Conversations

When cooking teacher Anna Kharzeeva began a quest to cook her way through an iconic Soviet-era book of recipes, her grandmother Lena became her guide

Joanne Petersen recalls working as a personal assistant to The Beatles' manager, the freedom of the Swinging Sixties in London and eloping to the Bahamas with a Bee Gee

The conservationist is on a quest to see all 2600 species native to Australia, before time runs out

David Read was one of the first doctors on the ground in Bali, 20 years ago and what he saw there turned him into a leading figure in disaster response

Kyra Maya Phillips on her family's search for home, from Morocco's Atlas Mountains, to Israel, then to Venezuela and beyond

The stage and screen actor looks back at his mother's magical influence on his childhood imagination, and his life in character

Palaeontologist John Long found his first fossil in a Melbourne quarry as a 7 year old. He grew up to unearth new clues as to how we became human (R)

The former captain of the Australian Women's cricket team shares what she's learned along the way, and how cricket has helped her in genetic counselling, her next career

How a bush kid from Magnetic Island graduated to an ashram in India and came to harvest cacao with an ancient, Indigenous tribe on the Amazon River

After Nova Weetman's partner died, the children's author started writing from and about grief

True crime journalist Jack Hoysted tells the story of the life and times of the man known as the 'Mr Big' of organised crime

Rachel Perkins' is one of the country's great storytellers, and now she's turned the lens on the bloody conflicts that broke out across the continent after the arrival of the British colonists

Reverend Bill Crews on the moment which changed how he saw his own life story, and his ideas on how we can all cultivate compassion, tolerance, empathy and love in difficult times.

Mike's evolution came as a shock, when he was fired from Columbia University and started working in a deli

The story of an Austin-driving Australian maverick who died in mysterious circumstances (R)Alice was a quintessential, mould-breaking young woman of the roaring twenties.Raised in country Victoria, she was capable and confident, and not interested in what was considered proper.Alice opened a motor touring company in Melbourne during the first world war.The business grew and by the 1920s Miss Anderson's Motor Service included a mechanic's shop, staffed entirely by young women known as 'garage girls'.Loretta Smith has spent a decade researching the story of Alice's life and tragic early death.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 informationA Spanner in the Works: the extraordinary story of Alice Anderson and Australia's first all-girl garage is published by HachetteYou can visit the recreation of Alice Anderson's garage at the National Motor Museum in South Australia

The former frontman recently uncovered boxes from his adolescence in his attic, and he was amazed at his early, detailed plans to take over the music industry

The author describes his early life during the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war and how arthouse films and illegal street photography provided him with an escape

Uncle Jack was forcibly removed from his mother as a baby and denied his Aboriginality. A one-off trip to Fitzroy connected him with a family he didn’t know about, and promptly landed him in jail (R) (CW: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners please be aware — this interview contains the voice of someone who has died)

Sarah Donnelley on her life working at Wilcannia Central School, on Barkandji Country 950 kilometres west of Sydney

The outback vet with stories of treating racehorses, camels and the odd chimp as he zigzagged around the Pilbara from the 1970s onwards, and how he came to meet the legendary red kelpie

The Coast Watchers' story is little known, but these civilians played a crucial role in protecting Australia from the advance of the Japanese Empire

Deborah Prior was one of more than 2000 mixed-race babies born to white British women and black American GI's during WWII (R)

Tom Gleeson discovered and honed his distinctively caustic, laconic style of humour in some unlikely places

Early aviation's most dramatic event saw courage, tragedy and a miraculous rescue involving the whole town of Albury (R)

Right up until the very first game, Women's CEO at the Brisbane Lions, Breeanna Brock wasn't sure that the women's league would ever become a reality

Sam Vincent was a struggling writer when a freak accident led him to unexpectedly take over his family's farm

As a boy, Simon Longstaff's life was changed by one of the most searing ethical dilemmas imaginable (R)

Professor Kelvin Kong is one of Australia's leading ENT surgeons. The proud Worimi man changes the course of children's lives by looking inside their ears.

