Conversations
Episodes
The late Archie Roach: turning spirit into song
03 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Archie tells of writing Took the Children Away and playing it in public for the first time, of his belated reunion with his siblings, and his love st...
Charmian, the violin and the zipper man
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Australian violinist Charmian Gadd reflects on her 80 years, from her origins in the bush at Ourimbah on the NSW Central Coast, to her love affair wi...
How Tom became 'DJ Hookie'
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Nash was 19 years old when he fell terribly ill with meningococcal septicemia, and all his limbs were amputated. After he learned to walk again o...
The art of survival
29 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Writer Susan Varga sees her life as full of hard joys - including her Hungarian Jewish family’s surviving WWII, her recovery from the stroke which ...
Freedom's child
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sisonke Msimang fought hard to find a home. She was born in exile, the daughter of a freedom fighter who had fled South Africa during apartheid.
Mapping two and a half million guitars
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even the cheapest guitars are made in part from trees which are becoming increasingly rare. Chris Gibson's curiosity about these timbers led him on a...
The flying vet from outback Queensland
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Campbell Costello (aka Dr Cozy) has probably the largest, and most exciting, consult room in the world
Cook Maggie Beer: from Bankstown to finding her purpose in the Barossa
25 Jul 2022
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...
Stupid crooks, crooked cops, and honest John
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Former narcotics agent, John Shobbrook battled corruption when investigating an audacious plan to air-drop heroin into Far North Queensland in the 19...
More than the station manager's wife
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Sally Warriner left behind the life she had built in the bush, it took her years to define herself as more than 'just the general manager's wife...
Guilty feminist Deborah Frances-White
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The podcaster and comedian on her early life in Queensland — reading Enid Blyton and yearning to wear a coat; what improv comedy taught her about h...
Geraldine Brooks and the world in words
19 Jul 2022
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...
Nerida's nudibranchs, sea dragons and siphonophores
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Nerida Wilson spends a lot of her time getting acquainted with the mysterious creatures lurking in the dark depths of the sea
Stories from Gudanji country
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Debra Dank walks and talks differently when she's at home on Gudanji country, because she comes with this place. (Content warning: Aboriginal and Tor...
Suicide survivor Oceane Campbell
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Oceane was 18 when she attempted to take her own life. After a painstaking climb back into life, 20 years later she is a midwife, a writer and a moth...
Barber Charles Lomu and the meaning of love
13 Jul 2022
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...
Dr Suzie Sheehy's journey to the basement of reality
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists continue to discover the rarer and rarer objects which make up our universe. Why are we so obsessed with the particles around us?
Ariadne and the Minotaur
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Forsyth on how revisiting the story of a bloodthirsty Minotaur lurking in a labyrinth in Crete made her realise how we all need monsters
Nova Peris shines bright
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nova is a woman of many firsts — an Olympic gold medallist and Northern Territory Senator. She continues to strive for excellence while showing up ...
Quandamooka Country to Canberra — Dr Valerie Cooms
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Aunty Kath, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, was Valerie's godmother, and just one of many staunch political figures on both sides of her family. Val worked her w...
How Thomas found his voice on the wharves
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Torres Strait Islander man Thomas Mayor was working as a wharfie in Darwin when he became a union delegate, then an author, and a tireless advocate ...
River, desert, island — Julie Janson's stories
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After years teaching in the remote Northern Territory, Julie began to trace her ancestry among the Darug people around the Hawkesbury River. Her most...
Gary Lang and the jewel of dance
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gary is a Larrakia man from Darwin, whose dancing career has taken him from the early, bright lights of Glebe in Sydney, around the world, to the tom...
Deserter, archaeologist and spy – the extraordinary adventures of Charles Masson
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Edmund Richardson tells the story of the East India Company deserter who went in search of one of Alexander the Great's lost cities, in Afghanis...
Taming the Black Dog, and burnout
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gordon Parker is the founder of the Black Dog Institute, which works to remove the stigma around mental illness. His latest focus is the phenomenon o...
