Conversations
Episodes
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...
Stories of starting over: DJ Hookie
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Nash was 19 when his limbs were amputated due to meningococcal septicaemia. After he began to navigate life with hooks for arms, he built a new ...
Maggie Mackellar on farming, motherhood, and catching sheep
01 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie Mackellar with stories from her life on a Merino wool farm on the east coast of Tasmania, and all of life and death that surrounds her throug...
The Big Pineapple, The Big Merino, The Big Gumboot: how big things captured Australia
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Amy Clarke on the history of Big Things and our enduring fondness for kitsch and curious creations
Crispian Chan on Perth's forgotten terror
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Crispian Chan grew up in the shadow of a campaign of terror in Perth that engulfed his family restaurant and haunted him for years
Geraldine Brooks and the world in words
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The historical novelist has seen enough action to last a lifetime from her days as a Middle East correspondent, and it was her mother's imaginative i...
Craig Hamilton's three lives
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Coalminer turned broadcaster Craig Hamilton was in his 30s when he had a psychotic episode on Broadmeadows train station. In the aftermath, his life...
Lessons from the world's longest study on happiness: Dr Robert Waldinger
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Robert Waldinger on what it takes to live a happy life. Robert Waldinger has spent most of his working life trying to understand the secret to hum...
Bertie Blackman's bohemian childhood
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bertie Blackman on her unconventional childhood with her father the artist Charles Blackman
How Julie became Matilda #1
23 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979, Julie Dolan was named as the inaugural captain of the Matildas. Ever since, she's helped build the juggernaut from the ground up
Kim and the Constitution
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Rubenstein on the inner workings and history of the Australian constitution
John Gaden's golden run
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Gaden on turning his back on law and landing on the stage
Remembering Michael Parkinson
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Broadcaster Michael Parkinson with the life story of his late father John William - Yorkshireman, miner, humourist and fast bowler (R)
Maddy, the shipwreck mermaid
18 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Maddy McAllister's job as a marine archaeologist involves diving into the deep to uncover the artefacts and human stories sunk in shipwrecks (R)
The invisible Mrs Orwell
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Funder on unearthing the story of the talented and determined Eileen O'Shaughnessy, George Orwell's first wife
From the meatworks to mending men's souls
16 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After arriving in Australia from Yugoslavia as a boy, Peter Stojanovic began working at a Melbourne meatworks. Decades on, he's now a counsellor hel...
Jana Pittman's turning point
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jana Pittman became one of Australia's most famous athletes as a young woman. Then at age 30, she found herself at a painful crossroads
David the Seahorse saviour
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
David Harasti with the story of how he opened a chain of underwater seahorse hotels to save an endangered species
A Heart in Two Places
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Donnelley on her life working at Wilcannia Central School, on Barkandji Country 950 kilometres west of Sydney (R)
Dr Freakman, hippie psychiatrist
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Psychiatrist Dr Harry Freeman on the memorable patients, LSD, and medical epiphanies from his 50 years in psychiatry
The sculptor's son
09 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hung Le and his family made a terrifying escape from Saigon in 1975, carrying one suitcase, a box of biscuits and some seasick pills. Decades after...
How Brendan Watkins claimed his birthright
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brendan Watkins on his search to find the truth about his birth parents and the failings of the Catholic church his discoveries unveiled
Mark Brandi on compassion, chance and reinvention
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Author Mark Brandi is a keen observer of people, a skill he honed growing up in a pub in country Victoria, where the family’s Italian heritage was...
Danny Estrin's Eurovision glory
04 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Voyager frontman Danny Estrin on his unconventional path from heavy metal to law and the Eurovision grand final
Oliver Twist, the storyteller
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rwandan-born comedian and playwright Oliver Twist on his years as a refugee and how his life as a storyteller began
The leadership and gentleness of Alex Blackwell
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The former captain of the Australian Women's cricket team shares what she's learned along the way, and how cricket has helped her in genetic counsel...
On the trail of the mega-shark
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a palm-sized fossilised tooth of a prehistoric shark.The find changed the course of his life
Toby Walsh: the power and perils of Chat GPT
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Toby Walsh on the rise of generative AI chatbots and their potential to overtake human intelligence
John's wild dogs
28 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
They have strange coats that look like they're painted on, and while their big Mickey Mouse ears are cute, their domestic dog-like looks aren't parti...
Martin Flanagan on exchanging shame for grace
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, Martin was 10 years old when he was sent to a Catholic Boarding school in North-West Tasmania. Decades later, he began his own reckoning wi...
Healing the grieving heart
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Wendy Liu has spent many years right up close to death. As a forensic counsellor she worked with families who had lost someone to an accident or viol...
Maggie Beer: from Bankstown to the Barossa
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie Beer started her working life at the age of 14 in a chenille bedspread factory. Two decades later, in a pheasant farm in the Barossa Valley, s...
How Ben's brain changed
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An unexpected stroke temporarily robbed Ben Mckelvey of his ability to speak, write and understand words. Eventually, Ben re-learnt the art of lang...
The army town, the lodger, and a succulent Chinese meal
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Writer Mark Dapin’s childhood was disrupted at the age of 10, when his mum fell in love with the lodger. He was then raised in an army town called ...
Anna McGahan and God
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Anna McGahan was playing a sex worker on Australia's biggest television show when she found God, renounced nudity on screen and tried to become the ...
The story of the human voice
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
John Colapinto was singing a Beatles song in front of Bette Midler when he injured his vocal cords. The experience set him on the path to studying t...
The wild boy who became a parenting expert
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Mark Dadds has helped hundreds of troubled kids from his clinic at the University of Sydney. He feels an extra connection to them, as he wa...