Radio National Presents – Détails, épisodes et analyse

She told women they'd been objectified, stereotyped, sold a middle-class myth of romance and marriage and that another, better, life could be had. The Female Eunuch by the Australian feminist Germaine Greer was published in 1970 and became a blockbuster feminist text. 

Greer's defiant and controversial thinking reframed relationships between women and men, but 55 years on, how does it speak to present day feminist thinking?

This is the final in our series The Books That Changed Us, about influential books of the 20th century.

Guests:Michelle Arrow — Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University. Author of a number of books including The Seventies: The Personal, The Political and the Making of Modern Australia. 

Anthea Taylor — Associate Professor Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney. Her forthcoming book is Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive. 

Kathy Lette — Australian born, England based author of many novels including Puberty Blues which she wrote at 17 in 1979. Her latest novel is The Revenge Club. 

The extraordinary story of a lowly-paid public servant who launched an environmental conservation movement and became an unlikely 1960s pop culture icon.

Using a combination of lyrical writing and fact driven journalism, when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published in 1963 it alerted the world to the dangers of the overuse of the pesticide DDT. The book was embraced by the burgeoning environmental movement and rejected by vested interests. It's still considered a benchmark in environmental writing today.

This is the fourth episode of The Books That Changed Us which takes a fresh look at five influential books of the 20th century.

GuestsMichael E Mann — Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. Author of The New Climate War and Our Fragile Moment.

Elizabeth Kolbert — journalist and Pulitzer prize winning author for The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural history. Her latest book is H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z.

Mark Madison —  Chief Historian, US Fish and Wildlife Service. 

The King's calligraphy once covered Hong Kong, but now it has all but disappeared. Louisa searches for traces of the King, and for any truth to his claims of dominion over Kowloon. In this quest, she goes to the heart of his kingdom — Kwun Tong is an area full of high-rise factories, churning out t-shirts and souvenirs. There she discovers the first of the King's courtiers; and begins to understand that the search for the king is the search for Hong Kong itself.

He called himself the King of Kowloon and, for almost half a century, he used his misshapen Chinese characters to wage a calligraphic campaign claiming his dominion over Hong Kong. Journalist Louisa Lim follows the trail of a man who was first known as a crank, then an artist, then a most unlikely icon.

The decision to get cosmetic enhancement is complicated. It could be triggered by childhood bullying, influenced by social media, or stem from a belief that you’re not good enough.The beauty industry encourages you to tie your self-identity to your appearance. It promises to empower you.In the final episode of Face Value, we delve further into why so many people are driven to change the way they look. Who are they doing it for? And do cosmetic procedures make people happier or more confident?

Cosmetic enhancement comes with plenty of risks. Botched surgeries, safety breaches, and in the worst-case scenario, fatal results. They've been reported for decades. Horror stories aside, chasing your aesthetic ideal is no easy task. Beneath every Insta-perfect photograph is a tonne of time, energy and money that's often glossed over. And that's not to mention the pain and prolonged recovery that can come with invasive procedures.

Why are so many people willingly submitting themselves to putting this much effort into how they look?

For the longest time, Western beauty has been celebrated. The desire and pressure to look more 'Western' has led to skin whitening products, nose jobs and double eyelid surgery. But the tide is turning. Celebrities like the Kardashians are leaning into an ethnically ambiguous aesthetic.

Is this cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation? What do people of colour, who've often been racially vilified for their appearance, have to say about others cherry-picking their features?

COVID-19 has changed the way we do things. We're relying on video platforms to work and to connect. And it turns out that seeing our faces on-screen everyday has triggered more people to seek cosmetic enhancement than ever before. Couple that with the constant stream of impossibly beautiful — and heavily edited — people on social media, and you have the perfect storm to create appearance insecurity. Where is all this leading us to?

The cosmetic enhancement industry is booming. Injectables and surgical procedures promise age-defying beauty. But they come with real risks. From anti-wrinkle injections and fillers, to nose jobs and Brazilian Butt Lifts, why are so many people choosing to enhance their appearance?

By some estimates, 15 per cent of Americans believe in QAnon, the conspiracy movement connected to the storming of the US Capitol in January this year. QAnon can be all-consuming, ending relationships and splitting families. So what's it like to climb back out of its embrace?