Conversations

20th Anniversary Collection: Mic's way out of the woods

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Deeply ashamed of something he had done, Mic Whitty retreated into the Welsh wilderness until an unexpected goal pulled him out of homelessness and b...

20th Anniversary Collection: Tommy Caldwell — born to climb The Dawn Wall

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tommy Caldwell grew up exploring Yosemite, looking up at El Capitan's punishing 3000ft sheer rock face. After years of training, he was ready to clim...

20th Anniversary Collection: Vickie Roach's turbulent life in and out of strife

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vickie's police record began when she was just 2 years old, and followed her throughout her life. But as an adult she pushed back, challenging a fede...

20th Anniversary Collection: Born blind at the right time

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Law Professor Ron McCallum was a premature baby in the 1940s. He completed his studies by recording people reading his textbooks aloud onto cassettes...

20th Anniversary Collection: Brolga the 'kangaroo mum'

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Aged 17, Chris 'Brolga' Barns was meant to be the 'bird guy' at a new zoo in Broome. A cough in his keeper's house alerted him to a kangaroo joey cal...

20th Anniversary Collection: Stan Grant on what his father taught him

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The veteran Wiradjuri journalist spent his first year living in the wreck of a Model T Ford on a NSW mission. He has reported from China and North Ko...

Conversations Live podcast extra: Bruce McAvaney

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah and Richard give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of the Conversations Live Tour, Adelaide edition.Legendary sports broadcaster, Bruce McAvan...

Conversations Live podcast extra: Gill Hicks

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah and Richard give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of the Conversations Live Tour, Adelaide edition.London Bombing survivor, Gill Hicks was on...

20th Anniversary Collection: Surviving my dad's arrest and learning to thrive

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Longtime TV casting agent, Kirsty de Vallance was 16 when Police searched the house and arrested her father on serious drugs charges. Throughout her ...

20th Anniversary Collection: The comic genius of Jennifer Saunders

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The co-creator of Absolutely Fabulous says her remarkable career as one of the world's funniest women is all down to a series of happy accidents. Wh...

20th Anniversary Collection: Judy Sharp and the remarkable rise of Laser Beak Man

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Judy Sharp was told by doctors that her son would never communicate or learn to love, she refused to believe it and set about to secure a brilli...

20th Anniversary Collection: How power and fear play out in the dentist's chair

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sharonne Zaks is not your average dentist. After treating a patient named Anna, Sharonne saw the power relationship with her patients differently. Sh...

20th Anniversary Collection: A lion named Christian, and the men who loved him

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the swinging '60s, Anthony 'Ace' Bourke and John Rendall bought a lion cub from a luxury department store. They eventually released him to his nat...

20th Anniversary Collection: Bryan Brown’s ticket from Bankstown to Palm Beach

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bryan Brown has played more than 80 roles on stage and screen. Raised in working-class Sydney, his talent, hard work, and unmistakable presence have ...

20th Anniversary Collection: the story of the unwitting woman behind cell research and 'immortality'

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Henrietta Lacks was the first human being that we know of to get close enough to 'immortality' to touch it. She died more than 50 years ago but her c...

Wild — Story Collection

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Adventurous spirits take us way out into the world's wild places — stories from across 20 years of Conversations. Travel high in the mountains wit...

Teachers — Story Collection

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Memories, motivation and life lessons from those at the front of the classroom - stories from across 20 years of Conversations.Teachers share storie...

Digging Up Mum and Dad — Story Compilation

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The secret lives of parents — stories from across 20 years of Conversations.Espionage, Hollywood scandal, a second family, daring wartime missions...

A Feast of Cooks — Story Collection

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our chefs and cooks and the food that made them — stories from across 20 years of Conversations.Unforgettable sensory moments from childhood are b...

Maximum McInnes

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A collection of some of the best moments from actor and writer William McInnes — celebrating 20 years of Conversations. The voice of actor William...

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...

Crushing on Aladdin and Nigella Lawson — how Daniel learnt to love himself

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and journalist Daniel Nour on the pressures of his vivacious Egyptian-Australian family, and 'inviting people in' instead of 'coming out'.Dani...

The walking nun — Sister Clare Nolan on entering the convent and saving lives

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sister Clare Nolan was the head of nursing at St Vincent's Hospital when the HIV/AIDS epidemic reached Australia. She met with politicians, brothel w...

Encore: What does a 'disaster specialist' actually do and how do they survive?

