Conversations

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 decades Is 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, t...

Anita Jacoby has spent decades uncovering the truth about other people, but when she turned the lens on her own father, she was shocked Anita 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...

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 life Tony Bull grew up across the road from Hobart's Risdon Prison. As child he started running with a crowd of b...

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 sadness Jason 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 mot...