DARE: The Time of Your Life

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Keeping yourself fit and healthy and in shape is vital for life’s long game. And no-one understands that more than celebrated chef Neil Perry, who chats with organisational psychologist Dr Amanda Ferguson about what it takes to survive the demanding restaurant game for more than 40 years. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The time of your life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. Too often ageing is painted as decline. In reality, Australians are living longer, healthier lives and reshaping what “older” looks like. This series flips the script and shows how ageing is not a dirty word but rather a time to be embraced, featuring interviews with extraordinary over 50s refusing to slip quietly into the background, who instead continue to survive and thrive in the long game of life. Neil Perry is Australia’s most decorated chef. The culinary genius behind Rockpool and winner of the 2024 World’s 50 Best Icon Award, Neil has spent 40 years at the very top of his craft, including his latest venture, the Margaret Family Group . Staying there hasn’t been accidental. It takes relentless passion, resilience, and an unwavering belief that what you put on the plate – and into your body – genuinely matters. Dr Amanda Ferguson is a registered psychologist, organisational psychologist, author and speaker, whose three-decade career has been devoted to helping people find meaning, motivation and wellbeing in work, life and relationships. – Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency -- TRANSCRIPT: ​ Jean Kittson: DARE the time of your life, formerly Life's Booming, is brought to you by Australian Seniors in partnership with RSPCA. For more episodes of this and our Life's Booming series, visit seniors.com.au/podcast. Hi, I'm Jean Kittson. Welcome to the latest season, Better with Age, where we are celebrating Australians who are living, working, and ageing on their own terms. No ageing stereotypes for them. This week's episode is called Playing the Long Game, and no one exemplifies what that means more than our first guest, Neil Perry. With a career spanning more than four decades, he is one of our most influential chefs. Indeed, he's the only Australian to receive the prestigious World's 50 Best Restaurants Icon Award, the food oscars. The culinary genius behind Rockpool, and his latest venture, the Margaret Family Group, Neil has survived the often brutal hospitality world without disappearing or burning out. And joining him is Dr Amanda Ferguson, registered psychologist, organisational psychologist, author, and speaker whose career has been devoted to helping people find meaning, motivation, and wellbeing in work, life and relationships. Neil and Amanda, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Neil Perry: Thanks, Jean. Good to be here. Jean Kittson: Neil, the restaurant business is often very brutal, long hours, highly competitive, stressful, fickle market, lots of pressures, all that, not that I want you to feel any pressure from me about this, but you've not only survived, but you've thrived for over 40 years. So, what do you think is the key ingredient or the secret ingredient to your longevity? Neil Perry: Well, I think just the enthusiasm of which I approach every day because, I mean, you know, it is an old cliche, but they say if you find a job you love doing, you'll never work a day in your life. And I am lucky enough to have found, you know, something that's intrinsic in lifestyle. So I kind of dream about food. I eat food, I wake up, I work in it. You know, my whole focus on a daily basis is about my restaurants, my staff and how we grow and continually evolve. So, I've kind of spent the last 51 years in the industry continually evolving rather than, you know, sort of deciding, oh my God, I've gotta change what I'm doing. I'm just day by day trying to do better than I did the day before. And that's a kind of mantra that we roll into the entire team so that they're always thinking about getting better and more focused and getting the best out of themselves and growing as people, which is really important. So, I think that's helped me keep an edge to continually keep thinking that. You know, I've got a role in the industry and I wanna keep moving forward. And, you know, tomorrow is another day and it's another day that I get an opportunity to be better than I was the day before. Jean Kittson: And you translate that to your teams by the sound of it, that is important. Neil Perry: Until I was 25, I was working front of house and managing restaurants and running restaurants, which has kind of helped me become a restaurateur rather than just a chef. And then at 25 transitioned into the kitchen and it was really obvious to me that there tended to be a kind of ‘us and them’ culture in the restaurant business. And we see with a lot of things at the moment on chefs and the way they treat people and they have treated people, and particularly in Europe, that it can be a very hard place to be. But, I made a very conscious decision to try and make it, you know – more about the way my personality is anyway – but to make it a place where it was really, everyone working together as one team, no front and back of house. It was, you know, really everyone coming together to make sure that the most important person in the room was the customer – and that we were supporting each other. So through the care philosophy, which, you know, is a really simple word, but it embodies itself in so many things that we do. So, you know, we care about our incredible suppliers. They're the lifeblood of our restaurant. Our amazing farmers and fishermen and, you know, incredible vignerons and so forth. And then it's really about caring about the place in which we work, because I really love to have a restaurant that's as beautiful 10 or 15 years down the track as it is the day that it opens. More patina, of course, but like a great pair of shoes – loved and comfortable – and that's really important to me. And then core to, I guess, the whole thing is we gotta care about each other. So we try to make sure that, you know, we're checking in. Are you okay? You know, are you doing your mise en place or can I help you set up the restaurant? And make sure that if we think somebody's coming in and they've got issues at home or with relationships, or even with a relationship within the restaurant, that we're trying to solve that and make sure that we can get to the point where we're all pulling in the same direction. And then for us, community's key. So caring about our community. We've always been involved in fundraisers and trying to help people that are less fortunate than us. We're in a very privileged position to be able to do that as restaurateurs and chefs. And then care about the environment because if we don't have clean air and clean water and clean earth, we can't get that amazing produce. It's my role to make them better chefs, better waiters, better sommeliers, better managers. But I like to make them better people. I always say at every large staff gathering, probably most of them under 30, that, you know, my generation kind of sucked the marrow out of the world, and it's up to them to make sure that the next generation of leaders are held to account. So, I do try to get them to think about community, you know, sustainability and politics – and their role in it. And that makes them hopefully, you know, more rounded people. Jean Kittson: Well, it sounds to me that longevity we're talking about and that success, so it would go the other way too. Do you get a lot of support from them? Because you give them so much care and attention and your expertise and you're bringing them up. And do they support you when there's challenges as well? Neil Perry: Yeah, of course. I mean, I always say that I'm kind of like a vampire. So, you know, I run this amazing team of people with huge amounts of energy and youth and they need to be guided and sort of, you know, given opportunities in life. But in return, I get so much energy and so much joy from them that that actually keeps me young. I look through my eyes and I actually think that I'm their age, you know? Jean Kittson: And Amanda, in your work, in different industries, do you see this teamwork as part of an essential ingredient as well in different industries? What helps your clients? Dr Amanda Ferguson: Yeah. Every industry is different in terms of how much teamwork you're gonna have and gonna need. Certainly in Neil's area, you can see the necessity of people there physically, and yet we've got a lot of remote working now and a lot of organisations have pivoted that way. But I think, Neil, you were talking beautifully about a whole lot of organisational psychology concepts like growth mindset; that the growth factor of helping these younger people moving forward and growing. And we know that the growth mindset is important for all ages and you know, fundamental to performance anyway, but then to ageing performance, this engagement Neil's talking about, what makes him engaged and motivated internally. That's what we know, as we get older, matters even more than when we're younger. So a lot of your younger staff, they're really motivated by extrinsic, which is external reward, which is building their careers and gaining money and being able to put down any roots that they can do at the time of their lives. And yet, these internal motivations are what are driving us as we age increasingly, which is about contributing, which is the influence you're having, the legacy you're creating. And that clearly motivates you as well with the care concept there, which is a wonderful driving factor. Jean Kittson: Do you think that keeps people more engaged with the work they do and able to meet challenges better? Dr Amanda Ferguson: Well, as long as you shift with your motivation. So we change across the lifespan, and Ericsson talked about the tasks of different ages and stages of life. Those travel with us during, staying at the top of our game. And so as long as we keep negotiating them, which is where our motivation's gonna change. So now, you know in our 60's, the main motivation there for the life stage is about legacy, and then it's gonna become wisdom, and moving into the wisdom part that we're negotiating with. So it's like in any generation pivoting, continuing to pivot even in older age. And you know, not giving up, you know, that there is a choice there that people make and have to be conscious of. Ericsson said at 63, it's a real challenge of; are you gonna regenerate or are you going to degenerate? Jean Kittson: Right. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Yes. Neil Perry: I think it's really important for people to recognise that a lot of things that happen to them are within their control. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Mm-hmm. Neil Perry: So for me, you know, I'll be 70 next year, so in 10 years I'm 80. So, you get a choice of thinking, well, you know, I've got 11, hopefully, very mobile years ahead of me. Because there's no guarantee physically, particularly when you've worked as many hours as I have and worn out most of the joints in your body, that you're going to be fabulously mobile. But it's important for me now, like, as we all know with longevity, like muscle mass is very important. So it's important for me to do enough exercise and it's really important for me to also think about balance and also flexibility. The three things that probably give you the most opportunity to get into your 80s and live the sort of life you'd still love to lead. And I know people who I always say are very inspirational to me who are like that hitting their eighties and, you know, still going out and playing golf and going on holidays and still working and doing things and I think that'll always be a very important part of my life. I couldn't imagine retiring. I could imagine taking it a little bit easier, you know, maybe not working every weekend, but I couldn't imagine not having the motivation mentally to come in and set parameters and talk to the chefs and speak to the wonderful fishermen and the farmers and the people that are the most important people in my life. So I just think for me, it's a matter of kind of putting the energy into those things that will give me the kind of outcome that I want. Dr Amanda Ferguson: And that's your internal motivation. Neil Perry: Yeah. There's a very traditional, you know, big pharma way of thinking about medicine and the body. And we now know that there's a very well documented and proven, you know, functional way of looking at it. We know diet's really important, so I eat really well. I mean, one of the things that's great for me is I don't eat really any processed food at all, probably except for bacon, which I love. Jean Kittson: You said processed. That's not processed. It's just dry. Neil Perry: Not really. It's like when I make our hamburgers, people say, ‘oh yeah, you eat a hamburger.’ Yeah, it's like freshly ground beef. That's what it is. It's got properly made sauces and it's got a bun, you know, so it's actually pretty good for you. I'm not sure about the other processed ones but, you know, I do think if you eat a lot of whole food, it's really important. I mean, my probably one sin in my life is I love red wine. So, I'm thinking a lot about, you know, how much I drink and maybe I should cut back. But every time I think about that it's just, you know. Jean Kittson: Too hard! Neil Perry: I think is it worth an extra couple of years? Maybe not. Jean Kittson: No, that's right. Benefit. Neil Perry: You gotta get the balance. Jean Kittson: Risk benefit. Risk benefit. Amanda, do you see that people with longevity in their chosen careers, do you see that as a psychological important part of them surviving, you know, playing the long game? Dr Amanda Ferguson: Oh, absolutely. And look, most of those people will either have really pivoted in their careers away from say, line management to supervising or training in a corporate kind of job. Or if you're lucky enough, I think as both Neil and I are, to actually love what you do and live to work because we get so much like a vampire back from the… Jean Kittson: Yes. Dr Amanda Ferguson: The beautiful energy of what we give out and what comes back. And that's engagement, that's called employee or work engagement, where we love and like our work. So clearly the cognition side that Neil loves, you know, the way he thinks about all his work as well as emotionally, what he's gaining and giving, and giving out cognitively – so everyone has a different long game. You know, I'll often say to people who have worked to live; ‘don't just retire, retire to something.’ And that's when they may sort of, you know, think of buying another business that is actually non-corporate, where they can have their staff if they're similarly engaged or creative outlets where they can really be more creative in the workplace or in hobbies or pursuits or golf. So, you know, the long game may be pivoting to being the brilliant golfer in your peer group. Jean Kittson: Right. Using your energy in your, yeah, well that sounds pretty good. but use that drive… Neil Perry: Frustrating game though. Jean Kittson: Yes. Frustrating game. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Well, yes, use the pivoting drives because as we age, the reason that we are motivated changes. So it's typically becoming, as we are entering post 50s, we're moving from – and certainly from late forties – we're moving from being really motivated by caring for others to wanting to build a legacy. And so if you feel your legacy is in the community, say, of having the surf club managed really that legacy may matter. And even having a plaque for yourself or you might become an elder to the local surf group. So, it's the pivoting and noticing and negotiating the lifespan changes that you have to go through in order to keep this motivation, engagement, growth mindset and risk failure – and have fun along the way. I mean, all those basic performance motivations and factors, they all still apply in older age. We draw on that breadth of knowledge and survive and thrive because of that, you know, it doesn't matter that the cognitive decline is happening. If you are pivoting, if you're compensating with all of that knowledge and ability and, you know, even muscle memory that you would have, definitely for your work. Jean Kittson: I think they call it crystallised experience. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Yes. Jean Kittson: Have you heard that expression? Dr Amanda Ferguson: Yes. Jean Kittson: Yes. So that's very valuable to workplaces. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Absolutely. Jean Kittson: I know you've been talking about legacy and I would think that Neil's already got an enormous legacy. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Exactly. Jean Kittson: And you could, you know, leave the business tomorrow and you'd still be as renowned and as admired and respected. Dr Amanda Ferguson: Except the care of the younger people. Neil Perry: Yeah, absolutely. Getting young people to care. I mean, it starts really with kind of, you know, you get young 16, 17-year-old people coming and working with us. I mean, we're very lucky through COVID that my daughters were in year 9 and 11. And when we came out of COVID and staff was very difficult, we'd already been doing, sort of, takeaway and burgers and everything we possibly could to survive. And one of the things that all these young kids loved, they loved coming and working for us because they're very social. And all of a sudden, for four months of their life, they were like, you guys cannot be together. So, for them to come and work and putting little bits of sources in containers and doing all that stuff. But to see them sit around a table, eight of them, and laughing and, you know, engaging and being social was just so wonderful because I know, with my girls, you could really sense that they were struggling and they really missed that. So they then came on to be, you know, the kids who worked in our restaurants, all of their friends, and they were anywhere from 15 through to 17. And we've put many of them through university. And so, they're a really important part of what Margaret is, and that makes it an incredible family restaurant beside the fact that my three daughters and wife worked there as well. So what was really wonderful was for their parents to come in and have dinner and just say, ‘thank you, you've really taught our daughters what it is to, or our son, what it is to strive,’ you know, to try to be the best you possibly can. And I just thought it was a really wonderful impact to have on young people. And then other times where we get young kids in the kitchen, 16, 17, and they're, you know, used to eating processed food and cans of drink and, you know, all the sorts of stuff that I dislike immensely. We don't force them, but we try to make them appreciate real food and whole food. And, you know, every day we have a family meal when we're open and it's not leftovers, it's a planned meal. We buy food in and our kids, you know, get in pairs and they get to prepare a family meal. We have some fantastic… Dr Amanda Ferguson: Wow. Neil Perry: dinners because we have kids from Korea and Indonesia and Singapore and China, Greece and Spain and Italy. And so we just get these amazing, very traditional meals cooked with real food. My motivation is to move the goals for those kids and to show them not just restaurant food, but what good eating is, to value and how to enjo

Broadcaster and comedian Wendy Harmer and positive psychologist Dr Tim Sharp (aka ‘Dr Happy’) lift the veil on relationships and explore what it takes to nurture our most important connections with our partners, friends, and with ourselves. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The time of your life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. Too often ageing is painted as decline. In reality, Australians are living longer, healthier lives and reshaping what “older” looks like. This series flips the script and shows how ageing is not a dirty word but rather a time to be embraced, featuring interviews with extraordinary over 50s refusing to slip quietly into the background. Wendy Harmer is a trailblazing comedian, broadcaster and journalist who has spent decades at the centre of Australian media and entertainment. Wendy first made her mark breaking new ground in Australia’s stand-up comedy scene before going on to become one of the country’s most recognisable media personalities and the author of bestselling books including Farewell My Ovaries . Australia’s own Dr Happy, Dr Tim Sharp is a leading positive psychologist, bestselling author and founder of The Happiness Institute , Australia’s first organisation dedicated to enhancing happiness. With a career spanning academia, clinical psychology and public speaking, he’s become one of the most recognised voices on mental health and wellbeing. Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency -- TRANSCRIPT: Jean Kittson: Welcome back to the podcast – DARE: The Time of Your Life, formerly Life’s Booming, brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. I'm Jean Kittson, and this season is called Better with Age where we're flipping the script and showing how ageing is not a dirty word, but rather a time to be embraced. Australians are living longer, healthier lives, and this season celebrates over 50s who are pushing the boundaries of what ageing looks like and feels like. In this episode, we are lifting the veil on relationships and exploring what it takes to nurture our most important connections with our partners, friends, and with ourselves. We've probably all experienced how relationships shift over time. It's natural, of course, but it might surprise you to know just how important they are to our overall happiness and why it's vital to keep nurturing all relationships old and new. Which brings me to our first guest, Wendy Harmer, who knows about the importance of friendships and relationships and making new ones as we age. I first met Wendy when we worked together back in the 80s, so we've been friends a long time. She's one of Australia's most beloved entertainers, a trailblazing, standup comedian, journalist, broadcaster, performer and bestselling author. Her books include the wonderful Pearly children's book series, as well as more adult titles like Farewell My Ovaries and her memoir Lies My Mirror Told Me . And joining Wendy is Dr Tim Sharp, otherwise known as Dr Happy. Tim is one of Australia's leading positive psychologists, and the founder and Chief Happiness officer at the Happiness Institute. Also a bestselling author, including The Happiness Handbook and his most recent Lost and Found . Tim has dedicated his career to helping people live happier and more flourishing lives. Tim and Wendy, welcome to the podcast. Thank you both for coming in. Wendy Harmer: Great to be here, Jean. Jean Kittson: Oh, it's lovely to have you both here. Wendy Harmer: I've got to say, Tim, the first time I set eyes on this one, what a bombshell. She would've been on stage in a nurse's uniform at The Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant. It was, at the time, playing Nurse… Jean Kittson: Pam Sandwich… Wendy Harmer: …Pam Sandwich Jean Kittson: …in Let the Blood Run Free . Wendy Harmer: And this. All arms and legs and big boobs and blonde hair and falling over and doing all this amazing physical comedy. Everyone just adored Jean – and the men, we had to fight them off with a stick. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Well those were the days, weren't they? This is what friendship's all about Tim, right? Thanks Wendy. That was lovely of you to say that. I mean, we've known each other for, well, since the early 80s. Wendy Harmer: It would have been about ‘83. Jean Kittson: And you were on stage doing stand up. See, I was doing [characters] and you were amazing, what you were talking about, women’s things – topics for women, about women and relationships. Wendy Harmer: That's right. Well, because when I first started out doing standup, it was really a bloke's domain and I thought, well, this, you know, this is ridiculous because, you know, women's lives are interesting too, and I mean, there's one thing that annoys me above anything else is saying women aren't funny. Like the idea, Tim, that you would say, ‘oh, the pet budgie can make me laugh. The dog can make me laugh, but a woman can't make me laugh.’ I mean, it really, I think it strikes to our humanity and I get really cross about that. So I've sort of been a bit of a campaigner with that, you know, rubber chook on a stick for many years. But you know, the idea, I know you have this happiness. You talk a lot about happiness. How important is laughter? Dr Happy: Very important. Well, it's a general group, laughter, fun play, all of those things, which we too often underestimate and discount. Well, we sort of see them as a nice to have, but the research is pretty clear. It's super important for a good life. It's hard to live a best life, a thriving life, a flourishing life without laughter, without fun, without play. I mean, there are many other things as well, and I'm sure we'll get to some of those other things, but a hundred percent it is a very important contributor to living a really, really good quality life. Wendy Harmer: And it's interesting too, that our sense of humor. It's not universal at all. It's formed in that crucible of the family, or indeed your chosen family like Jean. You know, we chose each other as grownups to be a family. But that, you know, there is like the punny family, there's the practical joke family. There's, you know, each family has its own particular sense of humor, doesn't it? Jean Kittson: Well, I think friendship is a really important way of maintaining humour in your life because you get together with friends to have a laugh, don't you, often? Wendy Harmer: Yeah. Jean Kittson: I mean, they're complex relationships, friendships. I mean, you've had friendships for a long time, Wendy, long-term friends. Wendy Harmer: I still have a friend who was at my 70th birthday a couple of months ago, whom I met on the school bus when I was 13 years old. So I – Gary. So I think that's pretty cool. He's the friend that I've had the longest, but you know, Jean and I have very similar trajectories in this way. We both were sort of country girls, and then we went to Melbourne and then we moved to Sydney. And that is a big dislocator, isn't it, of friendships. It's when you, you know, and we both moved to Sydney about the same time, so we left this huge coterie of friends to move to Sydney with our husbands, and then we both had kids, which is isolating as well… Jean Kittson: …definitely, it changes everything, doesn't it… Wendy Harmer: … you know, the nature of a friendship just changes so much over the years. Jean Kittson: But in terms of friendship and happiness, I mean, is friendship a really important element? You are talking about laughing, which it is, but I know when I get together with friends, we laugh a lot. But friendship is a really important part of, you know, happiness. Dr Happy: Yeah. Well, look, I've been, well, I probably should say I started out my career specialising in unhappiness. I was a clinical psychologist to begin with and an academic. So I was studying sort of stress, depression, and misery before I even discovered happiness. But I have been studying, well, what we technically call positive psychology for several decades now. And if I had to sum up everything I've learned from thousands of research articles, hundreds of books, many, many conferences about, you know, what are the most important contributors to, well not just happiness, but wellbeing more generally, longevity, physical health, et cetera, it would certainly be positive relationships. In fact, one of the – so Christopher Peterson was one of the leaders, one of the grandfathers of positive psychology, and he dedicated his life to studying, thriving and flourishing. And he was once asked, what have you learned in, you know, 50 years as a professor? And he said, I can sum it up in three words. He said, other people matter. Wendy Harmer: Wow. That is correct. Dr Happy: So yeah, it's vitally important, almost certainly the most important contributor and the most important thing we can do is prioritise fostering and developing good quality relationships. Wendy Harmer: Well, you do hear that, don't you? That people ask on their deathbed, you know, what's your regret? And it's often that I didn't spend enough time with friends or family. You have some amazing relationships, Jean, and it's funny when you have a friend and you get to know that – and Angela, she's not a friend of mine, but I know her to be your best friend and that your friendship has been amazing over the years. How long have you known Angela? Jean Kittson: Well, I've known Angela for, since we were both teachers sent to the wilderness to teach first year out teachers. So probably since we were about 21, so 50 years. But she's a long distance friend, so I would speak to this friend regularly on the phone, and we speak all the time whenever we like on the phone, but I would only see Ange maybe once or twice a year, which is another thing about friendship. I know that our friendship endures because we speak regularly and we are in touch with each other's lives. Then I have friends who live a few streets away who I don't see for months, but I don't ring because they're only a few streets away and I lose contact – I mean, we often lose contact with friends. So, how do you manage that sort of – have you lost contact with any friends? You've got a huge cohort of friends. Wendy Harmer: Oh, well, I've lost, you know, I've lost contact with lots and lots of friends. I've only once lost contact with someone on purpose. I've done the– and that was after I spent time with this friend, and I realised that every time I walked away from spending time with this friend, I felt worse about myself. There was something just subtle in the relationship that just made me feel that I wasn't smart enough or I was like overweight or I wasn't achieving or whatever. Richard Stubbs, you know, our comedian friend, he would say, Wendy, he said, ‘sometimes you go back to that well, where it's quite clearly the person doesn't wanna be friends with you, and you are like, you won't take no for an answer.’ So I'm probably the opposite. I'm probably that needy person who wants, who needs you to be my friend, maybe. Jean Kittson: Well, I think we all need friends and we don't like it when we lose contact. And then you get embarrassed because it's been so long since you called. This is my situation that I'm too scared to ring up in case they just won't pick up and then I know I'm dropped. How do you mend broken friendships if– because they can be very painful, that sort of grief of losing someone just because of neglect, really not deliberately ghosting them or anything. Because friendships need to be nurtured, need to be fed in a way, need to be maintained. Wendy Harmer: [Like this plant..] Oh, that's plastic. That's plastic! I was going to say like this house plant! Jean Kittson: Yeah. Dr Happy: Look, it's, well, there's a couple of things there. You're a hundred percent right. We– relationships do need to be worked on. Now for some people that's easier than others. There's no doubt that some people who, at the risk of oversimplifying, may be the more extroverted people who find it more enjoyable, easier. It just comes naturally to them. Some of us, some other people, need to work a bit harder at it, but it is something you need to work at. And the other thing that came out through both of that, is that things change over time, which shouldn't be a surprise. You know, as we age and as our circumstances change and as our contexts change, you know, and you get married and you have children and then you retire, and all those sorts of things. So, our relationships will change, but we do still need to work on it. We do still, it is important to have some friends, for some people that will be fewer than others. You know, so some people, some of us are happy with one or two good friends, that's enough. Other people might need five 10 or whatever. But… Wendy Harmer: I can never have enough! Dr Happy: …and that's okay. Again, we're all different. Wendy Harmer: Well, yeah. My husband is, he has the most friendships of any person I've ever met in my entire life, to the point where every now and then, it's like barnacles on a barge. I have to go down and scrape them off… Dr Happy: Are you calling your husband a barge? Wendy Harmer: …every now and then. Yeah. But then he had his 50th birthday at our house. Mind you, 350 people came. Jean Kittson: Amazing. Dr Happy: Wow. Wendy Harmer: Lord. But it's almost… Jean Kittson: I’m jealous. Wendy Harmer: …Yeah. But it's almost like his mission, you know, mission in life. But you know, I'll tell you something though. Oh, have you ever had this Jean, have you ever been jealous of someone else's friendship? Because I remember years ago, I was a big Oprah aficionado. I loved everything that Oprah did. And then she talked all the time about her best friend, Gail King. Jean Kittson: Mm-hmm. Wendy Harmer: And they went on a road trip together and how they talked to each other three or four times a day and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I thought, oh, I wish I had a friendship like Gail and Oprah. So I had to stop reading about their friendship because it just seemed too ideal. But, I'm not sure that they weren't just lying. Jean Kittson: They–– didn't you say that they rang each other three or four times a day? Wendy Harmer: Yeah. Three, three or four times a day. Jean Kittson: I know that seems excessive. Wendy Harmer: It does seem excessive. Jean Kittson: I think it seems like there's some insecurity there even. Wendy Harmer: Yeah. Maybe. Jean Kittson: Maybe, although, you know, we all need friends for different reasons, and we all need them at different times for different reasons. Often friends are the ones that get you through the hardest times in your life and you don't want to burden your family and your partner all the time with your insecurities. Wendy Harmer: See, I wanna say something really important there, which I hate, which is, you know, where people, you know, they make their marriage vows and they say, ‘you are my best friend.’ And I think. I don't want my husband to be my best friend. My husband is my lover, but he's not my best friend. I mean, what do you think of that, Jean? Jean Kittson: Well, in some ways, I suppose, you need to have a friendship with your relationship. Wendy Harmer: Yeah. Yeah. Jean Kittson: It needs to be companionable. You need to trust them to be able to be honest with each other, and that's what friendships are like, and to have sex. You know, if you… Wendy Harmer: Be honest with each other? Are you serious? Jean Kittson: I'm serious. You gotta be honest about your– well, about how you're feeling, I mean, you don't, I mean– of course. I think honesty is really important, although, no, I don't wanna say anything too personal here, but there is a difference, yes. There is a difference between your friendship with your girlfriends, where you can just download and, I mean, do you have a really close male friend, this is the other thing? Wendy Harmer: Oh, yeah, yeah. I've got, actually, probably, I've got more male friends and female friends even. And I love my male friends. When my husband and I got married, I had an ex-boyfriend in my bridal party and he had his– one of his girl, not his girlfriend, but a female friend in his party. So we are very relaxed, you know, about all that. But as I say, you know, yes, I believe in trust, absolutely, in a relationship with your partner. Honesty? Hmm. I'll get back to you. Jean Kittson: Well, I think with really good friends, you can be honest. I often hear people say, oh, these– well, you were talking about a friend who made you feel bad. I'm not talking about that. But I think some friends, you often hear people say, ‘oh, friends should build you up’ or ‘you should always have a positive relationship with them.’ But sometimes friendships go through periods where you are there to support them through really hard times. So, it's not always gonna be someone who makes you feel better about yourself. It's maybe you making them feel better about themselves. Wendy Harmer: But sometimes also as a friend, you've got to say, listen, I think that you might be, you know, on the wrong path here. Or, you know, you've gotta put… Dr Happy: Honesty. Wendy Harmer: …Yeah. You've gotta be diplomatic, haven't you? But some– do you think that a friend, good friend should be able to say, yeah, well, maybe, I don't know whether this is quite the–– how should we go about that? Dr Happy: Oh, for sure. I think, well, if I take my sort of professional hat on and just so to speak personally, because this is something I've learned over the years and, and I haven't really seen much research on it.There's not much talk in the sort of academic community about it. But, I've come to learn, there are different types of friends and so, I have some friends who I can talk honestly about and share my feelings with, even though I'm a bloke and then there are other friends who are fun, but I would never go to them necessarily if I have a problem. And I don't think that necessarily makes them not a good friend. I think it took me a long time to learn there are just different friends who have, kind of almost different purposes for want of a better phrase, including my wife and family as well in that. And so there are some things I will call some people for and other things I'll call other people for and I don’t know if we necessarily give that as much consideration. Wendy Harmer: Is your… Jean Kittson: I think that's really true. Wendy Harmer: …Can I ask, do you think your wife is your best friend? Dr Happy: She is actually at the risk of disagreeing with you! But I don’t know if that's necessarily that common. I have, well, I suppose it depends how you define best, but we are very close friends. We've spent over 30 years now. Jean Kittson: I think you're right about friends for, you know, you don't have friends for all seasons. You have different friends for different seasons in a way. And I– there's friends I would call if I needed a bit of therapy, you know, uplifting, give me a confidence boost. And then there's friends that I would call to just take me out of my world into a whole different world. Wendy Harmer: Yeah… Jean Kittson: …And that's, that's a benefit of having many friends or a few friends. But of course, what you mentioned be

