Naive is a word no one would associate with Peggy O’Neal, except perhaps the woman herself - albeit eight years ago, when she became president of the Richmond Football Club. O’Neal was already the first female board member in the club’s history, but admits she simply didn’t recognise the significance of becoming the first female figurehead in AFL clubland - or the backlash it would spark.

Fast-forward almost a decade and O’Neal’s incredibly successful time at the helm of the club - an era that has produced three premierships and more than 100,000 members joining five years in a row - comes to an end this season. 

Sunday’s match against Hawthorn is O'Neal's final time hosting an AFL president’s function and she spoke with senior writer Konrad Marshall in advance, about sexism and racism and mind games, but also her origin story, including getting her professional start as the first female lawyer at a top firm in Charleston, South Carolina. 

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The cars with blown-out windscreens stood out, as did the demolished shopfronts. Things like this led photojournalist Andrew Quilty closer and closer to the heart of ground zero in Kabul, where a bomb had been detonated, following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Quilty is the focus of a feature story in this Saturday’s Good Weekend — “As the Taliban advanced on Kabul, Andrew Quilty landed at its airport” — and the award-winning photographer is joined in conversation by the author of that piece, Good Weekend senior writer Tim Elliott, for a chat about life in that country before, during and after the withdrawal of US troops in 2021.

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Julie Inman Grant leads the world’s first regulatory agency designed to keep people safe online, after an influential career working with US Congress, as well as in senior positions at Silicon Valley giants Microsoft and Twitter. But she’s also just a mum, albeit one who understands better than most the pressures parents face in keeping their kids out of harm’s way online.

Inman Grant speaks with senior writer Konrad Marshall about the kind of disturbing content that comes through her office; what parents should and should not do to help their kids navigate the online world; and how she deals with all this in her own family dynamics.

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For independent MP Monique Ryan, unseating federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg at the May election was an incredible feeling. “It was the most fun night of my life,” Ryan says of becoming the member for Kooyong, a blue ribbon Victorian seat that had always been Liberal. “There’s no doubt about it.”

And yet in the wash up - assessing the three month election campaign and the three months since her win - she’s also come to see politics as a “very brutal blood sport”, filled with emotional and interpersonal challenges she simply didn't see coming. As she heads to Canberra, she freely admits she's on a very steep learning curve.

Ryan discusses her former life as a paediatrician, the election campaign and her hopes for the next three years with Good Weekend senior writer Melissa Fyfe, who penned today’s magazine cover story about Ryan.

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Ben Crowe has been mindset coach to the stars (including everyone from Ash Barty and Dylan Alcott, to Dustin Martin and Stephanie Gilmore) in a marketing and mentoring career spanning 25 years. Good Weekend senior writer Melissa Fyfe recently profiled Crowe, examining his work counselling everyone from CEOs to students to soldiers, and now hosts an in-depth chat with the man himself. In this latest episode of Good Weekend Talks - a magazine for your ears, in which top journalists from across The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age host discursive conversations with the people capturing the imagination of Australians right now - Crowe answers all the big questions. Does a mindset coach need his own mindset coach? What is a ‘courage mantra’ - and how do you come up with one? What was Shane Warne really like? And what is the meaning of life?

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Despite being the very public face of the Australian music industry’s #MeToo movement, singer Jaguar Jonze still feels gagged by the country’s onerous defamation laws.

The Taiwanese-Australian indie-pop darling was among the first to speak out against the poor treatment of women in the local music industry when she posted allegations on Twitter about being sexually assaulted by two producers in 2019.

Jonze speaks to host of sister podcast Please Explain, Nathanael Cooper about the cost of speaking out about poor behaviour in the music industry, in this episode of Good Weekend Talks.

Good Weekend Talks is a weekly podcast featuring conversations between journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age with extraordinary people from across the country and beyond.

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Paralympic gold medalist, winner of tennis’s uber-rare Golden Slam and Australian of the Year, Dylan Alcott feared he'd miss tennis when he stopped playing earlier this year. He didn't - not one jot. On this, the relaunch episode of Good Weekend Talks, he discusses with Konrad Marshall his post-tennis career plans, what he really wants to achieve as Australian of the Year, and why people with disabilities, aka "natural born problem solvers", make for great employees.

Good Weekend Talks is a weekly podcast featuring conversations between journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age with extraordinary people from across the country and beyond.

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They say the personal is political – that our own intimate experiences can’t help but inform larger social structures. The same is true in the stunning photographic work of visual artist Atong Atem, whose hyper-saturated images are at once joyous, traditional, surreal and deeply connected to her familial roots in South Sudan. 

Atong Atem talks art, politics and family with Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland on the latest episode of Good Weekend Talks. Atem is the inaugural recipient of the $80,000 La Prairie Art Award. It involves the acquisition by the Art Gallery of NSW of a large four-panel photographic self-portrait by Atem, and a residency at Art Basel in Switzerland, where the La Prairie skincare company is based, and where Atem will head later this month.

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We’ve all let half a loaf of bread grow mouldy, or purged our fridge of too many spoiled veggies. But you might be shocked by just how much produce we let wither and decompose.

The amount of food Australia throws away each year would, in fact, fill the MCG 10 times over. And we outperform other countries in what we throw away. But there are innovative minds trying to solve this problem. That much was detailed in our featured story this week, “Waste not want not” by freelance food writer Dani Valent, who joined us in this episode. 

Chefs and bartenders, suppliers and tech wizards are all trying to make a difference in this space. One of them, Joshua Ball, the co-founder of imperfect produce distributor Farmers Pick, discusses reducing food waste with Dani and Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland. 

You can read Dani's story here. 

Become a subscriber: our supporters power our newsrooms and are critical for the sustainability of news coverage. Becoming a subscriber also gets you exclusive behind-the-scenes content and invitations to special events. Click on the links to subscribe https://subscribe.theage.com.au/ or https://subscribe.smh.com.au/ 

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Sydney-born boxer George Kambosos jnr toiled in obscurity for years before becoming the lightweight champion of the world in November. His father, Jim Kambosos, makes no mistake about the source of that success.

In this episode, Kambosos snr speaks about what it’s like to manage the career of his champion son, and to be the father of a fighter. 

Hosting the discussion is The Sydney Morning Herald chief sports writer Andrew Webster, the author of our cover story this week, “Lord of the ring”.

You can read Andrew's story here. 

Become a subscriber: our supporters power our newsrooms and are critical for the sustainability of news coverage. Becoming a subscriber also gets you exclusive behind-the-scenes content and invitations to special events. Click on the links to subscribe https://subscribe.theage.com.au/ or https://subscribe.smh.com.au/ 

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