Audio transcript

Between the bookshelves – 14. Corey Tutt OAM

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ANNOUNCER: Listen @ The Arts Unit.

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JADE ARNOLD: The Arts Unit recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples and storytellers of this place, now known as Australia. We are grateful for the continuing care of Country, waterways and skies where we listen, read and learn. From here on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal peoples of the Eora nation, and from wherever you are listening, we respect the Elders of the past and present and extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening.

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You're listening to 'Between the bookshelves', the official podcast of the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge. I'm your host, Jade Arnold, the Premier's Program Officer, Reading and Spelling, at the Arts Unit. Join me as I chat with children's and young adult authors and other experts in education and children's fiction as we talk about the books and the strategies that may spark or reignite a love of reading. Let's dive in.

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Welcome to episode 14 of 'Between the bookshelves'. I'm joined today by the phenomenal Corey Tutt, a proud Kamilaroi man who's joining us today from Birapai Country. Corey is an award-winning author of 3 books that feature on the PRC book lists, is the editor of the 'Deadly Science' series and is the founder and CEO of the DeadlyScience organisation. He was named NSW Young Australian of the Year in 2020 and received the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2022. He's also an associate professor at the University of Western Sydney. Corey, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy day. How are you today?

COREY TUTT: I'm good. I'm in dad mode. And I can make dad jokes now because I'm actually a dad, which is fantastic. But look, I'm very excited to be joining you. And thank you for mentioning my books. And I feel thoroughly uncomfortable when someone reads a bio about me because I'm like, really, did I do that? Is that actually a thing? I'm also Young Australian of the Year. I'm now too old to be Young Australian of the Year. So every time someone mentions that, it just reminds me that I am approaching middle age.

JADE ARNOLD: Middle Age Australian of the Year in the future, I see.

[laughs]

Well, before we begin, I wanted to start out with a little game of this or that. Basically, I'm going to give you 2 different options, and you need to choose one of them. You can defend your choices if you want to. You can just leave your answers stand as they are, if you wish. It's totally up to you. Are you ready?

COREY TUTT: Yeah, go.

JADE ARNOLD: Fiction or non-fiction books?

COREY TUTT: Oh, non-fiction. I need to be real, baby. I don't mind a good fiction book. But I need the facts. I'm not winning Trivial Pursuit with some love story, right?

JADE ARNOLD: You are definitely not. Physical books or eBooks?

COREY TUTT: I love a good physical book, but I'm actually an audiobook guy, which does not answer the question. But I'm more of a physical book guy. But if I have a choice, it's an audiobook.

JADE ARNOLD: Turtles or snakes?

COREY TUTT: Considering just 2 days ago I picked up a venomous snake, please do not pick up snakes, but I am actually a closet snake catcher. I'm constantly picking up venomous reptiles and non-venomous reptiles. And I've never grown out of it. So I'm a bit of a snake guy. But I also love my turtles as well. And to be honest, turtles are so underrated as an animal. They clean up our waterways. And they're like the Dysons and the Hoovers of the creek system. And snakes, they clean up all the rodents, which we don't want in our houses. And they all do a really good job.

JADE ARNOLD: Very important roles in our ecosystems. Would you prefer science lab or field research?

COREY TUTT: Oh, field research every day. The best thing about field research is that you can hide your shame. You can order some Macca's, and you can just put it in a bin, where you're not allowed to eat in a lab. Road trips are the best. Picking up pieces of tin are the best. But I also don't mind the lab, because if you're the only one working the lab, you could put some Luke Combs on and not get any judgement. Shania Twain, 'That Don't Impress Me Much', when you're in the lab and you get a negative result, that's a fitting song.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. So there's benefits to both it sounds like.

COREY TUTT: There's benefits to both. But if I had a choice, it's field work any day of the week.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, wonderful. So onto the serious questions now. One of the key aims of the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge, or the PRC as we like to call it, is connecting children and young adults with stories that they're going to fall in love with. And so with that in mind, on this show, what we like to do is a little 'between the bookshelves' pitch instead of an elevator pitch.

So essentially, what I want you to do is imagine that there is a student standing between the bookshelves at their school or their local library or in a bookshop, and they're in the T section, and they see your titles on the shelves there. And it's your job to try and help them make the decision to take your books home. So for your most recent book, 'Caution! This Book Contains Deadly Reptiles', which features on the 5 to 6 PRC book list, could you give us the 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this title, please?

