Conversations

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.

When school principal Manisha Gazula changed how her students were learning to read, she began an entirely new system which made her an icon of literacy learning.
Manisha Gazula is the principal of Marsden Road Public School in the outer south-western suburbs of Sydney. 
When Manisha first came to the school, less than three per cent of its students were proficient in English reading and writing, which severely limited their options in life.
This was for many reasons - some children had never seen a book or held a pencil until they were ten years old, almost all of them didn't speak English at home, many came from refugee backgrounds, and Manisha was convinced that the conventional way of teaching literacy was not working.
So she introduced a new system that delivered much more explicit instruction in the elements of reading and writing.
It was a controversial change that made her first few years at Marsden Road tough, but the result was a radical improvement in student literacy, and now many other schools are following 'the Marsden Way'. 
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer was Carmel Rooney.
It explores literacy rates, Australian education system, NSW education system, public schooling in NSW, state schools, private schools, learning to read, my child doesn't like reading, Indian Australians, career change, motherhood, migrating to Australia, NAPLAN, standardised testing, books, ESL, English as a second language, the Australian curriculum, Marsden method, explicit instruction.
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.

Psychologist Kerrie Lumbewe on trying to unpack what has happened inside ordinary people that has made loving one another so difficult. (CW: this conversation mentions suicide, please take care when listening)
Kerrie Lumbewe is a psychologist who specialises in love and relationships.
She spends her days sitting with people as they try and work out how to make things work; to understand how they can be in a partnership and still feel so alone; to make sense of how two people who started out crazy about each other can end up making each other crazy.
These people desperately want to stop hurting one another, but are also obsessed with finding someone to blame, or labelling someone else as toxic.
Kerrie has witnessed many personal accounts of love and desire, heartbreak, secrets and betrayal.
She has seen up close what allows relationships to flourish, or to fold; and how ordinary people can start making sense of love.
And Kerrie says our unfettered access to social media in the age of information is drastically changing how we relate to and love each other.
Kerrie's forthcoming book is called The Five Fatal Love Errors: How We Protect Ourselves – and Lose Each Other. It will be published in early 2027.
If you'd like to learn more about how you love, you can visit Kerrie's website and take a quiz.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
It explores love, relationships, counselling, couples counselling, marriage, divorce, therapy, psychology, break-ups, heartbreak, pursuer distancer dynamic, separation, chase, situationship, modern love, modern relationships, dating apps, dopamine, instagram therapy, weaponising therapy language, Orna Guralnik, Gottman method, love maps, attachment theory, avoidant, anxious attachment, secure attachment, prison psychology, friendship, emotional intimacy, suicide, losing a parent, grief, mental health.
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 author Bonnie Garmus tried to sell her first novel, it was rejected 98 times, but then at 66, she wrote a novel called Lessons in Chemistry, which sold four million copies around the world.
Bonnie  had wanted to be a novelist since she was five years old.
Decades later, she was a copywriter, an open-water swimmer and a rower when she tried to sell her first novel.
After many rejections, she realised it would never be published.
One day Bonnie was at work when a male colleague took credit for one of her ideas. In a moment of anger, she then started writing a novel which would become Lessons in Chemistry.
Set in the 1950s and early '60s, it tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a chemist and mother who hosts a cooking show that ends up teaching women about a lot more than food.
Bonnie was 66 years old when it was published.
The book has resonated with millions of readers around the world and inspired men and women to change their own lives.
First broadcast in 2024 
Further information
Lessons in Chemistry is published by Penguin
Bonnie's latest book is Peck and Peck
This episode of Conversations was produced by Nicola Harrison and Carmel Rooney was the Executive Producer.
It explores writing, books, anger, women in the work place,  rejection, success, publishing, Lessons in Chemistry, female characters, Elizabeth Zott, motherhood, cooking, chemistry.
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.

Zoe Terakes is a writer and actor with deep family connections to the island of Crete, where their great-grandparents migrated to Australia from.
This island is the site of Europe’s first ancient civilisation.
Bronze Age Crete had palaces, temples, art, written language and mythology long before the Roman Empire existed, and centuries before the Parthenon was built.
When Zoe started reading the mythology of Crete they were astounded by how many of the tales involve mutability, metamorphosis, the transformation of this into that; from human to bird to lion and to human again – and from male to female and from female to male.
Zoe has retold some of these wild stories of blood, sex, love, divinity, humanity and magical transformations in their first book.
But the trans actor, who underwent their own transformation a few years ago, did not want to sanitise any of these ancient stories to make them more palatable for the contemporary audience.
Because, for Zoe, the power and enduring relevance of these epics is found in their tragedy, violence and mess.
Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers is published by Hachette.
This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.
It explores myth, storytelling, poetry, art, transgender, non-binary, gender identity, sexual identity, young Australians, Australian literature, Australian writers, acting, television, Marvel Universe, Sydney, Kings Cross, Greece, Crete, Talk To Me, film, Australian film, growing up in Sydney, growing up Queer.
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.