Conversations

Allen Murphy was raised in New York and grew up to become a drummer for The Village People. When he arrived in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory he fell in love with Indigenous culture and music, and knew he'd found home (CW: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that this episode includes the name of a person who has died.)

Dale Kent is a Professor of Italian history who grew up in Australia. Rejecting her Christian Science upbringing, Dale forged an unapologetic life of her own design. She lived and worked in Europe and then in the US where she taught at the University of California for 25 years

Dennis Van Someren works as a transport volunteer with young people going to visit a parent in the prison system. Dennis does the work because he's been in their shoes (R)

Kel Richards with the story of the gentleman thief James Hardy Vaux, who wrote Australia's first dictionary of convict slang

Margie's car is loaded with ultrasounds, milk crates and angle grinders: all things needed when tending to seven ft camels in the middle of nowhere (R)

When Sarah Sentilles became a foster parent she gave herself wholeheartedly to caring for baby Coco. A year later her understanding of love, motherhood and herself were utterly transformed (CW: Adoption)

Glenn was working at Enron in London when his mental health began to unravel. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and lost nearly everything. Then a Bowls Club in Queanbeyan helped him begin again

Kitty has woven together a series of true stories from her life including being locked in a crayfish freezer for talking too much (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

Sarah was twenty-seven when she discovered she had been conceived using a sperm donor. When she set out to find her biological father, she found out the truth about the global fertility business

Physician scientist Professor John Rasko on some of the charlatans and shining lights from the problematic and often tragic field of regenerative medicine. Long regarded as a coming salvation, the full potential of stem cells is yet to be realised. John de-mystifies our understanding of the science and explains why there's reason for hope

Animal behaviourist Gisela Kaplan grew up in devastated post-WWII Berlin, forced to eat soap and wild nettles to survive. A brilliant student who loved music, she trained as an opera singer and an academic. Decades later, after adopting a magpie nestling, she began a new chapter as one of the world's leading authorities on the lives of Australia’s native birds

Betty O'Neill's father disappeared when she was a baby. Decades later, inside a tiny apartment in the Polish city of Lublin she opened a green suitcase to find a huge clue to his secret lifeBetty O'Neill grew up in country New South Wales with her mum Nora.Nora worked in hotels in Kyogle and Coffs Harbour, and because she wasn't able to live at the hotels with her mum, Betty was often fostered out to families in the local area.Nora was what was known in the 1950s as a 'deserted wife'.Her husband Antoni had disappeared without a trace shortly after Betty was born.As a girl Betty knew very little about her father.She finally met him again when she was nineteen, and it was a strange and unsettling experience.Decades later, Betty became curious about her father's life story.She began an investigation which took her to Lublin, Poland, a city where she didn't know anyone, to finally uncover the truth.Further informationThe Other Side of Absence is published by VenturaTo 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.

Historian Paul Ham and the story of the terrible 'wearing down war' that took place in Ypres (R)

The story of the 2011 earthquake that triggered multiple disasters in Japan, and took many thousands of lives, as told by Richard Lloyd Parry (CW: descriptions may be distressing) (R)

Ronnie looks back on the ten years she worked as a police officer; the childhood which shaped her, and pays tribute to the guiding strength of her proud Aboriginal father (CW: family violence)

Lacking the patience required to work on a dictionary, Helen turned her abiding interest in language into the subject of a highly successful podcast. Her search for curious and revealing stories about language has taken her around the world (R)

Jared spent his childhood behind the scenes at the Museum of the Northern Territory, up close to prehistoric kangaroo fossils, opulent trading pearls, and sacred crocodiles flown in from Arnhem Land. Then he became the museum's taxidermist (R)

New York-based Australian writer Lily Brett moved her family to Shelter Island during the pandemic. There she's found a different speed of life and been adjusting to the absence of her late father. Now in her 70s, Lily's also been thinking about what it means to be old

Raised in a loving but strict Italian household, Pina Arena became ‘Tina’ to compete on Young Talent Time. Reinventing herself as an adult singer was tough, and it took a disastrous marriage and years living away from Australia to find her self-confidence

Ruth Coker Burks was a young single mum in Hot Springs, Arkansas, when she began helping the dying men everyone else had rejected

Stefan Eberhard on his life as a subterranean ecologist cave diving around the world, including inside the vast glowing chambers found beneath the Nullarbor Plain (R)

Widely known for her performance as Mrs Danvers, in the Hitchcock film, Rebecca, Judith gained a new cult following when she played a Star Trek Vulcan high priestess. Biographer Desley Deacon unearths the life story of an exceptional South-Australian born actor (R)

Sydney GP Dr Brad McKay is often in the media warning against taking health advice from those unqualified to give it, such as Instagram 'wellness influencers'. Then in 2020 Brad learned his name and face were being used to sell Keto diet pills online

