Life Matters - Separate stories podcast ABC listen

When Megan Maurice was diagnosed with breast cancer at 36 years of age, her daughter Pia was only seven. Megan thought the way to manage was to stay positive, and to adopt the mask of a character from a sad-but-uplifting TV show. She decided the emotional breakdown could come later. But what if surviving survival was even harder? Megan joins Hilary to talk about parenting through illness and trauma, and how to break through the numbness that comes once the crisis has passed. 

The World Health Organisation's 2021 Global Report on Ageism found that one in two people worldwide are ageist, and called ageism 'prevalent, ubiquitous, and insidious'.

One of the ways ageism manifests is through harmful stereotypes, and the language we use can play a critical role in either perpetuating or preventing those stereotypes.

Dr Catherine Barrett, Director and Founder of Celebrate Ageing and Dr Howard Manns, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Monash University join Hilary Harper to discuss the role language plays in shaping our attitudes and how using more age inclusive language can help prevent ageism.

With Australia reportedly one of the world's biggest fashion consumers, what if there was a way to find out everything you want to know about the item you are purchasing - to see the entire life cycle of a garment. How would this influence or inform your buying choices?  

A Digital Product Passport will contain all the information you need about an item's environmental impact. By 2030, all textile products for sale in Europe will need one, This well affect our trade with Europe, so will Australia follow suit? 

Alex Noble was sixteen and crazy about his chosen sport, Rugby. It was the day of the trials for the Open Sevens and Alex was primed. One tackle though went horribly wrong leaving  him paralysed from the neck down.
Five years on Alex is now a motivational speaker, has written a book called 'I Fight You Fight' and developed an approach to life he calls 'The Noble Way' 

A new set of guidelines from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute will help more than 3000 very preterm babies born in Australia annually. With around 60 per cent of these babies experiencing health and development difficulties later in life, experts say post-discharge care is often inconsistent and confusing for parents. The guidelines offer a schedule of care for all babies from the time they leave hospital up to school age so problems can be better identified and treated.

The internet and social media has been a double edged sword for news and journalism.

It's given a voice to communities that weren't often heard in the mainstream and enabled individuals and small collectives to report on news that would never have been covered otherwise.

But a lot of what you see on social media isn't actually true and the algorithms that control our feeds have tended to prioritise engagement over accuracy.

With many children and teenagers getting their news from social media, is it time for media literacy to be added to the school curriculum?