Earshot
Eavesdrop on life as it's lived. Earshot brings you intimate stories exploring the human experience.
Episodes
The Mystery of the Marree Man
The Australian outback is home to many mysteries, but the Marree Man has to be one of the biggest. In every sense of the word.
Deaf heart
Jodee Mundy is the only person in her family who can hear. Ever since she was little, she has moved between two worlds.
Becoming a motherless mother
Olivia Humphreys found herself pregnant and full of questions about what it's like to be a mother when you don't have a mother of your own.
What does haka mean today?
The All Blacks have taunted their opponents with haka for more than a century. But the world saw haka in a new light after the Christchurch terror attacks in 2019 triggered spontaneous haka performances in streets, parks and outside the Al Noor mosque.
The Other Me | Becoming Boy Michael and The Animal Outside
Tales of following your fantasy to find your true self. Performing as a drag king on-stage has helped Rae be her authentic non-binary self off-stage and by night Kusaki becomes something else…something animal, when he slips into a fur suit.
The Other Me | Return of the songbird
When her Parkinson's Disease medication stopped working musician and writer Linda Neil was in a very dark place. But a treatment called Deep Brain Stimulation has allowed her to return to playing the violin, singing, songwriting, living an independent life and riding her pink bicycle.
The Other Me | The foster files
Earshot presents documentaries about people, places and ideas, in all their diversity.
The Other Me | The other Martin
Martin lives out of a shopping trolley and sleeps rough on the cold streets of Canberra. But his passion for running, gift for words and an unlikely friend help him to get by.
The Other Me | Shadow dance
Andrew was building a life and career in Singapore when his world was turned upside down by a routine visit to the doctor.
The Other Me I An Interloper's Escape
Come on a wild ride through the compelling life of Taku Mbudzi, who defied the constraints of a strict Zimbabwean church, embarked on a solo journey to Australia at 19, and held onto a life-altering secret that shattered her father's heart. Discover how she harnessed the healing power of comedy, to develop resilience, understanding and forgiveness.
The Other Me | Mars Venus and Max
It used to be said that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus but Max has been to both planets. As a trans-man he has some fascinating observations about the world of men, having stood on the other side of the gender divide.
The Other Me | Jim Everett's black sauce
Jim Everett is a man of many selves – philosopher, fisherman, scholar, activist, poet, soldier, filmmaker, sauce maker. And at sixteen he discovered a hidden part of himself.
The Other Me | Half-Caste legends
Paulina always knew she had half- siblings around the world. They all shared the same Tongan father. Finding them was the best thing she ever did.
Mapu Anyul Yandi Gindarr - people come together as one
Indigenous and African migrant communities collide in the Northern Territory, as Sydney-born Brian Obiri-Asare explores what it means to be black in Australia
Bev Francis - strongest woman in the world
Bev Francis found out by accident she was the strongest woman in the world. It was the late 1970s, and the sport of women’s weightlifting was still new. When international records were compared, no one was as strong as Bev: she could defy gravity, lifting more than three times her bodyweight. Meet this forgotten champion of women’s muscle sports, who’s a firm believer that rules
Escaping The Taliban
When Kabul fell to the Taliban Samira and Fahim were in grave danger, they went into hiding and could see no way out of Afghanistan. Then a text from a stranger in Australia asking for their help changed everything. Vanessa sent them on a dangerous mission and in exchange she guided them across a perilous border to safety.
Follow the music | The Incurable romantics
Meet The Incurable Romantics, older fans of The Cure - one of the most influential post-punk bands of the 1980s. These women talk about the music, being on tour with the band and their fan artwork.
Follow me to the death | Love, blood and deathmatch wrestling
Erin follows her partner and Deathmatch wrestler Callen Butcher to ringside. While he battles his opponents in choreographed displays of gory competition, she is fighting to feel alive, as a disabled person living with chronic illness. Can they find harmony in their minds and bodies, together?
Follow me out of oblivion | Clare's story
The only thing that would quell Clare’s anxiety about her disintegrating marriage was a drink. It started with just one or two a night, it took the edge off. And so she kept following that feeling, the numbness, until she was drinking herself into oblivion.
