Conversations

Mel Huang Buntine on how computers started entering our homes, and the beige box of a machine that changed her own life.

Personal computers are so ubiquitous now, it's hard to imagine a time when computers were inaccessible to everyday people.

For decades, computers were the size of rooms, and they were used for specialist tasks like processing large data sets for researchers, or sending men to the moon.

But by the 1980s computers had become smaller and more affordable, and people started bringing them into their homes.

From this point on, how everyday people interacted with technology changed forever.

Mel Huang Buntine is a designer and technologist who was gifted her first computer as a tween in 1990s Melbourne.

Mel lived in a multigenerational home with her mother, her grandparents and her great-grandmother, all of whom had escaped the Cambodian genocide as refugees.

They couldn't understand why Mel was obsessed with this machine, but it completely opened up Mel's world and changed her life.

Now with anxiety growing around AI, surveillance and mega tech companies, Mel is trying to get people to understand the history of computers and how they work.

She hopes this will give back to people a sense of agency over machines, rather than feeling powerless to the opacity of algorithms and large language models.

Radical Computing is exhibiting at the National Communication Museum in Melbourne from 19 September 2026, until 21February 2027.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores technology, artificial intelligence, Facebook, Instagram, social media, coding, making a website, HTML, CSS, PS5, playstation, games console, computer games, desktop games, Apple iOs 27, Mac, Macbook, Mac versus PC, IBM, Commodore 64, Steam Frame, iPhone, smartphone, dumb phone, Steve Jobs, Jack Tramiel, computer race, home appliances, toy market, super computers, science and technology, future of computers, techno optimist, tech subculture, Demoscene, hackers, jailbreak phone, crack software, pirated software, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, ChatGPT, Claude, Anthropic, Zuckerberg.

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.

Prisoner advocate Vickie Roach spent decades in and out of jail but after studying for her masters degree, she helped change the story for thousands of other prisoners.

When Vicki was just two years old, she was given a police record, which enabled authorities to place her into the custody of a family she didn't know.

She grew up under the strict religious rule of her adoptive mother, whom she clashed with frequently.

Vickie left school at thirteen. It was that year she met her birth mother for the first time, and discovered she was Aboriginal.

Decades of trouble followed, including numerous prison terms.

Vickie's also known periods of stability, such as after winning back her son after a long-running custody dispute.

In 2007, Vickie was awarded her Master's degree while serving her final prison sentence at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Victoria.

She was also the sole plaintiff in a ground-breaking legal challenge to the High Court, which returned some prisoners the right to vote.

Today, Vickie continues her work as an advocate for the rights of women in prison. 

Content warning: episode contains mentions of violence, suicide and drug use

Further information

Vickie was joint winner of the 2017 Tim McCoy Human Rights Award

Adoption resources and support

Jigsaw Australia - search and contact

Find and Connect - support for former residents of children's homes, orphanages and institutions

Post-Adoption Support Benevolent Society AustraliaForced Adoption services Government support services website or, contact the Forced Adoption Support Service in your state or territory, call 1800 21 03 13

For immediate support, you can call Lifeline 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue 1300 46 36

Growing up Lisa Henson and her siblings spent a lot of time in their father's workshop and studio, watching puppets get drawn, sculpted and brought to life.

Jim Henson first started messing around with puppets as a teenager, and not long afterwards he began collaborating with his wife Jane. 

Together they founded Muppets Incorporated.

Puppets became a way for Jim to share his extraordinary imagination with the world, and he went on to become one of the most influential creative minds of the 20th century. 

His legacy includes Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and the movies The Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth.

Jim’s creations, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, and the Cookie Monster remain recognisable and beloved around the world.

Jim Henson died in 1990, but the Jim Henson company is still owned by the family, and his eldest child Lisa is now the CEO.

Further Information 

The Jim Henson exhibition at QAGOMA in Brisbane is on until April 2027

Make, Believe, Magic, The worlds of the of the Jim Henson companyThis episode of Conversations was produced by Jen Leake and the Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores Jim Henson, Lisa Henson, puppets, The Muppets, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, creativity, puppetry, The Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, television, animatronics. Frank Oz, Sesame Street, children's television,  Sam and Friends, creativity, technology, Jane Henson, Harvard University, England, The Creature Shop

Author Rebecca Huntley used supervised MDMA therapy to help her with complex PTSD and the legacy of childhood trauma.

