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When Ondine Sherman was 7 years old, she wrote a letter to the Editor of her local newspaper declaring that she was planning to dedicate her life to helping animals.  Now she's an animal rights activist, cofounding charity organisation Voiceless with her dad, Brian but she's also an author, mother of three and disability advocate for her twin sons.  Ondine has a unique way of guiding peo...

Celeste Barber became the unexpected face of the bushfire relief effort.  An attempt to raise $20,000 for the NSW Rural Fire Service & Brigades Donations Fund turned into the biggest fundraising effort Facebook had ever seen, totaling over $51million. So, we thought we'd take a look back at the chat Mia had with Celeste about her long rise to 'overnight success' and find out more about th...

Welcome to our summer series where we play you some of our favourite episodes that you might have missed or might want to revisit.  When Gabbie Stroud shut the door on her primary school classroom in 2014, she knew that she was leaving teaching forever. Between the growing curriculum, demanding parents and standardised tests like Naplan, Gabbie had begun to see her role not as a teacher, but...

Welcome to our summer series where we play you some of our favourite episodes that you might have missed or might want to revisit. A lot can happen in 30 years of someone’s life. You can build a solid career. Meet the love of your life. Have a baby. Mourn the loss of your dad. Enjoy the family you’ve built. And then watch it implode. Over the past 30 years, Angela Bishop has become one...

Welcome to our summer series where we play you some of our favourite episodes that you might have missed or might want to revisit. The day your life turns upside down usually starts like any other. It’s ordinary, it’s normal. And then, life smacks you in the head and everything changes in an instant. Leigh Sales has spent many years interviewing people whose lives have changed suddenly...

Welcome to our summer series where we play you some of our favourite episodes that you might have missed or might want to revisit. Marian Keyes is one of the most successful authors in the world. She’s sold 35 million books in 35 languages and she’s done that by writing about women’s lives….in all their messiness. She writes the words and the feelings that are inside your...

Welcome to our summer series where we play you some of our favourite episodes that you might have missed or might want to revisit.  Sex, drugs and rock and roll. That’s what we used to worry about when it came to the things that would mess up kids. These days the rate of things like teen pregnancy, smoking, drinking and drugs have fallen off a cliff. But they've been replaced with phone...

Welcome to our summer series, where we play you some of our favourite episodes that you might have missed or might want to revisit.  A woman’s work is never done. And author Gemma Hartley knows this. Whether she’s at home or in the office, there’s a whole layer of labour done predominantly by women that most men can’t even see. Emotional labour is being the person who...

For some women, being married to someone who was voted the sexiest man alive might make you feel a little .....well, insecure. Not actress and now author, Elsa Pataky. She's been voted the sexiest person alive many more times than Chris Hemsworth in her native Spain and she jokes that if she's ever feeling low, she jumps on a plane and goes back there for a confidence boost. In this episode, nothi...

When Louisa Hope walked into Sydney’s Lindt Cafe 5 years ago she didn't expect her life would change forever. Louisa is one of the Sydney Siege survivors. She and her mother were held at gunpoint and trapped for 17 hours before the gunman executed cafe manager Tori Johnston on his knees in front of her. Another hostage, Katrina Dawson was killed moments later in gunfire when police stormed t...

For 10 years Nicole Lee and her children were trapped, living with an abusive partner who was also Nicole's primary carer. Nicole uses a wheelchair and what began as a whirlwind romance turned toxic after the birth of their first child. The way out of this prison for Nicole was unexpected and the consequences were life-long for everyone involved. Today, Nicole is a powerhouse in advocacy for women...

When you talk to thousands of kids about what they get up to on their phones you learn a lot about the behaviour of kids online. Cybersafety expert Kirra Pendergast has visited schools all over Australia and given talks to more than 500,000 students, teachers and parents about how to stay safe and be smart online. She’s not about bans, guilt trips or making parents feel ashamed or overwhelme...

