Conversations

Dr Aaron Camens studies the fossilised skeletons, footprints and soft tissue left behind by strange, alien-like behemoths, to work out how they lived, and what, or who, killed them

Artist Michael Kelly's younger sister was born with intellectual disabilities in the 1950s, and went into care. The family lost touch with her until Michael decided it was time to find her again.Michael Kelly has been an artist all his life. When he was a young boy living in Brisbane, his younger sister was born with intellectual disabilities. She was institutionalised and the family eventually lost contact with her.That severed connection was a wound for the whole family, and followed Michael where he went.Over the years he’s lived in family squats, stayed in a decommissioned mental asylum, and in a van.Eventually he made his way to art school, where everything fell into place.All this time, he’s kept meticulous sketchbooks as a way to keep track of his artwork, dreams, ideas and sketches of a changing world. And his path back to his sister.Further informationMichael Kelly has an retrospective exhibition at the Frances Keevil Gallery in Double Bay, running from 7 August to 25 August.You can also see a selection of Michael's sketchbooks in the State Library's Amaze Gallery, until 1 December 2024. Learn more about that exhibition here.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Janty Blair is a Butchulla, Mununjhali and Woppaburra woman who, after a lifetime of nursing and midwifery, discovered her funny bone in her late 50s, after a serendipitous Bumble date

Dr John Paterson grew up in a tin hut in rural Darwin. He helped hold it down during Cyclone Tracy and has taken care of it so it still stands today. John learnt many lessons in that tin hut, which have followed him through life

When his elders named him Bindi, David Hudson had no idea his future would involve performing with his didgeridoo at the Taj Mahal, or a role in a film starring Marlin Brando (Content warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners: this episode contains the name of someone who has died.)Western Yalanji and Ewamian man David Bindi Hudson is a performing artist and musician.His parents were born on Mona Mona mission, near Cairns.David's mother didn't like being told what to do, and so in 1956 she walked off the mission with her three children, and made it 18km away to look for work at a local pub.Her ingenuity led the family to Spring Creek Station, where David’s elders taught him traditional dance and named him Bindi, which means "always looking forward".Since then, David has toured the world with his didgeridoo, playing to huge audiences in the Acropolis, the Taj Mahal and China's Forbidden City.He also played a part in a disastrous Hollywood movie, which gave him the chance to bring Marlon Brando home to have dinner with his Mum.Further informationRead more about David's autobiographical stage show, From Campfire to Stage Light.Content warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners: this episode contains the name of someone who has died.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Yuwaalaraay writer, storyteller and performer, Nardi Simpson of the Stiff Gins talks about her life, art and the meaning of country (R)

Ken Wyatt was born at Roelands Mission in outback WA, where his mother had been taken as a small girl, after she was stolen from her family. More than 60 years later, he became Australia's first Indigenous Minister for Indigenous AustraliansKen Wyatt was born at Roelands Mission in outback WA, where his mother had been taken as a small girl, after she was stolen from her family. More than 60 years later, he became Australia's first Indigenous Minister for Indigenous AustraliansKen Wyatt has Yamatji, Wongi and Noongar ancestry. He came into the world as a premature baby on a mission south of Perth called Roelands Farm, run by the Protestant Church. From 1938 to 1973, Roelands housed more than 500 forcibly removed Aboriginal children from all over Western Australia. One of those children was Ken's mother Mona, who was separated from family at just 4 years old.Mona married Don and they built a life for themselves away from Roelands, in Nannine, a railway fettler’s camp in remote WA. That's where Ken grew up, as one of 10 children. Ken went on to enjoy a fulfilling life as a teacher, and he was in his fifties when he decided to have a tilt at politics.He joined the Liberal Party, and in 2010 he was elected as the first Aboriginal member of the House of Representatives. Wearing a kangaroo skin cloak given to him by Noongar elders in Perth, Ken made his first speech in Federal Parliament, about his extraordinary journey from Roelands to Canberra.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Paula Quintela was seven years old when she witnessed Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat in Chile. She broke up the darkness by becoming her country's champion ocean swimmer and an artist

