Afleveringen
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Growing up, para powerlifter, Hani Watson’s passion for lifting had been ignited by her dad and the pack of Arnold Schwarzenegger-types in their string singlets who would accompany him to lift weights. The gym has seen Hani through agonising moments in life, and all the way to the Paralympic Games. Warning: discussion of sexual assault.
Throughout her childhood she was having operation after painful operation, to try to straighten her bowed legs.
After each surgery, the metal pins and screws would wreak havoc in Hani’s legs, and they resumed growing in the same way they always had.
In high school, ruptures at home meant Hani had to move out and support herself, and she lost touch with her mum.
During this distressing time, a kindly school principal gave Hani the keys to the school gym, and that place became an anchor once more.
After another unsuccessful surgery in her 30s, Hani was enjoying the freedom of a wheelchair, compared to the agonising and exhausting effort of walking.
She turned to powerlifting to recover, which led her to worldwide competitions, eventually earning a bronze medal at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022.
Hani also competed at the 2024 Paris Paralympics.
Further information
If you need support, you can chat online with someone at Lifeline, or call on 13 11 14.
Hani is competing for Australia in Glasgow at this year’s Commonwealth Games.
This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. Conversations' Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
This episode covers weightlifting, powerlifting, para-powerlifting, paralympian, disability, athlete, bowed legs, osteotomies, plates and screws in your leg, divorce, marriage, trauma, domestic violence, family violence, mental health, mental illness, psychosis, weight training, drugs, drug mule, marijuana, high school, bullying, popular kids, assault, sexual assault, competition, bunnings, wheelchair, VAD, QVAD, voluntary assisted dying and chores.
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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At just 15 years old, Jarvis Cocker wrote a manifesto that laid out his vision for a band he hoped would take over the music industry.
Jarvis discovered the document while sorting through the boxes of stuff from his early life that he’d stashed away in his attic.
It was in an an old school exercise book from when he was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in Sheffield.
He'd filled it with detailed plans to form a band called Pulp that would storm the music industry.
But it took fourteen years for his 'Pulp Masterplan' to come to fruition, when his song ‘Common People’ went to the top of the UK charts.
This interview was first broadcast in 2023
Further information
This interview was recorded at the 2023 Melbourne Writers Festival
Good Pop Bad Pop is published by Random House
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Hannah had a beautiful love story with her husband Matt. After he died in a surfing accident, grief broke her open and changed her life in unexpected ways
As a young couple, writer Hannah Richell and her husband Matt left London for a new life in Australia.
They loved the ocean, the sun, and the people.
Then one morning before work, Matt went for a surf at Bronte Beach, and, in a tragic accident, drowned.
Hannah was lost to grief....and overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for their two little children all alone.
But, painstaking, day by day, month by month, year by year she found her way back to life.
Hannah discovered that her heart could expand to include all of it - the joy and the heartbreak, the sweetness and the pain, the love and the loss.
Further information:
An Ocean And A Day is published by HarperCollins
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During her two terms as PM, Jacinda gained global attention for her response to the terror attack in Christchurch and for giving birth at the same time as running the country.
Jacinda grew up as a good Mormon girl who planned on making a difference behind the scenes.
But when she unexpectedly became head of the Labor Party, only weeks away from a federal election, Jacinda discovered she had a talent for leadership.
Jacinda's memoir about her time as PM and her life before and after is called A Different Kind of Power.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Jen Leake and Nicola Harrison is the Executive Producer.
Further Information
A Different Kind of Power is published by Penguin.
For more information, Penguin authors Jacinda Ardern
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The much-loved actor Sam Neill had an unusual path into acting. Raised in New Zealand as a shy boy with a stutter named Nigel, he was 30 when he got his big break (R) Sam, who has died at the age of 78, was an acclaimed actor, a winemaker, an author, a cancer survivor and a Dad to four children.
In recent years he had cared for cows, pigs, ducks and horses on his farm in New Zealand while making Pinot Noir.
In his remarkable career as an actor he starred in more than 100 films including Jurassic Park, My Brilliant Career, and The Piano.