COREY TUTT: Yeah. So I started my career off as a zookeeper. But what got me into zookeeping and got me so passionate about animals was a book called 'Reptiles in Colour' by Dr Harold Cogger. It was published in 1984. I got it in about 1996.

'Caution! This Book Contains Deadly Reptiles' is going to give you the party facts, right? Because when you go to a party and you're a young person and you're trying to fit in, if you can spout out a reptile fact that can wow the room, that is the perfect icebreaker. Talk about Ngaaybaay and how he breathes out of his bum, or how the bandy-bandy uses shutter shock to shock its predators. These are facts that animals have. And they are what connects us.

We get connected as humans by things we don't really understand. And that's why people are so fascinated with animals and fascinated by science, is that, as humans, we're constantly observing. We're constantly looking around us to understand the world and what we live in, because it is so complex. It's so simple, yet so complex. And our minds need to understand reptiles and mammals and birds. And even if they aren't your thing, there's something in there for everyone.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, I think you've hit the nail right on the head there. And I think one of the things that I really liked about this book was that it gives us those cool little party facts. I feel like we're pretty good at knowing all the cool, fun facts about our mammals and our marsupials. But lizards and turtles and other reptiles don't always get as much of a cool rap. So this is the perfect book to give to a young reader who loves facts and loves reptiles and loves knowing more about the world around them.

COREY TUTT: It's also the gateway book into a career in STEM. If we can get young kids loving our animals, maybe that inspires them to write their own book about animals and find out a little bit more. And we need more kids understanding our wildlife and animals to help protect them into the future.

With endangered species and also species that are going extinct, it's really important now that kids understand that they can play a role in protecting these animals for the future, because older people, unfortunately, don't have as much life to live. But young people do. And it's really important that young people know that they play such a huge role in protecting these creatures.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely. And one of the ways they can do that is by knowing about it. You obviously can't take action or work towards protecting species when you don't know about them to begin with.

COREY TUTT: Exactly.

JADE ARNOLD: Something that really stood out to me while reading this book was how you've really seamlessly woven in a lot of really rich First Nations knowledge into this book. Not only does every reptile feature its First Nations name, but you've also grouped each reptile by Country, and each new section opens with information about that specific area and the traditional owners. Why was it important for you to frame the book in this way? And what do you hope readers take away from that structure?

COREY TUTT: It's really important to me for people to understand the First Nations names of our animals, because for example, a brown snake isn't always brown. A tiger snake hasn't always got stripes. The names for our animals from Europeans actually don't make a lot of sense for what our animals actually are. And it's really important that young people, especially young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, they connect with culture with our animals. Because the more we can look into the past and learn about them, the more we'll know.

So there's particular stories of certain animals in language that uncover behaviours that Western science hasn't really quite got to know yet because the research simply isn't there. So by understanding First Nations perspectives with our animals and stories and language, we can understand a bit more about what these animals actually are.

For example, I worked with the Bundjalung Elders recently, and we rediscovered the name for rough-scaled snake. In their dictionary, the description was brown tiger snake. And then they had another name for tiger snake. But the close cousin of the tiger snake on Bundjalung Country is the rough-scaled snake. It's essentially a tiger snake with rough scales and it is brown with stripes and is exactly the description of that language name.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, that's wonderful. But I really like how so many of these names, their literal translations give you a much better description of the animals that they're trying to describe, as opposed to a brown snake, which can have so many different colours and forms and is really hard to identify just from that, so a really good naming system. And also, how fantastic to have those names in print.

One of the things I was going to ask you about next is that there's 2 names in particular that stood out to me as really special ones, the Kamilaroi name of the western sawshelled turtle, which is Ngaaybaay. Is that correct?

COREY TUTT: Yep, Ngaaybaay.

JADE ARNOLD: And that's the first time that word has been published ever. And you also worked with a Yuin elder to create the name for the broad-headed snake, Yuga-maga.

COREY TUTT: Yeah. And that was really important. That piece of work was super important because the broad-headed snake used to be found all over Gadigal Country. And the excavation of sandstone made that species extinct locally from that area. They're still found around Dharawal Country and Yuin Country, but they're so critically endangered.

But the whole premise of that snake is that yes, it's got a bit of a broad head, but actually, it looks like a baby python. And the people who have died of this snake have died because they have believed that it was a baby python. But Dharawal people and Yuin people have stories of baby pythons being venomous. And that story is directly linked to the broad-headed snake. But the language name has been lost and is now extinct. So that's really hard. So again, taking some of the Yuin language and making a name for it, using the definition of that snake being a false python was really important.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah wonderful. I wanted to know, what was it like being part of that process to work with Elders to either record these names for the first time or to create that name, and why preserving and sharing First Nations language through books like yours for young readers, especially when a book like yours will be the first time they've ever seen any of the 68 reptile names, why is that so important to you?

