Conversations

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...

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

Archie tells of writing Took the Children Away and playing it in public for the first time, of his belated reunion with his siblings, and his love story with Ruby Hunter (R) CW: For our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners, this program features the voice of someone who has died.  Please take care when listening.

Australian violinist Charmian Gadd reflects on her 80 years, from her origins in the bush at Ourimbah on the NSW Central Coast, to her love affair with her teacher, the extraordinary Richard Goldner, who invented a zipper for the war effort

Tom Nash was 19 years old when he fell terribly ill with meningococcal septicemia, and all his limbs were amputated. After he learned to walk again on prosthetic legs and began to navigate life with hooks for arms, he built a new life as a nightclub DJ

Writer Susan Varga sees her life as full of hard joys - including her Hungarian Jewish family’s surviving WWII, her recovery from the stroke which destroyed her ability to write and speak, and finding the great love of her life in middle age

Sisonke Msimang fought hard to find a home. She was born in exile, the daughter of a freedom fighter who had fled South Africa during apartheid.