Conversations

When he was a young boy in South Africa, Professor Mark Solms watched his older brother fall from a roof and crack his skull. His brother survived but was greatly changed by the injuries to his brain. The incident planted in Mark a deep desire to understand how a person's brain shapes them. CW: contains description of a medical procedure

Jeffrey tells stories of grit, brilliance and tragedy behind the making of the smash hit musicals 'Rent' and 'Hamilton'

In 1978 Australian Robina Courtin became one of the first westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun. Then a letter from a young prisoner in a California jail began a huge change in her own story (R)

Palm Island, Mer Island, and Australia are the cornerstones of Rachael's work as an actor and a director (R)

Simone Sheridan on working at the coalface of Australia's Covid-19 pandemic

When Admiral Chris Barrie retired as the Chief of the Defence Force, he became increasingly concerned about life for veterans with PTSD. Then he discovered certain psychedelic drugs were being used to literally change minds Chris Barrie was 15 when he joined the Royal Australian Navy. He spent 41 years in the navy, and eventually rose to become Chief of the Australian Defence Force, a role he held...

After Rick Morton was unexpectedly diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder he set out on a year-long mission to rediscover love

When Helen Jukes was given a colony of bees they helped release her from the numbing grind of her working life (R)

Thriller writer Helen Fitzgerald on her life as a social worker inside some of Scotland's toughest prisons

Choir master Stephen Taberner was raised a Christadelphian, but in his adult life he celebrates the pleasure of music (R)

Candy Baker was a cash-strapped single mum with too many horses when she moved to the hills outside Byron Bay and discovered a new way of communicating with her herd

Justice advocate Keenan Mundine broke the cycle of crime and incarceration in his own life after a chance meeting at a birthday party (CW: mentions suicide, references to drug use. Strong language. Discretion advised)

Deborah Prior was one of more than 2000 mixed-race babies born to white British women and black American GI's during WWII. As an adult, she finally found her birth mother again under strange circumstances (CW: discussion of adoption, discretion advised)

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

When Caroline O'Connor was told she had 'too much personality' for the ballet, she turned to musical theatre and braved cattle calls and years of working as an understudy in order to make it on Broadway and London's West End

Tom Gilling with the story of how a Scottish-born soldier named Jock McLaren became one of Australia's greatest World War II guerrilla fighters

Bill began his dream job as the ABC's China Correspondent in 2015. Five years later, seven State Security police officers visited him in the middle of the night to tell him he was barred from leaving the country

Sean Dooley's passion for birdwatching began with the coo of a spotted turtle dove. Decades later he broke the Australian birdwatching record (R)

When Mark McKenna set out to write a history of the centre of Australia, and Uluru, he unearthed new evidence about an 86-year old cold case *CW: For our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners please be advised that today’s conversation contains the voice and names of people who have died.

Serafina Tanè was born into a doomsday cult led by a charismatic and abusive man who claimed he'd been abducted by aliens

Eight thrilling encounters in and on the water, as told by previous Conversations guests (R)

Danielle Clode with the story of the adventurous Jeanne Barrett, a French peasant from Burgundy who became the first woman to sail around the world

Political reporter Jonathan Swan with the inside story of Donald Trump’s last few months in office

Stuart Kells' life as a bibliophile began with one ancient, leather-bound, blue book (R)

Cosmologist Tamara Davis on the complicated scientific quest to explore and colonise the Red Planet