COREY TUTT: Working with Elders is actually easier than working with herpetologists. Herpetologists are worse than blackfellas to work with because blackfellas-- we're not one harmonious group, but we all want to see our culture survive and thrive. And language is part of that. So working with those Elders was really important. Working with the scientists, not so easy, because every scientist has an opinion. And sometimes, they've got countering opinions to each other.

However, I think that we're very lucky. We've got a lot of language holders and knowledge holders still left. They're dying at an alarming rate. But working with Uncle Warren Foster, I've worked with him on all 3 books now, and working with Uncle Ted Fields, working with Aunty Faith up in Yugambeh, there's almost an exhilarating moment when you're working with a group that they've got a dictionary, we're going through the dictionary together, we're going through the descriptions, they've probably got some names for some things, they don't quite know what the species is, but we're playing a game of memory where I'm pulling out photos and I think it might be this or they think it might be this. And then we hit a eureka moment when we find that, OK, that must be the reptile that that name is. That's a really special moment.

Then there's other ones like the turtle you mentioned. That's well known in our community what that turtle is. But it just hasn't been written down. To write that down is really important. And to find other lizards and snakes, like the land mullets, the largest skink on Earth, or second largest skink on Earth and the largest skink in Australia. It grows to about 70 centimetres long. It's massive. And Gumbaynggir people have had a name for the skink for ages. And to help them find the name for that skink in their language and then put that in the book was really important, too.

And then I guess the other thing as well is working with Wiradjuri people to find the name for the Cunningham skink. It's been classified after Professor Cunningham who first classed that species. And look, he was a great scientist, but this thing had a name before he came along.

JADE ARNOLD: That's such a fascinating process. And it must have been so exciting, but also quite a mission to get all of those reptiles identified and matched. And what a fantastic effort of research and consulting with community that you've done. So fantastic work.

COREY TUTT: Yeah, I kind of treat it to being like a forensic scientist. You're trying to find the evidence. And then you're putting it together and making a compelling judgement on that. So there's a lot of lizards and snakes that didn't make the book because at the time of writing and researching-- because this was a research project. It wasn't just a book. And that research went into the Taronga Zoo's ARC Centre that they've just opened. So you will now see Indigenous names on the reptile signs for the first time in their 150-year history because of this book.

JADE ARNOLD: That's wonderful. If readers loved 'Caution! This Book Contains Deadly Reptiles', what's another book or resource that you would recommend they explore next?

COREY TUTT: Oh look, there's so many. I'm a bit of a true crime nut. I love true crime. But I won't tell the kids to read true crime because it obviously will keep them up at night. But look, I like 'Sky Country' as well, by Krystal De Napoli and Karlie Noon. I tend to read more of the non-fiction books. So 'Bad Blood' about Elizabeth Holmes was a great book because it's about Theranos and Silicon Valley. I loved the book 'The Woman that Fooled the World', the Belle Gibson book.

I read so many books. But I tend to love the saucy non-fiction books a little bit. Because I think a lot, and I'm quite a deep thinker about things, if I'm choosing to watch a TV show or read a book, I kind of like silly stuff because it switches my mind off it. So when I was living in Sydney, I was living with 2 nurses. And we would watch 'The Bachelor' and then 'MAFS' when it first came out. I don't watch those things anymore, but I used to enjoy those things because they used to just make my brain turn off. They're so silly that I just-- it was a time to stop thinking. [laughs]

JADE ARNOLD: And I think that's such a good message, too, for young readers, is that there's often different purposes for reading. And if you want something like knowledge and you want to learn cool, fun facts, then your books are a fantastic starting point. But sometimes, we just want to read something that lets us escape and have a bit of a laugh and switch our brains off. And you can find all of those in a book, depending on what you're picking up on.

COREY TUTT: There's actually some really good books for some older readers as well. I really liked Rob Burrow's 'Too Many Reasons to Live'. That was a guy that-- he developed motor neuron disease. And that was a really inspiring book for me because his best mate actually ran ultra marathons to raise money for Rob whilst he was suffering from that condition.

And for you science nerds, 'Bring Back the King' was one of my favourite books by Helen Pilcher that came out in about 2018. And this is about de-extinction. So you would have seen that recently. There was this news article about them bringing back the dire wolf. The dire wolf is actually not entirely brought back; 1% of its DNA was sequenced into the genome of a grey wolf.

