Conversations draws you deeper into the life story of someone you may have heard about, but never met. Journey into their world, joining them on epic adventures to unfamiliar places, back in time to wild moments of history, and into their deepest memories, to be moved by personal stories of resilience and redemption.
Hosted by Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski, Conversations is the ABC's most popular long-form interview program. Every day we explore the vast tapestry of human experience, weaving together narratives from history, science, art, and personal storytelling.
Whether it's an exploration of Australian and American politics, the intricacies of mental health, or the mysteries of ancestry and origin stories, our episodes offer a conversational approach that brings topics to life.
We uncover epic tales of war and peace, the complex dynamics of relationships and family, and the profound impact of grief and loss.
Follow Conversations for thought-provoking discussions, heartfelt stories, and a deeper understanding of the world around us.
Conversations explores the meaning of life, history, relationships, motherhood and fatherhood, love, religion and the origins of human life through a contemporary and conversational Australian lens.
From distinctive accounts of crime, mental health, ancestry, cults, grief, family and parenting, to discussions about science, books, art, music, war, spies and economics, Conversations traverses myriad topics.
Our interviews focus on pioneers of the natural world, wildlife, oceans, fungi, archaeology, palaeontology and megafauna.
Our guests speak about geopolitics, being a refugee and the experience of migration. They come from all walks of life — First Nations, Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples, CALD communities and ancestors of Australia's first fleeters. We explore Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu faith traditions, among other beliefs, including atheism.
We look at social history as well — close encounters with the ancient world, the Stolen Generations, and adventurers on an explorative odyssey.
In a Conversations interview, you will hear personal stories of secrets, lies, adoption, and living with disability, neurodiversity or chronic illness.
We traverse a person's life story, full of human interest topics, including redemption, love at first sight, spirituality, poverty, having children, family dynamics and even hidden families.
We hear from individuals who have struggled with drug addiction, jail, family violence, political imprisonment, persecution, abuse, depression, anxiety and mental health issues.
Conversations also speak to the public figures of Australian and international society — leaders, artists, politicians, authors, sports stars, actors and musicians.
A writer, a builder, a neurologist, a Paralympian, an Olympian, an amputee, a historian, a comedian, a funeral director, a bird photographer, an ethicist, a doctor, a spy, a pilot, a choreographer, a firefighter, a bookseller, an astrophysicist, a martial artist, a principal, an oud virtuoso, an ecologist, a carer, a demographer, a chess master, a forensic archaeologist, a biologist, a chef, a surfer, a button shop owner, a costume and set designer, a boxer, a drummer, a conductor, a dog behaviourist, an AFL player, a longevity expert, a barber, a Matilda, and a psychologist have all appeared on our program.
After almost 20 years of digging into the lives, stories and worlds of thousands of people, Conversations continues as the ABC's most popular podcast, providing Australians with a social history of our country and paying close attention to the small, personal details that make up a life.
The artist Loribelle Spirovski on her unusual childhood in the Philippines, meeting her father for the first time at 7 years old, and making her way as one of Australia's most exciting young painters. Loribelle Spirovski grew up in the Philippines, with her mum and her extended Filipino family. Her Serbian father, whom she had never met, was in Australia, driving taxis and waiting for the visa that would allow him to bring Loribelle and her mum to join him. Loribelle didn't meet her father until...
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 cruising the casino floor as a high-stakes professional poker player, to saving the lives of children in remote Australia. (R) In 2018, Dr Bo Remenyi was made the Northern Territory’s Australian of the Year for her work as a paediatric cardiologist. But her path to receiving that honour, and to her work in remote communities, has been filled with unexp...
Journalist Kerrie Davies with the story of how novelist Miles Franklin went undercover as a maid for a year, in Sydney and Melbourne's wealthy houses, well before gonzo journalists became household names. The real-life story of novelist Stella Maria Miles Franklin had an unexpected chapter after publishing My Brilliant Career. In 1903, Miles became a 'girl stunt reporter' by going undercover as a servant. For a year, she lived as a maid in Sydney and Melbourne's wealthy houses and wrote about th...
Song propelled Morris Stuart from his early life shepherding sheep in British Guyana to an unlikely love story in London. In his retirement, he found himself shaping a choir of Central Australian Aboriginal women, who had been breathing life into 138-year-old Lutheran hymns. Morris Stuart met his Australian wife, Barbara in London in the 1960s. The pair led a youth group attached to a nearby church, and initially tried to ignore their growing feelings for each other. Morris was a young, Guyanese...
Nature writer Andrew Darby on what he learned from his rambles through the wilds of Tasmania, communing with the world’s oldest surviving trees. In particular, his ‘buttock clenching’ ascent up a 60-metre-tall eucalyptus known as The Vibe Tower. Nature writer, Andrew Darby spent more than 20 years as a Fairfax correspondent based in Tasmania. His stories involved the natural beauty of the bush, including visits to wild places and to the people who protect them, but it was deadline-driven and he ...
