Life Matters - Separate stories podcast ABC listen

You pick up a friend to go out for lunch, and are joined by their digital nomad millennial  house guest. Things are going well until the bill comes and the guest wants to calculate it down to the cent. 

As you're driving them back, the guest opens a big bottle of kombucha and spills it all over the back seat of your new car. 

You didn't ask for money but are now annoyed about it! What could you have done differently?

Guests:

Jenny Tian, comedian 

Suren Jayemanne, comedian, writer and actor

If you have a tricky life dilemma you need help with, write it up and email it to Ask Aunty, lifematters@abc.net.au 

When someone helps you out, it can really mean a lot. A load has been taken off you, both physically and mentally.

We like to help each other out,  and yet when it's our turn to ask for help it's not necessarily a comfortable experience. 

Here's some tips on how to do it well.

From the outside, the intense, hyper-commercial culture inside financial firms seems both fascinating and appalling, leading to works like The Wolf of Wall Street.

What's it like from the inside, especially if you'd already tried to step away from it, to try to find a new kind of balance?

In her new memoir, Private Equity, Carrie Sun details how she dived back into the belly of the beast, as personal assistant to the billionaire founder of one of the hottest investment firms in New York and found herself slowly starting to disappear.

Playwright and author Marieke Hardy has long been cutting us up with her sharp and witty takes on life.

She brings her best nuggets of wisdom to Life Matters, explaining why she always makes time for dinner with a book, and how embracing a beginner's mindset changed her life. 

Renowned chef Joseph Abboud grew up steeped in the comforting, Lebanese food traditions of his parents. But his travels along the Silk Road led him to  realise there was a much richer Middle-Eastern food tradition that he could bring to Australian shores.

How did that epiphany lead Joseph to join other chefs ushering in a new ‘Lebanese-Australian food renaissance’? What is the history of Australian Middle-Eastern cooking that paved their way? And how has this evolving food tradition invigorated cross-cultural dialogue at Australian tables?  

Finding a job or career that matches your values, and even your passions, is the dream for many.

But how do you begin to figure out what that means in practice?

And, if you find it, how do you stop from dedicating all of your energy into your work, to the point that you risk burning out?