Lydia Pearson with the story of the chance meeting which saw her co-found a fashion label which became a global sensation

Judith was nearly 50 and dealing with grief, menopause and a world in climate crisis when the unthinkable happened

Dan Richards follows his curiosity to some of the most remote habitable places in the world including an Icelandic cabin and a monastery high in the mountains of Japan (R)

Lech Blaine was 17 when he walked away unscratched from a fatal head-on collision outside Toowoomba which killed three of his friends and left two of them in comas (CW: contains graphic descriptions of road trauma and accidents. Discretion advised)

Andrew Darby flew around the world on the trail of a small, unassuming migratory shorebird called the Grey Plover. In the middle of his journey, without warning, he began to fear for his own survival (R)

Patrice Newell was a model and a TV host before she began a new life as a biodynamic farmer (R)

Screenwriter Samantha Strauss on her grandmother's vibrant last years in a Gold Coast retirement home where love, sex and startlingly pragmatic conversations about dying were all part of daily life (CW: not suitable for children)

Instead of becoming an Olympic gymnast as she'd dreamed, by nineteen Kirsty Everett had survived leukaemia twice and fought her way to university. A childhood marked by punishing treatment regimes and the deaths of friends fed Kirsty's fierce determination to make the most of life

Writer George Saunders says stories by Russian writers Chekhov, Turgenev, Gogol and Tolstoy can guide us as to 'how we are supposed to be living down here'

With countries in lockdown, the showdown with China accelerating and the rise of white supremacy, the planet stands on a precipice. Journalist Stan Grant looks at a possible way forward

Midwife Christian Wright with tales of emergency evacuations and surfing with crocodiles while working in remote Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land, helping Yolŋu women birth their babiesChristian lives in the tiny town of Nhulunbuy right on the tip of the Northern Territory.His job there is an unusual one.Christian doesn't work in the mines like most of the whitefellas in town.He's a midwife, working with the Indigenous women of remote Arnhem Land to help them birth their babies.Further informationLearn more about Christian's research into pregnancy and birthDiscover the program to train women as Djakamirr, to help Yolŋu women give birth on their own countryChristian also recommends the book Why Warriors Lie Down and Die by Richard Trudgen as a valuable resource on Indigenous AustraliaTo 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 he was a young boy in South Africa, Professor Mark Solms watched his older brother fall from a roof and crack his skull.His brother survived but was greatly changed by the injuries to his brain. The incident planted in Mark a deep desire to understand how a person's brain shapes them. CW: contains description of a medical procedure

Jeffrey tells stories of grit, brilliance and tragedy behind the making of the smash hit musicals 'Rent' and 'Hamilton'

In 1978 Australian Robina Courtin became one of the first westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun. Then a letter from a young prisoner in a California jail began a huge change in her own story (R)

Palm Island, Mer Island, and Australia are the cornerstones of Rachael's work as an actor and a director (R)

Simone Sheridan on working at the coalface of Australia's Covid-19 pandemic

When Admiral Chris Barrie retired as the Chief of the Defence Force, he became increasingly concerned about life for veterans with PTSD. Then he discovered certain psychedelic drugs were being used to literally change mindsChris Barrie was 15 when he joined the Royal Australian Navy.He spent 41 years in the navy, and eventually rose to become Chief of the Australian Defence Force, a role he held when 9/11 happened.Since retiring Chris has become increasingly concerned about veterans suffering from PTSD.A few years ago he discovered that psychedelic drugs are being used in other countries to successfully treat it.Chris is now convinced that the Australian Government should legalise the clinical use of specific psychedelics to help veterans recovering from trauma.To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversation 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 informationLearn more about the work of FearLess

After Rick Morton was unexpectedly diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder he set out on a year-long mission to rediscover love

When Helen Jukes was given a colony of bees they helped release her from the numbing grind of her working life (R)

Thriller writer Helen Fitzgerald on her life as a social worker inside some of Scotland's toughest prisons

Choir master Stephen Taberner was raised a Christadelphian, but in his adult life he celebrates the pleasure of music (R)

Candy Baker was a cash-strapped single mum with too many horses when she moved to the hills outside Byron Bay and discovered a new way of communicating with her herd

Justice advocate Keenan Mundine broke the cycle of crime and incarceration in his own life after a chance meeting at a birthday party (CW: mentions suicide, references to drug use. Strong language. Discretion advised)

Deborah Prior was one of more than 2000 mixed-race babies born to white British women and black American GI's during WWII. As an adult, she finally found her birth mother again under strange circumstances (CW: discussion of adoption, discretion advised)

Deborah Lawrie had her first flying lesson at 16, then became a flying instructor herself. But when she applied for a job as a pilot, she found herself in the fight of her life

When Caroline O'Connor was told she had 'too much personality' for the ballet, she turned to musical theatre and braved cattle calls and years of working as an understudy in order to make it on Broadway and London's West End