Conversations

Trent Dalton on life before Boy Swallows Universe

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As a child Trent was a quiet observer of the drama of his family and his neighbourhood. He became an award-winning writer (R)

Brigitte and the seven peaks

23 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Brigitte Muir's dream to climb the seven highest mountains on each of the seven continents took much longer and cost her more than she expected, but ...

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 ...

From ploughs to cash cows: a short history of economics

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Federal MP Andrew Leigh is a former professor of economics who is fascinated by how economics can create magic

A matter of trust

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How Jeanne Ryckmans fell for a dashing Irish Professor who was far from what he appeared to be

The magnificent history of the Huxleys

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Alison Bashford with the story of the Huxley family, who founded one of the great dynasties of the world

The bookbinder's luck

16 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dominic Riley on how a chance encounter with a bookbinding monk named Brother Bede changed the course of his life (R)

Paul Kelly and the poetry

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Australia's storyteller in song on the poems he's loved since childhood, and how reading and learning great poetry has changed his songwriting (R)

The calligraphy of the outback: the art and life of David Rankin

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Artist David Rankin on his turbulent early life as a the son of a bootmaker, his unexpected path into painting, and his passionate love story with wr...

Crossing Australia with a camel named Delilah

13 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sophie Matterson spent five years preparing to cross the Australian continent with five camels she caught and trained herself (R)

Nick's land of lizards

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Clemann is one of Australia's leading lizard experts, but took an unconventional path into research. After working for years as a tradie, Nick p...

A party girl gets sober

09 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Victoria Vanstone was just 13 years old when she had her first drink, and the booze quickly consumed her. It wasn't until she was in her 30s that Vic...

Sue's special classroom

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sue Lowry originally trained as an opera singer, but while living in London she fell in love with teaching children with special needs

Richard E. Grant and his pocketful of happiness

07 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The actor on the late love of his life, his wife Joan Washington, and the final message she left him (R)

Kira and the real King Kong

06 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Kira Westaway has been on a ten-year mission to solve the mystery of how, why and when a giant ape called Gigantopithecus Blacki became extinct, a...

The making of Nazeem Hussain

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nazeem Hussain honed his comedy in Melbourne's suburbs in the 1990s. After his father left the family, his fearless mother taught Nazeem how to use h...

The toilet warrior

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Balla was on a business trip to India when he met two young men on a train. They invited him back to see their home, one of the world's biggest ...

She farms, she flies, she castrates bulls

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Ameliah Scott pilots herself around remote NSW to take care of animals and have a cuppa with their owners.

Trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) and me

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As a teenager Adele Dumont started pulling out her hair from the root.Eventually she created a bald spot the size of a 20-cent piece at the crown of ...

Jackie goes to Space Camp

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After feeling burnt out, Jackie Carpenter spontaneously applied for NASA's Space Camp. She was the first Australian accepted, and it was the most tra...

Julia Baird's search for grace

29 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Julia Baird has been sustained through hard times by acts of "moral beauty". In a world marked by division, these gestures have the power to restore ...

Robert Waldinger's good life

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Robert Waldinger on what it takes to live a happy life 

Aunty Ruth Hegarty’s life of defiance

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The hardship, cruelty and loneliness of the mission system during the Great Depression didn't crush Aunty Ruth Hegarty's spirit. She found her voice,...

Roger Rogerson: crimes and punishment

24 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After a life of controversy, crime and corruption, disgraced former police detective Roger Rogerson died last week, aged 83. Peter Hoysted met with ...

Slaying monsters, immortality and sex: the wild ride of Gilgamesh

23 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Louise Pryke is one of few people in the world who can read the ancient language in which The Epic of Gilgamesh is written. The mammoth, wild tale ...

Deviating demographics with Liz Allen

22 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Liz Allen is a demographer fascinated by Australia's demographic trends. But her own story is a remarkable case study in deviating from the norm ...

