Conversations

Aaron Tait was 18 when he was deployed after September 11. His dad's guidance had set Aaron up with the grit he would need as a military officer, but it took him many years to forgive himself for his role in the war.

Aaron comes from a long line of Navy men, and all through his childhood he was waiting until it was his turn to get stuck into life at sea.

After basic officer training, Aaron moved through the harsh Na...

Hostage negotiation isn't at all like what you see in Hollywood blockbusters. There is no lying, no promise-making, not even any names. Vince Hurley has only one task—trying to make a deep, human connection with a complete stranger.

Content Warning: this episode of Conversations contains strong language and descriptions of violent crime.

Vince Hurley is a criminologist at Macquarie University and a passionate advoca...

Navigator Will Oxley expected the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race to be a challenging one. But when he and his crew met with 12-metre waves and 80km/h winds in Bass Strait, Will knew something was about to go horribly wrong (R)

Will Oxley learnt the art of celestial navigation in his 20s and he is now one of the world’s leading ocean race navigators.

He has competed in the Sydney to Hobart race many times.

He was na...

Rafael Bonachela was born in the dying years of Franco’s Spain, into a patriarchal culture that didn’t appreciate little boys who wanted to dance. 

As the eldest of four brothers, his father expected him to be an example of academic achievement and bravado.

This hardline approach slowly drove his father away from the family, though when it came time to say goodbye, Rafael saw an unexpected side of him.

At the age of ...

Justin Heazlewood fled a complicated early life in Tasmania searching for fame as an artist on the mainland but then moved back to his home town of Burnie, and realised community is where you find it.

For years he imagined his hometown as somewhere he had to leave, especially if he was going to be any kind of artist.

And there were other, more personal reasons that made staying in Burnie complicated.

Justin's Mum has...

For journalist Kate Halfpenny, moving to a beachside town during Melbourne's lockdowns seemed like the perfect way to unwind and escape her huge mortgage. Then she had to contend with the triple whammy of perimenopause, her husband's alcoholism and distance from family and friends.

For the first time in her life, Kate had an empty house, no job commitments and no city life to distract her.

She was able to indulge da...

The artist Loribelle Spirovski on her unusual childhood in the Philippines, meeting her father for the first time at 7 years old, and making her way as one of Australia's most exciting young painters.

Loribelle Spirovski grew up in the Philippines, with her mum and her extended Filipino family.

Her Serbian father, whom she had never met, was in Australia, driving taxis and waiting for the visa that would allow him t...

Felicia Djamirze grew up in the criminal underworld, then became a beauty queen. But her life outside the pageant circuit was mired in the world of drugs, bikie gangs and violence.(CW: graphic discussion of domestic violence and crime) 

Felicia Djamirze is a counsellor, an advocate for women's justice, a three-time Miss Australia winner and a convicted drug trafficker.

Felicia grew up surrounded by drug abuse and cr...

For Professor Kelvin Kong, the ear is our most beautiful organ. Kelvin is a proud Worimi man and an ENT surgeon at the forefront of medical innovation.

For Professor Kelvin Kong, the ear is our most beautiful organ.

It's vital to how many of us understand each other, and how we understand ourselves.

The proud Worimi man is the third doctor in his family, and is now an ENT surgeon at the forefront of medical innovatio...

When Professor Mandyam Srinivasan began studying bees almost 35 years ago, we was interested in learning how bees landed so elegantly, and avoided colliding in mid-air.

What Mandyam discovered was a complex and astounding system of vision and flight, which is now being applied to machine vision and robotics.

He and his team at the Queensland Brain Institute built an autonomous aircraft, without GPS or radar, that fl...

As a marine molecular biologist, Dr Nerida Wilson spends a lot of her time getting acquainted with the mysterious creatures lurking in the dark depths of the sea.

From nudibranchs, to sea dragons and a UFO-looking spiral that's around 150 feet long, Nerida doesn't need to know why these weird and wonderful creatures exist, that they made it here in the first place is enough.

This episode of Conversations was produce...

When Lee Berger entered the field of palaeoanthropology there was a one in 10,000,000 chance he would discover anything 'worthwhile' digging around South Africa. But this real-life Indiana Jones kept bucking the odds.

First, he found a pair of hominid teeth in southern Africa, and then after a fossil-hunting dry spell, his 9-year-old son Matthew found the jawbone of a completely new hominid species.

A few years late...

Dr Culum Brown is a leading researcher in the field of fish cognition, his research has shown that even that smallest fish are capable of learning and can retain memories for months.

His fascination for fish stems from growing up in parts of south-east Asia, where he would spend every possible hour in the ocean with a snorkel.

As an adult, Culum's marine biology studies around the world have revealed many facts whic...

Dr Campbell Costello's work as a vet has taken him out of his family's station in North Queensland to places as far flung as Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Patagonia.

He's acted as the official vet for a sled race in Alaska, for epic horse races in Mongolia and Argentina, and he has run a cattle station in the former Soviet Union.

But after a family tragedy, Dr Costello got his pilot's licence so he could service Australi...

Dr Tanya Latty is an insect scientist with a quirky taste in pets, and a keen eye for detail, but it's the lessons from her brainless pet slime mould that she's most fascinated about.

Tanya studies the behaviour of ants and bees and she's particularly interested in their ability to work effectively as a team to achieve a common goal.

But her pet project is focused on a creature that defies classification.

Slime mould...

When his elders named him Bindi, David Hudson had no idea his future would involve performing with his didgeridoo at the Taj Mahal, or a role in a film starring Marlin Brando  

Western Yalanji and Ewamian man David Bindi Hudson is a performing artist and musician.

His parents were born on Mona Mona mission, near Cairns.

David's mother didn't like being told what to do, and so in 1956 she walked off the mission with h...

Erna Walraven was one of the first female zookeepers to work at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in the 1980s. Despite practical jokes from her male colleagues, like animal dung in her gumboots, Erna kept her nerve.

She 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 to Spain, where she lived for many years with her widowed sister and young...

At 18 years old, Mick Doleman miraculously survived when his ship capsized in the freezing Southern Ocean off Tasmania. But as he floated in a life raft with his nine crewmates, his ordeal at sea had only just begun.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris, the Executive Producer was Nicola Harrison.

It covers ship wreck, overcrowding, emergency rescue, team dynamics, ship captain, Tasmania, roug...