Lisa Blair navigated waves as tall as high-rise buildings, dodging cargo ships, icebergs and several near-death experiences to sail around Antarctica alone

Darryl Jones has an enthusiastic curiosity about wild birds that, against all odds, flourish in Australia's cities and towns

Alex Landragin was born into a champagne-making family in the French village of Verzenay. When he was five, his family began a new life in Australia. Then a freak accident changed everything (R)

Krissy Kneen grew up under the strict control of her grandmother, Lotty, who was the eccentric and sometimes cruel matriarch of her small family. Krissy was forbidden to investigate Lotty's past or ask why she'd come to Australia from Slovenia via Egypt. The extraordinary truth of Lotty's life could only be told after Lotty's death (R)

David Newheiser was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family. When he fell in love with a Buddhist, his parents cut him off and his Dad wrote a book called 'When Good Kids Make Bad Choices'. But then, unexpectedly, they reconciled

Being a single mother and student doctor in 1960s Ireland was merely the 'first act' in Caroline's gutsy adult life. She became a pioneering obstetrician, delivering sometimes contraband contraception, and babies, for fifty years (R)

Anthony Ham tells the dramatic story of Chris Clark, who made Brazil's Wild West his home, weathering death threats in response to his attempts at wildlife conservation

Andrew Quilty fell in love with Afghanistan for the sense of purpose it gave him as a photographer, but he watched it fall through the lens of his camera last August

Georgina Godwin grew up in Zimbabwe with a father who was the model of a British gentleman. Many years after she fled Africa for London, she discovered his secret identity (R)

When Kaya Wilson came out to his parents as transgender, after a near-death surfing accident and just weeks before his father's death, it revealed a cache of family secrets

Artist Judy Cotton reflects on the Australia that formed her, and the legacy of her exacting mother — a champion sheep breeder and passionate homemaker

Surfing writer Tim Baker on how the hormones which saved his life after a cancer diagnosis fundamentally changed his experience of being a man

The Australian author on the bedtime story she wrote for her young sons, to try to explain the grief and uncertainty of their father's leukaemia diagnosis

Christie splits her time between training for road and track wheelchair races, holding down several jobs, and raising her family. The Tokyo Paralympics will be her seventh as a competitor, but Christie almost gave up marathons after the 2013 Boston Marathon, and the most frightening experience of her life (CW: mention of suicide) (R)

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason on what it takes to keep up with her seven children — all of them gifted classical musicians.Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason is a former English academic and the mother of seven extraordinary children.All of them are gifted classical musicians.Her eldest daughter, Isata wrote and performed her first piano concerto at the age of eleven.Her son Sheku mastered the cello and performed at the royal wedding of Harry and Megan Markle.Every day the seven Kanneh-Masons, who range from early teens to the mid-twenties, fill the family home with glorious music.Further informationHouse of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons is published by OneworldTo 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.

Academic Will Visconti on the true history of the most famous cancan dancer in Paris at the turn of the century, and her later work taming lions

Tony Hoang was a teenage heroin dealer in Cabramatta at 13, grappling with addiction at 21, then cried out to God for a sign. What came next was more literal than he could have imagined

It was love at first sight, when Jack Ashby first set eyes upon a platypus specimen as a young university student

Historian Meredith Lake with the Bible's Australian history, from the convict era, to the Mabo land rights campaign, and the modern-day Pentecostal churches (R)

Documentary filmmaker Sharon Connolly has unearthed her family history of female whistling comedians, and how they changed ideas about how women should behave

Zayd Dohrn’s parents were militant left-wing revolutionaries, and he was born while they were living underground, fugitives from the FBI.

Gold Coast lawyer Chris Nyst on his 45 years in criminal law, defending career criminals, corrupt police, heroin addicts and a postcard bandit