Nancy's muster dog, Mate

19 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Nancy Withers has been breeding and training kelpies for 50 years, but one dog stands out from the rest, and he changed her life forever

The nudist, the vegetarian vicar and Karl Marx's daughter

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

These are just some of the remarkable and quirky people who helped write the Oxford English Dictionary

Jane Perlez's view from Beijing

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At 19 years old Jane Perlez visited China in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. She would return there as a journalist decades later to cover the...

Off-road in the roaring twenties

16 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1927 Francis Birtles set off on a grand adventure from London to Melbourne, through murderous mountain ranges and blustering blizzards, in a Bean ...

Chess master Irina Berezina’s gambit

15 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

International Chess Master and champion Irina Berezina credits her incredible chess-trained mind with helping her survive multiple international disa...

Costa Georgiadis — Heart and Soil

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Costa is the friendly face of Gardening Australia, a devotee of composting, keeping chickens and developing insect hotels (R).

Best of 2023 - Dean Laws

08 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dean Laws was in his 50s when doctors told him he had Parkinson's disease. For a time, he was devastated. Then he formed a running crew with his frie...

Best of 2023 - Karin Bäumler

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Some years ago, Karin Bäumler found herself in a fight for her life after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. In the thick of it all, making musi...

Best of 2023 - Amar Singh

06 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Amar Singh's sense of belonging to Australia has only grown since he leant into his Sikh faith, growing out his beard and his hair, wearing a turban...

Best of 2023 - Danny Estrin

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Voyager frontman Danny Estrin on his unconventional path from heavy metal to law and the Eurovision grand final 

Best of 2023 - Deb Wallace

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Former top Detective Deb Wallace with ingenious and surprising stories from her working life smashing criminal gangs in Sydney

Sandy Mackinnon's never-ending adventures aboard Jack de Crow

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For 25 years Sandy wondered what became of the little yellow dinghy he left in Romania, after a months-long voyage from the UK. Could it still be wa...

Melissa Lucashenko and the story of Edenglassie

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melissa Lucashenko was a motorcycle detailer, a house painter, a prison advocate, and a game show contestant before finding her way as a writer

William McInnes and his favourite Australianisms

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The actor and author thinks that nowhere in the world is the English language more poetic, colourful and persuasive than here in AustraliaWilliam McI...

Piecrust promises and broken hearts

28 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alecia Simmonds with tales from a time in Australia's legal history when the jilted and broken-hearted could sue for redress in the courts 

The truth about Pax Romana

27 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tom Holland on the glories, bloodshed and barbarianism of the golden days of the Roman Empire

Lee Miller: surrealist photographer, war correspondent, and gourmet chef

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Antony Penrose grew up knowing little about his remarkable mother Lee Miller, who had studied with Man Ray in Paris, and become a model, a photograph...

Lucy's button shop

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lucy Godoroja deals in the business of buttons, and the stories each button carries with it from Bohemia, or Milan to her shop in Sydney, and then in...

Hayley's morbid curiosity

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

British-Australian journalist Hayley Campbell uncovers the secret society of the western world's death industry, run by people who have made death th...

Pentridge Prison, Australia's bluestone hell

21 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writer and journalist James Phelps takes you inside the bluestone walls and medieval-looking turrets of Australia's most infamous jail

Jon Owen's radical love

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jon Owen on how he chose a life of 'intentional downward mobility' to help addicts, sex workers, and the homeless, from Calcutta to Mount Druitt to t...

Catherine Martin: making Elvis and loving Baz

17 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How a fashion-loving misfit from Sydney took over Hollywood with husband Baz Luhrmann, winning more Oscars than any other Australian (R)

The ladder out of depression with psychiatrist Ian Hickie

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Ian Hickie has spent decades trying to understand clinical depression. Where does it come from? What role do genes play? And most importan...

Prepared for anything

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Brendan Watson took his Scouts promise very seriously as a young boy. He's leaned in to his pledge in some very unexpected ways, from Moscow to Mong...