In this episode of DARE: The Time of Your Life, we are looking at Breaking New Ground. At an age when many people are beginning to look for the off switch, some over 50s are inspiring us by dreaming bigger than ever. Like our guest Jamie Durie. The landscape designer and TV host isn’t just 'not winding down', he’s completely upskilling and re-tooling. Join his conversation with host Jean Kittson alongside clinical psychologist and men’s mental health expert Dr Zac Seidler. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The time of your life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. Too often ageing is painted as decline. In reality, Australians are living longer, healthier lives and reshaping what “older” looks like. This series flips the script and shows how ageing is not a dirty word but rather a time to be embraced, featuring interviews with extraordinary over 50s refusing to slip quietly into the background. Award-winning landscape designer and sustainability advocate Jamie Durie was once a performer with all-male revue group Manpower, before he realised his passion for horticulture and garden design. Now Jamie is navigating the beautiful chaos of a young family in his 50s, while revolutionising the way we build our homes in TV’s Jamie Durie’s Future House . Dr Zac Seidler is a clinical psychologist, researcher and leading men’s mental health expert. He currently holds dual roles as Global Director of Research at Movember and Associate Professor with Orygen at the University of Melbourne. Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency -- TRANSCRIPT: Jean Kittson: Welcome back to the podcast, DARE: the Time of Your Life, formerly Life's Booming, brought to you by Australian seniors in partnership with RSPCA. For more episodes, visit seniors.com au/podcast. Hi, I'm Jean Kittson, and this season is called Better With Age, where we are flipping the script and showing you how ageing is not a dirty word, rather it's a time to be embraced. In this episode, we are looking at Breaking New Ground. At an age when many people are beginning to look for the off switch, some over 50s are inspiring us by dreaming bigger than ever. Take our guest, Jamie Durie, the landscape designer and TV host isn't just not winding down, he's completely upskilling and retooling. From navigating the beautiful chaos of a young family in his fifties to revolutionising the way we build our homes with high tech prefab design, Jamie is living proof getting older doesn't automatically mean it's time to start downsizing. Also with us is Dr. Zac Seidler, a clinical psychologist and leading men's mental health expert. Zac is also global Director of Men's Health Research at Movember. Jamie and Zac, I'm so happy to welcome you both to the studio. Welcome. Jamie Durie: Thank you. Yeah, great to be here. Good to meet you, Zac. Zac Seidler: You too, Jamie. Can’t wait to chat. Jean Kittson: I know. Well, it's so exciting to hear what you're doing, Jamie, and you know when people are usually in their fifties, I suppose they start thinking about maybe slowing down or… never crossed your mind? Jamie Durie: Well, I think we, as men, and I'm hoping I'm not alone here, Zac. We only really start working it out in our 40s, and by the time you then reach 50, you go, Hmm, okay, now I know exactly where I wanna land and exactly what I wanna focus on. And I've got the experience behind me where I've made a few mistakes, learnt along the way, and I can apply with accuracy and shoot with a rifle – not a shotgun at your goals, if you like. Because the idea of, kind of, focusing in on the things that I think you’re most passionate about and that are most relevant in your place is, I think, distilling everything you've learned throughout your career. Jean Kittson: Yeah. It's something you come to with experience. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Jean Kittson: And as you say, making maybe some mistakes, but then refining, fine tuning where your passion is, is this, like what you are doing now with this prefab. Is it the Prefab housing where you are also doing something called the Infinity Garden? Jamie Durie: Yeah. Jean Kittson: What's… tell us about this project? Jamie Durie: Well this, you know, Future House is the name of the show, and we're now at Channel Nine, which is brilliant, and we've had an amazing season. Basically it's an exploration of modern methods of construction and if we are sitting in the building crisis right now, the housing crisis, and we've got, you know, 1.2 million homes to build over the next five years – how on earth are we gonna achieve that target when we're 87,000 trades short of achieving that target with our conservative ways of building houses? Our houses need to be more energy efficient. They need to be more cost effective. They need to be more structurally sound. They need to be more resilient with increased weather attacks, you know, over the last five, 10 years, we've all seen the floods, the fires, the storms all increasing. And then how do we make it more affordable for everyday Australians so that we can all, you know, get off this renting bus and actually start to own a piece of Australia and be proud of it, but make it more affordable. So that’s what it’s really about. Prefab has come a long way. We're no longer talking about those archaic old ‘kit homes’, they're now beautifully designed, sophisticated homes, some of them, which you can buy at a hardware store at Bunnings these days. Jean Kittson: Wow. Jamie Durie: I don't know whether you've seen that or not, but it's amazing what's happening in this space and we're playing catch up and we wanted to develop a format to talk about those where we could, you know, pass on some of these learnings and create intelligent DIY design where Australians could learn from what we are learning from and help progress the solutions around solving the building crisis. Jean Kittson: Well, I can hear that you are using all your background in, you know, gardens and landscaping and building, but also a maturity that, you know, and in experience and knowledge that comes with age as you personally. And then you taking this knowledge and experience and then putting it into the community for a really important community benefit. How does that… does that make you feel good about your work? Is that what you mean by focusing more, in your 50s? Jamie Durie: Oh, for sure. This is the show I've always wanted to make. Having worked on 56 primetime shows throughout my career, which is a lot, when you only started at kind of 28. It feels like everything's come full circle because, you know, we're not just inspiring people to take up new ideas, but we're instilling them with education and awareness around how to create more sustainable homes, how to tread more lightly on the planet, how to reduce our energy costs, how to tackle the cost of living crisis and how to get more Australian families into more homes faster. Jean Kittson: That's amazing. I mean, from a person… personally, that's a lot of work, Jamie. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Jean Kittson: You don't feel like you should be slowing down, spending more time, you know… Jamie Durie: …weirdly Jean Kittson: …pottering around. Jamie Durie: No, weirdly, the more I dive into this, the more passionate I become and passion creates energy. You know, it just comes from somewhere. You would know this, Zac. You know, I mean, what you guys have created is astonishing and the people's lives that you've touched through the funds raised throughout Movember is absolutely mind blowing. Zac Seidler: Thanks Jamie, I appreciate that. It's been a community effort in a very similar vein, and I think Australians can really get around that type of… Jamie Durie: …Yeah… Zac Seidler: …of grassroots community building when you provide them with the right resources to do so. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Zac Seidler: But I love the idea that, you know, I don't, I think that slowing down, that idea of becoming 50 or 60 and starting to slow down, especially because life expectancy is increasing – thank God. Jamie Durie: …Yeah… Zac Seidler: …We're moving, you know, into longer lives, hopefully healthier lives as well. The data is pretty clear that when men start to slow down, bad things happen, to be honest. Retirement is not a good vibe for lots of guys because they have not built the scaffolding around them. They often haven't spent a lot of time with their friends or family over the years because they've been in this provider protector mode for so long, that when it slows down, they go, okay, I'm gonna play golf, I guess, or something and I've never played it before. And how does this work? And who are the guys I'm gonna call? And so, I really like the idea of seeing eras of your life and the fact that as you are maturing and ageing, you are becoming more dynamic in ways and kind of getting rid of the stuff that was a waste of energy, the stress, the anxiety, the trying to do a thousand things at once that I'm probably still doing and hopefully we'll get rid of at some point. But that ability to work out where you want to spend your time and energy for, you know, the next era and then there'll be another one after. That's so important. And I think, you know, Movember has been around for over 20 years and we're now moving into the next stage. We were just this young kid on the block, you know, kind of breaking stuff and trying to work out what's the best way to show up in the charity space and really change men's lives, and it started with a practical joke. It starts with, with something that everyone… Jean Kittson: …A pun, yeah. Zac Seidler: A pun. Exactly. And it moves from that conversation starter really into thousands of programs and a billion dollars plus that we've fundraised over the years. And so many people say that men don't wanna get around this stuff. You know, it's like, oh… Typically it is women leading charity dinners and doing fundraising events and we kind of broke that mould and suggested that if you provide the right framework, something that is about banter and community and mateship and the things that matters to guys and their health. You know, health by stealth is always what we say… Jean Kittson: Yeah, health by stealth… Zac Seidler: Go around, don't hit them on the head with the thing. Jean Kittson: No, Jamie Durie: …that's right. Jean Kittson: Start in a light way with a light, you know, an idea that's fun. And then dig a bit deeper. Jamie Durie: And it's the path of least resistance, isn't it? Because I grew up watching Magnum PI. And there's a Tom Selleck in all of us, where we desperately wanted to grow that mustache, but just didn't feel like there was enough reason to, and this gives us the excuse. Jen Kittson : Yeah. Jamie Durie: To go, oh, I'm doing something good. And I'm also exploring this mustache, which could look terrible on me, but it also could look fantastic. And my Mrs might love it! Zac Seidler: I love the wives and the girlfriends who are just like, ‘make this stop!’ every year. But that is the joy of this thing. And some people find that they can grow a beautiful mustache. We had a whole campaign called Shit Mo’s Save Lives. You've got this wispy thing. It doesn't matter. Jean Kittson: It doesn't matter! Jamie Durie: Growing a mustache doesn't happen overnight. No. And so there's this constant reminder of the cause. And bringing people back, bringing people's minds back every time you look in the mirror, oh, that's why I'm doing this because I'm raising money for this cause. Zac Seidler: And we also want to get around the idea that, you know, November is one month of the year. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Zac Seidler: We're lucky to have the pun to stand behind. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Zac Seidler: But this is an all-year situation. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Zac Seidler: You know, there are guys, whether it's prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and, and suicide prevention, lots of the things that we work in, they don't come and go, you know? They are a part of men's health. They're a part of our families. Our wives deal with them, our children manage this stuff. And so we wanna make this an all year round conversation, and it just gets supercharged in November. Jean Kittson: So what would you say to men who perhaps think they can just stop everything or they've had to stop everything because of health or their age or their jobs finished because of their age and they think they can go out to play golf. But then as you say, they may not have the friends around because they haven't stayed in touch with them, or that. So how do men find a new purpose? Because I think what you are doing, Jamie, is really a progression, a development of everything you've been doing in your past. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Jean Kittson: But some men have just spent their whole lives doing one thing. And then suddenly that stops. So how do they find a new sort of purpose, or how can they build on the skills, the knowledge they have? Zac Seidler: Yeah. Jean Kittson: What, what do you say to them? Zac Seidler: I'm very keen for Jamie's thoughts, but the way that I see it, because I see a lot of men in their 50s, 60s… It's funny because lots of guys now are having their midlife crisis in their 30s, which is kind of good because they still have the time to pivot accordingly. But what happens is that, when we get into the 60s, 70s, even, even 80s –– my grandpa's 96 and still kicking; he’s around. He goes into his office every day. I have no idea what he does, but he goes to work, right? So there's a part of that purpose that comes from that, but it's about an expansion really, which is that if you are myopic and you have this singular vision of who you are, and this is all that you can do, when that thing ends, whether you are fired, made redundant, you know, you retire, whatever might take place, you know we're in shifting times at the moment, and without that foresight and without the vulnerability to go, who am I? Taking pause going, who am I? What matters to me? What are my values and how can I go about, you know, picking and choosing lots of different things to spend my time doing, whether that's family, friends, hobbies… You know, it shouldn't just come when you click pause and you go, who am I now? What am I supposed to do? Because that is going to breed catastrophe. It's terrifying for all of us. You need to work your way up to it and realise, there is, each day, a chance to kind of do a little bit more in different fields of your life, water the ground in different areas, and realise that if you are, you know, you can be a one track, you can be a one corporation man your entire life. There's nothing wrong with that. But if it comes at the cost of you never prioritising your kids or your friends or your hobbies, that's just not really what we're here for. We're here to do many different things and to expand and grow. And I always find it very interesting. There's this trope that men don't talk, they don't want to go to therapy, they don't want to discuss what's happening in their lives. And I always, whenever a guy comes in and he is a bit, you know, doesn't have all the words, he grunts a bit. He's silent most of the time. I'm like, why are we here if not to understand ourselves? Jamie Durie: Yeah. Zac Seidler: And I think that lots of guys, when they get into those later years, they start to do that work, but it'd be lovely if they could do it a bit earlier. Jamie Durie: I didn't start my career in, you know, finding our future version of our house, you know, like what is the modern method of construction? I'd started in a very different space, where I was in Las Vegas dancing with an all male group called Manpower. You know? Jean Kittson: Dancing very well! Zac Seidler: Well, various people said, you need to talk to Jamie about this. You brought it up, not me! Jamie Durie: No, no. And, but listen, they were the greatest years of my life and, you know, I started when I was 16. I was lucky enough to meet, along my travels, and we toured 14 different countries and played to, you know, sometimes 8,000 women a night at various Zac Seidler: …and that one guy that was forced to be there! Jamie Durie: …entertainment centers… Yeah, in Sun City, in South Africa and Hong Kong and all over the place. And, I got to see a lot of the world, many, many times. Circumnavigated the globe many times before I was even 21. And I think, travel's been, you know, my greatest teacher. They say it's the university of life. And so by the time I got to sort of 23, I was like, okay, what do I really wanna do with my life? And weirdly, I met a garden designer, by the name of Paul Bengay and we got talking. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Jamie Durie: And he took me to his garden design studio and he said, ‘this is what I do,’ and I said, you design gardens for a living. This is amazing. So not only could I help heal the planet by planting more trees. But I can also do it in a creative way that would stimulate the creative side of myself. Right? So before I left Manpower, I enrolled into a horticultural course for four years, and there was that overlap effect where I was still doing shows. Still producing calendars. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Jamie Durie: …and my teachers had copies of my calendar. My horticultural teachers had copies of my calendar in their, in their staff room. And they were laughing at the fact that I was, you know, turning up to school every week, learning the names of plants – three and a half thousand of them – and, and throughout that period, you know, I didn't really graduate until I'd sort of reached, I think 30, but those last few years of my life where I was still doing shows at the Crown Casino in Melbourne and, and Las Vegas in the summer in in America… but I was going to school and studying. That's the pivot. That is… there's that overlap effect. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Overlap, yeah. Jamie Durie: Find what you are passionate about. Start seeding that idea, pushing your way into what is it that I next wanna do and move. And I think my love for the environment started way back then. And then morphed into what I'm doing today. And there's been that overlap into, okay, how are we gonna repair the planet as well? So, you know, I've overlapped the next section of my career out of horticulture and then into environmental work, you know, so I'm… Zac Seidler: It’s so, so values driven. And that's the thing, you know, you see young guys now who all want to be entrepreneurs and I end up seeing them because they're struggling to kind of reach this status that they believe they should reach in order to be successful. But it's get rich quick. And what you're describing is time, it's time, it's effort. Jamie Durie: Yeah Zac Seidler: It requires an understanding of what matters to you. And trial and error and failure and all of that stuff. Jamie Durie: Yeah. Zac Seidler: Which eventually. That all is the making of a man, you know? Yeah, yeah. Over time and you, you did two things at once, because you've gotta make a living. You've gotta try to work out what matters to you, where you're gonna go next, and you just keep following those open doors rather than going, this has to happen now. Jamie Durie: Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember. I remember doing a Samsung campaign. I was naked. And I was, I

SERIES 7: Better With Age. It takes courage to reinvent yourself professionally, yet it becomes a necessity for many people over 50. Bestselling author Kathy Lette and publishing exec Jane Curry share their hilarious experiences of pushing through career blocks and tiresome ageing stereotypes. Brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The Time of Your Life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. Australians are actually living longer, healthier lives, and reshaping what older looks like. So in this series, we are chatting with over 50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book, from career pivots to second acts. This episode celebrates the Reinvention Generation, and explores how we can continue to push through career blocks and debunk tiresome stereotypes as we age. Is it because that's just how we're wired? Or is it to prove that our best work is still ahead? Kathy Lette is an internationally bestselling author of more than 20 books, which have been translated into 20 languages. Her latest bestselling book, The Sisterhood Rules , takes readers on a rollercoaster ride that proves that from pain comes healing, from honesty comes forgiveness, and that nothing is more important than your sisters. Jane Curry is a highly experienced publishing executive, and managing director of Simon and Schuster, Australia and New Zealand . Jane is also the founder of Ventura Press , which she established to champion older female (and male) authors. Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency -- TRANSCRIPT Jean Kittson: Welcome to a new season of DARE: The Time of Your Life, formerly Life’s Booming, brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Hello I'm Jean Kittson, and this season is called Better With Age. We're flipping the script and showing how ageing is NOT a dirty word, rather it’s your time to live your life to its fullest. Australians are actually living longer, healthier lives, and reshaping what older looks like. So in this series, we are chatting with over 50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book, from career pivots to second acts. This episode celebrates the Reinvention Generation, and explores how we can continue to push through career blocks and debunk tiresome stereotypes as we age. Is it because that's just how we're wired? Or is it to prove that our best work is still ahead? To help us answer such questions is Jane Curry, a highly experienced publishing executive and newly-appointed managing director of Simon and Schuster, Australia and New Zealand. Jane is also the founder of Ventura Press, a company she started as a way of championing older female authors, many of whom only turned to writing later in life. And joining Jane is the fabulous author and beloved friend Kathy Lette. Her career has pushed boundaries from the get go, when she left school at 16 to write her debut novel, Puberty Blues. It had parents wringing their hands while teens lapped it up. And it was later turned into a movie and a TV series. She's gone on to pen more than 20 bestselling books, including her latest, the Sisterhood Rules, which has topped bestseller lists worldwide, and it's funny, fabulous and always empowering. Jane, Kathy, it's wonderful to have you both in the studio to speak about yourselves and your work. Kathy Lette: …and about you and your amazing work and your incredible life. Jean Kittson: Oh, do go on! Kathy Lette: My comic goddess right here before us, Jean. Jean's broken so many boundaries with her comedy. Jean Kittson: Oh Kathy, you’re amazing, and she's a long, long time beloved friend. And as you, in your words, you are my human wonder bra… Kathy Lette: …uplifting and supportive. I'd also say we are each other's big pair of knickers. We've got our asses covered. Jean Kittson: Mm-hmm. That's right. I can always, I mean, Kathy's the best friend you could possibly have. And don’t we all need… Kathy Lette: …Ditto. Jane Curry: …Don’t we all need female friendships, they keep us all going. Jean Kittson: You, Kathy. Kathy Lette: Yes. Jean Kittson: On a more serious note about, you have covered, you have written about all aspects of life from puberty to marriage, childbirth, menopause. Often based on your own experiences, you've inspired and entertained and soothed millions of readers, including your latest book, the Sisterhood Rules, which I absolutely love and should be a manual for any woman breaking up or any older woman wanting a bit of spice in her life, really. Kathy Lette: Haha, great, ha ha. Jean Kittson: But, um, when your previous publishers said to you. That nobody wants to read about middle-aged women. And they dropped you after 19 books in 17 languages. Kathy Lette: Yes. Jean Kittson: Bestsellers. Kathy Lette: Mm-hmm. Jean Kittson: And you went on to write the Revenge Club, another bestseller. I mean, how did you do that? Kathy Lette: I went to see my agent and said, I wanna write a book about four middle-aged women who take revenge on the men who've sidelined them and ruined their careers. And he was like, yeah, I dunno. Yeah, middle-aged women just aren't that sexy. And then I went to see my publisher at the time and my publisher was like, Hmm, middle-aged women. We know they exist, but nobody wants to go there. Jane Curry: Oh my goodness. Kathy Lette: And I looked at books written about women my age, like Anita Brooklyn novels, for example. And there was about sad, depressed, lonely women who wilt away and die in their flats and get eaten by their cats. Now I don't know any women like that. All my women friends are like Jean. They're swinging off a chandelier with a cocktail between their teeth. But when they, when they first said that to me, then my publisher dropped me. I thought, gosh, maybe I have passed my amuse-by date. And just for a moment, I did, I did have a real crisis of confidence. But then of course I'm an Aussie girl and we, Aussie girls are made of stern stuff Jane Curry: Dig deep. Kathy Lette: So I thought, nah, he's wrong. They're both wrong. So I got a new, I got a gay agent and I got a new publisher, Bloomsbury, and the book went to number-one on the bestseller list, which was the best revenge. It's called the Revenge Club – success! So yeah, it was so exciting. And also, I love writing about women this age because our hinterland is huge. You know, we've had the marriages, the divorces, the breakups, the promotions, the back stabs. We've raised the kids. We've looked after our aged parents as Jean did so, so devotedly. We've got so much to talk about and so much to share, and so much wisdom. Just at the time, society hands us the old invisibility cloak and puts us out to career pasture. It's not just me imagining that we, women my age, are given the cloak of invisibility. A few years ago, MI5 said they wanted to hire middle-aged women as spies because nobody sees us. Jean Kittson: Oh. Kathy Lette: Soak that up. And I remember the governor of the board of the Bank of England. He said, not long ago, that the economy was going through a menopausal phase. Sluggish. Jean Kittson: Oh. Kathy Lette: And I was like, tell that to Oprah Winfrey and Nicole Kidman, and Cate Blanchett… Jane Curry: Michelle Obama… Kathy Lette : …all the other people. Michelle Obama, all these other menopausal and postmenopausal women. So the sexism is sewn into our psyche. We really have to fight hard against that. And thanks to Jean and others of our generation. We've taken the stigma out of menopause. But the next big feminist hurdle for us is sexist ageism, because we get treated in a different way to men our age and, and we really have to rail against it. Because we're now prime, we're in the peak of our productivity. Jane Curry: But also we've all had to witness when the BAFTAs was on, every time we see these women who are completely transformed because they're not allowed to age in public. Kathy Lette: Mm. Jane Curry: So that's the standard. Yes. I mean, we are fortunate in where we're in the book business, so it's brain first in our business and always has been. Kathy Lette: Better to be witty than pretty. Jane Curry: Yeah, yeah – witty than pretty. And I remember a friend of mine who is actually a cosmetic surgeon, he said to me that it, you know, it's the women who are, have always been beautiful, that have had that sense of power when they walk into a room and they turn heads because of their beauty, they're the ones that find it harder to age. Kathy Lette: Well, it's a diminishing asset. Jane Curry: Yes. So whereas, you know, when you're in the book business as I've been, and Kathy, the entertainment book, um, you know, women of letters, we do have that our brain is our superpower. Kathy Lette: Yeah, yeah. Jane Curry: And then what we look like comes after that. Yes. Jean Kittson: It's hard to fight it though, isn't it? Kathy Lette: It is hard to fight it, Jean Kittson: …especially when you are performing and… Jane Curry: Oh yes. Well, in this new job I've just got, I got tapped on the shoulder to run Simon Schuster. So the first thing I found was all the, the settings on Zoom and teams. Because I’m reporting to the UK and I'm having meetings in the US all the time and sometimes I first thing in the morning, like 7.30 in the morning. So I'm like, where's the filter. Jean Kittson: Where’s the sparkle wand! Jane Curry: You know, we used to laugh when I worked at Macmillan. You know, we used, you know, there's fabulous filters that Jackie Collins had on all their photographs. Kathy Lette: Oh my gosh, yes. In fact, I've had lunch with Jackie Collins a few times with Joan Collins. Joan and Jackie, I mean, the double whammy. Jean Kittson: Yes. Jane Curry: Talk about sisterhood. Kathy Lette: Sensational broads. But, um, Joan Collins will move everybody around the table till she's got the right lighting. And isn't she clever? You know that when you do, when you're filming, they have that big silver thing that reflects the [light], why can't we have a dress made out of that? Jean Kittson: Well, why can't we! Kathy Lette: Or shoes? Jean Kittson: Because we don't care, Kathy. We don't care. Kathy Lette: We don't care. Jane Curry: Often we’re rushing from one thing to the next. Kathy Lette: Don't care. We don't care. But Jean, see, Jean and I don't do, don’t do any of that Botoxing stuff. Jane Curry: No. Nor do I. Kathy Lette: I think men should just read between my lines, the books, the babies, the hours of fun-loving flirtation. But it does get hard to resist it whenever all the other women… Jane Curry: …I think that's the thing when… Kathy Lette: …look much younger Jane Curry: that, right, what they call in the, you know, in data they call it benchmarking. So like any set of data figures in my world, you know, you benchmark against what was the bestseller. And so it's sort of benchmarking when you're talking about sales and all of that. But it's benchmarking with what we look like. So you sort of benchmark against, we, I think we're very critical of ourselves, because you look at another woman who's the same age and they've had the facelift and they've had everything done. And then look, I momentarily worry about it. And then honestly, you, I look at my to-do list and I think, no. Jean Kittson: Yeah, and I've got two daughters, so I don't want to be that role model. I've always said it's not what you look like, it's what you feel like, you know? Kathy Lette: Yes. Keep the lights low. Greatest beauty aid known to woman for all time. You know, what's happened in Hollywood, the pediatric, um, technicians there. The doctors noticed that the babies were not hitting their developmental milestones. And they were saying, is it because they're, they're having too much, um, carcinogens in their smoked salmon? I'm thinking, no, it's Botox. Because babies look at your face, like when you go, I love your little baby. The baby goes and you go, ah… If you've had Botox and you're going, ‘I love you’, and the baby's going, ‘uh’, you’re going, ‘uh’. They're not learning anything. Jean Kittson: Absolutely. Jean Kittson: You should write a research paper on that. They should do it. Kathy Lette: This is hysterical, isn't it? I know. Jean Kittson: I was told not to go, I mean. Not to go grey because I wouldn't, in the gig economy, I wouldn't get work. Apparently the research shows that if you, that men don't like actually working with women with grey hair. Kathy Lette: …Because it reminds them of their mothers, is it? Jean Kittson: …Maybe they feel that they… Kathy Lette: …it's ageing them… Jean Kittson: Have to defer or - No, not defer… Kathy Lette: …but they can have grey hair. Jean Kittson: They can have grey hair. So there are some interesting facts their. Kathy Lette: I was gonna say, part of the problem is that we never see women who look like us. 85% of people on British and Australian television over 50 are men. So the women just get immediately sidelined and put out to career pasture when they get one grey hair and one wrinkle. We should be saying, we wanna see ourselves reflected. Don't, don't disappear us. Jean Kittson: You know, Jane, you would see, um, this in the industry. You've seen this before. What happened to Kathy? Have you? Jane Curry: Oh, yes, because a lot of decisions are made on data. You know, they'll say, oh, and particularly I think people got very frightened when social media arrived. They got very frightened that they had to chase people with massive Instagram following. Oh, yes. And then there was this sort of Sally Rooney phenomena where everybody wanted a ‘ Normal People ’. And that was that emerging, you know, Kathy Lette: Irish writers… Jane Curry: …Irish and, and all that sort of coming of age story that, and we are, we are just, we move as a pack, the publishing industry. So once there's one Normal People , you can guarantee the next year there'll be 10 Normal People . And that's a book for people that haven't read it, that was published by Sally Rooney. It was a debut novel and you know, it was one of the zeitgeist novels. Kathy Lette: She became a publishing phenomenon. Jean Kittson: In terms of ageism in comedy, it's just a general feeling that I think women, first of all, women in comedy has been really hard from the start and you really have to push and it's a much more sort of natural environment for men because they're confident and some, some comedians can go on and and not even have thought about what they're going to say, they're just so confident. Kathy Lette: Yeah. Jean Kittson: When I was starting out in comedy, I would be starting out with other, the few women that were around in the 80s and we'd be in pubs and we'd go on stage and everyone would be drinking and eating their pizza, and no one would listen and the women would come off and going, oh my God, I'm just not funny. I haven't got good material. I stink. I can't do this. The men would go out there and they would get exactly the same reaction. People are just drinking and they'd come back and they'd go, that audience wouldn't know a joke if it was up them. They're just so freaking hopeless, and they'd just blame the audience and women would blame themselves, and I don't know where that comes from, but I think it can become more pronounced as you get older and there's slowly, more and more diminishing things that happen to you Like walking into a butcher and the butcher saying, hello, young lady, and you think I'm too, I'm too young to be called a young lady. You know, I not old enough. That's something that they would say to your grandmother, Hello, young lady, and expect you to like that. Expect it to be a compli–– Jane Curry: … A pat on the head. Jean Kittson: …Yeah, a pat. It's so patronising. Kathy Lette: Yeah. There's also this, it's an inbuilt prejudice against women that were not funny, and I, I was at a dinner party in London once and, and the hostess made a really good joke and the husband and men didn't pay any attention. The husband just went, oh, you know, embarrassing women can't tell jokes. And I was like, that's because we marry them. It made everybody laugh at him and that did take away his power. So just lean into that, that verbal ability that women have, you know, we’re more verbally dexterous. So use it like, develop what I call the black belt and tongue -fu! Quip lash, you know! Jean Kittson: Yeah, that's fantastic. Don't censor. Good comeback. Kathy Lette: Yes. Yeah. Good comeback. Jean Kittson: I know, I think we are getting stronger and we shouldn't, we shouldn't, um, suppress our strength as we probably have to keep peace, you know, with the family. That's right. With our work to balance everything. Yeah. You suppress a lot of who you are. Jane Curry: My eldest always says to me. Mum, you're overthinking. And that's the best mental health advice or whatever we do. We do overthink, Kathy Lette: But I think women should just or never go… You're underdressed if you go out at night without a couple of good one-liners tucked up your trouser leg. Jane Curry: That's really good advice. Kathy Lette: Because if, if you whack it back… Jane Curry: yes, Kathy Lette: …and make other people laugh at them, you completely take away their power. Jean Kittson: Well, you've got so many good one-liners, so you're like a one-liner factory. Jane Curry: I've got, I've gotta lift my game. Jean Kittson: Ah, yeah, exactly. So do I. So when your publishers said that ridiculous thing that nobody wants to read about middle aged women… Kathy Lette: …mm-hmm… Jean Kittson: Did you ever doubt yourself and think that I might have to reinvent myself in any way? Kathy Lette: I did. I, just for a moment, I lost confidence and I thought maybe I have passed my amuse-by-date. But then I looked around at my own female friends and I thought, they're so wonderful. They're all, you know, swinging off a chandelier with a toyboy between their teeth. I wanna write about these women. But I think as a writer, I'm always reinventing because I cannibalise my own life. My mother's a teacher and I think I've got a bit of her teacher gene that I always write the book I wish I'd had when I was going through something. So from, to the girls in Puberty Blues , you know, to teach them that they were more than a life support system to, to a pair of breasts, you know, to girls dating and, and then to motherhood and, and marriage and divorce and menopause, and raising an autistic child, raising a teenager, you know, now this post-menopausal second act. So I'm always reinventing because I'm, I'm changing. You know, women are used to change. We've got so much change going on in our lives. So, yeah, I think it comes naturally to women. So if you are reinventing yourself post menopause, you know, it's just, it's almost like situation normal. We're always constantly changing. And even divorce, I don't see divorce as a failure. I just see it as a change. Jean Kittson: Yes. Kathy Lette: You know, life is long from honeymoon to tomb to be like 80 years so, just if you need to reinvent, you know it's okay, and it comes more naturally to women. So don't be afraid of change. Change is good. But I would say women this age, this is a coming of age time. Jane Curry: Yes. Kathy Lette: Because we're the first generation who are economically independent. We've got the, the rock of fuel of HRT, we've got the chutzpah and the

