Roll With The Punches

I might start calling him 'No-Bullsh*t LeBusque'... Mark's back for a chat and we went straight into the messy middle of self-awareness. Where you realise you’re actually part of the problem. You know, the moment where you sit there reading your own behaviour back at yourself and go… “well, sh*t.” We got into why most of us only become self-aware when something breaks&hell...

I went in thinking we’d have a cheeky yarn about policy (yep, a very un-Tiff-like topic, I know)… and instead got my brain flipped inside out. Salli (The Policy Pig... and what a cracking title that is) dragged policy out of the dusty, boring corner we all shove it in… and made it personal. Like,  everything you do, everything you experience, every system you bump into&hel...

Sometimes within seconds of 'meeting' someone on the show I realise I'm going to have an absolute ball for the next hour or so... Mick Marshall sure was one of those humans! This bloke fell 120 metres inside a wind turbine, had his legs absolutely wrecked, got rescued by mates who’d barely trained for it… and that was just the warm-up act. What followed was years of pain, identity los...

Ohmigoodness, this one got me. I sat down with the absolute legend that is Leah Ashton, founder of Hand in Hand Ballarat, and what started as a chat about her incredible foundation (and a laugh about my inevitable wardrobe malfunctions and high-heel dramas at the recent gala ball we met at) turned into one of the most raw and brave conversations I sure didn't expect to be having today... Leah runs...

This one started as a bit of a yarn about paramedics and ended up punching me in the guts a lil' bit. We got into the day-to-day of the job. The pager going off, the adrenaline, the fact that what most of us would call chaos… just becomes a Tuesday for these guys. Scotty’s one of those humans who downplays everything. Reckons he’s 'not that interesting' while casually dropping s...

Episode 1000… and somehow I landed it with one of the most honest, straight-shooting, no bullsh*t humans I’ve come across in the gender transition space. Daviana sure doesn’t tiptoe or dress things up to make people comfortable. She says what she thinks, stands in facts over feelings, and lets it land where it lands. We got into identity, gender transition, parenting, sport...

Buckle up for this absolute firecracker of a guest... I stumbled across Jordana recently when she presented at an event I was attending and it was instant wannabe bestie vibes for me! She's one of those humans who aren't afraid to dive into new (and somewhat terrifying) adventures, like learning a lil' abracadabra to become a magician and doing stand-up comedy. You know, the kind of stuff that mak...

I jumped on the mic after a morning doom scroll that left a bad taste in my mouth (as they often can). Two smart, credible humans I follow and generally value their content... One publicly and shamelessly tearing the other apart. But this is not the exception these days, it's sadly becoming the rule. Just today's standard algorithm bait dressed up as 'education.' And it got me thinking. We sa...

Ahhh we all know the big three. 'Fight, flight, freeze'... The trauma response greatest hits. But nobody warned us about their sneaky little sibling, 'fawn'. That quiet shape-shifting, chronic people-pleasing “yeah I’m fine” while your insides are setting off silent alarm bells. In this ep I sat down with clinical psychologist Ingrid Clayton, and we got stuck right into it&hellip...

Maaaate.... Nick Morrison went from riding full-grown bulls at 12 years old to breaking his neck, breaking his back, racking up more than 50 concussions and eventually losing the ability to speak. Let that sink in. A stand-up comedian and keynote speaker who literally couldn’t talk. We went deep into identity. The cowboy up mentality. The addiction to adrenaline. The need to impress your pee...

G’day legends, this one’s me, solo, slightly caffeinated, and fresh off a boxing session so my brain is basically still shadowboxing like a boss. I'm eager to riff on some sneaky crap that keeps punching us humans in the face and causing us to spin our wheels... Like the idea that 'success' doesn’t delete fear, self-doubt, discomfort, or imposter syndrome. We keep telling ourselv...

I loved this one! Elaine Lin Hering is all about silence. Not the peaceful, meditative kind. The learned kind... The kind where you know exactly what you want to say… and then don’t. We talked about why 'just speak up' is crap advice, why some of us are post-processors who realise what we think three days later, and how hinting is not the same as being clear. Apparently 'Are you hungr...