The rise of the Super Bilby

14 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ecologist Katherine Moseby is helping Australia's bilbies, quolls, and stick-nest rats evolve to become tougher, faster and stronger, so they can sur...

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...

Wily cockatoos, bin chickens and spangled drongos

10 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Darryl Jones on the dramatic lives of Australia's city-dwelling native birds 

How David got his sea legs

09 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When David Hannan was a young man, he fled university and took a detour to the wild coral coast of WA where he became a lobster fisherman, before ea...

Kylie Moore-Gilbert's freedom fight

08 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent two years inside the Iranian prison system, secretly communicating with fellow women prisoners while she waited for news f...

Richard Flanagan's chain of events

07 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Flanagan was forever changed as a young man, when he was trapped for hours and almost drowned in an isolated stretch of river on Tasmania's ...

Ariadne and the Minotaur

06 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writer Kate Forsyth on how revisiting the story of a mythic Minotaur lurking in a labyrinth in Crete helped her realise that we all need monsters (...

Running from the FBI: life in The Weather Underground

03 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Zayd Dohrn’s parents were militant left-wing revolutionaries, and he was born while they were living underground, fugitives from the FBI (R)

Killer sponges of the vasty deep

02 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Merrick Ekins is Australia's leading expert in carnivorous sea sponges. Some sponges are secret killers, others are made up of glass and imprison...

Bruce Englefield's devilish charm

01 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On a whim, Bruce Englefield bought a wildlife park in Tasmania and moved from across the other side of the world to make life better for Tasmanian De...

Sandi Toksvig and the school of life

31 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Danish-British author and comedian on her father's laissez faire attitude to school, and how this opened her mind and brought her to NASA's missi...

How Stephen sang himself to life

30 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From homeless teen to operatic stardom: how a job at the David Jones food hall changed the trajectory of Stephen Smith's life

Shanelle Dawson: the daughter's story

27 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, Shanelle Dawson's family were the subject of a hit true crime podcast which helped convict her father Chris Dawson of her mother's murder. N...

Pip Williams: from dyslexia to the Dictionary of Lost Words

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Pip Williams was diagnosed with dyslexia as a teenager. She grew up to write a novel inspired by the history of the Oxford Dictionary, which soon bec...

Penny Moodie's compulsive and compelling life

25 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Penny grew up consumed by catastrophic thoughts and developed habits to try to ward off impending doom. It turned out she had been living with obsess...

The hunt for deep sea bioluminescence (and a giant squid)

24 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Marine biologist Dr Edith Widder was inside a submersible searching for bioluminescence in the ocean depths when she saw a giant squid as big as a tw...

The speech collector

23 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tony Wilson was always drawn to the world's great speeches. Then, without warning, he was called on to make the most difficult speech of his life (R)...

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...

Penny's odyssey to Greece and family

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An unexpected DNA test result sent Penny Mackieson on a mission across the other side of the world, to find her real natural mother, and discover her...

The caving time lord

18 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Kira Westaway is a geochronologist who places modern and ancient humans in context by dating things found in caves. For Kira, how we understand ou...

The lucky accident of Sydney's Opera House

17 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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

Lovemore's left hook

16 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A chance encounter led Lovemore Ndou into his local boxing gym, and a lucky left hook became his ticket out of apartheid South Africa

Silverchair's drummer grows up

13 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Gillies was a 15 year old drummer when Silverchair became a global sensation. After almost two decades of being a rock star, the band broke up, a...

The psychopaths among us

12 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lawyer and author David Gillespie has been on a mission to understanding psychopaths after realising he might have worked with one

The chef who changed the world: Josh Niland

11 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Josh Niland on his mission to cook fish eyes, fish liver, and fish sperm to help revolutionise how we cook and eat fishChef Josh Niland is devoted t...

David Marr's reckoning with his family's brutal past

10 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

David Marr with the story of his great-great-grandfather Reg Uhr, who led murderous expeditions with the Native Police during Queensland’s front...

