Conversations

Beloved Australian actor, Noni Hazlehurst looks back on her life on stage and screen. Noni Hazlehurst has been on Australian TV screens and theatres for nearly 50 years. She comes from a long line of performers.  Noni's parents met while they were part of a touring Variety act in the UK, and her great grandfather was a famous child trapeze artist. Keeping children company on Playschool was one of...

The country music star remembers a childhood spent roaming the Nullarbor Plain, and the number one lesson she learned from her father. Kasey Chambers started singing around the campfire as a little girl. She and her family spent much of the year camping on the Nullarbor Plain, where her dad would hunt for foxes and rabbits. Kasey and her brother Nash had a free range childhood, and went to sleep t...

Gina Chick, the winner of Alone Australia on her life as a creative, outrageous, nature-loving misfit who grew up to live through great depths of love, and grief (CW: discusses the death of a child). In 2023, Gina Chick spent 67 days by herself, in the wilderness of Tasmania’s West Coast, surviving on worms, fish, and one unlucky wallaby. After those 67 days, Gina became the first-ever winner of a...

Irish journalist and author, Fintan O'Toole on how the Victorians changed the meaning of Shakespeare's plays, and how we can bring them back to life. Fintan O'Toole is an Irish journalist and author who writes on politics and history for the New York Review of Books and the Irish Times. He wants to change the way we think about Shakespeare's plays, because the way many of us are introduced to Shak...

Writer George Saunders on how famous short stories by writers like Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Gogol are like miniature models of the world and how they can teach us to transcend our own limitations. (R) For many years, author George Saunders taught a writing masterclass in upstate New York, in which he introduced students to the stories of the great Russian authors.  Conversations with his stu...

Claire Nelson hadn't told anyone where she was going, and her phone lost signal shortly into her hike. As an experienced bushwalker, she never dreamed an adventure would turn out like this. (R)  Claire Nelson was hiking alone in Joshua Tree National Park in 2018, when she slipped on a stack of boulders and fell 25 feet to the ground. The impact shattered Claire’s pelvis, and she couldn’t even rais...

At the age of 18, Oceane Campbell tried to take her own life. She survived and fought her way back into life, becoming a midwife and a mother of three (CW: discussion of suicide, please take care when listening). (R) Oceane Campbell has been very close with the raw stuff of life. She's a midwife and a mother, so she's seen and experienced the power of birth many times over. She has also been very...

Toni Jordan grew up working in a T.A.B. with her cyclonic mother, and going to the greyhound races. Then she grew up to become a best-selling novelist. (R) Toni Jordan is a best-selling novelist. But she didn't grow up in a house full of books. Her mum ran a T.A.B. and her dad trained greyhounds for a living. Toni's mum was hardworking and hilarious, but she could also be hard to live with.  All h...

Jon Owen's mum enrolled him in a computer science degree at University - expecting him to build a flourishing career; which he did. It just wasn't the one that everyone expected. (R) Jon Owen came to Australia as a small child. He survived playground racism at school, and became a high achiever. His family expected him to excel at school and university and go on to a flourishing career. And that's...

After a stint being homeless and living in his car, Stephen Smith was working at David Jones Food Hall when one of his colleagues noticed his remarkable singing voice. A few years later, he became a tenor on the operatic world stage (R)

In 1882, thousands of sheep set off from a property in Western Victoria. Their destination was a huge station in the Northern Territory, land which a sheep had never set foot on. To get there, these animals and their drover battled drought, flood, famine and doubt. Tom Guthrie is a winemaker and sheep farmer in Western Victoria, and is a descendent in a long line of enterprising farmers. Almost 15...

Professor Ian Henderson has spent his career searching for new treatments in the fight against antibiotic resistance superbugs

Jeffrey Broadfield has made building his life. It has taken him around the world, and given him a place to belong. Jeffrey Broadfield is a master maker who builds houses to his clients’ wishes and quirks, using carpentry to turn recycled Australian hardwood into dream homes. It’s a craft Jeffrey says is dying. He grew up in Griffith, NSW, where he learned to swim in the irrigation channel and enti...

