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1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
For most of us, pain is a fundamental part of being alive, and staying alive and yet none of us will ever experience the exact same pain as someone else, which makes it incredibly difficult to understand. Every day, we stub our toes and burn our tongues. Some of us break bones and suffer from more serious illnesses and conditions. What you feel when your skin is broken or a ligament is torn is there to tell your brain to be careful, that something is wrong and needs to be protected.
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1 week ago | 
abc.net.au | Carmel Rooney |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Kris Helgen has helped name and discover around 100 species of mammal, travelling to many fascinating places to find them. He's traversed volcanic caters in Papua New Guinea, savanna grasslands of Kenya, and ventured deep into the forests of the Andes. Kris also spends much of his time in the dark depths of natural history museums, stumbling upon the forgotten pelts and unnamed specimens languishing in filing cabinets.
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3 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei was held in detention in China for more than three years, accused of selling state secrets to foreign people and powers. In episode one of this two-part series, Lei explained how the charges hinged on a document that was read out publicly on television, and how she survived the cruelty of interrogations and being kept in isolation.
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3 weeks ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
When journalist Cheng Lei moved back to the country of her birth after the dramatic opening up of China to the world, she was a part of something exciting and historic. That all changed after Xi Jinping came to power, and Australia's relations with China deteriorated. In this first episode of a two-part series, Lei explains how eventually, she found herself detained on bogus espionage charges, and held for more than three years in a Chinese detention centre.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
Irish novelist Colm Toibin has always been open to where life can unexpectedly take him, and the excitement that comes with that kind of freedom. His first big move was from rural Ireland to Dublin after his father died when he was young. Then, it was off to experience the wild hedonism and sexual liberation of post-Franco Spain. Since then, he's journeyed to Sudan, Los Angeles, New York and beyond.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Hilde Hinton's upbringing was marked by the shocking death of her mother when Hilde was just 12 years old. Despite the great grief, there was also a sense of relief for Hilde. She shielded her younger siblings, Samuel and Connie Johnson, from the truth of how and why their mother died. But when Connie also died, decades later of cancer, Hilde was propelled into writing her first novel, in between shifts as a prison officer.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
Ji Wallace was an energetic only child growing up on a bush block in suburban Brisbane when his parents brought home a trampoline to keep him occupied. Ji learned how to flip by that afternoon, and found he had a real talent. A couple of years later, he was a national champion in gymnastics. Ji managed to make a career out of bouncing around, representing Australia at the Olympics and then joining Cirque Du Soleil as an acrobat.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
When Hannah Kent arrived in Iceland as an exchange student in 2003, her arrival was a difficult one. On her first night in the country, she found herself stranded late at night at Keflavik Airport and desperately homesick. But within weeks, Iceland had begun to change young Hannah. She became entranced with the haunting story of accused murderer and domestic servant Agnes Magnusdottir, who became the last woman executed in Iceland.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Sarah Kanowski
When Jemma Sbeg started recording a podcast in the back of her Subaru about her quarter life crisis, she had no idea just how many people she would reach. But other people her age were desperate for guidance through their 20s - a decade a lot of us romanticise before we get there, and after we leave. It's a decade of massive growth for humans, when we make big decisions about relationships, careers and our own identities, but Jemma felt like she had no idea HOW to make the right choices.
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1 month ago | 
abc.net.au | Nicola Harrison |Meggie Morris |Richard Fidler
Adam Kay was not far off qualifying as an obstetric consultant in the United Kingdom, when a caesarean section on his labour ward went catastrophically wrong. He couldn't face experiencing another tragedy like it, nor the blunt response from his boss in the aftermath, and so he quit doctoring altogether. Adam took a radical inventory of his life, reassessing his goals, his dreams and his relationships and completely up-ending the conventional life he had felt backed into.
