Conversations

By ABC Radio

Society & Culture

What's Conversations about?

Spend an hour in someone else's life. 'Conversations with Richard Fidler' draws you deeper into the life story of someone you may have heard about, but never met.

4.5

142 ratings

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LAST EPISODE

Jodi and the people with po...

06.18.2021

'Love on the Spectrum' star Jodi Rodgers on her life as a sexologist and relationship counsellor for people with Autism, and her unexpected chapter in reality TV

Conversations episodes:

06.18.2021 Jodi and the people with possibilities 'Love on the Spectrum' star Jodi Rodgers on her life as a sexologist and relationship counsellor for people with Autism, and her unexpected chapter in reality TV
06.17.2021 The Tsars, the lady-in-waiting and Potoroo Palace Alexandra Seddon with the story of her aristocratic Russian family and their legacy, which helped her found a wildlife refuge for potoroos, koalas, snakes and kangaroos (CW: childhood abuse, historic suicide)
06.16.2021 Steve Biddulph and the lightbulb moment Parenting educator and retired psychologist Steve Biddulph was in his 50s when a chance conversation over lunch shifted almost everything about how he saw himself
06.15.2021 My second family in Vanuatu Physiotherapist Sky Fosbrooke’s stint as a volunteer health worker led to a deep attachment to the people of a small South Santo village (R)
06.14.2021 Wakefield's Kristen Dunphy — turning pain into gold The screenwriter and showrunner on writing television drama, her struggles with mental health, and how her time in psychiatric hospitals inspired the acclaimed ABC TV drama series Wakefield (CW: drug references and suicidal ideation. Please use discretion when listening)
06.11.2021 British double agent ‘Celery’ — his daring and scandalous life By uncovering the complicated history of her grandfather, Carolinda Witt also gained a sizeable extended family (R)
06.10.2021 Michelle versus the Atlantic Ocean From working in a bank and behind a bar, to rowing solo across an ocean, the story of Michelle Lee’s remarkable transformation and the voyage which made her an Australian Geographic Adventurer of the Year
06.09.2021 If these (dry-stone) walls could talk — Bruce Munday Bruce, a grazier and former teacher, fell in love with building dry stone walls and then began to delve into their fascinating history
06.09.2021 Judith Anderson and the Warwick bakers Judith's life story is intertwined with the story of her family's bakery in the country town of Warwick, in rural Queensland
06.08.2021 Cornish Pasties and Powerhouse boys — a love song to Moonta Kristin Weidenbach on her father's early life in Moonta, a Methodist-run mining town in South Australia (R)
06.07.2021 Bob Rogers — The Beatles, the radio, and me A broadcasting veteran, Bob spent 70 years on air, hosting TV shows as well as topping the radio ratings in Sydney. In 1964 he was sent to London to join The Beatles on their only Australian tour
06.04.2021 What might a kindness revolution look like? Hugh Mackay believes humans are ‘hardwired’ to behave kindly. He returns to the program to talk about how his early-pandemic prophecies on community, loneliness, and resilience have played out
06.03.2021 When the Library Burned Writer Susan Orlean on the enduring mystery of who set fire to the Los Angeles Central Library (R)
06.02.2021 The gay preacher Anthony Venn-Brown was a gay teenager when he gave his life to God. He tried to destroy his sexuality by exorcism and 'gay conversion' therapy before he became a rock star Pentecostal preacher. Then everything came crashing down
06.01.2021 Growing up in old Broome Anne Poelina, the daughter of a Timorese pearl diver and an Indigenous mother, has always been drawn back to her home town of Broome (R)
05.31.2021 The five personalities of China Jason Yat-sen Li on how his family story, marked by war, migration and knighthoods, and his own working life helped him embrace the complexities and contradictions of modern China
05.28.2021 A work of the heart High school English teacher, Brendan James Murray with funny, heartbreaking, inspirational and strange tales from his working life
05.27.2021 Mama Simba — love and Tanzania Donna Duggan fell in love with a Tanzanian man and together they built a safari company, before an accident changed everything (R)
05.26.2021 The turtle effect — their mysterious allure and surprising history Louise Pryke returns with a cultural history of turtles. With stories ranging from ancient times to modern day, and from turtle tears to Al Capone, Lou attempts to understand why they are such a widely-loved creature
05.25.2021 A magical life — escapologist and illusionist Arthur Coghlan Arthur made his name escaping from a locked 44-gallon drum in a pool of pool of sharks. His death-defying escapes in the late 1970s earned him the title of 'Australia's Houdini', and he was magician in residence at the Magic ...
05.24.2021 Christiaan Van Vuuren's fully sick life While confined to hospital with a rare form of tuberculosis, Christiaan found love and an entirely new path (R)
05.21.2021 The girl who ran away to sea — the making of Kathryn Working as a deckhand on a fishing trawler became the refuge Kathryn Heyman needed from the wreckage of her early life. Hitchhiking to Darwin, then working in the Timor Sea, far from her old life, helped her remake herself (CW: ...
05.20.2021 Let them ring — Paul Livingston on making a great big noise Paul is a musician, author and performer best known for his comedic alter-ego, Flacco. In recent years he's joined an eclectic band of people who ring the bells at his local church tower in inner Sydney. He's also been working ...
05.19.2021 Jessica Cottis — inside the colour of sound Jessica is an orchestral conductor and also a synesthete who 'sees' colour in her mind's eye. As an organ virtuoso she performed in some of Europe's great cathedrals. When forced to retire, Jessica re-trained as a conductor, making her debut ...
05.18.2021 The mystery of broken-hearted syndrome Cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Nikki Stamp reveals how emotional shock can be fatal (R)
05.17.2021 Henry Reynolds and the truth One of the foremost historians of black and white Australia, Henry says now is the time to acknowledge how the country was founded. Frontier violence, the myth of peaceful settlement, and the failure of the British to make treaties with ...
