Human Cogs Podcast

During the dark days of the pandemic not everyone was baking sourdough. Many women were locked in their homes with people they feared, and psychological, physical, financial and fatal abuse played out behind closed doors with domestic violence continuing to devastate too many lives.

Tarang Chawla is a writer, speaker, anti-violence campaigner and mental health advocate, whose beloved 23-year-old sister Niki was tragically murdered by her partner. 

Niki’s horrific death and inspiring life has become the catalyst for Tarang’s powerful change-making. Named as Young Australian of the Year Finalist, AFL Community Champion Award Winner, India-Australia Young Community Achiever of the Year, and Pro Bono Top 25 Most Influential Australians, Tarang founded the ‘Not One More Niki’ movement, Australia’s largest campaign to end violence against women in culturally diverse communities.

Tarang continues to use his voice to serve the community and champion human rights, and has just released a ground-breaking new podcast in collaboration with Future Women and supported by CommBank called There’s No Place Like Home, which features the stories of 10 extraordinary people who have survived family violence and domestic abuse.

In this difficult, inspirational and hope-filled conversation, Tarang emphasizes the importance of victim-survivors stories, explores how we move to solutions, and shares how keeping his sister’s spirit alive in his everyday has given him the fuel to keep fighting for social change.

It might be hard to listen and front up to the truth of the abuse and violence that is perpetrated behind closed doors.​ But as Tarang says: “It’s vital that we do. We have to listen. Because we need to learn.​”

Guest: Tarang Chawla
Show Links: There's No Place Like Home, Future Women, Instagram

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know that you spend most of your waking life working – a jaw-dropping 90,000 hours for the average person. 

Work dominates our days. It can be the thing that gets you up in the morning, or the thing that keeps you awake at night. 

What about you? Has the pandemic changed your relationship with work? Are you at a career crossroads, feeling tired, unmotivated, a tad lost in your work life? Are you experiencing burnout? Do you want to be more intentional about the role of work in your life so you can grow more joy and meaning in your career, and make your work, well, work for you?

We sat down to explore some of these questions with ABC Broadcaster Lisa Leong, who along with journalist Monique Ross, has spent a lot of time thinking and writing about work and co-authored a brilliant just published book called This Working Life - How To Navigate Your Career In Uncertain Times.

In this conversation, Lisa and Mon share how being on the brink of burnout was the wake up call they each needed to change their relationship with work, and themselves. They reflect on their personal, hard-won learnings and how they had to rethink unsustainable and negative work habits to rebalance their work life coherence, do less to gain more, and harness their energy and superpowers to craft the careers they now truly love. 

There’s stacks of great practical advice in here to help kickstart your career next steps, or at least help you have a good hard look at how you spend your working life. 

Guests: Lisa Leong and Monique Ross
Website: This Working Life
Socials - Lisa: Twitter, Instagram
Socials - Mon: Twitter, Instagram

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did you know that you spend most of your waking life working – a jaw-dropping 90,000 hours for the average person. 

Work dominates our days. It can be the thing that gets you up in the morning, or the thing that keeps you awake at night. 

What about you? Has the pandemic changed your relationship with work? Are you at a career crossroads, feeling tired, unmotivated, a tad lost in your work life? Are you experiencing burnout? Do you want to be more intentional about the role of work in your life so you can grow more joy and meaning in your career, and make your work, well, work for you?

We sat down to explore some of these questions with ABC Broadcaster Lisa Leong, who along with journalist Monique Ross, has spent a lot of time thinking and writing about work and co-authored a brilliant just published book called This Working Life - How To Navigate Your Career In Uncertain Times.

In this conversation, Lisa and Mon share how being on the brink of burnout was the wake up call they each needed to change their relationship with work, and themselves. They reflect on their personal, hard-won learnings and how they had to rethink unsustainable and negative work habits to rebalance their work life coherence, do less to gain more, and harness their energy and superpowers to craft the careers they now truly love. 

There’s stacks of great practical advice in here to help kickstart your career next steps, or at least help you have a good hard look at how you spend your working life. 

