The details of a life, the questions they raise.
Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski explore lives through concrete details: a barber's garage, a consulting room, a childhood music shop. Conversations (ABC) connects those settings to larger questions about care, loss, belonging and the difficult work of changing direction.
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A garage and a quiet consulting room offer two ways into the concerns of Conversations (ABC). Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski present the interviews. Questions about rooms, routines and childhood lead toward the experiences that have shaped a guest's relationships, choices and understanding of the world around them. The movement is patient, with room for complicated answers. Charles Lomu describes teaching young men to cut hair while helping them learn to talk, work with customers and find their footing. His account also considers family, bereavement, prison and the difference between having good intentions and acting on them in daily life. A conversation with a GP makes the connection between medical care and the difficulties that can keep someone from receiving it. A missing identity document can become a barrier to housing and income. Dental care, social work and the time to understand a person's circumstances belong in the same discussion as symptoms, prescriptions and treatment at the clinic. These practical details give questions about dignity and belonging something concrete to rest on, beyond a general appeal for compassion. Elsewhere, a psychoanalyst considers self-criticism, intimacy and the losses involved in change, explaining how apparently small worries can reveal something important about a person's inner life. Glenn Jarvis describes accepting a schizophrenia diagnosis and rebuilding through treatment, friendship, advocacy and activities beyond work. His account includes both psychiatric care and the value of being taken as he is by other people. Colin Hay's memories extend from living above a childhood music shop to making records, experiencing fame and confronting alcohol addiction. There is humour alongside the pain, including his father's habit of moving his CDs to the front of a shop display. Brendan Cullen describes depression, asking for help and finding a different challenge in training to swim the English Channel. The subject range also reaches beyond personal recovery to political power, with M. Gesson discussing autocracy and the condition of democratic institutions. Across these conversations, direct questions make space for emotion and reflection while keeping attention on the circumstances a guest is describing. That approach suits a listener interested in the connections between private experience and public life, with enough detail to make those connections tangible. The scale can be political; the attention remains human.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants personal accounts with room for family history, difficult emotions and the practical details of work and care. The subject range also offers a fit for someone interested in connections between individual lives and wider social questions.
What sets it apart: Suits a listener who values interviews that connect concrete settings and routines with larger emotional and ethical questions. A barber's garage, a GP clinic and a psychoanalyst's consulting room become places to consider belonging, responsibility and change.
Conversations draws you deeper into the life story of someone you may have heard about, but never met. Journey into their world, joining them on epic adventures to unfamiliar places, back in time to wild moments of history, and into their deepest memories, to be moved by personal stories of resilience and redemption. Hosted by Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski, Conversations is the ABC's most popular long-form interview program. Every day we explore the vast tapestry of human experience, weaving together narratives from history, science, art, and personal storytelling. Conversations Live is coming to the stage! Join Sarah Kanowski and...
Based on 8 episodes we listened to · October 2026
Conversations (ABC) gives accounts of recovery social depth by following the practical work of treatment, friendship and care.
Conversations (ABC) makes a missing identity document as revealing as a musician's memory of fame. Presented by Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski, its interviews connect personal experience to the conditions surrounding it.
A toy poodle changes a life; you can retire that motivational quote for the evening.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Sydney GP clinic for the patients the system has no file for.
Dr. Nada Andrik is a GP whose patients often arrive with problems medicine alone cannot solve. Richard Feidler's conversation with her at the Reverend Bill Cruz Clinic -- a Sydney practice turning 40 this year, having just opened a Blacktown site -- moves quickly from the…
Stephen Gross on what a patient's unposted wedding invitations revealed, and why naming that grief is what lets you move.
Stephen Gross has spent more than four decades in a room with two black leather chairs, a couch, and someone who cannot quite explain themselves.
A Sydney barber on the people who bother -- and why that willingness turns out to be the care.
Charles Lomu runs a garage barbershop in Blacktown, western Sydney, teaching young men to cut hair. This anniversary encore from the Conversations archive does not treat that as a feel-good destination -- it earns it.
M. Gesson watched Russian democracy collapse once; the autocratic logic they trace in Trump's America is uncomfortably familiar.
Richard Feidler's conversation with M. Gesson, New York Times columnist and author of Surviving Autocracy, works because Gesson has seen this before.
Colin Hay on fifteen years of work, three albums at the peak, and what the long reckoning cost him.
Colin Hay, frontman for Men at Work, had one of rock's odder careers -- Melbourne crowds of a thousand before the band had a record, then so pervasive that some American stations were scheduling Men at Work-free days.
