Jenny Briscoe-Hough is helping Port Kembla locals take back control at the end of life

Botanist and D'harawal elder Fran Bodkin uses western science to explain up to 80,000 years of Indigenous plant knowledge

Understanding and managing the psychopaths in our midst at work and at home

David Gillespie is a former corporate lawyer and investor and the author of the best-selling book, Sweet Poison.

Some years ago, David found himself working alongside a toxic human being, whom he now considers to have been a psychopath.

Psychopaths are typically people incapable of human empathy.

They tend to be charming in the initial phases of a relationship, then become parasitic and domineering.

In the workplace, their presence is often disruptive, and dangerous to the health of the people around them.

David has immersed himself into contemporary research into psychopathic behaviour, and developed some advice on dealing with a psychopath who worms their way into your life.

Further information  

Taming Toxic People is published by Macmillan

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.

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.

Lisa-Ann Gershwin discovered a new species of deadly Irukandji jellyfish. 

Lisa-Ann Gershwin was in her late 20s when she visited a small aquarium in Los Angeles. There she found white moon jellyfish in a tank, hanging 'like clouds in the sky'.

They were the most beautiful, mesmerising creatures Lisa had ever seen, and that day set her life's work in motion.

She's now one of the world's foremost jellyfish biologists who has discovered more than 200 species, including one she named Bazinga.

She says jellyfish blooms pose an increasing risk to the world's oceans, and there's only one way to stop them.

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 mind-bending physics of String Theory, decoded

Having more than 140 foster siblings was a major influence on one of Australia's best-selling crime writers

Mandyam Srinivasan: how the birds and the bees are revolutionising flying and robotics

Rodney Jackson's life, tracking and preserving wild snow leopards

Broadcast date: Tuesday 17 January 2012