Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based on an understanding of the Civil War, I believe that firmly. It defined us. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
At 10 past 10 on Monday, the spirit of jazz comes alive.
An incredible line-up of artists including Red Allen, Count Basie, Thelonious Muck, Jimmy Rushing.
I left my baby standing in the back door crying.
And the incomparable Billie Holiday.
My man don't love me.
A slice of history. The Sound of Jazz, Monday at 10 past 10 on SBS.
Strangely enough, the characters do come alive for you, even though you only see most of them in those wonderful old still photographs. Lots and lots of names we all think we know about, but I wonder how much we did really know about them and their contribution to that period of American history until we saw the series.
I didn't know much about John Brown's body. I thought I did. I didn't know why it was mouldering in the grave. I didn't know quite what he did, quite what role he played in the whole debate and the horrible strife about slavery, but now I do.
Here before God in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery. John Brown.
SPS is looking for an 11 or 12 year old boy with the knowledge of Italian to take part in a children's comedy to be produced later this year. If you'd like to audition, ring 02 964 2828 next week between 4 and 6pm Monday to Friday.
India's most violent elections have made it into the history books. The Narrow Gandhi dynasty is finished and perhaps an era of unity and secular politics is also over. India post Gandhi must come to terms with economic chaos, communalism and separatism. India post Gandhi, next on Dateline, 7.30 on Saturday night.
It could have been a very ugly, filthy war with no redeeming characteristics at all. And it was the battle for emancipation and the people who pushed it forward, the slaves, the free black people, the abolitionists and a lot of ordinary citizens.
It was they who ennobled what otherwise would have been meaningless carnage into something higher.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.
Mixed on the cutting edge, the people of the Black Triangle, Europe's largest concentration of uranium mines.
Government secrecy about the dangers helped to topple regimes, but the workers are still unaware of the extent of the risk.
Average life expectancy of a uranium miner is only 48 years.
Living in the Black Triangle on the cutting edge, 8.30 Tuesday, SBS.