Conversations

Ocean racing navigator Will Oxley first learned his trade through celestial navigation, using a sextant and the stars. He then began ocean racing around the world, and in 1998, he found himself upside down in a storm-wrecked Bass Strait (R)

Briana Blackett was a journalist working in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max was diagnosed with autism, and in time her second son Freddy was too, she left Doha to begin an entirely different life

Dr Kira Westaway is a geochronologist who places modern and ancient humans in context by dating things found in caves. For Kira, how we understand ourselves now, is tied up in the past

Art detective Arthur Brand met neo-Nazis, billionaire collectors and underground art dealers on his hunt for the two enormous bronze horse sculptures once owned by Hitler. It was all part of his quest to find the criminal masterminds attempting to sell the artwork on the black market (R)Arthur Brand is an art sleuth based in Amsterdam.His clients ask him to find stolen works of art, and to find out whether a painting or sculpture being sold on the black market is the real thing. One day, he received an email with an image attached of two gigantic horse sculptures.The unknown owner of these statues was claiming that they had once belonged to Adolf Hitler and had stood outside his chancellery building in Berlin. This led Arthur into a murky world of black market art dealers, billionaire collectors, and Neo-Nazis. Further informationOriginally broadcast February 2021Hitler's Horses 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, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Wendy Liu has spent many years right up close to death. As a forensic counsellor she worked with families who had lost someone to an accident or violence, and as a grief counsellor she supports people surviving all kinds of losses. Wendy says her work brings her a keener appreciation of life

The folk singer on the songs in her blood and the intergenerational conflict between professional creativity and family

Avi Loeb was Harvard's top astronomer when he became intrigued by reports of a pancake-shaped object the size of a football field hurtling through our solar system (R)

Historian Gwynne Dyer on his search to understand whether war is embedded in human nature, and why things are changing, despite the world becoming less violent over the past seven decadesIs war embedded in human nature?Historian Gwynne Dyer has faced this question during a career serving in the navies of three countries: Canada, the US and the UK.He says that although war has come to Ukraine, the truth is that the world has been getting less war-like for many decades.Gwynne is the author of many books on history, war, and technology.His latest book investigates how people have waged war since the dawn of humanity right up to the present day.Seven decades have passed since two great powers have gone to war with each other.But now, Gwynne warns, things are changing.Further informationThe Shortest History of War is published by Black Inc.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.

Anita Jacoby has spent decades uncovering the truth about other people, but when she turned the lens on her own father, she was shockedAnita Jacoby has won awards for her excellence in journalism, uncovering the truth about people and places for almost 40 years from behind the television camera.But a chance encounter at a dinner party a few years ago forced her to turn the lens on her own family.What she discovered about her father, Phillip, was painful and extraordinary.And what she thought would be a family history written only for her nearest and dearest, turned into a book filled with unearthed secrets too important not to share with the rest of the worldFurther informationSecrets beyond the Screen is published by Ventura Press.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.

A donation of land and $10 was all Australian-born Gemma needed to establish The School of St Jude in Tanzania (R)

Tom Tilley was raised in a loving Pentecostal family, but as he grew up he began to question the church's teachings, especially when it came to speaking in tongues

When teacher and actor Ned Manning lost his mother when he was 12 years old, he knew little about her life. So as an adult, he set off to re-imagine the life she shared with his father through WWII

From dodgy marathon runners to table tennis stars who 'dope' their paddles, there are few sports which can claim immunity from cheating

Louisa Lim with a history of the city of Hong Kong, including the true story of Tsang Tsou Choi, the 1950s graffiti artist who became a cultural icon

He's one of the world's most acclaimed opera stars, but Teddy Tahu Rhodes did everything he could, for a very long time, to avoid his destiny on stage

Wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght on his adventurous quest to save the rare, shaggy fish owls of Russia's Far East (R)