Follow me down the rabbit hole | A mother's story
Sarah and Miles took a strict approach to internet use with their 13 year old daughter Ruby. And when Miles suspected she was being groomed on Pinterest, they cracked down harder. But Ruby pushed back – she hacked the controls, secretly spent nights and class time on socials. Their relationship with Ruby took a hit and she shut down.When Sarah realised she was losing her daughter
Follow me up a mountain | Climbing Mt Bowen
It was supposed to be a hiking adventure, but it ended in an unforeseeable accident that would change Warren and Geert's futures forever. When he was sitting around a campfire on a remote island in Far North Queensland, Warren Macdonald made a life-changing decision.He’d sparked up a conversation with a Dutch hiker named Geert van Keulen, and he decided to follow Geert up a moun
A Final Promise | Meet me in the middle of the air
If a friend sent you a farewell text, saying she was planning to end her life, what would you do? Jennie’s response was to go and sing with Nia and promise to tell her story.Nia has scleroderma, her skin and lungs have hardened over the last 20 years, the pain and discomfort has now become unbearable. But thanks to the Voluntary Assisted Dying laws that Nia helped establish she w
A Promise Renegotiated | For the love of God
Charlotte was a deeply religious teenager - she prayed, served, and saved herself for marriage. Marriage, she was promised, would bring fireworks, fulfilment. After 5 years of dating, Charlotte married Casey. But as she got older, Charlotte began to question those promises made to her about marriage and happy-ever-after.
An Unattainable Promise | Beauty queens who want to save the world
Full of hope, botox and impossible dreams, beauty queens are judged on their beauty, sincerity and smarts. They promise world peace in exchange for fame, fortune and adoration. That’s the pact contestants make with the faceless owners of glittering pageants.
A Promise Frayed | When Oscar was promised the world
Oscar Berry is 24 and has a rare genetic disorder, speech disability, epilepsy and cerebral palsy. He might have a “dodgy chromosome” as his mum Kim says, but he’s gregarious, lives for the gym and his weekend activities, and is dying to move in with his mates. But when Oscar got his new NDIS plan in April, those dreams blew apart.
A Silent Promise | The keeper of forgotten souls
Imagine facing death with no next of kin and no funds to pay for your funeral. In Victoria you’ll end up in the care of Alan Barr at the Old Ballan Cemetery. He’s made a promise to people like this, who often become State Trustees, to provide a dignified end to their lives.When Miyuki Jokiranta finally finds her friend, Monika, a State Trustee who died during the pandemic, she m
A Promise Stretched | Marry me marry my ADHD
Promise me you won’t walk out of our restaurant, quit on our kids, run from our poverty, ignore our autism, ADHD or alopecia, or be defeated by our pandemic-induced loss of home and income.If author Naomi Hart had known the marriage vows that had tripped off her tongue so easily 14 years ago would come to mean all this, would she ever have said them in the first place?You will la
A Promise Lost | Lost Birds of Tasmania
Susan Lester inadvertently entered a world of political and corporate corruption when she was made the promise of a lifetime by one of Tasmania’s most powerful businessmen. When she signed a contract with Edmund Rouse to paint 200 watercolours of birds she had no idea it would be a decision that would overwhelm her and her artistic career.
A Promise Fulfilled | Love is not enough
Jess made a promise to a woman she would never meet, the mother of her daughter Noelle.Baby Noelle was found in the arms of her dead birth mother on the streets of Kinshasa in The Congo, she lived in an orphanage until she was four. Now, she’s 16 and living in Melbourne with Jess and her sisters, but she’s never known another Congolese person.Will a trip to Shepparton to meet the
The Other Me | Climbing Mt Bowen
It was supposed to be a hiking adventure, but it ended in an unforeseeable accident that would change Warren and Geert's futures forever.
The Other Me | Me, my half-sister and her biological mum
The unlikely story of two half-sisters who connected late in life, a birth mother turned adoptive mother, and what can happen when biological relatives turn up out of the blue.
