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.
Conversations is bringing you a summer treat — a collection of Richard's most memorable guests through out the years. William McInnes is a much-loved Australian actor and an author, whose childhood in the sunny Queensland left him fluent in the peculiar, funny and colourful words and phrases unique to Australian English. Over the years, he's continued to collect them to celebrate how much they say about who we really are. William McInnes’ Stories of Fatherhood William McInnes on life after the d...
Dec 24, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Conversations is bringing you a summer treat — a collection of Richard's most memorable guests through out the years. Shaun Christie David grew up eating the Sri-Lankan recipes his mother brought with her from Sri Lanka. After a life-change trip to his parent's homeland, Shaun left a successful career in finance to open a social enterprise restaurant, Colombo Social, giving jons to refugees and serving food from his mother's cookbook. Shaun Christie-David's family migrated to Australia during th...
Dec 23, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Conversations is bringing you a summer treat - a collection of Richard's most memorable guests through out the years. This time it's Magda Szubanski.At the height of her successful career, behind closed doors, Magda was coming to terms with the past of her Polish-born father, whom she loved dearly, and who was an assassin in his early life. Magda is well known for her comic performances across film and television, and is perhaps most beloved by Australians for her role as Sharon in Kath & Ki...
Dec 22, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. The child of doctors, Bhawani followed her parents footsteps into medical school without a second thought. But after the dissatisfaction of decades as a GP, Bhawani discovered the field of voluntary assisted dying and it changed the course of her life. Help and support is always available You can call Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14 Bhawani O'Brien grew up in Malaysia with Sri Lankan...
Dec 21, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Ruth Shaw runs a collection of three tiny bookshops at the southern tip of New Zealand's South Island. Even more than the books on her shelves, Ruth's life has been a high adventure full of danger, tears, heartbreak and love. Help and support is always available You can call Lifeline 24 hours a day on 13 11 14. Ruth Shaw runs a collection of three tiny bookstores at the southern tip of N...
Dec 19, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Ken Wyatt was the first Indigenous minister for Indigenous Affairs. When he made his first speech to parliament, he wore a kangaroo skin cloak given to him by Noongar elders in Perth and he shared with his government colleagues the extraordinary journey he took from a boy in a remote Western Australian settlement, to Canberra. Ken Wyatt has Yamatji, Wongi and Noongar ancestry. He came in...
Dec 18, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Kasey Chambers grew up surrounded by country music, singing around the campfire with her family, and listening to her father's cassettes of old country classics. She now makes her own country music, which has won her a devoted following and recognition as one of Australia's favourite country music stars. Kasey Chambers started singing around the campfire as a little girl. She and her fam...
Dec 17, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Candice Fox is one of the world's most successful crime writers, but she when she is not at her writing desk, you can find her rushing around Sydney rescuing stranded and injured wallabies, cockatoos, lizards, frogs and ducks. Listen to Richard's first Conversation with Candice Fox here. Candice Fox is one of the world's most successful crime writers. Her latest work is about a female ag...
Dec 16, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Gideon Haigh is a prolific author, but it took him decades to write down the story closest to his heart — the life and tragic death of his brother, Jaz, who was killed in a car crash at just 17 years. But eventually, on a hot summers evening, it all came pouring out onto the page, and became his book My Brother Jaz. 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 th...
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Pauline McGrath's life changed forever when her husband of 30 years, David, was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. Together Pauline and David set out to take advantage of the incoming Voluntary Assisted Dying laws about to come into effect in Queensland. Since David's death, Pauline has been has kept her promise to him to speak openly about their experience and be an advocate for V...
Dec 14, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024.At the make or break moment of his choreography career, the last person Rafael expected to hear from was Australia’s pop princess, Kylie Minogue. Rafael Bonachela was born in the dying years of Franco’s Spain, into a patriarchal culture that didn’t appreciate little boys who wanted to dance. As the eldest of four brothers, his father expected him to be an example of academic achievement a...