Stoking your sense of adventure and kick-starting curiosity is so important as we get older – just ask seven-time world champion surfer Layne Beachley and clinical psychologist Dr Roy Sugarman, who explain how you, too, can embrace new experiences and redefine what's possible, at any age. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The Time of Your Life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. Too often ageing is painted as decline. In reality, Australians are living longer, healthier lives and reshaping what “older” looks like. This series flips the script and shows how ageing is not a dirty word but rather a time to be embraced, featuring interviews with extraordinary over 50s refusing to slip quietly into the background. Layne Beachley is a seven-time world champion surfer, who has been pushing the boundaries of women’s surfing since she first stepped on a phone board aged four, going on to win a record breaking six consecutive world titles. Still hitting the waves every day, Layne continues to share her story and help others as a motivational speaker and co-founder of Awake Academy . Dr Roy Sugarman is a clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist who works with professional athletes, special forces and corporate leaders. He is also head neuroscientist for education technology company, Box Play and a co-founder of the global technology research company, Transhuman Inc , where he holds the patient for how we capture human emotions on data files, as well as having developed a totally non-pathological model for online mental health applications for the Department of Health Services in the state of California together with Kooth USA. Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency with Myrtle & Pine -- TRANSCRIPT: Jean Kittson: Hello and welcome to a new season of DARE: The Time of Your Life, formerly Life’s Booming, brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA. For more episodes, visit seniors.com.au/podcast. In this episode, we're exploring our adventurous side and being bold and taking risks and how it’s not just for your formative years. It's for now, from scaling mountains and learning to surf, to taking a grey gap year and traveling solo. More Australians over 50 are embracing new experiences and pushing their limits. Proving there is no expiry date when it comes to adventure. So, how can we overcome the, ‘I'm too old for this’ mindset to achieve the confidence to try something new? I mean, it could be something you've always wanted to do or something you did in the past and would like to take up again or something you only just thought of. Fostering our sense of adventure and kick-starting our curiosity is so important as we get older and to help us understand why it is important is Dr Roy Sugarman. Dr Roy Sugarman is a clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist who works with professional athletes, special forces and corporate leaders. He is also head neuroscientist for education technology company Box Play. And joining Roy, someone who needs no introduction. Seven time world champion surfer Layne Beachley. Layne has been pushing the boundaries of women surfing since she first stepped on a phone board aged four, and she has gone on to win a record breaking six consecutive world titles. Although she has been retired from competitive surfing for almost two decades, Layne still hits the waves every day. And Layne has ventured into another career altogether, sharing her story and helping others as a motivational speaker and co-founder of Awake Academy. Welcome Layne. Layne Beachley: Thanks Jean Jean Kittson: And welcome Roy.Welcome you both. Layne Beachley: Thank you. Lovely to be here. Jean Kittson: It's so great to have you both here with us and talking about this really important topic about, you know, keeping on pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves. Layne Beachley: It was interesting when you said in the intro about, am I too old for this? I had an experience this weekend, actually, you might be able to help me out with this Roy, where I was competing for my board rider’s club and I was one of the oldest in the whole field and I did come out of the water because it wasn't as enjoyable as it normally is, competing. I did have that mentality. I'm too old for this. Now, do you put that down to the fact that it's just 'cause I'm tired or can I just Are you allowed to be too old for this? Roy Sugarman: Well, absolutely. You can choose whatever time. Were you too young for it at four years old? Layne Beachley: I knew you… Roy Sugarman: So if you weren't too young for it at four years old, you Yeah, no, keep going. But what happens is, if I look at my athletes who keep training through 60 years old that don't show signs of ageing. So you've got 90 year olds who run triathlons and do Iron Men simply because they never stopped. I mean, you look at their muscles or you look at their hearts. They’re 30 years old. Layne Beachley: Right. Roy Sugarman: So what's the mindset? Mindset becomes your biggest thing. Doing the difficult thing. Layne Beachley: Mm-hmm. Roy Sugarman: That's the correct thing to do. When you have a choice and the point is you thought you have a choice. Layne Beachley: Well, I do have a choice, and I also believe it's the recovery process and the the space that you have around it. Because at 90 years old, there's not much else really going on in your life that's gonna distract you too heavily from being able to take good care of yourself. But that starts now. We don't wait till we're 90 before we start taking care of ourselves. So I'm just thinking now that you've said. Now that I'm in my fifties and I'm still competing, I need to actually have more space for preparation and recovery to enjoy it more. Roy Sugarman: Yeah. I think there are four pillars. There's the mindset pillar, there's nutrition and movement, and recovery is your fourth pillar. Jean Kittson: Okay. Right. Say that again. Recovery is your… Roy Sugarman: So mindset's your first important part of that. Jean Kittson: Yes. And then the next one Roy Sugarman: Movement and nutrition are critical as you get older. And even the rot starts early, so when you're young as well. And that fourth pillar is recovery time. So in other words, Jean Kittson: Where you rest and put your feet up, Roy Sugarman: don't overtrain. Jean Kittson: You don't have to work on recovery, do you? Layne Beachley: You do. You have to… Roy Sugarman: Oh yes, Jean Kittson: Oh, you have to work for recovery. Roy Sugarman: Well, there's active and passive, right? Layne Beachley: Exactly. Roy Sugarman: Yeah. Layne Beachley: Yeah. Jean Kittson: Oh gosh. Now we're getting technical. Alright. Can you say what active recovery and passive is in a few words that we, people who aren't sports people will understand, please! Layne Beachley: Well, active recovery would be things like massage and acupuncture and compression therapy and ice therapy and heat therapy Jean Kittson: Ah, Layne Beachley: Yeah. That would be the active Jean Kittson: And the passive is a glass of wine. Jean Kittson: The telly on, the feet up. Right? Layne Beachley: Well, preferably coconut water. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Layne Beachley: Not something that's all anti, well, not something that's inflammatory like alcohol. Roy Sugarman: So going for a walk. Layne Beachley: going for a walk. Roy Sugarman: Going for a walk, doing some stretching, doing some yoga. Very light stuff. Just keeping going, but being active, getting out of bed at the same time, going to sleep at the same time. There's more passive recovery, doing some heart rate variability training. Jean Kittson: Look, I'm feeling too old for this, as you say, I have never sort of worked in that way in a routine or with, you know, that much care. Layne Beachley: So television doesn't provide that, does it? Jean Kittson: Television? No. I don't really watch a lot of television. I do a little, just a lot of, I don't know what I do. Running around, I run around, a headless chook, and then sit down and, you know… Layne Beachley: With a glass of wine. Jean Kittson: Yeah, with a glass of wine. So when you have that pass through your mind – I'm too old for this – this is what happens to, I think a lot of people when, as they, as they get older in later life, they think ‘well, maybe I am too old for this.’ And I don't know whether it's their mindset or other people are putting it on it. You are out surfing with younger people. Did you get that impression that other people were looking at you like that? Or was, did it come from yourself? Layne Beachley: No, it came from myself. I don't care about how people look at me and the judgements that they make, cast upon me. It's more around my opinion of myself. That's the most important. I think it also came down to how my body was feeling and the energy that I was able to put into the performance. And just the mindset is also a reflection of how I'm feeling within myself. So I've been in a moon boot for a few weeks. Yeah, not ideal preparation either. And so I'm really conscious about allowing that injury to heal, but while still being able to do what I wanna do. And that's another thing that slows us down as we get older, is the injuries and the progression of injuries, and then honoring the injury and allowing it to heal. Roy Sugarman: Yeah. And the point that changes as you get older, which is something for younger athletes as well, is you can't be outcome focused. Cause that is going to be a negative for you. But the doctor says you have to lose weight. That's your outcome. Well, reactant theory, somebody's telling you what to do. But the important part of what Layne said is that, the opposite of a competitive mindset is psychological flexibility, which means I'm going to take my eyes off the end result. I'm going to just go for process. I'm going to enjoy what I'm doing. I'm going to love what I'm doing, how well I do. These other people can beat me. They're quicker, faster, stronger, younger. Which is very sad, but their rot’s… Jean Kittson: We hate them. Roy Sugarman: Their rot has already started, you know, and you know, people say, but you're 72, are you slowing down? The answer is, I hate old people, and I'm one of them, you know, some ageist as hell. But what Layne said very important is focus on the process of enjoying what you're doing. Forget about the outcome. The outcome may be beyond you, today. Jean Kittson: Well, this is expectations, isn't it? And the expectations we have on ourselves. So for instance, if you, we've been an elite athlete, like you have, your expectations of yourself must be enormous, and then you retired. How, how did you know when it was time to retire? Layne Beachley: Well. I knew because I wasn't willing to do the work outside of the water to generate the results that I expected of myself within it. If I have this expectation to perform well and win, then that has to be measured or correlated with the training, the preparation, the nutrition. All of the things that are, that need to be invested into performing my best. And I wasn't willing to do that work anymore. I was distracted. I was looking over the fence. I was craving a life outside of surfing. Knowing that I wasn't willing to do the work, I could have easily stayed there and just qualified and made up a number of the girls on tour, but that's not who I am. I perform and I prepare to perform well. I wasn't willing to do the preparation, so it was easy to make that decision. But to that point around expectation, I'm a seven times world champion. I won six in a row, but I won five in fear and two in love. And the two love-based titles were the process driven ones and the five fear-based world titles were outcome driven. So it's too easy to get stuck. And I say that because I've proven that you can succeed in both mentalities, but one costs you a lot more than the other. Jean Kittson: Yeah. Roy Sugarman: So, and that's where you find the values shift because you have to be valid and authentic as an athlete. And what you've described is how your values shifted and you became a valid and authentic version of yourself at whatever age. Which means you can do the difficult thing that's the correct thing to do. 'cause you had a choice. Layne Beachley: Right. Roy Sugarman: And when you have a choice, you choose according to your, what's valid for you. Those are your values and that gives you the psychological flexibility – competition doesn't matter so much. Being flexible and enjoying what I'm doing and the return on investment, and what it's gonna cost is a value-based decision. Layne Beachley: Right. Roy Sugarman: So if you're gonna be happy and cross the line, as we call it, right Layne Beachley: Yes. Roy Sugarman: You cross the line from being a pro to enjoying your life. [00:10:40] Layne Beachley: Can't you do both? Roy Sugarman: If you're lucky. But you know, I really love the authenticity and validity of what Layne said: I made a values-based decision. I was going to go now for the process, I loved two of those competitions 'cause I was in it for the love. Young athletes come up loving what they do, and then money or success or extrinsic motivators get there. Intrinsically, it wasn't motivating for you. You’d mastered it. Layne Beachley: Yeah. Roy Sugarman: So that sense of mastery, the idea of getting better and better at what's important to you shifted. And that's great. That's authentic. Layne Beachley: But to that point around choice, even when you say I don't have a choice, that in itself is a choice. Roy Sugarman: Yes. I choose not to choose. Layne Beachley: Yes. Jean Kittson: That's the easy way, right? Layne Beachley: Yeah. I don't have a choice. Jean Kittson: We all, I think we're all susceptible to extrinsic Layne Beachley: motivations. Jean Kittson: Do I say that? Extrinsic? Motivation and influences. And even in our everyday lives, it's very hard to sort of chill down and be true to yourself and make the choices that you want to make. We are all, even if we haven't been athletes, most people have made enormous sacrifices in their lives for their families or their partners, or maybe they've been, maybe they've had to deal with illnesses and trauma and this. So, to get to a stage in your life where you can understand yourself better, which is what I loved about hearing about your Awake Academy and hearing podcasts about how you have done a lot of work on self-awareness And how much that has informed the way you feel about yourself. You no longer when you win a game — when you win a competition, you feel like a winner. When you lose a competition, you feel like a loser. How that's gone from your life and now you're sharing that with others. And I think that's a wonderful thing you are doing. Is that giving you a lot of satisfaction. What's that bringing you? Why did you decide to do that? Layne Beachley: Well, when you become successful, as you know, (and as you know), I mean, everyone wants to know how you do it. And if you're able to deconstruct it and present it in a relatable way that people can take something from, that’s why I do it. I'm constantly doing the work on myself to then help people see themselves in me. I'm not putting myself up as the, the beacon and the light of perfection, because I'm as imperfect as you (and you) are. But what I am doing is saying I'm imperfect, but I'm also vulnerable and authentic in that, and I wanna help you become more vulnerable and authentic within yourself. So at Awake Academy, we're really inspired to help people be their best selves to live their best life. So to live your best life, you have to know who you are first. To achieve something great in the world, you have to know who you are because once you know who you are, then you can start working towards what you want. But sometimes, especially as kids, we put what we want ahead of ourselves and we lose ourselves in that. And I did that in those fear-based world titles. I won that first one and then went, okay, to be worthy of something else, I have to be more than what I am. And I lost that sense of self. And that taught me a lot about myself. So I love sharing those stories to help people feel less alone in their struggles, less isolated, less disconnected, and that they can relate to someone that they may be able to draw some knowledge and inspiration from. Because if you are getting inspiration from me, that's not me creating the inspiration in you, that's you creating the inspiration in you. And I think we put our self worth outside of ourselves too often. Jean Kittson: I think you'll provide the tools for people to manage themselves better. Which is what you do, Roy, and you are, you do it all based on the science of how humans behave and what motivates us. Roy Sugarman: Sure. Because in many ways we have a lot of similarities and differences from animals. So biologically it's quite easy to understand, and that takes the guilt away from people. The idea that when you're a young athlete and you don't get into the team or you don't succeed, I mean, Barcelona Academy will have 600 kids at any one time. None of them will play for Barcelona, apart from what their parents think, which is ‘all of them are going to play’, you know. So this expectation thing that said the drivenness to outcome, the forgetting, that self-reflection of what is valid and authentic for you is critical to the psychological flexibility of the young athletes or young medical students or young nursing students or otherwise, they start to look at suicide. We created an app a few years ago, 2017, we launched it, Time Magazine said we saved 23,000 lives. I don’t know how they got the figure, but you know… Layne Beachley: Go with it Roy Sugarman: My colleague Amanda, she, went with it, I hid! And she got under 30, you know, 30 influences of the year, and she became CEO of our startup in Delaware and everything else. The critical thing was vulnerability. We used the app to create vulnerability that people could experience without talking. They just had a swipe left and right to express vulnerability. And if you teach, vulnerability is good, that you self-reflect because every first year medical student, nursing student is taught to self-reflect on your values, what is valid and authentic. If you failed, you failed. It's okay, but did you fail on your own terms? If you left, you left on your own terms. Right? If you're going out of the door, it must be the door that you chose to leave, you know, so the crossing the line, the self-reflection that you talk about. So critical, but what are you reflecting on? What is valid and authentic for you at the time. And that's critical to an athlete mentality or success mentality. Jean Kittson: It must be critical to older people as well who have spent a life just fulfilling other people's expectations and succeeding in their business or whatever they've done without being elite athletes. I'm just trying to bring this back to what older people might experience when they retire and then suddenly they're left with themselves and looking at themselves maybe for the first time in their lives. And how are they going to deal with, how are they going to maintain a sense of self-esteem when how they valued themselves, maybe through their work or that has gone. Roy Sugarman: same with an athlete, same with an older person. It's your sense of identity. You have an athlete's identity. It's what you've been doing f

Series 7: Better With Age Too often ageing is painted as decline. In reality, Australians are living longer, healthier lives and reshaping what “older” looks like. This series flips the script and shows how ageing is not a dirty word but rather a time to be embraced, featuring interviews with extraordinary over 50s refusing to slip quietly into the background. The podcast is available at seniors.com.au/podcast or Watch DARE: The Time of Your Life on YouTube Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Apple Podcasts Listen to DARE: The Time of Your Life on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Myrtle & Pine See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After life The question of the afterlife fascinates us all, whether shaped by science, spirituality or something in between. In this episode, we explore what happens at the end of life, and what might follow, in a conversation with psychic medium Debbie Malone and science writer and journalist Bianca Nogrady. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. From vivid, near-death experiences to the quiet moments before death, this episode looks at how people make sense of the unknown. You’ll hear how psychic mediums describe receiving messages from those who’ve passed, what it feels like to come back from the brink, and how the scientific community approaches questions of consciousness, the soul, and what defines the moment of death. Debbie Malone is one of Australia’s most recognised psychic mediums, with over three decades of experience connecting people to their loved ones in spirit. As a medium, author and spiritual teacher, she works with individuals and audiences seeking comfort and closure, and has also assisted police on high-profile investigations involving missing persons and unsolved crimes. Bianca Nogrady is a journalist, author and science communicator who has spent more than a decade writing about death, dying and what it means to be mortal. Her book The End: The Human Experience of Death explores how cultures, clinicians, and individuals confront the reality of dying, and what we can learn from it. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT : S06EP07 After life James: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death. In this episode, well, this is a debate that's been going ever since we were alive. What happens after we die? No matter your religion or spiritual beliefs, the question of the afterlife fascinates us all. James: With the help of my guests, I'll explore everything we know, or perhaps don't quite know, about it from both a spiritual and scientific perspective. Bianca Nogrady is an award winning science journalist and the author of The End, The Human Experience of Death, and Debbie Malone is a psychic medium who felt a spiritual awakening after a series of near-death experiences. James: Bianca, Debbie, welcome to Life's Booming. So, Debbie, this starts with you. You've had a lot of near-death experiences. Debbie: Yes, I have. I had one at three and 13, then I had some, had another two in my early 20s. And then I had a miscarriage and then I woke up and started seeing murders and it was the backpacker murders, [that] was the first thing that I actually saw. James: What do you mean by seeing them? Debbie: I was becoming a victim and I was being, you know, I was being attacked and murdered, in visions and dreams. At the time the backpacker murders was a really big thing on the news and I just thought I was watching TV too much. And then I started to see things before they happened on the news. I used to work at Fairfax community newspapers and I kept seeing all of these different visions and I spoke to one of the journalists and he said, why don't we do a story about you and just see what happens. And then it ended up, Ivan Milat's girlfriend, Chalinda Hughes contacted the newspaper and wanted to make contact. And I ended up, consequently, working on the case with the taskforce for quite a few, quite a few years. James: Right. I feel I'm automatically going to go a bit glib, but you mean they go, okay, so Debbie, what's happened? What can we expect this weekend? Debbie: Yeah. And it's, and it's funny cause it's not like that. Because it's, and me being the sceptic, all I wanted to do was to shut it down. I didn't want to do anything, have anything to do with it. I'd never had a reading. I didn't, you know, have tarot cards or anything like that. And when it started to happen, at first the police were quite sceptical and I had to speak to a few different officers and then they just said, just keep a diary. And they said, don't think about what you see, just write it down, put a date down. And when I had enough information, I would send it through to them. I can't say that I have solved cases, it's more like I'm a profiler. So I can see, I can describe things. And the thing is with, when it comes through, it can be the past, it can be the present, or it can be the future. So it's like pieces of a puzzle. It's almost like playing charades in a way. So you're hearing things and seeing things and you try and work it out. James: So police weren't sceptical of this. Debbie: Oh, some were, some were. And yeah, I've had some challenging experiences with them, but I've had some incredible officers that I've worked with, you know, during the time as well. And I just thought once I did something with the backpacker murders, it would all go away and I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. I kind of thought that would be it. James: And by all go away, you mean the kind of visions you were having or you, you were getting a sense of, of… Are you, in this sense, are you someone who's seeing the future or are you someone who's seeing glimpses of the afterlife or something like that? Debbie: All of it. So the victims were coming to me, the two English girls were coming to me, and one of the visions was I could see somebody walking them into the forest, but I couldn't see who he was because I was seeing through his eyes. So they were walking away from me and they were kind of pleading with me to help them and then it would stop and then I would get a wall full of Polaroid images. And then it ended up, most of the images of the Polaroids were the other victims. But at the time, I didn't know. It was only later on when the case, you know, became solved – and some of those faces still haven't been, they haven't been linked to the case, so I think there's so many more. James: So going back to your near-death experiences. What did you see when that happened? What was your near-death experience? Debbie: My most vivid one, when I was 34, I had to have a major operation and I told the doctors that I was going to die and they thought I was being stupid. And I said about the anesthetic and they didn't believe me. Anyway, when I went through, I woke up after the operation and I was in a higher dependency, but they put me on a morphine drip and I didn't know I was allergic to morphine. So they kept telling me to, you know, push the button. And when I did, I ended up having a lot of really horrible visions to start with, but then I went through to this beautiful place. It was like, it was like a rollercoaster. Like, I love the night sky, and it was like I went up, I felt like I was an astronaut without a craft and I just could see the universe and I felt very calm. And then it was a lot of movement. The movie Contact for me is very close to my experience. And then I suddenly went into like, I would call it like a black hole. Cause I kind of feel like it was a vortex and I got sucked into it. But then, the movement was getting faster and faster, it's a bit like being on a rollercoaster. And then I landed in this meadow and everything seemed more colorful than it is here. And the stupid part about it, there was a privet hedge, I remember that. And it was about this tall, and there's this, like this little gate and there were people in front of me and they all went ahead, and then there's people on the other side and they all seemed so happy and you know, it just seems so beautiful and just, I felt so loved and peaceful. Then I got to my turn to go through the little gate and they said, no, you can't. And I'm a bit like, you know, I'm not the person that pushes in at the deli line. So it's like, you know, it's my turn. I want to go through. And they said, no, no, no, you can't, turn around. So I turned around and it was like, I was up in the sky, and I could see my – it makes me cry nearly every time I talk about it – I could see down that my one-year-old daughter was in my husband's arm, my three-year-old son was beside him and my seven-year-old was there, and the two boys are saying, where's mummy, where's mummy, and he said, mummy's not coming back, mummy's in heaven now. And then suddenly I fell back down and I'm back into the hospital room and the nurse is shaking me and they're pulling the morphine drip out. And she said, what are you doing? And I said, Oh, you know, I'm going to the light. And she said, not on my shift, it's too much paperwork. [laughter] James: Oh, the New South Wales public health system, it'll fix you up at any time. When you did your book, Bianca, did you do, did you talk to people with near-death experience or did you cover that area? Bianca: I did. I mean, the aim of my book was really to take, to kind of explore right up to the moment of death, but not beyond because I felt that my skills did not equip me to assess that in any kind of, in any form. But obviously people with near-death experiences did talk to me and also people who had talked to people with near-death experiences. Because one thing that really struck me with any time I hear stories like that is the people who've had them seem to lose their fear of death. You know, I think we all carry this fear of death in us. And I think it motivates a lot of what we do, but it, you know, I remember one woman just saying it was just so beautiful; I'm not scared, I'm just not scared of it anymore. James: Did you hear any, did people say the kind of detail that Debbie's describing there? I've never heard that. I've heard the light or that sort of thing, or feeling. I've never heard of such detail. Bianca: There was actually a study that was done that looked at a whole range of near-death experiences and tried to, I guess, classify some of the common elements to them and they sort of, that idea of there's a journeying, you know, it's a tunnel, it's driving down a road, maybe a rollercoaster, that there are, there's a journeying process and then there's a decision point. And at that decision point or junction, there is a sense that what is beyond is wonderful, that it's extraordinary and I want to be there. But then, either somebody says to them, no, it's not your time, there's something that turns them back. And I can't remember whether it's ever something that people, someone makes a conscious decision not to. From memory, people want to go forward, but someone else says, no, this is not your time. And, so, there's a pattern to those experiences, but in terms of the individual things, like I remember, one of the stories was a young soldier in world war… one of the major world wars, you know, who thought he was walking with his friends and then his friends just all kind of, he was just walking down this road and his friends just gradually disappeared. And, and then I think there was a point where someone said, no soldier, you've got to stop, go back. And so, you know, we bring to it our own circumstance, context, to it. But those features are common in all of them. James: But always good? Always in a sense of like going towards something good. This is going to be fine? Bianca: Well, it's interesting because there is a very small, very small, percentage of people who have horrific experiences, terrifying, terrifying experiences. I didn't hear of any of those stories, I don't know if you've encountered those… Debbie: Yeah, I have heard of that. Sometimes it's like they feel that, that movie What Dreams May Come, that Robin Williams was in, that kind of thing – kind of being stuck or earthbound, because a lot of the time when it's, sometimes it's someone who's tried to suicide and that they weren't, they weren't successful. James: I wonder if the, the near-death experience is a cultural thing. Like, did you look at that at all? Is it, is that… along the ways in which we talk about it seem to me very Western and almost very English, you know, like we talk about that sort of tradition. What do the South Americans do? What are the, what do the Germans do? Bianca: I think it is a cross-cultural phenomenon that, I mean, there's even, I think the earliest record of a near death, or what we think is a record of a near-death experience is actually from ancient Greece, and it was a description of a warrior. I don't know if there has been any kind of cross-cultural comparisons around near-death experiences. It would be really interesting. But I think what seems to come out is that it is very unique to that individual, what that experience is in terms of what the, what form the journey takes. James: You said Bianca, your book was, you know, I wanted to do up to death. What did you decide death was? Bianca: Well, that's a very good question because we don't actually, the definition of death is contested. And it is culturally specific. There are whole conferences that are held, still, on how we define death, and it's incredibly difficult. And the thing is, we don't need to define death unless we are wanting to donate organs. That's essentially the main reason we need a definition of death. We need a legal definition of death, so that if somebody is an organ donor, we know that removing their organs is not actually killing them. But it's incredibly complex. It's around the notion of when your heart stops, are you dead? But if your heart stops, we can restart your heart. If you stop breathing, we can re-, we can ventilate you. If your brain stops, how do we measure what brain activity, what's the difference between someone, for example, who's in [an] incredibly deep coma versus someone who might be what we now term as brain dead. And again, those definitions differ in different countries. I mean, again, if there's no time pressure, such as there would be with something like organ donation, then we do have the luxury of time to be able to wait. But there have been numerous cases where – there was one case in fact, where a surgeon was facing manslaughter charges because [of] a dispute over whether the person was in fact dead when he began to remove the organs. And it has very specific applications. There's been legal cases around brain death where two people were involved, a husband and wife involved in a car accident, who died first because that had implications in terms of the inheritance. And so there have been very complicated cases. And I mean, we talk about, well, brain death, well, loss of activity in the brain. But there is a state of, for lack of a better word, chronic brain death where people… The longest, I think, was somebody who literally survived for a decade and a half, a child who, I think they suffered meningitis, but they were kept on life support, breathing, they went through puberty. And then when they finally decided, we're not going to treat, or the decision was made to cease treatment for pneumonia, for example, which I guess is, you know, usually a common cause of death at that state. And when the autopsy was performed, and sorry this is a little bit brutal, but the brain was essentially calcified. So this, this individual was by legal definitions alive, up until that point, but you know, were they there? What had departed from that person? James: If the brain is the seed of consciousness, then they could not have been conscious, but then is the brain the seed of consciousness? You know, like all sorts of questions there. What do you think death is, Debbie, what's death? Debbie: Yeah, it's a hard one because I do believe there is life after, I suppose, the death is the death of the body, but I don't think it's the death of the soul. And I find that that's the thing that lives on and even you can measure it like when you make contact sometimes with spirit, they were an electromagnetic frequency. So EMF testers that you'd use to test a microwave will actually indicate when there's a spirit in the room, you know. But, when you're talking about transplants, another thing that I was thinking, I've done readings for people, like a lady who'd had a transplant. So she ended up, she was in a coma, but she had had a transplant from a young man, and it was a lung transplant, I think. And then she was in a coma and her mum came to see me, to see if like… because when people are in a coma, I can communicate with them even though they are still physically alive. And what was interesting, the person from the transplant came through the reading at the same time as the person who was the recipient. So it's, and you think, well, he's passed away, but he's living on through her. That, you know, but then he gave life to her to extend her life. So… Bianca: …I find that fascinating… Debbie: … that's even like, I suppose that's a whole other story. James: Well then. What's the, what's the soul? What's this soul thing that's then hanging around? Where is it hanging around? What is it? Debbie: What does it do? James: …Do you think there's a reincarnation? Debbie: Yes. James: Like what, what are you, what are you, what is, you seem to have gleaned a lot of information from the afterlife – let us know what's going on! Debbie: Oh, look, I definitely do feel that we, that we do live on. And I'm… One of the things that I do is called psychometry. So from holding or touching something, it's like I can, I can see through my hands, kind of thing. So you can touch an inanimate object, like a piece of jewellery. You can use clothing, but we tend to wash it. But say I went to Scotland and touched the sacred stones and I could see back into the past by touching that or just being in a historical site. And a lot of people might go to say a battle site or something, and they will feel that energy of sadness or, you know, or it might be a happy place, but you know, we tend to, we feel that. So I do feel that that energy does exist. But from my own personal experience, I did, you know, I've had past-life experiences, and one thing I did, I've been under hypnosis quite a lot of times with the police, but I did it to contact someone for a case, but it ended up, it took me back. So I had a past life and it was, I think unless I had my own proof, I would think, you know, I need to see-it-to-believe-it kind of thing. You know, I have seen things happen and even like children coming through and they know all about their great grandfather who they got their middle name or something so they can talk about them. James: Bianca, you're a science writer, you know, you edit science journals. Science, you know – Debbie, you know, this is just rubbish? Is there, is there, is there much science around this? Do scientists tend to just, you know, poo-poo this stuff? Bianca: It's funny. I always think of that, is it that line from Hamlet, there are greater things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

