Good Weekend Talks

Australians know Judith Lucy as the comedian with a sardonic wit and no-fear attitude to mining her personal life, from her unconventional upbringing and numerous disastrous relationships, to drinking too much and the indignities of ageing.

For over three decades, life was work for Lucy – until it wasn't. In 2023, she had a burnout, and she's turned her discoveries from that experience into a book about deep exhaustion.

In today's episode, Judith Lucy opens up about what fulfilment means for her, and the special guilt associated with burning out when you are middle-class and middle-aged. 

Sh...

At just 19, Alexa Leary was a champion triathlete when she suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in an horrific cycling accident. She wasn't expected to survive the crash, but she beat the odds, learning to walk, talk and live again – even jumping back in the pool with renewed purpose, winning two gold medals and one silver at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. In this episode of Good Weekend Talks, Leary talks to Konrad Marshall about living with traumatic brain injury and dealing with acute memory loss, and also reflects on her life before the accident. Now 25, Leary has released a...

Bram Connolly is the type of person you want as a neighbour if there's ever a crisis or an emergency on your street.
Connolly spent 20 years in the Australian special forces navigating the world's most dangerous landscapes, from Afghanistan to Somalia, so he knows how to stay cool in the heat of battle – and in unplanned moments in daily civilian life.
The founder of Hindsight Leadership and Resilience says preparedness begins with situational awareness and controlling emotions like stress and anxiety. In this episode, Connolly discusses his new book, 100 Ways I Almost Died, which features compelling stories of...

Australian journalist Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter for The New York Times, is perhaps best known for his hard-hitting interviews with US President Donald Trump. Most famous was his August 2020 exchange with Trump, in which Swan's real-time fact-checking (and incredulous facial expressions) while listening to the president's muddled assertions earned the then 35-year-old reporter an Emmy award. Now Swan has teamed up with fellow Times journalist and Trump expert Maggie Haberman to write "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump". It's a withering behind-the-scenes look at how Trump has consolidated executive power in his second term, s...

Think of Myf Warhurst and the word “bubbly” might spring to mind. With everything the radio and TV personality does – from Spicks and Specks to the Eurovision Song Contest or her documentary, The Truth about Menopause – Warhurst is known as the ray of sunshine, the nice one (she’s even the voice of Aunt Trixie, and Indy’s Mum, on Bluey). But she’s no longer playing nice. In a new book, she’s taken on the patriarchy. And she’s angry. In this episode of Good Weekend Talks, Warhurst talks about everything from creepy men to Karens, from Gen X to coercive...

George Megalogenis is known as a big thinker about Australian politics and culture, searching beyond the noise for what’s really going on in our country. He has four decades' experience in the media, including time in the parliamentary press gallery. In his new book, Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century, he looks at the seismic changes underway that will influence all of us in the coming decades. He joins Good Weekend Talks today for a chat about immigration – long an interest of his, as the son of Greek migrants – along with the feminisation of the wo...

Maria Ressa is one of the most celebrated journalists in the world. Born in Manila in 1963, she moved with her family to the US, studying at Princeton University before returning to the Philippines to forge a career covering the growth of terrorism in South East Asia. In 2012, she co-founded online news site Rappler, distinguishing herself as a fearless defender of freedom of expression while standing up to an authoritarian regime infamous for, among other things, its campaign against journalists. Ressa’s bravery earned her the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for journalism, and she’s visiting Australia to speak on August 23 at t...

Anthony LaPaglia is best known to audiences for a host of big- and small-screen roles, including films such as Looking for Alibrandi, Lantana and Balibo and US TV shows including Without a Trace.

But the 67-year-old is also no stranger to the stage, having once won a Tony for his performance in the Arthur Miller play, A View from the Bridge.

He’s back in Australia right now to front another Miller play – one the great works in the American canon – playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. A limited two-week season kicks off Tuesday...

Virginia Giuffre was fearless in taking down some of the world’s most powerful people. As Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent victim, she helped expose his crimes and hold his friends to account, including the man formerly known as Prince Andrew. But despite her heroic battle in the most notorious sex trafficking case of the 21st century, few knew about one of her toughest fights. It was one she fought privately at home in Australia.

Follow The Age and SMH Investigates to be first to listen to new episodes of Virginia from Walkley-award winning journalist Melissa Fyfe and...

Nothing exposes the flaws of a justice system more than the wrongful conviction of an innocent person for murder. Adelaide man Henry Keogh languished in prison for two decades after being wrongfully convicted of his fiancée’s drowning, while Andrew Mallard – a vulnerable, troubled outsider – had his life irrevocably shattered when he was wrongly convicted of the 1994 murder of Pamela Lawrence in Perth. Neil Mercer, one of Australia’s most respected print and TV journalists, has written a new book, 'Falsely Convicted: True Stories of Injustice in Australia', in which he exposes just how easily professional hubris, police tunnel vi...

