Deep dive into topics that deserve a sustained conversation.
Deep listening = Deep Trouble: the 60 minute grab.

Listen to all of the Deep Trouble interviews we’ve run to date.

Deep Trouble also features on 94.9 Main FM Mondays 4-5pm.

Deep Trouble is a deep listening podcast that explores long-form conversations with artists, writers, celebrities, scientists, historians and other public figures, interviewed by an expert versed in therapeutic techniques based upon the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Socratic Questioning.

Following on from Trouble’s Social Work interview format, the Deep Trouble podcast, delves deep into the psychological underpinnings of the guests in an attempt to find the signs, events, meanings and narratives that have informed their public, creative and private lives.

Amazing interviews with Rev. Tim Costello, acclaimed Cancer Scientist Jennifer Byrne, retired politician and anti-gambling advocate Kelvin Thompson and MORE.
 
 
The Vandemonian War – Dr Nick Brodie (Hardie Grant Books)

The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even the past – William Faulkner

In this interview, Dr Nick Brodie is in conversation about his new book The Vandemonian War; a revisionist history that details the secret war waged by the British Empire against the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Dr Brodie’s book is a refutation of the myth that the war was simply a bloody frontier feud between pastoralists and Aboriginal tribes, and instead seeks to elucidate the concerted military campaign perpetrated by the British government that drove the Aboriginal tribes off of their native land and to the very brink of extinction. Dr Brodie also discusses how misperceptions and misrepresentation of the past inform the Australian nationalist identity today.
 
 
Salt Blood – Associate Professor Michael Adams (winner of the 2017 Calibre Essay prize, Australian Book Review).

There are no words that fit grief. Nothing we can say. We do not want to be told everything is all right. It is not. – Patrick Holland, ‘Silent Plains’ (2014)

Associate Professor Michael Adams won the 2017 Calibre Essay Prize for his essay ‘Salt Blood’ which is a powerful contemplation on free diving, memory and grief. Michael talks about how abandonment, first when his mother left the family and then when his father committed suicide when he was only fourteen years old, has shaped his adult life and relationships. Michael talks about how ‘Salt Blood’ is his attempt to reconcile the past, whilst also being an exploration of the relationship between breath, free diving and meditation, and how these practices have brought him closer to acceptance of his father’s death and his own mortality.
 
 
Sugar Cane Woman – Indian-Fijian poet Manisha Anjali was born in Suva, the capital of Fiji, and we begin by discussing the importance of familial and national history in the development of works such as Sugar Cane Woman. Here is the vivid memory of meeting her great grandfather for the first time at his funeral; the free man who had fled Rajasthan and stowed away on a boat from Calcutta to Fiji, his body covered by tropical flowers and cotton buds in his nostrils, the lamentations of the women. Then there is the story of British colonisation and indenture that began in 1879 and ran till 1919 in which Indians were tricked into coming to Fiji with stories and visions of paradise, when the reality was slave-like conditions where Indian itinerant labourers were forced to work in the colonial sugar cane plantations and refineries. Manisha talks about the plight of Indian women in Fiji at this time who she says suffered from a kind of double colonisation; from British Imperialism and the Indian patriarchy. We talk about exile from the mother land of India and the persecution of Indians by Indigenous Fijians. Manisha also recites her poem Song of the Crocodile which is about three historical Indian women and describes their courage in the face of the hell and sacrifice that is represented by indenture. Manisha also discusses her experiences with the conservative elements of Indian culture, and her experience of being a woman whilst visiting India. She says that one of the positives of indenture was the death of caste system on the boats to Fiji, and how Brahmin were forced to associate with untouchables and that her family is made up people from various different castes – something that would never happen in India. We also discuss the mysticism of her grandmothers and her own secular obsession with religion, Hinduism, mass worship, the importance of symbols, Jungian archetypes and the collective unconscious. We finish by talking about death, grief, the acceptance of the heartbreak of loss and her casting off of the traditional role of the Indian women, her ‘liberation from love’ and how she feels marriage reduces a woman.
 

Deep Trouble is Hosted by Dr. Mark Halloran

Mark Halloran was born in the old Kyneton hospital in 1977, and raised on a sheep and cattle farm on the outskirts of the township. He left school when he was 17 years old and worked first as a roustabout and then as a shearer. He has a Bachelor of Behavioural Science (BBSc) Honours and a PhD in neuroscience. He has worked as a research scientist for the Australian School of Advanced Medicine at Macquarie University, Sydney, and has had his research published in several high ranking international scientific journals. He currently lives in Kyneton and works as a clinician within the local correctional facilities.

Dr Mark Halloran’s publication history: Atkin, J. D., Farg, M. A., Soo, K. Y., Walker, A, Halloran, M. A., Turner, B, Nagley, P, Horne, M. K. (2014). Mutant SOD1 inhibits ER-Golgi transport in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, J Neurochem, 129(1), 199-204, doi: 10.1111/jnc.12493. | Farg, M. A., Sundaramoorthy, V, Yang, S, Sultana, J. M., Gleeson, P, Levina, V, Halloran, M., Blair, I. P., Soo, K. Y., Atkin, J. D. (2013). C9orf72, implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, regulates protein degradation pathways [Submitted]. | Halloran, M. A., Parakh, S, Atkin, J. D. (2013). The Role of S-nitrosylation and S-glutathionylation of Protein Disulphide Isomerase (PDI) in Protein Misfolding and Neurodegeneration, Int J Cell Biol. | Kokavec, A, Halloran, M. A. (2010). Consuming a Small-Moderate Dose of Red Wine Alone can Alter the Insulin-Glucose Relationship, Can J Physiol Pharmacol. | Parakh, S, Spencer, D. M., Halloran, M. A., Soo, K. Y., Atkin, J. D. (2013). Redox Regulation in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Oxid Med Cell Longev. | Soo, K. Y., Halloran, M. A., Sundaramooorthy, V., Parakh, S., Toth R. P., Southham K. A., McLean C. A., Lock P., King, A. Farg, M. A., Atkin, J. D. (2015). Rab1-dependent ER-Golgi transport dysfunction is a common pathogenic mechanism in SOD1, TDP-43 and FUS-associated ALS, Acta Neuropathol. 130(5), 679-97, doi: 10.1007/s00401-015-1468-1.