LIFE’S BOOMING SERIES 6: Dying to Know Episode 6: Finding the funny side Many of us are embracing more humour following the death of a loved one. But how do we make space for laughter without feeling like we’re getting it wrong? Comedian Michelle Brasier and grief counsellor Marianne Bowdler share their experiences. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. In this episode, we explore the psychology behind our fear of death and how humour can help us face it. From heartfelt eulogies that land a laugh to finding the line between lightness and respect, we look at how Australians are using comedy to cope, connect and heal. Michelle Brasier is an award-winning comedian, writer and performer known for her sharp wit, musical talent and deeply personal storytelling. After losing both her father and brother to cancer, Michelle channelled her grief into her stage show Average Bear (on ABC iview) , and book My Brother's Ashes are in a Sandwich Bag , which blend humour, vulnerability and hope. Marianne Bowdler is the clinical services manager at Griefline , where she supports Australians experiencing grief, loss and trauma. She draws on years of experience to explain how laughter, when used thoughtfully, can offer relief, connection and healing. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT : S06EP06 Finding the funny side James: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine and this season we're talking about death, but it's not all doom and gloom. On this episode we're going to embrace the funny side of grief. Forty-seven percent of the over 50s want to embrace more humor following the death of a loved one, according to an Australian senior's cost of death report. Helping us navigate this somewhat confusing terrain are two women who've built their careers around talking about death in very different ways. Marianne Bowdler is a grief counsellor and clinical services manager at Griefline, who's worked extensively supporting marginalised communities through bereavement, attachment and loss. And Michelle Brasier is a comedian, writer and actor. Her frank and fearless brand of cabaret comedy has never made death funnier and has taken her all the way to Broadway. Marianne, Michelle, welcome to Life's Booming. James: What's Griefline? Who calls? Marianne: Griefline, we interpret grief very broadly. So grief is any response to a loss. So we lose lots of things, don't we? Might be, you see a house flooding down the river after a flood, could be redundancy, could be bankruptcy, might've lost your keys, the dog might've gone missing, so anything. James: Do people think to call you in that sort of thing? Marianne: More and more they do, more and more, and also ecological grief, which is that kind of nostalgia that we have for how the climate used to be. Michelle: Oh no. Right. Yeah, right. Marianne: And the landscape that was. And the beach that used to be at Byron. James: Yeah, so it's sort of an existential grief. Marianne: Grief is existential. James: Yeah, yeah. And then what, what can you offer? What happens when I call? Marianne: It's that annoying concept, isn't it? We hold space. It's about listening without judgment. And it's about enabling people to actually shine a torch into the darkness of the sorrow and the anguish that they might be experiencing. James: Yeah. Marianne: I mean, I think a lot of times you might be a young mom and you can't really be grieving because you've got to look after the kids. There's lots of times when you can't express your grief and it's quite helpful to be able to talk to a neutral third party who can be supportive. James: Yeah. There'd be cultural issues as well in some cases. Yes. And who's on the end of the line, like who's listening? Marianne: Our lovely band of volunteers. Yeah. So we have hundreds of volunteers and oftentimes it's someone who's been through a significant grief experience and therefore they know what it's like and they want to support somebody else. Or it might be students who are trying to learn something a bit beyond psychology, a bit more about existential things. James: Yeah. Michelle: Hmm. James: Michelle, you know about grief? Michelle: I know about grief. I'm an old hat at grief for such a young dog. I, yeah, I talk about this publicly all the time, but to do a little recap, we talk about this all the time. You and I, but I, my father was diagnosed when I was 18, with cancer and he died a week later. And shortly after that, my brother was diagnosed with a similar cancer and he died a few months later. And, I am now… assumed Lynch syndrome, which is a genetic… what's the word I'm looking for? Mutation. Yeah. Predisposition. It's a predisposition, to certain types of cancers. and so I'm always being poked and prodded and things, and getting things, you know, cut out, and early intervention, which is really lovely, but it means that grief has become a good friend of mine. And I make shows about all kinds of things, but one of my most successful shows, that you can watch on ABC iView that became my book, is called Average Bear. And it's about, it's about grief, but it's also about hope. And I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that grief is always a bad thing. And I think that it's a really wonderful way through something in a really wonderful way to honour something. So I try to make shows that are funny about things that are sad. James: Yeah. What did you even know of grief? I mean, there you are, 18, 19 years old. I mean, I'm thinking of 18, 19-year-old me. I wouldn't have had a clue. I would never even know what it was. Michelle: I didn't know anything. I mean, I hadn't, my nan had passed away, but she'd had Alzheimer's for my whole life. And she died when I was quite young, oo I didn't really have any experience of grief except the dog. And even the dog, I had been told had gone to the farm, classic. James: Right. Michelle:And I truly thought that the dog had gone to the farm until I was about 26. And I went, Oh no! [laughter] But yeah, so I hadn't really had any, any life experience of grief. I hadn't really had any life experience at all. I mean, of course, I think, you know, it really hit me in the face. I had just gotten out of hospital myself cause I'd been in a fire, and had had third degree burns and had to learn to walk again. And I was surrounded by a lot of grief there, but I didn't know it was right around the corner for me. I saw people lose people all the time. And I was, you know, starting to wise up that maybe the world wasn't quite so simple, but when I lost my dad so fast, grief became a very fast, you know, friend and a big element of my life and something I was so interested in, because my friends weren't going through it. It was very strange. I think when you're young and you lose somebody. If you are the first one in your friendship group, it can be really isolating or you can choose to, you know, oh yeah. Make it a place of fun. Marianne: It’s like you joined a club you didn't want to… Michelle: …the Dead Dad Club, as I call it. Yeah, yeah. James: Yeah, yeah. But you had no prep for it. I mean, it'd be something if you had cancer for a few years.. Michelle:…Yeah. James: You know, you'd, you'd have a chance to talk to you your mother about it, everybody about it, start to realise this was going to happen. You know, it must have been just like some, it'd be like a disease itself, wouldn't it? Michelle: Well, it is. I mean, I think it just happens when it does happen so fast like that, it was an assault on the senses. And I have a chapter in my book that's called ‘the actual stages of grief’ because that's how I've experienced it. And I talk about how the world becomes small, like the world just closes in and you find yourself, you know, just assaulted by all these ideas and they don't feel real until you finally eat a piece of pizza again. And, you know, I think it, it was a really fast introduction into perspective and a really quick, life lesson in being curious and trying to open yourself up to as many experiences as you can because you don't know how long you have. And I mean, dad was just that, that was the canary in the coalmine. I didn't know it was going to lead to my brother and all the, you know, we didn't realise it was like a first domino. I was like, Oh, this is the bad thing that happens in my life. It didn't feel like a marker, but now it's very clear that that was the point where my life changed and continued to sort of tumble on down. But I'm still really grateful for, you know, the things that I've learned from grief and the way that I've learned to, to honour people. James: Yeah. Marianne, can we prepare for grief? I mean, is it something that, it should be something that's part of all of our lives that we think about what this might mean, or is it just something that you, you're going to have to experience it when it happens? Marianne: It's spectacularly unhelpful to say the dog's gone to the farm. James: Yes. [laughter] Michelle: Mum? Are you listening?! James: But I suppose that's not a bad place to start, is it? People often feel like having the guinea pig or the dog is a good way to teach children about death. Marianne: Exactly. And it's, how do you have those conversations? I think very little children are quite interested and curious about death because you find like a dead beetle or a dead bee and you're like: what is life that now has departed from this dead beetle or what have you. And it sort of disappears for a bit and then it comes back in the teenage years where you can get, you know, very emo and nihilistic and want to get skulls and crossbones tattooed. James: Grandma dies when you're a teenager. Marianne: …yeah… James: …That's not uncommon. That's about the age. Marianne: And I think it's more helpful now because we tend to take the children to the funeral. Whereas back in the day when children were really excluded from any of the processes around death, or even from going to visit grandma in hospital, we don't want your memory of her to be with all the tubes and what have you. And then it's just not real. And you try and explain to your young child and they're like, Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. But is she coming to my birthday? James: Yeah. Marianne: There's that sort of, you didn't quite get it. James: But I feel like that's, that's, that's learning about death, not necessarily about grief. Grief is what you're going to feel, that, you know, grief is the price we pay for love or grief is, you know, when you're still trying to love, but the person isn't there. Like those are the things you can't know that until it's your mum that dies or your wife that dies. Right. Marianne: Well, I think literature can help, we, you know, develop our empathy from reading, but really nothing prepares you till you go through it. Michelle: I think even the grief of losing a relationship can be really hard. Any grief, your first experience of grief, and I think it's just wonderful to have someone on the other side of it who can say, I went through it. Here's how it felt. Here's what the aftermath was like. Here's what it was like when all the flowers died and people stopped bringing lasagna and they forgot that I was grieving and they moved on. Here's what that pocket is like, and here's what it's like five years after. And here's what it's like 10 years after. And that's what I think the stories bring in value is going, Hey, it's fine. And here it is. And I survived and here's how. Day to day, here's how. I think that's really beautiful because I remember just going, how am I ever going to be okay? How is this going to be okay? And calling people that I knew that were older than me who had lost people and saying, can you just please tell me it's going to be okay and tell me why and tell me examples of how it's okay. Marianne: And then the only downside of that is that you can get this sort of narrative of this is the way to grieve. And then what we hear are many stories that people have different ways of grieving. James: Yeah. Marianne: Yeah. It's not, not everybody, like when I grieve, I kind of cry a river and then get a headache. James: Right. Marianne: Wish that weren't true, but that's, that's just it, but not everybody does that. James: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this was this, you know, Elizabeth Kübler Ross was very popular and talked about for many years with the seven stages of, of grieving, but there is no fixed… you might be angry for a minute, you might be angry for a week, you know, like there's nothing fixed about it, is it? The duration, neither the duration nor the order. Marianne: Exactly. And you might feel all the emotions all at the same time. James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michelle: Or none of them. Marianne: Or none of them. Michelle: And that's something that a lot of people don't talk about as well. James: Yeah. Michelle: You might feel just numb for quite a time, and that's okay. Like there's nothing wrong with that. It is, it is an interesting thing to go through, but such a beautiful and human thing. I mean, I love how we make meaning of things that aren't necessarily meaningful as, as people. And I think that's how we add value to our lives. And honour those who have died, but yeah… James: When you say that, what do you, do you mean we will make meaning out of; do you mean we're making meaning out of grief because grief is very meaningful, isn't it? Michelle: Well, just meaning out of the little things. So like taking control of your story, and I suppose this is my experience, but I always tell the story of my, when my father was dying and he had been diagnosed with cancer and I had just learned to walk again and got out of the hospital. And I had this feeling that I should go home to my country town where my dad lived. I was just like, I just feel like I should go. I feel like something's gone wrong because they'd said to us, there'll be another Christmas, which is another thing you go, okay, and that's a bargain. You go, okay, all right, great. I'll be at least another Christmas. And I had this feeling in the middle of the night that we weren't gonna get another Christmas, and then I, we weren't gonna get another 24 hours. And I got in the car and I drove, and my brother called me in the middle of the night and said, I've, you know, I've just gotten back to Wagga. We've booked you on the first flight. Dad's asking for you. He's not good. And I was like, you can cancel the flight, I'm in Albury, I'm an hour away. I just knew. And I'm not religious. I'm not, you know, I don't necessarily think I'm super spiritual or anything like that, but I make meaning where there is none in that I felt I had to be there. And so I was there. And when I say there is none, it's because I would have been on the first flight in the morning anyway, and I would have seen him and I would have got to say goodbye anyway. But there is so much beauty and poetry in driving through the night because I had a feeling and it could have meant nothing. It could, he could have not gone and he did. He went the next day. But that's where we put meaning, you know, as somebody who's not religious, I can see the value of religion and the value of faith and going, Well, I don't have necessarily religion or faith, but I have this meaning in stories, you know, it's that it's the meaning and then the humor that undercuts all that meaning. And I think that's what makes it human. And that's what makes it special. James: Yeah. Marianne, you know, perhaps we can only learn to grieve when it happens to us. We could learn, we could all learn to deal with other people's grief, right? As a society, are we well equipped with dealing with the grieving? Marianne: Kind of saying, no. James: Well, something we'll leave in question. Michelle: So polite of you. Marianne: Yes. Because our statutory bereavement leave is only two days. Michelle: Is it? Yeah. I don't have a real job, so I don't know these things. Marianne: Yeah. So that's not. Michelle: Two days? Marianne: Two days. And so workplaces struggle to know how to support people. We do trainings for like work, you know, how to support your colleagues, how to support the teammates, how to cope in the office. A lot of, there's a lot of interest because people just like, we don't know, we don't know how to support the team. James: So, you know, I'd struggle to know whether to say something or not. I didn't, probably don't want this mentioned in the workplace, but then I should have said something and then it's all too late. Michelle: But I don't think it's ever too late. And I think that it's the struggle that's about you. It's not about the person who's grieving and you can go to a person and just say, Hey, Would you like to talk about this, or would you like to leave it? That's not going to make a person cry, and if it is, they're so close to crying that they're going to cry anyway, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with crying. We sort of want to just hold it. It's a Britishness in us, I think. We just want to hold these emotions in. I just think we can't treat people who are grieving, or who are dying for that matter, with cotton gloves, we can't, you know, and that's why I make these shows for people to come and laugh. And I have so many audience members who are actively dying and they come and they're like, tonight might be the night. Let's go. I was like, yes, like, let's have a laugh. If you only have 24 hours left, the least I can do is give you a laugh. Like, I think that we need to invite people into grief and into dying. And, you know, it's the problem with our society is that we go, Ooh, and, you know, people who are dying so often – and I'm sure maybe you even have this experience – but people get diagnosed with cancer and people just back off because they don't want to say the wrong thing. People aren't going to be upset with you for saying the wrong thing. They're going to be upset with you for disappearing in that tiny little period where they needed you the most. You'll get it wrong and that's fine. They'll tell you how to do it right. And you'll fix it like an adult, grow up. James: That is a fundamental thing, isn't it? We're too scared of getting it wrong. I'm sorry for your loss. Oh God. Was that terrible thing to say? Like maybe, maybe it is a terrible thing to say, but it's better than not saying anything. Marianne: Or, or in the workplace, where everybody's looking at the children's photos from the holiday and then the colleague whose child died. And the colleague will say, you know, I think about my child every moment of every day. It's not like you've done something to remind me. I'm fully aware. Michelle: Yeah. I know my kid is dead. Yeah. I don't need you

With most people now preferring to focus on celebrating life rather than mourning at funerals, we explore the new ways people are choosing to commemorate loved ones, and hear first hand experience of what it's like to grieve in the public eye, with acclaimed author Blanche d’Alpuget, widow of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and experienced funeral and life celebrant Evelyn Calaunan. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Blanche d’Alpuget is an acclaimed Australian author and the widow of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke. In this episode, Blanche reflects on public and private rituals of mourning, what it means to say goodbye well, and how grief reshapes us. Her latest novel, The Bunny Club (her first murder mystery), is out now. Evelyn Calaunan is a celebrant who has conducted more than 600 ceremonies, including living funerals that are heartfelt gatherings held before death to honour a life while the person is still present. Drawing on her background in palliative care and community work, Evelyn helps individuals and families create ceremonies that are deeply personal. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT : S06EP04 Going out with style James: Hi, I'm James Valentine. Welcome to Life's Booming. This season is Dying to Know. We're having the conversations that are often the hardest to have with people who've experienced life's one great certainty, death. It touches everyone, but how we honor our loved ones in death is changing, with most of us now preferring to focus on celebrating life rather than mourning at funerals. So in this episode, we explore some of the new ways people are choosing to commemorate life, as well as hearing first hand experience of what it's like to grieve in the public eye. Generously sharing their professional and personal stories are our guests. Evelyn Calaunan is an experienced celebrant who specialises in living funerals. And Blanche d’Alpuget is an acclaimed author and widow of former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Evelyn Blanche, welcome to Life's Booming. Blanche: Oh, thank you, James. James: Evelyn, you describe yourself as an end of life celebrant. What exactly does that mean? What do you mean by end of life celebrant? Evelyn: So I've done, I've done ceremonies, as well. I used to be a wedding celebrant and I've married a few couples where one of the partners was diagnosed with a terminal illness, so I would do the ceremony and that turned out to be sort of a life celebration and they just wanted to marry before one of them died. And then I've done a ceremony where the person was actually dying and we did it. The end of life sort of life celebration for him. And he passed away, I think, 10 days after, after the ceremony. That's why I think it's, it's best just to celebrate life now, like have those milestone birthdays or whatever birthday number you're turning and have a great party now - why wait till you have a diagnosis or a terminal illness that's looming? So it's important to have those, those celebrations now. However, in saying that, sometimes people are diagnosed and like, ‘Oh God, I didn't have that party. So I want to have something now.’ I did do a life celebration for my girlfriend who was diagnosed with cancer. And I did a little bit of a ceremony and a ritual and I shared a poem and I was getting a bit too sad for everybody there - cause we were really… It was like a 70s party, we were all dressed up and enjoying each other's company. And then after a while we could tell people were really getting upset because of her diagnosis. And then she came on the microphone. She said, ‘Okay, okay. That's enough, Evelyn, let's go on to karaoke’, you know, so, yeah, It turned out to be a lovely celebration and she wanted to invite people there from all parts of her life and just be able to have a good party with them while she was still feeling well. James: Yeah Yeah Evelyn: And I've done about 600 end of life ceremonies. James: It just sounds like 600 sounds like a lot Evelyn: Yeah, but in the context of 17 years, that's really not. James: I think the thing that struck me about that number was, does it get routine? Evelyn: Not really. I mean a lot of the script is or the script that I have – I mean, there's only so many ways you can say I'd like to welcome everyone here today. So I'll write a ceremony and I might say, ‘Oh, you know, Joe Blow leaves behind his loving sister’, and then the parents will come back and say, ‘Please take loving out, they couldn't stand each other!’ So, you know, there's a lot of adjectives that are changed because I kind of make my ceremonies quite flowery and people like to change that and make it more real. So yeah. James: Blanche, you had the experience of, in a way, one of the biggest funerals and biggest moments of public grief in Australian life, the death of Bob Hawke and the funeral and memorial service of Bob Hawke. How much did you and Bob plan those events together? Blanche: Not at all. No, no. That was all left up to me. James: Right. So you planned those events. So my understanding is Bob knew he was dying, right? You knew it was, say, a year before, that kind of thing, you knew it was, it would, it must have been coming. Blanche: Well, you don't know exactly when. When he started dying, it just fell like an axe. It was very sudden, out of the blue, we were having dinner. And he was in a bad way. He was in a lot of pain from peripheral neuropathy, so he was on morphine tablets and the fentanyl patches. Obviously it was going to be at some stage, but suddenly we're having dinner and we finished dinner and he got up from dinner and he actually went into the living room and actually threw up and he was in enormous pain, suddenly. And he got on the floor and said, ‘Oh, it's unbearable. The pain's unbearable’. And I said to him, ‘Yes, Bob, you're dying.’ And that was, so that was the beginning. James: How did he take that? Like, how did he take his death? So the, the imminence of his death? Blanche: Well, he'd said all along, I have no fear of death. And I used to think all along, wait until you get there. [laughter] It's one thing, not fearing death. It's another thing fearing dying, and dying can be difficult. Being born is difficult, life is difficult, and dying can be difficult too. But then I think it's wonderful, when you actually… Because I believe in the spirit and the soul, and I've seen enough of people dying to be convinced of it, there's an absolutely uplifting feeling as, as it goes, as it leaves the body. James: What did he believe, particularly at that point? Blanche: I sort of badgered him with my ideas for 25 years, so [laughter]. He'd started off an agnostic and he was still probably agnostic, but when he died, he wasn't. I mean, I could see it on his face. He didn't say, ‘Oh my God, I can, I see heaven’. But there was such a heavenly look on his face. As I saw on my mother's face. James: What do you see, Evelyn, the difference between, do you see a difference between those who are dying and have belief and faith and those who don’t. How does that express itself? How do you see it play out? Evelyn: What I've seen or what I've experienced talking to families is that that they could see at the end that they, if they were quite sick, cause I always ask, I always ask my families, how was it the last few days? And they always say to me, that, you know, just about a few days before they died, they had this really lucid moment where they sat up and we had a really good conversation. And, and then a few days later, they passed away. And another thing that I actually really would like to share is that most of the families, they get really upset if their person hasn't passed in front of them. They're waiting for that moment. But I have found in all of the many funerals I've done, I would say about 80%, if not more, the loved one usually passes away when someone will just go out to the toilet or go… I've had to explain that to families because they're, they're so upset. Like, ‘you know, I was sat there, I slept on, by the side, the side of the bed of my mother, and I was holding her hand and I, I just had to go to the toilet. I come back and she died on me’ - you know, but it's so common. James: Why are you nodding Blanche? You heard this a lot too. Blanche: Oh yes, it's very well known that because the loved one is hanging on emotionally, psychologically to the one who's dying. And so, the dying one can't leave, and that has to grab the moment. Do you agree with the Evelyn? Evelyn: Yeah I definitely agree with that, and I've heard the stories too many times to not discount that, and I think at the end of life, I think we just kind of resort to being kind of like cats or dogs – you know how they go to a corner to die. I think we kind of are like that as well. James: Yeah. Did you, were you there with when Bob died? Blanche: Yep. Holding his hand. I'd done a very foolish thing before. I'd spent all day lying down beside him, and he had pneumonia, he developed pneumonia. And I had an appointment with an acupuncturist and I went to see her. She took my pulse, which is the first thing you do with acupuncture, and she said, What have you been doing? And I said, I've been lying down with Bob, he's dying. She said, You've got no pulses. You'll die. She said, You've given him all your life energy and you must stop. And you can only hold his hand. You mustn't touch any more of his body than that. And indeed, while I was lying down beside him, his breathing improved, his color came back, he started – he was, had morphine, so I was in a morphine sleep – but he just started to look good. And as soon as I just moved away from him, he went back into pneumonia and dying. James: Yeah. Did you see the moment? Blanche: Yeah. Oh yes. James: What was that? Blanche: It was marvelous. It was… He gave a huge sigh, and then I felt the room was full of angels. It was very, very uplifting. It was very thrilling. And the same thing with my mother actually. I was with her when she died. And it was so exciting, I wanted to ring her up immediately and say, Hey mum, guess what I just saw? James: She probably knows. She probably knew. What kind of descriptions do you hear of the moment? Evelyn: Yeah, I hear the same as well, that when they finally took their last breath, they just looked so peaceful and they looked without pain. But in saying that, because I am, I do the funerals like, you know, a few days after they die, a lot of things happen at the funerals too, like, you know, birds brushing up against the window when you mention their name. Or, you know, light fluttering in when you're doing a reflection. I've witnessed a lot of that or even electrics going out during certain motions and then someone will ring out, ‘Oh, that's mum, she always wanted to make a big scene, you know.’ So I've witnessed a lot of that to know that there is something beautiful, you know, beautiful on the other side. And I feel when their body is still here on, on the, on the plane, like that time from when they die to when the funeral, I feel there's, their essence is really all around us. And some of the essence does come out at the funeral and some of the things people say… yeah, it's just beautiful. James: It's a fusion, I suppose, like I'm feeling a sense of a fusion of a, of a spirit and whatever that might be, but also our huge consciousness of them. You know, there's so much consciousness all the way, there's suddenly, you know, sometimes hundreds, thousands of people will be thinking about this person and remembering, you know, that, that's also a life force in some ways, isn't it? Blanche: Yes. I remember at Bob's, at the private funeral, I had no idea what I was going to say. And suddenly I looked in my handbag and there was a piece of paper with a poem on it. And there was exactly the right thing. I hadn't seen the poem before, but it was exactly the right thing to read in the circumstances. James: Had someone popped it in there, or? Blanche: No. James: Mmm. Blanche: Weird. James: Weird. Blanche: I'm weird. [laughter] James: I suppose I wondered about the experience of grief when it's going to be that public. And I do, there's a public funeral, but there was also, there's an immediate, sorry, private funeral, but there's also an immediate public thing you've got to deal with, with media and with the nation learning all that kind of thing. Blanche: That was a nightmare, a real nightmare. I think I probably had a thousand emails and texts, for starters. And I was really grieving, really, really upset. So I'd go up shopping and burst into tears over the cauliflowers. [laughter] I haven’t got anything against cauliflower. And I didn't have a moment, really, to grieve properly. I mean, I had the odd moments, but it was so busy, once he died because of who he was, and everybody wanting a slice of the salami, basically. James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How'd you handle it? Blanche: You just do James. When stuff gets thrown at you, you just handle it as best you can. Whether I did it well or ill, I don't know. James: And so then what, how did you handle your grief? Did you have to do that later? Blanche: Unfortunately. And I got… So the next year I got breast cancer. And I do think that was grief. James and Evelyn: Mm. Yeah. Blanche: He died in May, I moved out of the house in September, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer in February. James: Yeah. Yeah. That's too much, isn’t it Blanche: Well, it's life, you know, you just got to accept it. James: Because it seems sort of unimaginable, like just having to have so much to process, you've got a whole, there's a whole other complication… Blanche: …and people still come up to me. Almost six years later. And say, I wish he was still here. Yeah. That's quite common. Especially as we approach an election! [laughter] James: Well, yes, I could feel that too! And is that, is that a nice thing? Is it nice having, to be remembered like that? Blanche: Oh, yes, because it's all, it's always very civil and kind. Evelyn: And I think people feel like they know him, even though he wasn't, you know, their husband or father, they wanted a piece of him. And I think they wanted to fully grieve and honor his life. And that's why having that public funeral was very, was very necessary. Because I do think memorials, or anything, is necessary, even if you just for five minutes, it's like, let's just stop and think about whoever's past. We need that. We need that. And I've seen too often, in my… over the years, where a lady's past, was in her 80s, and what was going to be put in the coffin with her were ashes from her stillborn child. So she never did a ceremony for that. And I remember her husband was telling me, You know, she always talked about her stillborn. And they never knew what to do with the ashes. And so I think, if they would have had just a little bit of a ceremony honouring that child, or the stillbirth, that would have helped for them to go further. So we just need it, we just need moments to get together… James: Tell me more about why I think it's necessary. What, what, what is the… Because a lot of people will say this thing, ‘Look, cardboard box, put me out in the, put me out with the rubbish. You know, put me in the top paddock, let the crows have a go’, you know, like you get that sort of expression. But then you're, you know, what you're saying is it's very important, not even, not just for the person that's died, almost more for everybody else. Evelyn: I think funerals, end of life ceremonies, are really important for the people who are left behind. Like just us being together and honoring that person in a space and having this sort of energy directed towards this person that we love. But people, they don't want to have these ceremonies. And I don't, I don't know if it's an Australian thing, you know, cause I've heard that a lot, just put me out on the, you know, on the trash and I'll be, I'll be right, mate. But I think honoring that person is really important just for those who are left behind. James: Think it's Australian, a little bit Australian? Blanche: Yes, I do. And it's because we're so secular. James: Right. Blanche: I think. James: Well, I think a lot of the, a lot of the discussions we've been having here, or the point of these discussions in this, in this series has been because we've lost, you know, if half of us were Catholics and the other half were Anglicans and, you know, there were a few other sects alongside, that gave us the structures and gave us the ritual to the funerals. Whereas these discussions, a lot of it has been about, well, if you're not that, and that is an increasingly larger proportion of the population, well, what is it? What are you marking? Why, what is death? What is the funeral? What is the ceremony for? What, what's the funeral for? Blanche: The funeral is to celebrate the life. And I might say that although I want an, an, an inexpensive casket or coffin, I don't want a nothing funeral. I want ‘When the saints go marching in’, played at the end of it! James: it. Yes. Blanche: Fun. James: Yeah. Did Bob have much planning in the memorial? Did he think about that? Blanche: None. Unlike Gough [Whitlam]. Gough planned his funeral down to the last tea. Bob left it entirely to others. He didn't even think about it. James: Right. And what, what hand did you have in that? Was that something where it was hard to express perhaps your love because there's protocol, there's stuff that had to be done? Blanche: Oh, well, there were a number of formal speakers who had to be there, and I wasn't one of those. The one person representing the family was his eldest child, Sue, and then all the rest were pollies. James: And did it feel like you, did that feel like a memorial of Bob Hawke or the Bob Hawke you knew, or the Bob Hawke we knew? Blanche: It was the Bob Hawke the public knew. But there's also a lot of, as you were saying, a lot of information in that. Evelyn: Yeah. And, and I'd like to share this that, at a funeral, at least 80% of the guests there will find out something new about their person that they never knew. And we can all relate to that. So it's very common. And even sons and daughters, I've found, they know very little about their parents from before they were born. So, you know, they don't even know these basic

