Conversations

The matriarch of La Mama on life in and out of Melbourne’s beloved theatre

Dulcie Markham was one of the most notorious characters of Sydney in the 1930s, but many of her lovers met a grisly end

Lynne Kelly became a senior memory champion after she began researching ancient ways of transforming landscapes, objects and the human body into 'memory palaces.'

In the dying days of the Vietnam War, hundreds of orphans were airlifted from Saigon to safety. Ian Shaw tells the story of two Australian women at the heart of Operation Babylift

Demystifying the art of talk therapy and the complex relationship between therapist and patient Psychotherapy, also known as 'the talking cure', is based on a profound and usually ongoing connection between a person and their therapist. This type of work, often dealing with long buried events or feelings, can be transformative for patients. Gill Straker has a lifetime of experience as a psychother...

Tony became an actor against his mother's wishes. Three decades later, he won the part of a lifetime (R)

Travelling the world in pursuit of language and exploring its uses, abuses and transformation

Sally Young unearthed a culture of 'dog does not eat dog' as she wrote a history of Australia's newspaper barons

Gina Perry uncovers the strange story behind a controversial psychological experiment (R)

Dog whisperer Guy Hull on remarkable dogs, from life-saving kangaroo dogs to plane-flying Alsatians (R)

Vickie's met with trouble all through her life, starting with a police record at the age of two. She went on to challenge a Federal law on the rights of prisoners

The late Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke on his life before politics, and his years at The Lodge (R)

Social Researcher Rebecca Huntley on Australia's new political landscape

After two suicides within her family, Jessie returned to Northern NSW to begin again. (R)

Eleanor Gordon-Smith was a 'recovering champion debater' when a night in King's Cross upended her belief in the power of reason

As a young man, Irvine Welsh fell off a double-decker bus and won a tidy sum in compensation. Then he began to write 'Trainspotting'

Tales of drowned towns, pugnacious unionists, terrifying brumbies and a love story in a laundry floor came to light in Siobhan McHugh's history of the Snowy Scheme

Kate has used tragic events in her own life as creative fuel to write more than 25 plays (R)

Writer Susan Orlean on the enduring mystery of who set fire to the Los Angeles Central Library

The Sugarbag bees who headbutt their queen to her death are among the many Australian bee species which fascinate ecologist Toby Smith

David Isaacs on the surprising history of human vaccination

On 9/11 Captain Beverley Bass diverted her American Airlines jet to a tiny town in Newfoundland, along with thousands of other airspace refugees

Sarah’s life took a gothic turn as she crafted her version of Melmoth

The Pulitzer Prize winner was working as an odd-jobs man for an Italian Baroness when a phone call upended his life

George Saunders was a knuckle puller in a slaughterhouse and drove a chicken delivery van before he became a writer