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.
Stories make us who we are. Join Conversations for an hour of diverting listening, to transport, touch and uplift you. Our guided storytelling will teach you something new, introduce you to someone extraordinary and take you away to a different place or time in history.
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 country music star remembers a childhood spent roaming the Nullarbor Plain, and the number one lesson she learned from her father. Kasey Chambers started singing around the campfire as a little girl. She and her family spent much of the year camping on the Nullarbor Plain, where her dad would hunt for foxes and rabbits. Kasey and her brother Nash had a free range childhood, and went to sleep to the sound of their father's rifle as he worked through the night. Singing came naturally to Kasey,...
Oct 03, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Gina Chick, the winner of Alone Australia on her life as a creative, outrageous, nature-loving misfit who grew up to live through great depths of love, and grief (CW: discusses the death of a child). In 2023, Gina Chick spent 67 days by herself, in the wilderness of Tasmania’s West Coast, surviving on worms, fish, and one unlucky wallaby. After those 67 days, Gina became the first-ever winner of a reality show on SBS called Alone Australia, but her approach to the competition was very different ...
Oct 02, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Irish journalist and author, Fintan O'Toole on how the Victorians changed the meaning of Shakespeare's plays, and how we can bring them back to life. Fintan O'Toole is an Irish journalist and author who writes on politics and history for the New York Review of Books and the Irish Times. He wants to change the way we think about Shakespeare's plays, because the way many of us are introduced to Shakespeare is wrong and boring. Fintan says Shakespeare’s work is wrongly presented as a delivery syste...
Oct 01, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Writer George Saunders on how famous short stories by writers like Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol are like miniature models of the world and how they can teach us to transcend our own limitations. (R) For many years, author George Saunders taught a writing masterclass in upstate New York, in which he introduced students to the stories of the great Russian authors. Conversations with his students about writers like Tolstoy and Chekhov have given George some of the happiest moments of his li...
Sep 30, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Claire Nelson hadn't told anyone where she was going, and her phone lost signal shortly into her hike. As an experienced bushwalker, she never dreamed an adventure would turn out like this. (R) Claire Nelson was hiking alone in Joshua Tree National Park in 2018, when she slipped on a stack of boulders and fell 25 feet to the ground. The impact shattered Claire’s pelvis, and she couldn’t even raise herself on her elbows, let alone stand. She could reach her phone, but in the middle of the Califor...
Sep 27, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast
At the age of 18, Oceane Campbell tried to take her own life. She survived and fought her way back into life, becoming a midwife and a mother of three (CW: discussion of suicide, please take care when listening). (R) Oceane Campbell has been very close with the raw stuff of life. She's a midwife and a mother, so she's seen and experienced the power of birth many times over. She has also been very close to death. At the age of 18, Oceane tried to take her own life. After she survived, she began a...
Sep 26, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Toni Jordan grew up working in a T.A.B. with her cyclonic mother, and going to the greyhound races. Then she grew up to become a best-selling novelist. (R) Toni Jordan is a best-selling novelist. But she didn't grow up in a house full of books. Her mum ran a T.A.B. and her dad trained greyhounds for a living. Toni's mum was hardworking and hilarious, but she could also be hard to live with. All her life, Toni felt she had to look out for her mum. But after Marg became a grandmother, Toni began t...
Sep 25, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Jon Owen's mum enrolled him in a computer science degree at University - expecting him to build a flourishing career; which he did. It just wasn't the one that everyone expected. (R) Jon Owen came to Australia as a small child. He survived playground racism at school, and became a high achiever. His family expected him to excel at school and university and go on to a flourishing career. And that's exactly what he did — in a way that nobody could have predicted. Jon was near the end of his comput...
Sep 24, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast
After a stint being homeless and living in his car, Stephen Smith was working at David Jones Food Hall when one of his colleagues noticed his remarkable singing voice. A few years later, he became a tenor on the operatic world stage (R)
Sep 23, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
In 1882, thousands of sheep set off from a property in Western Victoria. Their destination was a huge station in the Northern Territory, land which a sheep had never set foot on. To get there, these animals and their drover battled drought, flood, famine and doubt. Tom Guthrie is a winemaker and sheep farmer in Western Victoria, and is a descendent in a long line of enterprising farmers. Almost 150 years ago, after surviving shipwrecks, fires and floods, Tom's ambitious great grandfather sent 11...
