As a forensic counsellor and then a grief counsellor, Wendy Liu has spent many years right up close to death. Her work with people who are processing all kinds of losses has brought her a much keener appreciation for life. (R)   Wendy Liu was a young woman on a social work placement when she realised she had a special affinity for hard conversations about life and death. She put her aptitude to work in palliative care, and then some years later she began working as a forensic...

Author Rosalie Ham grew up in a country town three blocks long and three blocks wide. She paid close attention to the characters there, like the woman at the shops whose face was frozen into Munch’s scream. This eye for detail led to her first novel, which became a hit movie starring Kate Winslet.     Author, Rosalie Ham grew up in country NSW, in a town three streets wide and three streets long. During a mouse plague, the rodents were so prolific that their droppings would appear at the...

Writer Emily Maguire on losing her own faith, but finding awe and inspiration in a controversial myth about a female pontiff who some people believe sat disguised on the papal throne for two years in the ninth century.   Writer Emily Maguire grew up in a very Christian home, where life revolved around the Church and prayer. By the time she was in her late teens, Emily had well and truly rebelled against her religious upbringing, eventually dropping out of high school, getting a job at...

Jelena Dokic overcame adversity, poverty and violence to rise to the top of the tennis world. Years later, her revelations about her father's abuse stunned the world. (CW: discussion of domestic violence and coercive control).   This episode of Conversations also talks about sport, training, family, origin stories, parenting, relationships, childhood trauma, sports commentary, online trolls, refugees, security, control, family violence, therapy, mental health, identity, disordered eating,...

Lee Berger, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and real-life Indiana Jones with tales of his hominid discoveries, many of which have rewritten the story of palaeoanthropology. (R)   National Geographic Explorer in Residence, Lee Berger, entered the field of palaeoanthropology when there was an infinitesimally tiny chance he would discover anything, while digging around South Africa. But this real-life Indiana Jones kept bucking the odds. He kept unearthing previously unseen parts...

As Andrew Dwyer ventured further into the desert, he fell in love with the people and the landscape. He battled sandstorms, floods and isolation to serve fine foods under the stars.   When Andrew Dwyer was growing up in 1960s Melbourne, the city wasn't the foodie destination it is now, in fact it was often described as a "culinary wasteland". But luckily for Andrew, his Czechoslovakian godfather and his Chinese stepmother introduced him to incredible flavours and cooking techniques from...

An impulse decision to buy a home in the rainforest results in a comedy of errors involving a python in the roof, an unexpected tax bill, two reality TV shows discussing bowel movements with Shane Warne. (R)   Akmal Saleh doesn't like the jungle or rainforests, or any of the animals in the jungle or rainforest.  Akmal likes cafes and running water, which made the comedian's purchase of a cabin in the hills outside Byron Bay incredibly puzzling to those who know him.  Looking for a place...

Athlete Gerrard Gosens didn't realise he was blind until his first day at primary school. His adventurous spirit led him to become a three time Paralympian, climb Mt Everest, swim the English Channel, and perform the rhumba on Dancing With The Stars. This conversation talks about family life, family history, childhood memories, origin stories, training, medical procedures, surgery, mountaineering, mountains, cycling, open water swimming, parenting, genetic conditions, glaucoma, disability,...

How a Birmingham boy became best-selling thriller writer, Lee Child, and the creator of one of the literary world's most popular loners. (R)         James Grant grew up in Birmingham when it was a bustling industrial city. While huge workforces would pour of the factories as men ended their shifts and headed home on bicycles, for children, there wasn't much to do. Young James often found himself at the library, and he grew up a voracious reader. He began working for Granada Television...

Dr Tracy Westerman grew up in the Pilbara, where suicide and mental health issues have deeply scarred Indigenous communities. So this Nyamal woman decided to do something about it.   Nyamal woman Tracy Westerman grew up in some of the most remote parts of Western Australia, moving from a station to a town called Useless Loop, eventually landing in the mining town of Tom Price. Tracy, the daughter of an Aboriginal mother and a white father, became the first person educated entirely in Tom...

Michael Visontay with the true tale of how fragments of a rare Gutenberg Bible were sold off, leaf by leaf, in New York in the 1920s, and how the sale of these books, chapters and verses changed the course of his own family.       Some years ago journalist Michael Visontay was researching his family history when he stumbled upon the story of a man named Gabriel Wells, who had been a New York book dealer at the height of the Roaring 20s.  As a way to make fast money, Wells came up with a...

Legendary cook, author, food producer and educator Maggie Beer had a circuitous path to the food world, which began when she left school at 14. (R)       Legendary cook, author, food producer and educator Maggie Beer grew up in Lakemba in South-West Sydney, and got her first job when she was 14 years old. Maggie had to leave school early to go out to work to help support her family after her father's business went bankrupt. Although she had a varied working life over the next two...

