Conversations

Writer Tanya Heaslip on swapping life on an Alice Springs station for the fairytale streets of Prague, and the remarkable parallels she found between these two magical worlds. Tanya was in a pub in London in 1989 when she watched on the television as the Berlin Wall came down. She was the tail end of a solo backpacking trip, which didn’t quite live up to what she’d imagined it might be as a little...

The late Widjabul Wieybal woman of the Bundjalung Nation Rhoda Roberts lived through great loss and grief, in the midst of becoming one of Australia's most influential cultural leaders in the arts (R). Content Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that this episode of Conversations includes the names and voice of someone who has died, used in accordance with the wishes o...

Nick Orchard on how a tough childhood, mental health issues, couch surfing and hip hop have helped him learn how to help others recover from burnout and impostor syndrome. When Nick was growing up, his mum struggled with her mental health and when he was on a date as a teenager he got the worst call of his life, and went to be with his mum when she needed him most. Nick turned to the Melbourne hip...

Melina Marchetta grew up in Sydney in a close-knit Sicilian family, but she never wanted to be seen as 'that Italian girl'. Years later, she drew on her story to write an Australian classic (R). Growing up, Melina lied about the fact she was forbidden to go out on the weekends, and instead told her friends she had to attend lots of weddings. At 19 years old, she visited Italy for the first time an...

Tracy Drain is Chief Engineer of the Europa Clipper, a NASA spacecraft currently travelling to Jupiter on a journey that will take six years. Europa is one of Jupiter’s four largest moons, and scientists believe there could be an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. Having water would make Europa one of the best places to look for signs of life in the solar system. Tracy Drain has worked a...

Together with his husband, Vinko Anthony runs a matchmaking agency for gay men looking for the type of enduring commitment and love that they found. As part of his role as matchmaker, Vinko shares what he's learnt about love and listening through the ups and downs of his own relationships. Vinko grew up on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, where he spent a lot of his childhood with his Nonna. The tw...

Stephanie Wood was new to online dating when she met a sweet man named Joe. But within weeks, she realised 'farmer' Joe was not who he claimed to be (R). Stephanie was a successful and well-travelled journalist when she met a sweet man named Joe online. They spent many romantic weekends away and discussed a future where they would live together in the country. But after months of his last minute c...

Charles Lomu on being privileged to see love in action in his grandparents, how a spiral into grief and anger led him to periodic detention, and how cutting hair today helps him steer young men away from a dark path (R).  When Charles was born, he was lovingly given to his grandparents, in the Tongan adoption custom of pusiaki. He lived a gentle, religious life in Tonga, and saw love in action thr...

Benjamin Gilmour describes the hectic work of saving lives, and what it's like to bring people back from the brink of suicide. (R) Ben was been a paramedic for twenty six years and was based in inner Sydney for more than a decade. A regular working week for Bondi's ambulance crews would see them called out to cardiac arrests, drug overdoses, domestic disputes, and to suicides. Their patch included...

When Anna Ferguson was a little girl she was badly hurt in a roller coaster accident. Although she made a full physical recovery, emotionally everything was different, and for many years she couldn't understand why she remained either angry or numb. Anna was 10 years old when she went with her family to the Melbourne Royal Show. Anna was excited to ride a roller coaster for the first time, but som...

Military strategist Jennifer Parker on the story behind the biggest disruption to oil supplies in world history, happening now in the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf has a particular geographical importance to the world, as the land on one side belongs to Iran, and the country has a history of using it to pressure its enemies in times of conflict. A quarter of all oil pro...

Jenny Briscoe-Hough on the uncomfortable truths which saw her set up Australia's first ever not-for-profit funeral home (R). After her mother died, Jenny Briscoe-Hough had an epiphany about the business of funerals. Although her family brought in their own flowers and had a simple service, the bill came to $11,000. A short time later, Jenny began thinking about setting up a not-for-profit funeral...