Guests: Lisa Leong and Monique Ross
Website: This Working Life
Socials - Lisa: Twitter, Instagram
Socials - Mon: Twitter, Instagram

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening!

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever set yourself a crazy big hairy audacious goal, and found yourself against the odds somehow achieving it?

Women climb invisible mountains every day.

But Laura Youngson's eureka moment came on a volcanic ash pitch, 5,714 metres above sea level, on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro in June 2017.

Youngson, an ambitious entrepreneur, gender activist and Co-Founder of global non-profit Equal Playing Field and Ida Sports, had a crazy idea that if she could convince two teams of female soccer players from 20 countries to join her on an expedition up a mountain to set the Guinness World Record for the highest altitude game of soccer ever played, they could literally change the game for women and girls the world over. 

The record made news across the planet, and set Laura on a path she could never have foreseen.

This is a conversation about what happened next, about change, showing up, and how it’s mostly the failures that shape us and make us. Laura shares with us the shadow side of striving, the relentless juggle of businesses and babies, and that if we can each just summit the limits we impose on ourselves, women and girls can do anything they put their minds to.

Guest: Laura Youngson
Links: Ida Sports, Equal Playing Field, LinkedIn

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sushi Das is an award-winning British Australian journalist of more than 25 years, spending much of her career at The Age, where she held a series of senior reporting and editing positions.


She is the winner of two Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards including Best Columnist (2005) and currently works as a freelance columnist and as a researcher for RMIT ABC Fact Check.

A brilliant writer and storyteller, Sushi is the author of Deranged Marriage - an affectionate, often hilarious, memoir of growing up in London in the 1970s in a strict and traditional Indian household, she raged against the control of her father and tried desperately to avoid an arranged marriage. 

Education was Sushi’s passport to freedom and it enabled her to escape to Australia in her 20’s to live the life she wanted for herself, and to find her own place in the world on her terms, as she navigated the tug between Eastern expectations and Western desires. 

Like so many of us, she has grappled with parental and cultural pressures that clash with her own deep needs for independence and justice.

In this episode, Sushi reflects on the role of mothers in raising strong daughters, in not repeating the patterns of the past, and in letting your children be free to emerge into who they are - as she says, “I do not own my daughter. I am her custodian. I am the bow and she is the arrow.”

Guest: Sushi Das
Socials: Twitter, LinkedIn

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when, aged 30, you understand you’re transgender?

This was the question that confronted Dr Yves Rees, an award-winning author, historian and regular contributor to ABC Radio and The Conversation, whose life was upended by gender transition in 2018. Then known as a woman called Anne, Yves was forced to grapple with the knowledge that they were not, in fact, a woman at all. 

In this episode, Yves shares the events that led to their transition including completing a PhD, ending a relationship with a male, moving cities and even dabbling in a brief encounter with marijuana which unlocked the human who’d been hiding inside all along. Yves describes the limitless joy that surfaced when the binary confines of society gave way to the euphoric possibility of what’s next. 

Yves expresses the desire that sits within each of us to be seen for who we are, regardless of the complexities and conflicts that are so very innately human. Yves’s wisdom is profound and invites the radical self-inquiry of us all.

If there’s any part of you that yearns to be more you, we know you’ll relate to Yves while applauding this very personal, and universal story of a wise, articulate and curious human who’s just trying to be themselves in a world that has space for them.

Guest: Yves Rees
Website: www.yvesrees.com
Socials: Podcast, Twitter

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many of us hear the word menopause and may think it’s not meaningful or relevant in our own life – regardless of our gender, career path or life stage. As an accomplished business executive who travelled the world working in often male-dominated industries, Melissa MacGowan was once probably the same. Until the symptoms of undiagnosed peri-menopause wreaked havoc in her own life.

Melissa is now a passionate business coach who supports female leaders to banish burnout and manage the many and complex personal and professional changes associated with menopause. In this chat, Melissa shares her own tools and strategies for maximising growth, managing stress, and dialling up vitality.

