Ep. 81 Cath Mahoney on over-sharing, a high-profile divorce, career change insights and coming back to self.

Ep. 86 Jo Stanley on women in media, comedy as catharsis and the case for vulvas.

If you’ve turned on the radio lately, have you ever sat back to listen to who’s telling the stories? Current data shows that only 27 per cent of radio hosts are women, female experts are quoted just 34 per cent of the time and - here’s the clanger - NINETY PER CENT of radio voices of people aged over 45 are in fact - men. Yep. NINETY per cent.

Why is that? What’s going on? And how does this skew attitudes and perpetuate gendered inequality in society?

Well our guest today, Jo Stanley, asked herself those questions for years, and is now on a mission to change the stats with the launch of Broad Radio - Australia's first women-centric radio network - connecting women through audio and serving the mostly overlooked five million-strong female audience aged over 35.

Jo Stanley is, of course, no stranger to audio - with a decades-long successful career in breakfast radio including rating number one for six years on Melbourne’s Fox FM, and dominating the top spot at Gold FM alongside her ongoing TV, writing and podcast gigs.

Despite being in the public spotlight and sharing her life with millions of listeners every day, in this conversation Jo shares how the lack of levity in her childhood shaped her, the challenges of living with fear, and how the birth of her daughter taught her what being enough really means.

Click here to listen to Broad Radio

Guest: Jo Stanley
Links: Facebook, Instagram

Hosts: Mads Grummet + Sabina Read
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

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www.humancogs.com

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 85 Corrie Perkin on the Fourth Estate, storytelling and why words do matter.

It was the poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou who once said ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you’.

Stories are what help us make sense of the world around us and of ourselves, of great tragedies and fates and fortunes, of buried histories and mysteries, of the untold secrets and human essence of things.

Journalist Corrie Perkin was born with stories in her blood. Her father, Graham Perkin - the famed journalist and editor of The Age newspaper - was a story that unfolded before her larger than life, as she grew up on a diet of breaking news, of ink and print, and the daily happenings of the world at large playing out in fervoured conversations at her kitchen table.

But her father’s tragic death when she was aged just 14, set Corrie’s story on a different arc, and changed her life in ways that today are still unfurling.

In this conversation we talk about grief, how we each make sense of our lived stories, about Corrie’s decades working as a respected journalist, storyteller and champion of novelists and books, and mostly, about why in an increasingly fractured and distracted world, our words really do matter.

Guest: Corrie Perkin, Journalist, Podcaster and Director of the Sorrento Writers Festival
Sorrento Writers Festival: https://sorrentowritersfestival.com.au/
Book tickets: https://sorrentowritersfestival.com.au/artfuel/program
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sorrentowritersfestival
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sorrento-writers-festival/
Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
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Thanks, as ever, for listening. Go well. Be well.
www.humancogs.com

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep 84. Dr Meg Jay on rethinking your twenties, why this decade isn't necessarily "the best years of your life" and thriving through skills not pills.

Being a young person in your 20s is a complicated and challenging time. Whether you’re living through this decade of your life now, or you’re a parent to a twenty something, you likely already know that the 20s are the most uncertain decade of life.

In this episode, we talk to the always compassionate and wise Dr Meg Jay, a developmental clinical psychologist, who is on faculty at the University of Virginia and maintains a private practice in Charlottesville where she specializes in twentysomethings.

Her first book, The Defining Decade, has sold more than half a million copies, launched one of the most-watched TED talks to date, and is the topic of 13.7 million views on TikTok.

Meg has just released her third book, The Twentysomething Treatment: A revolutionary remedy for an uncertain age, which upends the pathologizing of young adult life and offers practical skills and hope as she normalises the hurdles faced by young people, to help navigate this important time of life.

Meg shares with us why the 20s isn’t a developmental downtime to be pushed to the side, but rather a transformative time that paves the way for decades to come. She shares how small tweaks in our 20s can metamorphosis our careers, mental health, and relationships for the rest of our life.

