@GinaPerry

Thanks to everyone for all the lovely messages on my publication day yesterday, and a special thank you to @FavelParrett, Tony Birch, @LaurieSteed and @MeredithJaffe for taking time out to read and endorse a debut novel. Feeling very grateful!

@sybilthefirst @rcbregman Completely agree with RB. I also think people seem to have forgotten that Lord of the Flies is fiction.

@rcbregman Attention @GinaPerry! Love to hear what you say about this.

The BBC just released a new adaptation of Lord of the Flies, the classic novel by William Golding. It's beautifully made, but it's still telling the wrong story. A few years ago, I went looking for the *real* Lord of the Flies. I wanted to know: has it ever actually happened? Have kids ever been shipwrecked on a deserted island? It took me a year of research, but I found it. In 1965, six boys from a boarding school in Tonga stole a boat, got caught in a storm, and drifted for eight days without food or water. They washed up on 'Ata, a remote, uninhabited island in the Pacific. They stayed there for 15 months, and what happened on that island was the exact opposite of William Golding's novel. These boys set up a small commune. They built a food garden, stored rainwater in hollowed-out tree trunks, created a gym with improvised weights, and built a badminton court. One of them, Stephen (who would later become an engineer) managed to start a fire using two sticks. They kept it burning the entire time. Of course they fought too. But then they argued, they had a rule: go to opposite ends of the island, cool down, then come back and apologize. As one of them told me: ‘That's how we stayed friends.’ Back home, everyone assumed that the boys – Luke, Stephen, Sione, David, Kolo and Mano — were dead. When they were finally discovered by an Australian captain named Peter Warner, he radioed their names to Tonga. After twenty minutes, a tearful response came back: ‘You found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it's them, this is a miracle!’ Peter commissioned a new ship, hired all six boys as his crew, and named the boat the Ata, after the island where he found them. They remained friends for the rest of their lives – Peter and Mano even became soulmates. I tracked them down, and it became one of the central chapters of my book Humankind. Here's what struck me most: William Golding (the author of Lord of the Flies) was a troubled man, an alcoholic who once said ‘I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature.’ I think he was projecting his own darkness onto children. And we turned it into a lesson about human nature that we teach to millions of kids around the world. I think the real lesson is the opposite. When real children found themselves alone on a real island, they didn't descend into savagery. They cooperated, they took care of each other, they survived. I'm not saying that the Tongan castaways were representative of all kids everywhere. But I am saying that every kid who has to read or watch the fictional Lord of the Flies also deserves to know what actually happened when it played out in real life. Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.

Thibault Le Texier’s forensic research into the #StanfordPrisonExperiment has just been published in English. I write about how it is an eyeopening, shocking and engrossing read.

@kyleratner I so enjoyed our conversation today, it gave me heaps to think about. So great to hear about your work and talk all things Sherif.

Also, @GinaPerry it was such an honor to meet with you. Reading The Lost Boys was 🤯🤯🤯🤯for me and challenged everything I thought I knew about Sherif’s work. Every social psychologist needs to read it!!!

Thank you @katiehgreenaway & @EWB_Hub for hosting me! Katie, @ReynKJ, @siminevazire, @drbrockbastian, Pete Koval, Yoshi Kashima, & @drsmillie I benefited tremendously from all of your valuable insight. You have a great group!

Oops that’s 70 years ago!

50 years ago a social psychologist took 2 groups of boys on what the kids thought was a summer camp. It turned out to be a disturbing psychology experiment. amazon.com/Lost-Boys-Muza…

You are about to see in real time over the next 4 days how the media can choose who it humanizes and who it villainizes, who is a child and who is a minor, who is a mother and who is an accomplice. Who is a hostage and who is a prisoner. In short who is innocent and who is not.

Book review: My Father the Whale by Gina Perry via @aussiemoose trbr.io/VC3jwXf

Lovely round up of a terrific regional festival - thanks @Irma_Gold - I would never have guessed you were once a nervous public speaker!

The real tragedy of discovering fraud in psychology is realizing that it doesn't matter experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-…

Big: Henrietta Lacks’ living relatives reached a historic settlement with the multi-billion-dollar biotech company accused of stealing her cells without her consent Her “HeLa” cells were the world’s first capable of replicating outside the body thebaltimorebanner.com/economy/scienc…

I'm so excited that @AppleBooks chose My Father the Whale for their What To Read This Month collection! See the list here: apple.co/WhatToReadThis… @HarperCollinsAU

Re-writing a Childhood next Sunday June 18 at the fabulous @willylitfest Hear Megan Rogers, Fi Wright and I discuss examining the legacy of your childhood and facing the myths that make us. Full program here: buff.ly/3WZQ1g6 @HarperCollinsAU #MyFathertheWhale

So excited to be joining the ranks of these talented "dazzling debuts" at @willylitfest next weekend. Hope to see you there! Full program: willylitfest.org.au/home/festivali… @ultimopress @HarperCollinsAU @SimonSchusterAU

@BlarneyBooks @willylitfest Totally agree. It will be fab!

So looking forward to this session at @willylitfest - it's a fantastic program which of course means choosing which events to go to will be hard. A lovely problem to have, though.

And in a fit of inspired (and brave!) programming, this wonderful panel session will finish with a group swim, for literature-loving icebergers. @musicandmemoir

“A gorgeous coming of age story” thanks for a great interview @meredithjaffe and #writes4women podcast! #MyFatherthewhale

Great to talk all things #MyFathertheWhale this morning with Heather Hale for tomorrow's program. abc.net.au/westqld/progra…

Available in bookshops and online in Australia and New Zealand tomorrow! #MyFathertheWhale #aussiefiction