So look, that book's for younger readers as well. But it explains that we can fantasise about Jurassic Park and de-extinction. And yes, we can bring something back that is similar. However, it's the fantasy idea about bringing back a thylacine. It's not necessarily a thylacine. It's something that resembles a thylacine, but it's not what it once was.

And the technology is amazing because that technology in particular can be used for people that-- maybe they're a chance of developing some sort of borne disease, and if there's a way they can prevent that to prevent human suffering, then that's fantastic. But it should be, really, a last resort. Our initial effort should be to stop these species from going extinct in the first place.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to talk now about one of your earlier books, 'The First Scientists: Deadly Inventions and Innovations from Australia's First Peoples', which also features on the 5 to 6 book list. Could you give us your 'between the bookshelves' pitch for this book?

COREY TUTT: The first scientist is about telling the true story of STEM in this country. Often, we see images of Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison wearing lab coats. However, if you wanted to see a true image of a scientist, they are young women. They are people of colour. They're people from overseas. They are exactly what this listener is. And they come in all different walks and shapes and sizes. That's what STEM is. STEM is innately human.

But for many, many decades, we have told people conditionally that to be a scientist and be a high profile scientist, you have to be an old, white male wearing a lab coat. And that's not to say that old white males wearing lab coats aren't necessarily good at science or they shouldn't be part of science. It's just not a true reflection of what STEM is in this country.

And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been doing STEM for 65,000-plus years. And if you're non-Indigenous, that's also part of your history. If you're born on this continent or you reside here, you should be proud of the fact that First Peoples on this country invented bread, the world's oldest structures. We have structures that are older than the pyramids. And not every Egyptian is a First Nations person from Egypt. But they sure as hell are proud of the pyramids.

JADE ARNOLD: That's such a wonderful selling point of it. It's this very rich, very eye opening book that I think I'd encourage every middle grade and teen reader and even younger readers, if they're feeling confident, to explore. You must have come across so many amazing discoveries and innovations while you were researching 'The First Scientists'. I know that I was constantly surprised when I was reading through the book myself. So I wanted to ask, was there one scientific contribution that particularly amazed or inspired you personally when you were researching?

COREY TUTT: Yeah, mainly around the bush foods. The kangaroo apple on Yuin Country and Ngunnawal Country, that's an antibiotic steroid and a fish poison, which is pretty cool. The bush ovens are loved in Wiradjuri Country, learning about how Aboriginal people heated up clay balls and cooked meals underground. Even now, I'm writing the second version of that book and learning about symbiosis.

So I learned about a really cool story from Yuin Elders around killer whales and the relationship between killer whales and Aboriginal people, and also non-Indigenous people. This relationship continued on right up to the early 1900s. And then a silly mistake from a non-Indigenous person ruined the relationship for everyone. It's really important that we reflect on even NORFORCE and forensic science.

This happened in our lifetime. Most of your parents at home or your teachers were born before 1999. That was-- the last Aboriginal tracker was employed by the NSW police force, then. So we were using trackers right up to the early 2000s. And so this isn't past tense. This is stuff that has still happened. And it's really important that people understand that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are still using STEM. It's not a past tense thing. It's just-- it's taking a different format now.

So even up at Kiwirrkurra, the rangers are using drones to find bilbies. And these are-- they call them Ninu up there. They find them 6 seconds faster than Western researchers, which is really important.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, phenomenal. If readers are fascinated by 'The First Scientists', are there any books that you'd suggest that they explore next?

COREY TUTT: I really liked 'Australia's First Naturalists' by Lynette Russell. That was a really great book. Everyone sort of says 'Dark Emu', and I think 'Dark Emu' is really great. I really loved-- I believe it's called 'Dreaming Circles' by Paul Gordon. That is a really good book as well.

What I'd love young people to do-- if you live in a community where you've got an Elder in residence at your school, like an Indigenous person that comes to your school, which a lot of schools have now, talk to them, because sometimes there's local knowledge that is way cooler than what's in any book. Up here on Kattang and Biripi Country and Dainggatti Country, we have a lot of really powerful Elders up here, and I love going for walks with them. I love talking to them.

They have yellow wattle flowers and they're blooming this time of year. And that's generally a sign that the whales are coming. And that's really important.

It's important to see, when we talk about First Nations science, we have a habit of looking at things objectively, which is, like, a very narrowed focus. And that's Western science to a T. It's a narrowed focus. But if you look at First Nations knowledges across the world, they're more holistic.

