What Happens Next?

Steve Morris
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Documentary
  • Series

When Steve Morris began weighing his own career transition, he went looking for answers. He reached out to former elite athletes who'd already faced the leap into life after sport, expecting stories of reinvention and hard-won wisdom. What he found instead were tales that, for some, ended in tragedy — and it left him more unsettled about his own looming Monday off than when he'd started. What Happens Next is the result of that search: an unflinching, deeply human series of conversations with athletes who've walked away from the spotlight and had to figure out who they are without it.  In Season One, Steve sits down with former Wallaby Ben Alexander, Olympic legend Shane Gould, AFL premiership duo Easton Wood and Tom Boyd, and Olympic champion Mack Horton — each opening up about identity, loss, reinvention, and the question that haunts every retired athlete: what happens next? Now, listen to Season 2 for What Happens Next.

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  1. Episode 1

    S2E1: Sally Pearson: From Olympic Gold ... to What Happens Next

    Olympic champion Sally Pearson joins Steve Morris for the first episode of Season 2 of What Happens Next to take us inside one of the most extraordinary sporting careers in Australian history. From growing up on the Gold Coast with very little ... to becoming a teenage champion, travelling alone around Europe as a 19-year-old and ultimately standing on the start line of the 2012 London Olympic 100-metre hurdles final.  Sally reveals what it really takes to become the best in the world.  She recalls the nerves, rituals, pressure and extraordinary focus behind those famous 12.35 seconds that made her an Olympic champion. But Sally's story doesn't end with Olympic gold. In a candid and often emotional conversation, she talks about the brutal reality of elite sport — broken bones, torn muscles, ruptured Achilles injuries, disappointment and the devastating realisation that her body could no longer keep up with her ambitions. She describes coaching herself to a second World Championship title, missing the Rio Olympics, and eventually making the decision to retire from athletics at 32.  For someone who had spent almost her entire life as an elite athlete, the question became: Who is Sally Pearson when there is no longer a starting block, stopwatch or finish line? In this revealing conversation, Sally opens up about the uncertainty of becoming a beginner again, dealing with rejection and discovering a new identity beyond athletics. From television and sports broadcasting to embracing her creative personality, Sally explains how she learned to let go of Sally the athlete without losing the qualities that made her a champion. Her message to young athletes is powerful: be completely focused when you're doing your job, but when you step away from the field, hold on to the person you really are — because that's the person who will be with you for the rest of your life.  This is a story about Olympic glory, resilience, reinvention and, ultimately, discovering what happens next.

  2. Episode 2

    S2E2: Promises: From One Hit Wonder to What Happens Next?

    What happens when two teenagers from California record a song that becomes a massive hit on the other side of the world — while almost nobody in their own country knows who they are?  In this fascinating episode of What Happens Next, Steve Morris travels to Los Angeles to meet siblings Leslie and Benny Knauer, two of the members of the 1970s pop band Promises, whose infectious hit Baby It's You became a major chart success in Australia, Germany and New Zealand.  Leslie and Benny take us back to the band's beginnings, growing up in a musical family, recording in the pre-digital era, and the extraordinary moment they realised their song was being played on radio around the world. For Australian music fans, Baby It's You became a defining pop song of the late 1970s, helped enormously by the influence of Molly Meldrum and Countdown. The song reached number two on the Australian charts, spent five weeks at number one in New Zealand and went gold in Germany — yet Promises never achieved the same success in their native America. Leslie and Benny reveal what it was like to suddenly become pop stars overseas, touring Europe, meeting music legends such as Debbie Harry, and trying to understand how a song created by a couple of young siblings had travelled so far. They also talk candidly about the strange mix of excitement, self-doubt and pressure that comes with being known for one extraordinary record. But this is What Happens Next, so the story doesn't end when the band breaks up. Leslie and Benny explain how they stepped away from the pop-star world, returned to ordinary life and continued working in music and other pursuits. And then, in a remarkable moment captured especially for this episode, something happened that hadn't happened in 45 years — Leslie and Benny performed Baby It's You together again. For Benny's wife, it was the first time she had ever heard her husband perform his famous song live.  For Leslie, it was a chance to reconnect with the music and the brother she loved performing with. It's a warm, funny and wonderfully nostalgic story about family, fame, music, missed opportunities and discovering that sometimes the most unexpected part of a hit song is what happens next.

