Conversations

Tom Holland on the glories, bloodshed and barbarianism of the golden days of the Roman Empire

Antony Penrose grew up knowing little about his remarkable mother Lee Miller, who had studied with Man Ray in Paris, and become a model, a photographer, and a war correspondent. But then an unexpected find in the family attic changed everything

Lucy Godoroja deals in the business of buttons, and the stories each button carries with it from Bohemia, or Milan to her shop in Sydney, and then into the hands of passers-by

British-Australian journalist Hayley Campbell uncovers the secret society of the western world's death industry, run by people who have made death their life's work. CW: contains discussions of death and descriptions of dead bodies

Writer and journalist James Phelps takes you inside the bluestone walls and medieval-looking turrets of Australia's most infamous jail

Jon Owen on how he chose a life of 'intentional downward mobility' to help addicts, sex workers, and the homeless, from Calcutta to Mount Druitt to the Wayside Chapel

How a fashion-loving misfit from Sydney took over Hollywood with husband Baz Luhrmann, winning more Oscars than any other Australian (R)

Professor Ian Hickie has spent decades trying to understand clinical depression. Where does it come from? What role do genes play? And most importantly – what works to release its chokehold?

Brendan Watson took his Scouts promise very seriously as a young boy. He's leaned in to his pledge in some very unexpected ways, from Moscow to Mongolia and through temporary blindness back home again

Ecologist Katherine Moseby is helping Australia's bilbies, quolls, and stick-nest rats evolve to become tougher, faster and stronger, so they can survive the looming threat of more than 2 million feral cats (R)

Mick O'Regan met his feisty, brilliant wife Jo for the first time on a work brigade in Nicaragua. They fell in love and had a beautiful baby boy. Then quite unexpectedly, when Jo was in her 50s, Mick became her carer

Darryl Jones on the dramatic lives of Australia's city-dwelling native birds

When David Hannan was a young man, he fled university and took a detour to the wild coral coast of WA where he became a lobster fisherman, before earning an Emmy for his underwater cinematography

Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent two years inside the Iranian prison system, secretly communicating with fellow women prisoners while she waited for news from Australia

Richard Flanagan was forever changed as a young man, when he was trapped for hours and almost drowned in an isolated stretch of river on Tasmania's wild west coast

Writer Kate Forsyth on how revisiting the story of a mythic Minotaur lurking in a labyrinth in Crete helped her realise that we all need monsters (R)

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

Dr Merrick Ekins is Australia's leading expert in carnivorous sea sponges. Some sponges are secret killers, others are made up of glass and imprison tiny shrimp-like lovers for eternity, and others make love to themselves to reproduce

On a whim, Bruce Englefield bought a wildlife park in Tasmania and moved from across the other side of the world to make life better for Tasmanian Devils

The Danish-British author and comedian on her father's laissez faire attitude to school, and how this opened her mind and brought her to NASA's mission control room for the moon landing of 1969

From homeless teen to operatic stardom: how a job at the David Jones food hall changed the trajectory of Stephen Smith's life

In 2018, Shanelle Dawson's family were the subject of a hit true crime podcast which helped convict her father Chris Dawson of her mother's murder. Now she's reclaiming her own story and the story of her mother Lynette

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

Penny grew up consumed by catastrophic thoughts and developed habits to try to ward off impending doom. It turned out she had been living with obsessive compulsive disorder for 30 years

Marine biologist Dr Edith Widder was inside a submersible searching for bioluminescence in the ocean depths when she saw a giant squid as big as a two story house (R)

Tony Wilson was always drawn to the world's great speeches. Then, without warning, he was called on to make the most difficult speech of his life (R)

How Jodie went from skateboarding in her home town of Albany to become a world surfing champion, frothing all the way

An unexpected DNA test result sent Penny Mackieson on a mission across the other side of the world, to find her real natural mother, and discover her identity

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 (R)

Helen Pitt on how the luminous shells of the Sydney Opera House nearly didn't get off the drawing board

A chance encounter led Lovemore Ndou into his local boxing gym, and a lucky left hook became his ticket out of apartheid South Africa

Ben Gillies was a 15 year old drummer when Silverchair became a global sensation. After almost two decades of being a rock star, the band broke up, and Ben began to face his own demons

Lawyer and author David Gillespie has been on a mission to understanding psychopaths after realising he might have worked with one

Josh Niland on his mission to cook with fish eyes, fish liver, and fish sperm to help revolutionise how we cook and eat fish

David Marr with the story of his great-great-grandfather Reg Uhr, who led murderous expeditions with the Native Police during Queensland’s frontier wars CW: mentions the names of Aboriginal people who have died

Diego Garcia-Bellido is a palaeontologist who specialises in soft-bodied fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago. These perfectly preserved eyes, guts and nervous systems provide a window into the beginning of our own family tree, and into life on Mars.