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When there's a plane crash, a bomb blast, a flood or a pandemic, Lucy Easthope's phone starts ringing. This is how she stays cheerful and trusts her ...

Miss Australia, gangland girlfriend, counsellor and criminal: Felicia Djamirze's story

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Felicia Djamirze grew up in the criminal underworld, then became a beauty queen. But her life outside the pageant circuit was mired in the world of d...

A Dad's mission to save his daughter, and conquer cancer

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Dun left school at 17 to join the Australian navy as a submariner and later finished his high school certificate as an adult attending TAFE at n...

Teaching Nina Simone how to love me: a daughter's story

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Singer Lisa Simone is the only person in the world who can call Nina Simone 'mommy'. Lisa was the beneficiary of Nina's incredible talent and her aff...

Encore: The secret world of servos after dark

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

David Goodwin spent years working the graveyard shift at his local service station in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. The grungy work quickly took ov...

Dr Rangan Chatterjee on health and healing in a hectic world

17 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a boy, Dr Rangan Chatterjee saw his dad work day and night as a doctor before succumbing to an auto-immune disease. After his father's death in 20...

The hidden corners of Emma's Hong Kong — fishing villages, beaches and ancestral graveyards

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Novelist Emma Pei Yin ran away from Hong Kong as a teenager to start fresh in Australia. But she found herself repeatedly drawn back home whenever sh...

AFL star Zach Tuohy on his silent struggles as a young father and life after footy

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Zach was still a teen when he was scouted by the AFL in Ireland, beginning a great adventure in Australia, where he fell in love and unexpectedly bec...

Encore: Janty Blair is the BMW of standup comics

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After a lifetime of nursing and midwifery, Janty Blair discovered her funny bone in her late 50s, following a serendipitous Bumble date (R).Janty's f...

Leah Purcell's meteoric rise, from the Murgon meatworks to centre stage

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Leah Purcell grew up in a small town caring for her mum Florence. Her options after graduation were nursing or working at the meatworks. But after a ...

How a boy from Balmain made caring cool

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bundjalung man, Jack Manning Bancroft's scholarship to a prestigious Sydney University college showed him a rarefied world that shocked him, and he u...

A family secret unearths connection to country

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Yvonne Orley grew up on Aboriginal missions in NSW as the child of the matron and manager.  But it turned out that Yvonne had much deeper connection...

Encore: Love, jail, Jesus, and pubs — a tangled tale of four very different parents

04 Jul 2025

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 ...

When a sea change collides with messy midlife

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For journalist Kate Halfpenny, moving to a beachside town during Melbourne's lockdowns seemed like the perfect way to unwind and escape her huge mort...

Hannah vs Disney, Lizzo and Beyonce

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hannah Diviney made history in 2022 when she became the first person with a disability to film a sex scene for Australian television. Then she went v...

Purity, hypnosis and hiding — how a gay teen survived Opus Dei

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hollywood actor Tim Pocock was tricked by his dying, devout mother into undergoing gay conversion therapy. After she died, Tim finally learned how to...

Encore: my three fathers

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

American novelist Ann Patchett reflects on Frank, Mike and Darrell, the men who made her, going a year without shopping and her power to make herself...

Inside the six-day siege of the Iranian Embassy in London

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In April 1980, a group of armed men invaded the Iranian Embassy in London, taking hostages, and issuing demands in the name of a cause almost no one ...

Mass murder, cannibalism and insanity — inside Mao's cultural revolution

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

China's cultural revolution was murderously violent and culturally devastating; millions of people, artefacts and ideas went up in smoke. So what's f...

How I became a brainwashed cult bride

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liz Cameron was 18 years old when a stranger approached her in a book shop. It was the beginning of her induction into a cult, and it was an experien...

Encore: the charming Italian narcissist

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Kerstin Pilz found out that her charming husband Gianni had been cheating on her while he was dying and she was taking care of him, she had to d...

Mr. Finch — deathworker in the tapestry of life

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Author Katia Ariel tells the story of Ephraim Finch, a man synonymous with death in the Melbourne Jewish community. He started life as Geoffrey Willi...

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...

When Peter Greste became the story

17 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been a decade since Australian journalist Peter Greste became a global news story, spending 400 days imprisoned in Egypt. But he still misses ...

Encore: When success, a big house and a loving family aren't enough

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a man can't stop his drive and desire for more? Author Andrew O'Hagan dissects the pitfalls of more money, more success and more ap...