We also discuss Meg’s fascinating second book, Supernormal: the secret world of the family hero, which details stories of people who have faced adversity in the form of death, divorce, mental illness in a family member, abuse or bullying and who go on to thrive. We deep dive the impact of keeping family pain in the shadows and the power of sharing secrets to help us grow and develop in healthy ways despite the family dynamics we grew up in or the hardships we endured.

Meg’s warmth, insights, knowledge and watertight evidence-based research invite us to rethink our 20s, and understand that this decade won’t be the best years of our life. In fact, she states if your 20s are the best years of your life, something has gone terribly wrong! This is a not to be missed conversation for any parent and any 20 something.

Guest: Dr Meg Jay
Latest book: The Twentysomething Treatment: A revolutionary remedy for an uncertain age
Links: Instagram, LinkedIn,TikTok, X, Threads
Host: Sabina Read
Producer: Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
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Thanks for listening.

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Ep 83. Grace Tame on social justice, human connection and sharing our pain.

Grace Tame is a name that needs little introduction, but that doesn’t mean you know Grace - or indeed her story - on her own terms.

Catapulted into the spotlight as 'Australian of the Year' in 2021, Grace stepped squarely into the public eye and became a powerful catalyst for a tidal wave of conversation, action and policy change for survivor-victims of sexual abuse across Australia.

Finally, this was a chance for Grace Tame to find - and use - her voice, after years of shadows and silence.

"Let's make some noise Australia" was her catch cry.

In this honest and at times confronting conversation, Grace shares with us the findings of a new Australian study - the largest of it’s kind in the world - that validates what victim-survivors have been saying for years; that child sexual abuse is a public health issue and the current statistics are shocking.

Child sexual abuse is widespread in this country. According to the study, one in six (15.1%) Australian men report sexual feelings towards children and one in ten (9.4%) Australian men have sexually offended against children.

Grace calls for policy change and accountability for the big tech giants who continue to allow online access to child sexual abuse material on their sites, and for intensive education so grooming is implicitly understood by children, parents and bystanders - which means all of us.

Like every human on earth, Grace is a work in progress, and is still coming to terms with her experiences of instability, uncertainty and trauma. But she is powerfully reclaiming her narrative by ceding control as an adult in charge of the story of her life. And in Grace’s words: “Peace is not freedom from pain; it is the acceptance of it.”

WARNING: This episode is about child sexual abuse, and may be disturbing to some listeners. Please use discretion when considering listening to this episode, and if you do need support please contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or 1800 RESPECT.

Guest: Grace Tame
Book: The Ninth Life Of A Diamond Miner
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamepunk/
Grace Tame Foundation: https://www.instagram.com/gracetamefoundation/

Hosts: Mads Grummet + Sabina Read
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Join in the convo on Instagram @human.cogs

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Thanks, as ever, for listening. Be well.
www.humancogs.com

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 82 Cat Bohannon on the science of sex, why men have nipples and how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution.

Over the Summer I spent countless hours deep in the pages of a remarkable book called Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. The book is written by the very entertaining scholar, researcher and poet Cat Bohannon, and it's making very big waves across the world right now.

The book is an epic story and sweeping scientific exploration that starts with mammals 200 million years ago and moves forward through time, to fundamentally challenge the real origin of our mammalian species. In fact, in this book, Cat Bohannon completely rethinks human history, and offers a necessary myth-busting, landmark corrective about how humans have really evolved.

It took Cat 10 years to write this book: it is exhaustively researched but beautifully readable, and is densely packed with astonishing facts and revelations about how the female body came to be, why the size of male balls influences monogamy, why wet nurses in ancient cities catalyzed explosive population growth, and why modern medicine needs to stop the default to the male as the norm.

This conversation touches on all of that, and much much more, and it will completely change what you think you know about human evolution, the design wonders of the female body plan, and why Homo Sapiens have become a dominant species on our pale blue planet.

A warning that we talk about vaginas and sex and balls and swear in this episode, and also that you’ll need to strap on your big brain for this listen, and get ready to learn a lot, because this conversation will literally blow your mammalian mind.

Guest: Cat Bohannon
Book: Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of evolution

Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Join in the convo on Instagram @human.cogs

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Thanks, as ever, for listening.
www.humancogs.com

Learn more and support the show: https://www.humancogs.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.