Finding a dad, zoology and a life-threatening illness
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Bravery tells the story of his childhood in Logan, Queensland, how he went from a career at KFC to studying male satin bowerbirds and why being a...
My grandfather and his pet lion
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Author Victoria Mackinlay with the story of how her grandfather, Francis came to have a pet lion, as a gift from an Indian Maharaja
The art of taking sperm from a rhino
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Tamara Keeley uses reproductive technology to help save rhinos, Tasmanian devils and koalas from extinction
Richie Ramone and the record shop
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
No, he's not 'that' Richie Ramone, but this Richie Ramone's passion for punk is just as fierce.
Lisa Curry on winning gold and losing Jaimi
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Swimmer and entrepreneur Lisa on her life in and out of the pool, and how the loss of her daughter Jaimi has changed her
The Needle in the Tofu
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Zen priest and writer Ruth Ozeki takes us into world brimming with the voices of people and household objects, and her own experience of hearing he...
The Chloroformist — extraordinary Doctor Joseph Clover
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Christine Ball is an anaesthetist at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne who chanced upon an old casebook of a doctor named Joseph Clover (R)
A daring escape from Vietnam, and a brilliant career
20 Jun 2022
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 South Ch...
Howard Jacobson and the rocky path to writing
17 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Booker prize winning English novelist on disappointing his parents, the time before he was a writer, and his gift for unhappiness
Shanna Whan's best sober life
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When country woman Shanna Whan hit rock bottom in 2014 after a lifelong battle with alcohol addiction, she began a grassroots movement to tackle how ...
RAF Pilot Frank Dell's story of survival in Nazi occupied Holland
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Dell survived being shot down over Nazi Germany, with the aid of courageous Dutch families and resistance fighters (R)
The turtle effect — their mysterious allure and surprising history
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Louise Pryke returns with a cultural history of turtles, from ancient times to modern day, and from turtle tears to Al Capone, Lou attempts to unders...
Understanding Russia's 1917 Revolution and Civil War
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Antony Beevor depicts the conflict through the eyes of ordinary Russian workers to officers on the battlefield, to crystalise one of the mo...
Catherine Martin: making Elvis and loving Baz
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How a fashion-loving misfit from Sydney took over Hollywood with husband Baz Luhrmann, winning more Oscars than any other Australian
Maggie Dent — raising strong girls
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Guiding daughters to become confident young woman in an age of smartphones and early sexualisation is tough. The parenting expert says in this comple...
The cerebral cartographer
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Professor George Paxinos has mapped more parts of the brain than anyone else in the world. He's been creating atlases of this most mysterious organ f...
Michelle versus the Atlantic Ocean
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From working in a bank and behind a bar, to rowing solo across an ocean, the story of Michelle Lee's remarkable transformation and the voyage which...
Artificial Intelligence — a moral future
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Toby Walsh is a world leader in AI research. He asks questions like, 'can we train machines to be fair?' and 'how do we resist the spread o...
Putting lipstick on a great white shark
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Rodney Fox was torn apart by a great white shark and it took 462 stitches to put him back together again. He was then instrumental in filming Jaws, t...
The Jane Austen cure
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After 50 years of marriage Ruth Wilson took some time alone. In a yellow cottage with a dogwood tree in the garden, she began re-reading the novels o...
Gillian Bell — life and cake
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gillian has the best job in the world — travelling overseas to bake sumptuous and heartfelt wedding cakes, using foraged and fresh produce to tell ...
Megan Davis: the road to the Uluru Statement from the Heart
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Megan Davis was raised as a 'Queensland Rail kid', then in a book-loving household in a housing commission home. She grew up to become a lawyer at th...
Mawunyo's life in love, journalism and hip hop
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mawunyo Gbogbo grew up in a church-going Ghanaian-Australian family in the mining town of Muswellbrook, NSW. As a young woman she grabbed the chance ...
Wendy McCarthy's bold life
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How a sheltered girl who grew up on a soldier settlement farm in country New South Wales grew up to become a feminist trailblazer
Upside down in Bass Strait
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ocean racing navigator Will Oxley first learned his trade through celestial navigation, using a sextant and the stars. He then began ocean racing aro...