Sep 20, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Jeffrey Broadfield has made building his life. It has taken him around the world, and given him a place to belong. Jeffrey Broadfield is a master maker who builds houses to his clients’ wishes and quirks, using carpentry to turn recycled Australian hardwood into dream homes. It’s a craft Jeffrey says is dying. He grew up in Griffith, NSW, where he learned to swim in the irrigation channel and entice next door’s chooks over into his house to play. When he left school at 16, Jeffrey became interes...
Sep 18, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast
From using fish eyes in ice cream, and not wasting the liver, to creating recipes with fish sperm, chef Josh Niland on his mission to revolutionise how we cook and eat fish. (R) Chef Josh Niland is devoted to changing ideas about how we cook and eat fish in the Western world. He believes that rather than eating just the fillet, we should aim to eat the whole fish, as we do nose-to-tail with animals. At his restaurants, he cooks with fish eyeballs, fish livers, fish heads, and milt (fish sperm). ...
Sep 17, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
The deserts of Saudi Arabia are still holding on to many ancient secrets, hidden inside burial tombs and mysterious monumental structures called mustatils. Dr Hugh Thomas is on an archaeological mission to solve some of these mysteries. Hugh Thomas is an archaeologist who is fascinated by ancient mortuary practices and the secrets still hidden in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. In the north west of the country, thousands of mysterious rectangular structures, built in the fifth millennium, are still...
Sep 16, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Ji Wallace was at the top of his career as a gymnast and acrobat when a terrible injury and surprising diagnosis brought him back down to earth, temporarily. Ji was an energetic, only child growing up on a bush block in suburban Brisbane when his parents brought home a trampoline to keep him occupied. Ji took to it so quickly, he learnt how to flip by that afternoon, and was a national champion in gymnastics just a couple of years later. He managed to make a career out of bouncing around, repres...
Sep 13, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Psychiatrist Duncan McKellar wrote the report that triggered the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. He has seen how care changes when we take someone's life story into account. Duncan McKellar is a psychiatrist specialising in the care of older people with dementia and serious mental health conditions. When Duncan first started working with these patients, he was shocked to find elderly people tied to chairs and left in locked rooms. His advocacy helped trigger the Royal Commiss...
Sep 12, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
The late James Earl Jones grew up with a stutter and hardly said a word for years. After an English teacher intervened, he grew up to become one of the world's finest actors. (R) Actor James Earl Jones died recently, at the age of 93. When he was touring Australia in 2013 with a production of Driving Miss Daisy, Richard had the chance to sit down with him and ask him about his life. Although we knew him for his magnificent voice, James Earl Jones grew up with a stutter. A stutter which was so se...
Sep 11, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast
From sharks with wheels of teeth, to gargantuan sharks like the megalodon, palaeontologist John Long has traced the long and storied history of these oceanic hunters. Sharks and humans have a complicated relationship. We have long considered them monsters and super predators that should be eliminated for our own safety. But sharks are much more than scary and fearsome. The history of this incredible animal stretches back hundreds of millions of years. From sharks with wheels of teeth, to the asc...
Sep 10, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Author and professor Anita Heiss on her parents' story of romance, and how she brings true history alive in her work. Anita Heiss is a Wiradjuri woman, an author of many books and Professor of Communications at The University of Queensland. She has described herself as a “concrete Koori with Westfield dreaming.” Many of Anita's books focus on great love stories, and the inspiration for these romances came from the enduring, devoted love she saw between her parents – the very Austrian “Joe-the-ca...
Sep 09, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast
For decades, Gideon Haigh and his mother were the only two people who really knew what happened on Jaz's last night. This year, it all poured out. Gideon Haigh's brother Jasper was 17 years old when he died in a car crash. Until this year, Gideon and his mother were the only two people who really knew what happened to Jaz on that tragic night. Gideon has spent decades perfecting answers to questions about his brother — answers that never invited further discussion. This year, something peculiar ...