Matters of life and death Australia’s death care and funeral industry is big business. We meet death doula Dr Annetta Mallon and funeral industry adviser Martin Tobin, two caring and passionate business owners supporting you and your loved ones through the last step on life’s journey. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Dr Annetta Mallon is an end-of-life consultant, doula and educator and grief psychotherapist based in Tasmania. With decades of experience in trauma recovery and personal growth, Annetta helps people understand their rights and options at the end of life – especially those without a strong support network. Martin Tobin is a recognised family name in the funeral business. He is founder of Funeral Direction , a consultancy supporting funeral homes and cemeteries across Australia and New Zealand. A former solicitor, Martin brings legal, strategic and business insight, and is focused on helping the industry evolve through innovation, education and long-term planning. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel at Myrtle & Pine Studios -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT : S06EP03_Matters of Life and Death James: Hello, and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine, and this season, we're talking about death. In this episode, we're talking about matters of life and death, well, the final matter, how we say goodbye. Death is big business, and Australia's death care and funeral industry is worth more than $2 billion. And with us are two entrepreneurs, two people who work in this area, supporting you and your loved ones through the last step on life’s journey. We're joined by Dr. Annetta Mallon, an end of life consultant, an educator, and also known as a death doula. And Martin Tobin is a recognised family name in the funeral business and is now an expert adviser on the global funeral industry. Annetta, Martin, welcome to Life's Booming. So many places to start. I'm excited. And Martin, I'll start with you. What's it like when the family business is death? Martin: Yeah, well, it's all I've ever known. When I was, you know, when I was born and grew up, I, we actually lived in a funeral parlour. Um, so when I was, for the first two or three years of my life, uh, the funeral parlour was downstairs. We lived upstairs. So when it's all you've known, you don't think anything different of it. And I suppose all of my friends and sort of social groups when I was young and a teenager thought it was pretty quirky and funny, but for me, it was what I knew. My grandfather and his brother started our family business in the thirties. And by the time I came along, it was well, well and truly established. I didn't really work directly in it straight away after leaving school, but it was always in the background. And so I've always been comfortable with it. James: Yeah. But such an interesting thing. Like what's, what's the dinner time conversation. Did you have a good day, darling? Good deaths? Some good deaths? Martin: Well, all of that. You know, I think that's the stereotype, isn't it, that funeral directors are a bit, sort of weird and severe and a bit morbid, but, but it's, it's far from the truth. You know, I think most people who work in funeral service, and the work that Annetta does, are really warm and loving and gregarious people because you have to have those qualities to really survive and thrive in, in what we do in that space. James: You kind of got to love life, Annetta. Annetta: Absolutely. We are fiercely alive until we are dead. And I think that. Whether it's from the professional funeral side of things or more from consumer advocate and personal support side of things, coming in with a joke – why do we screw the coffin lids down so hard to keep the oncologist out. Great icebreaker: show up with cake. Make jokes, because most of us have a lot of laughter and love in our lives and it's important to leaven sorrow and, and grief. Martin: Yeah. Don't let death just drown out the… James: What's the undertaker's joke? Martin: Oh, there's so many. I mean, everyone used to, I used to get called Stiffy Tobin, that sort of stuff. James: Stiffy, Tobin… Martin: …you know, a bit. So a lot of funeral directors get called Stiffy. Annetta: …that's a 1930s cartoon character, isn't it? James: It's like, it's the, the Millers, the Millers and bakers are Dusty. You know, it's that, it's that era, isn't it? Annetta: You're a Tintin character. James: Yeah, exactly. Martin: Yeah. Luckily I wasn't, you know, I don't fit the stereotype of tall and gray. I'm sort of fairly short and not gray. And so when I joined our family business, I was quite young. So I was lucky I sort of didn't fit that stereotype. And back in the early 90s, there was very few women, very few people, young people, very few people from, from diverse backgrounds. So it's changed a lot really for the better in that sense. So there's no stereotypical funeral director now it's, it's a really, really diverse. James: What's a, what's a doula? Annetta: Well, a doula is someone who supports life's transitions. So I've been a birth doula, and it's a very powerful energy when someone comes into the world, but it's really not my jam. I like the other transition, and I'm better at it. I provide an awful lot of information for people who have questions like, what is this going to feel like? Should I be at home or should I be in the hospital? And the point of a lot of my conversations is not to provide answers, but to support people into recognising what's best for them, which I suspect is actually quite a lot of what Martin does, with the way that you work with businesses. James: When do you turn up? Annetta: A piece of string question. I can turn up pre-need, so there's no terminal or life limiting diagnosis. There's a bit of a myth that we turn up magically, like a fairy, in the last 24 hours of life. That's not really great or optimal. James: So, do some people get you, even if, well, I don't have a diagnosis, but I want to start working with a doula? Annetta: If you're a doula like me who does planning and can answer questions and help people prepare their documentation and their wishes, because that's not anything you want to be doing at the last minute and in cases where there's dementia and cognitive decline. It's too late then to get your planning in place. So I also help to support and foster family-wide and network-wide conversations so that everyone understands if someone's interested in assisted dying, let's talk about that. Does anyone have questions, for example. Or have you considered your pets in your planning? Are you including your grandchildren or just your children? Would you prefer to die in a medicalised environment, ideally, or in a home like environment? James: So you can, yeah, so you're there at any point and really every circumstance is entirely different. Annetta: It is, it's unique every single time. James: Same for funerals? Martin: Yeah, I mean, a funeral really should be a reflection of the person's life and interests and values and philosophies, and sometimes, you know, historically, traditionally, in say the last couple of hundred years that, that often revolved around their, their faith. So these days funerals are quite sort of open-ended, quite, quite unstructured, quite celebratory and people are trying to find some ritual in that and some meaning in that and, and that's the, that's the real change that's happening in funeral service. You know, funerals have been going on for thousands of years. They're one of the early rituals of human, human existence. So, and they emanate from the human need to stop when someone from among us leaves us, and reflect on that person's life, to typically grieve that person, if they meant something to us. So that is, you know, invariably people feel sad, not always, but typically. And people have to then say, well, how do we, how do we move forward without this person? And then for a lot of people, that's incredibly difficult. Grief, grief is just our response to loss. You can't control it. You can't make it go away. So if you suppress it in the early days, it comes back to bite you later. So a funeral is a chance to gather, reflect, embrace the reality of the death and embrace the early stages of the grief, the pain that you'll often experience, and to receive support from your community and to let go of that person because they go from being with you to being a memory. James: It's interesting the way you phrased it or the point of view you expressed there was to me it was the person closest to whoever's died, it's for them. And then it's for the community. It's not for us. Funeral's not for the guy that died. The funeral's for us. Martin: Yep, that's right. And we're finding a lot of people now trying to sort of orchestrate their own celebration and say, this is what I want. I want this to happen, that to happen. And that's, that's got a place, but it's really for the living, for the, for those that are left behind. And, you know, the dead, the dead can't tell the living what, how to feel. But they can give guidance and direction, but I think it's really important that the funerals, funerals are done the way that the survivors feel they need, need to do it so that they, that helps them get back into life afterwards. James: Yeah. Yeah. Would you agree? What's a funeral for? Annetta: I think a funeral is an opportunity to remember why your person was so important to you. One of the big changes that I think we're going to see more and more of in Australia now, with assisted dying nationally available, is a fabulous ‘going away party’, as I call them. So people who attend their own funerals, because basically, especially if you're in a hospital, you know when your time is coming. So there's almost like a bookending effect where we have a celebration with the person and they get to say goodbyes and explain to people why they were important and hear all the good stuff. Then there's probably going to be a gathering of some kind afterwards, possibly ham rolls and whisky will play a part, because, as Martin has said, we need to commemorate the fact that this aspect of our lives is now irrevocably changed. I think for a lot of us, the relationship goes on, but it's very different. I still talk to my mother and my grandmother, both of whom are dead. I don't expect them to respond. But there's still kind of… James: …I think that's the sane way to do it. If you expect them to respond, I don't… Annetta: That's a different conversation. James: That's different. Yeah. We're doing another whole episode on that. Martin: Different podcast. Annetta: Different podcast. James: From Beyond the Grave. Welcome. So again, the funeral's not really for the dead person. Annetta: I've never thought a funeral is for the dead person. It is to really bring us out of the immense shock of the raw grief that – and this is a generalisation – is about 72 hours. And that's not a sustainable emotional state. We get to come together. We get to shift from intense grief, the personal experience of loss and that response – because grief is love with no place left to be put – into mourning, which is a more shared communal public sense of loss, which is a really important transitional period in accepting a death, coming to terms with a death, acknowledging a death. And the funeral makes a space that I think is important, not just for the closest people, but for friends, work colleagues, community members. So there is a space that can be welcoming for a variety of community members, which is also really important. Community can be quite intimate and small, it can be broader and more encompassing. Martin: Yeah, look, I think it does need to, I think a good funeral will reflect the person's life. If, if it's, if it's not authentic, if you go to that funeral and you say, Gee, that wasn't about Fred, then clearly the family have got it wrong. So there has to, they have to be the central character, and that has to, you know, has to really reflect who they were, ideally. But if Fred starts micromanaging his service, his celebration, then I think we're missing the point because it really is for, for those left behind to say, what's going to be meaningful for me to help me, you know, take stock of my life now that Fred's, Fred's gone. A good example is, you know, sometimes people these days will often say, look, let's not go to the fuss of a funeral. Let's, let's have a private cremation or burial and we'll have a memorial service, which is fine. And a lot of people choose that. But if Fred's not there, you know, the emotions around how people feel about Fred and the stories about him aren't really aren't heightened enough for people to really feel what they should feel at a funeral. It's hard to sort of get started with your grief, is sort of the perspective I have… James: …But I suppose there's often that, that's often thought of, we're going to do this in a few days, but the memorials in two weeks… Annetta: I think it's individual. And I also think it is broader culture. So for example, in some cultures, from Eastern Europe, there are marker days. So you will have the funeral on a particular day and then you might do something 10 days later. And then the 40th day might be, for example, in the Macedonian community… I still pay attention to ‘death-aversaries’ and I pay attention to it because it's going to affect my mood and the way I go throughout the day because I will be thinking about that person. And ideally, you have had the opportunity to spend time with your person, whether that's in a hospital room. For example, I did that when my mother died. We were allowed to have the room for as long as we wanted with her. Or at home, and you might keep your person at home for a day or two and sing to them, wash them, sit in silence, cry with them, laugh with them. That's, that can be part of the saying goodbye, which the funeral then when it's done properly and appropriately, I think sort of wraps everything up and ties it as neatly together as you can so that you can move into all of the afters of grief. James: Martin, let's talk about the, the business of funerals. It's a big business, isn't it? Martin: Well, it's, it became an industry a hundred plus years ago, something that people started outsourcing to, you know. And initially it was outsourced to cabinet makers who made the coffin. And then they, the cabinet maker said, well I can, not only can I make the coffin, but I can transfer the body from the place of death and… And over a period of time it became an industry. So, it is there, so it is an organised industry in most, most countries around the world. And so the, the organised funeral director will provide a range of services to, you know, support people who've lost, lost someone. In Australia, it's primarily, historically, made up of family owned private businesses that are multi generational family businesses. But about 25 years or so ago, a lot of the well known family businesses were purchased by larger groups. But certainly they're at, in my view, they're at a competitive disadvantage to a generally family owned local community based, family owned business, because they just don't have that essence. James: Yeah. Is it a strange thing? I mean, you've talked very compassionately about grief and about the humanity of what's involved about the moment of death and what people are dealing with. Yet this is something that you'll make profit from, that the company is going to make profit from. Is that a strange, is there a conflict there? Martin: There isn't really. I mean, you know, sometimes I think a lot of the people who are attracted to the industry, yeah, they're talking to a family and they've gone through a loss and there's a lot of grief and pain and there might be, there might be some challenging financial circumstances too that they glean from the conversation. And yeah, that people feel, feel, Oh, gee, how can we add pain to them, or, you know, add, you know, send them an invoice for $10,000, whatever it might be on top of what they're already experiencing. So yeah, it is a little bit uncomfortable, but I think if, if the business has integrity around its pricing and there's, there's genuine options and, and you know, they're not sort of forced into any sort of uncomfortable decisions, then, you know, most people recognise that a funeral, if it, you know, needs to be done in a certain way, there's going to be a cost to that. James: And do you find that, you know, the, the rise of doulas, the presence of doulas, the change… the way in which there seems to be a lot of, a lot of alternatives to those bigger companies or that standard sort of the mahogany casket approach. Is that in a reaction to this sort of somewhat, you know, industrialisation of, of the process? Annetta: Partially, yes, and from my perspective, I think we can, Okay, Boomer, let's give you a big vote of thanks, because at every stage of life, the Boomer generation, it's a cliche for a reason, they've demanded information and choice, and they want things on their terms far more than we'd seen in the silent generation, certainly, and previous generations. So, what are my rights, options, and choices at end of life? What can we do better and differently? It's made space for things like Daisybox Caskets Australia. I'm not affiliated with them, but they offer a lower and a high quality product, but it's less expensive than mahogany, which you mentioned. Not a bad option for families on a budget, not a bad option for cremations. I think, as we are in such an almost overwhelm of information age, people do want to know what's possible and we can readily see that, for example, in the USA, we've got Katrina Spade, who started with the urban death project. James: What’s that? Annetta: The urban death project was an architectural hypothetical exercise. How can we offer a space for respectful memorialisation and body disposition that is not taking up valuable land. And from this, then we have, recompose, which is natural, organic reduction, nor human composting. In Tasmania, we've got the very first water based cremation service. James: What is that? Because I mean, cremation implies fire to me, not water. Annetta: Yes. So it's alkaline hydrolysis. It's a high temperature, high alkaline process of dissolving everything, which at the end you get a product that instead of gray ashes, white, you get a completely sterile liquid, that I pers

Dying well We’re all going to die, but how we acknowledge death and dying is a very personal experience. Award-winning journalist and author Tracey Spicer and anthropologist Dr Hannah Gould explore etiquette, rites and traditions to find out what makes a ‘good death’. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Tracey Spicer AM is a Walkley award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster. And she's an ambassador for Dying With Dignity . A vocal campaigner and advocate for voluntary assisted dying (VAD), Tracey penned a letter to her mother following her painful death in 1999. Dr Hannah Gould is an anthropologist who works in the areas of death, religion and material culture. She recently appeared on SBS documentary: Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye . Hannah’s research spans new traditions and technologies of Buddhist death rites, the lifecycle of religious materials, and modern lifestyle movements. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT : James: We're all going to die. Happens to all of us. But how we acknowledge death and dying is of course a very personal experience. With our guest and our expert, we're going to explore the etiquette, the rites and traditions seen in Australia and around the world. Someone who knows a lot about the rites and traditions of death is Dr Hannah Gould , an anthropologist who works in the areas of death, religion and material culture. We're also going to be joined by Tracey Spicer , she’s a Walkley award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster. And she's an ambassador for Dying With Dignity . Tracey and Hannah, welcome. Thank you so much. Tracey: Hello. James: Thank you for coming. Hannah Gould. Hello. Thank you for coming. Hannah: Thank you. James: Fantastic. Let's talk death! Tracey: Why not? There'll be lots of fun. James: Do you laugh in the face of death? Hannah: What else can you do? I mean, look, you know. Lots of sadness, lots of joy, every single emotion is reasonable, surely. I mean, it's like the question, the ultimate question of philosophy, of history, of every discipline. Every response is valid. Not always useful, or helpful. James: Yeah. Yeah. Hannah: But valid. Tracey: Well, it's a universal topic of conversation and that's why I've always loved dark humour. Because you do have to laugh, otherwise what do you do? James: I also think it's, it is the ultimate joke that we are all going to die, but we live like we're not going to. We live every day as though it's just not going to happen at all. Tracey: Especially in Western society, I think other cultures have got it right and we're in such deep denial about it. It's detrimental to all of us. James: Yeah. Now this is your area of expertise really, is that do other cultures have it right? Hannah: Everyone does it differently. Right or wrong is kind of a difficult thing to judge. I think certainly there's a big thing called, like, the denial of death thesis, right. And, and people like Ernest Becker, a lot of different philosophers and anthropologists and cultural, you know, analysis have looked at Western culture and gone, Oh my gosh, we are so invested in denying death, right. And whether that's through denying death by religions that say you're going to live forever, like, you know, don't worry, it's not the end. You'll pop off to heaven or whatever it is. Or through, you know, great heroic myths. Yes, you'll die, but the nation will remember you forever. So, you know, you won't really die. You'll be a martyr. Or contemporary, you know. Yes, you'll die, but have you seen how great the shopping is? You know, we can just ignore, we can deny death by being on Instagram and, you know, consuming, right, so, I think Western culture in particular, the way we've organised our society, allows us to not think about death. James: And we've organised death to be somewhere else, usually now. To be in a hospital, to be in palliative care somewhere. And they may be good, but they're not, they're not in the cottage, are they? They're not next to, not in the bedroom. Hannah: Not in the bedroom. So, we know that, say, 70% of Australians wish to die at home. Only about 15% do. And that is a rate that is lower than all these other countries we like to compare ourselves. So Australians are more institutionalised in their death than places like Ireland, like New Zealand, the United States of America, even Canada. We tend, more than other countries, to die in institutions – aged care, hospitals, and hospices. James: Yeah, right, right. The other way in which we deny death is, or the other way in which other cultures have a different attitude to death, will be that it'll either be more accepting – we are all going to die, will be part of their every day – or they may have a notion of reincarnation and coming back, which means that that's a very different attitude to death, really, than a, than a heaven and a hell. Hannah: Yeah, it's not necessarily an end so much. I think that's kind of quite common in, say, you know, Buddhist or Hindu or other kind of dharmic religions, particularly Asian religions. And then, obviously, there's a lot of Asian religion that's part of Australian society, so that's also quite present in Australia. But we can also have a kind of more secular idea about that. You know, a lot of these, a lot of my mum's generation in particular, have kind of a green environmental kind of reincarnation model where she will say, well, I don't particularly believe in heaven, but I do believe I'm going to become compost. Food for worms, you know, I'll come back as a tree or a flower or a tomato plant, you know, and that's, that's a kind of reincarnation of like reintegration into the natural environment, as it were. So there are some kind of myths or stories we can tell ourselves that perhaps help us think about death more positively. James: I've got a, a friend of mine who'd be into her 80s has said, oh, funeral? Just put me up the top paddock, let the crows have a go. Tracey: Yeah. My dad wants to be buried in a cardboard box, and I think that's a wonderful idea. James: We all say that, don't we? That's a really common one as well. I hear that a lot on the radio. People will go, mate, just, I don't care, put me out with the, on the hard rubbish day. Hannah: In the paddock, whatever it is… James: …the paddock, that’s the same sort of thing I said. You know, like, do we really want that, do you think? Hannah: Oh, do we really want that? I do think Aussies are pretty pragmatic about death. I do think we have a certain streak in us that's kind of like, you know what, it's all a bit much fuss, it's all too much. You kind of even get these people who therefore say, don't have a funeral. You know, I really don't want to have a funeral. Please don't even, you know, no fuss. That can be kind of sad sometimes because I think it's some people kind of not acknowledging how many people love them and miss them. James: Yeah. Hannah: Um, but maybe it's also a bit of an Aussie humour, dry humour, that, that black humour again of kind of, you know, trying to laugh in the face of death. Why not? Tracey: I would agree, but then we all get sucked in when we're in the funeral home, and they show you the cardboard box, and then they show you the glossy one that's 10 or 20 thousand dollars, and you think, did I really love that person that much, or should I do it? So it all feeds into what you were talking about before, that consumerism and overcommercialisation. James: Well, I also think sometimes, I would think it's about weddings. Weddings and funerals, well, who's it actually for? Tracey: Yeah, yeah. Well it's a punctuation mark, isn't it? I'm a lifelong atheist, but Tracey: I do enjoy, it sounds terrible, going to those kind of ceremonies, whether it's a funeral or a wedding, because it's important to celebrate or commemorate these changes, these huge changes. James: I love the sharing of stories at a funeral. People start talking. Tracey: Well, you learn so much about someone's life that you may not have known. And also often they're rich for that dark humour. I'll never forget my grandmother's funeral, who I was incredibly close to. And my father's new girlfriend loved my grandmother. She was so distraught she tried to throw herself into the hole in the ground on top when she was throwing the dirt in and I thought, well, that's intense. James: That's good. Tracey: That's, I've never seen that before. That's a first. Hannah: Oh, I've seen that before. Tracey: Have you?! Hannah: I will say that, you know, when you attend enough funerals or attend enough cremations for professional reasons, um, as it were, you kind of see everything, every range of human emotions. Like, we, we kind of think, you know, all funerals are all happy families. A lot of unhappy families, a lot of punch ups at funerals, lots of, uh, mistresses coming out of the woodwork at funerals, conversions, religious, you know, more and more people have recorded messages from beyond the grave that they play at their funeral, or, uh, they've decided that we're having a dance party, or we're having some sort of festivity or an event. I mean, you can do anything these days with a funeral. James: Do you go to a lot, just to observe? Hannah: Yeah, I do my research. So I, I research in death and dying and I, I work at a crematorium and I attend funerals and I hang around with other people in the death care sector. James: Yeah. Hannah: And you do see everything. James: Why do you want to… Tracey: …What got you interested in this? It's your job and I'm just fascinated by it… James: …We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll both do it. I think you've done this sort of thing! So, yeah. Well then, then, why do you want to be around death? Hannah: Oh. I mean, personal and professional. Professional, I'm an anthropologist, and anthropologists want to know what brings us together, what makes us all human, but then also why we do it so differently. And there is nothing else. It is the question, right, it is the one thing we all experience, and yet we've all decided to do it in completely different ways, and completely different ways throughout history. And then, personally, my dad died, and I thought, gosh, what on earth is going on? I suddenly was given the catalogue, of funeral, of coffins, right. James: And you were young. Hannah: I was 22, 23 when my dad died. An age that was perfectly old and mature at the time, I thought. But looking back, obviously, it was incredibly young. But yeah, I suddenly got handed this catalogue of, of kind of coffins, and they all had these really naff names, like, you know, these rich mahoganies, and like, it was like paint colours. Someone had, someone somewhere had decided, these were the options, right, that you were, that this is what was going to represent my dad. And I just felt this massive disconnect and I thought, ‘Hang on, I've got to work out what's going on there.’ So now I spend my life in death, as it were. James: Yeah. I suppose, most of us would think being around death would be a very gloomy kind of thing to be, or way to spend your day. Hannah: It can be very gloomy. But oh my gosh, the gallows humour that those boys in the crem – the crematorium – tell, uh, you know. James: Is there a joke you can share? Hannah: Ooh. Um. Not a lot of them are safe for work or anywhere. James: Tracey, you were going to jump in and ask something there before. What were you going to ask? You know, fellow professional interviewer. Tracey: I really see a connection with you being 22 when your father died and I was 32 when my mother died. Hannah: Mm. Tracey: Even at 32 I felt like I wasn't ready for it. James: Right, no. Tracey: And especially because it happened so quickly. Mum was the linchpin for the family, you know, smart and funny and she could do anything. She was one of those early super women kind of role models. And then all of a sudden at the age of 51 she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with seven months to live and she lived seven months almost to the day. And it was blood and guts and gore. She was in agonising pain. My sister and I were injecting her with medication every day. We wanted her to die in the home. Tracey: But it got to the stage where we had to bring her to palliative care, and that's when we started having the conversations about voluntary assisted dying, because, um, Mum and Dad had always said, put me down like a dog. And again, it's one of those things that you think it's going to be easy at the time, but it's not. We talked to the doctor. The doctor said, I don't want to end up in jail. And my sister sat there with the morphine button. She pressed it so often she had a bruise on her thumb. James: Hmm, right Tracey: …we said, surely you can just increase the morphine, because Mum was having breakthrough pain. So everything was fine until she'd scream once an hour, and there was no way they could cap that. So it's cruel, right? It's cruel. I, I don't think there's any way they would have done it. We tried to have those conversations. James: …Yeah… Tracey: Which is why one night, because we were sleeping in a chair next to her overnight just to hold her hand when she was in pain, I picked up the pillow and I did try to put it over her face because I thought, what kind of daughter am I, to let her suffer? And then I stopped at the last minute and then I felt really ashamed of, you know, what a coward I am. Hannah: No, I was going to say the opposite. What an incredibly brave act to, to have so much love and compassion for this person and so much respect, what you knew her wishes would be, that you were willing to do that, you know, for, not – for her, not to her, for her, right? That's extraordinary. Tracey: It's lovely of you to say. James: Did she know what you were doing? Tracey: Oh no, she was out of it for about the previous two weeks, actually. In and out of it. And then she died in the next 24 hours anyway. So she was very, very close. And she'd had that kind of burst, you know, had that almost honeymoon period a couple of days beforehand where you think, Well, she seems like she's getting better and we've read about that, so we expected she was close. Hannah: …Yep, the final, the final burst… Tracey: Yeah. Is there a name for that? Hannah: You know, I don't know what it's called, but you know, that is when usually the palliative care doctors, the hospice workers will call up the family and say, guess what? They're up and about, they're talking, they're eating all of a sudden, and that's genuinely usually a sign that it's not going to be long. James: Wow, isn't that interesting. Hannah: It's the final burst of energy. One of the interesting things about the rise of voluntary assisted dying, of euthanasia, to speak more broadly in Australia, is it reflects this kind of cultural shift that we have about the importance of choice and control towards the end of our lives and how increasingly like that is becoming an important part of what we think about as a good death, right. Like I want to be able to control where I die and who I die with and when and the pain and suffering, right? And that hasn't always been the case, right, you know throughout history there's been periods of that. There's been periods of, ‘Leave it to God.’ Or there's also been periods of, ‘Yes, I must prepare. I have to write my final last note or poetry’, or whatever it is. But that's increasingly becoming important particularly for, we see within the baby boomer generation that they really want to, you know, have some sort of choice, and emphasis on choice. James: Well, I mean, I wonder whether a lot of it is a reaction to, um, the, the medical control over the end of our lives is so extreme that we can be kept alive for so long. And so, it's, it's, it's a reaction to that medical control, isn't it? To want to say, well, surely I can, we can, we can have both, can't we? You can either keep me alive or I don't want to be kept alive. Could you let me go? Hannah: It's one of the great paradoxes, they talk about this paradox of contemporary death and contemporary medicine, is that all of our interventions have increased, right. The medicalisation of death has meant that not only do we have pain control, but we can keep people alive for longer. You know, we have better medicines, drugs, palliative medicine is massively advanced. And yet, if we ask people, the quality of death and dying has not increased. James: Right… Hannah: …And if we look globally, more access to medicine doesn't necessarily correlate with a higher quality of death and dying. There's some correlation, like, do you actually have the drugs? Can you access, access them? But when it gets to kind of over a certain hurdle, just because you're dying in Australia versus dying in a country with no resources doesn't mean you're going to die better. James: What do you, what's a quality of death? How are we measuring that? What do you mean by that? Hannah: There's lots of things you can do to measure it and people try. So one of them is, you know, to ask, ask the family, to ask the dying person, to also ask the physician, did you think this was a good death? You know, how do we assess it? Because it's not just up to the dying person as well. Of course, it's also up to the family, right – How did you experience that death, that dying? It's a difficult thing to measure, right, because for some people death is never gonna be… You know, the words good death, bad death are kind of controversial now because it's like, oh my God, I have to try at everything else, do I also have to live up to a good death? Like, we can't make it good. Can we make it better? James: Yeah. What is a good death, Tracey? Tracey: I think this really intersects with, uh, competition. Everything's become a competition. And also quality of ageing. Hannah: Yes, yes… Tracey: …Because my darling dad, who's 84 and still hanging on after smoking and drinking himself almost to death when he was in his 50s – it's a miracle he's still alive. He has very close to zero quality of life. He's a lovely man, we love spending time with him, but he can barely walk. You know, where's the quality of life? So I've just written a book about artificial intelligence recently, so it worries me, that medtech space, that we're getting people to live longer, but there's no quality of life and also no quality of death. Hannah: There's this phenomenon we act

