It's a Long Story

An HBO Documentary, two best-selling memoirs, pop culture cover stories, beauty columns, speaking engagements, essays, social media - Janet Mock is doing it all. And at the same time, she's eager to expand beyond her personal experience and share the platform that she has built with others in her community who may not be as fortunate. Janet is arguably one of the most influential transwomen working in media and is using every tool available to her to tell the stories that shift and challenge preconceived notions about what is possible for transpeople. 

This episode of It's a Long Story is hosted by Marc Fennell.

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A kitchen in Melbourne's Footscray provided the humble origins for Camp Cope's Kelly-Dawn Helmrich, Georgia Maq and Sarah Thompson. Since joining forces in 2015, the trio haven't wasted a second of their time in the spotlight, using their newfound influence to launch the It Takes One campaign. Aimed at stopping harassment of women at live music gigs, Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich has said of the project: “We have a platform now where people listen to us so we want to give back to other people who don’t have a stage to speak on.”

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Since she was a kid, there was never any doubt in Izzi Manfredi’s mind that she wanted to make music. Meeting Jack Moffitt and Thomas Champion at university, the three formed The Preatures. With influences like The Beatles, the Divinyls and The Pretenders, the band achieved international success with the 2013 track, “Is this how you feel?”. Their latest release is Girlhood, a distinctly personal album, which draws on stories from Izzi’s own childhood and adolescence.

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Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote has recently been flying solo, with her debut album Needle Paw soon to be released. In spite of a turbulent childhood, she took solace in nature, in animals and in music, growing into the independent spirit and curious soul that has enchanted such artists as Erykah Badu, Animal Collective, Questlove and the late, great Prince.

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Briggs is a rapper, comedian, actor, writer and fearless social critic. A proud Yorta Yorta man from regional Victoria, he took out the Australian Music Prize this year as half of the hip hop duo A.B. Original for their debut album Reclaim Australia, as well as appearing in the ABC's groundbreaking supernatural drama Cleverman and becoming a regular on satirical news programme The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.

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S-Town's rich and thoughtful story telling captured the attention of audiences from around the world. Brian Reed, its host and co-creator, originally set out to find a new story for This American Life. Instead, he spent three years investigating the life and tribulations of small town Alabama resident John B. McLemore. The podcast captured audiences with the twists and turns of life in Bibb County, presenting an audio story akin to great literature.

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Award-winning writer, journalist and public speaker, Thordis Elva was voted Woman of the Year in her native Iceland for her tireless campaigning for gender equality. She believes in ending the silence that still shrouds sexual violence, of which she is a survivor, and sees dialogue as a means of healing. She has long researched the effect of forgiveness in human relationships, an interest which took her across the globe and into the depths of her own heart, resulting in the book South of Forgiveness which she wrote with Tom Stranger.

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Lindy West’s vibrant humour, refreshing candour and unapologetically trenchant attacks on body shamers and trolls have earned her the admiration of Lena Dunham, Ira Glass, and Caitlin Moran. What can each of us take away from the courage of someone who confronts rape jokes, the fat police, and anti-abortionists - and laughs to tell the tale?

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Mei Fong is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who covered China for the Wall Street Journal for many years. Her book, "One Child", the story of China's most radical experiment details the repercussions of the one-child policy. Originally implemented to kerb population growth, the one-child policy resulted in immense suffering and hundreds of thousands of infant deaths. By the time the government announced it was ending the policy in 2015, China had a surplus of 33 million men and population numbers that were dropping drastically.

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Has contemporary feminism grown so tame, cowardly and irrelevant that it barely challenges the status quo? Have feminists traded liberation for acceptance? What will it take to wake the movement up? In a fearless call for revolution, Jessa Crispin demands more of feminism - nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.

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