Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Helen Garner's love letter to her grandson, and football Dec 06, 2024

Show notes

When writer Helen Garner began following her grandson’s under-16s football team, she gained a new appreciation for 'the ordinary beauty of human society'.

Cyclone Tracy 50 years on — the epic survival stories of a cub reporter and a woman in the navy Dec 05, 2024

Show notes

Finance journalist Alan Kohler and Patricia Collins, who had just joined the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service, recall their vivid memories from the night that irrevocably changed Darwin

It's been half a century since Darwin was nearly completely razed by Cyclone Tracy.

On Christmas Day in 1974, the monster cyclone bore down on the city, killing at least 66 people.

Both Alan Kohler and Patricia Collins survived that night in very different circumstances.

Alan was living in a share house on stilts with other young journalists at the time, and they were all huddled in the bathroom when the house fell down.

The next day, he and his friends set about printing an emergency copy of the Northern Territory news to let locals know what had happened and what do to next.

Patricia was still a teenager and had recently enlisted in the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service.

Stationed at HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin, Patricia and the other women in the Navy were given the option to evacuate after the storm, or to stay.

Patricia chose to stay and help get Darwin back on its feet.

Further information

Disasters take time to work through — and it's ok to ask for support. If this episode of Conversations brings up any issues for you, you can call any of these helplines:

You can also call any of these hotlines if you, or someone you know, is in distress:

Lifeline on 13 11 14
Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636
Mensline on 1300 789 978
Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800
Mental Health Line on 1800 011 511

This episode of Conversations discusses natural disasters, storms, wet season, how to survive a cyclone, Darwin, Northern Territory, Top End, Monsoon Season, tropical weather, modern history, Australian history, books, grief, reflection, personal stories.

Love, jail, Jesus, and pubs — a tangled tale of four very different parents Dec 04, 2024

Show notes

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 Blaine 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 creeping sense of dread.

She knew that one day the troubled biological parents of three of the children in the family would appear in their lives.

Michael and Mary Shelley were Christian fanatics wandering from place to place, in and out of jail and psychiatric hospitals, and notorious for stalking politicians and judges.

One evening, when Lenore was at home with some of the children, Mary Shelley knocked on her door, changing the family's life forever.

This episode of Conversations explores family, origin stories, adoption, foster care, religion, Christianity, mental health, mental illness, family dynamics, parenting.

Professor Richard Scolyer — Melanoma expert turned brain cancer patient Dec 03, 2024

Show notes

When Richard's team developed pioneering treatment for melanoma, he didn't expect he would become the first person in the world to use this experimental therapy on his own, terminal brain tumour.

Joint Australian of the year Professor Richard Scolyer has spent his medical career saving the lives of people with melanoma.

Then suddenly last year, the life he had to save was his own.

A tumour was discovered in Richard’s brain and the diagnosis was terminal.

So Richard and his colleagues decided to try something completely radical and experimental.

This episode of Conversations touches on personal stories, epic origin stories, cancer, dealing with cancer diagnosis, how to cope with cancer, glioblastoma, brain tumours, brain cancer, melanoma treatment, immunotherapy, Australian of the year, skin cancer and terminal illness.

Antarctica, Kiribati and outback Australia — the adventures of a GP doctor Dec 02, 2024

Show notes

When Dr Gillian Deakin became a GP, she knew she didn’t want to work behind a desk. Instead, she travelled overseas to make a difference. More recently, she has focused on treating patients with functional illnesses — symptoms that come and go despite all tests and scans showing up as normal.

Dr Gillian Deakin grew up close enough to hear the lions roaring at night in Sydney's Taronga Zoo.

She was part of a large, Catholic family and learned social justice and critical thinking from a young age.

When Gillian became a doctor, she promised herself her career wouldn’t involve sitting behind a desk.

She worked on the Australian outback film Burke and Wills, in Antarctica and on the tiny coral atoll of Kiribati.

Today Gillian treats patients with functional disorders — aggravating symptoms that sometimes escape medical diagnosis and can deeply affect people’s lives.

This episode of Conversations touches on personal stories, family origins, personal stories, mothers, fathers, Antarctica, Kiribati, outback Australia, GP training, functional symptoms, and functional illness.

Jonathan Haidt on 'attention fracking' and how to stop tech companies from stealing your child's focus Nov 29, 2024

Show notes

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says it is time to reinstate the play-based childhood to bring our kids back from life online and into the real world, away from their increasing obsession with devices.

It’s a fact of modern life that children who are given smart phones are able to access pornography, real images of violence and harmful comparisons with their friends and also influencers around the world.

Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt argues that as the social norms have changed, and younger and younger children have been allowed access to their own devices, their participation in the real world has suffered.

