Conversations

ABC Australia

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.

Conversations Live is coming to the stage! Join Sarah Kanowski and Richard Fidler for an unmissable night of unforgettable stories, behind-the-scenes secrets, and surprise guests. Australia’s most-loved podcast — live, up close, and in the moment. Find out more at the Conversations website.

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92 episodes
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Avg 51 min
English

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Today · 49 min
Rebecca Solnit on why things are much better than we think
The American writer discusses the historic US midterm elections, the decline of Trump and how you can find hope by looking to the past. It’s easy to feel like everything is getting worse. Politics full of rage and violence, the threats posed by AI, the rise of the manosphere and a climate that keeps on heating up. But Rebecca Solnit says that’s only the surface of the story. Take a longer view, even just the sixty-odd years she’s been alive, and you can see how profoundly things have chang
Yesterday · 52 min
Encore: The child bride who escaped her violent husband to begin an extraordinary new life
Hana Assafiri was married off at 15 to a controlling and abusive man. Within four years she'd escaped, to begin her remarkable reinvention. Hana was born in Melbourne and lived in Lebanon with her family for much of her childhood. In 1976, her family returned to Australia. While still a teenager, Hana was married off to a much older man. She fought to be free of her violent husband, despite divorce being unheard of in her conservative Muslim family. At the age of 20, she escaped the marriage
Wednesday · 52 min
Fighting for Country, not King: the real story of Australia's first Indigenous army officer
Captain Reg Saunders was the first Indigenous Australian to become a commissioned officer in the Australian Army. He was following a warrior tradition stretching generations back, fighting not for king but for country. He didn't have citizenship in Australia, but Reg led troops and fought in Libya, Greece and Papua New Guinea. He also survived on the island of Crete, living amongst the locals for 11 months during WWII. Reg's exploits in Crete were the subject of family legend. He also later
Tuesday · 50 min
Encore: The detective who led the hunt for Ivan Milat
The late Clive Small on how he led the NSW Police task force which helped to put one of Australia’s worst serial killers behind bars. In the 1990s, a series of young people’s bodies were found in makeshift graves in the Belanglo State Forest. After many false leads, precious clues emerged pointing to one man – Ivan Milat. Clive and his team followed an intricate process in carefully piecing together the evidence that led to Milat’s conviction. In 1996, the former road worker was sentenced to
Monday · 53 min
Rocker, doctor, flight surgeon – the many lives of Radio Birdman's Deniz Tek
Deniz has squeezed more than most into his life. From pioneering punk rock in Australia, to performing improvised neurosurgery aboard a naval ship, to retirement growing Macadamias in Hawaii. Deniz is a founding member of Radio Birdman, Australia’s seminal punk rock band. He was also an emergency doctor in Australia and the United States. But that wasn’t enough for Deniz. He decided to join the U.S Marines as a flight surgeon – a type of pilot who can perform improvised neurosurgery aboar
November 6 · 53 min
How Usman Khawaja changed Australian cricket
As the first brown immigrant and the first Muslim to enter the very white world of Australian cricket, Usman Khawaja overcame many setbacks while forging his extraordinary career in the sport. Born in Pakistan, Usman moved to Sydney with his family at four and fell in love with cricket watching his older brothers play. In 2011, Usman debuted for the Australian cricket team in the fifth Ashes Test at the SCG, becoming the first Muslim to wear the Baggy Green. But his journey has been as muc
November 5 · 50 min
Encore: Bryce Courtenay's son on his father's many secrets
Growing up with brilliant writer as a father, Adam Courtenay slowly became aware of many gaps and untruths in his dad's life story. So he decided to set the record straight, once and for all. When Adam was growing up, he saw his Dad as a hero. Bryce worked in advertising so he knew all the latest, coolest trends, and at bedtime, Bryce told Adam and his brothers amazing stories about his life in South Africa and the Courtenay family’s noble origins. When Bryce went from adman to wildly success
November 4 · 52 min
Hags, bears and magic — what fairytales can teach us about modern life
Instructions on how to forge a path through a darkening world, according to former neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, Dr Sharon Blackie. Sharon grew up in what she calls the edge lands — on a council estate, near marshes full of migrating birds, next to the chemical factories of North-Eastern England. She was given fairy stories to read that mirrored her own experience in a way — Sharon knew the world was not always a safe place and that little children should be careful. After her violent
November 3 · 46 min
Encore: An accidental midwife and the business of everyday miracles
Lisa Peberdy has been delivering babies for over 40 years, in hospitals and homes, in cities and remote locations and she still cries with joy at every birth. During Lisa's first career as a nurse, she was physically repelled by the notion of childbirth. When she re-trained to become a midwife, delivering a baby unassisted was a great challenge. When Lisa finally did it, she was hooked; and she says she still cries with joy at every birth for which she's present. Lisa's delivered babies in
November 2 · 53 min
Waleed Aly: Finding real meaning, in the midst of global collapse