In 2024 Nate Byrne went from presenting the weather to making the news when he acknowledged live on air that he was experiencing a panic attack. Keeping cool under pressure is a skill Nate developed in his first career as a Naval Officer, and perhaps also from his days as a go-go dancer in a Perth nightclub.     Nate Byrne is the Weather Presenter on ABC News Breakfast. In August this year Nate went from presenting the weather to making the news when he acknowledged, as he was...

Chef Ben Shewry grew up on a farm in New Zealand where his family grew or hunted most of their own food.   Ben was 10 when he started working in restaurants and his discovery of a second hand Thai cookbook eventually led him to Australia. In 2015 Ben become the owner of Attica in Melbourne and turned it into one of the world's most acclaimed and innovative restaurants. This episode of Conversations explores origin, family, ancestry, parenting, origin stories, Melbourne, personal stories,...

Antony Penrose grew up knowing little about his remarkable mother Lee Miller, who had studied with Man Ray in Paris, and become a model, a photographer, and a war correspondent. But then an unexpected find in the family attic changed everything. (R)   Lee Miller was a Vogue model, a photographer, and a war correspondent who studied in Paris with her lover, Man Ray, lived in Egypt, and captured some of the most searing images of the holocaust. Recently she has become famous in pop culture...

Bhawani O'Brien's first name means "giver of life" in Tamil, which is ironic she says, because one of the greatest privileges of her life has been helping more than 100 people in their dying moments as a voluntary assisted dying practitioner. Bhawani grew up in Malaysia with Sri Lankan parents, both of whom were doctors. She was also expected to become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or an accountant. Luckily for her, she adored her father, and followed his footsteps into medical school...

Australian Gonzo author and documentary filmmaker John Safran has made a career out of getting into places he probably shouldn't be. He put his sanity on the line in his latest escapade — breaking into one of Kanye West's strange homes.   His latest slightly criminal expedition saw him squatting in a Hollywood mansion belonging to Kanye West. John had seen a clip of the hip-hop mega star denying the Holocaust, defending Adolf Hitler, and claiming that Black people cannot be anti-Semitic...

Joh Jarvis was a high-flying boss when grief from a terrible loss began to overwhelm her. She tried therapy, exercise and healthy eating. Then she found Vedic meditation, and the experience was 'psychedelic'.   Joh Jarvis is a Vedic meditation teacher. Every week, she travels into Rikers Island Prison — a notorious jail in New York City — to teach meditation to hardened criminals. Joh grew up in Adelaide and had always wanted to live amidst the bright lights of New York. After a stint as...

Indian-Australian actor and playwright, Nicholas Brown on being cast as a villain, and what made him end his time in Mumbai for a different life back home.   Actor Nicholas Brown regularly appears on Playschool — cavorting with stuffed animals and singing about the solar system. Back when he was growing up in Western Sydney there was no one who looked like him when he’d turn the telly on.  Nicholas became the youngest student accepted to NIDA, straight out of school, but his career failed...

The hardship, cruelty and loneliness of the mission system during the Great Depression didn't crush Aunty Ruth Hegarty's spirit. She found her voice, God and her family. (R) In 1929 during the Great Depression, Ruth travelled with her mother and grandparents to Barambah, later known as Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission. After being told someone there would help them find a new home, they soon discovered they weren't allowed to leave. At 4 years of age, Ruth was separated from her family. She...

From the unforgiving tropics of the Kokoda track to Mt Everest, wilderness guide Steve Ellis has made a career teaching bushcraft and survival skills to civilians and Defence personnel – and along the way he has survived his share of life-threatening situations. Steve Ellis' own first lesson in survival came very young. He was just 6 years old when he got lost in the national forest near his family farm in central Victoria, but as Steve snuggled up to one of the working dogs for the night,...

Following the coup of 2021, Australian economist Sean Turnell received an email from a "secret friend", warning him he was being watched by Myanmar's military. Moments later, the police closed in on him.   Sean Turnell is an Australian economist with longstanding connections to Myanmar, the nation formerly known as Burma. In 2016, Sean was appointed as senior economic advisor to the dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, who had become the country's prime minister after decades of military rule. The...

From Wollongong to London, via Alice Springs, this is writer Nikki Gemmell on her deeply romantic life, and how she defied expectations to become a famous author. Writer Nikki Gemmell grew up the daughter of a coal miner who thought writers were a burden on society, while her mum taught Nikki that only success was worthy of love. So Nikki went above and beyond to prove her beloved father wrong, and to get the attention of her mother through her achievements, publishing 20 books in the...

Dasha Ross' most epic adventures were chartered with her larger-than-life husband John Pinder, including the time they managed a beachside hotel in Sri Lanka. Things did not go as planned. Dasha Ross has lived a life full of adventures, from nude modelling in Sydney and making films in Brazil, to renovating a nightclub in Harlem with a baby on her hip. But Dasha's biggest adventures were with her beloved husband John Pinder, including the time the two of them took up a surprising offer to...