Podcast Episodes

Encore: Janty Blair is the BMW of standup comics

After a lifetime of nursing and midwifery, Janty Blair discovered her funny bone in her late 50s, following a serendipitous Bumble date (R).

Janty's f…

1 year, 2 months ago

Leah Purcell's meteoric rise, from the Murgon meatworks to centre stage

Leah Purcell grew up in a small town caring for her mum Florence. Her options after graduation were nursing or working at the meatworks. But after a …

1 year, 2 months ago

How a boy from Balmain made caring cool

Bundjalung man, Jack Manning Bancroft's scholarship to a prestigious Sydney University college showed him a rarefied world that shocked him, and he u…

1 year, 2 months ago

A family secret unearths connection to country

Yvonne Orley grew up on Aboriginal missions in NSW as the child of the matron and manager.  But it turned out that Yvonne had much deeper connections…

1 year, 2 months ago

Encore: Love, jail, Jesus, and pubs — a tangled tale of four very different parents

Lech Blaine with the strange true story of his childhood, shaped by love, religious zealotry, and four wildly different parents. CW: descriptions of …

1 year, 3 months ago

When a sea change collides with messy midlife

For journalist Kate Halfpenny, moving to a beachside town during Melbourne's lockdowns seemed like the perfect way to unwind and escape her huge mort…

1 year, 3 months ago

Hannah vs Disney, Lizzo and Beyonce

Hannah Diviney made history in 2022 when she became the first person with a disability to film a sex scene for Australian television. Then she went v…

1 year, 3 months ago

Purity, hypnosis and hiding — how a gay teen survived Opus Dei

Hollywood actor Tim Pocock was tricked by his dying, devout mother into undergoing gay conversion therapy. After she died, Tim finally learned how to…

1 year, 3 months ago

Encore: my three fathers

American novelist Ann Patchett reflects on Frank, Mike and Darrell, the men who made her, going a year without shopping and her power to make herself…

1 year, 3 months ago

Inside the six-day siege of the Iranian Embassy in London

In April 1980, a group of armed men invaded the Iranian Embassy in London, taking hostages, and issuing demands in the name of a cause almost no one …

1 year, 3 months ago