Conversations

The lucky accident of Sydney's Opera House

22 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Helen Pitt on how the luminous shells of the Sydney Opera House nearly didn't get off the drawing board

Living the Prague Spring

21 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jaroslav Kovaricek was there for the violent crushing of the Prague Spring

The history of making colours

20 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

David Coles is known as the 'pigment-whisperer'

From the Shetlands to Vera: the adventures of crime writer Ann Cleeves

17 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The award-winning novelist lived many lives before her career as an author took off

The anxiety of modern life

16 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Haig's candour about his depression and anxiety has resonated around the world

The allure of silver barramundi

15 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jimmy Shu's childhood in Sri Lanka planted the seeds for his later life as a legendary restaurateur

Staring down the monster

14 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At 19, Colleen Gwynne rescued her mum from a violent marriage. Then she joined the police and solved one of Australia's most complicated murder cases...

The terrible journey of the Ticonderoga

13 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Veitch's great-grandfather arrived in Australia on a ship dubbed 'the floating charnel house'

Jacqui Lambie: the unlikely senator

10 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

From painkiller addiction to parliament, Jacqui's life has been a rollercoaster

The Hunger Games on Wheels

09 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 2017 Rupert Guinness, a veteran cycling journalist, embarked on a 5000 km endurance ride that would permanently change his outlook on a sport he l...

How Lemn Sissay found his voice

08 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Lemn Sissay grew up in the UK as a child of the state. At 18 he was given a letter written in 1968 from his Ethiopian mother pleading for his return

Can football save politics?

07 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

George Megalogenis thinks that Australia's political leaders should learn from football

Universal Basic Income: the future?

06 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Rutger Bregman is calling for new thinking about the kind of world we want to live in

The life and landscapes of Alison Lester

03 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

From Antarctica to Arnhem Land, the pages of the books of this prolific author and illustrator are fuelled by adventure

The other Kokoda trail

02 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When the Japanese began bombing New Guinea, Peter Phelp's granddad was forced to trek through some of the most rugged terrain on earth, but he wasn't...

Growing up dirt poor

01 Aug 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Rick Morton was growing up on a cattle station when his parents split up. His mum was left to raise three children in poverty

William McInnes’ stories of fatherhood

31 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tales ranging from growing up in 70s Queensland, to raising children as a single dadWilliam is one of Australia's best-known storytellers and actors....

Unlocking the mystery of Motor Neurone Disease

30 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dominic Rowe is asking how common degenerative brain diseases begin

Losing a brother, finding himself

27 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nic Newling believes sharing his story of living with mental illness will help others

A grief pilgrimage on Te Araroa Trail

26 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Bruce Hopkins set out to walk the length of New Zealand, with the ashes of his father and brother

Searching for Christoph

25 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1975, Ivonne Ranisch’s brother Christoph disappeared from an East German hospital. Her parents now believe he was stolen by the state

On being shot

24 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At 17, Gail Bell was shot in the back. The shooter was never found

Questioning the line of duty

23 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Gwen Cherne has become an advocate for war widows after the death of her husband Pete

Bringing kids back from the edge

20 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Major Paul Moulds and his calling to ‘run a rescue shop within a yard of hell’

The daring mission to rescue survivors of the Titanic

19 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jay Ludowyke has traced the story of RMS Carpathia, from Titanic rescue mission to the bottom of the ocean

The secretive world of mercenaries and private armies

18 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Percy explains the history and motivations of unconventional combatants (R)

How religious zealots shaped a family

17 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Lech Blaine grew up in a large family of foster siblings. When he was ten years old, his childhood ended suddenly (R)

Surviving kidnap in Sierra Leone

16 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Aminata Conteh-Biger was kidnapped during the Sierra Leone Civil War, and endured months of terror at the hands of rebel soldiers.

Censorship, and an unexpected friendship

13 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sari Braithwaite is drawn to making films on things we don't like to talk about

Osamah Sami - not always the good Muslim boy

12 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Osamah Sami wrote and starred in the hit Australian comedy film Ali's Wedding.

The doctor known as 'the God of Sight'

11 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nepalese surgeon Dr Sanduk Ruit has restored the sight of more than 150 000 people during his career

Behind the sequins: the Tony Sheldon story

10 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tony Sheldon's mum was a major star when he was a child. At 17, he became an actor against her wishes

The girl from Mount Druitt who became a remarkable comedy voice

09 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Playwright Nakkiah Lui was given a crucial early piece of advice: when telling stories, always try to offend your mother (R)

A 'lucky' accident changed Sarah Brooker's life

06 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Brooker was studying to be a neuroscientist, when a freak accident forced her to rebuild her life from the ground up (R)

The world's sinking megacities

05 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Kimmelman on why the world's giant cities like Jakarta and Mexico City are slumping into the earth

Young Hitler

04 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

WWI helped a homeless vagabond named Adolf Hitler become the dictator of the German Reich

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