Conversations

When country woman Shanna Whan hit rock bottom in 2014 after a lifelong battle with alcohol addiction, she began a grassroots movement to tackle how we talk about booze in the bush

Frank Dell survived being shot down over Nazi Germany, with the aid of courageous Dutch families and resistance fighters (R)

Louise Pryke returns with a cultural history of turtles, from ancient times to modern day, and from turtle tears to Al Capone, Lou attempts to understand why they are such a widely-loved creature (R)

Historian Antony Beevor depicts the conflict through the eyes of ordinary Russian workers to officers on the battlefield, to crystalise one of the most influential and devastating wars of the modern era

How a fashion-loving misfit from Sydney took over Hollywood with husband Baz Luhrmann, winning more Oscars than any other Australian

Guiding daughters to become confident young woman in an age of smartphones and early sexualisation is tough. The parenting expert says in this complex arena, we can't leave these lessons to chance Maggie Dent can clearly recall her indignation at being made to wear a dress as a little girl. She was a tomboy and noticed when she was treated differently from little boys, who were allowed to be their...

Professor George Paxinos has mapped more parts of the brain than anyone else in the world. He's been creating atlases of this most mysterious organ for more than 40 years, and is still journeying into unchartered cerebral territory

From working in a bank and behind a bar, to rowing solo across an ocean, the story of Michelle Lee's remarkable transformation and the voyage which made her reconsider her ideas about being alone (R)

Professor Toby Walsh is a world leader in AI research. He asks questions like, 'can we train machines to be fair?' and 'how do we resist the spread of lethal autonomous weapons?' His job is making sure the future of AI is for better, not worse. Artificial intelligence has become an essential part of our lives — it helps us to navigate and communicate, and is responsible for incredibly accurate med...

Rodney Fox was torn apart by a great white shark and it took 462 stitches to put him back together again. He was then instrumental in filming Jaws, the most terrifying shark film of all time. But over time, this salty seadog has become the apex predator's fiercest protector

After 50 years of marriage Ruth Wilson took some time alone. In a yellow cottage with a dogwood tree in the garden, she began re-reading the novels of Jane Austen. Eventually, Austen's heroines helped her seize a second chance at happiness

Gillian has the best job in the world — travelling overseas to bake sumptuous and heartfelt wedding cakes, using foraged and fresh produce to tell a couple's story through taste, texture and fragrance. Cake has been a staple in Gillian's life, through immigration, adventure and loss

Megan Davis was raised as a 'Queensland Rail kid', then in a book-loving household in a housing commission home. She grew up to become a lawyer at the UN, then began a history-making process of helping Australia's First Nations people speak the truth to power (R)

Mawunyo Gbogbo grew up in a church-going Ghanaian-Australian family in the mining town of Muswellbrook, NSW. As a young woman she grabbed the chance to further her media career in New York City at the Bible of Hip Hop, The Source

How a sheltered girl who grew up on a soldier settlement farm in country New South Wales grew up to become a feminist trailblazer

Ocean racing navigator Will Oxley first learned his trade through celestial navigation, using a sextant and the stars. He then began ocean racing around the world, and in 1998, he found himself upside down in a storm-wrecked Bass Strait (R)

Briana Blackett was a journalist working in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max was diagnosed with autism, and in time her second son Freddy was too, she left Doha to begin an entirely different life

Dr Kira Westaway is a geochronologist who places modern and ancient humans in context by dating things found in caves. For Kira, how we understand ourselves now, is tied up in the past

Art detective Arthur Brand met neo-Nazis, billionaire collectors and underground art dealers on his hunt for the two enormous bronze horse sculptures once owned by Hitler. It was all part of his quest to find the criminal masterminds attempting to sell the artwork on the black market (R) Arthur Brand is an art sleuth based in Amsterdam. His clients ask him to find stolen works of art, and to find...

Wendy Liu has spent many years right up close to death. As a forensic counsellor she worked with families who had lost someone to an accident or violence, and as a grief counsellor she supports people surviving all kinds of losses. Wendy says her work brings her a keener appreciation of life

The folk singer on the songs in her blood and the intergenerational conflict between professional creativity and family

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)