Conversations

The power and determination of Nas Campanella

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nas Campanella was six months old when she lost her sight. She fell in love with the radio and audio books as a child, growing up to become one of ...

The megadeath of megafauna

16 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Aaron Camens studies the fossilised skeletons, footprints and soft tissue left behind by strange, alien-like behemoths, to work out how they lived...

Sketchbooks, ghosts and a lost sister with Artist Michael Kelly

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Artist Michael Kelly's younger sister was born with intellectual disabilities in the 1950s, and went into care. The family lost touch with her until ...

The BMW of standup comics

12 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Janty Blair is a Butchulla, Mununjhali and Woppaburra woman who, after a lifetime of nursing and midwifery, discovered her funny bone in her late 50s...

The tin hut that's still standing

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr John Paterson grew up in a tin hut in rural Darwin. He helped hold it down during Cyclone Tracy and has taken care of it so it still stands today....

Bindi — Dinner with Marlon Brando, didgeridoo at the Taj Mahal and always looking forward

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When his elders named him Bindi, David Hudson had no idea his future would involve performing with his didgeridoo at the Taj Mahal, or a role in a fi...

Nardi Simpson on Crocodile Country

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Yuwaalaraay writer, storyteller and performer, Nardi Simpson of the Stiff Gins talks about her life, art and the meaning of country (R)

Ken Wyatt - the Noongar boy who made history

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ken Wyatt was born at Roelands Mission in outback WA, where his mother had been taken as a small girl, after she was stolen from her family. More tha...

Surviving Pinochet, living for art

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Paula Quintela was seven years old when she witnessed Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat in Chile. She broke up the darkness by becoming her country'...

Married at the Wayside Chapel

04 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Playwright Alana Valentine on the story of the radical minister, Ted Noffs, who married thousands of couples who weren’t accepted anywhere else, in...

Beyond the hills and into the mountains

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since she was a child, Michelle Johnston has tried to satisfy her insatiable curiosity about the world and the people in it. Most recently, her quest...

Finding home on the Tooraweenah Aerodrome

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Pitts needed to find peace after a hard life in the rugby and boxing worlds. So he went back to the airstrip that his aviator grandfather made f...

Risking everything

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For more than 20 years, Dominic Gordon cycled through the same self-destructive behaviours - stealing, risky sexual encounters, vandalism and drug-us...

Disaster specialist Lucy Easthope

28 Jun 2024

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 ...

Ben Lee: chutzpah mystic, Bondi rock prodigy, Noise Addict

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Lee was a teen rock prodigy by the time he was 14. He then began decades of making music, Hollywood fame, and a journey into alternative spiritua...

The ferryman from life to death

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After Richard Gosling's young daughter survived horrific injuries and open heart surgery, he became a funeral director, leaning into the emotional in...

Life and death in the holy city

25 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

John Lyons, the ABC's Global Affairs Editor, reflects on the Israel-Gaza war, drawing on his background as former Middle East correspondent for The A...

Like oil and water

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A change of heart and a great romance drove Dr Paul Hardisty to walk away from the oil industry and the influence of his brilliant but violent father...

Pack ice, seal fat and the big slide: Tim and Ernest's incredible journey

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Jarvis takes you on his adventures, following in the footsteps of explorer Ernest Shackleton, who tried valiantly to cross Antarctica from sea to...

How Leila saw birds anew

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Leila Jeffreys was a young photographer when she built a tiny studio specifically for birds. She then began taking heart-stopping images of budgies, ...

Avani Dias on the rise of Narendra Modi

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Avani Dias was working as the South Asia Correspondent for the ABC when she was forced out of India after her reporting fell foul of the Indian gover...

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...

Michael Theo's childhood dream

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Theo found unexpected fame on 'Love on the Spectrum'. Now he's realised a childhood dream: to become an actor

The strange true tale of the tattooed arm regurgitated by a shark

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Phil Roope with a true crime saga from 1930s Sydney involving a tiger shark, a severed arm, a Gladstone bag, smuggled cocaine, and a wronged man (CW:...