Playwright Alana Valentine on the story of the radical minister, Ted Noffs, who married thousands of couples who weren’t accepted anywhere else, including Alana’s own mum

Since she was a child, Michelle Johnston has tried to satisfy her insatiable curiosity about the world and the people in it. Most recently, her questions took her to a mysterious part of Russia called Dagestan, where mountains claw at the sky and time stands still

Mark Pitts needed to find peace after a hard life in the rugby and boxing worlds. So he went back to the airstrip that his aviator grandfather made famous when he flew home from England for love, breaking a world record in the process

For more than 20 years, Dominic Gordon cycled through the same self-destructive behaviours - stealing, risky sexual encounters, vandalism and drug-use -until he took the biggest risk of all to get his life back

When there's a plane crash, a bomb blast, a flood or a pandemic, Lucy Easthope's phone starts ringing. This is how she stays cheerful and trusts her gut in the face of never-ending disasters

Ben Lee was a teen rock prodigy by the time he was 14. He then began decades of making music, Hollywood fame, and a journey into alternative spirituality, including the world of ayahuascaBen Lee grew up in Bondi in the 1980s when it was a place of bikie gangs, Yiddish-speaking grandmas and tribes of kids living next to one of the world's most beautiful beaches. He was educated at a local Jewish school where he confounded his Rabbi by asking some surprising questions about Moses.Ben was always a seeker, and even as a boy, he also possessed a whole lot of chutzpah.At the age of 14 he saw Nirvana play at the Big Day Out. The next day he started his own band and two years later Ben was flying to America to support Sonic Youth.This began a wild few decades of making music, Hollywood fame, and a lengthy exploration of alternative spirituality, including a time in an ashram in India, and many ceremonies with ayahuasca, a hallucinogen found in a vine in the Amazon.After many years, Ben emerged with a crucial realisation about his life story. He is now living back in Australia with his wife Ione and their teenage daughter.Further informationFind out where to see Ben on his Australian tourBen and Ione Skye Lee have a podcast, Weirder TogetherTo binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

After Richard Gosling's young daughter survived horrific injuries and open heart surgery, he became a funeral director, leaning into the emotional intensity of that space between life and death

John Lyons, the ABC's Global Affairs Editor, reflects on the Israel-Gaza war, drawing on his background as former Middle East correspondent for The Australian

A change of heart and a great romance drove Dr Paul Hardisty to walk away from the oil industry and the influence of his brilliant but violent father, and into the world of water

Tim Jarvis takes you on his adventures, following in the footsteps of explorer Ernest Shackleton, who tried valiantly to cross Antarctica from sea to sea, from 1914-17 (R)

Leila Jeffreys was a young photographer when she built a tiny studio specifically for birds. She then began taking heart-stopping images of budgies, owls, eagles and cockatoos

Avani Dias was working as the South Asia Correspondent for the ABC when she was forced out of India after her reporting fell foul of the Indian government

Neurosurgeon Brindha Shivalingam says it is a privilege to go into someone’s brain and repair the body's most vital organ. She didn’t expect to become the patient in 2019

Michael Theo found unexpected fame on 'Love on the Spectrum'. Now he's realised a childhood dream: to become an actor

Phil Roope with a true crime saga from 1930s Sydney involving a tiger shark, a severed arm, a Gladstone bag, smuggled cocaine, and a wronged man (CW: graphic descriptions)On Anzac Day in 1935, a tiger shark vomited up a tattooed human arm inside a Sydney aquarium.When Phil Roope looked into the cold case he found an astounding true tale of Sydney's fascination and horror around sharks in the 1930s, a severed arm emblazed with boxing tattoos, a homicide, police corruption, a Gladstone Bag, and a thriving smuggling racket for drugs, stockings and lead paint.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.Further informationShark Arm is published by Allen and Unwin

Juliana Nkrumah survived ill treatment at the hands of her stepmother, growing up in Ghana, and got away with a warning from the Mugabe regime when she was teaching in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. And she is still the same girl who was too shy to look her husband in the eyes the first time they met

Why do we all feel "funny" about zoos? And should we? Dr Jenny Gray is the CEO of Zoos Victoria, and an ethicist fascinated by concepts like liberty and free will in the animal kingdom

