Human Cogs Podcast

What if ageing wasn't something to fear but something to finally - fiercely - embrace?
Jacinta Parsons is an ABC broadcaster, writer, public speaker and newly minted Doctor. She has lived with Crohn's disease for decades, navigated divorce, faced chronic illness and devastating loss, and now come through the other side, not diminished but radically empowered.
For her latest book, A Wisdom of Age, Jacinta interviewed women across Australia about the experience of ageing, and captured what we can learn from them to boldly rewrite the story of the second half of our lives.
In this episode of Human Cogs we talk with Jacinta about the hardwon learnings and unbridled freedom that can come with ageing: the shedding of “good girl” rules, the cultivation of our wilder versions of self and how life’s fractures and fragilities can also be surprising openings to new identities and big opportunities in the world.
We talk about internalised ageism and the stories women are told about their bodies. We talk about what chronic illness teaches you about control, surrender and what actually matters. We talk about the difference between loneliness and solitude, and why learning to be happily alone with yourself might be one of the most important things you can do.
And mostly we talk about wisdom - what it really means, how you cultivate it, and why the most interesting chapters of your life might be the ones you haven't written yet.
So pour yourself a cuppa, take a long walk under the bright sun or stars or lie your good self down and listen to this absolute wisdom of age from Jacinta Parsons.

Guest: Jacinta Parsons, ABC Broadcaster, writer and public speaker. She is the Co-host of ABC Melbourne’s The Friday Revue with Brian Nankervis and presents ABC Victorian Saturday Mornings.
Book: A Wisdom Of Age
Instagram: @jacintaparsons
Website: JacintaParsons.com
Hosts: Mads Hanger (Grummet) and Sabina Read
Producer: Our audio wizard is the beloved Daryl Missen

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Human Cogs is available on Apple, Spotify or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with stacks of our previous guests :)
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For anyone who grew up in the late 80s and 90s, the name Alison Brahe-Daddo is synonymous with that Dolly magazine cover - the one blu-tacked to bedroom walls and plastered all over school lockers.
With her dazzling smile and golden beach body, Ali exploded onto the Australian modelling scene at the age of 16, gracing the glossy covers of Cleo, Dolly and Cosmopolitan and making herself a household name. Ali was the absolute ‘It-Girl’ of the time, and everything every young woman wanted to be.
Fast-forward to today, and Alison Brahe-Daddo is a Mum to three adult children, fitness teacher, birth assistant, podcaster co-hosting the hit show "The Heart Of It" with her husband Cameron Daddo and she is also the author of Queen Menopause: Finding Your Majesty in the Mayhem.
In this episode, Ali takes us back into the often brutal world of modeling when as a self-proclaimed naïve teenager she learned to people-please her way through the industry - a pattern that followed her well beyond the runway and into her adult life.
We talk about how she fell madly in love with and married Cameron Daddo when she was aged just 22, and unpack the beautiful, messy reality of how Ali and Cam have evolved both individually and together over three decades of life and marriage.
But the big nugget in this conversation is MENOPAUSE: that universal yet profoundly misunderstood and stigmatised life change we still don't talk about nearly enough.
Ali doesn't hold back about her own challenging journey through menopause: the crippling anxiety, terrible panic attacks, insomnia, deep depression, blind rage and complete absence of joy that beset her through this stage of life.
What's remarkable about Ali's approach is that she doesn't just catalog the struggle: she dispels the myths, destigmatises what it means when a woman's fertile years end and explores the hidden gifts of menopause, including the power of self-love and self-compassion, and how she used this time to live a fuller, more authentic life.
The ripple effect of menopause impacts everyone - partners, children, workplaces, society at large - so this conversation isn't just for women, it’s for all of us.
But we hope Ali’s experience and wisdom in this episode will offer help and reassurance to anyone struggling with the challenges of menopause right now.

Guest: Alison Brahe-Daddo
Podcast: The Heart Of It
Instagram: @alidaddo
Hosts: Mads Hanger (Grummet) and Sabina Read
Producer: Our audio wizard is Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Spotify or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with stacks of our previous guests :)
Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
DM us on Instagram @human.cogs

Do you know someone with an amazing story? Tell us! We're always scouting for amazing people to feature on Human Cogs!
And if you really loved this episode, leave us a quick review. We love that.
Learn more and support the show: https://www.humancogs.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“How many kids do you have?”
It’s a question asked so casually, often as part of small talk. Yet, for those who dreamed of parenthood but find themselves childless, these four words can land with a heavy blow.
Today’s guest, Kelly Donougher, is a successful interior designer and founder of 13 Interiors, with design studios in Perth and Melbourne. But behind her professional success lies a deeply personal story. In her new book No Fence, No Limits, Kelly opens up about her and her husband’s decade-long journey with infertility—marked by rounds of medical interventions, the heartbreak of miscarriage, and the ongoing process of navigating grief.
In our conversation, Kelly shares the tension between meeting society’s expectations and honouring her own truths, how the medical system can make you feel like just another number, and what it means to carve out an identity beyond parenthood. She also reflects on how grief, while devastating, can spark transformation—and how creativity and career reinvention became lifelines of healing.
This is a conversation not just about infertility, but about the universal struggle with life’s “shoulds,” the boxes we’re told to tick, and the courage it takes to choose a different path. Kelly’s story is one of perseverance, hope, surrender, and ultimately, acceptance. Most of all, she reminds us that even when our sense of agency feels diminished, we still hold the power to choose.
To learn more about Kelly’s book, head to kellydonougher.com, and to explore her beautiful design work, visit 13interiors.com.

