Conversations

Jurors behaving badly

03 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jeremy Gans on the limitations of the jury system, and stories of extreme misbehaviour among jurors

Betty, Queen of Donks

02 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Betty Klimenko grew up as an heiress to the Westfield fortune. Then she turned her back on it all to marry the man of her dreams

Sam Cutler tour-managed some of rock's biggest names

29 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sam worked behind the scenes for Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead (R)

Dr Budgerigar

28 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Bob Donely is one of Australia's only vets specialising in the health of budgerigars

The Kharkov experiment

27 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When Maria Tumarkin travelled back to her homeland with her daughter, she had high hopes for the journey

A question of remorse

26 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Anthropologist Kate Rossmanith asks how our legal system decides if a criminal is truly sorry

The force of Will

25 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Winemaker Will Rikard-Bell's skin needed to be almost entirely rebuilt after a 2008 explosion at a winery in the Hunter Valley

The mysteries of the Southern Ocean

22 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Joy McCann's early fascination with the vast Southern Ocean has become a lifelong passion

Seeing Bergen-Belsen through my father's camera

21 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Lewis' father Mike filmed the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp

Michael Mosley and the gut brain

20 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Michael Mosley swallowed a tiny camera to peer into his own gut and its microbiome

The island of the ancients

19 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Ben Hills travelled to Sardinia, where locals are three times as likely to live to 100 as anywhere else on earth (R)

The rise of a watchful boy

18 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As a child, Trent Dalton was a silent observer of the drama of his family and his neighbourhood. He grew up to become an award-winning writer

Jennifer Egan on the women of the Brooklyn Navy Yards

15 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jennifer Egan time travels to the New York of WW2

John Marsden is an outlaw of education

14 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

John Marsden's years at a military high school inspired him to buy 850 acres of land to open a very different kind of school of his own

An erratic family saga

13 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Vicki Laveau-Harvie was estranged from her parents for decades, until she was summoned to their isolated ranch on the Canadian prairies

Inside the murderous mind

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant has assessed the mental state of many people charged with murder

Searching for home via Shanghai burlesque

11 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dancer Jenevieve Chang's rebellion (R)

Miss Ex-Yugoslavia

08 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

How living between two cultures shaped Sofija Stefanovic

A friendship - and a giant literary hoax

07 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alison Hoddinott was one of the first Australian women to go to Oxford University. She then returned home to raise her family, and became great frien...

How Hitler used heroin and methamphetamines to fuel the Third Reich

06 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Norman Ohler has unearthed a little-known element of WWII history: the drugs which played a crucial role in the progress and failures of the Nazis (R...

Jill's big change

05 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jill Emberson worked for decades at the heart of social change, and never believed in marriage. But later this year her daughter will walk her down t...

An unexpected later in life love story, set in New York

04 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At 48, Bill Hayes moved to New York. He took up photography, and fell in love with his neighbour, Dr Oliver Sacks (R)

Inside the Robbers Cave: testing tribal loyalties at a boys summer camp

01 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Gina Perry uncovers the strange story behind a controversial psychological experiment

The art of taking sperm from a rhino

31 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Tamara Keeley uses reproductive technology to help save rhinos, Tasmanian devils and koalas from extinction

How a young Dutch woman discovered her savage self in the wild

30 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Miriam Lancewood on her daily life roaming the New Zealand bush, hunting possums and goats to survive (R)

The murderous rise of Rodrigo Duterte

29 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jonathan Miller on President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs in the Philippines

The One-Child Policy: understanding China's radical social experiment

28 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Mei Fong explains how China's misguided population control scheme rendered it 'too old, too male, and too few' (R)

Eileen Myles: New York punks, and a dog named Rosie

25 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A freewheeling conversation with the celebrated poet and essayist

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...

No way to lose her: Sarah Ferguson on her mother

23 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the midst of her grief, Sarah became aware that hospital negligence led to her mother's death

Terrible treasure: 75 000 convict stories housed in a Hobart basement

22 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hamish Maxwell Stewart from the University of Tasmania has spent his working life deep in the Tasmanian convict archive (R)

The life of Space Gandalf

21 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Amateur astronomer Greg Quicke was working in Northern Australia, sleeping under the stars in a swag when he bought a second-hand telescope

Janis Joplin, Quentin Crisp and my Maltese grandmother: Paul Capsis

18 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

How three cultures shaped one of our great performing artists

How the state of your nation begins in your street

17 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Social researcher Hugh Mackay has some ideas for a more compassionate and socially cohesive Australia

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the impossible defeat

16 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Reflections on a failed campaign to become America’s first female President