The late Michael Mosley on his investigations into the complicated and fascinating world of our gut health and the human microbiome (R)

For a thousand years, Colditz Castle has sat on the edge of a cliff in eastern Germany. It has been a royal hunting lodge, a madhouse, and most famously an inescapable prisoner of war camp (R)

Thriller writer Louise Doughty on spycraft, trench coats and her Romany roots

When Kerstin Pilz discovered that her charming husband Gianni had been cheating on her while he was dying, she had to decide what to do nextWhen Kerstin Pilz was in her 40s, she fell madly in love with a charismatic Italian man named Gianni.The two married and began travelling the world together.Then Gianni suddenly fell ill.As he was in the hospital undergoing surgery for life-threatening cancer, Kerstin discovered her husband was not the man she thought he was.Further informationLoving my Lying, Dying, Cheating Husband is published by Affirm PressTo binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Journalist Nick Bryant has had three years away from his beloved America, completely reassessing his ideas about the superpower and the wild, great American experiment

Kate Forsyth on the otherworldly myth of Eros and Psyche, a story at the root of many fairy tales from Beauty and the Beast to Cinderella

When psychologist Ariane Beeston started having delusions after the birth of her son, and hallucinating that he was a dragon, she had to learn how to become the patient.Ariane Beeston thought that when her son was born, she would feel that immediate rush of love that everyone told her to expect, and that motherhood would come naturally to her.But that's not what happened.Instead, Ariane started having delusions about her own death, she became paranoid that social services would take her child away from her, and she hallucinated that her baby boy was actually a dragon.For months, Ariane hid her symptoms, afraid and ashamed of what she was feeling and seeing.When she gathered the courage to ask for help, Ariane, a trained psychologist, had to learn how to become the patient, as she navigated a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis.Further informationBecause I'm Not Myself You See is published by Black Inc. BooksResourcesCOPE: Centre of Perinatal ExcellenceSupport lines and resources recommended by COPEPANDA National Helpline 1300 726 306 — available Monday to Friday, 9am to 7.30pm, Saturday, 9am to 4pm AEST/AEDT.PANDA: Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia post natal psychosis informationPregnancy Birth Baby information on postpartum psychosis (Australian Government website)Gidget Foundation Australia (focuses on emotional wellbeing of expectant parents)Postpartum psychosis fact sheet from COPEPostpartum psychosis information (Royal Women's Hospital Melbourne)To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Jake Adelstein's dogged reporting on Japan's organised crime earned him a nemesis in Tadamasa Goto, one of the most powerful Yakuza bosses in the country. When Jake's life was on the line, he found protection in surprising places

When Bonnie Garmus tried to sell her first novel, it was rejected 98 times. Then at 66, she wrote a novel called Lessons in Chemistry, which sold four million copies around the world.Bonnie Garmus had wanted to be a novelist since she was five years old.Decades later, she was a copywriter, an open-water swimmer and a rower when she tried to sell her first novel.After many rejections, she realised it would never be published.One day Bonnie was at work when a male colleague took credit for one of her ideas. In a moment of anger, she then started writing a novel which would become Lessons in Chemistry.Set in the 1950s and early '60s, it tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a chemist and mother who hosts a cooking show that ends up teaching women about a lot more than food.Bonnie was 66 years old when it was published.The book has resonated with millions of readers around the world and inspired men and women to change their own lives.Further informationLessons in Chemistry is published by PenguinTo binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Archaeologist David Wengrow has discovered an entirely new way to think about the history of humanity, from the origins of farming, cities, democracy and slavery to civilisation itself.What sort of world could we create if we stopped believing that inequality is the price of progress?More than a decade ago, archaeologist David Wengrow started exploring this question with his friend the late David Graeber, an anthropologist.Together they unearthed a new picture of humanity's past and our shared future.The two Davids found many examples from human history of societies which flourished without kings, bureaucracies, palaces and poorhouses.They realised that the notion that humans have to surrender equality for modernity is not only untrue; it's boring, because it fails to recognise how politically creative humans can be.On Anzac Day in 1935, a tiger shark vomited up a tattooed human arm inside a Sydney aquarium.When Phil Roope looked into the cold case he found an astounding true tale of Sydney's fascination and horror around sharks in the 1930s, a severed arm emblazed with boxing tattoos, a homicide, police corruption, a Gladstone Bag, and a thriving smuggling racket for drugs, stockings and lead paint.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.Further informationShark Arm is published by Allen and UnwinFurther informationThe Dawn of Everything is published by PenguinRichard's conversation with David Wengrow was recorded live at the Sydney Writers' Festival

