Conversations

Dave Gleeson needs a damn good lie down

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dave Gleeson is known for his blistering performances in The Screaming Jets and The Angels, but he grew up singing at Mass in Cardiff, with a mum ...

The last keeper of Boston Light

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of America's oldest lighthouses was built in 1716 and survived the Revolutionary War. Its first two keepers met dismal ends, but Sally Snowman wa...

Cynthia's Swans

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Cynthia Banham survived the unthinkable, she had to reinvent herself, with the support of her family, and the kindness of the Sydney Swans AFL t...

Edita’s 600 days of longing

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Edita Mujkic fled the Bosnian War in Sarajevo with her two children, 50 American dollars in her pocket and no real plan. It took her almost two years...

Making peace with stuttering

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lifelong stutterer Jonty Claypole on how fluency can be a barrier to our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness

Best of 2022 — Elizabeth Chong

16 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At 90, Elizabeth Chong recalls the familiar abundance of the Queen Victoria Market of the 1930s, how her father popularised the dim sim in Australia ...

Best of 2022 — Tony Bull

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tony spent three decades in and out of jail. Inside Hobart's Risdon Prison, he joined a debating club with Chopper Read, and found his voice for the ...

Best of 2022 — Kelvin Kong

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Kelvin Kong is one of Australia's leading ENT surgeons. The proud Worimi man changes the course of children's lives by looking inside th...

Best of 2022 — Lindy Lee

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As a Chinese-Australian girl growing up in the era of the White Australia Policy, artist Lindy Lee always felt that she didn't belong. When she becam...

Best of 2022 — Stephen Walker

12 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The author tells the thrilling, surreal story of Yuri Gagarin, the loyal communist and father of two who became the first person to journey into spa...

Ken Done's vivid life

09 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Artist Ken Done grew up in a country town in NSW, drawing, fishing and listening to the Argonauts. Before he became a became a full-time artist, he...

Life on the inside when you're cast out

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Fisher, CEO of Sydney's first queer museum, wanted to replicate his family's warm, loving spirit with his own future family. He and his wife did...

Niki Savva's brutal assessment of Scott Morrison

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Niki Savva has seen ten prime ministers move in and out of the lodge during her decades as a political reporter, but one of those leaders stood out ...

The story of English

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Linguist Kate Burridge with the story of how Old English began on a small, damp island on the periphery of the world (R)

Cephalopods — magicians of their watery world

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith on the mystery of the octopus and giant cuttlefish, and why cephalopods are the closest we will come to meeting an i...

Victor Perton and the secret to optimism

02 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Victor's refugee mother was widowed at a young age, his grandparents were tortured and killed by the Soviets, but Victor says he comes from four gene...

Eva's arrested development

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Eva's parents fled from their home in communist Poland, she was told to "ask no questions". But once she got to the 'free world' she couldn't st...

Richard E. Grant and his pocketful of happiness

30 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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

Dee Madigan's precarious early life

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Gruen's Dee Madigan on her turbulent early life as one of four children to a former Catholic Priest 

Nick Cave and the bruises of experience

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Cave on how living through addiction, love and unthinkable loss has changed his inner life

What rugby stole from Michael Lipman

25 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Michael's professional rugby career came to a brutal end after dozens of concussions took their toll on his brain

Anna Yen, the Nanjing Acrobats and the family stories

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When acrobat and circus performer Anna Yen decided to become a playwright, in the process of finding out her family stories she unearthed a new facet...

How Sarah built a tall ship

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Parry first saw a tall ship sailing into Sydney Harbour in 1965. Two decades later, in an abandoned Hobart warehouse, she began building her o...

The hero of the Zebra

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hannah Kent with the true story of the Prussians who fled Europe for a new life in South Australia (R)

The grief tapes

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

After the loss of his mum Carol, James Crawley tried to push down his own grief. Then he watched 35 hours of raw and turbulent footage of his Dad Ri...

A rebel on the bench

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

David Heilpern with stories of drama, crime and heartache from his 21 years as a country magistrate (CW: references to drug use and sexual assault) (...