So First Nations people in Canada, for example, they eat caribou, which is a moose-type creature. And during the winter months, there's not much vegetation, except for lichen. And lichen is toxic to humans.

However, what they do is they eat the caribou, and caribou are ruminants, so they have 4 chambers to their stomach, just like cows. But as the caribou eat the lichen, they detoxify it in their stomach linings. So the First Nations people of Canada knew-- and Yellowstone as well in America-- knew that caribou would detoxify the lichen and they could eat it.

But that's observation, and that's trial and error. That there is knowledges that are holistic because you're taking into account time of year, digestive tracts. And that stuff's really important to know. To survive this many thousands of years, you had to know a thing or 2 about what's around you.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely. The next book of yours I'd like to talk about is called 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!', which features on the 7 to 9 list. Can you give us the pitch for this book?

COREY TUTT: This was my emo album. I had just come out of COVID. I had a punctured lung from Rugby Union. I ruined my honeymoon. I'd copped my first bit of bullying online.

Didn't really know what to do. I was pretty lost at this time, and I was looking for inspiration from other Aboriginal people. And I just started jotting down all the things that-- all the people I'd met.

And it was different to another autobiography. Like, autobiography, you focus more on a person's achievements. But I wanted to really break down why those people have achieved and make that normal for kids to read.

And for the most part, I hated the book, to be honest, when I first released it, because it was associated with all this personal pain. And the lesson for that is, when young people-- when you're feeling a bit sad or down, instead of getting angry and shaking your fist to the world like an old man, I tend to take my feelings and recycle them into something positive. Often, if I'm feeling really down, I've hit a wall, I will go and buy books, and I'll go deliver them to a hospital or a school. That's how I cope as a person.

But then I grew to love the book because I was in John Hunter, and-- I volunteer with an organisation called Captain Starlight. And Starlight obviously help kids that are unwell in hospital. And often kids that are unwell, they end up having a really negative experience with science because they are the science experiment.

Kids that have leukaemia or cancer, they're on red dragon, which is a chemotherapy drug. It's very, very strong. It makes them very sick. Their families are often there and they're just looking for a little bit of joy, a little bit of love.

And I go and do these science shows every year. I'm an ambassador for Starlight. I'll drive down to John Hunter, Randwick, Westmead, and I'll do a couple of year.

And I remember there was one little girl, Indigenous girl from Armidale. She's no longer with us, unfortunately. She gave me this book.

And part of 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!' has this page of why I'm deadly. And the Captains had wrote why this kid's deadly in there and stuck a photo in it. And she's like, hey, look, I'm in a book with Cathy Freeman. And all of a sudden, that book that was self loathing-- it was written from this pain I had.

I was trying to cope with the pain that I had with writing that book. It took on this whole new meaning. And it was like, oh, wow, I've got to get this book out. And it quickly became my favourite book because I-- people often say we don't need hope as humans; we don't need hope as Aboriginal people.

However, that's a false narrative, because when you're a child in hospital and you're just trying to get better, and your family's just trying to get better, hope is the thing that gets you through it. So that book was instilling hope into these people. So now I love it, because it's like, OK, that's the first book I give to someone. Because I had a guy, non-Indigenous guy visit the office yesterday.

And the first book I gave him was 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!' because he said he had kids. And you don't know what the background story of his kids are or who they are. But I know if they pick up that book, that's an opportunity for that kid to maybe find themselves in that book and see someone that's relatable to them. And it might be the thing that gets them through a really hard time. And that's really important.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely. That's such a heartwarming story. It's so wonderful to hear how you've turned something from a very painful part of your life to something that is-- I wouldn't have known that reading through 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!' It's all these double-page spread of these phenomenal people who are doing amazing things in all of these different fields, from sport to art to literature to science to probably 7 other things that I can't remember to list.

And yeah, it is very inspiring and uplifting. And I think you're touching on readers being able to see themselves in it. Something that we've talked about a lot on this podcast is the importance of representation and being able to have books that allow students to see themselves represented in text, but also to see other people's lives represented in text.

And I don't think we've ever really dived in deeper into why that's so important. But it comes back to this idea of you can't see yourself in particular roles if you don't see other role models in that. And it might be the thing that encourages a young First Nations child, or even any student, to think, well, actually, maybe I could be an elite athlete, or I could be an artist or a scientist or get involved in STEM, because these people have, and that's a potential pathway for me.

Without that representation, that doesn't happen. It's such a fantastic thing for you to turn a difficult part of your life into. There were so many amazing and inspiring stories that you collected through 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!' Was there one person who really stayed with you or inspired you the most?

