Human Cogs Podcast

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?
Join in the convo on Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share the love!
Please follow us or leave a quick review. It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

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

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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?
Join in the convo at Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to support our show! Please follow us or leave a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

We'd love you to share the love!
Please follow us or leave a quick review. It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

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

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

We'd love you to share the love!
Please follow us or leave a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

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.

When you google Catherine Mahoney, the first thing it says is Andrew John’s ex-wife. But as I know nothing about the NRL or his career as one of Australia’s biggest sports stars, this isn’t what led me to invite Cath to join us on Human Cogs.

Cath is an ex-publicist, writer, podcaster, talented creative, and had me rollicking on the floor with laughter when we first met two years ago. Her warm, funny and relatable 2022 memoir Currently Between Husbands tells the story of her marriage and separation to Andrew as well the relationship insights gleaned before and after her relationship with Andrew.

As a self-confessed over-sharer, not much is off the table. In this conversation, Cath reflects how being a people pleaser has helped and hindered her personally and professionally. How being separated and divorced is both challenging and also freeing.

She also shares some of the top tips she has gleaned from interviewing over 150 guests on her fabulous podcast So I Quit My Day Job, where she talks with career changes and how they made the leap.

Cath reminds us that being yourself and being at ease in your own skin is the best roadmap to follow. She also acknowledges that this is hard when we are drawn off course by the needs and expectations of others; and perhaps fear of judgement or failure too.

She’s Currently Between Husbands, and yet she’s so much more than that… here’s my chat with always delightful and witty Cath.

Guest: Cathrine Mahoney
Book: Currently Between Husbands
Follow: Instagram, Podcasts

Host: Mads Grummet + 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?
Join the discussion at Instagram @human.cogs

We do this for love. But we'd love you to support our show!
Please follow us on the podcast platforms or leave us a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How are you going with the state of the world right now?

Wars and violence continue to rage, hate and abuse fill social media feeds, and an escalation of ideological conflict is causing uncertainty and division in our politics, in our communities and at our dinner tables.

It can make you lose a little faith in the world ... wonder if humanity will be ok, whether we can actually save ourselves from ourselves.

Until you remember that there are stories of hope and love and life and survival everywhere, if you make the time to seek them out.

Today’s episode is a story that will restore your faith, and fill your cup.

It’s the unforgettable story of Mira Unreich, who one fine Spring day in 1945, was freed from a concentration camp in Germany, and found herself alive, under blue skies, against all odds. She’d survived four death camps, including Auschwitz, and a death march.

And in the decades that followed her release, she never explained the mystery underpinning her extraordinary survival, and why the holocaust’s greatest lesson for her - despite unimaginable horror - was experiencing the innate "goodness of people".

When Mira’s journalist daughter, Rachelle Unreich, many decades later, realised time was running out for her mother who was in her final weeks of terminal cancer, she decided to sit down and finally ask her some questions.

It would be the most important interview of her life: a chance to discover the secret to her mother’s boundless optimism, the sliding doors of fate and chance, how love and grief can run as deep as the years, and how the past and present weave a powerful and indelible connection between a mother and child, even when they’re gone.

Heartfelt thanks to Rachelle - and of course to Mira - for sharing this remarkable story.

We hope this episode leaves you all feeling a little better about the world right now.

Guest: Rachelle Unreich
Book: A Brilliant Life: My Mother's Inspiring Story of Surviving the Holocaust

Host: Mads Grummet + 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?
Join the discussion at Instagram @human.cogs

We do this for love. But we'd love you to support our show!
Please follow us on the podcast platforms or leave us a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Affairs are a little like childbirth. Someone is always having one somewhere, usually right under the nose of a spouse because nobody knows everything that happens inside a marriage, not even the people in it.”

Award-winning author and journalist Kate Legge has chronicled social and political affairs and other people’s stories since the 1980s. But Kate’s latest book - an unflinchingly honest and raw memoir called 'Infidelity and Other Affairs' - explores her own story and the tumult that took hold when her husband’s serial cheating upended her life, decades-long marriage and entire sense of self.

Kate’s story and that of her complex family of origin are compelling, and in this episode of Human Cogs she details her hurt, fury, agony and the eventual forgiveness and understanding she developed for her husband in the face of his betrayal and deceit. To this day, they remain firm friends.

As Kate writes: “Affairs create their own weather systems. They leap fences like wildfires and give reason the flick, and in the aftermath there is a bill of claims and damages to be logged. We are drawn to broken glass, like ghouls guiltily feasting on the drama. The hurt, the highs, the hubris, the audacity, the anguish jolts us out of complacency.”

Listen to this if you want to go deep into the complexities of marital infidelity, understand how our families of origin shape and scar us, and discover how the getting of wisdom is mostly got along the rutted roads and blind turns of our very messy human lives.

Guest: Kate Legge
Book: Infidelity and Other Affairs by Kate Legge

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 the discussion at Instagram @human.cogs

We do this for love. But we'd love you to support our show!
Please follow us on the podcast platforms or leave us a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’re all familiar with the idea of mindfulness and leadership and most of us would have some preconceived ideas about what each of these terms mean. So what happens when the two constructs collide at the deepest level? And what does mindful leadership mean for the leader, the team, the organisation and the bottom line?

Michael Bunting is a keynote speaker, best-selling author, researcher, facilitator and co-founder of the Awakened Mind app. As the co-founder of global consultancy, The Mindful Leader, he is committed to changing lives through leadership, team and culture transformation.

