podcast

Conversations

by ABC

Best of 2025: How I became a brainwashed cult bride

18.12.2025 • 00:53:31

Liz Cameron was 18 years old when a stranger approached her in a book shop. It was the beginning of her induction into a cult, and it was an experienc...

Best of 2025: The young boat builder who rowed across the Pacific

17.12.2025 • 00:52:16

Tom Robinson was a 14-year-old living in the Brisbane suburbs when he made a promise to himself to become the youngest person ever to row across the P...

Best of 2025: Claire Keegan on bravery, writing and the single life

16.12.2025 • 00:53:10

The bestselling Irish author grew up on a farm set on “50 acres on the side of a hill”. Growing up, she witnessed a harsh, misogynistic country that c...

Best of 2025: How Vincent Fantauzzo's life was saved by love and painting

15.12.2025 • 00:52:00

When artist Vincent Fantauzzo was a boy he was a street-fighting petty criminal with dyslexia and a blazing talent for drawing. He escaped jail time, ...

Encore: the life of Norman Swan

12.12.2025 • 00:51:00

How a boy from Glasgow named Norman Swirsky grew up to become Australia's most famous doctor When Norman was 10 years old his dad decided to change t...

William McInnes' bittersweet summers — budgie smugglers, boardies and bumming around

11.12.2025 • 00:50:30

The author and actor thinks summer in Australia is done bigger, better and weirder than anywhere else. For three months of the year, life slows down a...

How living like a Stoic changed my life

10.12.2025 • 00:51:19

Journalist and author, Brigid Delaney looked into the ancient philosophy during an assignment from her editor. What she discovered led her to years of...

The Rajneeshees and me — why Martina thought she needed a guru to heal

09.12.2025 • 00:53:00

Cult survivor and psychotherapist Dr Martina Zangger on her ten years devoted to an Indian mystic and how she learned to stand on her own two feet. W...

Encore: Helen Garner's love letter to her grandson, and football

05.12.2025 • 00:52:10

When Helen Garner began following her grandson Amby's under-16s football team, it was a chance to spend more time with her youngest grandchild before ...

The forgotten men who fought and died in the wild jungles of Borneo

04.12.2025 • 00:53:00

At the very end of World War Two, Australian soldiers were sent to Borneo to dislodge the occupying Japanese Forces. The story of their brutal fightin...