COREY TUTT: There's quite a lot, actually. I look at Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo from Redfern. And she's had a really tough time at the moment, so shout out to Aunty. She's lost a few people close to her. And I look at her life, and growing up in Walgett, she's my Aunty, and seeing the things that that lady has been through.

She left Walgett for an opportunity to go to Redfern for a job. She teaches young mums how to cook. She's now 80-odd years old and is still working and still cooking meals for people.

I look at someone like Aunty Beryl, and then I look again at someone like Deb Walford, who-- cuz-- she cooks for eveyone at the Koori Knockout. These people put themselves last-- literally last. And then there's other people like, obviously, Aunty Cathy.

And then you see even Tony Armstrong. The things that Tony Armstrong has to deal with as a young person. Take out the amazing success that man has and being an Aboriginal person-- even Brooke Boney, first Aboriginal person on mainstream TV.

The amount of stuff that those people have to carry just by being an Aboriginal person-- but yet they still turn up for work. They have to deal with a lot more than their non-Indigenous counterparts. And for me, I just get inspired by that ability to just be resilient.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely. If readers love inspiring stories that they found in 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!', where do you think they should head next?

COREY TUTT: There are so many amazing books. I really get inspiration from just yarning with Elders. I love having a coffee with an Elder and just learning about their life.

Anita Heiss has really great books. I love Anita. Apart from him being in a bit of trouble lately, I really love Dave Grohl's book-- from the Foo Fighters.

That was a really good book. That was really interesting. And there's a lot of really great ways you can draw inspiration. It doesn't necessarily have to be from books.

But I think even Tracy Hall-- I just read her book 'The Last Victim', and she was a victim of a scam. And she wrote about her experience as being a victim of a scam. But it's the amount of courage that it takes to write about that, because I could understand that that would be something that would be really difficult for a person to write about.

Obviously, people know about Hugh van Cuylenburg and 'The Resilience Project'. I really liked that book as well. So did everyone else apparently as well.

But I tend to just draw inspiration from people I meet, and people I hear their stories. I know that Nedd Brockmann gets a lot of air time, but the guy puts his body through incredible amounts of pain to help solve the issue of homelessness. Every city in Australia, every single suburb has a homelessness problem where people haven't got a safe bed to sleep in.

So when I say to young people, yeah, you can find inspiration everywhere. You can be a kid from Dapto who sends books to remote communities and starts their own charity. Or you can be anyone you really want to be.

I also say this unsolicited bit of advice, is that the road in life is very short. We have, on average, 80 years on this planet.

And through those 80 years, you will go through potholes. You will go over roundabouts. You'll punch a few tyres. You will have the whole remit of experiences in life.

But there's 2 ingredients you need. There's passion and then there's purpose. And the third one, if you're really lucky, is just to be a really good person because the rest will solve itself.

And I think that as a young person, especially young people reading this, you're going to have really tough times. But the key to getting through those tough times is identifying those who love and support you and surrounding yourself with them. And if you don't have those people yet, because some people don't get that luxury straight away, you can draw inspiration from other areas in life, because life is so fragile and it is so quick that any bad time you have is only temporary.

JADE ARNOLD: That's such fantastic advice. You're also the editor of the 'Deadly Science' series, which is a growing collection of books that celebrate First Nations knowledge across science and the natural world. Could you give us your 'between the bookshelves' pitch for the 'Deadly Science' series?

COREY TUTT: So the 'Deadly Science' series is really important because they include the stories and photographs of kids in community that DeadlyScience supports. So these are the first ever books that include remote and regional Aboriginal students and Torres Strait Islander students writing their own experiments. Often, we pick up science books, and they don't include Indigenous people in them.

They talk about Indigenous sciences. But the whole notion-- you can't be what you can't see, well, what does that mean? A lot of people use that language, but they don't actually put it into practice.

This is putting 'you can't be what you can't see' into practice. So if you can see it, you can be it. And that's really important.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, that's so powerful. What do you hope young readers gain from exploring these books?

COREY TUTT: I want them to know about the communities like Jilkminggan. I want them to know about Redfern. I want them to know about Badu and the Torres Strait. Most kids that are in metro areas wouldn't have heard of these places, but it's really important to know about these places, because Jilkminggan, for example, you're paying 7 times the price for food as what you would in metro Australia.

