Conversations

When Sarah Sentilles became a foster parent she gave herself wholeheartedly to caring for baby Coco. A year later her understanding of love, motherhood and herself were utterly transformed (CW: Adoption)

Glenn was working at Enron in London when his mental health began to unravel. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and lost nearly everything. Then a Bowls Club in Queanbeyan helped him begin again

Kitty has woven together a series of true stories from her life including being locked in a crayfish freezer for talking too much (R)

Krissy Kneen grew up under the strict control of her grandmother, Lotty, who was the eccentric and sometimes cruel matriarch of her small family. Krissy was forbidden to investigate Lotty's past or ask why she'd come to Australia from Slovenia via Egypt. The extraordinary truth of Lotty's life could only be told after Lotty's death

Sarah was twenty-seven when she discovered she had been conceived using a sperm donor. When she set out to find her biological father, she found out the truth about the global fertility business

Physician scientist Professor John Rasko on some of the charlatans and shining lights from the problematic and often tragic field of regenerative medicine. Long regarded as a coming salvation, the full potential of stem cells is yet to be realised. John de-mystifies our understanding of the science and explains why there's reason for hope

Animal behaviourist Gisela Kaplan grew up in devastated post-WWII Berlin, forced to eat soap and wild nettles to survive. A brilliant student who loved music, she trained as an opera singer and an academic. Decades later, after adopting a magpie nestling, she began a new chapter as one of the world's leading authorities on the lives of Australia’s native birds

Betty O'Neill's father disappeared when she was a baby. Decades later, inside a tiny apartment in the Polish city of Lublin she opened a green suitcase to find a huge clue to his secret lifeBetty O'Neill grew up in country New South Wales with her mum Nora.Nora worked in hotels in Kyogle and Coffs Harbour, and because she wasn't able to live at the hotels with her mum, Betty was often fostered out to families in the local area.Nora was what was known in the 1950s as a 'deserted wife'.Her husband Antoni had disappeared without a trace shortly after Betty was born.As a girl Betty knew very little about her father.She finally met him again when she was nineteen, and it was a strange and unsettling experience.Decades later, Betty became curious about her father's life story.She began an investigation which took her to Lublin, Poland, a city where she didn't know anyone, to finally uncover the truth.Further informationThe Other Side of Absence is published by VenturaTo 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.

Historian Paul Ham and the story of the terrible 'wearing down war' that took place in Ypres (R)

The story of the 2011 earthquake that triggered multiple disasters in Japan, and took many thousands of lives, as told by Richard Lloyd Parry (CW: descriptions may be distressing) (R)