Matt Hall made his first solo flight at 15 years old and has been addicted to life in the air ever since. He became a top gun fighter pilot and after serving for more than 20 years, he still hasn't come down to earth (R)

Archaeologist Julien Cooper digs up the remote deserts of Sudan and Egypt, finding forgotten artefacts, which tell the uninterrupted, thousands-year-old story of the nomadic peoples of Northeast Africa

Billy Bragg grew up in working-class Barking, east of London. The expected path was to go from school to the local car factory, but Billy his sights set further, and even a brief stint in the army couldn’t keep him away from a life in music (R)

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. At the make or break moment of his choreography career, the last person Rafael expected to hear from was Australia’s pop princess — Kylie MinogueAs the eldest of four brothers, his father expected him to be an example of academic achievement and bravado.This hardline approach slowly drove his father away from the family, though when it came time to say goodbye, Rafael saw an unexpected side of him.At the age of 17, when the wide world beckoned, Rafael left his home country without a backward glance, grasping with both hands the opportunity to become a professional dancer.After a last ditch attempt at becoming a choreographer, he received an email from Kylie Minogue. And the rest is history.Further informationmomenta is Rafael's newest full length work for Sydney Dance Company. It premiers on May 28, 2024.Watch Rafael's episode of Creative Types with Virginia Trioli here.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

When Dugald Jellie was growing up in country Victoria, it was dads — his own and his friends' — who opened the world up for him, and as a father himself, today he is paying it forward

Firie Bronnie Mackintosh attends emergencies to cut people out of crushed cars and rescue them from burning buildings (R)

What happens when a man can't stop his drive and desire for more? Author Andrew O'Hagan dissects the pitfalls of more money, more success and more applause in his latest novelAndrew O’Hagan is the author of several highly acclaimed novels.His new book is a sweeping portrait of modern-day London, a city ‘levitating on a sea of dirty Russian money’. The main character, Campbell Flynn, is much like Andrew himself: a public intellectual who escaped from the Scottish council estate he grew up in and came to London to enjoy great success.But success, a big house, a loving family and expensive habits are not enough.Campbell is a man riding for a fall, and there will be many spectators at the final hurrah, when his life comes tumbling down. To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.Further informationThis episode of Conversations was recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival.Caledonian Road is published by Allen & Unwin.

In the decades before Ruth Shaw became a bookseller in New Zealand's Fiordland, she lived the incredible stories of adventure, love and tragedy that now line the shelves in her shops

Artist Brigita Ozolins grew up hearing about the magic of her mother's home country, Latvia. It wasn't until she was in her 50s that Brigita understood why her mother fled that paradise, full of flowers and polite children

Astrophysicist Naomi McClure-Griffiths was making an atlas of our galaxy when she discovered an entirely new spiral arm of the Milky Way

Sean Fong is a para world champion in jiu-jitsu. The 'gentle' martial art has allowed Sean to shatter any illusions that society might have about people with physical differences (R)

From its surprising successes to its dismal failures, historian Frank Bongiorno takes you through the wild 130-year history of the Australian Labor Party

Troy Cassar-Daley grew up walking a tightrope between two worlds after his mum and dad broke up when he was small. As a grown man, a trip on a country music cruise began to change his story (CW: discussion of suicidal ideation and suicide)

Troy Cassar-Daley grew up walking a tightrope between two worlds after his mum and dad broke up when he was small. As a grown man, a trip on a country music cruise began to change his story (CW: discussion of suicidal ideation and suicide)

When Bonnie Hancock stumbled on a book in her local library, she got a gut feeling that refused to go away. And so she set off on a gruelling 12,700km journey around Australia on her surf ski