The girl who turned her head away

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Juliana Nkrumah survived ill treatment at the hands of her stepmother, growing up in Ghana, and got away with a warning from the Mugabe regime when s...

Free will, liberty and Aristotle in the animal kingdom

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we all feel "funny" about zoos? And should we? Dr Jenny Gray is the CEO of Zoos Victoria, and an ethicist fascinated by concepts like liberty ...

Michael Mosley’s legacy: empowering science for the everyday

11 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The late Michael Mosley on his investigations into the complicated and fascinating world of our gut health and the human microbiome (R)

The 700-room nightmare

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For a thousand years, Colditz Castle has sat on the edge of a cliff in eastern Germany. It has been a royal hunting lodge, a madhouse, and most famou...

Tabletop, Spank, and Spycraft

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Thriller writer Louise Doughty on spycraft, trench coats and her Romany roots

The charming Italian narcissist

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Kerstin Pilz discovered that her charming husband Gianni had been cheating on her while he was dying, she had to decide what to do nextWhen Kers...

Nick Bryant's America: polarised forever

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Nick Bryant has had three years away from his beloved America, completely reassessing his ideas about the superpower and the wild, great A...

Psyche, the curious and brave goddess of the soul

04 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Forsyth on the otherworldly myth of Eros and Psyche, a story at the root of many fairy tales from Beauty and the Beast to Cinderella

The secret psychosis of a first-time mother

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When psychologist Ariane Beeston started having delusions after the birth of her son, and hallucinating that he was a dragon, she had to learn how to...

Japanese gangsters: the secrets of the Yakuza

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jake Adelstein's dogged reporting on Japan's organised crime earned him a nemesis in Tadamasa Goto, one of the most powerful Yakuza bosses in the cou...

Writer Bonnie Garmus on rejection, writing and success in your 60s

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Bonnie Garmus tried to sell her first novel, it was rejected 98 times. Then at 66, she wrote a novel called Lessons in Chemistry, which sold fou...

David Wengrow: everything we know about the human story is wrong

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeologist David Wengrow has discovered an entirely new way to think about the history of humanity, from the origins of farming, cities, democracy...

Matt Hall's life at supersonic speed

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Hall made his first solo flight at 15 years old and has been addicted to life in the air ever since. He became a top gun fighter pilot and after...

The forgotten treasures of desert dwellers

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeologist Julien Cooper digs up the remote deserts of Sudan and Egypt, finding forgotten artefacts, which tell the uninterrupted, thousands-year-...

Billy Bragg — the boy from Barking

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Billy Bragg grew up in working-class Barking, east of London. The expected path was to go from school to the local car factory, but Billy his sights ...

How Rafael Bonachela let his inner showgirl out with Kylie Minogue

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rafael Bonachela was born in the dying years of Franco’s Spain, into a patriarchal culture that didn’t appreciate little boys who wanted to dance...

The power of the extra dad

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Dugald Jellie was growing up in country Victoria, it was dads — his own and his friends' — who opened the world up for him, and as a fath...

Bronnie and the jaws of life

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Firie Bronnie Mackintosh attends emergencies to cut people out of crushed cars and rescue them from burning buildings (R)

Riding for a fall - a portrait of male drive

20 May 2024

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...

The velveteen rabbit at the end of the world

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades before Ruth Shaw became a bookseller in New Zealand's Fiordland, she lived the incredible stories of adventure, love and tragedy that...

A Latvian Fairytale

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Artist Brigita Ozolins grew up hearing about the magic of her mother's home country, Latvia. It wasn't until she was in her 50s that Brigita understo...

Naomi and the smudge of luminous stars

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Astrophysicist Naomi McClure-Griffiths was making an atlas of our galaxy when she discovered an entirely new spiral arm of the Milky Way

Sean Fong dominating life on the jiu-jitsu mat

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sean Fong is a para world champion in jiu-jitsu. The 'gentle' martial art has allowed Sean to shatter any illusions that society might have about...