Heather Rose and the mystery at the heart of things

16 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Heather Rose  on her decades-long quest to make peace with life and loss after a tragedy befell her family when she was a girl (CW: grief and loss)...

Paulie Stewart and the punk nuns of Timor-Leste

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Paulie Stewart made a name for himself as the frontman of legendary Melbourne punk band Painters and Dockers, but he's also spent much of his life...

Surviving two volcanoes — Ngaiire's story

14 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The singer-songwriter shares memories of her mother's sacred, ancestral mountain, surviving childhood cancer and being rescued via a message on AM r...

Sandi Toksvig and the school of life

13 Nov 2022

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...

Diana Nguyen on making peace with her mother

11 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Diana Nguyen's mother would walk out of her performances at interval in protest of her career, but Diana forged on and in the process healed this mot...

Jo Medlin teaches adults to read and write

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Almost half of Australian adults struggle with some level of literacy — writing a shopping list, or reading a text message in private. Jo helps h...

The most perplexing musical instrument

09 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The French horn is made up of metres and metres of brass coiled around and around until it opens into a big bell. Let Peter Luff lead you through th...

The untold stories of the Battle of Long Tan

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Peter FitzSimons has written many books on Australian military history, but pulling out the remarkable stories from the Battle of Long Tan was a lo...

What humans can learn from animals

06 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Animal communication specialist, Justin Gregg on killer whales' grief behaviour, the Piping Plover's broken wing strategy, and what would happen if ...

Lamorna and the sea

04 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Lamorna Ash began to explore her Cornish ancestry she started work on a rusty yellow fishing trawler called the Filadelfia, scaling fish, guttin...

Love, power, and my PNG family — Dame Carol Kidu

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Carol, an Australian, and Buri Kidu, a young Papua New Guinea man, fell in love in the 1960s, their partnership defied convention (R)

Jonno Seidler: breaking the silence around men's mental health

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ray Seidler was a brilliant doctor and a family man, whose secret struggle with depression ultimately claimed his life. Now his son Jonathan is helpi...

Costa Georgiadis: Heart and Soil

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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

Mat Rogers finds his own game

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mat Rogers on football, family, stepping out of his Dad's shadow, and stealing the Queen's spoons (CW: mentions suicide) 

The enigmatic legend of Jimmy Possum

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Who was the legendary chair maker? An emancipated convict? An Irish refugee? A First Nations man? All we know is that he lived in a tree

Pub Choir — beer, singing and Kate Bush

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Brisbane choir director, Astrid Jorgensen shares how she thinks in sound, and why it's not about you, darl, when you come to sing in a group

The salty sweet life of Aaron Fa’Aoso

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Aaron Fa’Aoso on the mistakes, heartaches, and lucky breaks on his path to success as an actor and producer

A Renaissance scholar on love, power, Florence and folly

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

 Dale Kent is an esteemed scholar of the Italian Renaissance who grew up in Australia. Rejecting her Christian Science upbringing, she forged an una...

Suburban crime and mishap in 1950s and 1960s Sydney

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Crime writer, Peter Doyle delves into the notes and photographs kept by his uncle, Detective Sergeant Brian Doyle on the Kingsgrove Slasher and other...

When I am dead I will love this

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From Scotland's Orkney Islands, stories of how a chance meeting in a pub led Andrew Greig to climb the Himalayas, how golfing helped him recover fr...

The making of an epic adventurer

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From walking alone across Antarctica, to crossing the Simpson Desert using wind, Geoff Wilson has led a life full of adventure. Content Warning: Gr...

Chris, the lunchbox, and the impossible problems

19 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chris Pepin-Neff grew up as an identical twin in a small town in Connecticut. When he was four years old, his family suffered a terrible loss. Then ...

Murder she wrote - The life of Angela Lansbury

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded in 2013, celebrate the seven-decade long stage and screen career of the remarkable actor (R)The late Angela Lansbury has taken on a wildly ...