Arj Barker has been a fixture on the local comedy scene for decades, headlining our comedy festivals and turning up on shows including Thank God You’re Here and Spicks and Specks. But the San Francisco-born stand-up began telling jokes at open mic nights in 1989, before appearances on American late night TV for Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, and David Letterman - not to mention a memorable turn on the hit sitcom Flight of the Conchords. Barker joins us to talk about consciousness, comedy, and the furore that erupted two years ago after he asked a breastfeeding mother and baby...

Starting a business is one thing, running it successfully is another – but doing it with your spouse and four kids is a different kettle of fish. Janine Allis has done all of the above, after founding Boost Juice as a single store in the 2000s and growing it into a global empire. She’s since become one of the most sought-after entrepreneurs in the country and a regular on small screens, both as a judge on Shark Tank and as a competitor on Australian Survivor - twice. She also owns one of Australia’s fastest-growing dessert chains, Yochi. Allis joins G...

Peter Singer, often called the world's most influential philosopher, is turning 80, and he's returned home to Melbourne too, after almost 25 years as a professor of bioethics at Princeton University.
Singer's practical ethics has had a huge impact and caused controversy across issues as diverse as the rights of animals, voluntary euthanasia and abortion, freedom of speech, and our moral obligation to help those living in extreme poverty.
Given all that's happened in Singer's world and in the wider world, it seemed like a good time to ask him to reflect on his life and work, and about...

Rob de Castella, otherwise known as “Deeks” - or, to his opponents, “Tree”, due to his sturdy limbs and unshiftable calm - is a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medal winner and Australian running royalty. He joins Good Weekend Talks to chat about his Indigenous Marathon Project, in which he takes a group of Indigenous people from around the country every year and signs them up for a rigorous training and education program before each of them runs the famed New York City Marathon. De Castella likes to say that the finishing line in Central Park has be their starting line - en...

Australian author and intellectual Anna Funder specialises in telling the stories of people forgotten or ignored by official histories. She began her writing career with Stasiland, detailing the state surveillance of the people of the former East Germany, which was followed by her prize-winning novel, All That I Am, telling the previously untold story of early resisters to the Nazis. In her most recent work, Wifedom, Funder shifted her lens to the unexamined life of author George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, whose contribution had – until then – been obscured. The recently-appointed professor in creative writing at the University of Sydne...

Picture this: a crumbling Italian mansion in the Tuscan hills, an eccentric aristocrat, sun-soaked lunches, too much wine and a house humming with secrets. That’s the delightful world into which we’re heading today as we talk to writer Andrew Sean Greer, whose new novel, Villa Coco, is loosely inspired by his own time at an Italian estate around a famous Baroness. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less also joins us to discuss his life in Italy, the pleasures of the charm novel, and the one piece of travel advice he always comes back to. Today’s episode is hos...

John Safran burst into the public consciousness in 1997 as a contestant in the ABC TV show Race Around the World, where young filmmakers travelled the world making four-minute films in just 10 days. Safran won the popular vote on the reality show after running through Jerusalem naked, and asking a voodoo priest to put a curse on an ex-girlfriend. Almost 30 years on, the show is back, with Safran as a judge. Today’s conversation is hosted by Good Weekend senior writer Gay Alcorn, who talks to Safran about that early experience, but also growing up Jewish, antisemitism and the contradictions an...

There's a profound grief associated with not having kids if you really wanted them, one that's rarely acknowledged, even less understood. But there's also an unexpected joy when you come out the other side. In today's conversation, Good Weekend senior writer Katrina Strickland discusses the ups and downs of her own path into childlessness with Good Weekend editor Melissa Stevens. They traverse what medical developments have given young women today, the potential downsides - and what those worried about the decline in global fertility rates should be paying attention to. They discuss, too, what Strickland wants Millennials and Gen...

Shaun Micallef has graced our TV screens since 1989 – from crime caper Mr and Mrs Murder to long-running game show Talkin' About Your Generation and weekly satirical news comedy Mad as Hell.
But he's not averse to tackling the big issues, either: his latest series, Going for Broke, examines our national gambling habit.
In today's conversation, with senior culture writer Kerrie O'Brien, the lawyer turned funny-man joins us for a chat about two-up, his book about the origin story of Dracula, and what drives him to keep coming up with new ideas for documentaries.

See omnystudio.com...

