Days Like These - True Stories

By ABC Podcasts

Society & Culture

What's Days Like These - True Stories about?

The best story you'll hear this week. Days Like These is a podcast told by one person telling the tale of how they lived through something wild. Sometimes funny, sometimes scary, sometimes both. We've got sharks and pirates, justice and injustice, drugs and recovery, love and hate, spies and thieves, triumphs and disasters. All we need from you is less than half an hour each week.

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Brenden finds his wave

07.19.2022

As Brenden Newton grows up along Sydney's Northern Beaches in the 1990s, bodyboarding reigns supreme. He loves the physicality, how it brings him into such close contact with the water. And after a fateful trip to Tahiti, he decides to ...

Days Like These - True Stories episodes:

07.19.2022 Brenden finds his wave As Brenden Newton grows up along Sydney's Northern Beaches in the 1990s, bodyboarding reigns supreme. He loves the physicality, how it brings him into such close contact with the water. And after a fateful trip to Tahiti, he decides to ...
07.12.2022 The politician who grew pot The day Gough Whitlam is dismissed from office, in November of 1975, Catherine is sitting in the uni library when she hears the news over the loudspeaker. She's incredulous, incensed. She decides it's time to formally join the Labor party ...
07.05.2022 Craig survives the mine field Craig was a happy go lucky 19 year old when an accident changes his life forever. Forced to pay off a debt he decides to go work as a miner in Western Australia. What was a temporary gig to get ...
06.28.2022 Moving sideways Caroline Winter had a perfectly lovely life with her husband, until the day it all changed. Despite everything she tried, she just couldn't move forward, so she moved sideways instead. This is a story of loss, loneliness and the ways ...
06.21.2022 The Professor and the spy Konrad has dedicated his life to studying the history of the Jewish people. In the 1980s, he's invited to work with an East German historian to complete his magnum opus, making frequent trips behind the Berlin Wall and back again. ...
06.13.2022 Flashdance for fame school Chris Ryan grew up in India in the 1980s, so despite being born in Australia, the pop culture of the time was so exotic she could hardly believe it was real. Moving countries is hard, you leave behind a lot ...
06.07.2022 The Camera that spent 25 years in a glacier It's 1997 and friends Richard and Steve are climbing to the peak of Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. They're carrying 40 kilos of climbing gear and food. But when the climb takes a dangerous turn, much is ...
06.02.2022 INTRODUCING - Return Ticket Pack your bags! Come with us on a journey of the mind...to destinations both near and far-flung, the familiar and the unexpected... in search of what the tourist never sees. An armchair travel show that scratches the surface of the ...
05.31.2022 Monkey escape at Taronga Zoo! 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 ...
05.24.2022 Days Like These returns 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 ...
04.11.2022 Bonus - Lifeline 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. ...
03.29.2022 Penny and the catfish 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 ...
03.22.2022 Aidan and his dads 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 ...
03.15.2022 Karen forgets everything 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. ...
03.08.2022 Alyce and the pregnancy test 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 ...
03.03.2022 PRESENTS - Dig: The Ring In 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 ...
03.01.2022 What to do when you're struck by lightning 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 ...
02.22.2022 Dave beats the Best 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 ...
02.15.2022 Our Lady Takes a Trip 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 ...
02.08.2022 Nazeem Hussain's date with the spy 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 ...
02.01.2022 Days Like These is back 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 ...
01.25.2022 BONUS \| Earshot \| Easy Love 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 ...
01.25.2022 BONUS \| Earshot \| Easy Love 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 ...
01.11.2022 BONUS \| History Listen \| Henson Park 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 ...
12.14.2021 BONUS \| Tall Tales and True \| The Things You Miss 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 ...
12.01.2021 Finding Paleface [Update] 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 ...
11.23.2021 Jaleh's Drive for Freedom 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 the ...
11.16.2021 Jacek Takes A Bow 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 ...
11.09.2021 Swimming for Joy 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', ...
11.02.2021 The Orphan from Crete 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 ...
10.26.2021 A Chinese soldier sings a love song 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 ...
10.19.2021 Love Eventually 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, ...
10.12.2021 A Crack In Reality 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 ...
09.14.2021 Sex and Death 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 ...
09.07.2021 The Thylacine Test 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 ...
09.07.2021 The Thylacine Test 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 ...
08.31.2021 You Can't Argue with a Dead Man 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 ...
08.31.2021 You Can't Argue with a Dead Man 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 ...
08.24.2021 The Drugs Don't Work 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 ...
08.24.2021 The Drugs Don't Work 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 ...
08.17.2021 Sergei The Spy 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.
08.10.2021 Athena and the mountain 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 ...
08.10.2021 Athena and the mountain 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 ...
08.03.2021 The Long Way Home 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 ...
08.03.2021 The Long Way Home 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 ...
07.26.2021 Shark-tag-aggedon 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 ...
07.26.2021 Shark-tag-aggedon 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 ...
07.20.2021 INTRODUCING - Days Like These Season 4 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 ...
07.09.2021 We'll be back 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 ...
06.29.2021 Live at the Zoo 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 ...

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