lawyer turned activist, Michael Mobbs.
His ambition is to transform the concrete warren of terraces and narrow streets of Chippendale into a sustainable oasis.
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Guest: Author, Jane Gleeson-White
Today, writer Konrad Muller reads his latest piece on the quest to learn whether making organic wine is worth the effort.
It's called “Notes from a small vineyard” and in it he tries to discover the true effort and cost of going organic and interrogates what difference it makes.
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Guest: Writer, Konrad Muller
Background reading: Notes from a small vineyard
Surrounded by what we know as the Kakadu National Park, the Northern Territory’s Ranger Uranium Mine finally ceased processing in 2021, after nearly 50 years of operation.
With the mine now closed, Kakadu’s traditional owners are seeking that the government make good on the original promise of a national park in their care.
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Guest: Writer and photographer Anthony Ham
At certain times of the year, a group of volunteers can be found roaming Canberra’s bush reserves bearing raw chicken carcasses – all in the name of saving and studying the small local population of goannas.
Of particular interest to the volunteers is the Rosenberg’s monitor – only seven are known to be living in the area, and their survival in an environment so close to Canberra’s city is uncertain.
But, armed with bait and cameras taking millions of photos, local ecologists and volunteers hope to give Canberra’s goannas a chance.
Today on the show, Suzannah Marshall Macbeth, with her piece from a recent edition of The Saturday Paper, ‘Saving Canberra’s goannas’.
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Guest: Writer Anna Goldsworthy
A 14th century monastery in Bhutan might be the least likely place to find a hive of busy Wikipedia editors, but for Bunty Avieson, it was the perfect setting for a project in improving media literacy among local nuns, and preserving an under-documented culture online.
The rigours of editing Wikipedia offered a new path of enlightenment for both the teacher and her class of Bhutanese nuns, as they worked to bring the country’s culture and traditions to local as well as global readers.
Today, senior lecturer in Media at the University of Sydney, Bunty Avieson will be reading her piece from a recent edition of The Saturday Paper.
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Guest: Senior lecturer in Media at the University of Sydney, Bunty Avieson
Today on the show, Author and founder of AIME (the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience) Jack Manning Bancroft.
Published on the day of the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Jack’s piece is a statement on the continuing power of Indigenous knowledge systems, despite the long shadow of a failed referendum outcome.
Jack will read his story, ‘The Indigenous Knowledges Systems Lab’..
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Guest: Founder of AIME, Jack Manning Bancroft
Today, journalist Nicole Hasham, with her piece from a recent edition of The Monthly.
On top of a hill in a remote Aboriginal community, hours from Alice Springs, is an unmissable sight: a 20 metre high, steel Christian cross.
It’s a monument that was a decade in the making, cost 2 million dollars to build, and has attracted the interest of Hollywood star Mel Gibson. But despite the grandiosity, it’s a project that hasn’t been without its controversies.
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Guest: Journalist Nicole Hasham
For many Australians, facing the reality of this country is a task that has proved enduringly difficult, both at a public and a political level. For investigative journalist David Marr, finding the right way to tell the stories that allow us to see the truth of our history is a personal quest and one that has led to his latest book. This week, Michael talks with David about shame – both personal and national – and why his family agreed that he had to write Killing for Country.
Reading list:
Patrick White: A Life, David Marr, 1991
My Country: Stories, Essays & Speeches, David Marr, 2018
Killing for Country, David Marr, 2023
Septology, Jon Fosse, 2022
The Hummingbird Effect, Kate Mildenhall, 2023
You can find these books and all the others we mentioned at your favourite independent book store. Or if you want to listen to them as audiobooks, you can head to the Read This reading room on Apple Books.
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Guest: David Marr
Today on the show, writer and historian Robyn Annear, with her piece from the September edition of The Monthly.
While researching the opening of the Yan Yean reservoir in the 1800s, Robyn followed a thread, unravelling the history of sewage and sewerage in Victoria.
From cast-iron pissoirs and open-air urinals, to robo-dunnies and the National Public Toilet Map app, our local history of public toilets is rich with squalid detail.
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Guest: writer and historian, Robyn Annear
Today’s episode is a very special edition of Weekend Read.
Patrick Dodson is a respected Aboriginal elder, a federal Senator, and widely known as the Father of Reconciliation.
He is a fierce advocate for the Voice to Parliament, but Patrick Dodson has spent most of the campaign out of the spotlight, while he undertakes cancer treatment for his recent diagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Recently, Senator Dodson was able to record this episode in his country, the lands of the Yawuru people, in Broome, Western Australia.
In this episode, Patrick Dodson reads his moving piece from a recent edition of The Monthly about his lifelong fight for a better Australia.
We would like to thank the staff in Patrick’s office for making this possible.
Patrick will now read his piece, ‘A firelight stick on the hill’.
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Guest: Senator Patrick Dodson
Today on the show, Mark Mordue reads his piece from The Saturday Paper.
MRI scans are infamously claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing procedures. During his own MRI, the author was surprised to find solace and inspiration in the barrage of sounds he was subjected to lying within the machine. The cacophony of the equipment presented an opportunity to expound on the musical genres that are its antecedents, and those that are, perhaps, its legacy.
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Guest: Writer, poet and journalist, Mark Mordue
A clinic inside Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital is quietly changing lives through the power of tattoos.
The Combined Breast Service offers breast reconstruction, including making nipples anew with tattoo ink. It’s an offering that empowers post-mastectomy patients and breast cancer survivors, who often grapple with accepting their new chests.
Today, author Katherine Wilson will be reading her piece from the May issue of The Monthly.
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Guest: Author Katherine Wilson
Background Reading: Making a point
Today on the show, author Christos Tsiolkas with a recent piece from The Monthly.
“The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” – is the memorable opening line of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between.
It’s a line that has stuck with Christos Tsiolkas since he read it in high school - and a sentiment that has made him reflect on his life, his migrant parents’ lives, and the value of creating foreign worlds through fiction.
Christos Tsiolkas will read his story, ‘The Past is a Foreign Country’, after a short conversation with 7am host Ange McCormack.
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Guest: Author, Christos Tsiolkas
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