A few years ago, stuck in Sydney while undergoing treatment for cancer, Sam found himself with a lot of time on his hands to reflect on his eclectic life.
Sarah spoke to him in 2023 after the release of his quirky, funny and life-affirming memoir.
Further information:
Did I Ever Tell You This is published by Text
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Fairytale expert, Kate Forsyth travels back in time to the stories of her youth, to a dark, fantastical and eerie world where cruelty and mischief abound.
As a young girl, Kate was sent to stay with her great aunts in Newcastle and there was introduced to the darkness, magic and mystery of Scottish folklore.
These stories lit Kate’s imagination on fire, and let to a lifetime of study into these powerful stories and the messages behind them.
One true story from this period that stayed with Kate was the treacherous and dramatic life story of Mary, Queen of Scots, who, in the telling, was only a few years older than the teenaged Kate.
Intertwined with the true Scottish history were dark, fantastical and eerie accounts about cruel and mischievous fairies who would leave their young in place of human babies, as ‘changelings’.
This world abounded with magic - hazelnuts that give the power of invisibility and curses that cause boys to dance to their death.
These legends also feature brave and ingenious girls who figure out how to rescue the sick and cursed through their own wits and knowledge of the natural world.
Further information
The Changeling is published by Penguin Random House.
This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer of Conversations is Nicola Harrison.
You can listen to Kate's previous Conversations interviews on the tangled roots of fairytales, the dark and violent origins of beloved fairytales, the Russian tale of Vasilisa the Wise and her nemesis, the witch Baba Yaga, the story of a blood red rose, The intrepid and curious Charlotte Waring Atkinson, Psyche, the curious and brave goddess of the soul.
This episode touches on witch trials, burning of witches, neolithic stones, storytelling, violence against women, cunning folk, ken, kenning, runes, being in touch with the seasons, old women, prayers, spells, rowan tree, faeries, fairies, fairy queen, changeling, autism, neurodivergent, neurodiverse, dauphin, King James, King James Bible,
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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Travel writer Pico Iyer was at the peak of his career when an accidental layover at Narita airport saw him begin to question everything.
Pico began flying around the world solo at the age of nine.
His parents lived in America and he had become a boarder at the Dragon School in Oxford.
To get to school and from school he took several flights each year alone.
The formative experience of travel stayed with him, and he grew up to become a journalist and travel writer for Time Magazine.
Further information
This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2020.
Autumn Light: a season of Fire and Farewells is published by Bloomsbury.
This episode was produced by Nicola Harrison. The Executive Producer was Carmel Rooney.
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large of The Australian, investigates how the country went from the great reform age under Hawke, Keating and Howard, into the tumultuous Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison era of prime ministers, and arrived at the current existential crisis facing the Liberal Party.
Paul started his career as a political journalist in the 1970s and was at old Parliament House when Gough Whitlam was dismissed.
In his latest book, Paul examines how the Liberal Party lost its long-standing grip on the Australian psyche between 2013 and 2022, as it cycled through three temperamentally and ideologically divergent prime ministers.
He says that despite its many achievements, the Coalition in office was marked by a period of under-performance and doubts over the political system's capacity to serve the national interest.
Paul looks at the factors underpinning the current crisis besetting the Coalition and the reasons why Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison all struggled to govern, in very different ways.
Further information
The Twilight of Exceptionalism: The Liberal and Conservative Era 2013 - 2022 is published by Melbourne University Press.
This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. Conversations' Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
This episode covers Liberal party crisis, Barnaby Joyce, One Nation, conservatism, populism, populist, same sex marriage plebiscite, postal survey, carbon tax, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, covid19, covid, conservative politics, conservatism, MH17, Putin, Ukraine, mossad, ASIS, budget, NDIS, Gonski, Prince Philip, knighthood, Scotty from marketing, China, AUKUS, Albanese,
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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Wongaibon woman, Gayle Kennedy tells the story of her childhood, punctuated by years of treatment for polio. A bright child, she blitzed school and was drawn to comic book writing, which led to an award-winning career as an author.
Gayle was two when she contracted polio. The family was living in a camp outside Condobolin when little Gayle collapsed at her aunt’s house.