Briana, Max and Freddy: love, trains and mouth music
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Briana Blackett was a journalist working in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max was diagnosed with autis...
The caving time lord
24 May 2022
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 hunt for Hitler's horses by an art sleuth
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Art detective Arthur Brand met neo-Nazis, billionaire collectors and underground art dealers on his hunt for the two enormous bronze horse sculptures...
Healing the grieving heart
20 May 2022
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...
Music, mothering and Martha Wainwright
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The folk singer on the songs in her blood and the intergenerational conflict between professional creativity and family
Oumuamua's secrets
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Avi Loeb was Harvard's top astronomer when he became intrigued by reports of a pancake-shaped object the size of a football field hurtling through ou...
A history of war, humanity and technology
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Gwynne Dyer on his search to understand whether war is embedded in human nature, and why things are changing, despite the world becoming le...
Anita Jacoby uncovers painful secrets hidden by her loving father
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Anita Jacoby has spent decades uncovering the truth about other people, but when she turned the lens on her own father, she was shockedAnita Jacoby h...
Building a school for the world’s poorest children — Gemma Sisia's story
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A donation of land and $10 was all Australian-born Gemma needed to establish The School of St Jude in Tanzania (R)
Tom Tilley: losing my religion
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Tilley was raised in a loving Pentecostal family, but as he grew up he began to question the church's teachings, especially when it came to speak...
Searching for Margot
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When teacher and actor Ned Manning lost his mother when he was 12 years old, he knew little about her life. So as an adult, he set off to re-imagine ...
The audacious athletes who cheated their way to the top
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From dodgy marathon runners to table tennis stars who 'dope' their paddles, there are few sports which can claim immunity from cheating
Louisa and the King of Kowloon
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Louisa Lim with a history of the city of Hong Kong, including the true story of Tsang Tsou Choi, the 1950s graffiti artist who became a cultural icon...
Teddy Tahu Rhodes and the letter that changed his life
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
He's one of the world's most acclaimed opera stars, but Teddy Tahu Rhodes did everything he could, for a very long time, to avoid his destiny on stag...
The hunt for the world’s largest owl
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght on his adventurous quest to save the rare, shaggy fish owls of Russia's Far East (R)
Maggie Dent — helping teenage boys grow into good men
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie grew up around boys, then raised four sons of her own. Now she helps parents understand the changes teenage boys are going through as they cro...
The ghosts of Babylonia
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Irving Finkel on the ghosts who joined the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians in their day to day lives
Jackie Huggins: my father Jack
02 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Jackie Huggins with the story of her father Jack, who was a surf lifesaver, a rugby league player, a soldier taken prisoner in the Fall of Singapore,...
Tony Bull and finding his voice through a prison debating club
29 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tony spent three decades in and out of jail for property crimes and safecracking. When he joined an unusual club inside Hobart's Risdon Prison, he fo...
Sylvie and the magical stew
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Writer Sylvie Bigar thought her assignment was simple — cover the history of cassoulet, a French ancestral dish. What she discovered was a world of...
What the Totem Pole gave Paul
27 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since he was a boy, Paul Pritchard has been fascinated with climbing rocks. His compulsion took a terrible and beautiful turn on a matchstick of...
Lost at sea: losing faith as a Navy Chaplain
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How the Royal Australian Navy's top chaplain lost his faith
Two spoons and a dugout canoe — the story of Jock McLaren
25 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tom Gilling with the story of how a Scottish-born soldier named Jock McLaren became one of Australia's greatest World War II guerrilla fighters (R)
The green suitcase and the secret family
22 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Betty O'Neill's father disappeared when she was a baby. Decades later, she opened a suitcase in Poland to find a series of clues to his secret life (...
Don Winslow — private eye, safari guide and inside the narco wars
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The US crime novelist on his unlikely career progression, and how he uses his books as a way of showing the human stories behind the headlines of the...
Di Morrissey and the tragedy on Lovett Bay
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Di Morrissey grew up in a tiny village on the water, only accessible by rowboat, with film star Chips Rafferty and poet Dorothea Mackellar as her n...