The highs and lows of the ALP

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From its surprising successes to its dismal failures, historian Frank Bongiorno takes you through the wild 130-year history of the Australian Labor P...

Troy Cassar-Daley: the boy from Halfway Creek

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Troy Cassar-Daley grew up walking a tightrope between two worlds after his mum and dad broke up when he was small. As a grown man, a trip on a countr...

Troy Cassar-Daley: the boy from Halfway Creek

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Troy Cassar-Daley grew up walking a tightrope between two worlds after his mum and dad broke up when he was small. As a grown man, a trip on a countr...

When Bonnie just kept paddling

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Bonnie Hancock stumbled on a book in her local library, she got a gut feeling that refused to go away. And so she set off on a gruelling 12,700k...

Uncovering Tasmania's gruesome past

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cassandra Pybus exposes the secret trade of the skeletal remains of the first people of Tasmania. CW: This episode contains upsetting discussion abou...

Fantastic and fascinating fungi

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fungi have given us many gifts, from penicillin to food, but they can also be quite scary. Dr Alison Pouliot spends her time trying to explain these ...

Chris Haywood's life in character

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Australian actor looks back at his riotous life on camera, from Newsfront to Muriel's Wedding

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...

How our brains use autocorrect

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Margaret Moore is fascinated by our most mysterious organ - the brain. By looking at stroke survivors, she is trying to understand how brains work...

Nick Cave's broken-hearted optimism

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Cave has lived through addiction, love and unthinkable loss. His experiences have changed how he understands hope, heartbreak and optimism (R)

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 ...

Mother Courage

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Writer Colum McCann with the story of Diane Foley, whose son James was murdered by the Islamic State (CW: this episode contains descriptions of viole...

ANZAC Day: letters from the front

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For 100 years Australia has been collecting tens and thousands of letters and diaries from deployed service personnel. These are just some of the mov...

How Rhonda defied expectations

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Dr Rhonda Wilson was in year 10, she was told she should drop out of school and settle for becoming "just a mum". This is how Rhonda defied the ...

Dr Sutapa Mukherjee on how to sleep well

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From muscle paralysis and sleepwalking, to the power of our subconscious, Dr Sutapa Mukherjee takes you into the secret world of sleep

The creativity of language, storytelling and the great language recovery by Dr Ray Kelly Snr

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Ray Kelly Snr's grandfather was asked to translate "telephone" into Gumbayngirr, he responded with “muuya barrigi”, or flying breath (CW: ...

Theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama on making peace and living in poetry

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pádraig Ó Tuama survived conversion therapy and exorcism as a young gay man in a church in Ireland, then became a leading peace negotiator and a p...

Carly-Jay on dying, living, and learning to breathe

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Carly-Jay Metcalfe lives with cystic fibrosis, and has faced a double lung transplant, a rare cancer and other huge medical challenges. But through i...

A portrait of Peter Dutton

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Writer Lech Blaine on Peter Dutton, the former policeman who became the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia

The secret life of slime mould

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Scientist Tanya Latty on how a single-cell organism, slime mould, can solve complex problems in some remarkable ways (R)

Bettany Hughes takes you to the hottest sightseeing spots of the ancient world

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What was on the "must-see" lists for tourists in 200 BCE? From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Great Pyramids at Giza, historian Bettany Hughes...

Finding a new version of family

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Journalist Marina Kamenev on the changing story of our families in the 21st century (CW: discusses donor conception)

Louise Milligan on justice, family and Ireland

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The investigative reporter reflects on her beloved Ringsend relatives and what drives her work holding powerful organisations to account (CW: discuss...

Tom Gleeson: the hard man of Australian comedy

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tom Gleeson discovered and honed his distinctively caustic, laconic style of humour in some unlikely places (R)

Jellyfish, sharks, grease and goggles: the life of a marathon swimmer

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dean Summers became a long-distance swimmer in midlife. Now he swims with sharks, jellyfish and bioluminescence in wild oceans around the world

The strange origins of our immense oceans

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For writer James Bradley, the ocean is the connective tissue that holds all of life on Earth together. But how did it get here in the first place?