Rebecca's public life as a broadcaster, an author and a social researcher made her well-known to many Australians.

But in private, Rebecca spent years grappling with complex PTSD and childhood trauma.

At 50, while walking the Camino, she realised that despite decades of therapy, she was still living with a roiling anger about what had happened to her as a child.

She decided to undergo MDMA therapy delivered by an underground healer. 

Further Information

Rebecca Huntley's book Sassafras is published by Hachette.

Since 2023, psychiatrist in Australia have been authorised to prescribe MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

You can read about some of the complications of how MDMA is prescribed here.

Catrine Clay with the story of the children of Nazi perpetrators and Holocaust survivors came together under extraordinary circumstances to come to terms with their dark past.

In the early 1990s, historian and author Catrine Clay was working at the BBC, making a documentary about a woman named Renate.

Renate had been born in Germany in 1941, and grew up in the postwar years as the sole child of a single mother.

When Renate asked her mother about her missing father, she was told he had been an important general in the German forces, who had been imprisoned by the Russians.

But that wasn't the truth.

Renate's father was actually a Nazi war criminal of the highest rank, and she had been conceived as part of an experiment to produce Aryan children for the German fatherland.

Catrine and Renate travelled through Germany and Eastern Europe to find the truth about her father and the home she'd been born into.

Eventually, they go to Israel, where Renate comes face to face with the children of Holocaust survivors. 

There, they bond over their shared attempts to find a way forward, out of the silences and hidden fears of their parents' dark pasts.

Children of the Third Reich: Three pasts three futures is published by Hachette.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison

It explores World War II, history, family trauma, intergenerational trauma, holocaust survivors, Aryan super-race, experiments on humans, genetic experiments, SS soldiers, the body keeps the score, Epigenetics, psychology, suicide, mental health, mental illness, healing, Jewish history, reconciliation, German history, Nazis, reckoning with the past, family secrets, absent fathers, Israel, Palestine, forgiveness, humanity, Hitler, war criminal, war crimes.

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.

Urzila Carlson grew up in South Africa. Her father threatened the family with a gun when she was 6, and he walked out on the family soon afterwards.

Urzila's mum, who she describes as a 'warrior woman', raised Urzila and her sister.

When she was in primary school, one of Urzila's teachers taught her a big lesson about regret, which has stayed with her for life.

Urzila moved to New Zealand in 2006 to begin working in advertising.

One day a group of her co-workers persuaded her to perform at a local open mic night.

Within a year she had become a professional comedian in Australia and New Zealand.

Further information

Watch Urzila's latest comedy special 

Watch Urzila's TV sketch show on ABC TV

This episode of Conversations was produced by Nicola Harrison and the Executive Producer was Pam O'Brien.

It explores South Africa, comedy, family, domestic violence, alcoholism, Afrikaans, racism, violence, home invasion, stand up comedy, confidence, body image, migration, New Zealand, Australia, memoir, siblings.

The singer-songwriter on her early introduction to musicals in Port Moresby, how singing became a form of speech therapy for her stutter and also a path into her life’s work.

Meg Washington was born in a musical home in Port Moresby, where her parents had met as Australian expats.

Meg and her sister spent a lot of their time watching classic Hollywood musicals and also down at the local yacht club where their dad DJ'd every Saturday night.

Singing became something Meg was encouraged to do herself after she developed a stutter as a little girl.

And eventually it grew from a therapy into a thrill.

Meg's stutter was something she did her best to disguise while building her career as a singer and songwriter in Australia.

But after going public about her speech impediment in a TedX Talk, Meg realised she no longer cared about hiding who she was.

This honesty led to a whole host of exciting new opportunities – including becoming the voice of Calypso in Bluey, and making a film with her husband based on the iconic Paul Kelly song, “How To Make Gravy”.

More information

This episode was produced by Meggie Morris. The Executive Producer was Carmel Rooney.