And it’s clear Michael is a man who walks the talk. He has been meditating for 32 years, and just recently completed 126 hours of meditation in 2 weeks. That’s 9 hours a day for 2 weeks!

In this conversation, we share Michael’s personal story of financial challenges, divorce, the impacts of the GFC, and what amounted to a long dark night of the soul leaving him in tears every day for 2 years.

With his ever-developing curiosity, commitment, and compassion, Michael went on to support his two now adult children to thrive, wrote four books, remarried, and had two more children.

We traverse topics from change, pain, performance, growth and the power of course correcting even when it feels clunky. And we touch on how even the breathe can sometimes be used to numb our struggles.

Guest: Michael Bunting
Website: The Mindful Leader | Awakened Mind
Host: Sabina Read
Producer: Daryl Missen

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Human Cogs Podcast
Hosts: Sabina Read and Mads Grummet

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 at Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to support our show! Please follow us or leave a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over recent weeks we’ve all watched and listened to the debate over 'The Voice to Parliament' play out in the media, at dinner tables and in the public sphere.

Conversations have caught fire and it seems that a lot of confusion has got in the way of the facts.

This is partly because right-wing hardliners have deliberately launched misinformation and disinformation to seed fear, cloud issues and inflame political debate. But also because many people are saying they don’t really know what the proposed Voice to parliament and constitutional recognition actually mean, and what it will mean for Australia going forward …

And yet, how many people - including you - are actively taking responsibility to seek out facts, stay informed and educate yourself about the Voice?

The referendum date is set for October 14.

The Voice would enshrine in the nation’s constitution a mechanism for a group of Indigenous representatives to offer advice to the Executive Government and Parliament on matters and issues affecting the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Embedding the Voice in the constitution would also finally recognise the incredibly special place First Nations people have in Australian history.

The Voice would be an advisory body designed to improve outcomes in health, education and wellbeing. Important to note here is that this advisory body would NOT have the power to veto laws.

As a journalist I understand and am committed to platforming many different points of view.

But as a person committed to equal opportunity and fairness, improving outcomes for indigenous people who are - proportionally - the most incarcerated people on the planet by percentage of their population, the most disadvantaged ethnic group in Australia and a people who have an life expectancy of nearly eight years shorter than other Australian men and women, I personally think this referendum is a once in a generation chance to bring our country together.

I asked Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo to join us on Human Cogs to have an open conversation about what the Voice to parliament means, and why it will play an important role in Australia’s future.

Mayo is a Kaurareg Aboriginal and Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander man, the Assistant National Secretary of the MUA, a signatory of the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ and he sits on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Referendum Working Group, which drafted the referendum question.

Mayo has recently co-written a book with acclaimed journalist Kerry O’Brien called 'The Voice to Parliament Handbook', to equip Australians with balanced and fair information about the Voice.

No matter your view, I encourage you to listen to this conversation and make it your responsibility to make an informed decision when you step up to vote on October 14.

It is the least you can do for democracy - and for the future of our country.

APOLOGIES: Wifi was against us on the day of recording so please bear with the very ordinary sound quality. We promise it does get better as the conversation goes on!

Guest: Thomas Mayo
Website: https://www.thomasmayo.com.au/
The Voice To Parliament Handbook: https://lnk.to/thevoicetoparliamentbook
Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen

Show Notes:
Read the Australian Government Referendum Question and Constitutional Amendment: https://voice.gov.au/referendum-2023/referendum-question-and-constitutional-amendment

What is The Voice? https://voice.gov.au/

National Indigenous Australians Agency: https://www.niaa.gov.au/

The Voice To Parliament Handbook: https://lnk.to/thevoicetoparliamentbook

Yes23: https://www.yes23.com.au/

________________________________________________

Human Cogs Podcast
Hosts: Sabina Read and Mads Grummet

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 at Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to support our show! Please follow us or leave a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A quick google search shows that almost 8 hundred million people have searched for the term resilience and close to 5 hundred million have searched for the term grief. However, far less frequently, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly, have the two concepts collided.

Dr Lucy Hone is a best-selling author, speaker and award-winning academic researcher with a gift for translating complex science into practical tools. Regarded as a thought leader in the field of resilience psychology, tragic circumstances forced Lucy to focus more closely on grief when her 12-year-old daughter Abi was killed in a horrific motor accident in 2014.

Her TED talk, 3 Secrets of Resilient People, was one of the Top 20 most watched TED talks of 2020. And her wisdom can now be found on Insight Timer as well as through her cohort-based and online courses run through the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience.

Her recently updated and revised edition of her book, Resilient Grieving, offers readers practical and compassionate strategies and insights to cope with loss.

In this conversation with Sabina, Lucy shares how she sought to apply her own deep knowledge in resilience to her very personal story of grief. We traverse many topics from motherhood and marriage to career change and empty nesting. And of course loss -- in its many shapes and forms that inevitably touch us all.

Lucy somehow seems to balance a powerful mix of authenticity, vulnerability, wisdom and knowledge alongside her own kaleidoscope of honest and raw emotions ranging from unbearable pain to finding joy again. With warmth and hope, she reminds us that we can both grieve and live.

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Guest: Dr Lucy Hone
Links: Coping with Loss, TED Talk, Resilient Grieving
Socials: Instagram, LinkedIn
Hosts: Sabina Read and 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 at Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to support our show! Please follow us or leave a quick review.
It helps us get these stories out to more awesome peeps like you!

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.