Conversations

ABC Australia

Conversations draws you deeper into the life story of someone you may have heard about, but never met. Journey into their world, joining them on epic adventures to unfamiliar places, back in time to wild moments of history, and into their deepest memories, to be moved by personal stories of resilience and redemption.

Hosted by Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski, Conversations is the ABC's most popular long-form interview program. Every day we explore the vast tapestry of human experience, weaving together narratives from history, science, art, and personal storytelling.

Conversations Live is coming to the stage! Join Sarah Kanowski and Richard Fidler for an unmissable night of unforgettable stories, behind-the-scenes secrets, and surprise guests. Australia’s most-loved podcast — live, up close, and in the moment. Find out more at the Conversations website.

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2,001 episodes
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Episodes2001

Newest first

Jul 18, 2025 · 50 min
Encore: The secret world of servos after dark
David Goodwin spent years working the graveyard shift at his local service station in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. The grungy work quickly took over his life (R). He took the job to support his university studies, but working overnight made study impossible and soon the work took over. From his brightly lit perch behind the anti-jump wires, David saw a collection of very strange people come through the auto-doors. There was the man dressed as a giant bee, a woman who offered to pay for her
Jul 17, 2025 · 48 min
Dr Rangan Chatterjee on health and healing in a hectic world
As a boy, Dr Rangan Chatterjee saw his dad work day and night as a doctor before succumbing to an auto-immune disease. After his father's death in 2013, Rangan had an epiphany about his own future. Rangan rew up watching his workaholic father come home from his first job in a hospital, have dinner, shave and leave for his night shift as a home-visiting GP. It was normal for his dad to only sleep three nights a week, for 30 years. This sort of lifestyle eventually caught up with Rangan's fath
Jul 16, 2025 · 49 min
The hidden corners of Emma's Hong Kong — fishing villages, beaches and ancestral graveyards
Novelist Emma Pei Yin ran away from Hong Kong as a teenager to start fresh in Australia. But she found herself repeatedly drawn back home whenever she put pen to paper. Emma grew up in England and Hong Kong. But her life in Hong Kong wasn’t so much about the neon skyscrapers as it was about her family’s ancestral village, tucked away in the New Territories. Emma spent her school holidays there with her grandparents, learning how to take care of the family cemetery and joining in Chinese Festiv
Jul 15, 2025 · 52 min
AFL star Zach Tuohy on his silent struggles as a young father and life after footy
Zach was still a teen when he was scouted by the AFL in Ireland, beginning a great adventure in Australia, where he fell in love and unexpectedly became a dad. On his way home from training, a 24-year-old Zach would have to pull over on the side of the road to cry before he got home to his young family. Zach Tuohy was just 17 years old when he was scouted by the Carlton Football Club at a Gaelic football tournament in his home country of Ireland. He did two trials for the club before taking th
Jul 11, 2025 · 47 min
Encore: Janty Blair is the BMW of standup comics
After a lifetime of nursing and midwifery, Janty Blair discovered her funny bone in her late 50s, following a serendipitous Bumble date (R). Janty's father, Bob, was a staff sergeant in the Australian Army, and so she grew up moving around the country. Home for Janty, a Butchulla, Mununjhali and Woppaburra woman, was really Hervey Bay in Queensland, where she would go on trips every year to visit her aunties, uncles, cousins and grandparents, all of whom were stomach-achingly funny. While Jan
Jul 10, 2025 · 52 min
Leah Purcell's meteoric rise, from the Murgon meatworks to centre stage
Leah Purcell grew up in a small town caring for her mum Florence. Her options after graduation were nursing or working at the meatworks. But after a push from her meatworks boss, Leah defied her own expectations for herself (R). Leah is now an acclaimed actor, playwright, and stage and film director. She grew up in the Queensland country town of Murgon. Although she came from a big family, it was just her and her mum for most of her childhood. Her dad lived in town, but didn’t acknowledge her
Jul 9, 2025 · 50 min
How a boy from Balmain made caring cool
Bundjalung man, Jack Manning Bancroft's scholarship to a prestigious Sydney University college showed him a rarefied world that shocked him, and he used his childhood grit to channel his energy into a world-changing project. Jack's mother is Bundjalung artist, Bronwyn Bancroft. Growing up in inner-Sydney, he was intimidated by her artistic drive and threw himself into sport, because that was the only way a young Jack thought a man could have influence in the world. When he was ten the family
Jul 8, 2025 · 45 min
A family secret unearths connection to country
Yvonne Orley grew up on Aboriginal missions in NSW as the child of the matron and manager. But it turned out that Yvonne had much deeper connections to the country, and the people, that she knew at the time. Although her mother had tried to hide this part of the family story, it turned out that Yvonne herself was a Kamilaroi woman and this was her mother’s traditional country. Yvonne’s life took another unexpected turn 25 years ago when her sister asked if she would allow a group of high need
Jul 4, 2025 · 52 min
Encore: Love, jail, Jesus, and pubs — a tangled tale of four very different parents
Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of foster care and child removal. Lech grew up in a big family in country Queensland, where his dad Tom ran pubs for a living. He had six older siblings, who had come to the family as foster kids before he was born. It was a happy, knockabout, sports-obsessed childhood. But in the midst of all the love and warmth, Lech's mum Lenore lived with a cr
