Conversations

How women cricket players saved the "gentleman's" game and repaired diplomatic relations between England and Australia

Melissa Redsell was 16 and in her last year of school when she found out she was pregnant. Although many people told her she'd 'ruined her life' she went on to prove everyone wrong

Firie Bronnie Mackintosh is built from tough stuff - she attends emergencies to cut people out of crushed cars and rescue them from burning buildings. Her strength was forged in Rotorua, New Zealand, where she experienced a violent undercurrent and the first frothy coffees, introduced by her parents

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)

Listened to around the world by locals, spies and military officials, Radio Australia has long been rated by its hundreds of thousands of global listeners as more informative than the BBC World Service. So why don't we know anything about it?

Hilton Koppe on how his life as a soccer-obsessed country GP changed forever when he became a patient himself Hilton Koppe grew up knowing his parents wanted him to become a doctor. When he got the marks to make it into medicine, they were overjoyed. By the time he was 30, he'd started working as a country GP.  Hilton then became a beloved local doctor in Northern NSW, and he worked there for more...

Deborah Lawrie had her first flying lesson at 16, then became a flying instructor herself. But when she applied for a job as a pilot, she found herself in the fight of her life (R)

Vic Simms, Jen Cloher, Vika and Linda Bull, Rob Hirst, Elena Kats-Chernin, William Barton with stories from their formative years

Novelist John Grisham with his life story; from his work as a trial lawyer, to writing, and how he became involved in a movement using DNA testing to exonerate the innocent (R)

Academic Danielle Celemajer on how the Black Summer bushfires brought she and her rescue pig Jimmy into a terrible proximity with the inferno, changing both of their lives forever

Valerie Browning moved to the northern deserts of Ethiopia as a naive young nurse in 1973. A chance meeting on the streets of neighbouring Djibouti changed her life, and women's health in the region

Debra Gavranich with the story of her mother Marija, who left her tiny Croatian island to make a life with a man she’d never met, in Far North Queensland's Cassowary Valley (R)

Dr Irving Finkel on the ghosts who joined the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians in their day to day lives (R)

Tim Ferguson was in the midst of a high-flying comedy career when he started experiencing 'whacky symptoms'. In his early 30s, doctors told him he had Multiple Sclerosis

When Dr Genevieve Campbell heard the intoxicating music of Tiwi song women, it made her hair stand on end. Immediately she knew she needed to meet the women, and these relationships have changed her ideas of what music is

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

One of America's oldest lighthouses was built in 1716 and survived the Revolutionary War. Its first two keepers met dismal ends, but Sally Snowman was always enamoured by it. She is the first woman to care for the lighthouse, and now she will be the last (R)

When Cynthia Banham survived the unthinkable, she had to reinvent herself, with the support of her family, and the kindness of the Sydney Swans AFL team

Edita Mujkic fled the Bosnian War in Sarajevo with her two children, 50 American dollars in her pocket and no real plan. It took her almost two years to get her husband Goran out of the deadly siege situation, all the way from the Lake District in England

Lifelong stutterer Jonty Claypole on how fluency can be a barrier to our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness

At 90, Elizabeth Chong recalls the familiar abundance of the Queen Victoria Market of the 1930s, how her father popularised the dim sim in Australia and the 37,000 people she has taught to cook (R)

Tony spent three decades in and out of jail. Inside Hobart's Risdon Prison, he joined a debating club with Chopper Read, and 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 (R)

Professor Kelvin Kong is one of Australia's leading ENT surgeons. The proud Worimi man changes the course of children's lives by looking inside their ears (R)

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 became a student of Zen Buddhism, big shifts began in her life, and her art (R)

The author tells the thrilling, surreal story of Yuri Gagarin, the loyal communist and father of two who became the first person to journey into space, in a capsule perched on top of a modified Soviet R-7 missile (R)