TONTS.

Welcome to the final episode of TONTS season 5 Matrescence Festival edition. Today, we take the time to reflect on the full two days of the festival, how it came to be and what its future looks like. We encourage you to please let us know how felt listening to this series, what nobody told you and what you now know, you can that by messaging @tontspod on either Facebook and Instagram. For more fro...

Welcome to first episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear from Dr Sophie Brock, a sociologist with a focus on Motherhood. With a PhD from The University of Sydney just before becoming a mother herself, one of the main results from her research was a conceptual theory about the way Mot...

Welcome to eleventh episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. Today we have a special performance from Michelle Hall, Michelle is an independent performance maker, teaching artist, mentor, arts worker, community organiser, yoga practitioner and mother living and working on Noongar Boodja. She has trained in...

Welcome to the tenth episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear from Dr Winnie Orchard again, who spoke with us earlier in the season, Dr Orchard is a cognitive neuroscientist who specialises in understanding how caregiving reshapes our brain and minds and in this episode talks specific...

Welcome to first episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode, we experience both Maidenhood and Sagescence, as we relish in the wisdom of Jane Hardwick-Collings and the music of Mietta. Jane Hardwicke-Collings Jane Hardwicke Collings is a post menopausal grandmother. She was an intensive care and op...

Welcome to eighth episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. Today we welcome you to the second day of the festival and helping us to do that is the incredible Nartarsha Bamblett, a proud First Nations leader creating safe, transformative spaces for healing, learning, and collective growth. She is the founder of Q...

Welcome to seventh episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear from Mandy Hose, a sleep and settling consultant as well as the co host of the Too Peas podcast to help all parents of multiples who live with disabilities and additional needs. Mandy wants no one to feel alone anymore, paren...

Welcome to the sixth episode of TONTS Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear from the amazing Tamica Wilder, Tamica is a somatic sex coach and multi-qualified therapist with a deep passion for teaching humans to re-attune to the wisdom of our bodies, while giving full permission to shamelessly prior...

Welcome to the fifth episode of TONTS. Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode we're joined again by the wonderful Amy Taylor-Kabbaz and Dr Winnie Orchard, who you will have heard earlier in the festival, as they discuss the restructuring of the brain during Matrescence, hormones, neurodivergence in parents and...

Welcome to forth episode of TONTS. Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you will hear the first talk given by Dr Winnie Orchard, a cognitive neuroscientist, who specialises in understanding how pregnancy and caregiving reshape the brain and mind, she is leading efforts to create a standardized measure for rec...

Welcome to third episode of TONTS. Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear from previous speakers Amy Taylor-Kabbaz and Dr Melanie Jackson in a Q&A style panel and closing with more beautiful poetry from Vicki Chan. For more from our speakers you can visit: https://amytaylorkabbaz.com/ & http...

Welcome to second episode of TONTS. Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear from our speaker Dr Melanie Jackson, a private midwife providing homebirth services since 2009. In 2015 she completed her PhD, called "Birth Outside the System." This work sprouted academic publications and has also allowed h...

Welcome to first episode of TONTS. Season 5 Matrescence Festival edition, join us as we look back through our Melbourne festival from March 2025. In this episode you'll hear all about what it was like at the festival, how it was laid out and from two wonderful speakers from the morning of day one. Amy Taylor-Kabbaz is a Best-Selling Author of 'Mama Rising', Speaker, Journalist, Matrescence Activis...

This episode discusses themes of birth trauma, post natal depression and anxiety. Bron Lewis is one of Australia’s most promising new comedians. She was the co-winner of the National Raw Comedy competition in 2022, a four-time champion of the Moth storytelling competition, and both the best and the worst mum living at her house. Bron is a writer at The Project and has a prominent presence on stage...

Part Two of a conversation with the soulful indie folk singer songwriter Mietta - storytelling and creating on Boonwurrung country in Australia's Mornington Peninsula. At 22 years of age, Mietta is in a season of emergence. With deep connection to her home roots and her community she is also an education researcher, learning skills mentor, facilitator and designer of youth wellbeing and expressive...

Part One of a conversation with the soulful indie folk singer songwriter Mietta - storytelling and creating on Boonwurrung country in Australia's Mornington Peninsula. At 22 years of age, Mietta is in a season of emergence. With deep connection to her home roots and her community she is also an education researcher, learning skills mentor, facilitator and designer of youth wellbeing and expressive...

Welcome to another episode of TONTS. on the road. Audio grabs from Claire's tour of the UK last year. This one is from her show in the Caves in Edinburgh Scotland with the wonderful doula and mamma medicine women's circle facilitator Roberta Giovedi. Roberta had a baby during Covid and noticed that many mothers in her community (including herself) were feeling isolated and alone. With the help of...

Matrescence Album Two times TEDx speaker and viral poet, Fleassy Malay is an Internationally renowned, evocative and powerful spoken word artist, speaker and coach. A global advocate for Women’s rights, LGBTQI+ visibility, and a fierce voice for the power of authenticity and courage as a social change tool. Founder and CEO of Melbourne’s acclaimed Women’s Spoken Word organisation and monthly event...

Matrescence Album Matrescence Festival Dr Melanie Jackson is a private midwife providing homebirth services since 2009. In 2015 she completed her PhD, called "birth outside the system: wanting the best and safest" This work sprouted academic publications and has also allowed her to work as a researcher and midwifery lecturer at Western Sydney university, as a peer reviewer for academic journals an...

Matrescence Album Matrescence Festival Amy Taylor-Kabbaz is a Best-Selling Author, Speaker, Journalist, Matrescence Activist and Mama of three. After more than a decade covering breaking news and current affairs for the ABC around the country, her 'traditional' career took an unexpected turn when she found herself lost, overwhelmed and diagnosed with a thyroid disease after the birth of her f...

Welcome to another episode of TONTS. on the road. Audio grabs from Claire's tour of the UK last year. This one is from her London show with the spoken word poet Hollie Mcnish. Hollie is an award-winning poet, writer and performer. She is the Sunday Times bestselling author of  Slug  (and other things I’ve been told to hate) and won the Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry with he...

Jasper Peach is a trans, non-binary and disabled writer, speaker and parent. They are passionate about equitable access and inclusion, focused around the dismantling of misplaced shame via storytelling. Their written work has been published in The Age, HireUp, The Big Issue, Archer, The Guardian, Verandah, Australian Poetry Journal, Meanjin, ABC and SBS online. With a background in Auslan interpre...

Lucy Jones is an investigative journalist and author. She has written extensively on culture, science and na­ture. Her articles have been published on BBC Earth and in  The Sunday Times, The Guardian  and the  New Statesman . Her first book,  Foxes Un­earthed,  received the Society of Authors’ Roger Deakin Award. She has also written the book Losing Eden which was long-lis...

This is Part Two of my conversation with writer, feminist thinker and broadcaster Clementine Ford. Clementine Ford is a Melbourne based writer, speaker and feminist thinker. She is the author of four books, Fight Like A Girl, Boys will be Boys, How We Love and het latest book I Don’t the case against marriage. She has been a columnist for Fairfax’s Daily Life and a regular contributor to The Age a...

Clementine Ford is a Melbourne based writer, speaker and feminist thinker. She is the author of four books, Fight Like A Girl, Boys will be Boys, How We Love and het latest book I Don’t the case against marriage. She has been a columnist for Fairfax’s Daily Life and a regular contributor to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald . Clementine's writing explores issues of gender inequality and pop cu...