Conversations

Stan Grant on his life as a journalist, author and filmmaker from the Wiradjuri, Kamilaroi and Dharawal First Nations of Australia

At 15, Rebecca McCabe was on track to compete in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics for swimming. As swam, she would often ask herself big questions about the meaning of life. When her life in the pool ended abruptly, she decided to take a huge leap of faith

Biologist Merlin Sheldrake's extreme experiments, many of which involve his physical body and varying forms of fungi, have led to equally remarkable discoveries English biologist Merlin Sheldrake, son of Rupert Sheldrake, became fascinated by fungi when he was a boy. He grew mushrooms in his cupboard and brewed bog myrtle beer under his bed. He went on to study fungi at Cambridge University, and h...

David Hepworth charts our fascination with that most earth-bound of gods, the rock star; and discusses some of music history's striking examples

Despite never really liking maths at school, Eddie made up his mind in the teaching sign-on queue, to become a maths teacher. This split-second decision changed his life, and the lives of many of his future students (R)

Cave diver Stefan Eberhard has spent decades exploring the vast underwater caves of the Nullarbor Plains, where the water teems with blind shrimp and colourless fish, and curtains of bacterial slime hang glistening from the ceiling

Paul Haller grew up Catholic in Belfast, and his pursuit of meaning has since taken him around the world. Now a Zen priest, Zen practice and teaching became Paul's calling: from retreating to a cave in Thailand; to teaching meditation, to the incarcerated, and the dying, in San Francisco

Keith Banks spent twenty years in his dream career with the Queensland Police. He was awarded for bravery several times, but left the job angry and disillusioned. He now reflects on what the job and police culture were like in the 1980s and the cost of lying for a living

Why is scratching an itch so pleasurable? How can someone leap from a burning plane in the sky and survive with a few bumps and scratches? A journey through the wondrous complexity of the human body (R)

Jared spent his childhood behind the scenes at the Museum of the Northern Territory, up close to prehistoric kangaroo fossils, opulent trading pearls, and sacred crocodiles flown in from Arnhem Land. Then he became the museum's taxidermist

Yuwaalaraay writer, storyteller and performer, Nardi Simpson of the Stiff Gins talks about her life, art and the meaning of country

Lennie Gwyther was 9 years old when he rode Ginger Mick from country Victoria to Sydney to be at the opening of the Bridge (R)

Pico was a journalist in New York when a 20-hour layover at Narita airport in Japan made him question everything. He decided to begin again as a monk at a Zen temple in Kyoto. But things didn't go entirely to plan

Peggy McDonald has spent much of her life as wildlife carer who specialises in helping wedge-tail eagles, falcons, owls and other raptors recover their ability to fly

How Michael Pollan 'shook the snowglobe' of his mind by investigating the therapeutic effects of psychedelic substances In 2006 writer Michael Pollan became aware of new research into the therapeutic effects of psychedelics. He found that drugs such as LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) can help to alleviate depression, anxiety and addiction. Then he met terminally ill p...

Brendan James Murray on the elusive copper-coloured snake species which terrorised post WWII North Queensland (R)

Sharonne Zaks was working as a dentist when an encounter with a patient named Anna led her to develop a radical new branch of dentistry (R)

Throughout the 1930s and 40s, Arthur Stace rose before dawn to write a one-word sermon in chalk on the footpaths of Sydney. Writer Roy Williams unearthed the truth about Arthur Stace's life story with the help of those who knew him personally (R)

Leigh went through an event in 2014 which changed her profoundly. She was left questioning how we cope when the unimaginable happens (R)

The frontman of You Am I on his life in music, his Kalgoorlie childhood, and his battles with anxiety (R)

Glennon made a big name for herself in the US as a ‘Christian mommy blogger’ with her candid and often hilarious writing when she fell wildly in love with U.S Women's Soccer star Abby Wambach Alongside her blackly funny posts about the challenges of parenting, Glennon wrote about her recovery from alcoholism and bulimia. She encouraged her growing tribe of followers to feel their feelings rather t...

Writer Deborah Feldman grew up inside the claustrophobic world of an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect in Brooklyn, and as a teenager she was married off to a man she barely knew. In her 20s she fled to Berlin to make an entirely new life

Lawrence Ryan grew up in a dilapidated Victorian-era homestead called Monte Cristo. From when he was young, he knew he'd grow up to become a professional stuntman, jumping his motorbike over cars, buses and planes

Matt Norman's late uncle Peter won a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics, then was notoriously cast out of Australian sport (R)

Philippe Sands on how a cache of letters sent him on the trail of Nazi war criminal Otto Von Wachter, who escaped to Rome on the 'Ratline'