Jul 3, 2025 · 52 min
When a sea change collides with messy midlife
For journalist Kate Halfpenny, moving to a beachside town during Melbourne's lockdowns seemed like the perfect way to unwind and escape her huge mortgage. Then she had to contend with the triple whammy of perimenopause, her husband's alcoholism and distance from family and friends. For the first time in her life, Kate had an empty house, no job commitments and no city life to distract her. She was able to indulge daily in her love of boogie boarding and surf-side walks with her dog, Maggie. O
Jul 2, 2025 · 51 min
Hannah vs Disney, Lizzo and Beyonce
Hannah Diviney made history in 2022 when she became the first person with a disability to film a sex scene for Australian television. Then she went viral when she confronted both Lizzo and Beyonce over an ableist slur in their song lyrics. When Hannah was growing up, the only people she saw on TV who used a wheelchair like her were Paralympians or in Road Safety ads. Hannah spent a lot of her childhood feeling lonely and left out, though she was sure she wanted to be a writer when she grew up.
Jul 1, 2025 · 52 min
Purity, hypnosis and hiding — how a gay teen survived Opus Dei
Hollywood actor Tim Pocock was tricked by his dying, devout mother into undergoing gay conversion therapy. After she died, Tim finally learned how to be himself, without fear and self-loathing. Tim grew up under the thumb of his charismatic, pious mother. He went to a school with links to the controversial, secretive and conservative Catholic organisation, Opus Dei. There, he desperately tried to hide his sexuality, and was ruthlessly bullied for his musical and stage talents. Despite Tim's
Jun 27, 2025 · 50 min
Encore: my three fathers
American novelist Ann Patchett reflects on Frank, Mike and Darrell, the men who made her, going a year without shopping and her power to make herself invisible (R) Ann Patchett is an acclaimed American novelist and the owner of an independent bookstore in Nashville. Ann has had three fathers — Frank, Mike and Darrell, who have each provided her with material or motivation for her writing. In 1974 Frank signed up for a subscription to the “100 Greatest Books of All Time” from the Franklin Libr
Jun 26, 2025 · 53 min
Inside the six-day siege of the Iranian Embassy in London
In April 1980, a group of armed men invaded the Iranian Embassy in London, taking hostages, and issuing demands in the name of a cause almost no one had ever heard of. The 'Group of the Martyr', a collection of Iranian Arabs, wanted independence for their province of Iran, but their demands were impossible for the British Government to meet, and so the then-little known Special Air Service (SAS) were told to plan an invasion of the building to rescue the hostages. They had taken 26 people host
Jun 25, 2025 · 47 min
Mass murder, cannibalism and insanity — inside Mao's cultural revolution
China's cultural revolution was murderously violent and culturally devastating; millions of people, artefacts and ideas went up in smoke. So what's fuelling today's Neo-Maoist movement and nostalgia for that period? In 1966, the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong went to war against his own government. What followed was ten years of murderous violence and utter insanity, until Mao's death in 1976. Children were urged to denounce their parents, teachers were beaten to death in front of ho
Jun 24, 2025 · 53 min
How I became a brainwashed cult bride
Liz Cameron was 18 years old when a stranger approached her in a book shop. It was the beginning of her induction into a cult, and it was an experience Liz barely survived. The process of brainwashing happened gradually, first came the love-bombing and the allure of finding a new purpose in life. Then came the isolation from friends and family, along with sleep deprivation, overwork and sexual manipulation. Liz was one of the many women chosen to become a kind of bride for the leader of an inf
Jun 20, 2025 · 54 min
Encore: the charming Italian narcissist
When Kerstin Pilz found out that her charming husband Gianni had been cheating on her while he was dying and she was taking care of him, she had to decide what to do next (R) She had fallen madly in love with this Italian man when she was in her 40s. The two married and began travelling the world together. Then Gianni suddenly fell ill. As he was in the hospital undergoing surgery for life-threatening cancer, Kerstin discovered her husband was not the man she thought he was. Further info
Jun 19, 2025 · 52 min
Mr. Finch — deathworker in the tapestry of life
Author Katia Ariel tells the story of Ephraim Finch, a man synonymous with death in the Melbourne Jewish community. He started life as Geoffrey William, the son of a butcher, who would go on to become a master builder before his life became unrecognisable to him. Several years ago, Melbourne author and book editor, Katia was invited to write Ephraim's biography. Katia was already familiar with his name. She had seen the way mourners uttered his name and felt a sense of calm and ease within th
Jun 18, 2025 · 52 min
The mind f**k of pain — retraining your system to tackle chronic pain
Professor Lorimer Moseley is neuroscientist, who specialises in the complexities and mind-boggling nature of pain - what it is, why it exists, how it works and when it can go wrong. For most of us, pain is a fundamental part of being alive, and staying alive and yet none of us will ever experience the exact same pain as someone else, which makes it incredibly difficult to understand. Every day, we stub our toes and burn our tongues. Some of us break bones and suffer from more serious illnesses
Jun 17, 2025 · 53 min
When Peter Greste became the story
It’s been a decade since Australian journalist Peter Greste became a global news story, spending 400 days imprisoned in Egypt. But he still misses the life he had as a foreign correspondent. Peter and two colleagues were arrested while working for Al Jazeera in Cairo, they were charged with spreading false news and aiding terrorism. Peter then was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in jail. Back home, Peter’s parents Juris and Lois became the face of the campaign to free him and his tw