From wearing red stilettos on her first day of university and travelling solo into rural Egypt, to relocating to the United States with four kids in tow, Margie Warrell created her own life for herself off the dairy farm. Margie grew up on a dairy farm in Victoria, the eldest daughter in a big Catholic family.  It was assumed she would either enter the convent or marry a farmer. But Margie knew sh...

Writer Tony Birch with tales of his Fitzroy childhood including his grandmother Alma's 'op shop fever', his love for pine cones and blankets, and the macabre holiday he lived through when he was 5 years old (R). Tony grew up in inner city Melbourne in the 1950s and '60s. His grandmother taught him to waste nothing.  So Tony and his siblings would scour the streets for bottles, lead and copper to s...

Writer Drusilla Modjeska has built a career exploring the extraordinary lives of pioneering women writers and artists, who have never stopped asking important questions about gender, freedom and expression. Drusilla was born in England right at the end of the Second World War. She was raised to be a well-behaved and self-effacing young woman, in a very conservative time in history. But Drusilla es...

New York Times columnist and author M.Gessen on the slow strangulation of democracy, happening right now in Trump's America. M Gessen grew up in the Soviet Union and migrated to the US as a teenager before returning to Russia in the 90s to cover the country's brief attempt at democracy and then the slow slide back into autocratic rule under Vladimir Putin. M's insight into the mindset of the autoc...

Colin's band, Men At Work, was one of the biggest acts of the 1980s. Their first album shot the band to international fame. Then quite quickly, everything unravelled, and Colin had to begin again (R). Colin's band, Men At Work, was one of the biggest acts of the 1980s. Their first album shot the band to massive international fame, giving them two simultaneous number ones on the US charts, for albu...

When Megan Gilmour's son was 10 years old, he spent nearly two years in isolation at the Sydney Children’s Hospital. The months he missed at school didn't just affect him academically.  Megan, her daughter and her husband all relocated from Canberra to be with Darcy in Sydney as he underwent life-saving medical treatment, and lived at hospital. Over his many months in hospital, Darcy missed a lot...

It was a Sunday night in the garage of their family home when journalist and author Kate Legge found out her husband of 30 years had been cheating on her for decades. After a downward spiral as she came to terms with the news, the two of them took a road trip to Broken Hill to investigate the four generations of cheaters in his family line. The process led Kate to look into the murky waters of how...

Lisa Petty began her dance career in 1980s New York, intoxicated by the grime and flamboyant life of the city. She witnessed countless friends lose their lives to AIDS,  and the lessons she learned in closeness have stayed with her. As a young woman, Lisa Petty was visiting her aunt in a retirement home when she started to speak to the older people there about the role of wartime dance halls in th...

For the last decade or so we’ve looked on as the United States has radically changed itself, but the UK has been changing too as it continues to struggle with economic stagnation and the fallout from Brexit. The British people, famous for their aversion to radical and emotional politics, have embarked on a course which was supposed to take them back to the comforting certainties of the past, but h...

In the 1990s, Glenn Jarvis was living in London working for a very powerful American corporation called Enron. He was under a huge amount of stress at work, when his mental health began to spiral downwards. In the late 1990s Australian Glenn Jarvis won a job in London with Enron, a giant American energy and investment corporation. Life was exhilarating and he made lots of friends. But after a time...

The former Kings Cross street kid on his time in prison, recovering from an alcohol-induced brain injury, the puppy called Sunny who showed him what love is and how buying car parking spaces set him up for the rest of his life. Warning: This episode contains sensitive topics and reference to physical violence against women. John Howard came from a dysfunctional and often violent home in the outer...

Kate McClymont is chief investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald, she has won 10 Walkley Awards for her work on some of the biggest crime and corruption cases in NSW. She grew up on a farm in NSW, and during university, funded her start in Sydney by setting up a busking booth in Kings Cross. Passers-by would pay her to answer a question, have an argument, or verbally abuse them.  Kate'...

For years, Brendan Cullen was known around Broken Hill as the happy man who ran thousands of ewes across tens of thousands of hectares with a smile. What they didn't see was the guy crying in a room by himself, drinking himself stupid, thinking he wasn't providing enough for his family.