Ancestors like aliens: clues from the Cambrian explosion

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Diego Garcia-Bellido is a palaeontologist who specialises in soft-bodied fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago. These perfectly preserved ey...

Robyn Davidson, wandering spirit

06 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Robyn Davidson on her adventures high in the Himalayas, her love affair with an Indian prince, and her late in life reckoning with her own story (CW...

Jessica Cottis — inside the colour of sound

05 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jessica is an orchestral conductor, organ virtuoso and also a synesthete who 'sees' colour in her mind's eye (R)

Silk, sex, secrets and spiders

04 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

James O'Hanlon digs deep into the secret world of spiders; complex and tiny lives most of us are either unaware or afraid of

From Antioch to Syracuse and Tyre

03 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Katherine Pangonis with stories from five cities of the ancient world, from their splendour in antiquity to their comparatively modest twil...

Confessions of a drama kid

02 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Actor and writer Brendan Cowell with tender and funny tales from his boyhood as a child actor and a budding playwright (R)

Suzie Miller: finder of ways

29 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Suzie Miller with stories from her free range St Kilda childhood, her drama-filled life as a lawyer, and the inspiration behind her play Prima Fac...

Meaghan's connections to family, town and country

28 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Meaghan Katrak Harris with stories from her life as a teenage mother and raising a multicultural family, and her working life as a social worker and...

Xanthe Mallett on skeletons, forensics, crime and body farms

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Forensic scientist Dr Xanthe Mallett on her work analysing skeletal remains, investigating cases of wrongful conviction and studying the decompositio...

Seeing the world through a dog's eyes

26 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dog behaviourist Laura Vissaritis uses science and psychology to better understand what our dogs really are telling us

Dynasties and dynamism

25 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nicholas Jose was living in China in 1989, when the military was sent in to violently quell pro-democracy rallies in Tiananmen Square. He left Beiji...

Sam Neill's menagerie

22 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sam Neill is a winemaker, a cancer survivor and a father. He's also an actor, who's made more than 100 films

Smuggled to Antarctica

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rachael Mead with the true story of Nel Law, who stowed away on a Danish ship in 1961 to become the first Australian woman to set foot on Antarctica ...

The echidna argument

20 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Strategic analyst Sam Roggeveen says Australia needs to think more like an echidna when it comes to defence 

Living to 120 and beyond

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr David Sinclair is a longevity expert who believes ageing is a treatable disease (R) 

What happens to us while we're under anaesthesia?

18 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Cole-Adams has discovered what happens to us while we dwell in the chemical oblivion of general anaesthetic (R)

Chadden's planet Earth

14 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chadden Hunter was in his twenties when he found himself sitting around a campfire in the Ethiopian highlands, talking about his PhD thesis with Sir ...

Bronwyn's books

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Bronwyn Sheehan's daughter befriended a little girl in year four, her eyes were opened up to the realities of life for children in care, and th...

George Megalogenis on the stats that tell the Australian story

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From the 1944 wartime referendum, to the 1999 vote on whether to become a republic, referenda always tell us things about Australia that aren't revea...

Peter's long goodbye

11 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Broadcaster Peter Goers was in his twenties when his parents died suddenly, in a plane crash outside New Orleans. Decades later, he's beginning to m...

Stories of starting over: Susan Johnson

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Writer Susan Johnson began an unexpected adventure when she moved to the Greek island of Kythera with her 85-year old mother Barbara (R)

Stories of starting over: Kim Crotty

07 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Kim Crotty was locked up in Dartmoor prison for growing marijuana, his two young sons were bereft. After he began writing bedtime stories for ...

Stories of starting over: Anne Howell

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After a serious brain operation, Anne Howell woke up in hospital with retrograde amnesia, thinking she was nine years old. With no real understanding...

Stories of starting over: Charles Lomu

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Tongan-Australian man on being privileged to see love in action in his grandparents, how a spiral into grief and anger led him to periodic detent...