Gayle’s mother was in hospital at the time, where she had given birth to Gayle’s younger brother.
She ran from the hospital to her sickly toddler, and brought Gayle in for treatment.
Gayle was sent to Sydney and spent six months in an iron lung, a mechanical respirator that covered her whole body, leaving her head exposed.
For years she would return to Sydney for follow up therapy.
Gayle was a bright student who overcame racism at school and after she graduated she worked with the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, then set up the Ivanhoe Land Council.
During this time, Gayle was introduced to Streetwize Comics, which inspired to give writing a go and got a job as a comic book writer.
Years later, Gayle became unwell again, and she was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome.
She was miserable and suffering, and when she joined the NDIS her life changed for the better.
She started writing stories that were published in the Sydney Morning Herald and went on to win the David Unaipon Award for her book Me, Antman and Fleabag.
Further information
This episode was produced by Rebecca McLaren. The Executive Producer of Conversations is Nicola Harrison.
This episode contains reference to father's love, mother's love, polio, post-polio syndrome, Abbotsford station, Ivanhoe, Wangaaypuwan, Royal Flying Doctor Service, rehabilitation, children's hospital, kind nurses, long drop toilet, racism, Catholic school, Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, cousins, nepotism, Balmain, NDIS, scooter, how to drink in the park, Redfern, blackfellas, saying yes, giving things a go.
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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Troy grew up travelling between two very different worlds with his Indigenous mum and his Maltese Dad. At just 17 he started on his path to becoming one of Australia's biggest country music stars (R) CW: Mentions suicide, please take care when listening
Troy Cassar-Daley is a proud Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung man, and one of Australia's most beloved country music stars.
As a 17-year-old musician just starting out, Troy joined a band called Little Eagle.
Soon afterwards, he won the Tamworth Starmaker Quest, and within a few years, Troy was a fully-fledged country music star.
In his long career, Troy has won 40 Golden Guitars and 5 ARIA Awards, among many other accolades.
In his most recent album, Between the Fires, Troy digs deep into his own family history, with songs of grief, love and connection.
Further information
Troy is touring now - more details here
Help and support is always available
If you need to talk, 24/7 crisis support is available from Lifeline by calling 13 11 14.
You can also text and chat online with counsellors here.
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Writer Anita Heiss has based her novel Dirrayawadha on stories from the 1800s during the frontier wars in Bathurst, when martial law was declared.
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The filmmaker on her series which documents a period some historians call the most important war Australia has ever fought in.
Rachel Perkins is one of this country's great storytellers, translating distinctively Australian stories for the screen, including a television series first released in 2022 called The Australian Wars.
It tracks the bloody conflicts that broke out across the continent after the arrival of the British colonists.
Rachel says these are the most important wars in our history: they were fought on Australian soil, between Australians, to determine the ownership and control of the entire country.
The stories from this era are stories of violence, of peace, of epic adventures, which make up the foundational narrative of this nation.
This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2022
Further Information
The Australian Wars is available to watch on SBS on Demand.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris, the Executive Producer was Carmel Rooney.
It explores Aboriginal history, British colonial history, frontier wars, the Native Police, death, conflict, grief, Australian history, guns, violence, land ownership, control, documentary
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Tagalaka man, Victor Steffensen on the ‘walking encyclopedias’ — dear old men he met who entrusted him with their decades of cultural knowledge and taught him to apply the right traditional burn for the right environment, so Country can thrive.
Victor advocates for small, cool fires that emit white smoke. This is something Indigenous people have done for tens of thousands of years to help Country survive and thrive.
Victor was a young man who wasn’t sure which direction to take when two elders in Far North Queensland took him under their wing.
He was hungry for knowledge and a beautiful, trusting relationship grew between the three men.
The old men poured their expertise into Victor, who captured it all on videotape.
Today Victor teaches all around the country, using traditional methods on how to safely burn the landscape so plants, animals and people can flourish.
Further information
The Knowledge: Learning from ancestral wisdom to save our challenging global environment is published by Allen & Unwin.
