Conversations

After treating a patient named Anna, Sharonne Zaks saw the power relationship with her patients differently. She developed a new branch of dentistry to help care for survivors of sexual assault Sharonne Zaks grew up in a family of dentists, and when she too became a dentist, she developed an empathetic relationship with her patients, never judging them even if they'd avoided the dentist for years....

Eight stories exploring the pleasures and perils of water

Barrie unearths a family wartime secret after fifty years (R)

Alex Landragin was born into a champagne-making family in the French village of Verzenay. When he was five, his family began a new life in Australia. Then a freak accident changed everything.

Esther is a therapist who spent years studying intimacy, monogamy and sexuality. She became the world's most well-known expert on modern love When Esther was a teenager she was voraciously curious about human behaviour. She thought she'd become a journalist or a translator, but instead she grew up to become the world's most famous contemporary psychotherapist. Esther became known around the world...

The story of family bonds so strong that one couple gave their child to another, to be raised in a country far away

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