Sydney-based author Amal Awad was fed up with the cliched depictions of Arab women by Western writers, so she travelled across Australia and the Middle East to speak directly with women of Arab heritage from all over the region about their own lives and their own opinions.

The result is a book, Beyond Veiled Cliches: The Real Lives of Arab Women, containing interviews with 60 women from very different backgrounds: lawyers, professors, ambassadors, activists, physicians – even a Lebanese clown. The women spoke about all sorts of issues affecting their lives from justice to history to sex and, yes, the veil.

In a culturally diverse region, what experiences do women across the Middle East have in common? How do both Muslim and non-Muslim Arab women feel about stereotypes of the Middle East? What kinds of progress are being made to improve the lives of Arab women by Arab women and how do these advancements look from the perspective of the women living them? With interviewee Joumanah El Matrah, Awad discusses her travels and the candid and creative women she met along the way. Hosted by braodcaster Hilary Harper.

Hilary Harper, Amal Awad and Joumanah El Matrah

Socrates railed against the invention of the alphabet, worrying that the written word would erode human memory. Imagine how he would have felt about Google Maps and iPhone calendar alerts.

Technological revolutions have always spawned both opportunity and panic. Today, digital technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, and research into its effects on the human brain is struggling to keep apace.

There’s strong evidence to suggest that digital technology really is altering human physiology, affecting our impulse control, attention span, sleeping patterns and, yes, our memory function. But it’s not all bad news, with some research suggesting a link between complex online activities (such as immersive games) and cognitive flexibility.

Host Madeleine Morris is joined by neuroscientist and psychologist Olivia Carter, and philosopher of science Michael Arnold – plus an audience full of questions – to talk brains, technology, policy and wellbeing.

Left to right: Madeleine Morris, Michael Arnold and Olivia Carter