Conversations

Anna Dombkins was 25 years old, when she and her husband happened on a television program about adoption which would completely change their lives. CW: this episode of Conversations discusses adoption.

It was a documentary investigating the unimaginable conditions of some orphanages in China.

The newly married couple felt compelled to adopt, but because they already had biological children, it was near impossible to adopt in Australi...

Country music artist Kasey Chambers has spent her life making music and connecting with audiences.  It’s what she believes she was put on the earth to do.

Growing up Kasey and her family spent much of the year camping and roaming the Nullabor Plain where her dad would hunt for foxes and rabbits.

She started singing around the campfire as a little girl and went to sleep to the sound of her father’s rifle as he worked ...

James O'Loghlin had only just reconnected with one of his best and oldest friends, Jum Wallner, when Jum received some terrible news. What began next was a high stakes race with a fatal deadline.

The two men had grown up in Canberra, where thousands of homes had been filled with asbestos, which was often carelessly installed and removed.

Jum himself had grown up in one of these so-called "Mr Fluffy" homes, named after the local compa...

Peter Hoysted, AKA Jack the Insider is back with a look at the humorous and bizarre stories of the newspaper founded in 1979 by a former CIA officer.

“174 MPH SNEEZE BLOWS OFF WOMAN’S HAIR”, “BABY BORN WITH TATTOO”, “GARDEN OF EDEN FOUND!”

These were some of the fantastical headlines that led the comedic black and white US tabloid, Weekly World News (WWN).

Peter Hoysted, AKA Jack the Insider i...

Darren Hayes rose to fame in the 1990s as part of the musical duo Savage Garden but the scars of his violent childhood nearly ended everything.

The band ended up selling 35 million albums and won numerous awards with hits like 'Truly Madly Deeply'.

On the surface, Darren had achieved wealth, adoration and stardom —everything he dreamt of as a kid growing up in Logan, on the outskirts of Brisbane.

This episode of Conversations wa...

Ken Gamble is very good at spying on people doing the wrong thing but perhaps the investigations that have had the most impact are the missing person cases he's taken on pro bono.

Ken spent part of his childhood living in a remote outback pub and by the age of 12, he was driving drunk jackaroos back to their stations.

When his family moved to the Sunshine Coast, Ken took up boxing on the amateur circuit and left school in Year 10 to ...

Gonzo journalist and writer John Safran on why he decided to squat in a Hollywood mansion belonging to Kanye West.John Safran has made a career out of getting into places he probably shouldn't be, from breaking into Disney Land, to infiltrating fascist strongholds in Australia.

A couple of years ago, one of his journalistic expeditions saw him squatting in an abandoned Hollywood mansion belonging Kanye West.

John had seen a clip of t...

Everyone knows the story of the Titanic. But one quintessentially Australian story of survival, love and adventure lay dormant for more than a century before journalist and author Lisa Wilkinson raised it from the depths of the Atlantic.

Everyone knows the story of the Titanic - the biggest, most magnificent, most expensive ship ever built.

It was meant to be unsinkable. But when it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atla...

Molly's niche career began over a decade ago when she entered a whistling competition on a whim and she now performs all over the world. 

Her music sits somewhere between birdsong and the soundtrack to a film noir.

Born in Sydney, Molly moved to Hollywood as a baby before returning to Australia for high school in Byron Bay. 

Once she realised her talent was more than just a hobby for family and friends, she began performing ...

Marele Day is a novelist, but as a young woman looking for adventure, she hitchhiked on a catamaran sailing from Darwin to Sri Lanka.

The skipper was a Frenchman, named Jean Day, who revealed on board that he had once done jail time for hijacking a plane.

What she only found out later, was that Jean was a fugitive on the run from another high-profile crime.

Further information

Marele Day's memoir is called Reckless

This episode of ...

Clinical psychologist and men's mental health researcher Zac Seidler on how boys are being fed increasingly inflammatory content online, and what men can do IRL to offer a version of masculinity that is healthy and vulnerable, instead of hard and dangerous.

Many young men are taking a journey on the internet right now which starts with inoffensive self-improvement videos on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, but quickly becomes some...

The former Australian of the Year and pioneering cancer researcher, died from brain cancer on Sunday evening.

Richard was a world-leading melanoma pathologist and cancer researcher.

After his own aggressive brain cancer was diagnosed in 2023, Richard volunteered to be 'patient zero' in an experimental medical approach, which applied some of the discoveries he and his team had made in melanoma treatment. 

Richard credited much of ...

Growing up in Tokyo, Hiroko Yoda  never thought of herself as religious, but after her mother died, she began exploring the spiritual traditions of her homeland.

She was inspired by the Shinto idea that there are '8 million spiritual beings', animating everything we encounter.

In the different practices of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Shugendo, Hiroko found practical means of emotional support, and also ways of making her every...

Dan Rankine (aka 'trials') was the only little Aboriginal boy living in his rural Welsh village when he woke up shaking from a nightmare. That's when he and his mother knew they needed to go home to Adelaide.

Dan is now one of Australia's most respected hip hop producers, writers and rappers.

Born in Adelaide, Dan spent his early years on the other side of the world - in the rolling, green hills of rural Wales - with his mum, who had...

Erna Walraven was one of the first female zookeepers to work at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in the 1980s. She ignored practical jokes from her male colleagues, like animal dung in her gumboots, and this led to career highlights like travelling the globe to select the zoo's next gorilla patriarch. (R)

Erna was born in The Netherlands, to parents who were involved in the Dutch resistance during World War II.

Erna's love of languages took her ...

The Gamilaroi journalist on the tiny coalmining town that made her and still sustains her, how eating worms led to a job on breakfast TV, and why she's aiming to be a good ancestor in the deep future.

Brooke grew up in Muswellbrook, a coal mining town in NSW.

She was a smart, high-achieving kid, doing every extra-curricular activity she could fit in.

Despite this, she dropped out of high school and didn't finish her education.

After a ...

The much loved actor has been on Australian TV screens and theatres for nearly 50 years. (R)

Noni Hazlehurst comes from a long line of performers, her parents met while they were part of a touring Variety act in the UK, and her great grandfather was a famous child trapeze artist.

Keeping children company on Playschool was one of her best known roles, which she had for 24 years.

In Noni’s day, Playschool was recorded in one take,...

Political advisor Ed Coper on the cold-blooded machine that is feeding angry people angry content online to make them even angrier, and what we can do about it.

Ed Coper is a political advisor and communications consultant who has worked for the Australian Labor Party, and for progressive lobby groups.

Over the past few years, he has noticed what everyone else has - people on both sides of the divide becoming increasingly vocal and a...

The former Canberra Raiders player on hiding his fantasy reading habits as a kid in Western Queensland, the joy of doing hard things, and how books brought him back from the brink. Warning: Discussion of suicide.

Luke was a sensitive kid, growing up on a cattle station in Western Queensland. 

He loved being transported by fantasy novels — following the quests, battles and magic they offered him.

Luke found release in these ...