As we're bombarded with the drumbeat of news that veers from the shocking to the unfathomable, Waleed Aly wants to know, how do we come to grips with this chaos? For years, that is exactly what Waleed Aly has done by writing a series of columns for Melbourne's Age newspaper. Recently he's revisited the columns written during a concentrated period of profound upheaval, to see what they reveal. Waleed hopes to articulate what is revolutionary in this moment but also what is not, to examine our
October 30 · 51 min
Jon Ronson investigates the men looking for purpose in strange, dark places
When journalist Jon Ronson visited castle owned by a digital tycoon, it became a portal into a world of disaffected men, grasping for purpose online in a world where traditional institutions are collapsing. He had received a series of texts from his son Joel, after he was lured to a mysterious castle in the forests of New England late one night, and those texts set him off into an investigation of the modern manosphere. Jon began to investigate the wider ‘man crisis’ – where some are feeling t
October 29 · 51 min
Encore: The teacher who turned non-readers into literacy superstars
When school principal Manisha Gazula changed how her students were learning to read, she began an entirely new system which made her an icon of literacy learning. Manisha Gazula is the principal of Marsden Road Public School in the outer south-western suburbs of Sydney. When Manisha first came to the school, less than three per cent of its students were proficient in English reading and writing, which severely limited their options in life. This was for many reasons - some children had never
October 28 · 51 min
Why is it so difficult to love each other?
Psychologist Kerrie Lumbewe on trying to unpack what has happened inside ordinary people that has made loving one another so difficult. (CW: this conversation mentions suicide, please take care when listening) Kerrie Lumbewe is a psychologist who specialises in love and relationships. She spends her days sitting with people as they try and work out how to make things work; to understand how they can be in a partnership and still feel so alone; to make sense of how two people who started out
October 27 · 52 min
Encore: Bonnie Garmus on the spark of anger which began a whole new life, in her 60s
When author Bonnie Garmus tried to sell her first novel, it was rejected 98 times, but then at 66, she wrote a novel called Lessons in Chemistry, which sold four million copies around the world. Bonnie 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 credi
October 26 · 52 min
Zoe Terakes and the mythic tales of gods, sex and magical transformations
Zoe Terakes is a writer and actor with deep family connections to the island of Crete, where their great-grandparents migrated to Australia from. This island is the site of Europe’s first ancient civilisation. Bronze Age Crete had palaces, temples, art, written language and mythology long before the Roman Empire existed, and centuries before the Parthenon was built. When Zoe started reading the mythology of Crete they were astounded by how many of the tales involve mutability, metamorphosis,
October 23 · 47 min
Why Anthony LaPaglia is unapologetically irritable
Anthony talks about his turbulent childhood in the Adelaide suburb of Beefacres, escaping to a cocaine-fuelled New York in the 1980s to begin life as an actor, and how writing his memoir helped him forgive his parents. Anthony grew up in the suburbs of Adelaide, in a house full of rage, disappointment and violence. He spent as much time as he could alone, reading books, watching classic Hollywood movies, and dreaming of another life. For a while he thought soccer might be his ticket to escape
October 22 · 44 min
Encore: The incandescent life of fashion visionary Jenny Kee
Fashion designer Jenny Kee co-created a whole new era in Australian fashion in the 1970s. But nothing could have prepared her for her own next chapter. Jenny was born in Bondi in the 1950s, and left Australia for London when she was young. She began selling vintage clothes at the Chelsea markets, where she attracted attention for her stall and her brilliant style. When she returned to Australia in the early 70s Jenny met a gifted couturier named Linda Jackson. Together they embarked on
October 21 · 51 min
Learning my family connection to the brutal history of Australia's pearling industry
When Edith Wright discovered the turbulent history of her great-grandfathers, who were some of the founders of the pearling industry in the waters off Broome, she knew she had to write down the story Edith is a Bardi Jawi woman from the saltwater country of Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula. When she was a little girl growing up in the Kimberley, her dad would tell her stories about his two European grandfathers. Both men were pioneers in W.A's pearling industry, which required the skill
October 20 · 52 min
Encore: My orgasm induced amnesia and other epic adventures
Dasha Ross tells the story of her bizarre brush with memory loss and what happened when she and her husband decided to takeover a rundown beachside hotel in Sri Lanka. Dasha has lived a life full of adventures, from nude modelling in Sydney and making films in Brazil, to renovating a nightclub in Harlem with a baby on her hip. But Dasha's most epic escapades were with her beloved husband John Pinder, including the time the two of them took up a surprising offer to revamp and manage a beachside
October 19 · 45 min
Anthony Scaramucci on Trump, getting fired and owning his mistakes
Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci on his childhood, becoming a success on Wall Street and why backing Trump was a colossal error. Anthony grew up on Long Island, part of a large Italian-American community and far away from the world of money, power and influence. When he was accepted into a prestigious university, Anthony’s parents put their retirements savings on the line to make sure he was able to go. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he began his career on Wall Street, then into pol

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