It explores Papua New Guinea, DJ, filmmaker, being expelled from high school, creative arts, performance camps, eisteddfods, Rodgers and Hammerstein, love at first sight, quick wedding, spirituality, Christianity, Brisbane.

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.

Louise Adler has been one of the biggest and most controversial names in Australian publishing for decades. This is the story of how she fell in love with the world of books.⁠An asthmatic child, she spent most of Melbourne’s winters in bed with nothing else to do but read novels.

But it wasn't until her parents intervened in Louise's obsession with Enid Blyton’s boarding school series that her deep pleasure in the world of books began in earnest.⁠Shaped by her family's story of surviving World War Two, Louise grew up in questioning everything.

She was 15 years old when she went to her first Vietnam moratorium and was locked up for her role in the protests.⁠

She travelled to Israel at the age of 17, which was a transformative experience for her.⁠⁠Back in Australia, Louise began her career in publishing, backing some unconventional and headline-grabbing authors from Tony Abbott and Mark Latham to Louise Milligan and Mick Gatto.⁠Louise was Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week from 2023, until the dramatic collapse of the 2026 festival.⁠

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison. It was recorded live at the Byron Writers Festival.

It explores writing, writers, books, Australian literature, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Israel, Palestine, Anti-Semitism commission, Judaism, WWII, Holocaust survivors, Adelaide Writers Festival, Byron Writers Festival, freedom of speech, Australian literary scene, origin story, Auspol, politics, big ideas, memoir, love, marriage, safe spaces, Grace Tame.

Acclaimed poet and philosopher David Whyte has come to believe a single line of poetry is enough to change your life. 

David grew up amongst the moors and fields of West Yorkshire, with an English father and an Irish mother who had a gift for lyricism and language.

He started writing poems at just seven years old, but it wasn't until he was working as a guide in the Galapagos Islands that David truly understood what poetry was and what it could do for us.

A near-death experience there prepared him for life as a poet by teaching him to pay attention to what lay right in front of him at any given time.

For David, the power of poetry lies in its unmatched ability to meditate and focus on what's right in front of us, whether it's a mountain, a loved one, or our own reflection.

First broadcast in 2025

Further information

David's latest collection of poems and essays is Consolations II, published by Canongate.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris, the Executive Producer was Carmel Rooney.

It explores, poetry, poems, near death experiences, mothers, sons, family, Ireland, meditation, Zen, love, heartbreak, anxiety, time, happiness, the Galapagos Islands, family, grief, memory, spirituality, Christianity, language, England.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.

Why were 400 civilians allowed to fly into a war zone as Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait? What really happened to them when they were held as hostages? And why has the British government fought for so long to keep it all a secret?

Stephen Davis is an investigative journalist who has been following a story, within a story, within a story for more than 30 years.

It starts on 2 August, 1990 when a British Airways plane landed in Kuwait for a scheduled stopover.

There were nearly 400 passengers and crew on board, mostly British, who had no idea they were flying straight into Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.

Instead of refuelling and then carrying on to Madras, the people on board were taken into Iraqi custody, ferried to various hotels and strategic locations around Kuwait, and then Baghdad, deployed as human shields in an unfurling international conflict.

Used like chess pieces by Saddam Hussein's men, their experiences would scar them for the rest of their lives, but eventually they would point the finger at their own government's role in their fate.

Because Flight 149 should never have landed in Kuwait, and the reasons why it was allowed to fly into a war zone were covered up for more than three decades.

Stephen's sources pointed him to a secret British black ops mission that embedded nine operatives on that same civilian flight.

The Secret History of Flight 149 is published by Bonnier Books UK.

Around 100 passengers and crew of Flight 149 are suing the UK Government and British Airways for “deliberately endangering” them, claiming they knew Iraq had invaded Kuwait before the plane landed.

A preliminary hearing was held last November in the High Court in London. Both sides are still battling over procedural issues before a full trial can begin.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores the Middle East, geopolitics, President Bush, Gulf War, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, invasion, oil, world economy, Margaret Thatcher, spies, MI6, CIA, conspiracies, cover ups, investigations, lawsuits, Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Desert Sabre, Dick Cheney, Saudi Arabia, Republican Guard, modern history, modern conflicts, 9/11, terrorism, rise of terrorism.

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.