The Imperfects

Author, business lady and skincare wizard (according to her customs card), Zoë Foster Blake is nothing short of prolific. Chatting with Hugh, Ryan and Josh in this Vulnerabilitea House, Zoë talks through the pressure and responsibility she felt during her loneliest time. Striking ‘luck’ as a dirty word, Zoë’s compulsion to be productive and produce ‘good work...

Dr Billy Garvey gets kids. A developmental and behavioural paediatrician with over twenty years experience, Billy is an expert at up-skilling kids with the fundamental skills of empathy, kindness, compassion and self-esteem. Due to the extremely high demand for his expertise (the clinic waiting list is most likely seven years long at this point), Billy decided to co-produce his own podcast ‘...

For Nathan Buckley, self-reflection is critical for becoming the person he wants to be.  Placed on a pedestal during his playing career (for good reason), Bucks was Collingwood’s favourite son, and GOD he felt the pressure. Communicating only through criticism, both to himself and his teammates, Bucks says he was "demented" in the way he trained. In this episode, Bucks shares the steps...

Do you feel like you're on your own side? Are you able to speak to yourself with kindness? Or stick up for yourself in front of others? That, my friend, is self-compassion and it can be incredibly hard to do.  Dr Em says, "compassion" in Latin translates to “with suffering.” And SELF-compassion is how we relate, reflect and react when our self is suffering. In this episode, Dr Em...

In this Vulnerabilitea House, Grace addresses her adolescent self with a simple message - “It wasn’t your fault.” Australian of the Year, Next Generation Leader (as voted by Time Magazine), ultra-marathon runner and changer of laws, Grace Tame can't be tamed. Here she discusses the uncomfortable truths of her child sexual abuse, grooming & rape. She shares how survival mode b...

Have you ever felt excluded? Or like you don't belong? It turns out that belonging is a fundamental human need. To thrive, we need to feel safe, we need to feel welcome, but very importantly, we need to know the tribe has our back.  In this Academy of Imperfection, Hugh, Ryan and Josh chat to founder of Good Human, Rana Hussain. Rana is a host of The Outer Sanctum podcast, a board member of R...

‘The Inspired Unemployed’ began when a couple of tradies, Jack Steele and Matt ‘Falcon’ Ford, began an Instagram to catalogue the skits they were writing and filming overseas. Since then, Jack and Falcon have launched Australia’s fastest selling beer, collaborated with Fendi and Louis Vuitton, have 2 million followers on Instagram, launched a podcast exclusive to Spot...

Settle in and grab your notebooks, you’re in for a good one. We’re joined by Maria Ruberto, director and founder of Salutegenics Psychology, who just happens to be Ryan and Josh’s (ex) psychologist. Maria is the co-designer of Resilience First Aid, an internationally recognised two-day certification program, which teaches the neuroscience of resilience (Ryan took sooooo many note...

Jackson Tozer embodies the essence of The Imperfects podcast. Well, that’s what Ryan thinks, and we’re pretty keen to agree. Hugely successful and outrageously talented, Jackson, from the outside, is living the dream. Behind the professional success of acting alongside Shaun Micallef, John Cena and Zac Efron (and Ryan, can’t forget Ryan), Jackson found himself learning how to be...

This is not compulsory listening, but then again, it kind of is. We’re back to have another imperfect conversation about men, violence and consent, because we're still imperfect and we believe reflecting on behaviour is key to changing it.  We don't have all the answers, but in collaboration with Teach Us Consent and future OAM Chanel Contos, we’ve come up with some new Vulnerabil...

Dis episode is a little bit different, but if you’re as obsessed with Hugh van Cuylenburg as we are, we think you’ll enjoy it. The Resilience Project (TRP) is the company that Hugh started building 12 years ago. Today, it delivers evidence-based, wellbeing programs to over 1000 schools in Australia, as well as countless work-places and helps provide people with strategies to build resi...

Your values are perfect - according to our resident psychologist Dr. Emily Musgrove. Although this sounds counter intuitive to what we usually say…it’s actually a beautiful place to start. Figuring out what your values are, and where they come from can be a pretty intense experience. Lucky we have Dr Em to help, breaking down why they are important and how they can add purpose to your...