Badu, they have a barge that comes every 3 weeks that drops off food. Some kids in Australia are really lucky to have what they have. By knowing about these places, then they can grow up to adults that help these communities in a more practical way. And I think that's really important.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. So powerful. For readers who maybe can't get enough of the 'Deadly Science' series, what's something else that you would recommend they check out?

COREY TUTT: Anything by Aus Geo. I love 'Australian Geographic'. I used to read the magazines religiously as a child, loved them, and I was like a school kid when I went to Aus Geo's offices for the first time. And they're a smaller organisation and what they were when I was a kid. But I would recommend anything from Australian Geographic because they're always really interesting books.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, fantastic recommendations. Now, you touched on this earlier when we were talking about the 'Deadly Science' series. But you're also the founder and CEO of an organisation called DeadlyScience, which has had a huge impact in providing STEM resources and support to schools across Australia. For listeners who may not know as much about this organisation, can you tell us how DeadlyScience started and the difference that it's making to students today?

COREY TUTT: Yeah, well, I was working in the lab down at the University of Sydney, and I was invited to a careers day, and I was yarning with other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids, and they loved the science talks I used to do. We called it DeadlyScience. And I got to a point where the organisation I was working with didn't really want me doing these science talks anymore, mainly because the kids loved them too much.

JADE ARNOLD: Good problem to have.

COREY TUTT: It's a good problem to have, but it was a tricky problem. So I ended up getting a second job, and I googled 'remote community schools in Australia'. And I jumped on the blower; I gave them a call.

And basically, I ended up finding a school with 15 books in its entire school. And I went to Dymocks bookshop, and I dropped $1,000. And then that turned into 8 trips of $1,000, and I ran out of money really quickly.

These schools just basically-- they needed resources. They needed books. They needed telescopes. They needed the things to make their classrooms to get kids into their classrooms because they didn't have a lot of resource, a lot of these really small community schools. They just needed stuff to support their children that were going to these schools.

And from there, I started a GoFundMe page, and it grew to visiting the schools. It grew to creating lessons for teachers. They included First Nations perspectives.

Now we've got 17 staff across Australia, mainly in Townsville and Port Macquarie. And we go and visit schools, and we deliver workshops. We have a Pathways program for young people to get them into STEM careers. We develop books, resources, kits with juvenile justice centres.

We have a program called Deadly Labs where we're making soap equitable in Indigenous communities. So a lot of soap's really expensive. So we're teaching kids how to make traditional bush soap, but also Western soap. And we're testing the polymers to prove to the children that traditional soap's just as good for you as store-bought soap.

So that has an added impact of every single kid in that family gets to take a bar of soap home that they've made, which means that everyone's using soap, which is really huge. And look, there's 10 diseases you can prevent by washing your hands, and these are prevalent diseases in these communities. So hopefully, if the hypothesis works, we can reduce some of the bad health outcomes of these diseases, and help these people overcome and prevent them from getting rheumatic heart disease, which kills a lot of Aboriginal kids.

JADE ARNOLD: That's so powerful. And it's amazing how something seemingly as simple and innocuous as making a bar of soap can have so many impacts, like obviously, that scientific process of going through that and using that knowledge. But also having students to be able to create something themselves and feel really proud of that and then to take that home and to have that benefit them in so many ways.

What a fantastic organisation. That is phenomenal. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Are you currently working on any new books? Are you allowed to give us a sneak peek? I think you hinted at one earlier.

COREY TUTT: I recently became a dad for the first time. And one of the things that I really wanted to do-- I grew up without my dad, just in case readers didn't know that. And that was really hard for me because I didn't know my biological dad at all. He left when I was a baby.

And for a lot of kids, that's really hard. And a lot of young men, that's really hard as well. So I ended up writing a baby book for my son called 'Come Home, Bigabila' with Irma Gold.

And that's more for me-- again, it's probably similar to 'This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!'. It's probably overcoming my sensitivities around growing up without a dad. How do you be a dad if you haven't had one? And for me, that's really important. It comes out in February, I believe.

And then I've got 'The First Scientists II', coming out next year. And I've been playing on words with that-- the science before it was science. And again, it's going to be a much more in-depth book than 'The First Scientists I', and the idea is to actually just move the needle again.

I feel like 'The First Scientists I' was such a-- it was an iconic book for the time, because it was the first ever Blackfella science book. And it challenged the notion of what children are seeing science as today. And I'm very lucky that that was-- that book won a menagerie of awards.

And to be honest, it's going to be hard as an author to try and replicate that. It's very difficult to. I've written a good album, and then number 2 and number 3 and not as good. But, you know, it's gonna be-- that's a really exciting book that we've got coming out, and that's going to be out in October, which is fantastic.

