Conversations: Health & Resilience
Episodes
Shipwrecked and alone: surviving the Blythe Star
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At 18 years old, Mick Doleman miraculously survived when his ship capsized in the freezing Southern Ocean off Tasmania. But as he floated in a life r...
The mind f**k of pain — retraining your system to tackle chronic pain
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Lorimer Moseley is neuroscientist, who specialises in the complexities and mind-boggling nature of pain - what it is, why it exists, how it...
Depersonalisation — when Nathan lost his sense of self and nothing felt real
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2008 Nathan Dunne was night swimming in Hampstead Heath in the middle of winter when a psychological catastrophe struck him. He felt his sense of ...
Why Colm Toibin ran away with the circus — to Barcelona, Brooklyn and beyond
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Irish novelist has always been open to where life can unexpectedly take him, and the excitement that comes with that kind of freedom.Colm Toibin'...
Hilde Hinton's home for the temporarily defeated
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Hilde Hinton was on the cusp of adolescence, her mother died. For years she protected her younger siblings from the truth about their mum.Despit...
Claire Keegan on bravery, writing and the single life
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The bestselling Irish author grew up on a farm set on “50 acres on the side of a hill”. Growing up, she witnessed a harsh, misogynistic country t...
Jamila Rizvi’s one in a million brain tumour
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jamila’s craniopharyngioma had been growing for years, unbeknownst to her. In hindsight, it was her son who gave the first clue, when he stopped br...
Shaking — escaping the grip of a lifelong tremor
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist and author Sonya Voumard on the rare neurological condition that has stalked her since a family tragedy during her childhood.Sonya Voumard...
Martha, baby Michael and the police officer who cried
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Martha Jabour was a young mum when her baby son Michael died suddenly. In the thick of her grief, she worried for the devastated young police officer...
Translating adolescence and speaking Teenage Girl
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Dannielle Miller became a teacher, she was given the classes no one else could handle. She was given a whistle on her first day, to call for hel...
Bite Club: Surviving a shark attack, and the aftermath
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Pearson runs Bite Club, a support service for anyone who has survived a shark attack. Dave’s own brush with death came in 2011, when a three-m...
Love, jail, Jesus, and pubs — a tangled tale of four very different parents
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of ...
Heroin, Ivan Milat, rehab and redemption — the incredible life of Claude Robinson
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For years Claude Robinson was doing crime to fund his heroin addiction. He was eventually locked up with murderers in Goulburn Prison, where he share...
'It was meant to be me' — the teenage TV star who feels 'lucky to be paraplegic'
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Louise Philip had just scored her breakout role on Australian television, in Bellbird, when a horrific car crash threatened to derail the life she wa...
Embracing wilderness and wildness with Gina Chick
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gina Chick, the winner of Alone Australia on her life as a creative, outrageous, nature-loving misfit who grew up to live through great depths of lo...
Treating dementia — a new way of caring for the elderly
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Psychiatrist Duncan McKellar wrote the report that triggered the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. He has seen how care changes whe...
Love, death and walking : writer Ailsa Piper
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, Ailsa Piper's husband's unexpected death cast her adrift in a sea of grief. Then bit by bit, life called her back. Ailsa Piper is a writer ...
Writer Winnie Dunn on identity and the meaning of homecoming
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Winnie Dunn is the General Manager of Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Here she tells the story of how family and writing brought her home to Tonga, and ...
The beauty of the brain
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Neurosurgeon Brindha Shivalingam says it is a privilege to go into someone’s brain and repair the body's most vital organ. She didn’t expect to b...
The soup bar saving lives
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hana Assafiri was a child bride in her teens when she fought her way free of her violent husband. Then she built a new life helping other marginalise...
Terry's long goodbye
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Keri Kitay with the story of her devoted, outgoing mum Terry, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease at 54 years old
Learning to read with Manisha Gazula
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How headmistress Manisha Gazula radically (and controversially) transformed the literacy, and life, outcomes for her students at Marsden Road Public ...
The death on the pitch which changed Andy's life
20 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Football tragic Andy Paschalidis was in his 50s when a dear friend and fellow player died during an over-35s soccer game. The tragedy altered the cou...
Shaun's giving heart and thousands of free meals
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shaun Christie-David's parents came to Australia fleeing civil war in Sri Lanka. By age 13, he knew he wanted to be a banker. But life inside the wor...