Maddy, the shipwreck mermaid
19 Apr 2022
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
Meryl Tankard: dancing beyond ballet
18 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How a former ballerina revolutionised Australia's dance landscape (R)
My brother, our farm, and seeking the source of consciousness — Mark Solms
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When he was a child in South Africa, Professor Mark Solms watched his older brother sustain a terrible brain injury. He then began his own path, to u...
Jason Om shines a light on his family secrets
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When journalist Jason Om turned his skills towards his own family story he began to understand the real story of his perfectionist Buddhist Cambodian...
Pack ice, seal fat and the big slide: Tim and Ernest's incredible journey
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Jarvis on his adventures following in the footsteps of explorer Ernest Shackleton, who tried valiantly to cross Antarctica from sea to sea, from ...
Sara El Sayed: love, tradition and rebellion
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sara El Sayed on growing up Arab in South-East Queensland, while juggling conflicting expectations from her father to be a good Muslim girl, and from...
Clinical pain neuroscientist Dr Tasha Stanton: Why chronic pain is like a bilby in a bathtub
11 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Clinical pain neuroscientist Dr Tasha Stanton explains her studies into the power of the mind when it comes to coping with injury and illness.Clinica...
Taking your cat for a walk and why dogs never stop loving — Jeffrey Masson
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The bestselling author explores animal behaviour and grief — the loss we feel when a beloved pet dies, and how other species understand death (R)
Indira Naidoo: losing a sister and finding healing
07 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After her younger sister died suddenly, broadcaster Indira Naidoo's world was shattered. Then she turned to her urban landscape for solace (CW: menti...
The unusual life of Elizabeth Macarthur
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Novelist Kate Grenville on the story of love, grief and mental illness she unearthed when she revisited the letters of colonial gentlewoman Elizabeth...
The world-record-breaking sheep shearer turned outback cop
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Laurie Bateman went on an intense, lonely 18-month journey to become a Guinness World Record-holding sheep shearer, but it's not the accomplishment t...
Hannah Gadsby and the point of no return
04 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Australian comedian on Nanette, her 'farewell' to stand up comedy; being diagnosed with autism as an adult; and on Douglas, the show and the dog ...
Sian Prior: reckoning with childlessness
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sian Prior with the story of the years of longing and loss which marked her quest to become a mother, and what happened when she found herself childl...
Patrick Gale's family secrets
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
English author Patrick Gale finds inspiration in the endless sunset beyond his Cornish farm, old family letters and a pair of bearskin gloves from hi...
A magical life: Arthur Coghlan
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Arthur made his name escaping from a locked 44-gallon drum in a pool of sharks, and his death-defying escapes from the 1970s soon earned him the titl...
Feeding the body, mind and spirit: J.C Faulk
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
J.C Faulk gives out over a million kilos of food each year to the hungry in his Baltimore food program. He tells how his own life story has guided hi...
The hunt for mutant waves
28 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Big wave surfer Kerby Brown's obsessive quest to find 'slab waves' to ride, far off the Australian coast has almost cost him his life
The mystery of the eel
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Author Patrik Svensson was just a boy when his dad introduced him to the wonders of this enigmatic fish — their birthplace in the Sargasso Sea, the...
The poker-playing cardiologist
24 Mar 2022
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...
Searching for who betrayed Anne Frank
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
War crimes investigator Brendan Rook on the case that was 'more frozen than cold', and his years with the International Criminal Court, scrutinising ...
Barlinnie, the Gorbals and me
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thriller writer Helen Fitzgerald on her life as a social worker inside some of Scotland's toughest prisons (R)
Lindy Lee and the only game in town
21 Mar 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 began...
How Australia built the internet of the 19th century
18 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Northern Territory historian Derek Pugh recalls the 36,000 poles, undersea cable and sheer ingenuity that went into the greatest feat of engineering ...
Raised in a cult
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Serafina Tane was born into a religious cult on New Zealand's South Island. The cult leader was a charismatic but abusive man named Douglas Metcalfe,...