Jonathan’s theory is that in order to combat the addicting influence of technology on our kids’ lives, families and society must encourage and allow children to enjoy free play, independence and responsibility in the real world.

He says, rather than despairing at the current state of childhood, we have the power to give children fun, excitement and a passport to the real world.

This episode of Conversations touches on Australia's social media ban, screen addiction, smart phones, online gaming, social media, mental health, teens, childhood, free play, children's independence, risk, outdoor play, child development, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, gaming, and Jonathan Haidt.

The secrets in the stars — what we can learn about habitable planets, alien life and ourselves Nov 28, 2024

Show notes

Dr Laura Driessen takes you 26,000 light-years away, into the centre of our galaxy and beyond in the search for radio stars, supermassive black holes and supernova remnants.

Dr Laura Driessen is a radio astronomer who is fascinated with the scale of the universe and the wealth of information it holds, especially in its stars.

Her obsession began as a child, looking through her mini telescope on family camping trips at the planets and at comets.

But it wasn't until Laura was an undergraduate science student — poring over data from a giant radio telescope to create images of what the centre of our Milky Way looks like — that she got truly hooked into radio waves.

Laura now specialises in radio stars at the University of Sydney's Institute for Astronomy.

What she is discovering about these flaring beasts could be pivotal in the search for other habitable plants, and possibly alien life.

This episode of Conversations discusses space exploration, physics, astrophysics, astronauts, rocket ships, space shuttles, telescopes, radio telescopes, aliens, NASA, Elon Musk, Space X, galaxies, constellations, astronomy.

Alice Zaslavsky's hunger for life Nov 27, 2024

Show notes

The Masterchef graduate and cookbook author grew up in Georgia as the Soviet Union was crumbling, gorging on plums in her grandfather's garden. During this time the young, voracious Alice couldn't keep her food down at kindy. And it took years to work out why.

Cookbook author and TV presenter, Alice Zaslavsky grew up in Georgia as the Soviet Union was crumbling.

She would gorge herself on plums in her grandfather's garden, and her voracious spirit was celebrated and encouraged by her parents and grandparents.

In 1989, a Georgian independence protest was violently quashed by Soviet soldiers, in the street where she went to kindergarten.

Alice repressed the fear of that time, through her Jewish family's emigration to Australia.

Alice eventually became a teacher — the fourth generation in her family — and ended up on Masterchef in 2012, as a way to encourage her students to study her elective at school.

She has passed on her love of Georgian food to her daughter, through lashings of rye bread and sunflower oil.

This episode of Conversations touches on origin stories, family stories, life story, family dynamics, personal stories, reflection, Georgia, USSR, former Soviet Union, Tbilisi, Jewish, immigration, cookbooks, cooking and cooking with family.

Pip Williams — from dyslexia to the Dictionary of Lost Words Nov 26, 2024

Show notes

Pip Williams was diagnosed with dyslexia as a teenager. She grew up to write a novel inspired by the history of the Oxford Dictionary, which soon became an international bestseller. (R)

Pip Williams was a teenage poetry enthusiast when she had her first poem, called Fifteen, published in Dolly magazine.

Then just a couple of years later, she was diagnosed with dyslexia.

But despite her struggles with reading and spelling, she never drew back from the world of books and words.

A few years ago Pip was reading a non-fiction book about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary when she started to question why there weren't more women in the story.

Then she found the story of a missing word left out of the first-ever edition of the dictionary.

This story became the seeds of Pip's first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, which is now an international bestseller.

This episode of Conversations touches on dyslexia, dictionary, tree change, writing, books, Italy, travel, memoir, neurodivergence, learning disability, permaculture, farm to table, author, novels, personal stories, motherhood, origin stories, and reflection.

Jon Ronson on psychopaths, sociopaths and how to spot them Nov 25, 2024

Show notes

The journalist delves into the history of experimental psychopathy treatment in Canada, which included mass, nude LSD trips.

Years ago, journalist Jon Ronson did a course on how to spot a psychopath.

People with psychopathic tendencies tend to use certain patterns of behaviour, turns of phrase, and a decoy mask of normality.

Then Jon went out and met with men who had committed violent crimes, or had used their traits to make extraordinary amounts of money, and who had been locked up, for years, all because of their psychopathy.

In the process of his research, Jon noticed that today's reliance on social media fuels and rewards certain psychopathic traits.

To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversation 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.

This episode of Conversations touches on psychopaths, sociopaths, the Hare checklist, Jon Ronson, psychopathic traits, CEOs, murderers, life stories, prison, jail, psychiatric institutions, LSD and psychotherapy.

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