The Other Me | Return of the songbird
When her Parkinson's Disease medication stopped working musician and writer Linda Neil was in a very dark place. But a treatment called Deep Brain Stimulation has allowed her to return to playing the violin, singing, songwriting, living an independent life and riding her pink bicycle.
The Other Me | The foster files
Earshot presents documentaries about people, places and ideas, in all their diversity.
The Other Me | Becoming Boy Michael and The Animal Outside
Tales of following your fantasy to find your true self. Performing as a drag king on-stage has helped Rae be her authentic non-binary self off-stage and by night Kusaki becomes something else…something animal, when he slips into a fur suit.
The Other Me | The other Martin
Martin lives out of a shopping trolley and sleeps rough on the cold streets of Canberra. But his passion for running, gift for words and an unlikely friend help him to get by.
The Other Me | Shadow dance
Andrew was building a life and career in Singapore when his world was turned upside down by a routine visit to the doctor.
The Other Me I An Interloper's Escape
Come on a wild ride through the compelling life of Taku Mbudzi, who defied the constraints of a strict Zimbabwean church, embarked on a solo journey to Australia at 19, and held onto a life-altering secret that shattered her father's heart. Discover how she harnessed the healing power of comedy, to develop resilience, understanding and forgiveness.
The Other Me | Mars Venus and Max
It used to be said that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus but Max has been to both planets. As a trans-man he has some fascinating observations about the world of men, having stood on the other side of the gender divide.
The Other Me | Jim Everett's black sauce
Jim Everett is a man of many selves – philosopher, fisherman, scholar, activist, poet, soldier, filmmaker, sauce maker. And at sixteen he discovered a hidden part of himself.
The Other Me | My voice is my passport
What does your voice say about you? Not your choice of words, but all the extra information the voice carries, like our emotions, accents, even apparently our identity. Details that big tech and governments are more and more interested in each day.
The Other Me | Half-Caste legends
Paulina always knew she had half- siblings around the world. They all shared the same Tongan father. Finding them was the best thing she ever did.
INTRODUCING - The Other Me
Secrets are everywhere, we hide all sorts of truths about ourselves. Taku Mbudzi brings you stories of double identities, recently discovered inner-selves and journeys of transformation.
Remember Balgo | NDIS
All those statistics you hear about the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people? In Balgo it’s a gaping chasm. Especially for Aboriginal people with a disability.
Remember Balgo
The remote Aboriginal community of Balgo is famous for footy, art and fighting. But it’s a community in crisis, where “the gap” reveals its deepest scars. Dulcie and George are fighting to save it.
Remember Me | Ghost in the Machine
For as long as she can remember, Zoe’s dad Greg was addicted to alcohol. By the time she was 26, his drinking had taken its final toll. And this led to a reckoning. “What are my memories of dad? Am I actually remembering something real, or just creating a memory from an old photo? Was that really me? Or one of my sisters who wore that dress and sat on his knee?”Ghost in the Machi
Remember Me | The Sceptic
Sunil's mother loved telling him stories of his colourful uncle, India's best-known sceptic, who devoted his life to disproving fraudulent gurus' "miracles" by eating fire, bending forks and floating mid-air. But at the heart of the Sceptic's magic was a disappearing act.
Remember Me | Laurie's Ashes
Julie found herself collecting the ashes of her dead friend Laurie, even though they hadn’t spoken for ten years and she had no idea he was dying. In this intriguing trip into the realm of death and memory Julie finds out what happened to Laurie and works out a unique way to honour him and his ashes.
Remember my words
A comment at a funeral pushes Toby Hemmings to discover what his grandfather, Bill Hoddinott, recorded on reel-to-reel tapes back in the 1960s. What he finds are fragments of Aboriginal languages from long ago – can you revive a language from such little material?
Remember Me | Good spooks bad spooks
Earshot presents documentaries about people, places and ideas, in all their diversity.
Remember me when the *** is over
What is ordinary life like for Russians as their lives are shaped by a *** they had no say in?
Remember Me | Roman
In the early noughties the Australian band Rocket Science was being touted as the ‘next big thing’. But that all changed when the band's lead singer Roman Tucker had a serious accident, and lost his memory. This is Roman's music-fuelled journey to try and remember himself.