Dai Le's harrowing journey to power

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dai Le tells the story of her family fleeing Saigon and travelling across 2 oceans to make it to Australia, and how a sense of fairness drew her in...

The secret powers of snakes

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Christina Zdenek wants to change our minds about Australia’s deadly snakes, not just because their venom holds healing secrets

Babushka Lena and the Soviet cookbook

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When cooking teacher Anna Kharzeeva began a quest to cook her way through an iconic Soviet-era book of recipes, her grandmother Lena became her guid...

The Beatles, Brian Epstein and me

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Joanne Petersen recalls working as a personal assistant to The Beatles' manager, the freedom of the Swinging Sixties in London and eloping to the Bah...

Tim Faulkner's wild life

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The conservationist is on a quest to see all 2600 species native to Australia, before time runs out

Lessons from Bali's ground zero

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

David Read was one of the first doctors on the ground in Bali, 20 years ago and what he saw there turned him into a leading figure in disaster respo...

Kyra Maya Phillips: my grandfather's heart was full of poetry

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kyra Maya Phillips on her family's search for home, from Morocco's Atlas Mountains, to Israel, then to Venezuela and beyond

Nicholas Hammond — from The Sound of Music to Cinderella

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The stage and screen actor looks back at his mother's magical influence on his childhood imagination, and his life in character

How a fish with tiny fingers changed history

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

 Palaeontologist John Long found his first fossil in a Melbourne quarry as a 7 year old. He grew up to unearth new clues as to how we became  human...

The leadership and gentleness of Alex Blackwell

03 Oct 2022

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...

Chocolate and the universe in Scott Fry

30 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How a bush kid from Magnetic Island graduated to an ashram in India and came to harvest cacao with an ancient, Indigenous tribe on the Amazon River

The mysteries of roller derby and grief

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

After Nova Weetman's partner died, the children's author started writing from and about grief

The notorious Lenny McPherson and post-war Australian crime

28 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

True crime journalist Jack Hoysted tells the story of the life and times of the man known as the 'Mr Big' of organised crime

The Australian Wars

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel Perkins' is one of the country's great storytellers, and now she's turned the lens on the bloody conflicts that broke out across the continent...

Bill Crews and the Calais epiphany

26 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Reverend Bill Crews on the moment which changed how he saw his own life story, and his ideas on how we can all cultivate compassion, tolerance, empat...

Mike Moskowitz — the Ultra-Orthodox rabbi who became a trans ally

23 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mike's evolution came as a shock, when he was fired from Columbia University and started working in a deli

Fearless Alice Anderson and her all-girl garage

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The story of an Austin-driving Australian maverick who died in mysterious circumstances (R)Alice was a quintessential, mould-breaking young woman of ...

Jarvis Cocker and the Pulp master plan

21 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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

Pirooz Jafari and the thread of home

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The author describes his early life during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war and how arthouse films and illegal street photography provid...

Remembering Uncle Jack Charles — not true blue, true blak

19 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Uncle Jack was forcibly removed from his mother as a baby and denied his Aboriginality. A one-off trip to Fitzroy connected him with a family he didn...

A Heart in Two Places

16 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Donnelley on her life working at Wilcannia Central School, on Barkandji Country 950 kilometres west of Sydney

Rick Fenny, Red Dog vet

15 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The outback vet with stories of treating racehorses, camels and the odd chimp as he zigzagged around the Pilbara from the 1970s onwards, and how he c...

Australia's secret spy ring

14 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Coast Watchers' story is little known, but these civilians played a crucial role in protecting Australia from the advance of the Japanese Empire...

The Babies of Holnicote House

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Deborah Prior was one of more than 2000 mixed-race babies born to white British women and black American GI's during WWII (R) 

Tom Gleeson: the hard man of Australian comedy

12 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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

The greatest air race: twenty planes, London to Melbourne, 1934

09 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Early aviation's most dramatic event saw courage, tragedy and a miraculous rescue involving the whole town of Albury (R)

A league of their own — Breeanna Brock and the AFLW

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Right up until the very first game, Women's CEO at the Brisbane Lions, Breeanna Brock wasn't sure that the women's league would ever become a reality...