05.14.2021 How a doctor's suicide broke the silence Gastroenterologist Andrew Bryant's active, social and positive exterior gave no hint of the depression he was suffering. Days after his tragic death his wife Susan wrote an email making it clear she and her adult children were not ashamed of ...
05.13.2021 New York, Oenpelli, the Village People and me Allen Murphy was raised in New York and grew up to become a drummer for The Village People. When he arrived in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory he fell in love with Indigenous culture and music, and knew he'd ...
05.12.2021 A Renaissance scholar on love, power, Florence and folly Dale Kent is a Professor of Italian history who grew up in Australia. Rejecting her Christian Science upbringing, Dale forged an unapologetic life of her own design. She lived and worked in Europe and then in the US where she ...
05.11.2021 The family and the jail sentence — the ripple effect of losing a parent to prison Dennis Van Someren works as a transport volunteer with young people going to visit a parent in the prison system. Dennis does the work because he's been in their shoes (R)
05.10.2021 Knuckles, ruffles, flesh-bags and fences: the story of Australia's first dictionary Kel Richards with the story of the gentleman thief James Hardy Vaux, who wrote Australia's first dictionary of convict slang
05.07.2021 Inside the world of Australian camel vet Margie Bale Margie's car is loaded with ultrasounds, milk crates and angle grinders: all things needed when tending to seven ft camels in the middle of nowhere (R)
05.06.2021 Love and letting go — Sarah, Eric, and Coco When Sarah Sentilles became a foster parent she gave herself wholeheartedly to caring for baby Coco. A year later her understanding of love, motherhood and herself were utterly transformed (CW: Adoption)
05.05.2021 Enron, schizophrenia, the Bowls Club and me - the life of Glenn Jarvis Glenn was working at Enron in London when his mental health began to unravel. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and lost nearly everything. Then a Bowls Club in Queanbeyan helped him begin again
05.04.2021 Kitty Flanagan's unlikely path to comedy Kitty has woven together a series of true stories from her life including being locked in a crayfish freezer for talking too much (R)
05.03.2021 Confronting my grandmother the Baba Yaga Krissy Kneen grew up under the strict control of her grandmother, Lotty, who was the eccentric and sometimes cruel matriarch of her small family. Krissy was forbidden to investigate Lotty's past or ask why she'd come to Australia from Slovenia ...
04.30.2021 Sarah Dingle — finding my donor dad Sarah was twenty-seven when she discovered she had been conceived using a sperm donor. When she set out to find her biological father, she found out the truth about the global fertility business
04.29.2021 Hope, hype and exploitation — the wild history of stem cell science Physician scientist Professor John Rasko on some of the charlatans and shining lights from the problematic and often tragic field of regenerative medicine. Long regarded as a coming salvation, the full potential of stem cells is yet to be realised. ...
04.28.2021 The blue budgie in Berlin — Gisela Kaplan's story Animal behaviourist Gisela Kaplan grew up in devastated post-WWII Berlin, forced to eat soap and wild nettles to survive. A brilliant student who loved music, she trained as an opera singer and an academic. Decades later, after adopting a magpie ...
04.27.2021 The green suitcase and the secret family Betty O'Neill's father disappeared when she was a baby. Decades later, inside a tiny apartment in the Polish city of Lublin she opened a green suitcase to find a huge clue to his secret life
04.26.2021 The bloody futility of WWI's Battle of Passchendaele Historian Paul Ham and the story of the terrible 'wearing down war' that took place in Ypres (R)
04.23.2021 Meeting Japan's ghosts The story of the 2011 earthquake that triggered multiple disasters in Japan, and took many thousands of lives, as told by Richard Lloyd Parry (CW: descriptions may be distressing) (R)
04.22.2021 Veronica Gorrie stands up Ronnie looks back on the ten years she worked as a police officer; the childhood which shaped her, and pays tribute to the guiding strength of her proud Aboriginal father (CW: family violence)
04.21.2021 Helen Zaltzman is the Allusionist Lacking the patience required to work on a dictionary, Helen turned her abiding interest in language into the subject of a highly successful podcast. Her search for curious and revealing stories about language has taken her around the world (R)
04.20.2021 Territory taxidermist — Jared Archibald Jared spent his childhood behind the scenes at the Museum of the Northern Territory, up close to prehistoric kangaroo fossils, opulent trading pearls, and sacred crocodiles flown in from Arnhem Land. Then he became the museum's taxidermist (R)
04.19.2021 Lily Brett — love and Shelter Island New York-based Australian writer Lily Brett moved her family to Shelter Island during the pandemic. There she's found a different speed of life and been adjusting to the absence of her late father. Now in her 70s, Lily's also been ...
04.16.2021 Tina Arena — singing it loud Raised in a loving but strict Italian household, Pina Arena became ‘Tina’ to compete on Young Talent Time. Reinventing herself as an adult singer was tough, and it took a disastrous marriage and years living away from Australia to find ...
04.15.2021 The AIDS angel of Arkansas Ruth Coker Burks was a young single mum in Hot Springs, Arkansas, when she began helping the dying men everyone else had rejected
04.14.2021 Floating through the dolines — cave diving under the Nullarbor and around the world Stefan Eberhard on his life as a subterranean ecologist cave diving around the world, including inside the vast glowing chambers found beneath the Nullarbor Plain (R)
04.13.2021 Villainesses and Vulcans — the life of Judith Anderson Widely known for her performance as Mrs Danvers, in the Hitchcock film, Rebecca, Judith gained a new cult following when she played a Star Trek Vulcan high priestess. Biographer Desley Deacon unearths the life story of an exceptional South-Australian born ...