  3. Episode 3

    S2E3: Rory Underwood - 85 Caps, 18 Years in the Cockpit — What Comes Next?

    Rory Underwood lived two extraordinary lives at the same time. For 14 years, he was one of England’s greatest rugby wingers, winning 85 caps, scoring a record 49 tries for his country, touring twice with the British & Irish Lions and playing in three Rugby World Cups.  But rugby was only half the story. For 18 years, Rory was also a Royal Air Force fast-jet pilot, flying Tornados and other aircraft at extraordinary speeds and low altitudes. In this episode of WHAT HAPPENS NEXT with Steve Morris, Rory reflects on how he managed to balance two careers that, for most people, would each have been a lifetime achievement. But the real story begins when both careers came to an end.  In 1997, Rory finished his rugby career, and in 1999 he left the RAF after 18 years of service. Suddenly, the rugby player and the fighter pilot identities that had defined so much of his adult life were gone. Rory talks candidly about the challenges of that transition, the culture shock of moving from the military into business, and the importance of preparing for life beyond sport or any high-performance career. He shares how lessons learned in the cockpit and on the rugby field helped him build a new career in business, leadership and performance through his consultancy, Wingman. Steve and Rory explore what makes a truly high-performing team, why successful people can struggle when the structure and identity of their careers disappear, and why networking, developing new skills and preparing for the future should begin long before retirement. Rory also offers advice to the next generation of athletes: pursue excellence, but don't become so consumed by your performance that you lose yourself along the way. His story is ultimately about resilience, reinvention and learning from every experience — because, as Rory says, “the only mistake you'll ever make is one you never learn from.”

  4. Episode 4

    S2E4: Shaun Tomson — Bustin' Down the Door: Surfing, Loss, and Reinvention

    From the warm waters of Durban's Indian Ocean coastline ... to the biggest, most dangerous breaks on Hawaii's North Shore, this episode traces the extraordinary journey of 1977 world surfing champion Shaun Tomson.  Steve Morris travels to Santa Barbara to sit down with the man once ranked among the top ten surfers in history — and finds someone far warmer than the stern competitor he remembers from old photographs. Shaun opens up about his childhood in a beach-obsessed family shaped by his mother's survival of the WWII siege of Malta and his father's own shark-attack-defying love of the ocean, and how those early lessons in resilience and freedom set him on a path toward reshaping surfing forever. The conversation moves through the birth of professional surfing itself — the fierce cultural clashes on Hawaii's North Shore, the founding of his apparel brand Instinct, and the discipline required to walk away from competition on his own terms in 1989.  But this episode's heart lies in what came after the trophies: the devastating loss of his teenage son Matthew, and how Shaun transformed unimaginable grief into a mission of purpose. Out of that darkness came the Surfer's Code — twelve simple lines, each beginning with "I will" — a tool he's since carried into classrooms, boardrooms, prisons, and Ivy League leadership programs around the world. This is a story about stoke, identity, and what happens when the thing that defines you disappears — and the deliberate choices that fill the space it leaves behind. Whether you're an athlete facing life after sport or simply someone standing at your own crossroads, Shaun's message is disarmingly simple: write your code, take the drop with commitment, and always paddle back out.

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About

When Steve Morris began weighing his own career transition, he went looking for answers. He reached out to former elite athletes who'd already faced the leap into life after sport, expecting stories of reinvention and hard-won wisdom. What he found instead were tales that, for some, ended in tragedy — and it left him more unsettled about his own looming Monday off than when he'd started. What Happens Next is the result of that search: an unflinching, deeply human series of conversations with athletes who've walked away from the spotlight and had to figure out who they are without it.  In Season One, Steve sits down with former Wallaby Ben Alexander, Olympic legend Shane Gould, AFL premiership duo Easton Wood and Tom Boyd, and Olympic champion Mack Horton — each opening up about identity, loss, reinvention, and the question that haunts every retired athlete: what happens next? Now, listen to Season 2 for What Happens Next.

Information

  • Creator
    Steve Morris
  • Episodes
    8
  • Seasons
    2
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 What Happens Next?
  • Show Website
    What Happens Next?