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

Jun 13, 2025 · 51 min
Encore: When success, a big house and a loving family aren't enough
What happens when a man can't stop his drive and desire for more? Author Andrew O'Hagan dissects the pitfalls of more money, more success and more applause (R) Andrew O’Hagan is the author of several highly acclaimed novels. His most recent book is a sweeping portrait of modern-day London, a city ‘levitating on a sea of dirty Russian money’. The main character, Campbell Flynn, is much like Andrew himself: a public intellectual who escaped from the Scottish council estate he grew up in and ca
Jun 12, 2025 · 46 min
Actor and Hollywood It Girl Ione Skye on surrendering her Rock 'n' Roll past and forgiving herself
The Gen X actor on making peace with her absent father, the ghosts of her Hollywood past and nursing Anthony Kiedis through his drug addiction while she was still a teenager — a relationship she shudders at today. The 1990s It girl was named for the Scottish island where she was conceived, before her enigmatic folk singer father, Donovan abandoned the family before she was born. A string of stepfathers couldn’t remedy Ione's fundamental abandonment and she grew up surrounded by creative types
Jun 11, 2025 · 52 min
Our post-American future — what will the new world order look like?
Defence analyst Hugh White says Australian leaders are in denial about how dramatically the world has changed, and need to get a grip on the deep, troubling forces propelling us into a new order of world power. The balance of global power has changed dramatically over the last 25 years. Even in the last five years, so much has happened - the pandemic, AUKUS, the war in Ukraine, a change of government here in Australia, Donald Trump's return to the White House, and all the tumult that has follo
Jun 10, 2025 · 48 min
The pyromaniac kid who made barbecue his life
As a child, chef Graeme Stockdale was embarrassed by the smell of sauerkraut and pickles that would trail him from his Polish and German grandparents' home. A transformative encounter with a barbecued duck in Singapore changed his life, though nothing would prepare him for two monumental floods in his adopted region of Lismore, NSW. Graeme was only a boy when he was introduced to the power and ferocity of fire. As a nine-year-old living in Albany, Western Australia he lit a fire out of curios
Jun 6, 2025 · 52 min
Encore: Hormones and mental health with Dr Jayashri Kulkarni
Dr Jayashri Kulkarni on her Indian-Australian upbringing and her groundbreaking research into women's hormones and mental health (R) Jayashri Kulkarni’s family moved from India to Australia in 1961. They found there were no Indian grocery stores, few spices of any kind, and plain yoghurt wasn’t available. But the Kulkarnis adapted to their new home, teaching their neighbours how to cook Indian food, and encouraging Jayashri's love for studying. Jayashri became a doctor, and during her traini
Jun 5, 2025 · 48 min
Part TWO: Locked up in China — Cheng Lei on cell mates, singing and survival
Cheng Lei's years in detention in China, on trumped-up espionage charges, go from cruel and isolating, to absurd and romantic when she gets moved into a cell with three other women. The Chinese-Australian journalist was held in detention in China for more than three years, accused of selling state secrets to foreign people and powers. In episode one of this two-part series, Lei explained how the charges hinged on a document that was read out publicly on television, and how she survived the cru
Jun 4, 2025 · 49 min
Part ONE: Locked up in China — Cheng Lei on state paranoia and staying sane in isolation
When journalist Cheng Lei was detained by Chinese state security agents, she thought would be freed within the week. Instead, she was held on absurd espionage charges for more than three years, much of that time spent in isolation. When Cheng Lei moved back to the country of her birth after the dramatic opening up of China to the world, she was a part of something exciting and historic. That all changed after Xi Jinping came to power, and Australia's relations with China deteriorated. In this
Jun 3, 2025 · 51 min
Depersonalisation — when Nathan lost his sense of self and nothing felt real
In 2008 Nathan Dunne was night swimming in Hampstead Heath in the middle of winter when a psychological catastrophe struck him. He felt his sense of self split in two, and an unbearable pain overtook him. He couldn’t work out what had happened to him, and neither could the doctors. CW: This discussion contains sensitive mental health details and mentions suicide. Nathan was driven to attempt suicide, and endured years of misdiagnoses from doctors and medications that didn't work. Nathan didn'
May 30, 2025 · 48 min
Encore: A home filled with music — raising the Kanneh-Masons
Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason on what it takes to keep up with her seven children — all of them gifted classical musicians (R). Kadiatu is a former English academic and the mother of seven extraordinary children. All of them are gifted classical musicians. Her eldest daughter, Isata wrote and performed her first piano concerto at the age of eleven. Her son Sheku mastered the cello and performed at the royal wedding of Harry and Megan Markle. Every day the seven Kanneh-Masons, who range from early te
May 29, 2025 · 53 min
Why Colm Toibin ran away with the circus — to Barcelona, Brooklyn and beyond
The Irish novelist has always been open to where life can unexpectedly take him, and the excitement that comes with that kind of freedom. Colm Toibin's first big move was from rural Ireland to Dublin after his father died when he was young. Then, it was off to experience the wild hedonism and sexual liberation of post-Franco Spain, a pleasant shock after needing a prescription to buy condoms in Ireland. Since then, he's journeyed to Sudan, Los Angeles, New York and beyond. Wherever Colm goe