This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
This episode covers Indigenous elders, cultural knowledge, doubt, backburning, bushfires, fuel load, drip torch, cool burn, mosaic burn, everything is connected, sacred knowledge, climate change, native grasses, crocodile country, knowledge sharing, Indigenous knowledge systems, NAIDOC week, lost language, mentors, Indigenous rangers, Kuranda, camping, fishing.
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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For 40 years, crime was the only constant in Lincoln Lynch’s life, until a prison stint forced him to look inward and change the trajectory of his life for good.
His young mum went to prison for dealing drugs when Lincoln was little, and eventually he followed in her footsteps.
Lincoln endured periods of homelessness and institutionalised abuse as a teenager, and he became a teen father, before winding up in prison himself.
There, in his cell, Lincoln discovered God’s teachings about compassion and forgiveness, and he resolved to leave prison a different man.
On the outside, he was given practical, real-life support to re-establish his life at a halfway house in Sydney called Rainbow Lodge.
With new-found confidence and purpose, Lincoln started studying psychology, fell in love and is now working at the lodge, helping other men find their way outside of prison.
Content Warning: this episode of Conversations contains discussion about childhood abuse and sexual assault.
More information about Rainbow Lodge can be found online.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Rebecca McLaren and Meggie Morris. Executive Producer was Eliza Kirsch.
It explores judicial system, justice system, recidivism, substance abuse, heroin, meth, speed, homelessness, sleeping rough, childhood abuse, sexual assault, sexuality, institutional abuse, mother son relationships, grief, drug dealing, crime, guilty verdict, prison system, prison sentence, serving time, changing your life, turning your life around, love, relationships, fatherhood, psychology, Vince Hurley, policing, criminology, intergenerational trauma, God, spirituality, reform.
To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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The inaugural winner of Alone Australia on her life as a creative, outrageous, nature-loving misfit who grew up to live through great depths of love and grief. Warning: Discusses the death of a child.
In 2023, Gina Chick spent 67 days by herself, in the wilderness of Tasmania’s West Coast, surviving on worms, fish, and one unlucky wallaby.
After those 67 days, Gina became the first-ever winner of a reality show on SBS called Alone Australia, but her approach to the competition was very different from the other contestants.
For Gina, the wild was not an enemy to be overcome but a place with no hierarchy, where she feels completely herself.
It’s always been that way, since she was a 'weird' little girl with a rare affinity with birds and nature.
As an adult, Gina spent years inside Sydney’s queer club scene and working for an all-girl security firm, but life changed completely for Gina when she became a mother herself.
Further information
If you need support after listening to this story, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Gina's book We are the Stars was published by Simon & Schuster in 2024.
The Executive Producer of Conversations is Nicola Harrison.
This episode explores motherhood, parenting, reality television, Alone Australia, winner of Alone, hunting, survival, did Gina catch the wallaby? adoption, adoptees, Kiama, South Coast NSW, ADHD, birds, neurodiversity, bad boyfriends, debt, sexually transmitted debt, scent, pheromones, younger men, Oxford Street, survival, nightclubs, podium dancing, synaesthesia, breast cancer.
To binge even more great episodes of the 'Conversations podcast' with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, singers, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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Nuking the moon, putting mirrors in space and blowing up the Polar ice caps are just some of history's hairbrained schemes to control the weather, an obsession man has had since the dawn of time.
As a major heatwave tears through Europe, millions of people are frantically trying to stay cool, or praying for some relief. Their desperation is not new.
For thousands of years, human civilisations have been obsessed with trying to control the weather, to stave off drought and famine, in order to survive.
There are ancient tales of great kings who could part the oceans, and deities who would bring down the rain if they were presented with the right kind of sacrifice.
But it wasn’t until the last century that we suddenly had the technology to actually do these kinds of things, or at least attempt to do them.
Some of these wild ideas - to bring water to the desert, drain the Mediterranean Sea to make farmlands, simply make Russia a warmer place to live - have involved blowing up the Polar ice caps, putting mirrors in space, and nuking the moon.
They sound dangerous and unlikely, but some of them have come true.