Sep 06, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
After a childhood spent trying to escape her father's booze-fuelled outbursts, Seana developed her own problem relationship with drinking. But by her mid-50s, Seana decided she had had enough. Seana Smith grew up in a beautiful house in rural Scotland, and when things were good at home, they were wonderful. But Seana’s father loved to drink, and his habit took over her family’s life. Despite the fights, abuse and violence, Seana's mother couldn't bring herself to leave her husband, and so Seana ...
Sep 05, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Dog behaviourist Laura Vissaritis uses science and psychology to better understand what our dogs really are telling us and how our behaviour influences theirs (R). Laura is a dog behaviourist with qualifications in both animal behaviour and human psychology. Dogs were the first animals to become domesticated, and over the centuries they've evolved from their wolfish origins to become more useful, attentive and appealing to us. Laura says that when a dog is displaying 'difficult' behaviours like ...
Sep 04, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
As a young child, chunks of Brenda Matthews' early memories were missing until her biological mother told her the truth of what happened. Together they are slowly healing Wiradjuri woman Brenda Matthews was stolen from her family, along with her six siblings, when she was two-years-old. She came from a loving, hardworking, religious family. She was fostered by an affectionate white family, and she blended into her new life happily. After six years of living with them, she was told it was time to...
Sep 03, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast
When a devastating injury ended Jack Beaumont's career as a jet fighter pilot, he decided to become a spy, in the French Secret Service. Jack Beaumont (not his real name) is a former intelligence operative and the author of several spy thrillers. Jack grew up in a turbulent family in Paris and when he got older he decided to train as a jet fighter pilot with the French Air Force. During a training dogfight at supersonic speed, Jack suffered a devastating injury that meant he could no longer fly ...
Sep 02, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
While struggling with PTSD, social researcher Rebecca Huntley chose an unconventional and underground path to healing — MDMA therapy. Rebecca Huntley is well known to many Australians for her formidable intellect and career as a broadcaster, an author and a social researcher. But despite her impressive public-facing life, in private, Rebecca's trauma from a difficult upbringing refused to leave her. At 50, she walked the Camino in Italy and realised that after 30 years of therapy, she was still ...
Aug 30, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
When Carolyn Blacklock's passport was confiscated from her in a foreign country she was faced with a scary reality that got wilder at every turn Carolyn Blacklock's passport was taken from from her at the Port Moresby International Airport when she was trying to get on a plane back to Australia. It was at that moment she realised just how much trouble she was in. Carolyn, who had headed up the national power company in Papua New Guinea and worked for the World Back there, had faced charges of co...
Aug 29, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Kári Gíslason was 18 when he met a mysterious stranger called 'the Pirate' on the Greek island of Corfu. When he fled the island, he left behind a debt he promised to one day repay. When Kári Gíslason was 18, he came to the island of Corfu as a stony-broke traveller. But he quickly found work in a little town: lime washing walls and working as a builder’s labourer. The man who gave him the work was a mysterious figure known simply as ’the Pirate’. At first, Kári thought it was a nickname given t...
Aug 28, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Andy McCarthy found passion for solar power as a high school dropout. He began one of Australia's biggest solar businesses, right in the heart of Victoria's coal country. But then a breakdown changed everything for Andy and his family Andy McCarthy dropped out of high school in year 10. He was a highly energetic kid but found it difficult to latch onto any one thing for long. Andy was happier out of school, and tried a whole lot of different jobs. Then at 19, he connected his first solar panel a...
Aug 27, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
In this two-part series, historian Paul Ham traces how our definition and understanding of the human soul has transformed over thousands of years. Humans have been probing their own invisible inner voice since the Stone Age. But where did the concept of the soul even come from? And is it really what separates the living from the dead? Historian and writer Paul Ham has traced how our definition and understanding of the human soul has changed over thousands of years. Human beings have been probing...
Aug 26, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Suzie Miller's frugal and free range St Kilda childhood taught her to question almost everything. She grew up to become a trailblazing writer and lawyer (R) Suzie Miller grew up in St Kilda, and from early in life she had a number of part-time jobs. She became a trailblazing paper girl in her local area, when the role was usually only offered to boys. As a young woman Suzie trained as a lawyer and began working with homeless teenagers in Sydney’s Kings Cross. She then began to write stories and ...
Aug 23, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