Sam's education in grit

07 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sam Vincent was a struggling writer when a freak accident led him to unexpectedly take over his family's farm

Simon Longstaff and the ethics of everything

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As a boy, Simon Longstaff's life was changed by one of the most searing ethical dilemmas imaginable (R) 

The secret world of the human ear

05 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Kelvin Kong is one of Australia's leading ENT surgeons. The proud Worimi man changes the course of children's lives by looking inside th...

Sailing solo around Antarctica

02 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Lisa Blair navigated waves as tall as high-rise buildings, dodging cargo ships, icebergs and several near-death experiences to sail around Antarcti...

Bush chooks, clever crows, and assassin maggies

01 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Darryl Jones has an enthusiastic curiosity about wild birds that, against all odds, flourish in Australia's cities and towns

The rise of the land dragon

31 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Landragin was born into a champagne-making family in the French village of Verzenay. When he was five, his family began a new life in Australia....

Confronting my grandmother the Baba Yaga

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Krissy Kneen grew up under the strict control of her grandmother, Lotty, who was the eccentric and sometimes cruel matriarch of her small family. Kri...

How David was lost, then found

29 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

David Newheiser was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family. When he fell in love with a Buddhist, his parents cut him off and his Dad wrote a bo...

Rebel doctor Caroline de Costa — smuggling condoms and scaring priests

26 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Being a single mother and student doctor in 1960s Ireland was merely the 'first act' in Caroline's gutsy adult life. She became a pioneering obstetri...

Life and death in the Amazon

25 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Anthony Ham tells the dramatic story of Chris Clark, who made Brazil's Wild West his home, weathering death threats in response to his attempts at w...

The fall of Kabul through Andrew Quilty's lens

24 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Quilty fell in love with Afghanistan for the sense of purpose it gave him as a photographer, but he watched it fall through the lens of his ca...

The secret life of George

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Georgina Godwin grew up in Zimbabwe with a father who was the model of a British gentleman. Many years after she fled Africa for London, she discover...

How Kaya's transition unlocked a secret history

22 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Kaya Wilson came out to his parents as transgender, after a near-death surfing accident and just weeks before his father's death, it revealed a ...

Judy Cotton makes her way

19 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Artist Judy Cotton reflects on the Australia that formed her, and the legacy of her exacting mother — a champion sheep breeder and passionate home...

Cancer, manhood and me

18 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Surfing writer Tim Baker on how the hormones which saved his life after a cancer diagnosis fundamentally changed his experience of being a man

Chloe Hooper’s hopeful spell

17 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Australian author on the bedtime story she wrote for her young sons, to try to explain the grief and uncertainty of their father's leukaemia dia...

Paralympian Christie Dawes is super/normal

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Christie splits her time between training for road and track wheelchair races, holding down several jobs, and raising her family. The Tokyo Paralympi...

Raising seven classical musicians: the Kanneh-Masons

15 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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

La Goulue — from the cancan to lion taming

12 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Academic Will Visconti on the true history of the most famous cancan dancer in Paris at the turn of the century, and her later work taming lions

Tony the Aussie-Vietnamese Gangster Pastor

11 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tony Hoang was a teenage heroin dealer in Cabramatta at 13, grappling with addiction at 21, then cried out to God for a sign. What came next was more...

Platypuses' best friend

10 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was love at first sight, when Jack Ashby first set eyes upon a platypus specimen as a young university student

The story of the Bible in Australia

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Meredith Lake with the Bible's Australian history, from the convict era, to the Mabo land rights campaign, and the modern-day Pentecostal c...

My Giddy Aunt — women's vaudeville in Australia

08 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Documentary filmmaker Sharon Connolly has unearthed her family history of female whistling comedians, and how they changed ideas about how women shou...

Running from the FBI: life in The Weather Underground

05 Aug 2022

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.