Conversations

Growing up with brilliant writer as a father, Adam Courtenay slowly became aware of many gaps and untruths in his dad's life story. So he decided to set the record straight, once and for all.
When Adam was growing up, he saw his Dad as a hero.
Bryce worked in advertising so he knew all the latest, coolest trends, and at bedtime, Bryce told Adam and his brothers amazing stories about his life in South Africa and the Courtenay family’s noble origins.
When Bryce went from adman to wildly successful writer with his debut novel, The Power of One, Adam couldn’t have been prouder.
As Adam grew older, he became aware of the gaps in the stories his father told so well, and realised just how many lies Bryce had told his family and the nation.
At first, Adam tried to ignore the fables and fibs - he wanted badly to believe them because they made Bryce's storytelling so powerful.
But when Adam became a writer himself, an author of historical books and a journalist, he needed to champion the truth above all else.
Further information
My Father Bryce is published by Hachette.

Instructions on how to forge a path through a darkening world, according to former neuroscientist and psychoanalyst, Dr Sharon Blackie.
Sharon grew up in what she calls the edge lands — on a council estate, near marshes full of migrating birds, next to the chemical factories of North-Eastern England.
She was given fairy stories to read that mirrored her own experience in a way — Sharon knew the world was not always a safe place and that little children should be careful. 
After her violent father left the family, Sharon’s mum turned to alcohol to cope. 
Through her mother’s recovery, Sharon was introduced to a local recovery centre called The Room where people could get help for their addiction, and there Sharon found a fascinating group of people who promoted her interest in psychology, and a place to belong.
After university, Sharon had a fine life on paper — a husband, a well-paid corporate job and a mortgage, but she wasn’t happy and she heard The Call to start a dangerous and unlikely project.
Sharon was living in America in 1999 when John F Kennedy Jnr died in a plane crash.
She decided she needed to face her longstanding fear of flying and took up lessons to become a pilot, to look death in the face.
Sharon says if we heed the messages in fairy stories they can serve us well in life — be courageous, be kind and always share what you have with friends who may help you in the future.
Further information
Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now is published by September.
Read Sharon's newsletter The Art of Enchantment.
This episode was made on Turrbul and Jagera country. It was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
This episode focuses on ecofeminism, mythology, fairytales, tatterhood, snow white, rose red, danger, intrigue, sharing, post-hero, women, nature, The Call, facing fear.
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.

Lisa Peberdy has been delivering babies for over 40 years, in hospitals and homes, in cities and remote locations and she still cries with joy at every birth.During Lisa's  first career as a nurse, she was physically repelled by the notion of childbirth.
When she re-trained to become a midwife, delivering a baby unassisted was a great challenge.
When Lisa finally did it, she was hooked; and she says she still cries with joy at every birth for which she's present.
Lisa's delivered babies in hospitals and homes, in cities and remote locations, all over Australia.
In recent years her work has been with cord blood banks, collecting valuable stem cells from the umbilical cord and placenta.
These cells may potentially be used later in that person's life to create and regenerate organs, blood, and tissues; and assist their immune system.
First broadcast in 2016
Further information
Lisa's story features in Paula Heelan's book, Australian Midwives, published by Harlequin
Earlier this year Lisa published her memoir The Accidental Midwife This episode of Conversations explores childbirth, delivering babies, midwives, mothers, still birth, adoption, remote Australia, PNG, Timor Leste, hospitals, doctors, fathers, babies, placenta, pregnancy, nursing.

As we're bombarded with the drumbeat of news that veers from the shocking to the unfathomable, Waleed Aly wants to know, how do we come to grips with this chaos?For years, that is exactly what Waleed Aly has done by writing a series of columns for Melbourne's Age newspaper.
Recently he's revisited the columns written during a concentrated period of profound upheaval, to see what they reveal.Waleed hopes to articulate what is revolutionary in this moment but also what is not, to examine our changing relationships with technology and each other; and identifying the things that really matter in life even as the upheaval tries to obscure them. 
Further information 
Reasoning With Chaos is published by Allen and Unwin 
This episode of Conversations explores Donald Trump, US politics, global politics, war, artificial intelligence, anger, protest, global chaos, news, social media, politics, global collapse, China, the United States, Australia, media.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.

When journalist Jon Ronson visited castle owned by a digital tycoon, it became a portal into a world of disaffected men, grasping for purpose online in a world where traditional institutions are collapsing.
He had received a series of texts from his son Joel, after he was lured to a mysterious castle in the forests of New England late one night, and those texts set him off into an investigation of the modern manosphere.
Jon began to investigate the wider ‘man crisis’ – where some are feeling tossed around in a sea of conflicting ideologies of what it means to be a man today.
From the death of utopian factory towns to the false promise of YouTube influencer culture, Jon shows us our rapidly changing world like never before, and the men caught in the middle. 
He found a world drained of purpose, of collapsing institutions, in which a new era of disinhibited behaviour has taken hold of our online and real-world selves.
The Castle is published by Penguin.
Jon is currently on tour in Australia. He is speaking at The Melbourne Town Hall this weekend.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
It explores masculinity, culture wars, gender wars, Musk, Trump, tech billionaires, Marc Fennell, manosphere, Louis Theroux, Peter Thiel, Hugh Hefner, Dan Bilzerian, Andrew Tate, Chris Mark, the castle, sons, fathers, fatherhood, death threats, murderers, ChaptGPT, AI, Google Gemini, Artificial intelligence, psychopaths, Zuckerberg, Argentina, anger, disenfranchised men, angry men, ICE, United States, Donald Trump, Nerd Reich, politics, silicon valley, gender wars, class war, race war, Louise Theroux, investigative journalism.
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.