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 the South China Sea, they thought all hope was lost (R) Anh is an academic and community volunteer who grew up in Vietnam in a Catholic family. Anh's childhood was idyllic, with a big extended family and a close friendship with her cousin named Joe. But life for the adults was complicated after the end of the war, and so in the early 1980s, her parents plan...
When artist Vincent Fantauzzo was a boy he was a street-fighting petty criminal with dyslexia and a blazing talent for drawing. He escaped jail time, and grew up to become one of Australia's most well-known portrait artists. VIncent Fantauzzo is one of Australia's most successful portrait artists. For his luminous, photo-realistic paintings he's won the People's Choice Award at the annual Archibald Prize more than any other artist. He's also won the Moran National Portrait Prize twice, once with...
Rebecca Huntley, Rick Morton, Julia Zemiro and Sarah Kanowski bring you stories of human failure, misadventure and outright fiasco in a live storytelling event recorded at Adelaide Writers Week. A few weeks ago, some former guests of Conversations, and our two presenters gathered at the Adelaide Town Hall. The event was a live storytelling hour, with the theme 'Mistakes were made', in front of a rapt audience of 800 forgiving souls. Writer and social researcher Rebecca Huntley shared her dramati...
Josie McSkimming on growing up with her bohemian sister, the poet Dorothy Porter, and how their lives took off on wildly diverging paths as they grew up. Sisters Dorothy and Josie Porter grew up in an interesting and sometimes volatile home on the northern beaches of Sydney in the 1970s. Together with their middle sister Mary, they lived in a world of books, a backyard menagerie of animals, and regular birdwatching excursions. Their father Chester was a well-known lawyer who was sometimes a expl...
Hilton Koppe was a beloved country GP for 30 years before an unexpected health crisis of his own forced him to reassess everything (R) Hilton Koppe grew up knowing his parents wanted him to become a doctor and so when he got the marks to make it into medicine, they were overjoyed. By the time he was 30, he'd started working as a country GP. Hilton then became a beloved local doctor in Northern NSW, and he worked there for more than three decades. But a few years ago, Hilton's own health suddenly...
Journalist and author Sonya Voumard on the rare neurological condition that has stalked her since a family tragedy during her childhood. Sonya Voumard was on the precipice of teen hood when her father suddenly and unexpectedly died. In the months following his death, Sonya developed a tremor in her right hand, not dissimilar to the shaking she sometimes noticed in her father when he was cutting the top off her boiled egg at breakfast. The tremor got worse as she got older, but working late night...
Loneliness is a universal experience, for each of us at some point in our lives. Journalist Ros Thomas travelled the world to investigate, and find the antidote. Ros spent a year travelling around the world to research something all of us have experienced — loneliness. She met an old man who had learned to thrive through crushing grief with the help of a small, desktop robot. Ros visited a share house in Sweden where pensioners live with young asylum seekers, who care for each other like grandpa...
The chief investigative reporter on her work exposing criminals and corruption, including former politician, Eddie Obeid and financial fraudster, Melissa Caddick. Kate McClymont is chief investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. She grew up on a farm in NSW, and during university, funded her start in Sydney by setting up a busking booth in Kings Cross. Passers-by would pay her to answer a question, have an argument, or verbally abuse them. Kate's start in crime reporting came from an...
As a young woman, Krystyna thought her father had taught her everything about Poland’s history, but she didn’t know that what he’d left out would become a focus of her life (R) Growing up, Krystyna Duszniak's father didn't speak a word of English to her, instilling in her a love of the Polish language, literature, history and culture. As the child of immigrants who had survived World War II, history was all around Krystyna, and while her patriotic father taught her so much about his homeland, sh...
Peter Norris's father was a notorious bank robber who lived life on the run, dragging his boy across the country with him, until Peter refused to go with him one last time. It was the hardest decision he ever had to make. Peter Norris grew up on the run with his criminal father, Clarence 'Clarry' Norris. Every time Clarry was arrested, he would find a way out of custody and fulfil his promise of coming back to his son, and every time they reunited they would be off once more tearing across Austr...
Martha Jabour was a young mum when her baby son Michael died suddenly. In the thick of her grief, she worried for the devastated young police officer who had come to her home that day, before he unexpectedly reappeared in her life (CW: this conversation discusses the death of a child). Martha Jabour has lived through the worst possible day for a parent. When she was a young mum, she put her baby Michael to bed one night, and by the morning he had died in his sleep. Michael was just 7 weeks old, ...
While working as an undercover cop, Nick Kaldas played a drug baron in the market for vast quantities of hemp oil, tracked a fugitive with a penchant for hair transplants, and posed as a hit man for a spurned lover. Nick was a 21-year-old immigrant lad from Egypt when he decided to join the NSW Police Force. He soon rose up the ranks from working as a junior constable on the beat, then as one of the first Arab-Australian undercover cops, to becoming one of the most senior police officers in Aust...
