Days Like These

“I just want to be authentic, you know?” Yes, sort of. Who is our authentic self? This season we bring you stories from people who are looking for the answer.

Bec never thought of herself as a spontaneous person, but one flirty fire emoji would lead to the biggest surprise of her life.  

Dave was always a skateboarding thrill seeker. But he came as close as you can to death without dying the day he decided to take on Devil’s Mountain.

Fred Leone is an award-winning musician and a descendant of a great Garrwa warrior named Garrinjamaji. This is his story.

Edita Mujkic’s story of escaping war-torn Bosnia, and her attempts to keep her family together and safe, in the middle of a war.

Kiwi comedian James Nokise was on a roll, intoxicating audiences with his stand-up. So why can’t he get out of bed?

Karni Liddell was born in Rockhampton with a neuro-muscular wasting disease. Her parents were told she'd never crawl, walk or even live past her teenage years.

Days Like These is back with new host Farz Edraki. Strap in for a brand new season of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

As Brenden Newton grows up along Sydney’s Northern Beaches in the 1990s, bodyboarding reigns supreme. He loves the physicality, how it brings him into such close contact with the water. And after a fateful trip to Tahiti, he decides to try going pro in the sport. But just as his career takes off, strange thoughts surface over and over, threatening to engulf his mind and his body. And Brenden has t...

The day Gough Whitlam is dismissed from office, in November of 1975, Catherine is sitting in the uni library when she hears the news over the loudspeaker. She’s incredulous, incensed. She decides it’s time to formally join the Labor party and, shortly after, Catherine herself is elected as a local member in a harbor-side Sydney council.  And it’s there, in the busy, chaotic world of local governme...

Craig was a happy go lucky 19 year old when an accident changes his life forever. Forced to pay off a debt he decides to go work as a miner in Western Australia. What was a temporary gig to get cash becomes a ten year career avoiding responsibility, danger and exhaustion.

Caroline Winter had a perfectly lovely life with her husband, until the day it all changed. Despite everything she tried, she just couldn’t move forward, so she moved sideways instead. This is a story of loss, loneliness and the ways we keep going.

Konrad has dedicated his life to studying the history of the Jewish people. In the 1980s, he’s invited to work with an East German historian to complete his magnum opus, making frequent trips behind the Berlin Wall and back again. But little does Konrad know that while he is researching in East Germany, East Germany is researching him, too.

Chris Ryan grew up in India in the 1980s, so despite being born in Australia, the pop culture of the time was so exotic she could hardly believe it was real.  Moving countries is hard, you leave behind a lot and making new friends is hard. This was the challenge for nine-year-old Chris, she felt like an outsider even though she looked like she fitted in just fine.  To tackle her problems and make...

It's 1997 and friends Richard and Steve are climbing to the peak of Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. They're carrying 40 kilos of climbing gear and food. But when the climb takes a dangerous turn, much is lost. Then, almost 25 years later, a backpack turns up on Mount Cook. Inside, there's a camera with the film intact, memories long-buried make their way back to the surface once m...

Alan Hale makes a teenage escape from Launceston when he gets work at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. It's the mid 1960s and Taronga's chief benefactor, Sir Edward Hallstrom, is pouring much of his fortune into acquiring new and exotic animals to add to zoo's collection. Alan is apprenticed to the Head Keeper for monkeys and he's charged with cleaning out the cages each morning. He loves the zoo and his jo...

Days Like These is back with a new season.  There’s chaos when thirty monkeys escape from a Sydney zoo. Melting snow on a mountainside unearths a long-buried secret.   A misfit kid tries to dance her way to fame.   And one woman is forced to choose between politics and pot.   Starting June 1 more true stories from across Australia about the day when everything changed. 

13 11 14 is one of the most recognisable phone numbers in the country. It connects callers to Lifeline’s free crisis support at any time of the night or day, and for some, it’s a call that saves their life. In this bonus episode, we go behind the scenes to meet the volunteers who answer calls from strangers going through the darkest times of their lives. ***Warning: this episode talks about suicid...

Penny married John in the 80s. She always believed marriage was forever, and she felt comfortable in her role of wife and mother.  Then one day, 30 years into her marriage, she receives a message that shatters her reality. It sets Penny off on a journey to confront the lies and deception that litter her love life.

Aidan Jones is a stand up comedian. Jokes and stories are his stock in trade. But the defining story of his life happened before he was born: when his mum was in her 20s, she returned home from an extended trip around South America only to realise that she'd just fallen pregnant to her Colombian boyfriend. Aidan was the result. It's a series of events that would take almost thirty years for Aidan...

Think about where you are stored in your brain. Your sense of self and identity, who you are basically. What if your brain decided it wanted to shut a few things down? That's what happened to ABC broadcaster Karen Tighe. As an experience sports journalist she's covered the world's biggest events with a career's worth of memories and experiences to reference. But after Karen contracted encephalitis...

Alyce Nelligan is used to being a trailblazer.   Born with minicore myopathy, a rare muscle disease, she was the first kid at her primary school in a wheelchair, and the first person with a physical disability to graduate from her high school in Toowoomba, Queensland.   She’s also used to being told what she is and isn’t capable of achieving.  But Alyce, hasn’t met a barrier she hasn’t been able t...

Out of nowhere, the lightning bolt struck both of them. A last minute visit to the beach becomes a bigger ordeal than anyone could have imagined, enough to change the course of their lives. But that’s not exactly how publishers Kevin and Hannah see things. Especially when they keep getting asked about that day over and over again. 

Sporting heroes can seem so far away, out of reach like sporting gods. Only in our dreams could we play with such deities. David Jack's had an idol like that, George Best. A Manchester United legend, footballing genius and style icon who was known as the fifth Beatle. Like a lot of kids in Manchester, David was brought up on a diet of football and David's dream was to play with Best. We follow Dav...

Barb grew up in a large Irish Catholic family headed by her father Dave, an eccentric and devout man.   Barb’s childhood is steeped in her father's faith like the power of saintly examples, repenting for your sins and messages passed to the world through apparitions of Mary, Our Lady.  As a young adult, Barb forms her own opinion and walks away from the Church and everything her father believes. T...