And now, many people are at work on brand new gigantic geo-engineering solutions to counteract the effects of the warming planet.
Palaeontologist and explorer, Tim Flannery, has been tracking the progress of some of these schemes.
A Brief History of Climate Folly, written with Emma Flannery, is published by Text Publishing.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
It explores weird science, crazy science, Elon Musk, China, Trump, feats of engineering, space exploration, the human ego, wild weather events, magic, supernatural, religion, God, divinity, human sacrifice, famine, starvation, migration, global warming, climate change, European heatwave, Paris heatwave, fossil fuel, deforestation, COP, climate change policy, sea levels, floods, Summer, water, gas, electricity, solar power, politics, renewables.
To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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John Hockney's memoir gives a rare insight into the unusual life of one of the world's most famous artists.
He grew up in the industrial town of Bradford in Northern England and was one of five children in a creative household, led by his iconoclastic father Kenneth, a conscientious objector who always told his children to 'never worry what the neighbours think'.
During the war, there were many shortages. As child, John's brother David would creep downstairs in the morning and draw on whatever paper was available.
He drew figures, streets, houses, landscapes and cartoons on the white edge of the newspaper, his mother's magazines, or whatever comics arrived that day.
When David got his first sketchbook at the age of 10, his parents realised his drawing was much more than compulsive doodling.
This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2020
Further Information
John Hockney's memoir is called The Hockneys: Never Worry About What the Neighbours Think
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For more than a century, Melbourne's Abbotsford Convent was occupied by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, and the "wayward" girls and orphans they took care of. Patricia Sykes was one of those girls.
She was dropped off at the orphanage with her three sisters in the early 1950s after their mother died.
Their father couldn't afford to take care of four girls at home, but wanted them to stay together, so an orphanage felt like his only option.
As a girl, Patricia, a gifted student who loved music and words, desperately wanted to escape the convent.
But later in life, after finally finishing school and then university as a mother and mature student, Patricia returned to Abbotsford Convent.
As a poet in residence, Patricia went back on her own terms to hear and to tell the stories of dozens of women who passed through its doors, and to interrogate her own understanding of her time with the nuns.
Patricia's collection of poetry is called The Abbotsford Mysteries. You can find information about all of Patricia's books online.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer was Eliza Kirsch.
It explores religion, Christianity, Catholicism, Australia of yesteryear, modern history, Melbourne, Victoria, nunnery, orphanages, grief, sisterhood, education, women's rights, motherhood, losing a mother, the Queen, writing, books, late life career change.
To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you’ll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.
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Science writer David Epstein on why freedom can be the enemy of success and how we can all benefit from less choice, not more.
We live today with vastly more freedom of choice than our ancestors.But there’s also plenty of research telling us all this choice is making us more anxious, overwhelmed and less creative.In his book, Inside the Box, David makes the case for how constraints can unlock creativity and satisfaction.
And why after writing this book he now believes that narrowing your options can truly set you free.
Further Information
Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better is published by Macmillan
You can learn more about David Epstein here
This episode was produced by Jen Leake and the Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
It explores creativity, innovation, creative burnout, relationships, technology, art, music, rules, deadlines, science, General Magic, Apple, Iphone, sport, choice, anxiety, creative thinking, rules.
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Veteran performer Paul Capsis on his strict upbringing and the strong female role models who helped him stay in school despite the brutality.
A powerful and expressive voice, flamboyant physical presence, and mane of dark hair have become his trademarks as a performer.
But when Paul was growing up in inner-city Sydney as the child of Greek and Maltese parents, these same qualities brought him a world of trouble. At school he was relentlessly ridiculed and beaten.
The love of his Maltese grandmother, Angela, and other family members, helped Paul stay in school despite the brutality; as did immersing himself in the music of his favourite singers, Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday.
This episode of Conversations was first broadcast in 2018
The producer was Michelle Ransom Hughes and the Executive Producer was Pam O'Brien.
It explores performing, singing, homophobia, bullying, Maltese heritage, Greek heritage, strong female role models, Janis Joplin, cabaret, grandmas, women, inner-city Sydney.
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