Actor and Hollywood It Girl Ione Skye on surrendering her Rock 'n' Roll past and forgiving herself

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Gen X actor on making peace with her absent father, the ghosts of her Hollywood past and nursing Anthony Kiedis through his drug addiction while ...

Our post-American future — what will the new world order look like?

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Defence analyst Hugh White says Australian leaders are in denial about how dramatically the world has changed, and need to get a grip on the deep, tr...

The pyromaniac kid who made barbecue his life

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a child, chef Graeme Stockdale was embarrassed by the smell of sauerkraut and pickles that would trail him from his Polish and German grandparents...

Encore: Hormones and mental health with Dr Jayashri Kulkarni

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Jayashri Kulkarni on her Indian-Australian upbringing and her groundbreaking research into women's hormones and mental health (R)Jayashri Kulkarni...

Part TWO: Locked up in China — Cheng Lei on cell mates, singing and survival

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cheng Lei's years in detention in China, on trumped-up espionage charges, go from cruel and isolating, to absurd and romantic when she gets moved int...

Part ONE: Locked up in China — Cheng Lei on state paranoia and staying sane in isolation

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When journalist Cheng Lei was detained by Chinese state security agents, she thought would be freed within the week. Instead, she was held on absurd ...

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 ...

Encore: A home filled with music — raising the Kanneh-Masons

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason on what it takes to keep up with her seven children — all of them gifted classical musicians (R).Kadiatu is a former English ...

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...

The secret life of Scarlett, the octopus

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Alex Schnell was around 5 years old, playing in rock pools around Clovelly beach in Sydney, she had an alien encounter. The creature in the sha...

Encore: How Sean Sweeney found his deaf heart

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sean Sweeney on the complications and joys of growing up as a a hearing child in a deaf family, using Auslan, a distinctively Australian sign languag...

The miserable lives and golden guns of tyrants, dictators and despots

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marcel Dirsus is fascinated by the treadmill of tyranny: how dictators gain power, how they stay there and how they fall. This is his blueprint for b...

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...

Peter Godwin's complicated loves, great losses and occasional wars

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The writer had a complex relationship with his mother, whose professional reputation built a wall between them, but also saved his life more than onc...

Treating anorexia by nourishing the heart

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Psychiatrist Warren Ward treats patients who are severely ill with eating disorders. Understanding the mystery of human nature has driven him since h...

Ghost stories and executions in Iceland — when Hannah Kent and Agnes Magnusdottir became entwined

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When writer Hannah Kent first visited Iceland in 2003, she came across a gothic true story about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman hanged in Iceland...

Heroin addiction, Ivan Milat's dentist, and beginning again

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Claude Robinson developed a heroin habit as a young man, and spent years in jail. In 2006 he began to turn his life around for good. (CW: description...

Situationships, risks and growing pains — Jemma Sbeg on surviving your 20s

13 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From relationships and loneliness, to indecision and burnout, Jemma Sbeg is your guide to navigating your 20s, and looking back on that decade with a...

Encore: Mt Druitt to Tonga, how Winnie embraced her cultural heritage

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Winnie Dunn was a teenager when the Chris Lilley character 'Jonah from Tonga' became a national joke and as a Tongan Australian the stereotype made h...

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...

Slapped by a whale's tail, and other animal adventures

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Whale and dolphin researcher, Barry McGovern’s love of sea creatures started in Clare, Ireland, when as a child he met the county’s solitary, fri...

Adam Kay — the magic and misery of doctoring, comedy and fatherhood

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After a caesarean section on his labour ward went catastrophically wrong, Adam Kay took a radical inventory of his entire life. CW: traumatic childbi...

Briana, Max and Freddy: love, trains and mouth music

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Briana Blackett was a journalist in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max and his little brother Freddy we...

Encore: breaking the silence around men's mental health

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jonno Seidler with the story of his Dad Ray,  a much-loved and successful doctor, who hid his private struggles from the world.Behind closed doors, ...

Learning from the mighty matriarchs of the animal kingdom

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Erna Walraven was one of the first female zookeepers to work at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in the 1980s. Despite practical jokes from her male colleagues, ...

Mawunyo's life in love, journalism and hip hop

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mawunyo Gbogbo was raised as a church-going African Australian girl in the sleepy mining town of Muswellbrook, before she grew up to become a hip-hop...

Inside the mind of a dog, and a pig named Habib

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Luke Hura has an innate ability to understand and communicate with animals, and for decades he's been training them for film, television and the stag...