Stephen Davis: life as an international peace negotiator

15 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 2014, Stephen Davis went on a rescue mission to northern Nigeria to save the Chibok girls, kidnapped by Boko Haram (R)

Shaking up the power structure: Jeremy Heimans

14 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jeremy Heimans was one of the founders of GetUp in 2005. Since then he's been at the forefront of the online movement for social change

Yes, Senator: behind the scenes of the Australian Senate

11 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Rosemary Laing was Clerk of the Senate for seven years

On the trail of Candidate Trump: journalist Katy Tur

10 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Katy was described by Donald Trump as disgraceful, a liar, and 'third-rate' during her coverage of his successful Presidential campaign

The search for the turquoise-blooded frog

09 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Biologist Jodi Rowley has identified 26 new species of frogs in South-East Asia and Australia

The evolution of Poh Ling Yeow from Painter to Masterchef

08 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

How a shy Mormon girl named Sharon became Poh Ling Yeow. Sharon Ling Yeow grew up in Malaysia, and moved to Adelaide with her parents at the age of 9...

Growing up in the shadow of Long Bay

07 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Growing up next door to some of Australia's most notorious criminals shaped Patrick Kennedy's family

Richard Lloyd Parry: encounters with Japan's ghosts

04 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the 2011 earthquake that triggered multiple disasters in Japan, and took many thousands of lives

The weed forager's cure

03 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Annie Raser-Rowland's adventurous life as a weed forager and free thinker

Tara Westover's escape from ignorance

02 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Raised in rural Idaho in an extremist Mormon family who forbade her to attend school, Tara studied in secret, and made her way to university

The life of Masha Gessen

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Masha Gessen on growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union, and her two remarkable grandmothers

How haemophilia shaped a family

30 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Eddy became an expert on rare bleeding diseases after his son Lachie was born with haemophilia

Liz Ellis on infertility, netball, and other love stories

27 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Liz's life before and after netball; and what she had to unlearn to have a baby boy after facing secondary infertility

Robert Fisk: life as a war correspondent

26 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Fisk has spent his career reporting from war zones, and he's one of the few Western journalists who met Osama Bin Laden in person (R)

The rise of Kerry Tucker

24 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kerry Tucker rewrote her life story from inside maximum security

Fishing in Eden

23 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Historian and angler Anna Clark on the story of fishing in Australia (R)

How to fly a hovercraft

20 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Venn's imagination was captured by the simple physics of the hovercraft. He turned flying them into a business, but the unusual vehicles still ...

The strange honeycomb houses of Çatalhöyük

19 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeologist Serena Love on climbing into history in one of the first villages on earth, where the locals lived with de-skulled bodies buried in the...

What Clare did next: a survivor's story

18 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Stockbroker Clare Keenan has worked in places ranging from a New Zealand prison, to a covert Jordanian broadcaster. She trusts her fierce survival in...

How Australia's first female detective took on Sydney's razor gangs

17 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Leigh Straw tells the story of Lillian Armfield, arch enemy of serial criminals Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh et al

The mission of a flying midwife

16 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jan Becker on her work saving the lives of newborn babies in Sub-Saharan Africa, in 'the golden minute' after birth (R)

Midnight Oil's Rob Hirst

13 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Chasing the back beat and adventures in wide open spaces, Rob remains essentially the same as the boy he was

Pleasures and pain: tales from the piano

12 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Virginia Lloyd's talent for the piano shaped her early life

The delicate and deadly world of jellyfish: from Bazinga to Shiraz

11 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Lisa-Ann Gershwin is among the world's foremost jellyfish biologists (R)

The poetry of the trenches

10 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Neil James on the Australian soldiers sent to WWI with spurs, a clasp knife and two books of verse

Vasily Sukhomlinsky: educating the heart, head and hands

09 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Cockerill explains the revolutionary philosophy of educator Vasily Sukhomlinsky (R)

Adrian Mole and the Shropshire postman

06 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Young Robert Lukins modelled himself on the fictional character Adrian Mole, a prodigious reader and writer

What the whales know: how humpbacks thrive in Australian waters

05 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Marine biologist Micheline Jenner has lived at sea, researching humpbacks, for thirty years

Lessons from the end of a marriage

04 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When James Jeffrey's parents split up, his life took on a seismic instability

Revealing the scars: the life of Kate Mulvany

03 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Mulvany has used tragic events in her own life as creative fuel to write more than 25 plays

Danielle Clode and Marian Rankine

29 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Zoologist Danielle Clode and the story of Australian naturalist, Edith Coleman.Marion Rankine on the history of umbrellas.