INTRODUCING - Remember Me
Memory can be a trickster, a balm, or sharp claws scratching at your heart. In this next season of Earshot we're telling tales of remembering and forgetting.
Follow me and my mobile phone | Escaping The Taliban
When Kabul fell to the Taliban Samira and Fahim were in grave danger, they went into hiding and could see no way out of Afghanistan. Then a text from a stranger in Australia asking for their help changed everything. Vanessa sent them on a dangerous mission and in exchange she guided them across a perilous border to safety.
Follow me and the Virgin Mary| Preparing for the apocalypse
When Claire Ashman followed her husband into a gated community on the NSW South Coast, she never imagined she would spend the next decade hoarding food and covering her windows to prepare for the apocalypse.
Follow me to the death | Love, blood and deathmatch wrestling
Erin follows her partner and Deathmatch wrestler Callen Butcher to ringside. While he battles his opponents in choreographed displays of gory competition, she is fighting to feel alive, as a disabled person living with chronic illness. Can they find harmony in their minds and bodies, together?
Follow me out of oblivion | Clare's story
The only thing that would quell Clare’s anxiety about her disintegrating marriage was a drink. It started with just one or two a night, it took the edge off. And so she kept following that feeling, the numbness, until she was drinking herself into oblivion.
Follow me down the rabbit hole | A mother's story
Sarah and Miles took a strict approach to internet use with their 13 year old daughter Ruby. And when Miles suspected she was being groomed on Pinterest, they cracked down harder. But Ruby pushed back – she hacked the controls, secretly spent nights and class time on socials. Their relationship with Ruby took a hit and she shut down.When Sarah realised she was losing her daughter
Follow me up a mountain | Climbing Mt Bowen
It was supposed to be a hiking adventure, but it ended in an unforeseeable accident that would change Warren and Geert's futures forever. When he was sitting around a campfire on a remote island in Far North Queensland, Warren Macdonald made a life-changing decision.He’d sparked up a conversation with a Dutch hiker named Geert van Keulen, and he decided to follow Geert up a moun
INTRODUCING - Follow Me
Introducing our next season, Follow Me. Seven confessional stories of following.
Our audio favourites: Me, my English and all the languages of my life
An exploration into language, accents, love and life, featuring the Eurythmics.
Our audio favourites: The Isle of Denial
William Cuffay, transported from London in 1848 for allegedly planning an uprising, became the unlikely face of Australia's trade unionists.
Our audio favourites: Shadow of a Doubt
Eight years ago, residents of the Sydney beach-side suburb of Coogee were spellbound by a vision of the Virgin Mary that appeared in a shadow cast by the sun upon a fence post. But what was it really?
Our audio favourites: A portrait of a foster family
Meet the Greenocks. They fostered their first child seven years ago oblivious to the joy, the grief, the chaos, the worry and the love it would bring to their home.
Our audio favourites: Lady of the swamp
Margaret Clement was a wealthy Victorian heiress whose life fell into ruin. She finished her days living alone in a swamp in Gippsland in her decaying mansion Tullaree surrounded by waist-deep water. Margaret Clement became known to locals as "the lady of the swamp", then in 1952 she disappeared without trace
Our audio favourites: Meat factory ear worms
A young man is trapped in a dead end job in a meat factory and the monotony of process line slaughter is unbearable. Music keeps him going, specifically those songs that get stuck in your head, which he calls ear worms. This program was originally broadcast on RTE in Ireland.
A Final Promise | Meet me in the middle of the air
If a friend sent you a farewell text, saying she was planning to end her life, what would you do? Jennie’s response was to go and sing with Nia and promise to tell her story.Nia has scleroderma, her skin and lungs have hardened over the last 20 years, the pain and discomfort has now become unbearable. But thanks to the Voluntary Assisted Dying laws that Nia helped establish she w
A Promise Renegotiated | For the love of God
Charlotte was a deeply religious teenager - she prayed, served, and saved herself for marriage. Marriage, she was promised, would bring fireworks, fulfilment. After 5 years of dating, Charlotte married Casey. But as she got older, Charlotte began to question those promises made to her about marriage and happy-ever-after.
