Conversations: Archive: 2015-2017

Hilarious and true tales of personal mortification, told at a live Conversations event.

True stories of mortification and embarrassment as told at a live Conversations event

Lynne Kelly believes she's found a code to describe the way non-literate peoples shared sophisticated knowledge (R)

Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh describes the extreme risks and rewards of his four decades’ work on the body’s most mysterious organ

Bill Hayes moved to New York at 48. He took up photography, and fell in love with his neighbour, Dr Oliver Sacks

Doctor Oliver Sacks was a neurologist, a naturalist and a university professor. He became famous for writing case histories of his patients in books including, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars.

But Oliver had never been in a relationship. Then, at the age of 75, he fell deeply in love with a man decades younger than him.

He and Bill Hayes lived in the same building, in New York, three flights apart.

Their time together ended when Dr Sacks was in his early eighties.

Further information

Insomniac City published by Bloomsbury

This conversation was broadcast from the Sydney Writers’ Festival

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.

Caroline Brothers explains why the search for the youngest victims of Argentina’s Dirty War continues to this day

Writer George Saunders on his fascination with Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln's grief for his lost son, Willie

Journalist Norman Ohler has uncovered a new facet of Third Reich history: a Nazi regime awash with cocaine, heroin and crystal meth.

True stories from novelist Maggie Groff’s years as an unlikely London nurse

Leonard Janiszewski on the golden era and social influence of these beloved family businesses (R)