Conversations: Art & Passions

When his elders named him Bindi, David Hudson had no idea his future would involve performing with his didgeridoo at the Taj Mahal, or a role in a film starring Marlin Brando  (Content warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners: this episode contains the name of someone who has died.) Western Yalanji and Ewamian man David Bindi Hudson is a performing artist and musician. His paren...

Paula Quintela was seven years old when she witnessed Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat in Chile. She broke up the darkness by becoming her country's champion ocean swimmer and an artist

Ben Lee was a teen rock prodigy by the time he was 14. He then began decades of making music, Hollywood fame, and a journey into alternative spirituality, including the world of ayahuasca Ben Lee grew up in Bondi in the 1980s when it was a place of bikie gangs, Yiddish-speaking grandmas and tribes of kids living next to one of the world's most beautiful beaches.  He was educated at a local Jewish...

When Bonnie Garmus tried to sell her first novel, it was rejected 98 times. Then at 66, she wrote a novel called Lessons in Chemistry, which sold four million copies around the world. Bonnie Garmus 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 realis...

Rafael Bonachela was born in the dying years of Franco’s Spain, into a patriarchal culture that didn’t appreciate little boys who wanted to dance.  At the make or break moment of his choreography career, the last person Rafael expected to hear from was Australia’s pop princess — Kylie Minogue As the eldest of four brothers, his father expected him to be an example of academic achievement and brava...

When Ray Kelly Snr's grandfather was asked to translate "telephone" into Gumbayngirr, he responded with “muuya barrigi”, or flying breath (CW: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners please be advised this program contains discussion of people who have died. Please take care when listening) To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanow...

The oud virtuoso reflects on his path to the instrument, via a stamp collection and an Egyptian movie star When Joseph was 10, his dad swapped an iron and $100 for a second-hand oud at Sydney's Glebe markets.  The oud is a traditional middle eastern instrument – the ancestor of the modern guitar. Joseph had fallen in love with its sound and style when watching the classic films of Egyptian cinema...

From homeless teen to operatic stardom: how a job at the David Jones food hall changed the trajectory of Stephen Smith's life

Josh Niland on his mission to cook fish eyes, fish liver, and fish sperm to help revolutionise how we cook and eat fish Chef Josh Niland is devoted to changing ideas about how we cook and eat fish in the western world. He believes that rather than eating just the fillet, we should aim to eat the whole fish, as we do nose-to-tail with animals. At his restaurants he cooks with fish eyeballs, fish li...

Robyn Davidson on her adventures high in the Himalayas, her love affair with an Indian prince, and her late in life reckoning with her own story (CW: mentions suicide)

Artist David Rankin grew up as the son of a bootmaker in suburban Sydney. He became an outback teacher, then  a a painter, before meeting the great love of his life, the writer Lily Brett 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 ...

Pádraig Ó Tuama survived conversion therapy and exorcism as a young gay man in a church in Ireland, then became a leading peace negotiator and a poet. Pádraig Ó Tuama grew up in the South of Ireland, and spent a long time not knowing quite where he fit in. He loved poetry, and prayer and talking to people so he decided to become a Priest. But a realisation about his sexuality began a struggle with...

Amar Singh's sense of belonging to Australia has only grown since he leant into his Sikh faith, growing out his beard and his hair, wearing a turban and committing himself to the service of his entire community

The new chief conductor of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, on the chair of spikes that accompanied his early musical career, and why he doesn't tone down his Italianness in Australia. During his Suzuki lessons in Turin, Italy, Umberto Clerici was sitting up straight on a chair full of spikes, lest his posture slip. Umberto chose the cello as his instrument, mainly because it wasn’t the violin,...

Dave Gleeson is known for his blistering performances in The Screaming Jets and The Angels, but he grew up singing at Mass in Cardiff, with a mum who opened their home to hundreds of foster children

Nick Cave on how living through addiction, love and unthinkable loss has changed his inner life

The stage and screen actor looks back at his mother's magical influence on his childhood imagination, and his life in character

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...

Maggie Beer started her working life at the age of 14 in a chenille bedspread factory. Two decades later, in a pheasant farm in the Barossa Valley, she found her dream job Legendary cook, author food producer and educator Maggie Beer grew up in Lakemba in South-West Sydney, and got her first job when she was 14. Maggie had to leave school early to go out to work to help support her family after he...

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

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

Nadia Wheatley with the stories of two women ahead of their time: the writer Charmian Clift and her own mother Nina Watkin. Two decades ago, Nadia published her acclaimed biography of the late Australian writer Charmian Clift. Charmian is best known for her memoirs Peel Me A Lotus and Mermaid Singing about her family's poverty-stricken but wildly romantic life on the Greek Islands in the early 50s...

Stories from Dave Grohl about his life in music, including how he went from being "that guy from Nirvana” to a superstar rock star fronting the Foo Fighters

Designer Jenny Kee with the story of her wild and creative life, including how she and Linda Jackson began a movement which changed Australian fashion (CW: discretion required. Drug references, suicide and content that might be upsetting)

When an eruption began in 1994 in Papua New Guinea, the last thing singer-songwriter Ngaiire expected was a second volcano to begin spewing ash. Tuning in to the mystery and majesty of PNG has become a lifelong project (CW: Some listeners may find parts of this conversation upsetting. Please use discretion when listening) Throughout her childhood, singing was something Ngaiire did at church, somew...