Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Chloe Hooper’s hopeful spell Aug 17, 2022

Show notes

The Australian author on the bedtime story she wrote for her young sons, to try to explain the grief and uncertainty of their father's leukaemia diagnosis

Paralympian Christie Dawes is super/normal Aug 16, 2022

Show notes

Christie splits her time between training for road and track wheelchair races, holding down several jobs, and raising her family. The Tokyo Paralympics will be her seventh as a competitor, but Christie almost gave up marathons after the 2013 Boston Marathon, and the most frightening experience of her life (CW: mention of suicide) (R)

Raising seven classical musicians: the Kanneh-Masons Aug 15, 2022

Show notes

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason on what it takes to keep up with her seven children — all of them gifted classical musicians.

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason 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 teens to the mid-twenties, fill the family home with glorious music.

Further information

House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons is published by Oneworld

To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversations podcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

La Goulue — from the cancan to lion taming Aug 12, 2022

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Academic Will Visconti on the true history of the most famous cancan dancer in Paris at the turn of the century, and her later work taming lions

Tony the Aussie-Vietnamese Gangster Pastor Aug 11, 2022

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Tony Hoang was a teenage heroin dealer in Cabramatta at 13, grappling with addiction at 21, then cried out to God for a sign. What came next was more literal than he could have imagined

Platypuses' best friend Aug 10, 2022

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It was love at first sight, when Jack Ashby first set eyes upon a platypus specimen as a young university student

The story of the Bible in Australia Aug 09, 2022

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Historian Meredith Lake with the Bible's Australian history, from the convict era, to the Mabo land rights campaign, and the modern-day Pentecostal churches (R)

My Giddy Aunt — women's vaudeville in Australia Aug 08, 2022

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Documentary filmmaker Sharon Connolly has unearthed her family history of female whistling comedians, and how they changed ideas about how women should behave

Running from the FBI: life in The Weather Underground Aug 05, 2022

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Zayd Dohrn’s parents were militant left-wing revolutionaries, and he was born while they were living underground, fugitives from the FBI.

A life in the law, on the Glitter Strip Aug 04, 2022

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Gold Coast lawyer Chris Nyst on his 45 years in criminal law, defending career criminals, corrupt police, heroin addicts and a postcard bandit