Imagine if your biggest professional rival was also your sister. And imagine if your profession was one of the most unforgiving in the world. Cate and Bronte Campbell have been competing against one another for almost all their lives and yet in 2016, during the 100m freestyle at the Rio Olympics, something went horribly wrong for Cate. What happened next would affect both sisters and change Cate's...

The day Marguerite Edwards died began like any other day. The family woke up, got their 3 daughters ready for school. Marguerite’s husband Iain headed off to work at his Orthodontist clinic which was a 5-minute drive up the road. Marguerite dropped the girls at high school and went to an aerobics class. It was the ‘80s after all.   But at 6 pm that night Iain got a phone call...

If you’re OK living a life of frequent and often crushing disappointment, you’ll be able to handle a career as a professional cyclist. That’s the advice Dr Bridie O’Donnell was given by a fellow cyclist when she decided to make cycling her career. She was not at the point in her life’s journey where you would expect someone to choose the path of a professional athlete...

This episode contains a discussion of suicide.  If this brings up any issues for you please call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Trinny Woodall spent the early 2000s giving women makeovers with her partner in fashion crime, Susannah.  Their books and TV series, What Not to Wear , were iconic in the 2000s.  Now Trinny has a makeup company called Trinny London, which she launched at the age of...

Why has this happened to me? Will I ever stop comparing my child? What will our future look like? For the past 3 years, these are just some of the questions that have floated in and out of Melanie Dimmit’s head. Questions she felt she shouldn’t be expressing. Until now.  Melanie is a journalist. She’s also the mum of two little kids under the age of three - Arlo and Odie. Sh...

There’s something about Angie Kent's honesty and no BS attitude to love and life that have people rooting for her. When Angie agreed to be the Bachelorette she was walking in as a 29 year old woman who'd never been in love. She sits down with Mia Freedman to talk about what goes on behind the scenes of one of Australia's favourite reality shows and lets us in on some of her back story you mi...

When Stephanie Wood decided to go on a date with a guy she met online she had no idea it would change the course of her life forever. Stephanie is an award-winning journalist and author, she’s a smart woman in her late 40s who doesn’t stand for bullshit.  But when she met Joe, all of that fell by the wayside.  Because Stephanie fell head over heels in love with a man she bare...

You might have imagined this chat would be all about Libby Trickett's golden swimming career, but there's much more to Libby's story than swimming.  When she retired for the second time, Libby found herself like a fish out of water... literally. Coming from a world where your whole life is set out in a schedule made by someone else, to now having to find her passion on her own. After struggli...

On the 12th of September 2014, a mother called 000 to report her son missing. Five years later, he still hasn't been found. William Tyrrell, the little boy in the spiderman suit, was born in 2011 to his biological parents whose names we aren’t legally allowed to tell you. At 9 months, William was placed into foster care with his older sister and at 3, William was playing outside his foster g...

Rachel Griffiths has been telling stories for the past 25 years of her life.  Whether it’s through movies like Muriel’s Wedding or TV shows like Six Feet Under or Brothers and Sisters - each of which she starred in for years, she’s built her career out of playing interesting characters. But now, she’s decided to create interesting characters.  You see Rachel was a...

It's easy to forget celebrities have to work and that being famous doesn't pay the bills.  Dannii Minogue has been working hard since she was seven years old. From the ages of seven to 16 Dannii was a cast member on one of the biggest TV shows of the time, Young Talent Time. Then at 17 she signed her first record deal and moved to New York. By 23 she was married to actor and son of a former P...

Pia Miranda has a cracker of a year. Until recently, she was best known for her starring role as Josephine in the cult Australian coming-of-age film 'Looking For Alibrandi' where she played a schoolgirl. She's worked solidly for the past 20 years since then as an actress and voiceover artist and she's had two kids. But in early 2019, Pia received an email that would change her and her family's lif...

Nicole Haddow didn’t expect to be living at home with her parents with an unstable income, a bunch of maxed-out credit cards and $11k's worth of debt when she turned 30. But that's where she found herself.  Nicole’s story will be familiar to a lot of millennials. In a world that demands we show off our best clothes, holidays and experiences on Instagram, it can be easy to find you...