An Unattainable Promise | Beauty queens who want to save the world
Full of hope, botox and impossible dreams, beauty queens are judged on their beauty, sincerity and smarts. They promise world peace in exchange for fame, fortune and adoration. That’s the pact contestants make with the faceless owners of glittering pageants.
A Promise Frayed | When Oscar was promised the world
Oscar Berry is 24 and has a rare genetic disorder, speech disability, epilepsy and cerebral palsy. He might have a “dodgy chromosome” as his mum Kim says, but he’s gregarious, lives for the gym and his weekend activities, and is dying to move in with his mates. But when Oscar got his new NDIS plan in April, those dreams blew apart.
A Silent Promise | The keeper of forgotten souls
Imagine facing death with no next of kin and no funds to pay for your funeral. In Victoria you’ll end up in the care of Alan Barr at the Old Ballan Cemetery. He’s made a promise to people like this, who often become State Trustees, to provide a dignified end to their lives.When Miyuki Jokiranta finally finds her friend, Monika, a State Trustee who died during the pandemic, she m
A Promise Stretched | Marry me marry my ADHD
Promise me you won’t walk out of our restaurant, quit on our kids, run from our poverty, ignore our autism, ADHD or alopecia, or be defeated by our pandemic-induced loss of home and income.If author Naomi Hart had known the marriage vows that had tripped off her tongue so easily 14 years ago would come to mean all this, would she ever have said them in the first place?You will la
A Promise Lost | Lost Birds of Tasmania
Susan Lester inadvertently entered a world of political and corporate corruption when she was made the promise of a lifetime by one of Tasmania’s most powerful businessmen. When she signed a contract with Edmund Rouse to paint 200 watercolours of birds she had no idea it would be a decision that would overwhelm her and her artistic career.
A Promise Fulfilled | Love is not enough
Jess made a promise to a woman she would never meet, the mother of her daughter Noelle.Baby Noelle was found in the arms of her dead birth mother on the streets of Kinshasa in The Congo, she lived in an orphanage until she was four. Now, she’s 16 and living in Melbourne with Jess and her sisters, but she’s never known another Congolese person.Will a trip to Shepparton to meet the
INTRODUCING — Promise Me
Earshot is back doing what we do best – telling intimate, personal stories…and we're going seasonal. Our first season is called Promise Me.How easy is it to make a promise? What happens when you don't deliver?In Earshot's new eight-part series, promises are made, broken, kept and stretched. From a vow to love, honour and obey to a pledge to save the world, from the intimate to th
Greetings from Hobart
Take a stroll up Elizabeth Street from the colonial era docks, past the Empire Hotel with its notorious bullet holes to beyond “the flannelette curtain”. Local artist Kate Kelly is our guide to the hidden histories of Hobart and tales of the original Palawa custodians, gentrification and the art that ate Hobart.
Greetings from Yirrkala
Our guide to Yirrkala is Siena Stubbs who grew up between the two worlds of her mother’s Yolngu culture and her father’s Balander or white world. Siena explains how every person, creature or place belongs to one of two balancing moieties - Yirritja or Dhuwa. She also explores the town’s history of missionaries and Yolngu resistance, along with her own connection to family and c
Greetings from Nambour
Aunty Doreen has a soft satirical spot for her home town of Nambour. Join her on a tour back in time when sugar cane ash used to rain down on the town, Miss Sugartown reigned supreme and Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were in short pants at Nambour High, dreaming of going to Canberra.
Greetings from Elizabeth
Out on the arid edge of Adelaide, ghosts of Holden cars and electric guitars haunt streets with names like Bogan Road. Join Glenn Shorrock and other locals as they tell a tale of migrants who powered Australian manufacturing success and our music industry.
We'll be back
Earshot is working on something new! We're busy putting together a special season of shows: see you in your podcast feed again soon.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder | Part 2
Ahmed spent six years in immigration detention before winning a landmark legal case, he was finally free. But when the government appealed that decision in the High Court Ahmed and his partner Danice faced a difficult choice.
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