Conversations

When Anne was ten, she walked onto the school playground and a girl spat in her face after calling her ‘a dirty, Arab Muslim’. To her shock, her teacher did nothing. The incident changed how she saw the world, and helped set her on the path to becoming the first Australian Muslim woman elected to parliament (R)

Darwin's Ben Graetz on becoming one of Australia's best-known Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Drag Queens

Surf-loving athlete Nick Marshall is a former professional ironman. Now a physiotherapist, he's created a new way for kids with special needs to be included at the beach (R)

Megan Davis was raised as a 'Queensland Rail kid', then in a book-loving household in a housing commission home. She grew up to become a lawyer at the UN, then began a history-making process of helping Australia's First Nations people speak the truth to power

Zooarchaeologist Dr Melanie Fillios uses the remains and fossils of animals, including dingoes, to understand more about ancient humans (R)

George Megalogenis looks at the Morrison government's response to the pandemic so far, and asks whether the 'exit strategy' fully comprehends the changed landscape of the post-COVID world

Cheryl is a Wadjuk traditional owner playing the long game in the Swan Valley community where she grew up (R)

A Gangulu elder, Mick was Co-Commissioner of the high profile Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory. Mick's fierce advocacy for young people is due in part to a sliding doors moment in his teens (CW: Discussion of suicide.  And for ATSI listeners please be advised this conversation contains the names of people who have died.  Take care when listen...

Aunty Kath, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, was Valerie's godmother, and just one of many staunch political figures on both sides of her family. Val worked her way to becoming a powerful advocate for Aboriginal people and her family CW: ATSI listeners please use discretion when listening as the program references people who have died.

Vic grew up on an Aboriginal mission in Sydney's La Perouse in the 1950s, becoming a singing star in his teens. He went on to write and record Australia's first Aboriginal protest album, while in prison. Luke Peacock 'unearthed' Vic's album decades later, and worked alongside him, to bring it to a new public (R)

Gurindji man and ABC presenter Charlie knew a little about his mum's life as he grew up. But after her death, he began to reckon with what she'd lived through as a child (CW: contains mention of ATSI people who have died; mentions of sexual violence)

Tarang Chawla with his family's story of migration from India to Melbourne to make a new life, and how the murder of his sister Niki changed his own path (CW: graphic discussion of family violence. Discretion advised)

How does Ben Crowe get elite athletes to the top of their game? What he asks footballers, surfers and tennis players to do seems counter intuitive, and a lot of the work happens off the field. (R) Ben Crowe is a mindset coach who has worked with elite athletes like surfer Steph Gilmore, tennis superstar Ash Barty, and the Richmond Football Club. But Ben's method of coaching seems counter-intuitive...

Vic Simms, Jen Cloher, Vika and Linda Bull, Rob Hirst, Elena Kats-Chernin, William Barton with stories from their formative years

Even the cheapest guitars are made in part from trees which are becoming increasingly rare. Chris Gibson's curiosity about these timbers led him on a worldwide journey to understand the guitar's past and future

Betty Klimenko grew up as an heiress to the Westfield fortune. Then she turned her back on it all to marry the man of her dreams (R)

Ianto Ware with the story of growing up in the suburbs of Adelaide with his radical feminist lesbian mother Dimity

Ben grew up in a Glasgow housing estate, then married, went to University and made a life for himself as a musician. But some years later, he was homeless (R)

Kyle was a 55-year old children's author and husband when she began living her truth as a trans woman

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

After years teaching in the remote Northern Territory, Julie began to trace her ancestry among the Darug people around the Hawkesbury River. Her most recent novel was written in response to Kate Grenville's The Secret River

'Love on the Spectrum' star Jodi Rodgers on her life as a sexologist and relationship counsellor for people with Autism, and her unexpected chapter in reality TV

Alexandra Seddon with the story of her aristocratic Russian family and their legacy, which helped her found a wildlife refuge for potoroos, koalas, snakes and kangaroos (CW: childhood abuse, historic suicide)

Parenting educator and retired psychologist Steve Biddulph was in his 50s when a chance conversation over lunch shifted almost everything about how he saw himself

Physiotherapist Sky Fosbrooke’s stint as a volunteer health worker led to a deep attachment to the people of a small South Santo village (R)