Robyn Davidson on her adventures high in the Himalayas, her love affair with an Indian prince, and her late in life reckoning with her own story (CW: mentions suicide)

Jessica is an orchestral conductor, organ virtuoso and also a synesthete who 'sees' colour in her mind's eye (R)

James O'Hanlon digs deep into the secret world of spiders; complex and tiny lives most of us are either unaware or afraid of

Historian Katherine Pangonis with stories from five cities of the ancient world, from their splendour in antiquity to their comparatively modest twilight

Actor and writer Brendan Cowell with tender and funny tales from his boyhood as a child actor and a budding playwright (R)

Suzie Miller with stories from her free range St Kilda childhood, her drama-filled life as a lawyer, and the inspiration behind her play Prima Facie

Meaghan Katrak Harris with stories from her life as a teenage mother and raising a multicultural family, and her working life as a social worker and an academic

Forensic scientist Dr Xanthe Mallett on her work analysing skeletal remains, investigating cases of wrongful conviction and studying the decomposition of the human body (CW: contains references to death and crime)

Dog behaviourist Laura Vissaritis uses science and psychology to better understand what our dogs really are telling us

Nicholas Jose was living in China in 1989, when the military was sent in to violently quell pro-democracy rallies in Tiananmen Square. He left Beijing the next day and returned to a changed city

Sam Neill is a winemaker, a cancer survivor and a father. He's also an actor, who's made more than 100 films

Rachael Mead with the true story of Nel Law, who stowed away on a Danish ship in 1961 to become the first Australian woman to set foot on Antarctica

Strategic analyst Sam Roggeveen says Australia needs to think more like an echidna when it comes to defence

Dr David Sinclair is a longevity expert who believes ageing is a treatable disease (R)

Kate Cole-Adams has discovered what happens to us while we dwell in the chemical oblivion of general anaesthetic (R)

Charlotte was Australia's first children's author. She came to the colony of NSW from London in 1826, and now her trailblazing, tragic and dramatic life story has been written by her descendants, Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell (R)

Debra Gavranich with the story of her mother Marija, who left her tiny Croatian island to make a life with a man she’d never met, in Far North Queensland's Cassowary Valley (R)

When Bronwyn Sheehan's daughter befriended a little girl in year four, her eyes were opened up to the realities of life for children in care, and their carers

Chadden Hunter was in his twenties when he found himself sitting around a campfire in the Ethiopian highlands, talking about his PhD thesis with Sir David Attenborough. The meeting changed his life

From the 1944 wartime referendum, to the 1999 vote on whether to become a republic, referenda always tell us things about Australia that aren't revealed in a normal federal election

Broadcaster Peter Goers was in his twenties when his parents died suddenly, in a plane crash outside New Orleans. Decades later, he's beginning to make sense of the loss

Writer Susan Johnson began an unexpected adventure when she moved to the Greek island of Kythera with her 85-year old mother Barbara (R)

When Kim Crotty was locked up in Dartmoor prison for growing marijuana, his two young sons were bereft. After he began writing bedtime stories for his boys from his cell, a new chapter opened up for him after he was released from jail (R)

After a serious brain operation, Anne Howell woke up in hospital with retrograde amnesia, thinking she was nine years old. With no real understanding of who she was or who she could trust, she set about rediscovering her identity (R)

The Tongan-Australian man on being privileged to see love in action in his grandparents, how a spiral into grief and anger led him to periodic detention, and how cutting hair today helps him steer young men away from a dark path (R)

Tom Nash was 19 when his limbs were amputated due to meningococcal septicaemia. After he began to navigate life with hooks for arms, he built a new life as a DJ (R)

Maggie Mackellar with stories from her life on a Merino wool farm on the east coast of Tasmania, and all of life and death that surrounds her through the cycle of lambing seasons

Dr Amy Clarke on the history of Big Things and our enduring fondness for kitsch and curious creations