I sat down with Andrew 'Atto' Atkinson, nearly 29 years in Victoria Police and a lifetime of stories that sound like a Netflix series but come with very real scars. We talked about the covert surveillance work that had him breaking into houses, planting listening devices, tracking cars, heart racing, sometimes while the occupants were still home. High risk. High reward. Calculated, but never casua...

I waited eight months to get Scotty Douglas strapped into the hot seat here at RWTP HQ, and doesn't he have some stories to tell! We went from Paris kitchens where he got dressed down by French chefs, to running a café with brown paper bag accounting and zero tax literacy, to cooking breakfast for the Dean who took a chance on him and changed the trajectory of his life. Scott’s story...

This conversation hit a little differently. Vicki Scott joined me to talk about slowing down, perspective, and what really changes when life punches you square in the face. After being diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer, Vicki found herself navigating not just treatment, surgery, and survival, but the unexpected emotional aftermath that nobody really prepares you for. We talked about the press...

Tania Khazaal works in the family estrangement space, and she came in hot with a message a lot of people will hate at first… but probably need to hear. Is today’s therapy language and our feeds flooded with social media buzzwords creating the perfect permission slip to cut people off before we’ve actually learned how our nervous system works, how to communicate properly, or how...

I booked this chat thinking I'd be talking to an animal behaviour expert. Turns out, I was basically signing up for a gentle but very accurate psychological assessment via my pets. Mark Vette and I talked dogs, cats, bonding, anxiety, routine, over-attachment, and why our animals know us better than most humans ever will. We went deep into why dogs feel like family, how cats absolutely train us wi...

A hearty chat with Alison Bowen escalates quickly... I mean you can't escalate a whole lot more than the Mount Everest Summit, hey!? Quite an understated lass, Alison has been in the midst of her Seven Summits journey, which started not with Everest glory, but with joining a Rover group, doing weekend hikes, getting curious, and slowly chipping away at bigger and higher mountains over nearly two d...

Righto, Tony Pearce is back. And yep, he’s still head down, tail up, doing wildly wholesome and mildly unhinged things in the name of mental health. We rewound to Tony’s Trek in 2023, when he looked at the brutal reality of mental injury and suicide risk in emergency services and basically went, nah, we can’t just keep talking about this and doing nothing. So he walked 1500km thr...

This one is basically me and Harps doing what we do best. Taking the piss, accidentally saying something deeply meaningful, then laughing so it doesn’t get too serious. We talked about goals, plans, and why ticking boxes doesn’t always fix how you feel. That weird moment where you get the thing you thought you wanted and realise it wasn’t the antidote. Identity, perceived value,...

Nicole Liddell is doing her PhD on coercive control, specifically how technology gets used to keep the control going even after someone leaves. And honestly, the examples are equal parts terrifying and ridiculously sneaky. Bank transfers with threats in the reference line. Smart home systems taken over remotely. A bloody robovac being used like a creepy little spy cam on wheels. But the part that...

'Big Dog' Jason Blyth is BACK! An origin story so massive I didn't even attempt to cover it all in our first chat in episode 967... In our second chat (as we dart off in multiple directions along the way) we essentially came together to talk about Jason's biological father... what it was like seeking him out and meeting him, and the way trauma can shape identity like a shadow you didn’t ask...

Mick Harrington is back, aka the Mower Man, and honestly I could listen to that bloke sing the phone book and still get emotional. But this time round we are getting fired up on all things bushfires... Funding. Public land management. The gap between decisions made in Spring Street and the reality on the ground when your town is literally on fire. Mick talked about communities being left vulnerabl...

Imagine what its like growing up in a religious cult... Cait managed to wriggle herself free from the Christian Patriarchy in her mid 20's... breaking free from a rigid belief system and an emotionally abusive father.. Cait was homeschooled, isolated, taught that obedience was love and silence was safety. No choices. No agency. No room for anger, desire, or even curiosity. We talked about courtshi...

In this chat with Andrea Gullick gets right into the uncomfortable stuff. Loss, identity, control, and the stories we tell ourselves just to keep functioning. Andrea shared what it was like losing her husband suddenly, navigating a baby with cancer, and becoming a young widow while still trying to look like she was coping. We talked about the mask of being strong, how long you can wear it for, and...