Social media was once harnessed by Barack Obama to spread hope. Now “angertainers” are exploiting our human instinct to seek threat to divide society and to build their own cultural, political and social capital, often based on misinformation and lies.
They create content for platforms that reward stunts, insults and anger – in the process, distorting reality and hijacking any possibility of a considered debate.
In this episode of Good Weekend Talks, Ed Coper, author of Angertainment: How Social Media Outrage Ruined Everything, explains how and why that happens, why you can't stop clicking on things that make you an...

Bob Brown has spent the past 50 years trying to make people put the planet before profit. The environmental crusader, former senator and medical doctor, and founding member of the Wilderness Society has fought pivotal battles, including campaigns to save the Franklin River and the Swift parrot. He also practises what he preaches: he has lived sustainably for decades in a one-bedroom home.
Today, to celebrate the 300th episode of Good Weekend Talks, deputy editor Konrad Marshall interviews Brown live on stage at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
This episode comes to you from the State Library of Victoria...

You might know her best from Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell, but over the past 20 years, Christie Whelan Browne has become one of the most in-demand stars of the Australian stage, appearing in Britney Spears: The Cabaret, The Producers, Shane Warne: The Musical and Muriel's Wedding.

But the thing that has kept her in the headlines is no laughing matter – the allegations of sexual harassment she made against her Rocky Horror Show co-star Craig McLachlan in late 2017.

Today, Whelan Browne takes a break from rehearsing a musical version of All About Eve to chat about eve...

When Fran Lebowitz was growing up in suburban New Jersey in the 1950s, she won a school award for being “the Class Wit” – and in her 50-year career as a writer and speaker, she’s repeatedly earned that label. Among her countless famous aphorisms, this zinger: "The best fame is a writer's fame. It's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough to get you interrupted when you eat."

As a writer herself, Lebowitz has published two best-selling collections of essays – and a children’s book – but today she’s better known as a public intellec...

Luke Bateman is perhaps Australia’s most unlikely book critic – a former rugby league star and recovered gambling addict who works as a logger on a remote Queensland property. While hardly your average inner-city literary type, Bateman had always loved reading – especially fantasy books – but living in the bush with only black snakes for company, had no one to talk to about it. So one day in April last year, he posted a clip of himself on TikTok, talking about his love of books. The post made him famous – he now has more than a million social media followers, including...

Investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe has made a career out of chasing the kinds of stories that most people would be wise to leave alone. The New Yorker writer is drawn to powerful institutions and the people at their heart – from the Sackler dynasty, whose pharmaceutical company created the opioid painkiller OxyContin, in Empire of Pain, to the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in Say Nothing. His latest book, London Falling, delves into the story of 19-year-old Briton Zac Brettler, who had been living a double life, pretending to be the son of a Russian oligarch, before he...

New York food writer, editor and podcaster Laurie Woolever spent the early years of her career assisting two very famous chefs: first Mario Batali, then Anthony Bourdain, for whom she worked for nine years. Woolever was also, for much of this time, an addict – using alcohol, marijuana and sex to get through the ups and downs of work, marriage and motherhood. She writes about all of this in her candid 2025 memoir, Care & Feeding, which suggests that while she did a lot of care and feeding for others, it took some time to learn how to do it for herself.

Marianne Perkovic spent decades working in the finance sector. In 2006, she was the youngest chief executive of an ASX-listed company and in 2018, as a banking executive, she faced a grilling at a royal commission. This is not the standard path for nailing the best seat at Australian Fashion Week. In fact, becoming executive chair of the Australian Fashion Council in 2023 was meant to be her “fun board” (while giving her couture credibility with her two daughters).
Perkovic joins us to discuss her unlikely role determining the future of fashion in this country, and how she wrested control of Aust...

Stephanie Alexander is a national icon: an internationally renowned cooking guru, best-selling writer and inspirational founder of a nationwide kitchen-garden scheme for schoolkids. She's also the final arbiter of kitchen disputes in homes all over Australia – resolving disagreements about how to store tomatoes and when to take the sponge out of the oven – as the author of Australia's most famous cookbook, The Cook's Companion. The 2.8-kilogram culinary doorstopper turns 30 this year, and Alexander joins Good Weekend senior writer Amanda Hooton for a chat about restaurants and writing, eating and air-fryers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bob Carr has done hard jobs before. He was premier of NSW for 10 years, and later served as foreign minister under Julia Gillard’s government. But when his beloved wife, Helena, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2023, he faced the hardest job of his life – learning how to live without her. Carr worked through his deep shock and sadness by obsessively walking the Sydney streets he once presided over as premier, often weeping as he did so. He knows he made his friends uncomfortable by talking too much about Helena’s death at dinner parties. The silence of their...