Death, with love and dignity
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Pauline McGrath's husband David was diagnosed with a brain tumour, she supported him as he chose a different path to death (CW: discussion of de...
Our hormones and our minds: Jayashri Kulkarni
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Jayashri Kulkarni on her Indian-Australian upbringing and her groundbreaking research into women's hormones and mental healthTo binge even more ...
Making waves — surfing trailblazer Pauline Menczer
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Pauline Menzcer is one of the legends of Australian surfing, but even after leaving Hawaii as the 1993 World Champion she had to wait for the recogn...
Mick and Juana: a love story
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mick O'Regan met his feisty, brilliant wife Jo for the first time on a work brigade in Nicaragua. They fell in love and had a beautiful baby boy. Th...
Champion surfer Jodie Cooper on the breaks that made her
20 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How Jodie went from skateboarding in her home town of Albany to become a world surfing champion, frothing all the way.When Jodie Cooper was growing...
Martin Flanagan on exchanging shame for grace
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, Martin was 10 years old when he was sent to a Catholic Boarding school in North-West Tasmania. Decades later, he began his own reckoning wi...
Toni Jordan's lucky life
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Toni Jordan grew up working in a TAB and going to the greyhound races. Then she grew up to become a best-selling novelist
Cynthia's Swans
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Cynthia Banham survived the unthinkable, she had to reinvent herself, with the support of her family, and the kindness of the Sydney Swans AFL t...
Jonno Seidler: breaking the silence around men's mental health
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ray Seidler was a brilliant doctor and a family man, whose secret struggle with depression ultimately claimed his life. Now his son Jonathan is helpi...
Dai Le's harrowing journey to power
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dai Le tells the story of her family fleeing Saigon and travelling across 2 oceans to make it to Australia, and how a sense of fairness drew her in...
The secret world of the human ear
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Kelvin Kong is one of Australia's leading ENT surgeons. The proud Worimi man changes the course of children's lives by looking inside th...
Cancer, manhood and me
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Surfing writer Tim Baker on how the hormones which saved his life after a cancer diagnosis fundamentally changed his experience of being a man
Finding a dad, zoology and a life-threatening illness
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Bravery tells the story of his childhood in Logan, Queensland, how he went from a career at KFC to studying male satin bowerbirds and why being a...
Mawunyo's life in love, journalism and hip hop
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mawunyo Gbogbo grew up in a church-going Ghanaian-Australian family in the mining town of Muswellbrook, NSW. As a young woman she grabbed the chance ...
Briana, Max and Freddy: love, trains and mouth music
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Briana Blackett was a journalist working in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max was diagnosed with autis...
Tony Bull and finding his voice through a prison debating club
29 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tony spent three decades in and out of jail for property crimes and safecracking. When he joined an unusual club inside Hobart's Risdon Prison, he fo...
Clinical pain neuroscientist Dr Tasha Stanton: Why chronic pain is like a bilby in a bathtub
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Clinical pain neuroscientist Dr Tasha Stanton explains her studies into the power of the mind when it comes to coping with injury and illness.Clinica...
The cannabis grow house, Dartmoor prison, and making amends
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Kim Crotty was locked up in Dartmoor prison for growing marijuana, his two young sons were bereft. He began writing bedtime stories for them fro...
Kids TV host, author, trailblazer: Wendy Harmer
15 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Much-loved broadcaster and writer Wendy was born with a cleft lip and palate, into a struggling family. As a young journalist she saw an anarchic cab...
From the meatworks to mending men's souls
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Stojanovic was working in a Melbourne meatworks when a spiritual epiphany led him to a new life, working with violent men to help change their ...
Akmal Saleh really doesn't like the jungle
09 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
An impulse decision to buy a home in the rainforest launches a comedy of errors involving a python in the roof, a half-finished home, an unexpected t...
Not your average dentist
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After treating a patient named Anna, Sharonne Zaks saw the power relationship with her patients differently. She developed a new branch of dentistry ...
Jessie Cole's survival story
24 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After two suicides changed her family forever, Jessie Cole returned to Northern NSW to begin again (CW: Suicide references)Jessie grew up in Northern...
London bombings survivor Gill Hicks' fight for peace
18 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Broadcast date:Thursday 17 January 2013
Lincoln Hall's story of survival
22 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Mountaineer Lincoln Hall made an incredible recovery after being left for dead on Mt Everest