Conversations

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.

A life in the law, on the Glitter Strip

04 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Gold Coast lawyer Chris Nyst on his 45 years in criminal law, defending career criminals, corrupt police, heroin addicts and a postcard bandit

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...