From using fish eyes in ice cream, and not wasting the liver, to creating recipes with fish sperm, chef Josh Niland on his mission to revolutionise how we cook and eat fish. (R) 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 animal...

The deserts of Saudi Arabia are still holding on to many ancient secrets, hidden inside burial tombs and mysterious monumental structures called mustatils. Dr Hugh Thomas is on an archaeological mission to solve some of these mysteries. Hugh Thomas is an archaeologist who is fascinated by ancient mortuary practices and the secrets still hidden in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. In the north west of t...

Ji Wallace was at the top of his career as a gymnast and acrobat when a terrible injury and surprising diagnosis brought him back down to earth, temporarily. Ji was an energetic, only child growing up on a bush block in suburban Brisbane when his parents brought home a trampoline to keep him occupied. Ji took to it so quickly, he learnt how to flip by that afternoon, and was a national champion in...

Psychiatrist Duncan McKellar wrote the report that triggered the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. He has seen how care changes when we take someone's life story into account. Duncan McKellar is a psychiatrist specialising in the care of older people with dementia and serious mental health conditions. When Duncan first started working with these patients, he was shocked to find e...

The late James Earl Jones grew up with a stutter and hardly said a word for years. After an English teacher intervened, he grew up to become one of the world's finest actors. (R) Actor James Earl Jones died recently, at the age of 93. When he was touring Australia in 2013 with a production of Driving Miss Daisy, Richard had the chance to sit down with him and ask him about his life. Although we kn...

From sharks with wheels of teeth, to gargantuan sharks like the megalodon, palaeontologist John Long has traced the long and storied history of these oceanic hunters. Sharks and humans have a complicated relationship. We have long considered them monsters and super predators that should be eliminated for our own safety. But sharks are much more than scary and fearsome. The history of this incredib...

Author and professor Anita Heiss on her parents' story of romance, and how she brings true history alive in her work. Anita Heiss is a Wiradjuri woman, an author of many books and Professor of Communications at The University of Queensland. She has described herself as a “concrete Koori with Westfield dreaming.” Many of Anita's books focus on great love stories, and the inspiration for these roman...

For decades, Gideon Haigh and his mother were the only two people who really knew what happened on Jaz's last night. This year, it all poured out. Gideon Haigh's brother Jasper was 17 years old when he died in a car crash. Until this year, Gideon and his mother were the only two people who really knew what happened to Jaz on that tragic night. Gideon has spent decades perfecting answers to questio...

After a childhood spent trying to escape her father's booze-fuelled outbursts, Seana developed her own problem relationship with drinking. But by her mid-50s, Seana decided she had had enough. Seana Smith grew up in a beautiful house in rural Scotland, and when things were good at home, they were wonderful. But Seana’s father loved to drink, and his habit took over her family’s life. Despite the f...

Dog behaviourist Laura Vissaritis uses science and psychology to better understand what our dogs really are telling us and how our behaviour influences theirs (R). Laura is a dog behaviourist with qualifications in both animal behaviour and human psychology. Dogs were the first animals to become domesticated, and over the centuries they've evolved from their wolfish origins to become more useful,...

As a young child, chunks of Brenda Matthews' early memories were missing until her biological mother told her the truth of what happened. Together they are slowly healing Wiradjuri woman Brenda Matthews was stolen from her family, along with her six siblings, when she was two-years-old. She came from a loving, hardworking, religious family. She was fostered by an affectionate white family, and she...

When a devastating injury ended Jack Beaumont's career as a jet fighter pilot, he decided to become a spy, in the French Secret Service. Jack Beaumont (not his real name) is a former intelligence operative and the author of several spy thrillers. Jack grew up in a turbulent family in Paris and when he got older he decided to train as a jet fighter pilot with the French Air Force. During a training...