Conversations

Megan Davis was raised as a 'Queensland Rail kid', then in a book-loving household in a housing commission home. She grew up to become a lawyer at the UN, then began a history-making process of helping Australia's First Nations people speak the truth to power (R)

Mawunyo Gbogbo grew up in a church-going Ghanaian-Australian family in the mining town of Muswellbrook, NSW. As a young woman she grabbed the chance to further her media career in New York City at the Bible of Hip Hop, The Source

How a sheltered girl who grew up on a soldier settlement farm in country New South Wales grew up to become a feminist trailblazer

Ocean racing navigator Will Oxley first learned his trade through celestial navigation, using a sextant and the stars. He then began ocean racing around the world, and in 1998, he found himself upside down in a storm-wrecked Bass Strait (R)

Briana Blackett was a journalist working in Qatar when she realised her baby son Max wasn't responding to his name. When Max was diagnosed with autism, and in time her second son Freddy was too, she left Doha to begin an entirely different life

Dr Kira Westaway is a geochronologist who places modern and ancient humans in context by dating things found in caves. For Kira, how we understand ourselves now, is tied up in the past

Art detective Arthur Brand met neo-Nazis, billionaire collectors and underground art dealers on his hunt for the two enormous bronze horse sculptures once owned by Hitler. It was all part of his quest to find the criminal masterminds attempting to sell the artwork on the black market (R)Arthur Brand is an art sleuth based in Amsterdam.His clients ask him to find stolen works of art, and to find out whether a painting or sculpture being sold on the black market is the real thing. One day, he received an email with an image attached of two gigantic horse sculptures.The unknown owner of these statues was claiming that they had once belonged to Adolf Hitler and had stood outside his chancellery building in Berlin. This led Arthur into a murky world of black market art dealers, billionaire collectors, and Neo-Nazis.  Further informationOriginally broadcast February 2021Hitler's Horses is published by PenguinTo 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.

Wendy Liu has spent many years right up close to death. As a forensic counsellor she worked with families who had lost someone to an accident or violence, and as a grief counsellor she supports people surviving all kinds of losses. Wendy says her work brings her a keener appreciation of life

The folk singer on the songs in her blood and the intergenerational conflict between professional creativity and family

Avi Loeb was Harvard's top astronomer when he became intrigued by reports of a pancake-shaped object the size of a football field hurtling through our solar system (R)