Football tragic Andy Paschalidis was in his 50s when a dear friend and fellow player died during an over-35s soccer game. The tragedy inspired him to begin a whole new story for himself, and the sport (R) Andy grew up in Sydney's Balmain when it was a working-class suburb, full of migrant families. His parents had arrived in Australia from Greece a few years before, seeking a different life. Andy grew up to be one of the first Greek-Australian sports broadcasters on TV and radio on SBS and 2GB, ...
Australian writer Tim Winton on the stories which inspired his latest novel, 'Juice', a story of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit. 'Juice' is an astonishing feat of imagination. It takes us to a far-off future on a superheated planet, where people must live like desert frogs in Northwest Australia. They go underground for the murderously hot summer months, before emerging in winter to grow and make what they can. The nameless narrator of the book is travelling with a c...
The Polish-French physicist and chemist is famous for discovering radium, but Marie Curie was more than her accomplishments. From 'the flying university' to great loves and losses, Dava Sobel investigates her extraordinary life. Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, and the first person to win a second Nobel Prize. But alongside her discovery of radioactivity, Marie’s life was marked by her fierce love for husband Pierre, a scandalous affair following his death, and feats ...
Would you want to live for longer? Forever? Have your mind preserved and uploaded into something non-human? And is it even possible? Neuroscientist Dr Ariel Zeleznikow explores challenging ideas about life and death. From adding a few decades onto a life span, to suspending the aging process altogether, and more radically, uploading a preserved brain and consciousness into an entirely different physical structure, Ariel's research is at the cutting edge of neuroscience. These seem like strange i...
Gold Coast lawyer Chris Nyst on his 45 years in criminal law, defending career criminals, going head to head with corrupt police, heroin addicts and a postcard bandit (R) When Chris Nyst finished studying law in the mid 1970s, he moved to a town by the beach to begin his life as a lawyer, not because it was a glitzy and glamorous city back then, but because he wanted to surf. But his nearly five decades as a criminal lawyer on the Gold Coast turned out to be a wild ride through crime, corruption...
Durkhanai Ayubi and her family keep alive the stories and flavours they carried to Australia from Afghanistan, in the dining room of their 'accidental' and thriving restaurant (R) Durkhanai was two years old when she and her family came to Australia from Afghanistan. She grew up with stories of the old country from her parents, but her most powerful sensory connection to Afghanistan developed in the kitchen of her mother, Farida. Both her parents had other professions in their homeland, but in 2...
Writer Geraldine Brooks on love, grief and letting go after her husband died in a shocking and unexpected way. In 2019, Australian writer Geraldine Brooks was forced into a world of practicalities when her beloved husband, Tony, collapsed on the street in the United States and died. She had to immediately manage finances and family life, organise a funeral and work out what had happened for Tony to so suddenly and unexpectedly die. As time went by, Geraldine realised she had never let herself pr...
It took a catastrophic car accident for the singer and actress to leave a decorated career in architecture and focus on her artistic ambitions, including a tribute show to her friends Sinead O'Connor, and Shane MacGowan of The Pogues. Irish-French singer and performer Camille O’Sullivan grew up in County Cork, with her Irish father and French mother. Although she sang throughout her youth, she was persuaded to become an architect and went on to win awards for her work. But after she nearly lost ...
It took a catastrophic car accident for the singer and actress to leave a decorated career in architecture and focus on her artistic ambitions, including a tribute show to her friends Sinead O'Connor, and Shane MacGowan of The Pogues. Irish-French singer and performer Camille O’Sullivan grew up in County Cork, with her Irish father and French mother. Although she sang throughout her youth, she was persuaded to become an architect and went on to win awards for her work. But after she nearly lost ...
Lindsey Fidler’s quest to find her biological father started with jazz and an American Air Force Base. It ended with a trip to the U.S. through a disastrous free flights promotion run by the British division of Hoover Vacuums. Sociologist Lindsey Fidler’s parents met and married in the 1960s in East Anglia, United Kingdom. They would go to jazz clubs and socialise with the men from the American Air Force base nearby. Lindsey’s father was known as The Typewriter King because he could fix any type...
Paul is a musician, author and performer best known for his comedic alter-ego, Flacco. In recent years he's joined an eclectic band of people who ring the bells at his local church tower in inner Sydney (R) Paul is a musician, author and performer best known for his comedic alter-ego, Flacco. In recent years he's joined an eclectic band of people who ring the bells together at their local church tower in inner Sydney. Every week Paul and his fellow bellringers climb high into the tower where the...
The renowned physician discusses the role of trauma in our lives, showing up as addiction, chronic disease and mental illness — and how recognising his own led to true healing. Dr Gabor Maté was born in Budapest to a Jewish family, just before Nazi tanks rolled into the city. His mother risked handing him to a stranger on the street to try and get him to safety. Many years later, after establishing himself as a successful physician in Canada, Gabor looked at the problems in his work and marriage...