Let’s talk about death, baby From breaking the stigma to understanding the conversations we need to have before we die, beloved broadcaster and advocate Andrew Denton and clinical psychologist Dr Kerrie Noonan dissect everything we should and shouldn’t say about death. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. Andrew Denton is renowned as a producer, comedian and Gold Logie-nominated TV presenter, but for the past decade he has been devoted to a very personal cause. He is the founder of Go Gentle Australia , a charity advocating for better end of life choices that was instrumental in passing voluntary assisted dying (VAD) laws across Australia. Senior clinical psychologist Dr Kerrie Noonan is director of the Death Literacy Institute ; director of research, Western NSW Local Health District ; and adjunct Associate Professor, Public Health Palliative Care Unit, La Trobe University . For the past 25 years she has been working to create a more death literate society, one where people and communities have the practical know-how needed to plan well and respond to dying, death and grief. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel -- Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains discussions about death, which may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you are struggling with the loss of a loved one, please know that you are not alone and there are resources available. For additional support please contact Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. TRANSCRIPT : James: Hello, and welcome to Life's Booming. I'm James Valentine, and this season, we're talking about death. Or, on this episode, why we don't talk about it enough. Death is really easy to talk about, but avoiding the subject just makes things even harder. From breaking the stigma to understanding the conversations we must have before we die, I'll be dissecting everything we should and shouldn't say about death with two fascinating minds. Andrew Denton is the founder of Go Gentle Australia . A charity advocating for better end of life choices, but you probably know him better from so many shows on our TV. And Dr Kerrie Noonan is a senior clinical psychologist and social researcher, determined to increase our death literacy. Kerrie, Andrew, thanks so much for joining us. Do you know one another? Andrew: Yes we do. Yeah. Kerrie: Yeah, along the way. Andrew: We've had a few conversations about death, dying, literacy, all those things. Yeah. James: How did you learn about death? Like when did you, and who did you go to talk to? When did you start thinking about it? Andrew: Well, I think you learn about death the way everybody does, which is you experience it. And the first time it happened to me, I made a documentary about teenagers with cancer, Canteen, the support group, and one of those young men died. And his parents very generously invited me to visit him as he was dying. And that was the first time I actually saw what death can be. And it was, it was very hard to see and then watching my own father die obviously was a profound moment for me because that was an unhappy death. But how I've learned about it since is, I imagine a bit like Kerrie. I've had thousands of hours of conversations with people who are dying and their families and their carers. And, I've learned so much about death I feel I've mastered it and can move on. James: Yeah, true. That's right. Is that, is this what you mean by death literacy, that, that in some ways we just need to be talking about it more? Kerrie: It's, it's talking about it. That, that's one aspect. But it's, it's kind of developing your know-how and being able to put that know-how into practice. So, you can maybe talk about, maybe have some competency in terms of talking or maybe doing one element, related to death and dying. But, when you put it into practice, that's when death literacy kind of really comes to life. It kind of sits, some of the research we've done recently, it's evident that death literacy sits in networks, in-between people, within people, in communities, so it's not just about individuals. James: I suppose I'm wondering about at what point we might have this, or there'd be a difference in death literacy with 20-year-olds than there would be with 80-year-olds, right? Kerrie: Yes, experience changes your death literacy. That's probably the strongest predictor. So we started this research looking at networks of care and how people kind of come together. And so where we're at now is we're looking at what are the predictors and what are the things that we understand so that we can understand more about how to make more death literacy, I guess. So an example, that's your question, well I can give a real example. When my mum was in hospital, we were, we needed someone to help us to move mum from the hospital to home because we wanted to take her home. And we couldn't get the health system or the medical system to do that. So I put an email out, a text message out to my friends who happened to work in the death space. And within an hour we had someone, within two hours, mum was home. And so. That took, you know, that set off a little chain of conversations, emails, texts. And while I was doing that, my brother was getting the medication sorted and other things sorted for my mum. So we really, we utilised, to bring my mum home, we utilised like every bit of knowledge and our networks to do that. James: But you were at the centre of, you know, you, you study this, you're a, you know, an advocate for it, and so you're at the centre of it. You would have a network. I mean, I don't know that I've got the same network. I'd, I could put it out to my friends and they'd go, we could bring wine. Oh, you know, like, I don't know that they'd, I don't know that they'd be that practical. Kerrie: But that's actually helpful too. You need your friends to turn up with wine and, and bread and whatever comforts. So we found that younger people, for example, so we've done two kind of national studies just to kind of demonstrate your point about younger people. Between, 2019, pre COVID, and 2023, we looked at the population and we looked at death literacy and how it changed. And we found that voluntary assisted dying and COVID had an impact on people's death literacy, particularly for the younger people, anyone who's experienced a death, anyone who's been through loss, has higher death literacy than people who haven't. And so, there's lots of things that contribute to that, but, COVID, I think, we're still kind of looking at the data, but certainly voluntary assisted dying because of the way that you need to kind of have conversations, you need to actually reach out to your networks, you need to talk to doctors, you know, there are actually lots of interactions in that that really stretch your skills and, your understanding. James: It's only a few generations back when death was very present in our life. The conversation about voluntary assisted dying has perhaps allowed us to have that conversation again. Have you seen that? Andrew: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, there's, there's a lovely, witty observation that in Victorian times they talked about death all the time and never about sex. And today it's the other way around. It's not that many generations ago where the body would lie in the house and there'd be a viewing in the house. And so it was, it was a more human thing, the way Kerrie's describing her friends helping her mother come home, that's a communal and human thing. And when I talk about voluntary assisted dying, I must and I want to bracket it with palliative care, because really, despite the fact politically they were oppositional during the legislative debate, they're very much on the same end of the spectrum, which is we're all going to die, and the concept of palliative care, which is also the same idea of voluntary assisted dying, is not, ‘Let's get you to the dying bit, but how do you live as well as you can while you are dying?’ And that dying process could be very short or it could be very long, it could be several years. You, usually you can't be really clear. So the whole point as Kerrie said about voluntary assisted dying and palliative care is you talk about these things. And interestingly, I think there's a paralysis around death, and you know, you said, well, my friends wouldn't know what to do, they'd bring wine, as Kerrie said, that's no bad thing. But if you put out a call to your friends to say, I need to move my fridge, somebody's going to say, I've got a ute. James: Yes. Andrew: …your need, perhaps, to leave hospital and go home, that's the same question… James: They might have a ute. Andrew: …It's just, it's just a human question, which is, I need help. And not only do we get paralysed in the face of death and assume that the experts have the answers, but the experts often get paralysed in the face of death. They don't know how to have those conversations either. So one of the things that voluntary assisted dying absolutely has done, and there was a, a geriatrician in Victoria who said to me. He was ashamed to admit that voluntary assisted dying had made him understand how limited his practice had been, in that he had subconsciously only been asking questions of patients that he had an answer to: How's your pain? James: Right. Andrew: I can treat your pain. What are your symptoms? I might be able to treat your symptoms. Whereas what he asks now is, how do you feel? What is life like for you? That's a much more holistic question. What is it that you need? If we can't help you with it, maybe someone else can help you with it. So I think it's about transcending that paralysis in the face of death. Which is natural, but the greater group that you can talk with it about, the better. I still remember a woman I met several years ago. And she said to me from the moment her husband was diagnosed with cancer to the moment he died, he refused to talk about it. And the, it was like a sliver of ice stuck in her heart because she was frozen in that too. James: Yeah, yeah. Kerrie: Yeah, and I think what we, what we found in a lot of our research too, Andrew, was that, carers were often, had massive networks that the person who was dying didn't know about… Andrew: Right… Kerrie: …as well. So I think that's, that's the other thing, about some of these conversations is that, once you know that you've got community who's up for the conversation or up for whatever around you that a lot of carers are, can have that access to other people. James: And you mean the person dying doesn't know because they don't ask, unless they're talking about it, then no-one thinks to bring it forward? Is that what you mean? Kerrie: Yeah. I think what happens in that situation is a carer can become quite isolated like the dying person. If they don't want to talk about it, there actually are still practical things to organise. There are still things, where are the passwords? How do you get into the bank account? What bills need paying? Andrew: I'm trying that with my wife all the time and she's not even dying! Kerrie: That's right. They continue but you don't get to have the conversation with the person. Andrew: Actually, Geraldine Brooks, a beautiful author, her husband Tony, who is a friend, he died very suddenly, dropped dead in the street, and he was young, in his early 60s. And she's just written a book about this called Memorial Days , about that whole experience. And that's the strongest piece of practical advice she gives, which is, prepare for your death by helping others. James: Yes. Andrew: Like, leave the passwords, explain how these things work. The best things I've learnt about the idea of preparing for death and thinking about death, actually I'm pretty sure came from some of your literature, Kerrie, which was the idea of an emotional will. And an emotional will is not about, to you James, I'll leave my ute. It's actually about, to you James, I'm going to leave, my favourite city in the world. Limerick in Ireland, and here's some money for you to go there, or to you James, I'm going to leave these five songs, which mean something to me. It's actually about, well this poem, it's about gifting something of spiritual life value as opposed to an object. James: Yeah. Following the, the, the legislation in New South Wales, now pretty much in every state, Andrew, where, what do you see now? What do you see in our society now? What do you see happening? Andrew: Look, there's still the same paralysis and fear about death. I think that's, that's kind of natural. You know, one of the people on our board of Go Gentle is the former federal president of the AMA, who's a neurosurgeon, and he said when his dad was dying in hospital, he was afraid to ask for, you know, more help because he didn't want to be annoying. So, you know, I mean, this is the head of the AMA. To me the big question is not so much, how individual families or individuals respond even though it's very important. To me the big conversation is within the medical professions. And I don't actually say that critically. Because we're all equally struggling with the concept of the abyss. And I think, it is an acknowledged problem in healthcare, of futile care at the end of life. It's giving a 90-year-old a hip replacement, for example, just over-treating. Because of the, I've heard it described as ‘doctor as hero’. You know, we give, we give doctors, quite reasonably, a special place in our society. Because we ask special things of them. But part of that training is, we must win. We must treat. When I was first told this by a doctor in Oregon, when I went there. When they said, oh, we see death as a defeat, I actually laughed. I thought they were joking. I said, it's… James: You know you can't win. He turns up with that scythe at some point. Andrew: So I think there's a much broader conversation about what is dying, and how do we have that conversation with people who are dying. And I think… James: I suppose I just thought, I have had a couple of conversations recently with people who have a relative or parent who has gone through voluntary assisted dying… Andrew: Yes… James: …And what I noticed was the way they talked about it, in a sense, wasn't much different to, oh, we went to Europe. You know, we had a nice trip. Like, it was very normal, the way they said it. They went, I was at my uncle's death yesterday. Andrew: It can be. It can be. You know, dying affects different people differently. There are people who have gone through the voluntary assisted dying process who totally support it and are very glad it's there, but still found the experience traumatic. It's not a silver bullet. James: Right. Andrew: It doesn't, it, it's merciful, and it's peaceful, but it doesn't, it certainly doesn't remove grief, and it doesn't remove, for many people, the unreality of dying. We hear many, many testimonies of families deeply grateful for the way in which they are able to say farewell. And I think that's a very important part of voluntary assisted dying. A genuine ability to say farewell. But people are different. There's one man that insisted, who used voluntary assisted dying, and insisted that he be only with his doctor. And the reason he gave, which I find both beautiful and heartbreaking, he said, ‘I don't want the love of my family holding me back’. So, you know, I always maintain when I talk about this. James: [sigh] I felt the same thing. I did the same thing. I know. You know, huge. Andrew: Whenever I've talked about this, I've always maintained, none of us know how our dying will be. All we know is that it will be hours and hours alone. And I think that's why I struggle with, that philosophy that somehow or other, that, our dying is about society at large or about some universal rule that we might be breaking if we don't do it the right way. James: Kerrie, you know, I sort of want to acknowledge that you've been through death quite recently, that your mother died only a few weeks ago as we're having this conversation. As someone who's then spent their life studying this area and thinking about this area, what have you learned from the death of your mother? Kerrie: It looks similar to what Andrew said before about his colleague, the doctor. Like, well, I went straight to the practical things, didn't I? Like, it's a kick, grief's a kick in the guts, let's face it. Knocks you on your butt. James: And we are very practical in those first weeks, aren't we? At the moment of death and afterwards. Kerrie: Just the other day, when we dropped my daughter off to uni, I went to text my mum, as I would usually do. And text her the photo of her in her dorm. And I think this is, you know, I was really glad of my experience because I just sat there and cried for about five minutes, actually. I just needed to blubber and cry. I could have sucked it up. We could have just, you know, driven on. But actually it was really helpful just to really deeply acknowledge that moment. That was the first time. That I'd experienced that real sense of wanting to, to, communicate with her. Andrew: I hope it won't be the last time you hear her cry about your mum. Kerrie: No, it won't be. It won't be. But when she died, because of the work that we had done, I didn't cry initially. Andrew: Yeah. Kerrie: And this is this individual kind of experience of going through this. I didn't, immediately cry. I felt intense relief for my mum. And so I was just reflecting on that. I was like, ‘Whoa, I'm not crying’. The other thing that is, is on my mind is that it took an ICU doctor on the day that mum… So mum had three MET calls. And if you don't know what a MET call is, and you're listening to this, this is where every registrar, every emergency person on call, runs to the bed of the person who is, who's crashing. James: Right. Kerrie: …and she had three of those. And by the end, I'm glad I wasn't there because I hear that mum was very distressed. James: Right. Kerrie: And it took an ICU doctor to sit down with her and go, what do you want Maureen? James: Yeah. Andrew: Yeah. Kerrie: And mum said, I'm done. And so it didn't matter that I'd done that with the doctors, multiple times, or that she had an advanced care directive, clearly stating, do not give me, treatment that will prolong my life. It didn't matter that all of those things were in place. What mattered, was that ICU doctor who absolutely, compassionately just stopped everything and talked to my mum. And it's a pretty brave thing when your heart is failing and other things are happening in your body to say, no more, I'm done. Because that does, that's a decision about you only have a certain amount of time left in your life then. So, that doctor changed the course of my mum's dying. And, yeah, I'll never forget that. And then the comp

Join James Valentine for the sixth season of Life’s Booming: Dying to Know , our most unflinching yet. We’ll have the conversations that are hardest to have, ask the questions that are easy to ignore, and hear stories that will make you think differently about the one thing we’re all guaranteed to experience: Death. Featuring interviews with famous faces as well as experts in the space, we uncover what they know about what we can expect. There are hard truths, surprising discoveries, tears and even laughs. Nothing about death is off the table. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – lifesbooming@seniors.com.au Watch Life’s Booming on YouTube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many of us put off creating or updating our wills, often because it feels like it's something that can be addressed later. But life is unpredictable, and having a current will is vital to protecting your loved ones and reflecting your wishes when the time comes. In this special episode, host James Valentine speaks to TV personality and keynote speaker Barry Du Bois about his very personal story, and hear from Safewill CEO and founder Adam Lubofsky about the importance of securing your legacy. About the episode - brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 31 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in between. This special episode commemorates Australian Seniors inaugural Update Your Will Day on 20 October, and reminds Australians of the importance of protecting your legacy for the ones we leave behind. In 2011, keynote speaker and former The Living Room presenter Barry Du Bois sat in front of a team of doctors and heard the immortal words: it's time to put your affairs in order. Facing a cancer diagnosis, he turned his attention to securing his legacy for his family. Safewill founder and CEO Adam Lubofsky created his online platform to help Australians simplify the process of writing and updating their will. He shares some of the common will myths and reminds us all of the importance of regularly reviewing your will to ensure your estate plan is current, legally valid, and reflective of your intentions. If you want to share your story to Life’s Booming, visit seniors.com.au/podcast . Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify : Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts For more information About Australian Seniors visit seniors.com.au/podcast . Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency , in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here we delve into another aspect of our health that is often less spoken about: mental health. Older people are more likely to experience contributing factors to depression and anxiety, such as physical illness or personal loss, but how many seek help? In this episode, comedian Mary Coustas (aka Effie) shares her very personal story, and we get insight from clinical psychologist Dr Charlotte Keating on how to better care for your mental health. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 30 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in-between Our bodies surprise us in ways we never thought possible as we age, so in series five of the Life’s Booming podcast – Is This Normal? – we’re settling in for honest chats with famous guests and noted experts about the ways our bodies behave as they age, discussing the issues and awkward questions you may be too embarrassed to ask yourself. Mary Coustas is one of Australia’s most loved actors, comedians & corporate speakers. In 1987 she became a member of the ground-breaking stage show ‘Wogs out of Work’, where her comic creation Effie was born. She is about to embark on a national tour, called UpYourselfness. Dr Charlotte Keating is a clinical psychologist with a PhD in neuroscience, who runs her own private practice in Sydney's Lower North Shore. She is a passionate advocate for everyone's mental health, and has a particular interest in helping executives, parents, and young people. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note - lifesbooming@seniors.com.au . Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency Transcript: James Valentine: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming Series 5 of this most excellent and award winning podcast. I'm James Valentine and in this series we're going to ask the question, is this normal? I mean, as we age, stuff happens to us. Our bodies change, things fall off, we get crook, stuff doesn't work as well as it used to. There's nothing we can do about it, we're getting older, we're ageing. But which bits are normal? Which bits do we have no control over? Which bits can we do something about? That's the kind of questions that we're going to be asking in this series, Is This Normal? of Life's Booming . Now, of course, if you enjoy this series, leave us a review, tell all your families and friends about it. And we want to hear from you as well. You can contribute to this. If you've got questions about things in particular that you want to know, perhaps there's some particular wear and tear happening to you, let us know. We'd love to see if we can answer that question in the series. We're going to look at things like menopause, gut health, mental health, lots of other burning questions. So think about those areas. And if there's something in there that's specific to you that you'd like us to cover, let us know. On this episode, we'll delve into another aspect of our health that is perhaps less spoken about, zeroing in on mental health. We'll be speaking to clinical psychologist Dr Charlotte Keating, who is currently practising in Sydney. But first, let's introduce someone you might know as Effie, comedian Mary Coustas. Well, hello. So we're going to talk some mental health. We're going to talk about these kind of things. What affects you as you get older, how you deal with it as you get older, what changes. What have you noticed, Mary? Mary Coustas: Here's the thing. I love contrast. I love contradiction. I like all those things that when put together make for a more interesting mix. You feel more yourself, obviously, with age. You've worked through what matters and what doesn't, and hopefully you've found a healthy place to put what you've learned, either in practice or out there into the world. And I do it through laughter, mostly. But your body goes through something else that you should have anticipated, but you didn't. So I found the whole menopause thing really tricky, particularly for me, because when I was going through perimenopause, I was doing 10 years of IVF. So it was hard for me to know that I was going through perimenopause because I was taking IVF drugs, to have my now daughter. So then I missed that. And then I was much later, I came to motherhood late. And so then after I gave birth to my daughter, I was going through menopause, but you think because women are so accustomed to discomfort – and I'm not talking about marriage – sometimes it's that we don't connect the dots enough. So I thought it must be because I've just become a mother and the hormones from that, and I didn't realise it was the menopause thing. And the menopause thing plagues us in many different ways, but mentally it's a big one. It was the biggest one for me. James Valentine: Before that, I mean, it's a bit of a cliche to say that the comedians are often doing that because of anxiety, because of various mental health issues. Were you that? Is Effie the outcome of that? Mary Coustas: No, I mean, yes, I had anxiety. I had a dying father. That doesn't help. Like he was unwell from before I was born. So that was the only true anxiety, apart from the racism that I encountered and then turned into a career. James Valentine: Yeah. You mentioned that, like, Effie's a response to racism. I suppose I hadn't quite realised that. Explain how that came about. Mary Coustas: Well, I was very confident growing up in a working class multicultural suburb. And then we moved as a family. My dad was very much a bigger picture sort of guy and said, we need to go where you can get a better education. And unfortunately that was in a very white area and I was the little seed. From the multigrain that made it into a very wide area. And I was spotted immediately. You know, everything about me. I was very into fashion. I had my Suzi Quatro haircut. I was on it. I paid a terrible price for that. For being different. James Valentine: How old were you? Mary Coustas: I was nine. And it peaked I think a year or two in, and I just couldn't find a way to make it work for me. I was ostracised and it was tough. It was very, very tough because it was coinciding with my dad's health. And it was a very defining moment for me. And I hated the suburbs. I still get a little bit, oh god, I've got to get back to the inner. Because I feel like that's where we celebrate togetherness a bit more. We don't drive up a driveway and close the garage door and say goodbye to the day and everyone around us. I don't like that isolated feeling. So, the minute I stood on stage during my high school years, in musicals, which is ridiculous, I don't sing at all, but I mime brilliantly, I just went, okay, this is my stage, and this is where I can express myself. The Greeks built this thing thousands of years ago and they knew something and it's my thing and because I love the older generation so much and their stories, and this is beautifully folding into the conversation that we're having. I was never bored with that generation and what they'd experienced in their village stories and how they came to Australia and what that was like for them. So the marriage of that obsession with the older generation, with finding a healthy outlet to express the big noose that was hanging around my social neck, which was race, Wogs Out of Work happened. I served Nick Giannopoulos as a waitress. He just graduated from acting school and so had I. I didn't know him. But then he told me, we went to the same primary school, the same Greek school. I mean, it was just so bizarre. And then Wogs Out of Work happened and that was the thing that changed the conversation in Australia. It was such a humongous stage show that really addressed the elephant in the cultural room and then discovered that the elephant was the best thing ever. And there were lots of elephants and there were giraffes and big lions and so I think the world has changed. Well, certainly mine has. And I think there are a lot of people out there that are now super confident. And Effie was the perfect way to illustrate a young girl like so many Greeks. On paper, Effie would appear as failed, I would imagine, her English isn't great. She's working class. She's primarily uneducated, she left at Year 10, went and studied hairdressing. Walks into any room, whether it's with the prime minister in the room, which I've done a lot of, that high-end corporate stuff. Any room, any place feels worthy, feels relevant and still 35 years in, is that example of someone that is because of self love. It's funny because my current stage show is called Upyourselfness , and Effie, in that, says it's the only immunity we have left is to love who we are. And in the show prior to this one, this one is about political correctness and language. And as I said, Effie's never been great with language, but she's been great with feelings and demystifying things. The show before this one, Effie talked about lockdowns and COVID and she admitted to her own mental health issues. So I think she's a great mouthpiece for me to express so much of what I want to say about the world. She comes in a very animated form and I think people believe everything she says because it is based in truth, my truth. And then I wrap it up in her little boofy exterior and accent and put it out into the world. And so she was born out of necessity and out of my truth. But yeah, I'm a very hyper sort of person, never been diagnosed with anything other than plenty of energy. And if I look at my mother who's 85, she's got plenty of it too. So I've used energy, and we were talking about this before we started, about how it's important to put the right words with things and then sometimes you can conveniently put a different word that makes it sound better or worse. Some people would look at, say, adrenaline and think that it was adrenaline rather than anxiety because it is a rush and it is something that you can put a positive spin on. I've seen a lot of people that have built great lives and careers out of using adrenaline, and then manifests later as an anxiety. So I am no expert in this. I know what I've gone through. James Valentine: That's why we've got Charlotte. It's okay. Good. You know what you've gone through. Mary Coustas: Yeah. And I believe that if you're a human being, you're going to have mental health issues. We're feelers. James Valentine: Is that true, Charlotte? Is that an accurate observation? We're human beings, so we're going to at some point deal with, it could be anxiety, depression, whatever the label, we're going to deal with something. Dr Charlotte Keating: Yeah, I think it really is. It's incredibly common, one in six people across their lifespan will experience some sort of mental health challenge, be it depression or anxiety. So I think most of us have either experienced it or have known someone who will, or has. Mary Coustas: I suppose when I say it, I mean like we're all going to experience grief. We're all going to experience sadness. I mean, not the greatest hits of what we know mental health to be these days, which is a handful of really intense feelings. But I'm just talking about being human. Talking to somebody who's going through something very difficult that you love, or seeing a stranger you don't know on the street that evokes the empathy and all those beautiful things that reminds us of how human we are. We can't have all those feelings without suffering through plenty of them, whether they're directly ours or not. James Valentine: Is it, Charlotte, what that Mary is describing is the anxiety, the depression, those kind of things, those mental health issues – is it when those feelings are too much or become extreme? Or is anxiety, depression, something else? Dr Charlotte Keating: Yeah, I think it's a really important distinction, James. I think for people who are experiencing depression or anxiety, sometimes those can be emotions that go with everyday life. I think certainly for older Australians, who perhaps have had less opportunity or exposure to the sorts of knowledge, awareness and information that younger Australians have today. They can often, I was thinking about what you were saying earlier in terms of your journey, they can go to the GP and perhaps present with, I have a lot of adrenaline, or I'm feeling quite tired, and not necessarily link those sorts of symptoms to perhaps there is something going on, physical or mental, that could represent perhaps more than just feeling off. I think sometimes we might feel off for a couple of weeks and we might just put it to the back of our mind and keep going. And it can be after really having let it go for some time, that in fact if you do have a chat to your GP or you do have a look, you're like, actually I've been feeling not quite myself for more than two weeks. It could in fact be months, maybe even years. And whether it's low energy, low motivation, lack of enjoyment or pleasure in the things that might have typically brought it, perhaps even difficulty doing the things you have to do, even things like self care, memory, attention, all of those sorts of things we go, oh, that's probably because I'm tired or or what have you. They can be signposts that there is something going on that possibly you could get some help and support. James Valentine: But I suppose for a lot of older Australians, it's also the thing to do with those things was to put it to the back of the mind, was to just go on, was to not sort of, what's all this stuff about, mental health? We didn't do that. We just got on with it, Charlotte, you know, it's all very well for you and your fancy diagnosis. We just got on with things. Dr Charlotte Keating: It's absolutely true, James. And I was having a little look at some of the statistics on help-seeking, for Australians. And certainly for younger Australians, just for a point of comparison, 14% of 35 to 44-year-olds will seek help for their mental health concerns. Whereas 6.8% of 65 to 74-year-olds will seek help. I was actually heartened that there was a percentage of people who would. James Valentine: Doesn't sound like many though, does it? Dr Charlotte Keating: It doesn't. James Valentine: In either group, really? Dr Charlotte Keating: In either group, exactly. When you can consider the impact it can have on daily life and functioning. But 95% of older Australians see their GP and the GP is the first port of call often for being able to help with these experiences. James Valentine: I was really struck by what you said, Mary, when you said women are used to experiencing discomfort. And so, therefore, perhaps tend to just roll it into, aagh, it's another one of those things that happens to me. They're not recognised, necessarily, that it could be a mental health issue. Mary Coustas: It's funny what Charlotte said. I know a lot of older people that I'm close to that go to their GP to probably deal with more mental issues than physical ones. I mean, they're there way too regularly and if you have a good GP that is a good listener and loves what they do and loves their patients, you go there and I think they were stoic. They had to be. These conversations weren't being had then. And I've been inspired by that generation so much for so many reasons. Sometimes you just have to force yourself to get on your feet and keep moving. I've experienced that personally on occasions, where just too many things happened at the same time that were too heartbreaking for me to be able to pretend it didn't. There was no hiding from heartbreak and grief and trauma and all those things, but I just think that a lot of people are terribly lonely and I think a lifetime can yield a lot of upset and grief and loss. Potential loss of physical capacity, loss of people you've loved, loss of opportunity, loss of all of those things. James Valentine: I wonder, Charlotte, if we're on two different streams here. The difficulties of life are one thing, and the extreme difficulties that Mary's describing there that so many have dealt with, that she's dealt with herself, will bring rise to moments of tension, of pain, of anguish. This is different from mental health? Dr Charlotte Keating: Oh, it's a really good question. I think what we're really deciphering here is how do we respond to what life involves, what the journey involves. I think it's probably fair to say by the time people have lived multiple decades on the planet there is a sense of stressful life events and experiences that they've all, that they've all had. Some are certainly worse than others. There can be a compounding effect to some of those. When we think about war or we think about growing up in other countries and things like that, there's all sorts of cultural differences as well with how we process those experiences and in fact, grief and loss as well. And I think that can also lead to questions we ask ourselves about what is normal, with respect to how we process grief, how are we supposed to do it, when is it that it might be important to perhaps seek some support in that way. You've described some stories, certainly Mary, where I'd be interested in understanding more about your experience of grief. I think for many people, perhaps it can be understood in the context of stages of grief. Kübler-Ross is someone that people are quite familiar with in the five stages of grief, being denial or shock, anger, then a sense of bargaining, what could I have done differently, and those sorts of things, with depression and sadness toward the end, and then some level of acceptance of what the loss might be at the end. And those stages aren't necessarily sequential. James Valentine: Yeah. Or even in that order. Dr Charlotte Keating: Or even in that order, and I think that there isn't necessarily a timeline, everybody's lives are so different. Their experience is so unique, together with their own sort of personality constructs and uniquenesses. And so, I think if you are listening and you're in a process of grief yourself and you're wondering if you might be a little bit stuck in some of that processing and as you said, Mary, it can be because sometimes there hasn't been a culture of being able to express emotionally or talk about experiences. So you might try and busy yourself or distract yourself or find ways to try and push it aside. But it does come out, we are biological and physical beings, it's important to be able to express it. And so I would recommend if there is grief you're going through, that's really persistent, very painful and difficult, you're finding it hard not to excessively avoid, or perhaps overthink the challenge at hand, it's really impacting your capacity to get on with your day-to-day, I'd recommend having a chat with your GP about it, or if a loved one you can see is experiencing that, try and talk with them about it. James Valentine: I suppose we don't have to think of it in terms of when we go to seek help, GP, psychologist, psychiatrist, whatever it might be, we don't have to see it in terms of there must be something wrong with me. Dr Charlotte Keating: That's it. James Valentine: That I've got a mental health disease. You know, we can go and talk for all sorts of reasons, and maybe I only need to go for half a dozen times. Dr Charlotte Keating: Absolutely. James Valentine: Maybe it's only a short period of time where you need to just be able to talk to somebody neutral, somebody who's not in the family, someone who's outside of the situation. Mary Coustas: Yeah, look, there's a very heal