Crispian Chan grew up in the shadow of a campaign of terror in Perth that engulfed his family restaurant and haunted him for years

The historical novelist has seen enough action to last a lifetime from her days as a Middle East correspondent, and it was her mother's imaginative influence that led her to turn her fascination with history into new interpretations (R)

Coalminer turned broadcaster Craig Hamilton was in his 30s when he had a psychotic episode on Broadmeadows train station. In the aftermath, his life was completely changed (CW: mentions suicide)

Dr Robert Waldinger on what it takes to live a happy life

Bertie Blackman on her unconventional childhood with her father the artist Charles Blackman

In 1979, Julie Dolan was named as the inaugural captain of the Matildas. Ever since, she's helped build the juggernaut from the ground up

Kim Rubenstein on the inner workings and history of the Australian constitution

John Gaden on turning his back on law and landing on the stage

Broadcaster Michael Parkinson with the life story of his late father John William - Yorkshireman, miner, humourist and fast bowler (R)

Dr Maddy McAllister's job as a marine archaeologist involves diving into the deep to uncover the artefacts and human stories sunk in shipwrecks (R)

Anna Funder on unearthing the story of the talented and determined Eileen O'Shaughnessy, George Orwell's first wife

After arriving in Australia from Yugoslavia as a boy, Peter Stojanovic began working at a Melbourne meatworks. Decades on, he's now a counsellor helping violent men change their behaviour

Jana Pittman became one of Australia's most famous athletes as a young woman. Then at age 30, she found herself at a painful crossroads

David Harasti with the story of how he opened a chain of underwater seahorse hotels to save an endangered species

Sarah Donnelley on her life working at Wilcannia Central School, on Barkandji Country 950 kilometres west of Sydney (R)

Psychiatrist Dr Harry Freeman on the memorable patients, LSD, and medical epiphanies from his 50 years in psychiatry

Hung Le and his family made a terrifying escape from Saigon in 1975, carrying one suitcase, a box of biscuits and some seasick pills. Decades after they fled, Hung returned to Vietnam to honour his late father's wishes (R)

Brendan Watkins on his search to find the truth about his birth parents and the failings of the Catholic church his discoveries unveiled

Author Mark Brandi is a keen observer of people, a skill he honed growing up in a pub in country Victoria, where the family’s Italian heritage was the source of scrutiny

Voyager frontman Danny Estrin on his unconventional path from heavy metal to law and the Eurovision grand final

Rwandan-born comedian and playwright Oliver Twist on his years as a refugee and how his life as a storyteller began

The former captain of the Australian Women's cricket team shares what she's learned along the way, and how cricket has helped her in genetic counselling, her next career (R)

When Tim Flannery was a boy he found a palm-sized fossilised tooth of a prehistoric shark.The find changed the course of his life

Professor Toby Walsh on the rise of generative AI chatbots and their potential to overtake human intelligence

They have strange coats that look like they're painted on, and while their big Mickey Mouse ears are cute, their domestic dog-like looks aren't particularly exotic. But Africa's painted dogs are unlike any other carnivores on the planet

In 1966, Martin was 10 years old when he was sent to a Catholic Boarding school in North-West Tasmania. Decades later, he began his own reckoning with what had happened at the school (CW: discusses sexual abuse)

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

Maggie Beer started her working life at the age of 14 in a chenille bedspread factory. Two decades later, in a pheasant farm in the Barossa Valley, she found her dream job

An unexpected stroke temporarily robbed Ben Mckelvey of his ability to speak, write and understand words. Eventually, Ben re-learnt the art of language, but his brain, his identity and how he connected to others had changed forever

Writer Mark Dapin’s childhood was disrupted at the age of 10, when his mum fell in love with the lodger. He was then raised in an army town called Aldershot in the UK, which began his fascination with stories of crime and warfare

Anna McGahan was playing a sex worker on Australia's biggest television show when she found God, renounced nudity on screen and tried to become the perfect Christian woman

John Colapinto was singing a Beatles song in front of Bette Midler when he injured his vocal cords. The experience set him on the path to studying the human voice

Professor Mark Dadds has helped hundreds of troubled kids from his clinic at the University of Sydney. He feels an extra connection to them, as he was once a wild and rebellious boy himself

Sarah Percy with a new history of the world's frontline women soldiers

Dominic Riley on how a a chance encounter with a bookbinding monk named Brother Bede changed the course of his life