Dec 12, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Anita Heiss is a Wiradjuri woman and a prolific author. Her latest novel, Dirrayawadha, brings together Indigenous and colonial history, as well as Wiradjuri language, into a 19th century love story between an Irish convict and a brave Wiradjuri woman. Anita Heiss is a Wiradjuri woman, an author of many books and a Professor of Communications at The University of Queensland. Many of Anit...
Dec 11, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Jack Beaumont (not his real name) grew up in a turbulent family in Paris before joining the French Air Force as a young man. After a devastating mid-air accident, he joined the DGSE and became a French secret agent and he now uses his first-hand knowledge to write spy thrillers set in the world of international espionage. Jack Beaumont (not his real name) is a former intelligence operati...
Dec 10, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Rebecca Huntley spent 50 years trying to process PTSD brought on from a traumatic childhood. But it was only when she decided to experiment with MDMA as a treatment that Rebecca's life began to change. Rebecca Huntley's public life as a broadcaster, an author and a social researcher made her well-known to many Australians. But in private, Rebecca spent years grappling with complex PTSD a...
Reflecting on a year of phenomenal guests, we are bringing you a selection of the Best Conversations of 2024. Troy Cassar-Daley is one of Australia's most beloved country music stars, with a string of awards and albums to show for it. But his latest album, Between the Fires, is a reflective, deeply personal exploration of grief, love and his childhood, caught between the two worlds of his Indigenous mother and his Maltese-Australian father. Help and support is always available You can call Lifel...
Dec 08, 2024•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast
When writer Helen Garner began following her grandson’s under-16s football team, she gained a new appreciation for 'the ordinary beauty of human society'.
Dec 06, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Finance journalist Alan Kohler and Patricia Collins, who had just joined the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, recall their vivid memories from the night that irrevocably changed Darwin It's been half a century since Darwin was nearly completely razed by Cyclone Tracy. On Christmas Day in 1974, the monster cyclone bore down on the city, killing at least 66 people. Both Alan Kohler and Patricia Collins survived that night in very different circumstances. Alan was living in a share house on ...
Dec 05, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of foster care and child removal. Lech Blaine grew up in a big family in country Queensland, where his Dad Tom ran pubs for a living. He had six older siblings, who had come to the family as foster kids before he was born. It was a happy, knockabout, sports-obsessed childhood. But in the midst of all the love and warmth, Lech's mum Lenore lived with a ...
Dec 04, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
When Richard's team developed pioneering treatment for melanoma, he didn't expect he would become the first person in the world to use this experimental therapy on his own, terminal brain tumour. Joint Australian of the year Professor Richard Scolyer has spent his medical career saving the lives of people with melanoma. Then suddenly last year, the life he had to save was his own. A tumour was discovered in Richard’s brain and the diagnosis was terminal. So Richard and his colleagues decided to ...
Dec 03, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
When Dr Gillian Deakin became a GP, she knew she didn’t want to work behind a desk. Instead, she travelled overseas to make a difference. More recently, she has focused on treating patients with functional illnesses — symptoms that come and go despite all tests and scans showing up as normal. Dr Gillian Deakin grew up close enough to hear the lions roaring at night in Sydney's Taronga Zoo. She was part of a large, Catholic family and learned social justice and critical thinking from a young age....
Dec 02, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says it is time to reinstate the play-based childhood to bring our kids back from life online and into the real world, away from their increasing obsession with devices. It’s a fact of modern life that children who are given smart phones are able to access pornography, real images of violence and harmful comparisons with their friends and also influencers around the world. Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt argues that as the social norms have changed, and you...
Nov 29, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Dr Laura Driessen takes you 26,000 light-years away, into the centre of our galaxy and beyond in the search for radio stars, supermassive black holes and supernova remnants. Dr Laura Driessen is a radio astronomer who is fascinated with the scale of the universe and the wealth of information it holds, especially in its stars. Her obsession began as a child, looking through her mini telescope on family camping trips at the planets and at comets. But it wasn't until Laura was an undergraduate scie...