The murder of Mollie Dean

28 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Gideon Haigh returns with the story of a shocking crime from bohemian 1930s Melbourne

Geoffrey Robertson's fear of the dull

27 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Geoffrey's sense of social justice saw him become a barrister at the Old Bailey, then a champion for human rights

Kitty Flanagan's unlikely path to comedy

26 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kitty Flanagan has woven together a series of true stories from her life including being locked in a crayfish freezer for talking too much

Urzila Carlson: a life without regrets

23 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A group of work colleagues cajoled Urzila into performing live on stage for the first time, and kickstarted her unexpected career in comedy

Watching the universe from the Hubble Space Telescope

22 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

NASA astronomer Jennifer Wiseman on exploring the design of the universe

The story of Sydney's ferries

21 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After a boyhood spent riding the ferries, John Darroch devoted his life to recording their stories

Untangling the physics of String Theory

20 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Brian Green explains how the universe is made of strings, vibrating in 11 dimensions (R)

The crime-soaked history of Melbourne's Dockyards

19 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jack the Insider tells how a union became an elaborate front for murders, standover rackets, drug syndicates and armed robbery

Alexander McCall Smith: before and after The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

16 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A wide-ranging conversation about the landscapes, physical and imaginary, which inspire one of the world's most prolific authors

Nags, glad rags and the hoi polloi

15 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Craig Sherborne's childhood was shaped by the social aspirations of his parents

Jordan Peterson's rules for life

14 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 2016, psychologist Jordan Peterson unexpectedly became one of the world's most influential thinkers

Surviving a plane crash in Burma

13 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Circumstances around the plane crash Anna Bartsch and her partner survived in 2012 have become increasingly suspicious

An Australian firefighter's 9/11 story

12 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Wallace flew from Western Australia to New York city, to help the exhausted firefighters of Ladder 24 in mid-town Manhattan

Hunting the deadly coastal taipan

09 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Brendan James Murray on the elusive copper-coloured snake species which terrorised post WWII North Queensland 

An extreme treatment for depression

08 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Elliot was working as a psychologist when she became so ill she was held in a locked psychiatric ward

On love: Mandy Len Catron

07 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Can 36 questions lead you to fall in love with a stranger?   

Father Lockwood's rebel daughter

06 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Patricia Lockwood's grew up as the daughter of one of America's few married Catholic priests

Cornish pasties and powerhouse boys: a love song to Moonta

05 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kristin Weidenbach on her father's early life in a Methodist-run mining town in South Australia

Nigeria to New York: travelling with Teju Cole

02 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The photographer, author and art critic on his work and life across cultures

God, war and weapons of peace

01 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the midst of training to become a priest, Sarah Sentilles gave up God

Vasilisa the Wise and the witch Baba Yaga

28 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Forsyth explores a classic Russian folk tale and delves into the romantic life of the Brothers Grimm

The mystery of broken-hearted syndrome

27 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Nikki Stamp reveals how emotional shock can be fatal

The singular quest of Kyung Ae

26 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Bell's Korean birth mother spent years searching for her son in America. Then she discovered an AFL star living in Perth

Dave Graney and the art of the bludge

23 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A hard working musician explains how he's stayed on the road

After the tsunami: using DNA to return names to the missing

22 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Forensic biologist Kirsty Wright spent five months in Phuket, Thailand, leading a DNA team to identify victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami

How the First Fleet piano was lost and found

21 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Australia's first piano disappeared for more than a century. Then pianist and conductor Geoffrey Lancaster launched his own rescue mission

Showman Fred Brophy's life inside the boxing tent

20 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Raised by a side-show operator and a trapeze artist, Fred is now the last boxing tent showman in the world (R)

Tales from the 'backies' of Dundee

19 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As a child, Gary Todd testified against his father in court to save his mother's life

The daring and scandalous life of British double agent ‘Celery’

16 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

By uncovering the complicated history of her grandfather, Carolinda Witt also gained a sizeable extended family

Christine Milne: a quiet revolutionary

15 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Christine Milne was a teacher in north-west Tasmania when she joined a campaign against a pulp mill in the town of Wesley Vale. The campaign changed ...

Bringing the dead back home

14 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jenny Briscoe-Hough is helping Port Kembla locals take back control at the end of life

Family jail sentence: the ripple effect of losing a parent to prison

13 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dennis Van Someren draws on his own story to help others rise above the grief of a parent being jailed

Lale Sokolov, the tattooist of Auschwitz

12 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Author Heather Morris on the Slovakian Jew who became the tattooist for Auschwitz-Birkenau

Royal Navy Helicopter rescue pilot Jerry Grayson

09 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jerry recounts some of the many rescues which led to him becoming the Royal Navy's most decorated peacetime pilot (R)