Conversations

Latest Episodes:

Risking everything Jul 01, 2024

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For more than 20 years, Dominic Gordon cycled through the same self-destructive behaviours - stealing, risky sexual encounters, vandalism and drug-use -until he took the biggest risk of all to get his life back

Disaster specialist Lucy Easthope Jun 28, 2024

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When there's a plane crash, a bomb blast, a flood or a pandemic, Lucy Easthope's phone starts ringing. This is how she stays cheerful and trusts her gut in the face of never-ending disasters

Ben Lee: chutzpah mystic, Bondi rock prodigy, Noise Addict Jun 27, 2024

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Ben Lee was a teen rock prodigy by the time he was 14. He then began decades of making music, Hollywood fame, and a journey into alternative spirituality, including the world of ayahuasca

Ben Lee grew up in Bondi in the 1980s when it was a place of bikie gangs, Yiddish-speaking grandmas and tribes of kids living next to one of the world's most beautiful beaches.

He was educated at a local Jewish school where he confounded his Rabbi by asking some surprising questions about Moses.

Ben was always a seeker, and even as a boy, he also possessed a whole lot of chutzpah.

At the age of 14 he saw Nirvana play at the Big Day Out. The next day he started his own band and two years later Ben was flying to America to support Sonic Youth.

This began a wild few decades of making music, Hollywood fame, and a lengthy exploration of alternative spirituality, including a time in an ashram in India, and many ceremonies with ayahuasca, a hallucinogen found in a vine in the Amazon.

After many years, Ben emerged with a crucial realisation about his life story. He is now living back in Australia with his wife Ione and their teenage daughter.

Further information

Find out where to see Ben on his Australian tour

Ben and Ione Skye Lee have a podcast, Weirder Together

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.

The ferryman from life to death Jun 26, 2024

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After Richard Gosling's young daughter survived horrific injuries and open heart surgery, he became a funeral director, leaning into the emotional intensity of that space between life and death

Life and death in the holy city Jun 25, 2024

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John Lyons, the ABC's Global Affairs Editor, reflects on the Israel-Gaza war, drawing on his background as former Middle East correspondent for The Australian

Like oil and water Jun 24, 2024

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A change of heart and a great romance drove Dr Paul Hardisty to walk away from the oil industry and the influence of his brilliant but violent father, and into the world of water

Pack ice, seal fat and the big slide: Tim and Ernest's incredible journey Jun 21, 2024

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Tim Jarvis takes you on his adventures, following in the footsteps of explorer Ernest Shackleton, who tried valiantly to cross Antarctica from sea to sea, from 1914-17 (R)

How Leila saw birds anew Jun 20, 2024

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Leila Jeffreys was a young photographer when she built a tiny studio specifically for birds. She then began taking heart-stopping images of budgies, owls, eagles and cockatoos

Avani Dias on the rise of Narendra Modi Jun 19, 2024

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Avani Dias was working as the South Asia Correspondent for the ABC when she was forced out of India after her reporting fell foul of the Indian government

The beauty of the brain Jun 18, 2024

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Neurosurgeon Brindha Shivalingam says it is a privilege to go into someone’s brain and repair the body's most vital organ. She didn’t expect to become the patient in 2019

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