Cleopatra's Bling Podcast

There is a moment in every child's life when they realise that the relationships around them may not be as simple as they seem. It's a perplexing sensation that can stay with us well into adulthood: times when you see your partner speaking, but hear the words of their father or grandmother emerging from their mouth.

That generations present are haunted by generations past is something that poet Trivarna Hariharan contemplates through moving, spare writing. Trivarna calls up ghosts sensed from absences felt, creating sequeneces of words that make the poet's almost 200k Instagram followers feel seen and understood in just a few lines.

Cleopatra's Bling Podcast was produced by Zoltan Fecso and the CB team. Original music by Cameron Alva. You can discover Cleopatra's Bling designs, here.

Bestselling author, and marriage and family therapist, Elizabeth Earnshaw has been helping couples and parents for decades. She uses attachment theory to help individuals understand better how and why they are reacting to emotional triggers. Her insights have been featured on the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and Oprah.

Olivia sat down with Elizabeth to discuss how to love, even when it gets hard, getting into the nitty gritty of our relationships, both good and bad. Elizabeth's ability to explain these emotionally charged and deep topics with effortless simplcity is just one of her amazing talents.

Content Note: Grief, infant loss, child loss, topics about difficulties in relationships i.e. infidelity briefly touched on in this episode.

Cleopatra's Bling Podcast was produced by Zoltan Fecso and the CB team. Original music by Cameron Alva. You can discover Cleopatra's Bling designs, here.

What kind of engagement ring would a jeweller want for herself?

These questions and more in our final episode of the season that covers the earliest ever love rings, engagement rings' secret codes, and how capture by pirates led to one of the world's most iconic love ring designs.

Our guest today is more often referred to by the charming moniker "Blooms" which she uses as her Instagram handle @petrinablooms. This cheerful gardener is as riotously colourful and funny as the wild and varied flowers she tends to in the green expanses of her suburban Melbourne home.

It's these flowers that Petrina Burrill handpicks and sells as part of her sustainable floristry practice. In signature pale pink overalls you can find her in a garden that Design Files has described as a Narnia, frollicking amongst pastel petals, and deep green fronds.

Many of us spend our whole lives attempting to climb the ladder of success in our chosen profession. Liam Spurrell found accolades and opportunities early: thanks to his talent for flavour and keen eye for detail already at a young age he found positions opening up to him in some of Melbourne's best restaurants. But rather than stay in the ratatouille race, Liam decided to trade in his chef's whites for muddy boots, secateurs and scissors.

He is now a full time forager, sourcing ethical and sustainable produce from beach bananas, to mountain marigold, to olive herb.

Co-host James is back to the Podcast to talk a small but ubiquitous accessory with a very long history: the silk scarf. This week we've got ancient spies, martial arts, war propaganda, and the death of a star of the stage.

Plus: Listener questions!

Over the past years Olivia has found twin passions in learning the Arabic language and advocating for Palestinian liberation. A mentor and teacher who helped to guide her in this journey is Yousef Alreemawi - a lecturer, political adviser and commentator, editor, and friend.

They discuss the beauty of Arabic as a language, its unique expressiveness, and his experience as part of the Palestinian diaspora.

Kirstie Clements has presided over the most glamorous corners of the Australian fashion industry throughout her long career. At one point in time her role took her from clubbing with supermodels and Guns N' Roses in Paris, to high tea with Estée Lauder at the Plaza New York, to travels alongside Armani in Shanghai. Despite these stylish credentials, she finds that much of her creative and professional inspiration has been drawn from fine art, poetry, music, film, and travel.

She sat down with Olivia to dish on how to reinvent your creative message, adapting to life in a new country, and how it felt to be elevated to Vogue's editor in chief.

Co-host James returns to the Podcast to talk the life and times of the Renaissance's most infamous scoundrel: Benvenuto Cellini. This week we've got murder, sex, war, poetry, goldsmithing... with a touch of necromancy and some favours done for the Pope. It's the history of the life of Florence's most famous goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. What better man or place to cover than that which inspires so many of our collections and where our first bespoke solid gold pieces were made? Plus: Listener questions!

The male boxer you see fighting it out in the ring at the Olympics, or the man who comes round to repair your burst water pipe - these might be the last kind of people you would stereotypically expect to pull off their gloves to reveal bright nail polish.

Our guest today, Harry Garside, happens to be both: a professional fighter, and a tradesman. He also happens to be a laid back pioneer of the diverse possibilities of gender expression, having sported nail lacquer in the ring. His colourful hands were shown to the world when the gloves came off for a celebration of his Bronze Medal-winning stoush.