Conversations

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Briana, Max and Freddy: love, trains and mouth music May 25, 2022

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Briana Blackett was a journalist working in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max was diagnosed with autism, and in time her second son Freddy was too, she left Doha to begin an entirely different life

The caving time lord May 24, 2022

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Dr Kira Westaway is a geochronologist who places modern and ancient humans in context by dating things found in caves. For Kira, how we understand ourselves now, is tied up in the past

The hunt for Hitler's horses by an art sleuth May 23, 2022

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Art detective Arthur Brand met neo-Nazis, billionaire collectors and underground art dealers on his hunt for the two enormous bronze horse sculptures once owned by Hitler. It was all part of his quest to find the criminal masterminds attempting to sell the artwork on the black market (R)

Arthur Brand is an art sleuth based in Amsterdam.

His clients ask him to find stolen works of art, and to find out whether a painting or sculpture being sold on the black market is the real thing.

One day, he received an email with an image attached of two gigantic horse sculptures.

The unknown owner of these statues was claiming that they had once belonged to Adolf Hitler and had stood outside his chancellery building in Berlin.

This led Arthur into a murky world of black market art dealers, billionaire collectors, and Neo-Nazis.

Further informationOriginally broadcast February 2021

Hitler's Horses is published by Penguin

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, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Healing the grieving heart May 20, 2022

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Wendy Liu has spent many years right up close to death. As a forensic counsellor she worked with families who had lost someone to an accident or violence, and as a grief counsellor she supports people surviving all kinds of losses. Wendy says her work brings her a keener appreciation of life

Music, mothering and Martha Wainwright May 19, 2022

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The folk singer on the songs in her blood and the intergenerational conflict between professional creativity and family

Oumuamua's secrets May 18, 2022

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Avi Loeb was Harvard's top astronomer when he became intrigued by reports of a pancake-shaped object the size of a football field hurtling through our solar system (R)

A history of war, humanity and technology May 17, 2022

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Historian Gwynne Dyer on his search to understand whether war is embedded in human nature, and why things are changing, despite the world becoming less violent over the past seven decades

Is war embedded in human nature?

Historian Gwynne Dyer has faced this question during a career serving in the navies of three countries: Canada, the US and the UK.

He says that although war has come to Ukraine, the truth is that the world has been getting less war-like for many decades.

Gwynne is the author of many books on history, war, and technology.

His latest book investigates how people have waged war since the dawn of humanity right up to the present day.

Seven decades have passed since two great powers have gone to war with each other.

But now, Gwynne warns, things are changing.

Further information

The Shortest History of War is published by Black Inc.

Anita Jacoby uncovers painful secrets hidden by her loving father May 16, 2022

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Anita Jacoby has spent decades uncovering the truth about other people, but when she turned the lens on her own father, she was shocked

Anita Jacoby has won awards for her excellence in journalism, uncovering the truth about people and places for almost 40 years from behind the television camera.

But a chance encounter at a dinner party a few years ago forced her to turn the lens on her own family.

What she discovered about her father, Phillip, was painful and extraordinary.

And what she thought would be a family history written only for her nearest and dearest, turned into a book filled with unearthed secrets too important not to share with the rest of the world

Further information

Secrets beyond the Screen is published by Ventura Press.

Building a school for the world’s poorest children — Gemma Sisia's story May 13, 2022

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A donation of land and $10 was all Australian-born Gemma needed to establish The School of St Jude in Tanzania (R)

Tom Tilley: losing my religion May 12, 2022

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Tom Tilley was raised in a loving Pentecostal family, but as he grew up he began to question the church's teachings, especially when it came to speaking in tongues

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