JADE ARNOLD: It sounds like those books are in very good hands, and we'll keep an eye out for both of those titles with bated breath and great excitement. Are there any amazing non-fiction children or young adults titles that you think our listeners need to know about right now.

COREY TUTT: Yeah, so there's a book by Greg Crocetti about termites. Greg actually works for me at DeadlyScience. And he wrote a book around the First Nations' relationship with termites.

And that's really cool. I loved it. There is multiple books out there at the moment.

There's 'Growing up on Wiradjuri Country', which is really important. That's a really cool book. There is, like I said, a lot of different books that I think are really great.

But it's important that you find your own DNA as a reader of what you find is cool. I say tomato you say tomahtah. I love reading anything really. I aim to listen to 2 to 3 audiobooks a week, and I read probably 2 or 3 more on that as well. so-- not so much that I'm a dad now.

Ross Moriarty's books, I love reading to my son, like 'Who Saw Turtle?' I've read that probably about 300 times now. And I always find it funny, because I'm cracking little side jokes to my wife about that book all the time.

And that's part of the reason why I wanted to write for my son, too, because it's really important-- that story is so important, for younger readers, especially for their imagination. As you get older, you can get more into the non-fiction stuff. I love true crime, but that's because I've got the mind of a 40-year-old woman.

Like, my nieces always tease me. They go, you're listening to the music that my mum listens to, which is my older sister. And I said, well, that's because it's good.

JADE ARNOLD: [laughs] Look, I haven't hit the true crime podcast point in my life just yet. But I'm sure it's around the corner. I'm sure it's coming soon.

COREY TUTT: It really does come from a place of really just trying to understand the things that we don't understand. I don't really understand crime. And what goes into the mindset of a criminal is really interesting.

JADE ARNOLD: Well, you've kind of hinted that you're reading quite a lot a lot of the time. Are you reading anything currently? Or are you excited to dive into something next?

COREY TUTT: I'm actually reading a really interesting book at the moment called 'Unmasked'. And 'Unmasked' is about using genealogy materials to solve crimes from the past, so crimes that are a couple hundred years old. So for example, in America, there's a serial killer called the Zodiac Killer.

And the Zodiac Killer licked envelopes. And this is, like, 70 years ago, right? And they've got a brief DNA profile, so you can think of it like 10% of a thumbprint, right?

And what they've been doing is, some of these historical crimes, they have been putting them through ancestry.com and tracking down relatives of that person to solve the crime, which I find really fascinating. I don't really agree with the crimes. But I find that them using that technology really interesting, and it's got some ethical considerations as well around it. So it's actually quite interesting that law enforcement are using these techniques now to solve some of these historical crimes, which is a good thing that they're solving them. But also, it's an interesting way to do it.

JADE ARNOLD: Yeah, absolutely. That sounds fascinating. Corey, thank you so much for joining me today. I am sure our listeners, with young readers who love inspiring non-fiction will be racing out to purchase your titles for their library collections or feature them in book talks and many, many more students diving into your books as they complete the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge.

Your books really celebrate the strength and resilience and creativity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. You're just an amazing example of how storytelling and science can come together to form a stronger future. So thank you so much for spending time with me today to talk about your books.

COREY TUTT: Thank you so much, Jade. And if anyone wants to find out a bit more about DeadlyScience, you can follow us on social media. More importantly, tell your parents about DeadlyScience. Help us get out to more kids. It's really important.

JADE ARNOLD: Absolutely, absolutely. And for everyone tuning in, we'll include a full list of all of Corey's featured books, the books that he mentioned, and a link to DeadlyScience in the show notes for today's episode. You can find them on the 'Listen @ the Arts Unit' page, so be sure to check them out and share it with the young readers in your life. Most importantly, happy reading.

[theme music - Matt Ottley, 'Dance of the Jellyfish']

JADE ARNOLD: Thanks for tuning in to 'Between the bookshelves'. This podcast is produced by the Arts Unit of the NSW Department of Education, as part of the 'Listen @ the Arts Unit' series. For more information about our programs, to access our show notes or to listen to other podcasts, explore our website at artsunit.nsw.edu.au. For more information about the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge, including our book lists, visit PremiersReadingChallenge.nsw.edu.au.

Theme music, 'Dance of the Jellyfish', composed by Matt Ottley. Copyright, Matt Ottley, 2024. Reproduced and communicated with permission.

Background music licensed by Envato Elements.

Copyright State of NSW (Department of Education), 2025.