Body Sphere
-
What lies below
'Is it supposed to look like this?' Anxiety and misinformation surround male and female genitalia. Two new books seek to redress this: a cultural history of the penis and a book of photographs called 101 Vagina. Plus, one man’s vasectomy—we join him for the surgery.
-
The Uncanny Life of Puppets
What strange power to be human do puppets possess? Sometimes it seems that a puppet can move an audience in ways that a flesh and blood actor couldn’t. How do puppeteers create such life in inanimate objects?
-
The Sick Man in Medical Cosmology
In 1976 the British sociologist Nicholas Jewson published a paper called The Disappearance of the Sick-Man from Medical Cosmology. As well as having a fabulous title, it describes the historical shifts in the way a patient is treated: from being a whole person to a set of organs to a collection of cells. The medical historian James Bradley reviews the significance of this thesis about bodies, disease and power.
-
Plastic Face
The first recorded facial surgery—a nose job—was in India around 600 BCE. It’s only over the past 50 years, though, that plastic surgery has taken off as an anti-ageing treatment. These days a facelift, eyelid surgery, brow lift or nose job is at your fingertips! Are aesthetic plastic surgeons simply responding to demand—or are they creating the demand?
-
Body Architecture
Imagine wearing clothes that convey your mood by glowing and blushing? Or perspiring a fragrance through your skin? Lucy McRae has a background in dance and design and she's come up with a unique job title: Body Architect. Plus, a look at the extravagant architecture of the hair that was in vogue in the 18th century, when fashionable women wore towering edifices of decorated hair.
-
Sex and the Citadel
As popular uprisings have been seen in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world, Shereen El Feki has been trying to understand the upheavals not through politics but through sex. To what extent, she asks, might the ‘Arab spring’ bring the freedom to control your own body and what you do with it? Or, will matters of sex and sexuality become more tightly controlled? A look at intimate life in a changing Arab world.
-
The Art of Gesture
How much of communication is in what you say? It’s actually less than half. The Romans knew this; they had a whole language of gesture for public speaking. Renaissance and Baroque theatre also used a complex system of body language. How is non-verbal communication being taught today? And why do footballers and tennis players gesticulate much more than they used to?
-
Scar Stories
You're young, you're beautiful. You get cancer. You survive, but the physical scars are a permanent reminder. For teenagers and young adults this comes at a time when body image and self-identity are paramount. A photographic project is challenging young survivors to see their scars in a different light—and to reveal what many wanted to keep hidden.
-
Dance Like Nobody's Watching
It’s a dance craze that’s taken off around Australia and now around the world. You go along to a hall. The lights go off and the music goes on—and you're dancing in the dark with a crowd of people. It’s called No Lights No Lycra. There’s also no alcohol, no instruction—just a mass of bodies dancing in the dark.
-
Every breath I take...every move I make
Quantified Self is a global community of people who are gathering and analysing their own data about their health, exercise, diet and sleep. It's also known as self-tracking, body-hacking and—"cyberchondria"! But as health care systems around the world are coming under increasing pressure, is self-tracking the way of the future?
-
A Question of Colour
What do these people have in common: Nero, Napoleon, Vivaldi, Van Gogh, Prince Harry, Julia Gillard? They're all redheads of course. Redheads comprise around 1% of the world's population. So, globally, it's the rarest of human hair colours. It's also the most stereotyped and maligned. Is making fun of redheads one of the last acceptable forms of discrimination?
-
The Heart is an Organ of Fire
Why do we have two hearts? Medically speaking, there's the heart that pumps blood and oxygen around your body. Culturally, there's the heart as a symbol of love and emotion. Are these two different notions of the heart linked? In this historical, medical and emotional journey through the human heart, you'll meet a man whose heart stopped for ten minutes, the woman who loves him - and a medical historian.
-
Body Hair: Follicular Follies
Why do humans have much less body hair than other primates? Then again, if we really were naked apes, the body hair removal industry wouldn’t be booming and no-one would bother getting more and more parts or their bodies shaved, plucked, waxed and lasered.