Older episodes

Conversations

What's Conversations about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Conversations episodes:

Jodi and the people with possibilities

The Tsars, the lady-in-waiting and Potoroo Palace

Steve Biddulph and the lightbulb moment

My second family in Vanuatu

Wakefield's Kristen Dunphy — turning pain into gold

British double agent ‘Celery’ — his daring and scandalous life

Michelle versus the Atlantic Ocean

If these (dry-stone) walls could talk — Bruce Munday

Judith Anderson and the Warwick bakers

Cornish Pasties and Powerhouse boys — a love song to Moonta

Bob Rogers — The Beatles, the radio, and me

What might a kindness revolution look like?

When the Library Burned

The gay preacher

Growing up in old Broome

The five personalities of China

A work of the heart

Mama Simba — love and Tanzania

The turtle effect — their mysterious allure and surprising history

A magical life — escapologist and illusionist Arthur Coghlan

Christiaan Van Vuuren's fully sick life

The girl who ran away to sea — the making of Kathryn

Let them ring — Paul Livingston on making a great big noise

Jessica Cottis — inside the colour of sound

The mystery of broken-hearted syndrome

Henry Reynolds and the truth

How a doctor's suicide broke the silence

New York, Oenpelli, the Village People and me

A Renaissance scholar on love, power, Florence and folly

The family and the jail sentence — the ripple effect of losing a parent to prison

Knuckles, ruffles, flesh-bags and fences: the story of Australia's first dictionary

Inside the world of Australian camel vet Margie Bale

Love and letting go — Sarah, Eric, and Coco

Enron, schizophrenia, the Bowls Club and me - the life of Glenn Jarvis

Kitty Flanagan's unlikely path to comedy

Confronting my grandmother the Baba Yaga

Sarah Dingle — finding my donor dad

Hope, hype and exploitation — the wild history of stem cell science

The blue budgie in Berlin — Gisela Kaplan's story

The green suitcase and the secret family

The bloody futility of WWI's Battle of Passchendaele

Meeting Japan's ghosts

Veronica Gorrie stands up

Helen Zaltzman is the Allusionist

Territory taxidermist — Jared Archibald

Lily Brett — love and Shelter Island

Tina Arena — singing it loud

The AIDS angel of Arkansas

Floating through the dolines — cave diving under the Nullarbor and around the world

Villainesses and Vulcans — the life of Judith Anderson

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