Nov 28, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast
The Masterchef graduate and cookbook author grew up in Georgia as the Soviet Union was crumbling, gorging on plums in her grandfather's garden. During this time the young, voracious Alice couldn't keep her food down at kindy. And it took years to work out why. Cookbook author and TV presenter, Alice Zaslavsky grew up in Georgia as the Soviet Union was crumbling. She would gorge herself on plums in her grandfather's garden, and her voracious spirit was celebrated and encouraged by her parents and...
Nov 26, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Pip Williams was diagnosed with dyslexia as a teenager. She grew up to write a novel inspired by the history of the Oxford Dictionary, which soon became an international bestseller. (R) Pip Williams was a teenage poetry enthusiast when she had her first poem, called Fifteen, published in Dolly magazine. Then just a couple of years later, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. But despite her struggles with reading and spelling, she never drew back from the world of books and words. A few years ago Pip...
Nov 26, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
The journalist delves into the history of experimental psychopathy treatment in Canada, which included mass, nude LSD trips. Years ago, journalist Jon Ronson did a course on how to spot a psychopath. People with psychopathic tendencies tend to use certain patterns of behaviour, turns of phrase, and a decoy mask of normality. Then Jon went out and met with men who had committed violent crimes, or had used their traits to make extraordinary amounts of money, and who had been locked up, for years, ...
Nov 25, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast
For years Claude Robinson was doing crime to fund his heroin addiction. He was eventually locked up with murderers in Goulburn Prison, where he shared a dentist with Ivan Milat. But in 2006 he made a big change, to turn his life around. (CW: descriptions of drug use, addiction, and crime) Claude Robinson is the manager of Rainbow Lodge, a home in inner Sydney for men just out of prison. Claude knows the place well because nearly 20 years ago he was sent there himself. Claude was a heroin addict ...
Nov 22, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
During the height of his fame as one half of Savage Garden, Darren Hayes struggled to reconcile what he'd lived through as a child growing up in Logan (CW: descriptions of domestic violence). Darren Hayes rose to fame in the 1990s as part of the musical duo Savage Garden. The band ended up selling 35 million albums and won numerous awards with hits like 'Truly Madly Deeply'. On the surface, Darren had achieved wealth, adoration and stardom —everything he dreamt of as a kid growing up in Logan, o...
Nov 21, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Professor Alice Roberts examines the bones of those who died between five and ten centuries ago, solving the mysteries of how they lived and died. Professor Alice Roberts wants us to listen to skeletons. She's an anatomist and archaeologist who says that posthumous examination of our bones can reveal so much more than what someone might have looked like. Whether it's about our health, our diet, what we did for a living, how we died, and whether that was a violent end — epic stories are written i...
Nov 20, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Paul McVerry is an experienced cattleman and a stud breeder, who had a wild vision to fly a gift of cattle to India with the help of winemaker Dan Murphy. (R) New Zealand-born cattleman Paul McVerry has been surrounded by animals his whole life, and not just in cattle pens or in sheep yards. Paul has accompanied thoroughbred horses on weeks-long ship journeys across the Pacific ocean. He's been stuck with prized bulls in the back of a truck going the wrong way down Broadway in New York City. Aft...
Nov 19, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast
Screenwriter, Mithila Gupta thought her life would mimic her beloved Bollywood films — full of swooning and drama. But something was stuck, and she was an adult before she could embrace her vibrant Indian heritage. Screenwriter, Mithila Gupta grew up obsessing over Bollywood heart-throbs, thinking she would meet her own prince in a movie perfect meet-cute, involving serenades and moonlight. Her parents had left their home in Jaipur, India, to move their daughter to Australia, with hopes of more ...
Nov 18, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast
