Conversations: Our Evolving World
Great minds making sense of our fast-changing world. Guests including Cheng Lei, Jonathan Haidt and Brolga Barns: authors of A Memoir of Freedom and The Anxious Generation, and the founder of The Kangaroo Sanctuary, sit down for a Conversation withRichard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski. In this collection of episodes, we’ve reached back into the rich archive and curated a selection of episodes where our guests speak about lived experiences and concepts like society, technology, democracy, war, survival and adaptive skills, generational differences, science, and justice etc. To binge even more great episodes of the ‘Conversationspodcast’ with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowskigo 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.
- Update frequency
- every 57 days
- Average duration
- 50 minutes
- Episodes
- 50
- Years Active
- 2012 - 2025
Mass murder, cannibalism and insanity — inside Mao's cultural revolution
China's cultural revolution was murderously violent and culturally devastating; millions of people, artefacts and ideas went up in smoke. So what's fuelling today's Neo-Maoist movement and nostalgia …
00:47:36 |
Wed 25 Jun 2025
Part TWO: Locked up in China — Cheng Lei on cell mates, singing and survival
Cheng Lei's years in detention in China, on trumped-up espionage charges, go from cruel and isolating, to absurd and romantic when she gets moved into a cell with three other women.
The Chinese-Aust…
00:48:06 |
Thu 05 Jun 2025
Part ONE: Locked up in China — Cheng Lei on state paranoia and staying sane in isolation
When journalist Cheng Lei was detained by Chinese state security agents, she thought would be freed within the week. Instead, she was held on absurd espionage charges for more than three years, much …
00:49:00 |
Wed 04 Jun 2025
Undercover hitmen, shady drug deals and covert surveillance — life as a top cop
While working as an undercover cop, Nick Kaldas played a drug baron in the market for vast quantities of hemp oil, tracked a fugitive with a penchant for hair transplants, and posed as a hit man for …
00:53:00 |
Tue 18 Mar 2025
Tim Winton on staying alive, in extremis
Australian writer Tim Winton on the stories which inspired his latest novel, 'Juice', a story of determination, survival, and the limits of the human spirit.
'Juice' is an astonishing feat of ima…
00:47:24 |
Thu 13 Mar 2025
Could you live forever? The neuroscience behind brain preservation, consciousness and death
Would you want to live for longer? Forever? Have your mind preserved and uploaded into something non-human? And is it even possible? Neuroscientist Dr Ariel Zeleznikow explores challenging ideas abou…
00:50:18 |
Tue 11 Mar 2025
Drug bazaars, hitmen and hackers — why Eileen went deep into the dark web
Lawyer turned journalist Eileen Ormsby on her journey deeper and deeper into the internet's 'evil twin', where, under the cloak of anonymity, people sell buy and share anything a person is willing to…
00:50:00 |
Thu 06 Feb 2025
Richard's Most Memorable Guests — Ross Gittins
Conversations is bringing you a summer treat — a collection of Richard's most memorable guests through out the years.
Ross Gittins is one of Australia’s most popular newspaper columnists. For five …
00:52:00 |
Tue 31 Dec 2024
Jonathan Haidt on 'attention fracking' and how to stop tech companies from stealing your child's focus
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt says it is time to reinstate the play-based childhood to bring our kids back from life online and into the real world, away from their increasing obsession with dev…
00:52:18 |
Fri 29 Nov 2024
I was a political prisoner in Myanmar — and I could never hate the Burmese
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 …
00:52:30 |
Mon 14 Oct 2024
The unexpected plot twist: The tech nerd who changed course to help the homeless
Jon Owen's mum enrolled him in a computer science degree at University - expecting him to build a flourishing career; which he did. It just wasn't the one that everyone expected. (R)
Jon Owen cam…
00:50:54 |
Tue 24 Sep 2024
Epic sharks — the ancient origins of the monsters of the sea
From sharks with wheels of teeth, to gargantuan sharks like the megalodon, palaeontologist John Long has traced the long and storied history of these oceanic hunters.
Sharks and humans have a compli…
00:50:06 |
Tue 10 Sep 2024
The sprawling history of the human soul — part two
In this two-part series, historian Paul Ham traces how our definition and understanding of the human soul has transformed over thousands of years. Humans have been probing their own invisible inner v…
00:48:30 |
Mon 26 Aug 2024
The sprawling history of the human soul — part one
In this two-part series, historian Paul Ham traces how our definition and understanding of the human soul has transformed over thousands of years. Humans have been probing their own invisible inner v…
00:52:00 |
Mon 19 Aug 2024
The Natural Horseman
People travel from all over the world to learn about horses from Ken Faulkner. But after a life-threatening riding accident on his favourite horse, Smoke, Ken had to learn to walk and ride again, red…
00:53:06 |
Fri 16 Aug 2024
Ken Wyatt - the Noongar boy who made history
Ken Wyatt was born at Roelands Mission in outback WA, where his mother had been taken as a small girl, after she was stolen from her family. More than 60 years later, he became Australia's first Indi…
00:52:18 |
Mon 08 Jul 2024
David Wengrow: everything we know about the human story is wrong
Archaeologist David Wengrow has discovered an entirely new way to think about the history of humanity, from the origins of farming, cities, democracy and slavery to civilisation itself.
What sort of…
00:49:24 |
Wed 29 May 2024
How Bri Lee became an incendiary
Bri Lee on the brutal series of events which began her life as a writer tackling injustice in our courts, the beauty industry, and in our schools (CW: description of legal processes relating to sexua…
00:51:42 |
Tue 02 Apr 2024
Aunty Ruth Hegarty’s life of defiance
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.
In 1929 during the Great Dep…
00:52:13 |
Thu 25 Jan 2024
Wily cockatoos, bin chickens and spangled drongos
Darryl Jones on the dramatic lives of Australia's city-dwelling native birds
00:50:24 |
Fri 10 Nov 2023
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