For anyone who grew up in the late 80s and 90s, the name Alison Brahe-Daddo is synonymous with that Dolly magazine cover - the one blu-tacked to bedroom walls and plastered all over school lockers. 

With her dazzling smile and golden beach body, Ali exploded onto the Australian modelling scene at the age of 16, gracing the glossy covers of Cleo, Dolly and Cosmopolitan and making herself a household name. Ali was the absolute ‘It-Girl’ of the time, and everything every young woman wanted to be.

Fast-forward to today, and Alison Brahe-Daddo is a Mum to three adult children, fitness teacher, birth assistant, podcaster co-hosting the hit show "The Heart Of It" with her husband Cameron Daddo and she is also the author of Queen Menopause: Finding Your Majesty in the Mayhem.

In this episode, Ali takes us back into the often brutal world of modeling when as a self-proclaimed naïve teenager she learned to people-please her way through the industry - a pattern that followed her well beyond the runway and into her adult life.

We talk about how she fell madly in love with and married Cameron Daddo when she was aged just 22, and unpack the beautiful, messy reality of how Ali and Cam have evolved both individually and together over three decades of life and marriage.

But the big nugget in this conversation is MENOPAUSE: that universal yet profoundly misunderstood and stigmatised life change we still don't talk about nearly enough. 

Ali doesn't hold back about her own challenging journey through menopause: the crippling anxiety, terrible panic attacks, insomnia, deep depression, blind rage and complete absence of joy that beset her through this stage of life. 

What's remarkable about Ali's approach is that she doesn't just catalog the struggle: she dispels the myths, destigmatises what it means when a woman's fertile years end and explores the hidden gifts of menopause, including the power of self-love and self-compassion, and how she used this time to live a fuller, more authentic life. 

The ripple effect of menopause impacts everyone - partners, children, workplaces, society at large - so this conversation isn't just for women, it’s for all of us.

But we hope Ali’s experience and wisdom in this episode will offer help and reassurance to anyone struggling with the challenges of menopause right now.

Guest: Alison Brahe-Daddo
Podcast: The Heart Of It
Instagram: @alidaddo

Hosts: Mads Hanger (Grummet) and Sabina Read
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Spotify or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with stacks of our previous guests :)

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“How many kids do you have?”

It’s a question asked so casually, often as part of small talk. Yet, for those who dreamed of parenthood but find themselves childless, these four words can land with a heavy blow.

Today’s guest, Kelly Donougher, is a successful interior designer and founder of 13 Interiors, with design studios in Perth and Melbourne. But behind her professional success lies a deeply personal story. In her new book No Fence, No Limits, Kelly opens up about her and her husband’s decade-long journey with infertility—marked by rounds of medical interventions, the heartbreak of miscarriage, and the ongoing process of navigating grief.

In our conversation, Kelly shares the tension between meeting society’s expectations and honouring her own truths, how the medical system can make you feel like just another number, and what it means to carve out an identity beyond parenthood. She also reflects on how grief, while devastating, can spark transformation—and how creativity and career reinvention became lifelines of healing.

This is a conversation not just about infertility, but about the universal struggle with life’s “shoulds,” the boxes we’re told to tick, and the courage it takes to choose a different path. Kelly’s story is one of perseverance, hope, surrender, and ultimately, acceptance. Most of all, she reminds us that even when our sense of agency feels diminished, we still hold the power to choose.

To learn more about Kelly’s book, head to kellydonougher.com, and to explore her beautiful design work, visit 13interiors.com.

Host: Sabina Read
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
Human Cogs is available wherever you get your podcasts or via our website where you can also catch stacks of great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?

Get in touch via website or Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share our podcast and leave us a quick review! 
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Thanks, as ever, for listening. 

Go well. Be well. Human well.
www.humancogs.com
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How often do you think about worst case scenarios? Contemplate fate or imagine catastrophes or run the gamut of ‘what ifs?’ 

The reality is that none of us really know what’s coming down the life pipes next … as famed author Joan Didion wrote “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You can sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

For Pete Conroy, that instant came on the most ordinary of mornings - the third of November, 2022.

It was dead quiet on the peninsula that day. Pre-dawn. Pre-birdsong. Pete was driving to work, thinking about the day ahead, staring into the darkness, thinking about maybe an ocean swim at Dromana later on, about dinner tonight, about working on his golf handicap on Saturday. 