-
Air & Earth: Ballet & Tango
A woman walks into a bar. A lone couple is on the dance floor. To the sound of drastic accordion music in a minor key, they cling to each other, their arms twitching as if drowning...I didn't know it yet, but the reason this looked like the main event of their lives was because it was. This is tango. As tango is sexy and earthy, ballet is ethereal and uplifting. Ballet is about elevating the body to transcendence - an idea that comes straight out of the French court of the 17th century. And...
-
Perfect Worlds: Medical & Makeover Tourism
Fancy a change? What about a holiday? These days you can have both. What could be better: a holiday in five-star luxury and the cosmetic surgery you’ve always dreamed of.
-
Anatomical
Anatomical models beautifully crafted in wax were made from the 17th century. Later models were made from papier mache and plaster. They render parts of the human body in all its complexity. They were used as teaching aides in medical schools, but they are also strange and wonderful works of art.
-
Moving Bodies and Boundaries
Garth McLean has the toned body of a yoga teacher. He also has multiple sclerosis. He teaches others with MS and manages his symptoms with yoga - and without drugs. Cate Sayers started up a little dance class 3 years ago for her daughter and a few other children with Down syndrome. The demand has been overwhelming and the results enlivening.
-
Giving a Hand
Meet a young doctor who's spent time in some the most dangerous and difficult places in the world with Medecins Sans Frontieres, trying to help the sick and the damaged. And find out about a project where you can make a prosthetic hand for a landmine victim and do some corporate team bonding at the same time.
-
Tango Nuevo & New Circus
What can bodies express that words can't? Tango was famously described by the Argentine poet Enrique Discepolo as 'a sad thought that can be danced'. As tango is essentially melancholy, circus is traditionally uplifting. In the hands and bodies of the new circus practitioners though, circus skills are being pulled apart and put back together in savage, sophisticated and sensual ways.
-
Different Ways of Running
Running is the simplest and most basic of sports, yet there are all sorts of variations on the theme - not all of them straight-forward. Scott Jurek is a ultra-marathoner who runs vast distances on a vegan diet. Tim Matthews is a Paralympic sprint gold medallist and now coach. Lachlan Ryan and Jarrod Theodore have just made their first feature film ‘Reverse Runner’. Who knew you could compete running backwards? The Retro Running world championships are on this weekend in Spain.
-
Pong! How You Smell
Coming to you in odorama - a cultural history of personal hygiene. Why have we come to dislike and want to cover up our natural body odours? A daily shower using a variety of sweet-smelling products isn't universal or age-old. How and why do attitudes to bathing and washing change? Studies are now showing that certain body odours are linked to attractiveness. And that if you choose the right perfume, it will interact with your body odour to make you even more attractive.
-
Touch: Massage Therapy
What does 'having a massage' mean to you? Being pampered in a luxury day spa? A quick neck rub at your shopping centre? Relief for a sore back or exercise injury? Massage therapy is all these things, but it's also now just started to be introduced into hospitals, for cancer and palliative care patients. It's a long way from when a 'massage parlour' was a euphemism for a brothel - to a hospital setting. But how is massage helping very sick people?
-
The Sporty Ones, part 2: The Runners
Sport may appear to be rule-bound and regimented, but ask any champion runner and they'll tell you that running is about freedom. Great Australian sprinters and middle-distance runners from Marjorie Jackson and Herb Elliott to Raelene Boyle and Catherine Freeman discuss the urge to run, the urge to win - and what happens when you don't win.
-
The Sporty Ones, part 1: The Swimmers
Olympic swimming champions reflect on the years they've spent being wet. From the youngest age, Shane Gould loved the water. Whereas Kieren Perkins didn't like getting his face wet. And Nicole Livingstone chose the backstroke because she could talk and swim at the same time.
