The Recovery Room with Lucy Bloom Lucy Bloom

If you've read Get the Girls Out you'll know exactly who Doc is. He was my landing pad after my 20-year marriage went kaput.  We're not a couple anymore but we are still good friends: we live two or three hills apart by the beach in Sydney and I think we will be mates for life. There really is no one on planet earth quite like Doc. He's a surfer, a bourbon appreciator, loves a fast motorcycle and a ciggie. But he's also a dream therapist, lover of tropical aquariums and anything pineapple flavour. Doc has so many good stories to tell it wouldn't be decent a podcast show without him.

Mandy Retzlaff is a farmer, an author and a horsewoman. She was born in Ghana, grew up in South Africa and Zimbabwe but these days, lives on the coast of Mozambique in a town called Vilankulos, running a horse safari business on the white sandy beaches there. I rode with Mandy and her husband Pat during my year of the Shit Sandwich when I took a break from reality and went for a gallop in Africa instead. I often tell my audiences that when life is really putting the boot in, RUN, run from those problems at least for a while. I racked off to Africa for a month and that’s how I met the delightful Mandy and her horses. Pat and Mandy have the most epic life story which you can read in 104 Horses: A Memoir of Farm and Family, Africa and Exile. The stables were too noisy so Mandy has kindly schlepped up the road to the guest house to record this podcast interview.

Bernard is a demographer, speaker and writer. For several decades, Bernard has studied population and economic shifts as indicators for the future, and then helped explain them to the rest of us. He has his own language and authority from Her Majesty the Queen to make up new words as required. I made that last bit up. However, whenever you see smashed avo on a menu, I think of Bernard, because he was the original commentator who linked the ridiculous cost of smashed avo in cafes to the impossibility of GenXers ever buying their own home. True story. He’s a Baby Boomer, but that’s OK.

Jane Caro is a writer and media commentator who knows when I mention her on stage somewhere because the audience starts tagging her in tweets about bold or brave communication. I’ve only met Jane once in person but in 2014 she wrote an article which had such a profound effect on me and the way I write, then in 2017 she published a collection of women's stories which gave me the courage to write the Kindness chapter in Get the Girls Out. It is with great pleasure and a whole lot of fangirling that I welcome Jane Caro to the Recovery Room...

Greg Bloomfield is the man behind the smoking ban on airlines, the decline in the annual road toll from 17 per 100,000 to less than 6 and he's the man who can help you get a mental health bed when no one else is listening. He's the man behind FairGo - a simple communication system which puts pressure on politicians through the most effective avenues. He's a skilled negotiator and you'll want him on your team if your bank is talking foreclosure. Greg has taught me just about everything I know about democracy, negotiation and fending for the underdog. He explains here how dealing with politicians and banks is a lot like cattle farming.

When I was looking to sell a business in 2013, I wanted to sell the program to someone who would love it but with military precision. Carrina Hampton was the perfect person to take over the baby I had created - Beer + Bubs, childbirth education for dads at the pub - and to grow it in scope.