Just an ordinary morning. On an ordinary day. That with no warning, suddenly turned into the worst day of Pete’s life.

In the darkness, in an instant, everything would change: the life Pete loved, the body he lived in, the world he knew and the way he moved through it.

The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius once wrote: “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”

This is a conversation about that kind of strength, and the story of a truly remarkable man who chose to meet the very worst of what happened on an ordinary day with unimaginable grace, superhuman grit and extraordinary good humour.

As Pete says in this episode: “Every human’s got their own Everest. Some are bigger and steeper than others but at some stage, everyone’s got to make the climb.

This is the story of Pete’s climb. 

Guest: Pete Conroy
Powering Up Pete: Donate here
Instagram: Powering Up Pete
Host: Mads Hanger (Grummet)
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****

Human Cogs is available wherever you get your podcasts or via our website where you can also catch stacks of great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Get in touch via website or Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share our podcast and leave us a quick review!
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Thanks, as ever, for listening.

Go well. Be well. Human well.
www.humancogs.com

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Don Watson has spent a lifetime listening closely - to the language of politics, power, persuasion and all the spaces in between.

A historian, author and master of the written word, he is perhaps best known as the speechwriter behind some of Australia’s most unforgettable words - including the iconic Redfern Speech, delivered by then-Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1992. It remains one of this country’s most raw and courageous reckonings with our colonial past, and a landmark moment in the long and unfinished story of reconciliation.

But Don Watson's work doesn’t stop at politics. Over decades, he’s carved out a formidable legacy as one of our most astute and fearless cultural critics - writing bestselling books, searing Quarterly Essays and brilliantly biting commentaries that strip the varnish from political spin, corporate waffle and the TikTokian digital decay of modern language.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Don offers his brutally clear-eyed take on the state of language and the state of the world with that other Don running amok in the White House. From the rise of meaningless buzzwords and the weaponisation of language to the turning of the free world under the Trumpian Project 2025 dictate, Don Watson says America was never a perfect democracy anyway - and that if anyone tries to tell you what is going on in the United States, you should quickly walk away. 

We talk about democracy - what it was, what it is and what it’s becoming - but we also  go way back to Don’s childhood on a muddy, blue-gum-lined dairy farm in Gippsland. A world of rolling hills, working hands and laconic storytellers - where his first understanding of Australia, its language, its past and its people took shape.

We chart his unlikely journey from farm kid to the halls of academia where he discovered that the real nuggets weren’t to be found in textbooks, but in the colour, grit and perennial contradictions of Australia’s chequered political history.

What is clear when you listen to this is that no matter where you sit - or not - on the political spectrum, Don Watson is a remarkable human and a rare thinker - a man unafraid to call out bullshit, challenge conventional wisdom and remind us that words aren’t just words; they define who we are. 

Words can shape nations, tear down empires, ignite revolutions and - sometimes - heal wounds. Words can give voice to the voiceless, turn ideas into movements and hold power to account. 

And in an era of misinformation, disinformation and the white noise of the White House, where the zone is flooded, meaning is diluted and truth is up for debate, the way we use language matters now - more than ever. 

This is a conversation about the power of language but really, it’s about everything. About truth. About history. And about the kind of future world we want to live in - and the words we’ll need to build it.

Guest: Don Watson
Books: Penguin
Catch Don at the Sorrento Writers’ Festival

Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
LISTEN NOW
🎧 Spotify: Listen here
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Human Cogs is available wherever you get your podcasts or via our website where you can also catch stacks of great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Get in touch via website or Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share our podcast and leave us a quick review!
It helps us get these human stories out there!

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

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Politics is the stuff of Shakespeare.

Acts of revenge, personal sabotage, falls from grace and epic power struggles have always pushed politicians in and out of public favour.

As Australia heads toward a federal election, in our own political landscape we see the high drama of campaign theatre play out against the global backdrop and twisted plot of an increasingly shaky world order. 

Do you still have faith in our democracy and the kind of leadership Australia needs right now?

I recently sat down with Julia Banks - former federal MP, corporate lawyer, leadership consultant and author of Power Play: Breaking Through Bias, Barriers and Boys' Clubs.