-
How Crowds Behave
They say two’s company, three’s a crowd. How about three million? That’s the number of pilgrims who’ll converge on Mecca this year for the hajj. It’s one of world’s great crowd management challenges. So what’s it like to be in this enormous mass of bodies? And what are the latest theories and models that are being applied to this and other large-scale public events such as the London Olympic Games?
-
The perfect man and the mermaids
Who wouldn’t like to know, or be, the Perfect Man? Sadly he died in 1925 after a vigorous life as a strongman. The mermaids are very much alive however. You’ll meet Nerissa, Aradia and Volitania - modern manifestations of the ancient myths.
-
Runner's High
You can chemically induce a feeling of euphoria and invincibility by taking drugs—or you can go for a long run. What goes on in the body to produce the effect known as 'runner's high'?
-
Body Image: getting over yourself
Harley Breen was a fat kid with asthma, a limp and ADHD. He's now a stand-up comedian. Cynthia Bulik was a US figure skater and is now a professor of eating disorders. Both have tales to tell about body esteem and how to stop confusing what you look like with who you are.
-
Body Hair: Follicular Follies
Why do humans have much less body hair than other primates? Then again, if we really were naked apes, the body hair removal industry wouldn’t be booming and no-one would bother getting more and more parts or their bodies shaved, plucked, waxed and lasered.
-
Art of the Body
Have you ever gazed on a classical Greek sculpture and wished you looked like that without your clothes on?
-
Dance to the Rhythm of Time
When six-year-old Lila stands in first position in her ballet class, she's channelling a French king of four centuries ago. The history of ballet is written on the body of every dancer.
-
The Mystery of the Left Hand
In a gathering of ten people, are you the one who's left-handed?
-
The Bionic Athlete
How do you think you'd get on if you lost one or both of your legs in an accident? Can you imagine it might change your life not for worse but for better? Michelle Errichiello and Jack Swift are amputee sprinters in training for the London Paralympics, with different views on this question.
-
Running on Ice
Ever fancied running a marathon?
-
How yoga can harm your body but help your sex life
As yoga has grown into a global phenomenon, increasingly fuzzy claims are being made for what it can do for you. Everything from fitness and weight control to a long happy life and spiritual enlightenment. Rarely any mention of injuries. William Broad is a New York science writer and yoga practitioner who's surveyed decades of scientific research to try to work out what's real and what's not.
-
The Heart is an Organ of Fire
Why do we have two hearts? Medically speaking, there's the heart that pumps blood and oxygen around the body. Culturally, there's the heart as a symbol of love and emotion. Are these two different notions of the heart linked? In this historical, medical and emotional journey through the human heart for St Valentine's Day, you'll meet a man whose heart stopped for ten minutes, the woman who loves him - and a medical historian.
-
On the Line
In 1974 a bunch of unemployed Broadway dancers got together to see if they could generate some kind of work for themselves. The result was one of the most successful musicals of all time: A Chorus Line. Baayork Lee was one of the original cast members, and she tells the story of the making of this show that’s all about dancers. Plus – cast members of a new production of A Chorus Line in Australia discuss the ironies of auditioning for a show that’s about dancers who are auditioning for a...
-
2,000 years of dieting
This very first episode is about the New Year's resolution you probably made: to lose a bit of weight. Are you struggling to stick with your resolve now? You're not alone. For centuries we've been trying to find the wonder diet. According to Louise Foxcroft, the author of Calories and Corsets: A history of dieting over 2,000 years, there's no such thing.
Recommended Shows
PROGRAM INFORMATION
- Melbourne, VIC
- Health
- ABC (Australia)
- English
-
Body Sphere
ABC Radio National
GPO Box 9994
Melbourne 3001 -
Visit the station website
Update show info
More information
Get physical with The Body Sphere. It’s a program about the human form and all the things it can do. It’s about the way we use our bodies to create and compete with, care for and abuse, display and hide.From the invention of dieting to the fat acceptance movement, from foot binding to barefoot running, from the history of yoga to the technology that’s turning us into ‘post-humans’, it’s about the things we do with and to our bodies.
