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.

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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.

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Following on from last week, here's a little (very unedited, stream of consciousness style) dear diary reflection episode on the top ten things I've learnt in our first year of parenthood. If you've listened to last week's throwback, you'll remember the crazy timing of all our birthdays meaning I got to it down to record this one on the morning of my own 36th birthday. The perfect moment to think about the passing of time, the things that have changed me, the things I'll be taking onwards and the things I'll be leaving behind.

As I say in the episode, I'm not really sure who this one is for and I didn't plan or script as much as I usually would for a solo episode. But I've always used this show as a platform to share our life in real time - highs and lows - and if anyone else out there happens to find comfort, revelations or solidarity in even a tiny part of it, that's a huge bonus. Do let me know if you found anything helpful or comforting, it means so much to hear how things reach you all. And in the meantime, I hope you're having an amazing week and are seizing your yay!

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It is such a great privilege to have a community (or a yayborhood) sharing in our big life milestones and moments (especially over many years for some of you who have so kindly stuck around) and I’m sure it will shock you just as much as me to hear that this week marks ONE YEAR since Teddy came into the world. Weirdly it feels like I’ve been his Mum for both a minute and a lifetime all at once, but either way I can barely remember the person I was before and I think you can all tell it’s been my favourite chapter by far.

If you follow on socials, you’ll know the first birthday milestone has come along with a very timely twelve month regression so we are back in the thick of sleep deprivation in another twist of the rollercoaster of parenthood... but it’s equally felt like a privilege (and a safe space to be honest) to share the tougher times over the past year as much as the good ones with you all. Teddy's actual birthday is tomorrow at the time of recording and we’re having a little party on the weekend, so you’ll get bombarded on all fronts with his sweet little face!

As you know I love to do, I’ll be marking the occasion with a bit of a dear diary reflection episode on the biggest things I’ve learnt over the past year and taking stock of how it all feels, but that will be coming next week. Because I’ve had a few DMs asking about our birth story (plus I personally don’t really remember much of that episode having recorded in the thick of the newborn haze), I thought it’d be a nice throwback moment to re-release this one first to see what’s changed, what hasn’t and how far we’ve come.

I don’t know if any other parents experience this, but I still can’t quite believe he’s real life and I look back at all the photos and videos of those very early days ALL the time, so can’t wait to re-listen to the chat we had with Sophie from Australian Birth Stories. If you have any questions for the next episode, feel free to shoot me an email or DM as always. Thank you again for embracing this new chapter with us and celebrating our little almost one year old! Hope you enjoy.

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Given International Women’s Day fell on a Saturday this year, consider this week’s conversation our annual dedication episode. And I don’t think we could have a more perfect guest for the occasion than the woman currently holding the highest position that exists in one of the most traditionally male dominated landscapes in Australia… the AFL.

We are so lucky to have Laura Kane with us today, the Executive General Manager of Football at the AFL since August 2023. We so often talk about how you don’t need to know where you’ll end up because the job you’ll have might not even exist - well, Laura’s did exist only just not for women until she became the first woman to take the reins then build an executive team around her that’s 40% women and counting.

Getting her Mum to write a letter to her school so she could play Auskick and not netball, Laura’s love for footy has been longstanding but coming up before women could play football professionally, she started her career in law instead. This was not the only thing we had in common either - with a career as stellar as hers, I expected her to be much older but we both grew up in the 90s era of Nokia 3310s and it humbled me immensely to realise we’re the same age.

As a powerful, intelligent, but incredibly down to earth woman (who I actually met through Ang so that gives you an idea of the kind of legend she is), I was and still am fangirling hard so I’ll stop myself there before I read out her entire life story and she tells it way better herself. I hope you are as inspired by Laura as I am.

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Welcome to part two of our very hotly awaited episode of Seize the Bebe on starting solids. In this part, we cover one of the most overwhelming parts of the process - introducing allergens - with Nourishing Bubs founder and paediatric dietitian, Olivia Bates, who answers your questions in such great detail sharing her wealth of knowledge to put our minds at ease. If you haven't listened to part one, we cover all the introductory basics there (when do we start? how many meals? how much food? what is baby led weaning?) so I recommend you listen to that first. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

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Use the code TEDDY10 for a discount if you are interested in ordering!

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Welcome to a very hotly awaited episode of Seize the Bebe and by hotly awaited, I mean we had SO many submitted questions from you guys but possibly even more from me. Pretty much every area of parenting is overwhelming, sometimes confusing and energy intensive but starting solids is right up there at the top of the list in the early days so it’s one of the first topics I wanted to cover.

Most of you also follow along on socials, so you will probably already have heard about Nourishing Bubs and how game changing it has been for Teddy’s introduction to solids but if you don’t know, it’s a beautiful Australian business using 100% Aussie fruits & veggies to create individually portioned frozen baby food purees and foods plus a groundbreaking allergen intro pack. They’re delivered to your door and make it SO easy to start the process of introducing foods, taking away so much stress and freeing up your time.

But possibly even more stressful is also wading through timing, volume, methods and so much other information - even now I still have so many questions on a daily basis. SO I am THRILLED that the incredible Nourishing Bubs founder, paediatric dietitian nutritionist Olivia Bates joins us for this episode to share her wealth of knowledge.

As always, every baby is different and every family has different preferences, priorities and needs so we’ll be talking general information but of course it will vary for each individual. I’ll also include links to everything we mention in the show notes but in the meantime I hope you find this as useful as I did!

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