Ladies, We Need To Talk

One in three women in Australia will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in their lifetime and one in six will experience depression. This Mental Health Month, it's time to find solutions.

In this three-part series, Yumi Stynes chats to leading experts about hacking your brain, hormones, nutrition (and yes, mental load) to feel better.

Yumi speaks to women with depression and anxiety about the treatments and lifes...

Twins Clare and Jessie Stephens have been by each other's side for all of life's firsts. The first day of school, first job, first love, first pregnancy and birth plus that time Clare dyed her hair brown (spoiler alert: disaster).

The sisters, both writers and podcasters, live in tandem. They're also competitive high achievers.

So what's it like when your best friend is also your harshest critic, most fierce rival a...

Married mum Deepa Paul didn’t have ‘sleeping with strangers’ on her bingo card. She grew up in the Catholic and conservative Philippines and married her college sweetheart. But underneath, Deepa yearned for more.   

Deepa wanted to open up her marriage, but convincing her husband took time and tears. Eventually, they settled on boundaries and set up their dating profiles. 

Having sex with new people meant that Deepa...

This is a guided meditation to help with chronic pain.  

Endometriosis hurts. It can be a gnarling, twisting, stabbing, relentless source of pain. Finding a way through that pain can be overwhelming at times. Meditation can help.  

Gynaecological surgeon and endometriosis specialist Dr Pav Nanayakkara guides you through a series of breathing exercises to shift your relationship with pain.  

This isn’t a standard Ladi...

Around one million Australian women live with endometriosis. That's around one in seven, so chances are you know someone dealing with debilitating pain, medical misogyny and fertility issues because of the disease.

Awareness about endometriosis has expanded in the last few years, but there's still a long way to go. Yumi Stynes meets women who've spent a lot of time and money seeking a diagnosis and fighting to be h...

Artificial Intelligence is supercharging a new era of misogyny. There are more weapons than ever for men to use against women to silence and shame us, chief among them deepfakes (AI generated images and videos). And tech companies and regulators are not doing enough to fight this abuse, which is affecting everyone from schoolgirls to prime ministers.

After her book Men Who Hate Women dropped, academic Laura Bates w...

Trying to find a life partner on a dating app who's not a gun toting, fish wielding weirdo can be like trying to find a needle in the haystack. But according to Professor Jennie Young, there's a much more empowering way of sorting through all that hay. She's come up with a technique to hack the apps called 'The Burnt Haystack Method' to help women wade through the online swamp.

Jennie never thought she would use he...

Dating apps are a drag. And women are ditching them in droves. Beyond the swiping, more of us are daring to date in real life. Yumi Stynes chats to women moving away from the apps and towards in-person singles events.

From post-divorce blind dates to queer speed dating, dinners with strangers and exercise classes, all in the name of finding love. Or at least a little lust.

Plus, friend of the pod and Lifestyle Edito...

As part of Women's Health Week we're bringing back our episode on Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and the difficulty of getting a diagnosis. 

Weight gain, bristly hairs, no period. Welcome to Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome.  

PCOS is one of the leading causes of infertility worldwide and it can cause debilitating physical and psychological symptoms. 

1 in 8 women have PCOS, so that’s at least a couple of friends in you...

Stand-up star Sashi Perera called off her wedding at the last minute. There were tears and tantrums but that wasn't the final time the lawyer-turned-comedian blew up her life.

Moving to a country in the middle of civil unrest? Tick. Dating a series of duds? Tick. Quitting a well-paid job for stand-up comedy? Tick.

Sashi's redefined what success means to her through career changes, relationship breakdowns and IVF str...

A herpes diagnosis can come with a whole lot of stigma, but it shouldn't. Around 15% of us carry the antibodies to genital herpes, making it one of the most common STIs in Australia.

Yumi Stynes finds out what it's like hearing you have herpes for the first time and how to best manage. From itching to tell partners to soothing your symptoms and how to keep sex humming. 

Plus, STI expert Dr Ellie Freedman explains th...

Approaching her 70th birthday, Gail Rice booked herself an appointment with a sex worker. She'd never done anything like it in her life. As a younger woman, Gail had enjoyed a string of sexual and romantic partners. As the years passed, her sexual currency dwindled and she was hungry for intimacy. But exchanging money for sex taught Gail much more about herself than she was expecting. This is a story about erotic ...

Ozempic has entered the group chat. Since GLP-1 agonist drugs burst onto the scene, they've been hailed as a weight-loss game changer, but they've also raised uncomfortable questions about what bodies are acceptable, or not.

For years, the body inclusivity movement pushed back against the idea that only thin bodies can be 'healthy' but Ozempic & co are drowning out this message.

So, what do these drugs mean for ...

Having blah sex? You've CUM to the right place.

Dr Emily Nagoski has the tools for you.

The renowned sex educator and author of Come as You Are, Burnout and Come Together brings the wisdom of psychology and sex research to the fore. She chats with Yumi Stynes about the science behind our sex drives and how we can bring back the chutzpah in the bedroom. (R)

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Is everyone having better sex than me?

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Unrelenting standards, high expectations and a fierce, reprimanding inner critic. Perfectionism is often celebrated, but striving for flawlessness comes at a cost. There’s lots of ways we, as women feel pressure to be perfect: be the perfect partner, the perfect mother, have the perfect body. But, of course, perfectionism is always out of reach. So, how can we learn to be kinder to ourselves and let go, even just ...

Hannah Diviney never saw herself reflected in pop culture. And she definitely didn't see herself as the object of desire. Growing up with cerebral palsy, Hannah watched on as rom-coms and teen dramas depicted able-bodied bombshells fall in love, snog their guts out and have sex. All these experiences, it seemed, were out of reach for her. It meant that Hannah had the demanding job of being her own role model. She ...

Have you ever experienced 'the ick'? It's that sudden, visceral feeling of being put off by someone you're dating. Maybe it's their flat cap, the way they chew, or how they laugh.

Stories of the ick are prolific online, but it leaves us with a question — what causes it?

To separate red flags from disgust, we get into the psychology of the ick — why you might feel icky, if it should be a deal breaker, and what it say...

'Bounce back' culture can find someone else to pick on, we're celebrating bodies who've given birth.

And this episode isn't just for the mums. It's for everyone who's ever felt the bod they were given this earth to roam in isn't good enough.

Yumi Stynes meets women who've fought the insidious pressures on mums' bodies and found a new appreciation for themselves.

Featuring: burns survivor and author Turia Pitt, founde...

Emotional labour is the overlooked cousin of the mental load. It's managing the feelings of people around us, from being a shoulder to cry on to cheering on your colleagues. Taking the time to check in on relatives and making sure the fridge is stocked with everyone's favourite foods. Emotional labour is invisible yet vital work that falls more heavily on women.

Journalist Rose Hackman reckons it's time women are r...