Julia’s story is one of grit, resilience and a deep commitment to challenging the structures that hold people back. She made headlines when - after winning the seat of Chisholm in 2016 as the only Liberal to take a seat from the Opposition - she later walked away from the party, calling out Scott Morrison, the toxic culture, gendered power plays and systemic bias she experienced firsthand.

Julia unpacks the realities of Australian politics behind closed doors, and unpacks the tension between ‘positional power’ - the authority that comes with a title - and ‘personal power’ - the strength we each carry within us. 

While Julia’s experiences in Australian politics played out in the full glare of the public eye, her insights extend far beyond the bearpit of Canberra. 

In Australia's boardrooms, workplaces and everyday interactions, she says women in leadership roles are still labeled as "too ambitious," "difficult" or "overemotional" - coded language used to diminish their power. And women are still gravely unrepresented in the political arena.

In this episode of Human Cogs, Julia brings a perspective that is sharp, honest and deeply needed at a time like this, in a world like this. 

Julia reminds us that while the power struggles will perpetuate, we all have a choice in the leaders we elevate, values we uphold and future we collectively shape through our individual actions and democratic participation.

Guest: Julia Banks
Book: Power Play: Breaking Through Bias, Barriers and Boys' Clubs
Twitter / X: @juliahbanks

Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
LISTEN NOW
🎧 Spotify: Listen here
🎧 Apple: Listen here

Human Cogs is available wherever you get your podcasts or via our website where you can also catch stacks of great conversations with previous guests :)

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Get in touch via our website or Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share our podcast.
Please share, follow us or leave a quick review. It helps us get these human stories out there!

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

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Annus horribilis is a Latin phrase that means "horrible year". It’s the antithesis of annus mirabilis which means "wonderful year".

Of course years don’t exist in those binaries but we all know that some years are better than others: some are defined by greatness, and others we just can’t wait to see the back of.

As this episode goes to air, Mads shares what this past year has been like for her, marred by deep grief and a few mortality jolts that have brought into sharp focus what really matters. 

Mads doesn’t count her experience as unique because this is just ordinary human life, of course, playing out as it ever has with its wonders and horrors in chorus. 

But it is true that for most of us, by the time you’ve clocked up a few decades of living, you’ll likely have had a front row seat to witnessing some people you deeply love die, dement, disappear or divorce.

How you choose to walk through those human hardships is the only choice you will ultimately have because life will continue to throw curveballs, which means you will need to deliberately choose - again and again - where you will focus your energy, who you will spend your precious time with and who you will need to let go.

Sarah Grynberg knows this walk well because she’s had to make some pretty hard personal choices recently to let a few old friends and habits go so she can create more space for serendipity in her life.

This has partly been prompted by what Sarah has learned in her professional life, as an internationally acclaimed mindset coach and speaker, and the host of A Life of Greatness podcast which to date has had millions of downloads.

On her podcast, Sarah interviews some of the world's greatest thought-leaders, sporting legends, famous entertainers and best-selling authors as they explain how they have overcome challenges, conquered self-limiting beliefs and unearthed what it means to achieve greatness in their own lives.

Of course, what a life of greatness looks like is very different for each of us. But as Sarah walks us through her own difficult journey to now, we hope you can all take a little tonic of greatness from this conversation. Enjoy.

Guest: Sarah Grynberg, Host of A Life of Greatness Podcast and internationally acclaimed Mindset Coach and Speaker
Host: Madeleine Hanger (Grummet)
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
LISTEN NOW
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🎧 Apple: Listen here

Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
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Thanks, as ever, for listening. Go well. Be well.
▶️ www.humancogs.com

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Stan Grant is a man of remarkable intellect, profound story and deep faith.

On a late winter's afternoon recently, I meet Stan in a moment when he is on a difficult journey through a kind of lament - deeply contemplating the three big disciplines that have steeled his extraordinary life and work - physics, philosophy and theology.

Stan says since the Voice to Parliament Referendum he’s been taking time to take stock, that he’s done too much time plucking the wings off butterflies - and that right now he’d rather write beauty into the world.

So he’s been working on a new book that is a meditation on time, on God, on the temporal nature of our being and on the complex state of our modern world.

There is plenty for Stan to sit with and sort through right now.

