By ABC listen
The best story you'll hear all week, told by the people who lived it.
Alan Hale makes a teenage escape from Launceston when he gets work at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. It's the mid 1960s and Taronga's chief benefactor, Sir Edward Hallstrom, is pouring much of his fortune into acquiring new and exotic animals...
Days Like These is back with a new season. There’s chaos when thirty monkeys escape from a Sydney zoo. Melting snow on a mountainside unearths a long-buried secret. A misfit kid tries to dance her way to fame. And one woman is...
13 11 14 is one of the most recognisable phone numbers in the country. It connects callers to Lifeline’s free crisis support at any time of the night or day, and for some, it’s a call that saves their life....
Penny married John in the 80s. She always believed marriage was forever, and she felt comfortable in her role of wife and mother. Then one day, 30 years into her marriage, she receives a message that shatters her reality. It sets Penny...
Aidan Jones is a stand up comedian. Jokes and stories are his stock in trade. But the defining story of his life happened before he was born: when his mum was in her 20s, she returned home from an extended...
Think about where you are stored in your brain. Your sense of self and identity, who you are basically. What if your brain decided it wanted to shut a few things down? That's what happened to ABC broadcaster Karen Tighe. As...
Alyce Nelligan is used to being a trailblazer. Born with minicore myopathy, a rare muscle disease, she was the first kid at her primary school in a wheelchair, and the first person with a physical disability to graduate from her high...
The Fine Cotton Ring In was one of the biggest scandals in Australian horseracing history. A plan to swap a slow horse with a much faster look-alike involved a motley crew of small-time crooks, a couple of horses and a...
Out of nowhere, the lightning bolt struck both of them. A last minute visit to the beach becomes a bigger ordeal than anyone could have imagined, enough to change the course of their lives. But that’s not exactly how publishers...
Sporting heroes can seem so far away, out of reach like sporting gods. Only in our dreams could we play with such deities. David Jack's had an idol like that, George Best. A Manchester United legend, footballing genius and style...
Barb grew up in a large Irish Catholic family headed by her father Dave, an eccentric and devout man. Barb’s childhood is steeped in her father's faith like the power of saintly examples, repenting for your sins and messages passed to...
It's 2011. Australia is in its tenth year of the War on Terror. Reports of hate crimes are on the rise. And 20-something Nazeem Hussain is a tax specialist. Before he was selling out shows and touring stand-up internationally, Nazeem Hussain...
Days Like These is back — with spies, comedians, lost parents and a lightning strike — oh, and then there’s a pilgrimage of the agnostic and the atheist, travelling from Sydney to Ireland with a wooden statue of Mary. And...
Days Like These is taking a break for the summer, but while we’re away we wanted to share with you some of our favourite true story podcasts. One Sunday evening, widower Warren Kirk was home alone and decided to do...
Days Like These is taking a break for the summer, but while we're away we wanted to share with you some of our favourite true story podcasts. One Sunday evening, widower Warren Kirk was home alone and decided to do...
Days Like These is taking a break for the summer, but while we’re away we wanted to share with you some of our favourite true story podcasts. History, tragedy, and triumph. Marrickville’s Henson Park is an icon of Sydney's inner...
Days Like These is taking a break for the summer, but while we’re away we wanted to share with you some of our favourite true story podcasts. Holidays can stir up memories of loved ones no longer with us. They...
When horse lover Nicole began to learn about brumbies, there was one who took her breath away on Facebook page: Paleface. He was the most famous stallion of all the wild horses on the Snowy Mountains. A rock star horse with...
Growing up in pre-revolution Iran, Jaleh Misaghi dreams of becoming a race car driver. So strong is the pull of rubber on the road, she glues herself to the TV, watching Formula 1, practicing her moves and yearning for...
Jacek Koman grew up in theatres, the son of two actors performing their way around Communist Poland in the 1950s and 1960s. At school he’s more interested in learning Russian than stagecraft, by the time Jacek reaches university he decides...
It’s mid-winter in the Snowy Mountains and in the Thredbo river, where the water is 3.3 degrees, a woman swims laps. She’s wearing just a regular swimsuit, cap and goggles. The swimmer is 40-year-old Joy Symons, attempting an ‘ice mile’, a feat considered...
Sonya grew up in Brisbane. But at 26 she decides to move her life to London. Within days of arriving, she meets a beautiful woman at a bar in Soho. They click instantly. They fall in love, get married and...
Growing up in a small city in south-west China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution led Guojian to join the People's Liberation Army, China’s military. He was a doctrinaire solider until an illegal Australian radio station, and a love song, opened his world.
When Megan met Leon, they thought they were just in for a holiday romance. But it became a long distance thing. Then it became a real life thing. And then it wasn't a thing. Leon had his life sorted out, while Megan...
