Lovely yayborhood, I hope you all had a wonderful double long weekend and are getting back into the swing of things. I had some very much needed down time with lots of wholesome, offline play to yay and it does SUCH wonders for the soul. So often, you don’t realise how fast you’ve been going or how hard you’ve been pushing until you stop - I talk about the relentlessness of our modern pace of life so much and yet constantly fall victim to it myself. So I am very grateful not only for our guest today but for the timing of his appearance as he is a world-renowned expert in optimising our health, wellbeing and longevity and is exactly the person whose brains I needed to pick this week.

Nic and I have been friends with Simon Hill for many years now connecting through multiple shared chapters in the wellness industry including launching products, opening plant-based restaurants, writing books, hanging with the Hemsworths and then, of course, podcasting (one of us has a #1 best selling book and a podcast with 40 million downloads, I’ll let you guess who). You may already know him as the brains behind the multi-platform Plant Proof, recently rebranded to The Proof, exploring the health and longevity benefits that come with mastering physical exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, recovery, sleep, and alignment. Simon is a physiotherapist and nutrition scientist with a unique ability to distil and translate convoluted, nuanced scientific information into snippets digestible (pun intended) by everyday audiences so that we are equipped to block out the noise and misinformation of the social media age and better our lives. I mean who doesn’t want to live longer and better and be given tips on how to do that? You can see why his is a brain I’m thrilled to have picked and why millions tune in to his content, this one is full of zingers - I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

READ MORE ABOUT THE PROOF.

Follow Simon Hill here.

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The problem with being an excitable person who always uses excitable language is that I leave no superlatives in reserve for when something really blows me away. But I think most of Australia and the world (in fact, at least 60 million listeners) will grasp why I am pinching myself that our guest this week is none other than Hedley Thomas, National Correspondent for The Australian and creator of globally acclaimed investigative podcasts The Teacher’s Pet, Shandee’s Story, The Night Driver and the currently ongoing, Brownyn.

I find every human and story interesting, but I do have a list of dream guests who I never think I’ll get and Hedley has been one since 2018 when he literally changed the landscape of criminal investigations with The Teacher’s Pet, leading to the murder conviction of Chris Dawson for the previously unsolved disappearance of his wife Lynette Dawson in 1982. You all know that while on this show I’m all about the yay, my guilty pleasure has always been true crime and there is possibly no more influential person in the space than Hedley.

You can imagine how nervous I was to interview such a renowned, Gold Walkley award winning journalist - wanting to do him justice, explore his work, touch on who is he outside of work (a father, lover of cows, fan of White Lotus…) and ask all my burning questions about the Bronwyn case and what it takes to solve long overlooked crimes. We really need a whole series, but for now I tried to focus on things not exhaustively covered elsewhere so we do assume some baseline knowledge of his cases and skate over his fascinating way to yay before podcasting, which I highly recommend you research elsewhere.

I have so much more to say, but I know you’re all waiting to hear the voice that so many of us know so well. I knew he’d be eloquent and fascinating, but didn’t expect him to be quite so humble and warm! For more information on the Bronwyn investigation, please do visit bronwynpodcast.com or tune in wherever you get your podcasts. This was truly a life highly for me and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

LISTEN TO BRONWYN HERE.

Find out more about Hedley's work here.

LINKS

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I am so excited about our guest this week (although I know I say that every time), but I'm especially excited about this one as we’ve been trying to line this up for a long time and I’ve been fangirling over her for even longer. But as always, the universe in its infinite wisdom worked out the perfect timing for us in the end so that this chat would come out the same week as her very first book.

You’ll probably already know Ellie Cole as one of many things - our most decorated Australian female Paralympian of all time, sought after public speaker, talented TV presenter, and, for around the same time as me, boy Mum, which I’ve loved bonding over during these past twelve months or so. But as of this week, she can add published author to the line up releasing Felix and His Fantastic Friends into the world.

With the main character based on her son Felix, the book was born out of Ellie’s passion to change the way we think about difference and follows able-bodied Felix through the playground teaching him how to make playtime magical with all kinds of friends. It’s such a heartwarming, powerful extension of Ellie’s already passionate advocacy and you’ll hear more about it in the episode.

I also love that instead of recording during her decorated swimming career like we originally planned, we ended up chatting after her retirement turned reinvention which touches on all the themes we love about identity, definitions of success and finding happiness. I had about two hours of sleep the night before and you’ll hear me apologise a few times for not doing her justice, but luckily she’s as eloquent as she is talented easily overcoming my babbling questions with incredible answers so I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

GET YOUR COPY OF FELIX AND HIS FANTASTIC FRIENDS HERE.
Follow Ellie here.

LINKS

+ Announcements on Insta at @spoonful_of_sarah
+ Join our Facebook community here
+ Subscribe to not miss out on the next instalment of YAY!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.