Maggie grew up around boys, then raised four sons of her own. Now she helps parents understand the changes teenage boys are going through as they cross the bridge from boyhood to manhood (R)

Dr Irving Finkel on the ghosts who joined the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians in their day to day lives

Jackie Huggins with the story of her father Jack, who was a surf lifesaver, a rugby league player, a soldier taken prisoner in the Fall of Singapore, and the first Indigenous Australian to work in the post office

Tony spent three decades in and out of jail for property crimes and safecracking. When he joined an unusual club inside Hobart's Risdon Prison, he found his voice for the first time. Then a few years ago, on a fishing trawler far out to sea, he began the painful process of changing his lifeTony Bull grew up across the road from Hobart's Risdon Prison.As child he started running with a crowd of boys who stole money for the woodman and the milkman from people's front doorsteps.In late primary school he found himself in trouble with the law for the first time.He was 17 when he first went to jail, in Queensland's Boggo Road after a car chase with the police in Cairns.A year later, he was back in Tasmania, and inside Risdon Prison for the first time.It was a scary experience because he'd heard so many unsettling sounds coming from inside the prison walls when he was a child.In his 20s, Tony joined the Spartan Debating Club inside the jail. The prisoners, including Chopper Read, often debated teams from outside the jail, and their families were sometimes allowed in to watch the debates.Learning to debate changed how Tony used his voice. He eventually became yard boss, a conduit between the prisoners and the Superintendent.Some years later he was out of jail and working on a fishing boat called the 'Diana' when he had a pre-dawn epiphany far out at sea.He realised it was finally time for him to break the cycle of crime and incarceration in his own life.Tony worked incredibly hard to unlearn some of his old habits which had previously led him straight back into jail.Today he lives in his own unit with his beloved dog Princess and runs a home maintenance business.Further informationLearn about the Salvation Army's Beyond the Wire programTo 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.

Writer Sylvie Bigar thought her assignment was simple — cover the history of cassoulet, a French ancestral dish. What she discovered was a world of passion, disagreement and her own family's complicated tale

Ever since he was a boy, Paul Pritchard has been fascinated with climbing rocks. His compulsion took a terrible and beautiful turn on a matchstick of rock that sticks out of the Southern Ocean in Tasmania

How the Royal Australian Navy's top chaplain lost his faith

Tom Gilling with the story of how a Scottish-born soldier named Jock McLaren became one of Australia's greatest World War II guerrilla fighters (R)

Betty O'Neill's father disappeared when she was a baby. Decades later, she opened a suitcase in Poland to find a series of clues to his secret life (R)

The US crime novelist on his unlikely career progression, and how he uses his books as a way of showing the human stories behind the headlines of the opioid epidemic in America

Di Morrissey grew up in a tiny village on the water, only accessible by rowboat, with film star Chips Rafferty and poet Dorothea Mackellar as her neighbours. When she was a young woman, a tragedy on the bay altered her life (R)

Dr Maddy McAllister's job as a marine archaeologist involves diving into the deep to uncover the artefacts and human stories sunk in shipwrecks

How a former ballerina revolutionised Australia's dance landscape (R)

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 sadnessJason 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 up.His questioning and searching for the truth also saw his father change in a way Jason never believed possible.Further informationAll Mixed Up is published by HarperCollinsJason Om will be a guest at the 2022 Sydney Writers FestivalTo 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.

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 turbulence, stressful jobs, or a lack of previous movement.She wants to change the story around pain, and give people back their mobility and their zest for life.She aims to do this by challenging the messages in the brain related to pain and movement.Tasha does this in different ways, one of which involves showing people elongated images of their fingers and knees.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.

The bestselling author explores animal behaviour and grief — the loss we feel when a beloved pet dies, and how other species understand death (R)

After her younger sister died suddenly, broadcaster Indira Naidoo's world was shattered. Then she turned to her urban landscape for solace (CW: mentions suicide)

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 50For 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 informationChildless is published by TextTo 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.

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