In this episode we spotlight gut health, and all the normal, and more unusual, health issues connected to our digestive systems. We speak to clinical nutritionist and the author of The Gut Repair Plan , Sarah Di Lorenzo, plus Melbourne chef and founder of Made by Tobie, a home delivery meal service, Tobie Puttock. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 30 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in-between Our bodies surprise us in ways we never thought possible as we age, so in series five of the Life’s Booming podcast – Is This Normal? – we’re settling in for honest chats with famous guests and noted experts about the ways our bodies behave as they age, discussing the issues and awkward questions you may be too embarrassed to ask yourself. Sarah Di Lorenzo is a clinical nutritionist and author of four books, including her latest, The Gut Repair Plan . She is resident nutritionist for Sunrise and Weekend Sunrise , and is passionate about sharing information about a healthy diet and eating the right foods to help with sleep, stress, weight loss, immunity, and slowing down the ageing process. Chef Tobie Puttock began his career in Melbourne, before travelling and cooking around the world, including alongside good friend Jamie Oliver, who shared his passion for simply cooked food. His most recent focus is his own brand of frozen ready meals, Made by Tobie, with a focus on producing meals that aren’t harmful to us or the environment. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note - lifesbooming@seniors.com.au . Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency Transcript: James Valentine: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming Series 5 of this most excellent and award winning podcast. I'm James Valentine and in this series we're going to ask the question, is this normal? I mean, as we age, stuff happens to us. Our bodies change, things fall off, we get crook, stuff doesn't work as well as it used to. There's nothing we can do about it, we're getting older, we're ageing. But which bits are normal? Which bits do we have no control over? Which bits can we do something about? That's the kind of questions that we're going to be asking in this series, Is This Normal? of Life's Booming . Now, of course, if you enjoy this series, leave us a review. Tell all your families and friends about it. And we want to hear from you as well. You can contribute to this. If you've got questions about things in particular that you want to know, perhaps there's some particular wear and tear happening to you, let us know. We'd love to see if we can answer that question in the series. We're going to look at things like menopause, gut health, mental health, lots of other burning questions. So, think about those areas and if there's something in there that's specific to you that you'd like us to cover, let us know. On this episode, Getting to the guts of it , we spotlight gut health, the normal, and the more unusual health issues connected to our digestive systems. We speak to clinical nutritionist and the author of The Gut Repair Plan , Sarah Di Lorenzo, plus Melbourne chef and founder of Made by Tobie, a home delivery meal service, Tobie Puttock. Sarah Di Lorenzo: Hi, thank you so much for having me. James Valentine: Why are you a nutritionist? I can't even say it! Sarah Di Lorenzo: Nutritionist, a clinical nutritionist. Why? I started with my own gut health, really, was what drove me into becoming a clinical nutritionist. I just did really notice around the age of 15 that foods affected me differently. I noticed it with white bread in particular, and I would go home and say to my dad, who's a psychiatrist, a doctor, and I'd just say, I don't feel well when I eat that food. And he goes, oh yeah, yeah, we all feel like that from bread. It's probably a Greek thing, whatever. You'll be fine. Don't worry. And so I watched my dad always living his life bloated, and I was like, yeah, yeah, it's not great. And then when I was in Italy when I was 18 for a few months, it was the most incredible experience that I clearly just couldn't enjoy, because I had gut issues, I had non-coeliac gluten insensitivity, self diagnosed. And then I ended up after that, when I came back at that young age, I was doing my science degree at Sydney Uni, I came back and I was like, I need to work on my gut because my quality of life is not great. And so it dominated my life and I just couldn't enjoy my life. And so that's what I started doing was working on my own gut and I'm 51. So that's like 30 years ago, more so 32 years ago, I started, I realised then, so I went through my own gut healing journey and have spent a lot of those younger years just looking at my own rest and retest, trying different foods, creating menus, creating diets, I just did it as a hobby and a passion. And then I went on to study nutritional medicine after that, when I realised that it was really my calling. I feel like I'm a healer. I do. I've healed myself and now I want to heal everyone else. James Valentine: Now, let's go to chef Tobie. Hello Tobie. Tobie Puttock: Hello, how are you today? James Valentine: Thank you so much for joining us. It's fantastic to get some time with you. This is something that's close to you. You think about the gut a lot. Tobie Puttock: My wife, when we first met, she was very controlled by her stomach issues. So obviously all tied in with the gut. She had food poisoning when she was younger so badly she was hospitalised for a few days – not from my cooking! I didn't know her at this stage, it was in the UK, and it really screwed her gut up. So I remember for the first about three or four years of our relationship, everything was dictated by that. And it was IBS basically. And I didn't really understand, I'd never met anyone with such an issue before. And, you know, we'd have dinner plans, we'd be all ready to go. And suddenly her stomach would start to feel uncomfortable and we'd have to cancel dinner. Our whole life revolved around the stomach issues and after being together a few years, I had the opportunity to write my first cookbook. We were living in the UK at the time, we came back to Australia and I met an amazing person named Dr Sue Shepherd. She goes under a different surname these days, but she is kind of a guru in the gut health space and she spent some time with my wife and basically together we adjusted her diet and she solved her own issues. So she no longer has IBS. James Valentine: That's great. And it's come on a lot, hasn't it? Our consciousness of the gut, eating for our gut biome, I would say it's a way of thinking about food that's come up about in the last decade or so. Tobie Puttock: Yeah, 100 per cent. Being in food for my career and my whole life revolves around food, I see things jumping in and out of fashion and gut health has been a huge fashionable topic for a long time, and now it seems to have mellowed out into actual just fact. People accept that your gut is super important and eating the right foods and gut health really can make a huge difference to your life. James Valentine: Yep. Well, let's plan a diet, a pantry for good gut health. What kind of dishes, what kind of ingredients do you focus on if you're thinking gut health? Tobie Puttock: Well, first of all, I try and eat as little processed foods as possible. So I also have quite an empty pantry at most times, but obviously fermented foods are fantastic, I do a lot of fermenting. After I jump off here, I will be going to make sauerkraut this morning, but things like kimchi, most fermented foods, are fantastic. And then there's going to be, if you do have things like IBS, there's going to be a lot of trigger foods that will be quite acidic as well. But yeah, definitely for me, we have a lot of sort of robust greens, lots of cavolo nero, Tuscan kale, brussels sprouts and all the good stuff there. James Valentine: Right. I like that description of robust greens. These are the tough ones. Tobie Puttock: All the brassicas. So we're steering, you know, I think things like cos lettuce are fantastic and they're sexy and rocket lettuce and all that kind of stuff. But I remember a few years ago, it was probably 2013, I made a big life change, I just got spat out of kitchens, I was probably quite unhealthy without realising it, I was just going through life as a lot of people did and I was insanely stressed. And I started doing a lot of yoga, and my wife, at the time, was seeing a personal trainer and trying to get shredded. And she was going to the personal trainer a couple of times a week, but coming home to eating my Italian food that I cook in restaurants, which I now wasn't cooking because I wasn't in restaurants. And she gave me a list, this amazing list of all the things we can have as much as we want of, things we should never have, and things we can have in moderation. And we started cooking from that list. And I should also pop in there that we tried to conceive and it didn't happen naturally. And they tried to tell us – well, they did tell us – that IVF would be the only way. And with a total diet overhaul cutting out all processed foods. And I don't want to say that kale saved our life or anything, but it kind of gave, you know, kind of did a little bit. I lost probably six kilos of body fat, my wife lost 10, and she wasn't big to begin with. We conceived naturally, and we kind of look at those as some of the fondest years of our life. And then we had a kid and started eating junk food, and did the reverse of that because we were young parents – or new parents, I should say. Yeah. James Valentine: Yeah. All hail kale, I say. So Sarah, what happens to our gut as we age? What are the sort of things we need to be aware of as we're 50, 60, 70? What's happening? Sarah Di Lorenzo: A lot's happening. I mean, I kind of noticed this when I thought, even myself, like it ages. It's as simple as our gut does age. We don't produce as much saliva as we used to. But if you think about eating, say a highly processed meal when you were young and be like, oh that was okay. Or even getting blind drunk when you were young. And then you think, well, that was okay. You go and now in your 50s, you go and eat a big processed meal and you're like, oh gosh, you kind of really do feel it. Or you go out and have a big night on the drink. The next day people will notice it. James Valentine: The next two days. Sarah Di Lorenzo: People notice it. They really feel it. So look, it ages. At the end of the day, when you really look at it, first of all, we don't, as I mentioned, there's just not as much saliva. People don't produce as much of the digestive enzymes, so like lactase, so people notice things like, oh I'll hear things in clinic, I just don't really seem to process dairy like I did when I was young. Well, cause you're not producing enough digestive enzymes, so it comes that whole process ages as well, and there's just, even the way our peristalsis, the whole system is… James Valentine: Is that swallowing? Sarah Di Lorenzo: Yes, swallowing issues, chewing. People tend to change their diet as they're older. If they've got things like dentures or dental issues, it can start right from there. So, the microbiome changes. The microbiome is the habitat which our microbiota live in. So I always explain that to people. James Valentine: This is all the bacteria in our gut. Sarah Di Lorenzo: Bacteria, fungi, viruses. James Valentine: This is the new thing. This is the newer discovery. This is not stuff we understood. You know, when you were first going, I don't feel so good. Sarah Di Lorenzo: Correct. Yeah, this is all new stuff and it is fabulous. When I was actually reading all this stuff and I was putting this book together, I'm just in awe of our gut. Like, I'm so impressed by it. I really am. The residents that live there, that I might point out, our gut bacteria, weigh two kilos. Yeah. Yeah. James Valentine: Isn't that amazing? Two kilos of biomass of living stuff. Sarah Di Lorenzo: I find that fascinating. James Valentine: So like, do they change if we don't look after them? Sarah Di Lorenzo: Correct. James Valentine: Or do we need to do stuff? Are we trying to keep a youthful gut or do we need to understand our maturing gut? Sarah Di Lorenzo: Well, there is that, but look, we do need to take care of it. And this is one thing that I see as people age what they don't do is they don't create that diversity. So our gut bacteria love, love, love a diversity in our diet. So as we age, we tend to eat the same things every day. People have the same breakfast every day, the same lunch, the same dinner. They don't eat a lot. Now, it's actually, and that's one of the biggest problems. So as you age, it's really important to make sure that you've got that diversity to feed that good bacteria in our gut. We want those colonies broad. We want to feed, because all the different bacteria do different things. Like we've got a bacteria, which is my favourite one, called akkermansia muciniphila. James Valentine: But that's easy for you to say. Say that again. It's a what? Sarah Di Lorenzo: Akkermansia. It's my favourite bacteria. I love this bacteria. We want lots of it, so akkermansia muciniphila is one that keeps us at a healthy weight. And then you've got like bifidobacterium, which actually helps break down the food we eat. I know you're looking at, if anyone could see James right now! James Valentine: No, it's impressive. Okay, very, very good. It's like when people see birds and they use the Latin name. It's like, very good. Well done. Sarah Di Lorenzo: Now I've lost my train of thought. Yeah, sorry. Okay, as we age… James Valentine: Yeah, as we age. I think what I'm interested in is, like, with a lot of things we want to stay, we need to stay, youthful. Is our gut like that, or should we be allowing our gut to mature? Sarah Di Lorenzo: I would want to be keeping my gut as young as possible. Definitely. The other thing we forget is medications that people take as they age. So medications can really impact gut health. And we know that. People often take laxatives when they're older. There is actually this recent study that came out that showed that people who use laxatives – not stool-bulking laxatives, but actual laxatives – have a 51% increase in their risk of dementia, which shows that gut brain axis. So there's a lot of things that can, stress is a really big one. It can be stress with ageing, stress for whatever, that will impact gut health. But it is creating that diversity and we only eat I think, 75% of the adult population only eat from 12 different plant types over the course of the week. That's some research that I have seen. So one great thing that you can do to start to improve and feed all those different colonies down there, like akkermansia, and grow more of them, the one thing you can do is make sure, a little test you can do, is make sure you're eating 30 different plant species over the course of the week. James Valentine: And Tobie, how do you approach getting that diversity in the diet? Tobie Puttock: Yeah, there's a lot to be said for it. General nutrition, I have a basic understanding of, but my main thing is making things taste good. Which is what I wanted to do with my book, The Chef Gets Healthy , which was about making everyday food. Because I think as a society, we tend to look for easy answers for big problems. And I remember at one stage, the fried southern chicken burgers were trendy. And then on the other end of the scale, you had Pete Evans pushing these really super hardcore diets like the paleo diets. And I always think that the answers lie somewhere in the middle. You don't need to go to these extremes. James Valentine: Okay. Well, give us some insights into what you do with these sort of things. Cause I think sometimes people say, look, the fermented foods, kimchi, sauerkraut, they're good. And then you should be eating more of the brassicas, the broccoli and the sprouts and all that sort of stuff. But if you're used to the steak and veg, if you're used to the pizza, you don't know what to do with this stuff. Tobie Puttock: Yeah, it's true. And I believe that you can still eat all that. You just need to add in vegetables. So I think as a society we're getting better at this, but until recently we've eaten way too much protein. Aussies tend to eat beef or lamb, or similar sort, four to five nights a week and even more seven nights a week. I remember speaking to somebody saying, oh, you should have fish once or twice a week. And they had no idea. They never cooked fish. They had no idea of the health benefits of that as well. But my belief is that we need to pull back on eating meat, substantially, for so many reasons, you know starting with environmental, but also our health as well. So I believe a great diet and a lot of research has been done on this and proven, the Lancet report has shone some great light on this, which is that we should probably eat a vegetarian diet three to four nights a week. Eating meat is expensive, so you can save that money that you're not spending by cutting meat out of the diet three to four nights a week. And then when you do eat meat, eat a fantastic cut of meat that's sort of grass fed, comes from a reputable supplier, therefore we're not fuelling the inhumane farming trade. And you will notice huge differences. Now, simple ways to cook vegetables. I've worked in very technical kitchens and it's funny, because since I've been out of kitchens since 2012, I've often realised that cooking vegetables, the easiest way, is often the most flavoursome and nutrient-beneficent. So, I grew up with a British father who grew up in a family which was often, I think, frozen vegetables, or vegetables that were cooked until all the chlorophylls and colours had gone out and they were grey. I do the polar opposite of that. So, I'm not into a raw diet, but I think you need to cook vegetables until, for example, with kale. Let me talk you through one of my favourite quick dishes. So we do a breakfast, which is, baked eggs and kale, and fantastic. And my meat-eating friends who I've given this to just go bananas for it. So it starts in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, and garlic and chili – so aglio e olio base – and you sauté that off over a low-to-medium heat until the garlic starts to soften and become translucent, at which stage you break in some kale – and cavolo nero, which is a type of Tuscan kale, is also fantastic. Even more robust leaves than the traditional green kale that we're familiar with now, with those stems which are really fibrous. I normally leave those out and keep them for a juice or similar, but they've got a lot going on, our body needs them, but for this particular dish, not the best. So break off the leaves, sauté them around, mix them through with the oil and the garlic and the chili until it just starts to green, at which stage you can crack a couple of eggs into there. And then normally over the top of that, I break some feta cheese into there, dabble a little bit of natural Greek yogurt, some hemp seeds, a little good pinch of sea salt and pepper, bung the whole thing into the oven just until the eggs are set. We're talking two, three minutes. So you can make this whole dish, if you're good, in under 10 minutes. And it's got a lot going on there. You're going to get all that beautiful fibrous veg from the kale in there. And the protein from the e

Embarrassed about asking your doctor something? We’re doing it for you. Our experts are going to answer some of those concerns you might have that are a bit quirky, less dinner chat, more private google search type questions. Our expert doctors are getting the stigma out of the way and getting you on your way to a healthier life. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 30 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in-between Our bodies surprise us in ways we never thought possible as we age, so in series five of the Life’s Booming podcast – Is This Normal? – we’re settling in for honest chats with famous guests and noted experts about the ways our bodies behave as they age, discussing the issues and awkward questions you may be too embarrassed to ask yourself. This episode, we hear from Sydney GP Dr Sam Hay. Also known as Dr Kiis, Sam is director of the Your Doctors network, health expert for Kidspot, and was host of Embarrassing Bodies Down Under and Amazing Medical Stories. You'll also hear from geriatrician Dr Simon Grof, who has been a consultant geriatrician at Victoria’s Eastern Health since 2014, and is Chief Medical Officer at Jewish Care Victoria, who talks through some questions of ageing in later life. And Dr Mohammad Jomaa is a Sport and Exercise Physician, who has a special interest in sports-related injuries and their management, and shares his advice on mobility and healthy exercise for over 50s, to maintain longevity. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note - lifesbooming@seniors.com.au . Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast . Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency Transcript: James Valentine: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming, series five of this most excellent and award winning podcast. I'm James Valentine and in this series we're going to ask the question, is this normal? I mean, as we age, stuff happens to us. Our bodies change, things fall off, we get crook, stuff doesn't work as well as it used to. There's nothing we can do about it, we're getting older, we're ageing. But which bits are normal? Which bits do we have no control over? Which bits can we do something about? That's the kind of questions that we're going to be asking in this series, Is This Normal? of Life's Booming. Now, of course, if you enjoy this series, leave us a review. Tell all your families and friends about it. And we want to hear from you as well. You can contribute to this. If you've got questions about things in particular that you want to know, perhaps there's some particular wear and tear happening to you, let us know. We'd love to see if we can answer that question in the series. We're going to look at things like menopause, gut health, mental health, lots of other burning questions. So think about those areas and if there's something in there that's specific to you that you'd like us to cover, let us know. On this episode of Life's Booming, we're tackling your frequently asked questions. Embarrassed about asking your doctor something? Today, we're going to do it for you. Our experts are going to answer some of those concerns you might have that are a bit quirky, a little bit less, “I can talk to my friends about this or at a dinner party”. It's more, I've got to get on Google and search this up on my own. Whether their patients voice them or not, together with our doctors, we're getting the stigma out of the way and we're getting you on your way to a healthier life. Some of you have sent in voice notes to ask us questions. Terrific, thank you so much. If you want to ask a question, you can visit the website or the link in the show notes and share a voice question. We're going to be chatting to Sydney GP, who's known as Dr Kiis, from army veteran to hit morning radio and director of the Your Doctors network: this is Dr Sam Hay. And you'll also hear from geriatrician Dr Simon Grof as well, and we'll talk about some questions of ageing in later life with him. But first up, let's meet Sam. Sam, nice to meet you. Sam Hay: Yeah, you too. How are you? James Valentine: Yeah, very, very well. I suppose I'm thinking that the relationship with the GP changes as you age. You know, and unfortunately perhaps you start to get to know them really quite well. You see them a lot. Sam Hay: Absolutely, I think for younger people, they don't fully understand what the worth of a good GP is to them. And then as people drift through their middle years, they certainly start to have more of a relationship. James Valentine: So let's say post 50, what are the kind of things you'd recommend that we, that I should be coming to see the doctor, once a year, once every couple of years? Sam Hay: I think there are some people out there who truly are looking after their health very, very well. They have no problems. They're very lean. They exercise a lot. They eat a great diet. They don't smoke. And they have literally nothing going on. And then they come and get a check-up and we literally find nothing. So those people, sure, they probably can go a couple of years between visits to the doctor. But in general, over the age of 50, I like to see patients every single year for a check-up because we want to pick up very early the major risk factors for the big things that are going to cause problems down the track, and those big ones are heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. James Valentine: And what do you pick up? What are you looking for? Sam Hay: Well, we want to do a general check-up. And in that we're looking at blood pressure, weight, waist, from an examination perspective. Then we want to check the history, how are they going, how much exercise are they doing, what's their smoking, what's their general diet like, what are their stress levels, so where does mental health potentially fit into that. Pretty much all the time we'll do a set of blood tests, and once again, doing a general screen, but trying to pick up the big risk factors that come in, cholesterol, diabetes, a couple of other simple things. And then the major cancers that we need to be screening for. So your major community ones are going to be bowel cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, having a conversation with the doctor about prostate cancer screening. But then the last bit overall is we're going to look at somebody's family history. So what have they got in the family that might be putting them at more risk and does it influence all of those things? And do I have to do any other tests? James Valentine: We've also, you know, again, I'd say if you're 50 and over, you've grown up with the notion you only see the doctor when you're sick. Sam Hay: Correct. And so it's people understanding that check-up is important. Even if the last three check-ups have been completely normal and fine, what we're trying to do is we're trying to pick up your cholesterol or your diabetes or your blood pressure or something else before it falls off a cliff. James Valentine: Yeah. This would make such a difference to you, wouldn't it, Simon, if we were all doing this in our 50s and 60s? Simon Grof: Oh, absolutely. And I must reinforce that having a good GP is just the number one thing, I think. And we see that in hospitals all the time where some of our older people have not seen a GP for 40, 50 years; there's no-one regular, and just to have that touch point to call the GP who has that relationship and to get some of that background story is just so, so, so crucial. So, couldn't agree more. James Valentine: Let's look at a few frequently asked questions. Do you see many 85-year-olds still smoking, Simon? Does anyone turn up? They're out for a sneaky… [inhales]. Simon Grof: People do smoke. Strangely enough, I had a virtual consultation the other day and I logged on. An 89-year-old lady, once again widowed, and she had the whole time during the hour-long consultation, and she kept on apologising saying, “I'm sorry it's a habit I can't give up.” James Valentine: And what are you seeing in smoking habits, because we are into a generation that have largely given up, you know, at 50 or 60 or so. Sam Hay: I've definitely seen a drop-off in cigarette smoking and an increase in vaping and a complete misunderstanding about the risks of vaping. James Valentine: And what's being misunderstood? Sam Hay: What I find fascinating is, what was it, 50 or 60 years ago, the government was endorsing cigarettes across the world. And then they realised, hang on a minute, these cause disease. And so that, all the governments had a massive flip. And the community struggles to understand why the government won't endorse these things. Because we don't know the risks. And one of the biggest risks are that we don't really know what these chemicals do when they're vaporised and you inhale them. The second thing is, the majority of vapes that people are using come from underneath the counter, which means they're being produced in factories where you just don't know the chemicals that are in there. So yes, some of the vapes you can get from pharmacies, etc., are going to be more reliable and therefore, for want of a better word, safer, but it's all these other ones that we don't know about. And we are seeing injuries, there are people going to hospital, there are people dying, it's in the media. So it fascinates me that people are still seeking it out. James Valentine: Yeah. I genuinely believe that anything positive that's being said about vaping is tobacco industry propaganda. But people do say, well, at least it's a way to get off smoking cigarettes. Sam Hay: So this, I think, is the challenging thing because there does seem to be a place for vaping in a harm minimisation program for people who are smoking. So for getting people off the smokes because in vape products that you can get through pharmacies, we have much more reliability about what's in them. We do understand that they seem to be much safer than smoking. So using them in a quit smoking regime, it's generally accepted that they are valuable and useful. For non smokers to take up vaping, still not recommended whatsoever. James Valentine: Vision. Is this something that you see a lot of that you have to deal with? People start to get cataracts. They start to have eye conditions that they didn't experience before? Simon Grof: Yeah, we do. And as we get older, there are a lot of age related visual disturbances and vision is so crucial. A story that I can think of, I had a patient of mine who just kept on falling and would present to hospital, would get to the emergency department. There wouldn't be any broken bones, they'd check out the sensation and his power in his body and then send back home. And by the third or fourth time, someone said, let's just give this person a little bit more time in hospital. So it ends up being on my ward and my very astute junior register actually had a look in his eyes. No-one had actually got an ophthalmoscope before and had macular degeneration and off to get some treatments and was, you know, not having any further falls. So I think we sometimes don't think about it. We want to find sometimes the more complex things in medicine, but sometimes it's just taking a step back, being thorough, as what geriatricians and what GPs do, and just making sure you're asking the right questions. James Valentine: At some point, do you look at people and go, well, this can't be ageing. At another point, a few years down the track, you go, well, this is ageing. Sam Hay: And it's not as simple as that because I think people are maintaining their general health and their fitness for longer. And I think this whole concept of when do you suddenly become old and when do you suddenly start becoming affected by all these old age diseases? It certainly is shifting. I don't tend to look at patients as an age, and therefore this is an age related thing. I tell you, I go, you've got arthritis, you've got a heart problem, you've got a kidney problem, whatever it might be. And just keep it as simple as that. James Valentine: Yeah, yeah. And I suppose, is there a bit of a trap for the geriatrician as well, Simon? It may not be ageing, it might be something else. Simon Grof: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And when in the hospital setting, when my junior doctors are describing and telling me about everyone new that's being admitted to the ward, the age for me is somewhat irrelevant. It's more about their social history, what they're able to do on a day to day basis, where they live, what they can get up to. And it's usually the family that are the worriers still managing their tablets. As we do age, we do have more comorbidities and their ailments, such as some heart problems, some problems with the breathing, problems with the bladders and bowels. And when you were younger, that didn't seem to bother people too much, but with the accumulation of these, it can be quite difficult to manage as we get older, and I suppose there's a very small threshold. Whereas, if you were to get a urinary tract infection, that is an infection in the bladder, that can sometimes contribute to problems with peeing, urine to be retained in the body, or it can cause you to go a bit more frequently as we get older. Potentially, a small thing like that can actually have a wide range of issues and complications, and sometimes something like a urinary tract infection, can actually go on and lead to a sudden memory and thinking problems. And we see that quite commonly, whereas people and older people present to the hospital setting with a urinary tract infection with other things that might be seen as minimal, and they've got a condition that's called a delirium, which is really a sudden change in their memory and thinking with their orientation, with their ability to focus. And that could be quite stressful for both them and for family members, because these things can come on quite suddenly. James Valentine: Over the last few years, we've learned so much about vaccines. You know, it's been such a constant topic of conversation. And it's made, vaccines became age-related, didn't they? Through, during COVID-19, there were various vaccines. Well, you better go and have your boost if you're over 65, and we're going to make that available to you. Well, now you can get your retrovirals if you're over that age, and you know, you better get in and get those. Take me through vaccines for sort of 60-plus. What are you seeing? What can people get? Sam Hay: I think the general population doesn't fully understand the burden that influenza has. It is a big risk to kids under five and to the elderly bubble of people. There's no magic age group, but we've kind of delineated it at about the age of 65. It's really any adult with any chronic health condition is going to be at high risk from influenza. I am a major advocate for getting your annual flu shot. We need it every year because protection starts to drop off quickly and it's a virus that changes, mutates, so therefore we've got to try and keep up with that, with our updated shots. As we age we get a higher risk of lung conditions and lung infections, you know, pneumonia. And so there's one or two vaccines out there against pneumonia, which are incredibly effective at reducing the number of people that are going to end up in hospital with Simon. James Valentine: COVID? What's the current thinking on COVID-19? Sam Hay: So people should be up-to-date with their boosters. And this is a conversation to have with your doctor. It really is, to determine what your risk is. So I think people could be up to about their sixth shot if they sort of kept on getting them. But if we go back to the guidelines, they're really saying we only need, from the guideline perspective, three to four shots, definitely. And people could have access to those extra ones. So that's as of the beginning of 2024. I look at it somewhere in the middle, in that if people have a cluster of medical issues that are going to increase their risk, then they should consider those regular vaccines. If they're looking after people who are at risk, perhaps more boosters. If you're going travelling or into high risk environments, then you may want to consider it. James Valentine: And what do you see in aged care and among your patients? Are they keen to still get vaccines or they go, ah! Simon Grof: COVID in residential aged care now is still a huge issue and I'm trying to promote vaccines to the older people and their families as well, but you have a lot of people who never took it up to start off with. So you're not going to convince them now, but the people in the middle, the target audience take up these boosters, which are better. Because they do attract and they target against the newer type of variants of COVID. It's more to stop the seriousness of the actual infection and then stopping them presenting to hospitals. So I think in a residential aged care environment, we're still pushing it, which is at odds with what's happening in the community. James Valentine: At what age am I too young to go and see the geriatrician? Simon Grof: That's a really good question and that's a question we get asked quite commonly. Essentially a geriatrician is a doctor with specialist training and caring for the health of older people. The term is, I suppose, geriatric medicine. And geriatricians like myself diagnose and treat age-related medical conditions. And the age usually is above 65. But you know what? Really, is it above 65? Most of the people on my ward, or I see in residential aged care, are 85 and above. So, is 85 the new 65? I don't know. James Valentine: Oh, let's not put it that way around. That seems wrong! But there must be many a condition that would have been better off if we were starting to deal with it in our 60s. Simon Grof: Absolutely. Similar to the heart where, you know, they say middle age is when you really need to up your game and, you know, continue the consistency with the exercise, continue the consistency with eating well, not smoking, alcohol, all the things we hear about. It's similar for the body, similar for the brain, similar for everything into old age as well. So the sooner we can start and the sooner we can look after things, the better it is. And you know, we might be living to 150 soon, who knows. James Valentine: All right, let's talk about mobility and exercise and bring in sports physician, Dr Mohammad Jomaa, UK educated and now in Sydney, where he's practising as a sports physician. Thanks so much. Mohammad Jomaa: Thanks, James. It's been a real pleasure to jump on and speak to you today. James Valentine: So what's your general advice for exercise for over 50s? Mohammad Jomaa: Exercising safely is paramount. It usually is injuries and complications, which stops people from exercising at all in the first place. So we need to use exercise as a means to reduce the risk of our injuries, as opposed to increase the risk of injury through exercise. Doing nothing is bad for us, but we also know that doing too much is bad for us. And so where's the sweet spot? Finding that is all about figuring out where your current function is and very cautiously and gradually increasing from there, giving you enough time to recover and get stronger so that you can keep building and building. James Valentine: So do you have a recommended exercise regime for perhaps, you know, 50-plus? Mohammad Jomaa: Everyone has a different starting point. Everyone has a different goal. And so exercise prescription is always very nuance

