Days Like These

A decade ago, Jennifer Mills found out there was a watercolour painting of her on the wall of a major gallery. The thing is, she’d never sat for one, and she’d never spoken to an artist about being in a portrait.

So, what was the picture? How did it come to be there? How would it connect her to more than three hundred other women, all called Jennifer Mills?

Follow our Jenni as she enters a portal to a global adventure, where a stranger with the same name has the power to revive her deepest and most precious memories.

A police officer with his knee on a man's neck in Minneapolis. Guards rushing a cell in Sydney's Long Bay jail to stop a man from eating biscuits. George Floyd and David Dungay Junior are dead and the world is catching fire around law student Taylah Gray. It sets her own smouldering sense of justice aflame.

She's not a lawyer yet, but Taylah spearheads the legal case to hold a Black Lives Matter protest in Newcastle during the first heightened days of the pandemic. It makes her a lightning rod for criticism and also for the hope of the movement. Under threat of wearing the legal cost from the authorities, she takes her protest all the way to The Supreme Court — will she emerge victorious?

Russell Cheek spent his thirties touring Australia in the beloved performance group, The Castanet Club. He poured himself into the art and the lifestyle. For him, the band was his life, there was no Plan B. So, when The Castanets breaks up, he finds himself middle aged, broke and at a creative loose end. His solution: he writes away to Sale of the Century. But does he have what it takes to win eight nights in a row — and take home the jackpot?

A big thanks to NBN Newcastle and Fremantle Australia for providing access to some of the archival audio in this episode. Archival audio is used courtesy of Fremantle Australia.

Guts. Justice. Surprise families. Playing Elton John’s piano. Deep disappointment. Risking it all on a gameshow. Danger on the high seas and low roads. Perseverance. Hope for the future. 

Days Like These is BACK and things are wilder than ever before.

Russell is staking everything on winning Sale of the Century. Taylah has a fire in her belly that only justice can quench. And Jennifer? She’s just trying to find out why someone would paint a portrait of her without asking and stick it on a gallery wall. 

New episodes every Wednesday from April 28, 2021.

The Days Like These team is off whipping up more wild and wonderful true stories for your listening pleasure.

A boyhood visit to the dentist turns Tim Rogers into a lifelong fan of The Rolling Stones. But when the Aussie musician's dream comes true and his band is picked to support the bad boys of rock'n'roll, an inside joke aimed at his idols threatens to tip the whole relationship off the rails.

If someone told you they could hear their own eyeballs moving, their blood pumping through their veins and their voice echoing inside their own head would you believe them? Get ready to go inside the minds of two young women struggling with all those symptoms and one of the world's most disturbing medical conditions. Prepare for a sonic trip of swerves you never saw coming as we take you inside the operating theatre for a world-first procedure to try and fix the syndrome.

In the rough-as-guts Bondi breaks of the 1980s, rising surf star Pauline Menczer was one of the only women in the water. And, boy, did she pay for it. Hot on the heels of her idol Jodie Cooper, both women discover it's not only big waves that can wipe you out. When they finally face each other in the water, they also take on the conservative, sexist world of professional surfing… and change it forever.

When Marisa and Peter Skillen set off with their kids for their first family camping trip, they're expecting a peaceful couple of days among the gum trees. But when one of their young twins slips away with only his bumblebee backpack, their dream weekend turns into a living nightmare as they desperately scour the bush to find him before it's too late.

When a young Jenna Holmes discovers the magic of The Oprah Winfrey Show while channel surfing one afternoon, it cracks open a whole new way of thinking for the Toowoomba schoolkid.  The undisputed master of daytime TV becomes Jenna’s guide for life. 

Chutzpah, visualisation, Celin Dion’s legs... the education Jenna’s getting is a little different to the other nine-year-olds.  

Can Jenna use what she’s learned to realise her dream of meeting Oprah in person?