Norman Swan
speaker
307 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 11 Aug
Norman Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Because everybody's felt it from time to time.
It's not a nice feeling and it is pernicious.
And I'll give you an idea of how pernicious it is.
Professor Sir Michael Marmot, an expatriate Australian researcher at University College London, inherited a study called the Whitehall Study.
And that's a study of British civil servants, looking at why the secretary at the top of the scale, people might remember, yes, minister, and yes, prime minister, while the Sir Humphreys at the top died later in life and were healthier than people at the bottom of the civil service.
Why was there this health gradient?
And what he found was you can explain the health gradient by things that you know, like cholesterol, like your level of education and so on.
That explains a lot of the gradient, but it doesn't explain all of it.
So there was still a gap after he took into account all the things that you knew were risk factors for dying younger and sicker.
And what they factored in was locus of control that you just mentioned.
Where do I feel my life is controlled and my decision-making is in control?
Is it within me or is it somewhere else, as you said, or something else?
And when he factored in locus of control, the gap significantly disappeared.
In other words, he found one of the significant factors that dictated premature death and premature disability.
That's right.
Aboriginal communities have known about this for a long time without necessarily having read the literature.
Nothing about me without me.
Aboriginal community controlled health organizations.
Control is a big issue.
Control is a big issue with older people.
Showing 221–240 of 307 · page 12 of 16
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