Life Matters - Separate stories podcast ABC listen

Have you ever gone to the perfect holiday spot and thought: I wish I could just live here forever? What is it like for the people who actually do?

From the busy days of peak season to the slow days when the crowds go home, how does that change life for the people who live there all year round?

And can that understanding help us to become better tourists ourselves?

Dr Yves Rees is a historian, author and podcaster and prominent voice on issues and experiences of gender diversity. 

They share how taking up ocean swimming with the Salty Slags club boosted their wellbeing, and why they make an effort to sit with the hard feelings.

When teacher Molly Roden Winter’s husband is home late, leaving her to put the kids to bed (again), she storms out of the house, finding herself at a bar exchanging numbers with a cute guy. 

Molly never expects to pursue it, until she gets back home to learn her husband knows about the encounter. 

What follows is a complete transformation of Molly’s relationship with her husband and herself. 

When you walk through the city or just pop down to the shops, it can feel like everyone has a set of headphones glued to their ears

While work-related hearing loss has gone down in Australia over the last few decades, the World Health Organisation suggested that more than 1 Billion young people are at risk of hearing problems - in part because of the way we're listening to music.

Professor Robert Cowan share how to keep our ears healthy into our older age.

A Senate report says banking services and access to cash should be considered an essential service in Australia, and has called for a new banking code, which would prohibit banks from closing local branches in regional areas without consultation. 

The report, which also calls for investigation into the feasibility of a publicly owned bank, has been criticised by the Australian Banking Association, which says customer behaviour has moved away from face-to-face banking services. 

However, some residents living in, regional and remote communities have welcomed the report, highlighting the importance of local banks for those low on digital literacy, as well as the difficulties businesses face in having no safe places to make large cash deposits.

Jane Cafarella was separated from her sister when her parents divorced, each taking one child with them.

But well before that while living under the same roof her parents had already claimed a child each. For Jane it was her mother, and for her sister, Julie, her father.

How this, and living with lymphodoema, played out across Jane's life is captured in her memoir Cleaved, a story of loss, legs and finding family.