Host: Sabina Read
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen
*****

Hosts: Mads Hanger (Grummet) and Sabina Read
Producer: Our audio wizard is Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Spotify or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with stacks of our previous guests :)
Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
DM us on Instagram @human.cogs

Do you know someone with an amazing story? Tell us! We're always scouting for amazing people to feature on Human Cogs!
And if you really loved this episode, leave us a quick review. We love that.
Learn more and support the show: https://www.humancogs.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How often do you think about worst case scenarios? Contemplate fate or imagine catastrophes or run the gamut of ‘what ifs?’
The reality is that none of us really know what’s coming down the life pipes next … as famed author Joan Didion wrote “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You can sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”
For Pete Conroy, that instant came on the most ordinary of mornings - the third of November, 2022.
It was dead quiet on the peninsula that day. Pre-dawn. Pre-birdsong. Pete was driving to work, thinking about the day ahead, staring into the darkness, thinking about maybe an ocean swim at Dromana later on, about dinner tonight, about working on his golf handicap on Saturday.
Just an ordinary morning. On an ordinary day. That with no warning, suddenly turned into the worst day of Pete’s life.
In the darkness, in an instant, everything would change: the life Pete loved, the body he lived in, the world he knew and the way he moved through it.
The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius once wrote: “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”
This is a conversation about that kind of strength, and the story of a truly remarkable man who chose to meet the very worst of what happened on an ordinary day with unimaginable grace, superhuman grit and extraordinary good humour.
As Pete says in this episode: “Every human’s got their own Everest. Some are bigger and steeper than others but at some stage, everyone’s got to make the climb.
This is the story of Pete’s climb.

Guest: Pete Conroy
Powering Up Pete: Donate here
Instagram: Powering Up Pete
Host: Mads Hanger (Grummet)
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
Human Cogs is available wherever you get your podcasts or via our website where you can also catch stacks of great conversations with previous guests :)
Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Get in touch via website or Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share our podcast and leave us a quick review!
It helps us get these human stories out there!

Thanks, as ever, for listening.

Go well. Be well. Human well.
www.humancogs.com
Learn more and support the show: https://www.humancogs.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don Watson has spent a lifetime listening closely - to the language of politics, power, persuasion and all the spaces in between.
A historian, author and master of the written word, he is perhaps best known as the speechwriter behind some of Australia’s most unforgettable words - including the iconic Redfern Speech, delivered by then-Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1992. It remains one of this country’s most raw and courageous reckonings with our colonial past, and a landmark moment in the long and unfinished story of reconciliation.
But Don Watson's work doesn’t stop at politics. Over decades, he’s carved out a formidable legacy as one of our most astute and fearless cultural critics - writing bestselling books, searing Quarterly Essays and brilliantly biting commentaries that strip the varnish from political spin, corporate waffle and the TikTokian digital decay of modern language.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Don offers his brutally clear-eyed take on the state of language and the state of the world with that other Don running amok in the White House. From the rise of meaningless buzzwords and the weaponisation of language to the turning of the free world under the Trumpian Project 2025 dictate, Don Watson says America was never a perfect democracy anyway - and that if anyone tries to tell you what is going on in the United States, you should quickly walk away.
We talk about democracy - what it was, what it is and what it’s becoming - but we also go way back to Don’s childhood on a muddy, blue-gum-lined dairy farm in Gippsland. A world of rolling hills, working hands and laconic storytellers - where his first understanding of Australia, its language, its past and its people took shape.
We chart his unlikely journey from farm kid to the halls of academia where he discovered that the real nuggets weren’t to be found in textbooks, but in the colour, grit and perennial contradictions of Australia’s chequered political history.
What is clear when you listen to this is that no matter where you sit - or not - on the political spectrum, Don Watson is a remarkable human and a rare thinker - a man unafraid to call out bullshit, challenge conventional wisdom and remind us that words aren’t just words; they define who we are.
Words can shape nations, tear down empires, ignite revolutions and - sometimes - heal wounds. Words can give voice to the voiceless, turn ideas into movements and hold power to account.
And in an era of misinformation, disinformation and the white noise of the White House, where the zone is flooded, meaning is diluted and truth is up for debate, the way we use language matters now - more than ever.
This is a conversation about the power of language but really, it’s about everything. About truth. About history. And about the kind of future world we want to live in - and the words we’ll need to build it.
Guest: Don Watson
Books: Penguin
Catch Don at the Sorrento Writers’ Festival
Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Audio Superstar Daryl Missen

*****
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Human Cogs is available wherever you get your podcasts or via our website where you can also catch stacks of great conversations with previous guests :)
Got some thoughts on today's episode you'd like to share?
Get in touch via website or Instagram @human.cogs

We'd love you to share our podcast and leave us a quick review!
It helps us get these human stories out there!

Thanks, as ever, for listening.
Go well. Be well. Human well.
www.humancogs.com
Learn more and support the show: https://www.humancogs.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.