The stigma around menopause is slowly peeling away, but many of us still suffer in silence. In this episode, we take a lighter look at the often unglamorous side-effects of menopause – from hot flushes and brain fog to facial hairs and mood swings – hearing from Aussie comedian Jean Kittson, who is living her best life on the other side, and getting the medical rundown from celebrity GP and passionate women’s health advocate Dr Ginni Mansberg. About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 30 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in-between Our bodies surprise us in ways we never thought possible as we age, so in series five of the Life’s Booming podcast – Is This Normal? – we’re settling in for honest chats with famous guests and noted experts about the ways our bodies behave as they age, discussing the issues and awkward questions you may be too embarrassed to ask yourself. Jean Kittson has been entertaining audiences for decades with her wit and humour, both of which she brings to the fore in her candid and hilarious take on menopause, You're Still Hot to Me , the book she wished she had read during the momentous time in her life. Dr Ginni Mansberg is a well-known celebrity doctor based in Sydney, with television appearances in Embarrassing Bodies Down Under, Sunrise, The Morning Show, and Things You Can't Talk About on TV. She is also the author of The M Word: How to thrive in menopause. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note – Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify : Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast. About Australian Seniors Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency SSMR0502_240229_Menopause the other side_Final James Valentine: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming Series 5 of this most excellent and award winning podcast. I'm James Valentine and in this series we're going to ask the question, is this normal? I mean, as we age, stuff happens to us. Our bodies change, things fall off, we get crook, stuff doesn't work as well as it used to. There's nothing we can do about it, we're getting older, we're ageing. But which bits are normal? Which bits do we have no control over? Which bits can we do something about? That's the kind of questions that we're going to be asking in this series, Is This Normal? of Life's Booming. Now, of course, if you enjoy this series, leave us a review, tell all your families and friends about it. And we want to hear from you as well. You can contribute to this. If you've got questions about things in particular that you want to know, perhaps there's some particular wear and tear happening to you, let us know. We'd love to see if we can answer that question in the series. We're going to look at things like menopause, gut health, mental health, lots of other burning questions. So think about those areas and if there's something in there that's specific to you that you'd like us to cover, let us know. When it comes to women's health in older years, it turns out that the hot flushes, the brain fog, the facial hair, the mood swings can all be linked back to the one thing and that's menopause. In this episode, Menopause the Other Side, let's take a look in some detail at the common symptoms, the experiences, and life on the other side of it. We'll get some answers about menopause, the ‘M’ word, from the queen of morning television, Dr Ginni Mansberg. But it gives me great pleasure to welcome, of course, to thispodcast as well, Jean Kittson, who wrote a fantastic book called You're Still Hot To Me, dealing with her experience and her research into menopause. Jean Kittson, hello. Jean Kittson: Hello, James. James Valentine:Still so hot? Jean Kittson: Yes, I am, actually. Every now and then. James Valentine: Is this the 10th anniversary? Is it 10 years since you published? Jean Kittson: Yes, it is. 2014 it came out. It's into its sixth reprint now, something like that. Women still keep going through menopause. James Valentine: The book didn't fix it? Jean Kittson: No, that's right.And I thought I'd finish and everyone's finished. No, they're still going. Of course they're still experiencing menopause. And just the other night I was out with some younger women and they're still struggling. Trying to work out what the best way to handle it is and what treatment to get and they're still people pushing back around different treatments like HRT. I was really surprised. We've come on a lot more than we have 10 years ago, people are speaking about it, but there's still a lot of ignorance really, misinformation. James Valentine: It still seems to be an area of mystery, really, and half whispered truths. Oh well I've heard you should do this, and what about the other? Jean Kittson: Yes, I think people are still afraid it's going to impact on their work because the Australian Human Resources Institute did asurvey and they found that the majority of women would not mention menopause at work because they thought they'd be considered old, sidelined for leadership positions.With all the stigma still attached to menopausal women. So there's still a lot of, I don't want to talk about it in the workplace. And that of course translates to, I don't really want to talk about it at all. James Valentine: Yeah, and leading into it, let's say you're 30 or 40. You're not even thinking about it. Jean Kittson: No, well that's the thing, and yet when I was doing my book, I found that most of the women I randomly chose to interview were having their first hot flushes around 40, 42. And we're always told it's around 50, 52, 55, that area. But many, many women will start going through perimenopause, which is another part of menopause that I didn't even know existed until I went through menopause. So there's perimenopause that can start 10 years earlier. And some women are thinking, they’ll follow the Hollywood style. Oh, I’ll have a baby. She had a baby naturally at 50. So can I. I'll just keep putting it off. What? Well, was that a hot flush? What the hell? What am I going to do? You know, so it comes as a terrible shock. And I think there's a lot of things about women's bodies that need to be talked about more openly. Fertility, ovulation, menopause, all those sorts of things. James Valentine:Yeah. If only it happened to men. Jean Kittson: If only, we'd never hear the end of it. James Valentine: That's right, we'd have championships in it. Jean Kittson: Yeah, that's right. James Valentine:Set world records, all that kind of stuff. Jean Kittson:You'd have, you know, months off. Yeah. Menopause month off. James Valentine: Do you know, he's battling with menopause but still CEO. What a guy. Jean Kittson: That's right. Hang on, you can't talk to him for a moment. James Valentine: That's right, just wait. Jean Kittson:All the windows are open. James Valentine: He's a little bit emotional but come back tomorrow, he'll be fine. Jean Kittson: We were going to have a board meeting, it's cancelled. But don't worry about it, it’s menopause. James Valentine: What? Oh, that's fine, no worries. I went through it myself, man. On you go. Good on ya, chaps. Is it as simple as, like, it was happening to you and you found it difficult to find relevant information, what you needed to know? Jean Kittson: Oh yeah, that's why I wrote my book.I wrote the book I needed. I needed to find the facts out about menopause, and I found out so many other facts about my own body that had never been talked about. We're just sort of more primed, our whole body is primed to have sex when we ovulate rather than other times of the month. But we're told that women are just ready for it every day of the freaking week. James Valentine: Yeah, and let me clarify that. That was men who decided that one? Jean Kittson: Can't say it ain't so. Just because men don't understand women and don't like it when we get a little bit feisty, a little bit irritable, start giving our kids a burnt chop. You know, in the old days, we were diagnosed with climacteric insanity and locked up. And if men of a certain age got a little bit feisty, a little bit irritable, they were elected to parliament. James Valentine: That's right. That's very good. Dr Ginni Mansberg's with us. You've met! Jean Kittson: Yes, we have, Ginni, hello. Ginni Mansberg: Hello darling, how are you? Hello to both of you. James Valentine: Thank you so much for coming. Is this, like, I think what we've got to is, I'm sort of seeing, we shouldn't necessarily think about all these things as separate? It's the entire cycle of life and the entire fertility cycle of a woman that we should be discussing, not as though there's this thing that happens to people called menopause. Ginni Mansberg: Absolutely. I mean, a lot of people don't realise that menopause itself is a single day that happens 12 months from the first day of your last period. Only, you probably didn't know it was your last period at the time because your periods were all over the show, often for up to several years before you go into menopause proper. And we call that perimenopause. I call it hormone hell. Your hormones are giving you a triple pike with a half flip because they are going up and down like a yo-yo, and our brains and our bodies really don't like those fluctuating hormone levels. So often, exactly as Jean was saying, the worst of it comes in your mid to late 40s, not in your late 50s. That's not it at all. In fact, sometimes life gets a lot better on the other side of the rainbow after menopause. James Valentine: Hang on, just take me back. You said a single day, menopause is a single event. Ginni Mansberg: It is. So it's defined as 12 months from your last period.That's really problematic for women who, for example, have a hysterectomy before they go into menopause. It doesn't make any sense for those women whatsoever because their hysterectomy might have been at age 40, their ovaries were fully functional and don't go into decline for another six years. That's a problem for women who use contraceptives like the Mirena coil that have some progesterone in their coil. They don't have regular periods either. So there is a movement to change that definition, but that's what we've got at the moment, that single day. 12 months after you had your last period. James Valentine: Yeah, we describe it, Jean, as it seems to me like it’s anything from about 45 to 75, a whole period of life. Jean Kittson: Yes, that's right. That's right. I haven't heard the single daydefinition before, I must say, but of course it is 12 months after your last period, so if you can count to the day, that's the day you are officially, and probably, you know, medically, scientifically, in menopause. James Valentine: What happens on that day? Jean Kittson: You buy a bottle of champagne! James Valentine: Ginni, what happens on that day? Ginni Mansberg: Mostly it's not a lot different from the perimenopause that precedes it. And those early postmenopausal years, that's why I think getting hung up on definitions is problematic from a medical perspective. It's not like once you hit menopause on that day, everything changes. It's not like that at all. In fact, the treatment is fairly similar whether you've gone through menopause already or whether you're in that lead up, but your hormones are still giving you hormone hell. James Valentine: Jean, when you were looking at this, did you find a treatment for menopause? Jean Kittson: Well, when I started going through menopause, I was asking around my friends, what's going on, and they said, oh, it's probably menopause, and most of them didn't take any treatments, and they said it was a breeze for them, or they didn't really like to talk about it. Some of my friends said, I'm on HRT. Other people were saying, HRT is deadly, you'll get breast cancer. It was during that time. It wasn't long after the Women's Health Initiative brought out the report that linked HRT to breast cancer and everyone dropped off using it.But then it was found 12 years later to be flawed and HRT is the best way to go. So I had to keep being a fully functioning woman. I had kids at home, elderly parents, I was full-time job. I couldn't stand on stage and start perspiring and mopping my brow, and that's the first time I had a hot flush. I was talking to all these young Czech guys from Ericsson or something. It was a corporate gig, and I'm standing on stage in a silk top, gold silk top. And then I'm going, is it hot in here? That's probably the first time I mentioned that, you know, out of the million times I've mentioned it since. And I started mopping my brow, and then I looked down, and my whole top had turned like camouflage. I had rings of sweat under my boobs, I had them down the side, and then I thought,I have to do something radical about this. So I went to a gynaecologist, I talked about HRT, I realised there was a lot of fear that a lot of women suffered, a lot of women would leave their jobs because they thought they weren't coping with work, but they actually weren't coping with their menopause symptoms. I realised it was like in so many aspects, women were afraid, they suffered, there were these taboos, they were without information, they couldn't lead fully functioning lives, basically. And so, their biology was in denial, and one of the reasons they denied their biology and didn't talk about it was because when we were allburning our bras and things like that, we wanted to be equal to men, the same as men in the workplace. We didn't want to admit that actually there's things that are going to happen biologically that are going to affect our jobs. Not for the worse. We just have to work around it. Like we've got the little kitchen tidies in the toilets now. You know, in the old days, men would say, Oh, don't listen to her. She's on the rags, when we got our period. If you said that now, you'd be considered a fossil and a twerp. So we've got to get the same with menopause. So there's lots of great treatments, but Ginni would know. James Valentine: Ginni, we might come back to treatments. Let's just discuss the symptoms. First of all, you know, Jean's first moment is ghastly. Thank you for repeating it. But the range of symptoms is also extraordinary, isn't it? Ginni Mansberg: Yeah, everything from palpitations to shortness of breath to itchy skin, a whole lot of stuff that goes on below the belt. Hot flushes is the one that most people know about and that's because it's really common and very visible. So 75% of women will experience those hot flushes. They're not always dramatic, like Jean’s. Some women just run hotter and a lot of women experience heat at night, so that interrupts their sleep. We see a lot of insomnia. About 80% of women will experience what we call brain fog. So you can't remember, oh, what's that thing that you write with that leaves ink on the page? Can't remember the name of it.What's that thing that I need to get into the lock of my house? Can't remember that thing. Forgetting people's names, being on a Zoom call and forgetting the name of the project you're working on, that 80% of women will have that, but a lot of people don't realize that this is peak time for mental health issues in a woman's life. So one in three women will experience some sort of mental health problem. Anxiety and depression are the main ones, and they have particular hues. We often call it the ‘peri rage’. People are just so angry and so annoyed, and they don't understand why they're so angry with people, but lashing out and acting what they feel like is very inappropriate. They're very remorseful and quite paranoid, very thin skinned, very easily offended. Now, when you put those things together, it's not surprising exactly as Jean says, that untreated, 10% of women will leave the workforce altogether at this time, an additional 14% will decide to go part time or to significantly reduce their hours, an additional 8% of women will either ask for a demotion or actively avoid a promotion, say no to a promotion that's offered to them. And then we can't understand about number one, the gender pay gap, but number two, the fact that Australasian women retire with so much lower levels of superannuation and the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees has estimated that for Australian women alone, menopause costs between $17 and $35 billion a year in lost revenue and lost superannuation because they are exiting the workforcebecause of this hormonal glass ceiling. Now that doesn't happen to everyone, but I think that those numbers are costing the Australian economy enough and women enough that we need to be taking it more seriously and not just saying it's a couple of hot sweats. Suck it up, princess. James Valentine: Yeah. But I think Jean highlights the difficulty here for many women is to say, is that unless the society acknowledges it, unless the entire workforce and all of our structures acknowledge the existence of these things, it's very difficult for an individual woman to suddenly say in the workplace, actually, can we just deal with my menopause?Um, you know, is that okay? Can we accommodate that now, please? Ginni Mansberg:I think we really need to talk about the study that Jean talked about called the Women's Health Initiative Study that came out in 2002. So if you allow me just a couple of minutes to explain what happened and why we are in a bit of a disaster today. So untilthat study came out, around the 1990s, big cohort studies – so when you look at big populations – what scientists had found was that women who were taking the older forms of HRT had lower levels of heart disease. And so the National Institutes of Health in America decided to mount a massive study, 110,000 women, that was a prospective placebo controlled trial. Don't worry about the details. It's just a really, really good study. And they took women with an average age of 63 who had never had hormone therapy and gave half a placebo and half hormone therapy to look at what would happen to their rates of heart disease and other illnesses. What they didn't expect to find was this. For every 10,000 women who took a placebo, there were 30 cases of breast cancer. But for every 10,000 women who took this old-school form of HRT that we no longer use at an average age of 63, when the vastmajority of women are well past their symptoms and don't need it anymore, when they started it at that age, there were 38 cases of breast cancer per 10,000 women. The result of that finding was that, and on top of the fact that no, they didn't have any less heart disease, they decided to cancel the study. But instead of talking about those relative risks and the fact that this was not in the population that used hormone replacement therapy in real world trials, they went to the papers and said, hey, this stuff causes breast cancer. And a fewthings happened as a result of that. Number one, 80% of women worldwide threw their HRT in the bin and all the menopause symptoms got rebranded as just like a wrinkle, like a bit of, if you can't handle that, you're a princess. You shouldn't need this stuff. It's very dangerous. The second thing was, and this is really important.There's a legacy of this today, was the doctors were no longer taught about menopause. It went out of the curriculum. I, with all of my postgraduate experience, have never had any formal education on menopause. Everything I know is self taught by joining the various menopause societies around the world because it is not taught to medical students.It's not taught to GPs. It's not taught to gynaecologists thes

Changes to our joints, bones and muscles are often attributed simply to ageing ‘wear and tear’, but is that true? From creaky joints to hip and knee replacements, physiotherapist Rod Grof takes us through the top musculoskeletal risks as we age, while Logie-winning actor John Wood shares his own health story, and how health impacts his life. About the episode - brought to you by Australian Seniors. Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 30 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in between. Our bodies surprise us in ways we never thought possible as we age, so in series five of the Life’s Booming podcast – Is This Normal? – we’re settling in for honest chats with famous guests and noted experts about the ways our bodies behave as they age, discussing the issues and awkward questions you may be too embarrassed to ask yourself. Acting veteran John Wood is no stranger to treading the boards. From Rafferty’s Rules and Blue Heelers to comedy revue Senior Moments and Ensemble Theatre’s newest show, The Great Divide , John has been entertaining audiences for more than 40 years. Rod Grof is a Melbourne-based physiotherapist and principal of Platinum Physio. Experienced in treating a range of musculoskeletal injuries and conditions in clients across the lifespan, Rod helps his older patients to live more active lives, with less pain. If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note - lifesbooming@seniors.com.au . Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast . Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency Transcript: James Valentine: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming Series 5 of this most excellent and award winning podcast. I'm James Valentine and in this series we're going to ask the question, is this normal? I mean, as we age, stuff happens to us. Our bodies change, things fall off, we get crook, stuff doesn't work as well as it used to. There's nothing we can do about it, we're getting older, we're ageing. But which bits are normal? Which bits do we have no control over? Which bits can we do something about? That's the kind of questions that we're going to be asking in this series, Is This Normal?, of Life's Booming. Now, of course, if you enjoy this series, leave us a review, tell all your families and friends about it. And we want to hear from you as well. You can contribute to this. If you've got questions about things in particular that you want to know, perhaps there's some particular wear and tear happening to you. Let us know. We'd love to see if we can answer that question in the series. We're gonna look at things like menopause, gut health, mental health, lots of other burning questions. So think about those areas and if there's something in there that's specific to you that you'd like us to cover, let us know. From creaky joints to hip and knee replacements, let's find out the things that are really gonna affect our muscles and our bones, our musculoskeletal system. Someone who knows muscles a lot better than me is Melbourne based director of platinum physio, Rod Grof. Rod helps his older patients to live more active lives with less pain and he can share what commonly happens to our bodies as we age and also what we can do about it. But before we bring on Rod, let me introduce someone who's very familiar to you. You're gonna know him. He's a great guy and a marvellous actor. You got to know and love him in Blue Heelers. He's currently in the ensemble theatres The Logie winning actor. Hello, John Wood. John Wood: Hello, James. How are you? James Valentine: Good. You're a bit crook. John Wood: Oh, I'm not that crook. I've had Rheumatoid arthritis for about the last 15 years and it sort of slows you down. James Valentine: What did you first notice? John Wood: Pains in the ankles, really. You know, quite severe pains in the ankles and difficulty getting around. And then I started to notice it in the hands, you know, like it was, you know, the knuckles were really swelling up and the hand was very difficult to move, but I also discovered I had Gout in, certainly in this hand, this hand I had an MRI done on and it was full of uric acid. James Valentine: Yeah, right. And were they, what did they say at the time, was that compounding, were they separate things or compounding one another? John Wood: Well, they're separate and you take different medication for them both. I mean, you take allopurinol for the gout and methotrexate for the arthritis and I've started taking curcumin recently, which seems to settle things down a bit, and mersynofen. And this week, I've had, I don't know why it's happened, but I seem to have something like bursitis. There's no lump or swelling or anything, but the elbow has been giving me jib James Valentine: It just happens. It's like, what do you do? It just happens, doesn't it? Everything starts to go a bit. How long a period, like from say the ankle pain to the joints, are we talking months, years? John Wood: Not very long. It was, it just seems that I've got Rheumatoid everywhere. You know, like it's, apart from slowing me down a bit, it hasn't really affected my work, except for one occasion I auditioned for the Harry Potter musical and they had us marching up and down and across and sideways and doing all sorts of stuff and that was all fine, then this associate director from England said, now I want you all to fall down. And I said, I can't even get on the ground to play choo-choo trains with my grandkids. So I said, it's a big mistake getting me to fall down. He said, nevermind fall down anyway. So I fell down and I had to be helped up by Julie Forsyth and a couple of other women. James Valentine: And so it doesn't impede you that much, but it's painful. John Wood: It's always very painful. Yeah. But at the moment, it's not too bad. I guess you get used to it as time goes on. And I've been lucky that the methotrexate has stopped any, you know, the stuff that says swelling. James Valentine: Yeah. It doesn't seem to be there. John Wood: No, no. And you know, I remember seeing old ladies when I was a kid, you know, whose fingers were really gnarled and bent. James Valentine: And sort of folded into a claw almost. John Wood: Yeah, yeah. James Valentine: It’s shocking. And so apart from the drugs, what else have you, what else have you tried? Exercise, diet? John Wood: Oh I'm trying, I'm staying at Kirribilli at the moment of course, and it's a bloody long walk up to the shops at Milsons Point. Just about, you know, like I'm getting fitter. James Valentine: Well let's bring in Rod. He's Director of Platinum Physio and he helps patients like you, you know, with, I suppose, the non chemical approach and trying to get that bloody long walk to maybe go a bit bloody further. Rod, thanks for joining us. What are you hearing and what John's telling us? Rod Grof: I'm hearing a very common story. We have plenty of patients who come into our clinic with Rheumatoid arthritis. And you said John, 15 years ago was your onset of it. So often we hear that Rheumatoid arthritis’ onset is between the ages of 30 to 50 years of age. And you're currently taking methotrexate: just for our listeners, that’s actually a immunosuppressant, so it's going to slow down the immune response and in turn reduce, hopefully reduce the inflammatory response as well. And starting in the ankles, that's fairly common, but more so starting in the hands and the feet is probably the first point. And then it progresses to the knees, the ankles and as you've mentioned now, the elbows. James Valentine: You think the elbows are Rheumatoid? Rod Grof: There's a very good chance that it would be, yes. John Wood: Oh great, right. Rod Grof: But again, without a proper assessment, we can't categorically tell you that. But just interestingly that you mentioned that, you know, when James asked you about the exercise side of things, there's some really great non pharmacological interventions, John, that you could really get involved in. And one of them, which I could speak really highly about would be something called hydrotherapy, which is exercising in warm water at approximately 34 degrees Celsius, and just being able to really get a good workout and have a really targeted workout, which will address your muscles as well as your tendons and your ligaments that are ultimately affected by Rheumatoid arthritis to help improve things like your flexibility and we need to know, have you noticed that you've had changes in your flexibility, your mobility over the years? John Wood: I’ve never been all that flexible. I had, I was told when I was in my early teens, I had back trouble and the doctor discovered that I had two L5 vertebrae and I, you know, like most men, I used to use my spine like a crane and just, you know. James Valentine: And so is that like, so during the course of the rheumatoid arthritis, say the last 15 years, has anyone suggested exercise or anything apart from drugs? John Wood: Well, I was doing my own exercise. I was walking in the RACV club pool at a place called Healesville in Victoria. And it's really great exercise because it's 1. 2 meters deep. It's a heated pool. It's not heated to as warm as Rod suggested but, it's great. I mean, you know, walking through water and I used to do it. James Valentine: That was sort of self prescribed, wasn't it? You just thought this is good. John Wood: Yeah, yeah. I just thought this is, you know, like the water takes a bit of weight off the joints. James Valentine: But no one has said at any point, you know, when you go back to get it checked or, you know, no doctor or anybody else has said anything, just go and have a chat to the physio. John Wood: No. James Valentine: No. No. You hear that a lot, you know, a lot of people don't know what you can offer, Rod. Rod Grof: Yes, that is the case. And our physio association are really pushing forward the campaign just to give the general public to get a good understanding of the breadth of what we do. And it's not just about musculoskeletal. We also treat patients neurologically. We also treat patients, you know, cardiothoracic wise as well. So there's a lot that patients don't know that physios can do except for massaging, you know, Chris Judd on the sidelines at an AFL game. James Valentine: Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, or actors who need a little bit of help. Rod Grof: Yeah, absolutely. James Valentine: Can't get up off the Harry Potter stage at any point. So would you consider it now, John? Like, you know, like we can go in a little bit more about what it actually offers. Are you open to stuff, you know? John Wood: Yeah, yeah, of course I am. Yeah, yeah. I'd be very happy to talk to Rod. I believe you're in Melbourne, so. Rod Grof: Yes, I'm based in Melbourne. John Wood: I’m just here, up here, working at the moment. James Valentine: So Rheumatoid arthritis, how common is that? Rod Grof: Rheumatoid arthritis is fairly common. It's a condition which is an autoimmune disease, which basically means that your body essentially is attacking itself. It's malfunctioning. And it's different to other forms of arthritis or the more popular or more well known type being osteoarthritis, which is more of your wear and tear type of arthritis. With Rheumatoid arthritis, that is when the body is actually attacking the lining of the joints, and that causes the redness, causes the swelling, and really a significant amount of pain and loss of function. James Valentine: Then that would suggest to me it's kind of curable. You know, can we take something to fix it? Rod Grof: So sadly it actually isn't curable. However, it can be managed. So that's where I come into the picture. The non pharmacological side of things is you know, exercise, good sleep nutrition, stressing less, having a really good lifestyle and being active; yoga, meditation, mindfulness, all of these things are really important to help manage that condition from a non pharmacological perspective. And when you go and see the quacks, see the docs, they're the ones that are going to feed you all the different pills. And I always say this, if there was a pill for exercise, every single doctor would be prescribing it. James Valentine: Yeah. But in some ways, it is the hardest one to do if you don't, if you haven't had a discipline of it in your life, it can be very hard to start. Rod Grof: Absolutely. You know, we have plenty of patients that come through our door that are across the lifespan and some of them have never walked into a gym in their life. An active gym is a real central feature of our physiotherapy clinics. James Valentine: So what’s going on in this gym? What are you doing? Rod Grof: So in the gym we're actually completing some physio supervised exercise. So we're actually taking the patient through a Physio tailored exercise regime, which addresses whatever their deficits are. James Valentine: We said, you know, if you haven't had exercise as part of your life, where you're not used to gyms, maybe that can be a bit forbidding. I mean, the other difficulty that can come with ageing is that you're not as limber as you once were, or you've got another injury or a knee problem or something that may interfere with you doing the exercise. Rod Grof: Absolutely. So often as well, having other niggles is a massive deterrent. And again, we've had patients that come in all the time and say, look, I used to be a runner and you know, I unfortunately was climbing a ladder one day and doing some housework and I fell off the ladder and I landed on my knee and I had to go to surgery and I had to go to hospital and have surgery. And unfortunately that moment in time has really prevented them from going on to do any form of exercise or rehabilitation. Whereas that's the time that should really be the impetus and really give you that motivation to start getting better because there's just so much that can be done. James Valentine: It's common at this point to start to have, I've got a bit of a creaky knee and a bit of a dicky hip and my elbow is a bit weird when, you know, the sun's at 45 degrees and I just played tennis three days ago. You know, it can all feel a little bit ill defined or you've had a bit of a go at a couple of things and nothing much happened or changed. That's what it can feel like at this age. Hang on. I'm describing myself. You know like and you're not sure whether to seek treatment for every creaky bit that's that's going on. Rod Grof: Yes, so what you're describing is, you know, noisy knees is a great example. The reality is if it's not painful and not affecting your quality of life, just play on. Don't worry about it. We become so obsessed and we hear so much about, you know, bone on bone and my joints are creaking and cracking. Well, there's plenty of evidence that suggests that people who are bone on bone actually don't have any pain. And there are those that have pristine looking joints, and can't get off a couch. So based on that, there's really good evidence, really important lifestyle choices that you can still make. And based on that, we would encourage you, even if you're hearing all these interesting sounds in different parts of your body, work through it, and if it's progressively getting worse, that's when you do seek treatment. James Valentine: Do you start with the physiotherapist? Do I go to a GP? Do I go to some other doctor and then get referred to you? Rod Grof: It's a great question. Now, I believe when it comes to musculoskeletal related conditions, go straight to your physiotherapist. Here in Australia, you don't need a referral, so it's very, very accessible. Often we'll have patients that will go to a GP and the GP says you need to go see a physiotherapist straight away. Also, there are some GPs though, that might go, Oh, okay. You've got a bit of a creaky shoulder. Maybe we need to go and do an X-ray or do some imaging. So I've seen people walk through my door with a wheelbarrow worth of scans. I'm talking about scans, including X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds over the last 20 to 25 years in relation to whatever joint it is that's bothering them. Now, these people have done the ring around. They've gone doctor shopping and seeking answers and they come through our door because this one doctor in the last 20 years who they've seeked has said, why don't you go and see a physiotherapist? So they come into our door and the first thing we ask them is, have you ever seen a physio? They say, no. Have you ever done any form of exercise? They say no. Okay. Well, great. Here's a starting point. And I try to soften it. I didn't say we've got a gym out here. Let's go and do some gym work because again, the idea of going into a gym can be quite terrifying for people because they think of macho men with their tops off and flexing their muscles in the mirror. So just to sweeten it up a bit, it's more of a rehabilitation center and that just kind of takes the edge off it a bit. And that way we at least get that buy in and introduce them into that gym setting. Let's talk a little James Valentine: bit more about the difference between Rheumatoid and Osteoarthritis, because I think we've spent a fair bit on Rheumatoid. Osteo comes on when in your life, what's it caused by, what is it? Rod Grof: Absolutely, so Osteoarthritis occurs, you know, pretty much over the age of 40 years of age. There's different degrees of it, different stages of it. It is a Progressive condition and you know, it's, it's part of the, unfortunately it's part of the ageing process. Like we get gray hair, like we get wrinkles, that's all age related changes. These things are common with arthritis where ultimately, or osteoarthritis, where the cartilage that lines the joint changes. And that can be as a result of different mechanical stresses that you put through your joints and more commonly, wear and tear and genetics, you know, unfortunately we can't really fight genetics. So one of the biggest, I guess, risk factors that you can't change for arthritis is your age, your sex, and also your genes. When I say sex, it's more common in females than it is in males. Now arthritis, unlike Rheumatoid arthritis affects more of your major weight bearing joints, i.e. predominantly your hips and your knees. Okay. And again, you might get sensations of what you described before, which was the noisy sounds. We call that crepitus. That's the medical term for it. Specifically, you might get some bony enlargement as well around the particular joint that you're working with. And unfortunately there are factors as well. The other risk factors that are actually modifiable are things like improving your muscle strength. Improving your level of physical activity and also again, just ensuring that you're living a healthy lifestyle. James Valentine: Yeah. So when this first occurs, can you slow it down? Can you end up, can you get rid of it? Rod Grof: So again, you can, it's not that you can get rid of osteoarthritis. However you can slow it down and you can by doing all of those modifiable, implementing most of those modifiable factors, as I said, particularly exercise, weight loss is a really big one as well. And by the way, this is quite an interesting fact, which I'm sure your audience will find very interesting. For every 10 percent of body weight that we lose, there is a 50 percent reduction in the amount of loads going through our knee joints. James Valentine: Yeah. Well, that's amazing. So I lose 10 kilos. It's like 50 kilos less through my knee. Is that what that means? Rod Grof: So it's 50 percent less load going thro