Ian Dunt argues Britain's political dysfunction really comes down to one thing: the tribal mind's talent for making doubt disappear.
Richard Feidler opens with a quick tour of Britain's recent decade: Brexit's broken promises, falling living standards, the lettuce that outlasted Liz Truss, a Labour landslide that changed little, and a monarchy that offered cold comfort.
Glenn Jarvis: from Enron's London books to a schizophrenia diagnosis, and the friendships that brought him back.
Glenn Jarvis was inside Enron's London finance operation in the late 1990s, tracking transactions he couldn't explain -- large sums moving in and out with no paper trail.
A toy poodle at the other end of a long stretch through Sydney's back lanes.
John Howard - not the prime minister, not the actor - left home young and spent years on Sydney's harder edges: petty crime in King's Cross, stretches in jail, a drinking habit that left him pressed against the brickwork in a Surrey Hills back lane whenever anyone walked past.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Dr Sonia Henry says she was a physiotherapist for “a good number of years” before medicine, after initially being drawn to sport, the Tour de France, skiing, and tennis.
Jane Messer discusses the family history behind her book Raven Mother, centered on her father Michael, who was born in Berlin and sent to boarding school in England at age eight.
Dr Nada works where medicine has to notice the whole mess, not just the symptom.
Richard Fidler interviews Bo So about his book on debating and arguing well, exploring how debate can change lives.
For more than 40 years, Stephen has listened.
This episode explores Tanya Hyslop's journey from growing up in remote Australia to her fascination with post-Cold War Europe, particularly Prague, and how it inspired her memoirs about cultural parallels and personal relationships.
A tribute to Rhoda Roberts, an Indigenous Australian cultural leader, recounting her life and contributions.
Nick Orchard shares how hip-hop helped him through childhood struggles and later inspired him to help others facing similar hardships.
This episode explores the real story behind the Australian classic 'Looking for Alibrandi', focusing on author Melina Marchetta's personal experiences with her extended Italian-American family and how they influenced the novel.
An interview with NASA chief engineer Tracy Drain about the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa.
A matchmaker shares his childhood in Croatia and lessons in love and listening.
Stephanie Wood discusses her experience with a deceptive online dating partner and her book 'Fake'.
Charles Lomu cuts hair in a Blacktown garage.
A paramedic discusses his book about responding to suicides and the toll of the job, including his own PTSD.
Anna, an anxiety coach and mental health therapist, shares her personal story of surviving a childhood roller coaster accident and how it led her to study psychology and develop practical tools for healing trauma and anxiety.
An interview with former naval officer Jennifer Parker about the strategic Strait of Hormuz and Iran's disruption of oil supplies amid war.
This episode explores how Jenny Briscoe-Huff runs a not-for-profit funeral service at a community centre to help people reclaim control over death care and grieving traditions.
Margie Warrell shares her journey from a dairy farm in regional Victoria to becoming a life coach in America, discussing her upbringing and the choices that shaped her life.
This episode features an interview with Australian author Tony Birch discussing his childhood in working-class Fitzroy, Melbourne, and how it influenced his new short story collection Dark As Last Night.
An interview with author Drusilla Modjeska about her book on women artists, focusing on Paula Modersohn-Becker.
The guest knows Soviet rule from childhood.
Colin Hay starts with Overkill.
Megan Gilmore, CEO of Missing School, discusses her son's hospital stay and her work to keep hospitalized children connected to school and community.
Journalist Kate Legg discusses her book on infidelity, her own experience with her husband's affair, and their evolving relationship.
An interview with movement and intimacy director Lisa Petty about her work helping actors embody characters through physical gestures and choreography.
Britain feels suddenly unfamiliar.
Glenn Jarvis was living in London, working in Enron's finance department while the market roared.
John Howard is not the prime minister.
Kate McClymont keeps choosing hard stories.
Brendan Cullen calls himself a glorified shepherd.
Vicky McCauley recounts the story of her husband Andrew's disappearance while attempting to kayak across the Tasman Sea, and how she rebuilt her life.
Deborah Richardson shares her journey from a struggling student to a police officer, surviving a car bomb, and later supporting a Ukrainian police officer and his family after Russia's invasion.
Author Nikki Gemmel discusses her upbringing in a coal mining family and her journey to becoming a writer.
This episode explores the history of Australian universities, from elite sandstone institutions to the modern era of mass education and overseas fee-paying students.
Sita Walker discusses her upbringing in a Baha'i family, her journey of self-discovery, and her transition from following rules to making her own choices, culminating in her memoir and novel.