In the ultimate power move, we interview Zan Rowe, ‘one of Australia’s best interviewers’. Talk about pressure.  Champion of the airwaves, TV presenter, music journalist and podcaster, Zan has soundtracked the lives of many Australians. In this episode of the Vulnerabilitea House,  Zan draws the card; ‘how would your ambitions change if you only had one year to li...

Have you ever made a really bad decision? Made a call that you couldn’t undo? It's a fear for many, and for others, living with the reality of a ‘roll of the dice’ gone wrong, is cause for great sadness, and discomfort.  But, there is wisdom in mistakes. And for Poh Ling Yeow, learning to own her bad decisions, meant she could move forward with empathy and acceptance. ...

How does food affect our mood? Does diet actually impact our mental health? What is a gut micro-biome, and can we still eat a few chips without ruining it? In this Academy of Imperfection episode, we are joined one of the worlds leading experts on the relationship between what we eat, and how it effects our mental health, Professor Felice Jacka. And if can we trust anyone to get to the bottom of t...

Last season we met Chanel Contos from Teach Us Consent and we were completely blown away by her courage and the work she's taking on. So much so, that within minutes of Hugh opening and reading Chanel’s book, “Consent Laid Bare”, he had nominated her for Australian of The Year.  In this snippet from the full episode, Hugh, Ryan, Josh and Chanel discuss the normalised and sys...

What would it feel like to have the very thing that mad you great - your body, strength and co-ordination - slowly and painfully taken away from you? As a swimmer, Michael Klim was on top of the world - he was literally ‘World Swimmer of the Year’. Trips to the Olympics, medals of every colour, 21 world records AND his face on the cover of a Foo Fighters Album, Michael really did have...

Do you have boundaries? Have you ever crossed someone else’s boundaries? How would you react if someone crossed yours? It is WAY easier to ignore it. Avoiding potential conflict and awkwardness is second nature to most of us. For those of us with people-pleasing tendencies, telling someone they have violated a boundary can be an acute version of living hell. Luckily for us, our resident psyc...

Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is not a life sentence, as Rick Davies so eloquently tells Hugh and Josh in this episode of The Imperfix. Best known as Jimmy from the TV show 'Offspring', Rick is unbelievably vulnerable in sharing his story with OCD - from the awkward and painful compulsions, to the relief of a diagnosis at 18 years old. Here Rick share's how he was inspired by the...

From being ‘canceled’, to alcoholism and post-natal depression, Yumi Stynes knows how to get vulnerable in the Vulnerabilitea House. Starting as a magnetic, music presenter on Channel V, Yumi’s career spans more than 20 years on our screens, on the radio, or in the very successful books she’s written. However as she shares with Hugh, Ryan and Josh, there were times when the...

Unfortunately, we all know what bad leadership looks like, for many of us, it doesn’t take long to think of examples…but what does it actually take to be a ‘good leader’? This week in the Academy of Imperfection, Hugh, Ryan and Josh are joined by a legend of the sport, former rugby league player and current coach of the Queensland Maroons, Billy Slater. Billy has been call...

How kind is your inner voice? What does it say to you when your with friends, having family dinner, at work, when you mistakes, or, when you look in the mirror? We all have an inner critic and for lots of us, that voice can be loud and relentless - holding us back from thriving, from living the life we want to live and being the person we want to be. In this episode of the IMPERFIX, we jump back i...

Its hard to imagine a life more remarkable, or as unique as that of Nathan Cavaleri. Nathan rose to fame as an 8 year old blues prodigy, regularly appearing on Aussie TV screens in the 90’s, but there is so much more to Nathan and his story than that. Whether it’s touring Australia with the likes of Jimmy Barnes; or touring America with blues Legend B.B. King; being signed to Michael J...

After his sister, Niki, was murdered by her ex-partner, Tarang Chawla made a decision - that he wouldn’t allow Niki to be remembered as just another statistic. Since then, Tarang has become an activist, working to reduce incidents of all forms of violence and abuse towards women in Australian. In this episode of the IMPERFIX, we reflect on a conversation we had with Tarang back in 2022. Here...

Taking a risk, by definition, is hard. A lot of us spend most of our life avoiding risks, under the assumption that it’s the ‘safe’ thing to do. As Dr Em explains, we have an evolutionary instinct for self-preservation; tendencies to overestimate danger and underestimate our ability to cope; and we often have early childhood experiences and messages around safety that can coalesc...