Encore: The case of the unknown sailor

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2007, Jeremy Austin was asked by the Royal Australian Navy to help them identify the remains of an unknown sailor from World War II. Using the be...

Adam Liaw’s longing for food

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Masterchef graduate shares what he learned from his grandmother, who won the lottery in Malaysia when she was a 25-year-old widow with three chil...

Listening to a mountain to save workers trapped underground

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2023, Arnold Dix helped rescue 41 men trapped in a tunnel after it collapsed high in the Himalayas. As an engineer and tunnel expert, he was uniqu...

The physics and feeling of floating — why Angelica learnt to swim

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Angelica Ojinnaka-Psillakis grew up in Sydney, famous for its coastline and beachside existence. But for reasons beyond her control, she didn't learn...

Encore: Grief, loss and the healing power of the natural world

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2013, Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth lost their beloved farm in Wales, it was where they'd lived for 20 years and raised their children.In the ...

The epic escape story of four ANZAC POWs — through the Italian Alps to freedom

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and tour guide Simon Tancred on the little-known ANZAC story of how a group of POWs made a daring escape on foot to neutral Switzerland.Simon ...

Made in Burnie — Justin Heazlewood on swapping fame for his hometown

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Justin Heazlewood fled a complicated early life in Tasmania searching for fame as an artist on the mainland. Recently he moved back to his home town ...

From Manila to Sydney to the Archibald Prize — Artist Loribelle on finding family and love

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The artist Loribelle Spirovski on her unusual childhood in the Philippines, meeting her father for the first time at 7 years old, and making her way ...

Encore: The poker-playing cardiologist

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a child, before she escaped communist Hungary, Bo Remenyi had no ambitions. But when she got to Australia all of that changed. She's gone from cru...

Miles Franklin's secret life as a 'boy sober' undercover maid

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Kerrie Davies with the story of how novelist Miles Franklin went undercover as a maid for a year, in Sydney and Melbourne's wealthy houses...

The life-changing power of a choir - From Guyanese activist forming an Aboriginal Women’s choir

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Song propelled Morris Stuart from his early life shepherding sheep in British Guyana to an unlikely love story in London. In his retirement, he found...

The wisdom of an ancient Pencil Pine

08 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Nature writer Andrew Darby on what he learned from his rambles through the wilds of Tasmania, communing with the world’s oldest surviving trees. In...

Encore: A daring escape from Vietnam to the halls of prestigious American universities

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Anh Nguyen Austen's family fled Vietnam by sea in 1982, on a wooden boat bound for the Philippines. When a once-in-a-century storm struck in the Sout...

From street fighting petty criminal to portrait artist - How Vincent Fantauzzo's life was saved by love and painting

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When artist Vincent Fantauzzo was a boy he was a street-fighting petty criminal with dyslexia and a blazing talent for drawing. He escaped jail time,...

'Mistakes were made' — a live storytelling experience

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Huntley, Rick Morton, Julia Zemiro and Sarah Kanowski bring you stories of human failure, misadventure and outright fiasco in a live storytel...

Two sisters, Dod and Brattle - the lesbian poet, and the evangelical Christian

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Josie McSkimming on growing up with her bohemian sister, the poet Dorothy Porter, and how their lives took off on wildly diverging paths as they grew...

Encore: Doctor Koppe — PTSD and me

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hilton Koppe was a beloved country GP for 30 years before an unexpected health crisis of his own forced him to reassess everything (R)Hilton Koppe gr...

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...

Loneliness — it's not only you

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Loneliness is a universal experience, for each of us at some point in our lives. Journalist Ros Thomas travelled the world to investigate, and find t...

The fearless Kate McClymont — weathering death threats and court cases for work

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The chief investigative reporter on her work exposing criminals and corruption, including former politician, Eddie Obeid and financial fraudster, Mel...

Encore: Krystyna Duszniak and Poland's lost histories

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As a young woman, Krystyna thought her father had taught her everything about Poland’s history, but she didn’t know that what he’d left out wou...

Life on the lam — how Peter escaped from under his fugitive father's shadow

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Norris's father was a notorious bank robber who lived life on the run, dragging his boy across the country with him, until Peter refused to go ...

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...

Undercover hitmen, shady drug deals and covert surveillance — life as a top cop

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While working as an undercover cop, Nick Kaldas played a drug baron in the market for vast quantities of hemp oil, tracked a fugitive with a penchant...