In this episode, we talk to Courtney Barnett, who broke into the musical mainstream a little over a decade ago as an Aussie singer-songwriter with deadpan delivery, with work veering from the witty and rambling to something evoking Margaret Atwood. The Grammy-nominated artist chats to Konrad Marshall from her home in Los Angeles, where she's about to release her fourth album, "Creature of Habit".

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kathy Lette is a comic writer and pioneering voice in contemporary feminism whose first book, Puberty Blues, was published in 1979. Co-authored with Gabrielle Carey, it catapulted her into the public eye, horrifying her headmistress mother with its graphic depictions of teenage sex and drug taking. She has subsequently written 21 best-selling books and today speaks with The Sydney Morning Herald’s deputy opinion editor, Margot Saville, ahead of the release of her newest novel, The Sisterhood Rules.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Todd Sampson began his TV career on Gruen, the long-running ABC series about advertising, before transforming himself into a human guinea pig to scrutinise the limits of the human brain and body.
His upcoming show, called Why?, explores the reasons behind why people turn to extreme beliefs and behaviours such as doomsday prepping, base-jumping or alien worship. In this chat, hosted by The Sydney Morning Herald science reporter Angus Dalton, Sampson talks about his upbringing, how he went from 'ad man' to TV, and the moment marrying a doomsday prepper really came in handy.

See omnystudio.c...

Konrad Marshall is Good Weekend magazine's deputy editor, he's also the regular host of this podcast and he's just released a new book. Run For Your Life is a year-long journey on why we run, and explores a year Konrad spent in constant motion – jogging and sprinting, shuffling and loping, while also interviewing some of Australia's most interesting runners.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we talk to reality TV star, youth worker and mental health advocate Brooke Blurton. Many know her as the first Indigenous and bisexual Bachelorette from the dating-show franchise, but she's also an author, presenter and podcaster. Blurton talks with Konrad Marshall about everything from growing up in Western Australia to life after The Bachelorette and her recent TV collaboration with Tony Armstrong. As well: the "surreal experience" of working on the new season of the SBS program, Going Places with Ernie Dingo.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Martin Luther King III carries one of the most famous names in 20th century history, that of his father, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. The second child and eldest son of Dr King, Mr King was just 10 years old when his father was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Mr King joins Good Weekend senior writer Amanda Hooton for a discussion on what it was like to have the most famous civil rights activist in history for a father, and his fears for present day America. Mr King is visiting Australia soon, where he'll be addressing First Nations university students and y...

Jon Lovett is a former speech writer for Barack Obama, a progressive activist and co-host of a global hit political podcast. Sounds serious, right? Yet, out of the four hosts of the popular Pod Save America, Lovett it is known as the funny one. He's a comedian who appeared on a season of Survivor, wrote a political sitcom that lasted one season and even worked on Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom. Lovett joins Good Weekend Talks ahead of his podcast's Australian tour for a chat about everything from how Australia should deal with Trump to the way Democrats and America generall...

Tennis star Alex de Minaur will lead the homegrown charge in the Australian Open, which begins on Sunday, off the back of a tough 2025. De Minaur spoke to Konrad Marshall for this episode late last year, during a rare and all-too-brief break between seasons. It was an opportunity to ask the tennis champion at length about everything from his lowest point, which he himself calls his rock bottom, along with how he plans to take his game to the next level, before, finally, why playing in front of a home crowd at Melbourne Park is the greatest gift.

...

In this week's episode we speak with acclaimed author Helen Garner, who followed the travails of her grandson's footy team for her new book, The Season. She speaks with Konrad Marshall about what she now envies about male contact sports, the benefit of coming to footy with limited prior knowledge, and the debate over the book's cover image.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we talk to Tim Rogers. Best known as the frontman for rock band You Am I, Rogers was born in Kalgoorlie, WA, but lived all over the country growing up, spending time in Adelaide, Sydney and Canberra, and now, rural Victoria. The 55-year-old has lived a big life so far as a songwriter, raconteur, talking head and author. He's had his struggles and his joys but has remained, as always, sartorially splendid. He speaks with Good Weekend senior writer Konrad Marshall about addiction, mental health, footy, cycling, gardening, and his current tour with the band, celebrating...

In this episode we talk to Jess Cattelly, the co-founder of Sydney swingers club Our Secret Spot. The 32-year-old got into swinging – also known as The Lifestyle - when she was just 20, and her Parramatta Road venue has since become an example of the way in which the swinging community is changing. Middle-class suburban key parties are no longer, nor is the practice as grimy or seedy as popular culture might have you imagine. Instead, The Lifestyle is big on respect and consent, joy and community, and, as Cattelly notes, usually led by the female gaze. It's also welcoming a...