One night, fresh from his first big break-up, a 23-year-old Graham Panther is hanging out at a friend’s house when she pulls out a massive bag of weed. Together, they decide to cut loose, forget about their troubles for one night. But...
Emma Jane Holmes is a funeral director by day, but when night falls, her alter ego appears. Emma takes our lead reporter Pat Abboud behind the closed doors of a mortuary, to reveal how the death care industry is dealing with...
Two men go head-to-head over a set of photographs taken in the Tasmanian wilderness. The images could rewrite the history of a legendary animal, if only they can agree on what they're looking at. Here are the images captured by Neil Waters...
Two men go head-to-head over a set of photographs taken in the Tasmanian wilderness. The images could rewrite the history of a legendary animal, if only they can agree on what they're looking at. Here are the images captured by Neil Waters and...
At the beginning of 2019, country singer Felicity Urquhart was preparing for a huge year of performing and publicity. She was about to release Frozen Rabbit, her first solo album in a decade. Creating the record had been an extended labour of love for her and her...
When Jane Rowe tries her first hit of heroin, the relief it offers is undeniable. Rebelling against her privileged upbringing, she throws herself into the punk scene of 1970s London, rubbing shoulders with rock stars and moguls. But when the...
A cold-war thriller, set on the streets of Sydney. Our hero, a man only recently promoted from the ASIO mail room to spy-catcher, finds that chasing a KGB operative doesn’t always follow a James Bond-type script.
Two friends set off on a one-way ticket overseas intending to have the time of their lives. It's their big adventure before settling down to start "real life'. But, in a small village in Nepal, amongst hikers from all over the world, it all goes terribly wrong... and it's all they...
Two friends set off on a one-way ticket overseas intending to have the time of their lives. It’s their big adventure before settling down to start “real life’. But, in a small village in Nepal, amongst hikers from all over the world, it all goes terribly wrong... and it’s all they...
A brother and sister duo face a life-changing diagnosis, a family secret and flooding rains as they race across state borders to make it home. This is a story about the frustrations and fractures of addiction, the loneliness of life in a pandemic and the wonders of long-distance love. Mostly, it's about the ties that...
A brother and sister duo face a life-changing diagnosis, a family secret and flooding rains as they race across state borders to make it home. This is a story about the frustrations and fractures of addiction, the loneliness of life in a pandemic and the wonders of long-distance love. Mostly, it’s about the ties that...
One evening, a team of scientists realise that a tracking device they'd attached to a bull shark off the coast of NSW has come ashore and is now leaving a GPS trail all over Wollongong and surrounds. This tag, once...
This season, we follow two men, facing off in the Tasmanian wilderness, there's a shark-hunt through a university campus, and a strange chase down Sydney streets, in the pursuit of a Russian spy. There's an avalanche, an addiction, and a...
The Days Like These teams are busy cooking up some new stories for you, and we'll be back later in July. Listen out for our first episode on the 28th. Meanwhile, there are plenty of stories in the back catalogue...
Cut Copy. Evermore. Bliss n Esso. British India. Tame Impala! You've got your tickets. Your favourite band is headlining and your mates are by your side. A music festival in amongst the wild animals at a South Australian Zoo ... it could...
Singer-songwriter Shellie Morris still remembers the first time she heard Yothu Yindi's Treaty. She had left her adopted white family in Sydney when "Treaty yeah, Treaty now" blared through her car radio, and changed her forever. The song would become part...
Tai Snaith has always loved animals, especially horses. After growing up on a farm, she thought she was used to the practical cycles of life and death that Australian country life can throw at you. But when her beloved horse Ziffy...
How do you orchestrate a meeting with your hero? For Tate Sheridan it was simple: a clandestine operation involving a long and heartfelt letter, a demo CD, some wrapping paper and sneaky dash backstage at a big Elton John gig. Two...
Jason grows up with saltwater in his veins and adventure in his bones. In a little seaside Queensland town with the Coral Sea as their playground, Jason and the locals tie up mud crabs for sport ... with their toes....
Narelle Grech was a teenager when she first discovered that she'd been conceived using donor sperm. As her shock turned to deep curiosity, Narelle decided — she had to meet this man. All she has to go on is his donor...
An actor's life can be punishing. It's competitive, unpredictable and, no matter how hard you work, success is often down to dumb luck. There are no guarantees, and maintaining a thick skin is essential. When actor Kate McNamara wins an award...
A decade ago, Jennifer Mills found out there was a watercolour painting of her on the wall of a major gallery. The thing is, she’d never sat for one, and she’d never spoken to an artist about being in a...
A police officer with his knee on a man's neck in Minneapolis. Guards rushing a cell in Sydney's Long Bay jail to stop a man from eating biscuits. George Floyd and David Dungay Junior are dead and the world is...