Conversations

How Usman Khawaja changed Australian cricket

As the first brown immigrant and the first Muslim to enter the very white world of Australian cricket, Usman Khawaja overcame many setbacks while forging his extraordinar

Encore: Bryce Courtenay's son on his father's many secrets

Growing up with brilliant writer as a father, Adam Courtenay slowly became aware of many gaps and untruths in his dad's life story. So he decided to set the record straig

Hags, bears and magic — what fairytales can teach us about modern life

Instructions on how to forge a path through a darkening world, according to former neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, Dr Sharon Blackie. Sharon grew up in what she calls

Encore: An accidental midwife and the business of everyday miracles

Lisa Peberdy has been delivering babies for over 40 years, in hospitals and homes, in cities and remote locations and she still cries with joy at every birth.During Lisa'

Waleed Aly: Finding real meaning, in the midst of global collapse

As we're bombarded with the drumbeat of news that veers from the shocking to the unfathomable, Waleed Aly wants to know, how do we come to grips with this chaos?For years

Jon Ronson investigates the men looking for purpose in strange, dark places

When journalist Jon Ronson visited castle owned by a digital tycoon, it became a portal into a world of disaffected men, grasping for purpose online in a world where trad

Encore: The teacher who turned non-readers into literacy superstars

When school principal Manisha Gazula changed how her students were learning to read, she began an entirely new system which made her an icon of literacy learning. Manish

Why is it so difficult to love each other?

Psychologist Kerrie Lumbewe on trying to unpack what has happened inside ordinary people that has made loving one another so difficult. (CW: this conversation mentions su

Encore: Bonnie Garmus on the spark of anger which began a whole new life, in her 60s

When author Bonnie Garmus tried to sell her first novel, it was rejected 98 times, but then at 66, she wrote a novel called Lessons in Chemistry, which sold four million

Zoe Terakes and the mythic tales of gods, sex and magical transformations

Zoe Terakes is a writer and actor with deep family connections to the island of Crete, where their great-grandparents migrated to Australia from. This island is the site

Why Anthony LaPaglia is unapologetically irritable

Anthony talks about his turbulent childhood in the Adelaide suburb of Beefacres, escaping to a cocaine-fuelled New York in the 1980s to begin life as an actor, and how wr

Encore: The incandescent life of fashion visionary Jenny Kee

Fashion designer Jenny Kee co-created a whole new era in Australian fashion in the 1970s. But nothing could have prepared her for her own next chapter. Jenny was born in

Learning my family connection to the brutal history of Australia's pearling industry

When Edith Wright discovered the turbulent history of her great-grandfathers, who were some of the founders of the pearling industry in the waters off Broome, she knew sh

Encore: My orgasm induced amnesia and other epic adventures

Dasha Ross tells the story of her bizarre brush with memory loss and what happened when she and her husband decided to takeover a rundown beachside hotel in Sri Lanka. D

Anthony Scaramucci on Trump, getting fired and owning his mistakes

Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci on his childhood, becoming a success on Wall Street and why backing Trump was a colossal error.Anthony grew up on Long Island, part of a la

How to keep living when life falls apart

When Robin Bailey’s husband and father of their three boys died by suicide, she had to figure out the best way to help her children work through their grief while also ma

Encore: Inside the minds of the fish who sleep, have friends, and know it's the weekend

Dr Culum Brown's work on fish cognition has proven fish have long memories, sharks have friends, and sting rays know it's the weekend. Dr Culum Brown is a leading resear

How I decentred men and fell in love with my friends instead of another f*ckboy

Broadcaster and author Dee Salmin on how her parents' epic love story and dramatic relationship shaped her understanding of love and men; and how she eventually found hea

A little girl with a life split in three — how Mimi made it [PART II]

Mimi Kwa tells her family’s saga, featuring her dad — the thirty-second child of a wealthy Chinese silk trader, and her mum, who survived decades of undiagnosed schizophr

A little girl with a life split in three — how Mimi made it [PART I]

Mimi Kwa tells her family’s saga, featuring her dad — the thirty-second child of a wealthy Chinese silk trader, and her mum, who survived decades of undiagnosed schizophr