logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2022
28m 35s

Fanny Smith: Icon

ABC Radio
About this episode
In 1899, twenty-three years after her people were declared ‘extinct’, Fanny Smith made a revolutionary recording where she announced to the world that she was The Last Tasmanian. Far from ‘extinct’, she was a proud Aboriginal woman raising her eleven children and publicly singing and speaking her Pakana language. This is her extraordinary story. 
Up next
Jul 2022
The Friendship Spitfire: Jack Dawson Green's WW2 story
A story of swagger, bravery, skill and ultimately, friendship, set on the frontline of war 
28m 35s
Jun 2022
Too Old To Run - the Drug Grannies ep 2
In the summer of 1978, Australian narcotics agents intercepted a campervan being unloaded on the Melbourne docks. What they discovered inside the van turned out to be the largest haul of an illicit substance, black hashish, to land on Australian soil at the time. The campervan be ... Show More
28m 35s
Jun 2022
Acting on a High Wire - a short history of television drama
From the very first night that ABC television beamed into loungerooms around Australia, it offered audiences live drama, initially plays and then serials. The story of the generation of pioneers who helped to create a new art form, shake off the cultural shackles of England, and ... Show More
28m 38s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2024
Ep 8: Finding Eunice
Eunice Carter’s descendents remember her as an austere woman, with a tendency to correct grammar and table manners. Throughout her career, Eunice sought to make a mark on history. She yearned to create a legacy. Did she succeed? And why does it matter to be remembered? The Godmot ... Show More
44m 48s
Oct 2024
Susan Smith | 123
In October 1994 a young mom from a small town in South Carolina reported that she was carjacked on a rural road. Susan Smith claimed that an unknown Black man forced her out of her car at gunpoint and then drove away with her two toddlers in the backseat. The search for the boys ... Show More
39m 43s
Apr 1
CLASSIC: What really happened to Amelia Earhart?
Amelia Earhart was a living legend -- this high-flying aviation pioneer garnered international acclaim and accolades for her daring flights across the planet. On July 2nd, 1937, midway through a flight around the world, Earhart's plane disappeared. Although she was declared legal ... Show More
38m 50s
Oct 2024
16. Gloria Steinem
Kirsty Young asks the activist and writer Gloria Steinem what advice she would give her younger self.Through the last seven decades, Steinem has been a singular voice and influential thinker for the causes of feminism and equality in the USA. She discusses her breakthrough as a y ... Show More
36m 27s
Jul 2024
Edna O'Brien: The Country Girls
Following the death of the Irish author Edna O’Brien in July 2024, another chance to hear a 2008 World Book Club episode in which she talked to Harriett Gilbert and an audience of readers about her renowned debut novel The Country Girls. Banned in her homeland on publication, it ... Show More
26m 25s
Oct 2024
34. Violet Charlesworth - Fake Heiress
In this episode of Lady Swindlers, Lucy Worsley meets Violet Charlesworth, an heiress with a taste for the high life. From her family home in North Wales, Violet drives the length and breadth of the country in her expensive motorcars, accompanied by pedigree pooches and dripping ... Show More
27m 46s
Aug 2024
Women of the World: Edna O’Brien
In one of the last broadcast interviews, the acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien, who died aged 93 in July 2024, is in conversation with Kim Chakanetsa. In this bonus episode, shediscusses her final novel, Girl – which tells the story of a young girl in Nigeria who is captured by ... Show More
26m 45s
Feb 2025
The 'Wolf Children' of World War Two and China's TV lessons
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes. We hear from 'wolf child' Luise Quietsch who was separated from her family and forced to flee East Prussia. Whilst trying to survive during World War Two, these children were likened to hungry wolves roamin ... Show More
51m 13s
Sep 2024
‘The Cleverest Woman in England’
Jane Ellen Harrison was Britain’s first female career academic, a maverick public intellectual burdened with the label ‘the cleverest woman in England’. Her quips and quirks became legendary, but many of those anecdotes were promulgated by Harrison herself. Mary Beard joins Tom t ... Show More
40m 26s
Jan 2021
L'hymne national australien change pour inclure les aborigènes
Le 1er janvier 2021, l'hymne national Australien a été officiellement modifié. La 2e phrase de l'hymne passe de "We are young and free" à "we are one and free", après des années de polémique et de tensions. La première phrase date de 1863 et elle a été écrite par un écossais fraî ... Show More
2m 54s