Melissa Lucashenko was a motorcycle detailer, a house painter, a prison advocate, and a game show contestant before finding her way as a writer

The actor and author thinks that nowhere in the world is the English language more poetic, colourful and persuasive than here in Australia

William McInnes is a much-loved Australian actor and an author, whose books often recall his childhood in Queensland.

It was there, in Redcliffe, that William became fluent in the peculiar, funny and colourful words and phrases unique to Australian English.

Over the years, he's continued to collect them to celebrate how much they say about who we really are.

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.

Further information

Yeah Nah: A celebration of life and the words that make us who we are is published by Hatchette

Alecia Simmonds with tales from a time in Australia's legal history when the jilted and broken-hearted could sue for redress in the courts 

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)