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 understand how a person's brain shapes them. CW: description of a medical procedure (R)
When journalist Jason Om turned his skills towards his own family story he began to understand the real story of his perfectionist Buddhist Cambodian father and his Catholic Eurasian mother, who was stricken with an inexplicable sadness Jason is a journalist with ABC TV. A few years ago he turned his journalistic skills to his own family story. Jason wanted to find out what had happened to his mother in Malaysia, and whether that could explain the melancholy she struggled with as he was growing ...
Tim Jarvis on his adventures following in the footsteps of explorer Ernest Shackleton, who tried valiantly to cross Antarctica from sea to sea, from 1914-17
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 her grandmother who encouraged her to write, and not marry
Clinical pain neuroscientist Dr Tasha Stanton explains her studies into the power of the mind when it comes to coping with injury and illness. Clinical pain neuroscientist, Dr Tasha Stanton works with people who experience chronic and crushing pain at the University of South Australia. Typically, her patients suffer from osteo-arthritis and back pain. Tasha says that far from being only the result of injury or illness, pain is influenced by many different factors in our lives — emotional turbule...
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 shares her deeply personal story, beginning with her adventurous childhood with two sisters and their globe-trotting family. She vividly recalls her late sister Monica's daring spirit, their cultural upbringing, and the family's political activism against apartheid. The narrative then shifts to Monica's adult struggles with mental health and the devastating impact of her suicide, detailing Indira's unique path to finding solace and meaning amidst grief by observing the resilience of nature in her urban environment.
Novelist Kate Grenville on the story of love, grief and mental illness she unearthed when she revisited the letters of colonial gentlewoman Elizabeth Macarthur
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 the Kamilaroi man is most proud of
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 (R)
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 childless at the age of 50 For many years Sian Prior desperately wanted to have a baby. Her longing to be a mother played havoc with her relationships and her body. It never happened, and Sian had to decide what to do with the freedom that was hers. Further information Childless is published by Text To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations ...
English author Patrick Gale finds inspiration in the endless sunset beyond his Cornish farm, old family letters and a pair of bearskin gloves from his childhood dress-up box
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 title of 'Australia's Houdini' (R)
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 him to the work
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
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, their powers of navigation, and the ongoing secret of their reproduction
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.
War crimes investigator Brendan Rook on the case that was 'more frozen than cold', and his years with the International Criminal Court, scrutinising Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi
Thriller writer Helen Fitzgerald on her life as a social worker inside some of Scotland's toughest prisons (R)
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 studying Zen Buddhism, some big shifts began to happen in her life, and her art
Northern Territory historian Derek Pugh recalls the 36,000 poles, undersea cable and sheer ingenuity that went into the greatest feat of engineering in 19th century Australia — the Overland Telegraph Line
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, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ (R)
Dr Duane Hamacher on his study of Indigenous Astronomy, which covers 65,000 years of observation, deduction, and experimentation
Mark Trevorrow on how the music of composers Anthony Newley and Paul Williams influenced the course of his life and began the evolution of his alter ego, Bob Downe
The young naturalist shares his deep connection to the wild landscapes and creatures of Northern Ireland. Dara's first book has been highly awarded, and is all the more exceptional for his being just seventeen years of age (R)
When Kim Crotty was locked up in Dartmoor prison for growing marijuana, his two young sons were bereft. He began writing bedtime stories for them from his cell, as a way to reach them
The Mexican-American Mixed Martial artist and bare knuckle boxer on being smuggled into the US as a child in a pickup truck, and how almost losing his eye turned him toward the art of the city of his birth
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 and the 37,000 people she has taught to cook
Musician Eliza Hull has a condition called Charcot-Marie-Tooth which affects her mobility, and for many years she tried to hide it. But after she had a daughter, she became proud of her disability
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 was always enamoured by it. She is the first woman to care for the lighthouse, and now she will be the last