She reveals the power of exploring unexamined beliefs, the importance of taking a team approach with her husband (who she describes as her partner in growth), and how her many moments of 2am despair catalysed a conscious slowing down, and the revelation that stress steals your mojo.

If you’re wondering how to better manage your time and energy, if you would like to prioritise energy over action, and if you want to focus on how you wish to feel rather than what you want to achieve, then this insightful chat is for you. Whether you are male or female, I know you’ll learn something about yourself, your partner, or a colleague. Regardless if they have reached menopause or not!

Guest: Melissa MacGowan
Socials: Instagram, LinkedIn

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adam Schwab is a former corporate lawyer, company founder, angel investor and the co-founder of Luxury Escapes, a global travel company. He has also written for Crikey and SmartCompany since 2005 and is the author of Pigs at the Trough: Lessons from Australia’s Decade of Corporate Greed. 

From being a self-described glorified filer at a top-tier law firm, to great accomplishments as an entrepreneur, Adam credits his hard work, grit and precision, honed as a law student, as key ingredients in building Luxury Escapes into the juggernaut that it is today.

We started by asking how Adam would describe himself if you met him at a party. What followed was a rapid-fire rundown of his journey to now, harnessing his insatiable appetite for winning, keeping his head while riding the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey,  all while at the helm of a billion-dollar company.

This conversation offers a fascinating window into the entrepreneurial mindset, the line danced between risk and safety, the power of co-founder relationships; and in the face of great success, how Adam sees himself as a frugal everyday man, and the kind of person that loves a good holiday deal just like the rest of us.

Guest: Adam Schwab
Website: Crikey, Luxury Escapes
Socials: Twitter, Podcast, Instagram

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

George McEncroe is a tech entrepreneur, writer, standup comedian, educator, and force of nature. The single mother of four hates orthodoxies, has a roll up your sleeves ‘can do’ mantra, and has spent her life giving everything a crack to dial up the carpe diem in her every day so she doesn’t die wondering.

In this episode, we hear about  some of the formative experiences that have shaped the adult George is today, including the trauma of losing her beloved sister to suicide, weathering a marriage breakup, mental health challenges, and her commitment to continuous self-reflection and self-improvement so she can build a safe harbour for herself, and those in her fold.

George reflects on the realisation that she is more capable than she ever thought, and also that being overly trusting of others hasn’t always served her well as an entrepreneur. She also shares the ways she has found to calm her mind, by journaling her fears and resentments, meditating, minimising alcohol, and uncoupling herself from her work.

There’s a lot in this conversation, including quite a few F-bombs (sorry about that!). But the truth is it’s a story from the heart - raw, real, and strong. We started by asking George some rapid fire questions, beginning with who she is in the world of biscuits.

Guest: George McEncroe
Website: Shebah.com.au
Socials: Twitter, LinkedIn

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jocelyn Brewer has, in her words, a job of the future. A psychologist and ex-teacher who helps individuals and organisations be well connected and mentally fit, she has been working with adolescents, families and adults for a decade, and understands the complexity of busy modern life, the increasing role of technology in our work and how healthy digital and screen habits need to be consciously shaped by us all.  

But rather than see exponential technology and social media as a dark force in our lives, Jocelyn debunks the notion of screen addiction and instead invites us all to do an audit on our relationship with our technology devices, so we can make better choices about our “digital nutrition” - that is what we choose to watch, like, who we follow and much time we’re actually spending online.

In this chat, Jocelyn reveals some bite-sized morsels to help guide the use of technology for young people and adults. She has a wealth of resources available to download too and runs courses to support the younger generations who she calls digital orphans, rather than digital natives because their parents haven’t dined on the digital diets that are such an integral part of their lives.

We started by asking Jocelyn how the worlds of teaching, psychology and technology came to collide in her own life.

Guest: Jocelyn Brewer
Website: Jocelyn Brewer
Socials: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Hosts: Sabina Read and Madeleine Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen at Purple Wax

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website.

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

Want to support our show? We will sprinkle you with loving kindness and all good things if you CLICK FOLLOW on Apple and Spotify! Or if you're really feeling it, please leave us a REVIEW.

Thanks for listening! 

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.