May 28, 2025 · 51 min
Hilde Hinton's home for the temporarily defeated
When Hilde Hinton was on the cusp of adolescence, her mother died. For years she protected her younger siblings from the truth about their mum. Despite the great grief of her mother's shocking death when Hilde was just 12 years old, there was also a sense of relief for Hilde. She shielded her younger siblings, Samuel and Connie Johnson, from the truth of how and why their mother died. But when Connie also died, decades later of cancer, Hilde was propelled into writing her first novel, in
May 27, 2025 · 52 min
The secret life of Scarlett, the octopus
When Alex Schnell was around 5 years old, playing in rock pools around Clovelly beach in Sydney, she had an alien encounter. The creature in the shallow water in front of her was a little octopus and unlike anything Alex had seen before, and instead of darting off in fear like a fish might, to Alex it felt like the octopus was genuinely curious in her. Alex has now spent many hours observing them in the ocean, and has discovered extraordinary things about octopus intelligence, personalities,
May 23, 2025 · 51 min
Encore: How Sean Sweeney found his deaf heart
Sean Sweeney on the complications and joys of growing up as a a hearing child in a deaf family, using Auslan, a distinctively Australian sign language. In his twenties, Sean rebelled against the deaf world, and began to look for a new life in the hearing one. But after eighteen years, he returned. He found work as an interpreter at TAFE, and he met his future wife. In 2019, Sean became well known for interpreting from English to Auslan for Australia's Rural Fire Service during Australia's Bus
May 22, 2025 · 51 min
The miserable lives and golden guns of tyrants, dictators and despots
Marcel Dirsus is fascinated by the treadmill of tyranny: how dictators gain power, how they stay there and how they fall. This is his blueprint for bringing an end to authoritarianism. With democracies seemingly faltering worldwide, political scientist and writer Marcel Dirsus is putting tyrants under the microscope to better understand how they rise and how they fall. Years ago, Marcel took a break from his university studies and travelled to central Africa, where he took a job in a brewery.
May 21, 2025 · 53 min
Claire Keegan on bravery, writing and the single life
The bestselling Irish author grew up on a farm set on “50 acres on the side of a hill”. Growing up, she witnessed a harsh, misogynistic country that convinced her she would never marry. Claire shares what she has learned about writing from a litter of newborn piglets. Her works Small Things Like These and Foster have both been made into movies. Claire's stories often take place in the landscape where she grew up — the farms and small towns of Wexford in Southeast Ireland. Claire was the young
May 20, 2025 · 53 min
Peter Godwin's complicated loves, great losses and occasional wars
The writer had a complex relationship with his mother, whose professional reputation built a wall between them, but also saved his life more than once while working as a war correspondent. Peter Godwin was born in Zimbabwe when the country was still under colonial rule. His English mother was the only doctor for thousands of kilometres and early on, Peter realised that he came second to her patients. When Peter was little, civil war broke out at home and so he was sent away to boarding school
May 16, 2025 · 52 min
Treating anorexia by nourishing the heart
Psychiatrist Warren Ward treats patients who are severely ill with eating disorders. Understanding the mystery of human nature has driven him since he was a young doctor. Warren Ward's patients are often critically ill with diseases like anorexia. Warren says asking someone with anorexia to eat is like asking an arachnophobe to put their hand in a jar full of spiders. As a psychiatrist, Warren uses psychotherapy to help his patients. He encourages those with an eating disorder to approach th
May 15, 2025 · 51 min
Ghost stories and executions in Iceland — when Hannah Kent and Agnes Magnusdottir became entwined
When writer Hannah Kent first visited Iceland in 2003, she came across a gothic true story about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman hanged in Iceland. That story would change her life. Hannah's arrival to the Nordic island as an exchange student in 2003 was a difficult one. On her first night in the country, she found herself stranded late at night at Keflavik Airport and desperately homesick. But within weeks, Iceland had begun to change young Hannah — its dramatic landscapes, extraordinary
May 14, 2025 · 51 min
Heroin addiction, Ivan Milat's dentist, and beginning again
Claude Robinson developed a heroin habit as a young man, and spent years in jail. In 2006 he began to turn his life around for good. (CW: descriptions of drug use, addiction, and crime) (R) Claude Robinson is the manager of Rainbow Lodge, a home in inner Sydney for men just out of prison. Claude knows the place well because nearly 20 years ago he was sent there himself. Claude was a heroin addict who had taken to crime to pay for his habit and wound up in a minimum security jail. But after he
May 13, 2025 · 52 min
Situationships, risks and growing pains — Jemma Sbeg on surviving your 20s
From relationships and loneliness, to indecision and burnout, Jemma Sbeg is your guide to navigating your 20s, and looking back on that decade with a new perspective. When Jemma Sbeg started recording a podcast in the back of her Subaru about her quarter life crisis, she had no idea just how many people she would reach. But other people her age were desperate for guidance through their 20s - a decade a lot of us romanticise before we get there, and after we leave. It's a decade of massive gro