When the family circus comes to town

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the rodeo to the dining room table, this is a collection of strange, funny and sombre stories from real families

Glennon Doyle's untamed life

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Glennon was the world's most famous Christian mummy blogger when she fell wildly in love with U.S Women's Soccer star Abby Wambach (R)

Ayesha is not an escape artist

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ayesha Jehangir left her rural village to get a better education; she left Pakistan to explore Afghanistan; and she left an abusive marriage to find ...

How Bri Lee became an incendiary

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bri Lee on the brutal series of events which began her life as a writer tackling injustice in our courts, the beauty industry, and in our schools (CW...

Family folklore: spies, secrets and suffering

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Phil Kafcaloudes grew up hearing stories about his legendary grandmother Olga, who became a spy for the British in WWII. When he grew up, he went in...

Jane Fonda - writing her own script

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jane Fonda's big life has included Barbarella, activism, three husbands, workout videos and hair epiphanies. Now in her 80s, she's devoting her energ...

Oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros' love for Egyptian movies

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The oud virtuoso reflects on his path to the instrument, via a stamp collection and an Egyptian movie starWhen Joseph was 10, his dad swapped an iron...

Crime scenes, lost wallabies, and coal-covered possums

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Best-selling crime writer Candice Fox has written 17 books. But she also has a second life hurtling around Sydney rescuing stranded wallabies, cockat...

The secret world of servos after dark

26 Mar 2024

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...

Va — the sacred space between us

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Australia's first Pasifika university Professor, Jioji Ravulo was just a boy with the flu when a trip to his father's homeland turned him into a chie...

Anton Clifford-Motopi on finding his full name

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Anton Clifford-Motopi didn't see a face that looked like his until he became a father. And it would take several more years before he learned who he ...

On birds, fathers and fairy possums

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ecologist David Lindenmayer first went into the Mountain Ash forests of Victoria in search of the tiny Leadbeater Possum, and he discovered an amazin...

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...

Jarvis Cocker and the Pulp master plan

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The former frontman uncovered boxes from his adolescence in his attic, and he was amazed at his early, detailed plans to take over the music industry...

Sex, law, and life on Mars

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What would a human settlement on Mars look like? How would humans procreate in space? And what on earth is a 'snuggle tube'? These are all questions ...

From Yale to psychiatric prison: the undoing of a brilliant friend

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Jonathan Rosen was a child he had a neighbourhood friend called Michael Laudor. Their very similar pathways in life dramatically, and darkly, di...

Zoya Patel on horses and homecoming

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Zoya Patel became besotted with horses as a child, she could never have imagined how they would help shape her life and relationships

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...

Rescuing the forgotten animals of war

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Marcus Fillinger has taken his military experience and wildlife rescue charity to Ukraine, where, as a civilian, he evacuates abandoned lions, wolves...

How Ross Gittins found his calling

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After a dispiriting stint as a Chartered Accountant, Ross found his perfect job: explaining the Australian economy, in plain English, to millions of ...

Jodi Rodgers on loving our neurodiversity

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As a teenager, Jodi Rodgers got a job as a disability support worker and met a 6-year-old girl who would change her life

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...

Mary Beard's Roman Empire

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Some of the wildest stories about Roman emperors involve playing the violin while watching the city burn, and appointing a horse as consul. Classicis...

Mic's way out of the woods

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Deeply ashamed of what he had done, Mic Whitty retreated into the Welsh wilderness for almost a year. Eventually an unexpected goal pulled him out of...

Satu Vanksa on faith, love and music

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Satu Vanska grew up in Japan as the child of Lutheran Missionaries. When the family moved back to Finland, she felt isolated and alien. But Satu knew...

Guilty feminist Deborah Frances-White

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The podcaster and comedian on her early life in Queensland, where she yearned to wear a coat; lessons from improv comedy; and how eyebrows were the k...