As a journalist and correspondent who covered war for 40 years, he's seen the worst of what we can do to each other but he has also seen love endure in the most Godforsaken of places. So he knows first-hand the paradoxical contradictions of what it means to be a human in a world like ours.

Stan believes it's essential we all have something bigger than ourselves to believe in because if the human being is the limit, then we will only see the limits of the human.

And in a world so often consumed by the chaos of modernity, ongoing conflicts and the binaries of identity, Stan Grant is keenly focussed these days on kindling what we share rather than what divides us for, as Franz Kafka said, identity is a cage in search of a bird.

I'd love you to listen to this episode of Human Cogs podcast as we journey with Stan through his rivers and eddies of thought, where philosophy, theology and the mystical realm converge to offer a deeper understanding of Stan Grant the mortal, what might lie beyond this life, and how we humans can all - somehow - someday - find our place in the untold cosmos.

Guest: Stan Grant, Award-winning Journalist, Author, Writer, Poet and Vice Chancellor's Chair of Australian-Indigenous Belonging at Charles Sturt University.
Host: Madeleine Hanger (Grummet)
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
LISTEN NOW
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Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
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Thanks, as ever, for listening. Go well. Be well.
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When you think of a health retreat, I wonder what thoughts and feelings come to mind? Yoga with a monk on a mountain, people healing their deepest wounds around grief, illness or weight issues, or perhaps it’s images of Nicole Kidman in 9 Perfect Strangers as depicted in the book and movie?

I’ve attended countless retreats in Australia and overseas, and every time I have made one or two changes that have catalysed bigger shifts in my life. I believe we need to update our beliefs that retreats are somewhere “broken” people go, and replace them with the idea that retreats provide an environment with all the ideal ingredients that help set us up for tuning into our own innate sense of knowing and wisdom that have the potential to invite us back to a sense of wholeness, rest and repair – emotionally, physically, psychologically and mentally.

In 2023, I spent six life changing days at Aro Hā Health Retreat in the glorious New Zealand mountains near Queenstown. In this episode, we are joined by Aro Hā’s co-founder and glorious human, Damian Chaparro. He shares the philosophy embedded in the program at Aro Hā as well as what a typical week looks like for guests. Damian shares his own younger year experiences of working tirelessly in an IT job with all the financial trappings, and too much alcohol, minus the meaning and fulfillment. And how as a life-long learner he continues to find ways to acknowledge all the parts that show up in him and how he has learned to listen to self and others with curiosity and acceptance.

We discuss the benefits of fasting, movement, nature and stillness, and what gets in the way of creating sustainable behaviour changes that we desire, yet so often sabotage. Damian also reveals some entertaining and heartfelt stories of connecting with his 80 year old mum after they both shared the plant-based psychedelic, ayahuasca (not at Aro Hā by the way!)

If you’re curious about dialling up wellbeing, or are wondering what a health retreat might be like for you, or if your body, mind and soul is looking for a reset, then this conversation is for you. I deeply believe the world would be a better place if we all had the opportunity to experience the magic of Aro Hā.  Here’s my chat with Damian.

Website: Aro Ha
Links: Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, 

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

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If you’ve turned on the radio lately, have you ever sat back to listen to who’s telling the stories? Current data shows that only 27 per cent of radio hosts are women, female experts are quoted just 34 per cent of the time and - here’s the clanger - NINETY PER CENT of radio voices of people aged over 45 are in fact - men. Yep. NINETY per cent.

Why is that? What’s going on? And how does this skew attitudes and perpetuate gendered inequality in society?

Well our guest today, Jo Stanley, asked herself those questions for years, and is now on a mission to change the stats with the launch of Broad Radio - Australia's first women-centric radio network - connecting women through audio and serving the mostly overlooked five million-strong female audience aged over 35.

Jo Stanley is, of course, no stranger to audio - with a decades-long successful career in breakfast radio including rating number one for six years on Melbourne’s Fox FM, and dominating the top spot at Gold FM alongside her ongoing TV, writing and podcast gigs.

Despite being in the public spotlight and sharing her life with millions of listeners every day, in this conversation Jo shares how the lack of levity in her childhood shaped her, the challenges of living with fear, and how the birth of her daughter taught her what being enough really means. 

Click here to listen to Broad Radio

Guest: Jo Stanley
Links: Facebook, Instagram

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

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

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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!
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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.