Young Blood - Men’s Mental Health

From 2025 to 2026, Justine has lost two brothers to suicide.

While her younger brother, Glen, struggled with addiction and his mental health for a long time, her eldest brother, Rowan, never showed any obvious warning signs. Even after losing Glen and becoming an outspoken mental health advocate, Justine had no idea how much Rowan was struggling.

She has her own lived experience of that struggle, having lived part of her life in addi...

Every man has a childhood. Most of us think we've left it behind.

But author, Brendan James Murray argues we haven't. The fears, beliefs, patterns and wounds we carry as men often begin long before we're conscious of how they shape the way we think, feel and act.

After more than a decade as a high school teacher, Brendan set out in search of answers to some of the big questions that emerged from the classroom. His latest book, Child...

Gabe was first on the podcast back in 2022 after losing his arm to a flesh eating infection. At the time, he was rebuilding his life and chasing a new dream of representing Australia at the Paralympics.

Now, midway through 2026, it's fair to say things haven't quite gone to plan. Since we last spoke, Gabe's undergone more surgery, suffered a cycling crash that left him with a broken neck and brain injury, learned to walk again, and ...

Finding someone to speak to about your mental health as a man can be frustrating. We're told to open up, be vulnerable and reach out. But sometimes the result doesn't feel like what we're looking for. Philip Armstrong understands that.

After 15 years in the Australian Defence Force, he was medically discharged for staph infection while also trying to process the loss of his fellow soldiers in a tragic field accident.

Left with no su...

How many of us have had our sporting aspirations crushed by injuries? Not to mention the chronic aches and pains that can creep in, take hold and become part of who we are as we age into our ripe old 30s and 40s - on the fast track to our inevitable decline...BUT I've got some good news, my guest today says it doesn't have to be that way...

Suffering from osteitis pubis from his mid-teens, James's ability to play footy, and the iden...

Bryce didn't think much about becoming a dad, until he started building a life with his wife Marie.

Their journey towards becoming parents got off to a rough start, enduring a miscarriage, before Marie eventually fell pregnant with their son, Harry. The pregnancy was healthy and normal all the way to full-term, when Marie noticed Harry wasn't moving.

They went to hospital expecting reassurance, but instead were met with utter devast...

After years trying to start a family, Mark and his wife Angela were deflated, and wondering if it was going to happen for them.

When they finally conceived, it felt like everything was going right — until a routine scan revealed their unborn son Hudson, had a serious heart condition.

Faced with the scary prognosis of future complications, they rejected the confronting option to terminate the pregnancy and pushed on.

And before H...

When a viral image of a football fan sticking a flare up his arse during England’s Euro 2020 final against Italy surfaced, it wasn’t just a meme, it was the most unlikely of doorways...

For UK stage performer Alex Hill, it became both the inspiration and the vehicle to explore loneliness, friendship, masculinity, mental health, and what it really means to belong.

His debut play, Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse for England,...

Gambling, in one form or another, has been part of human societies for centuries. Those wanting a betting opportunity could find one if they looked hard enough, but it was a far cry from the gambling bombardment we’re exposed to in the Western world today.

Australians lose more than $30 billion a year to gambling, and new figures show New South Wales residents lost $2.5 billion on the pokies alone in just three months in 2025.

...

When you hear the word psychiatrist, you might think medicating mental illness, but there’s more nuance to it than that.

Psychiatry brings together biology, psychology medicine and lived experience to understand what’s going on in someone’s mind and how to treat it. 

Aleem is a Pakistani Australian who migrated here 16 years ago, became a psychiatrist and in doing so recognised a major need to increase access t...

Sydni grew up on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu, in a tight-knit community with a culture she says expects men to be tough and keep their emotions to themselves.

Her father was one of those men. Loving and strong, but never one to share what he was going through.

When her younger sister went missing in late 2023, Sydni and her family were thrust into the national spotlight overnight, facing huge stress and the brutal commentary of coun...

Five years ago, Flynn was on this podcast as a teenager living with cystic fibrosis. CF is a genetic condition that affects one in 2,500 Australians, causing mucus to clog the lungs and digestive system, requiring constant physio, medication and hospital check-ins to stay well.

Thanks to modern medicine, many people with CF now live into their 40s and beyond, but it means staying ever vigilant and factoring the disease into their fu...

Around 70% of Aussie men are overweight or obese, and most of us would say we’d like to lose some fat and drop a pants size or two.

Maintaining a lean, healthy body we feel happy in, is relatively simple, but it's far from easy. We generally know the importance of exercise and the basics of nutrition, but the way our emotions drive our eating habits is much less talked about.

When life gets stressful, food becomes an easy form ...

Corporal James Overall served as an Australian Army medic for a decade, deploying overseas on multiple occasions, including to Afghanistan in 2015. He was instrumental in 6 mass casualty events, as a highly skilled trauma care provider and auxiliary security force member, awarded the United States Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (NAM) for his outstanding service.

Frequently under immense pressure to perform in life or death...

On the cusp for a decade, but never quite making the big time in professional surfing, Cooper's life was destined to go down another path.

After seeing his sister lose multiple friends to suicide and facing his own challenges, he educated himself on mental health and founded The Good Human Factory to connect people with simple tools to improve their wellbeing.

It took off, and has since grown into countless nationwide workshops for s...

Matty signed up to serve in the Australian Army and deployed to Afghanistan as a young soldier.

On his 22nd birthday he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and soon discharged from defence.

For the past 7 years he's shared the unfiltered ups and downs of his journey through Instagram, and was recognised with an OAM for his contribution to brain cancer awareness.

He’s since travelled to some of the most dangerous parts of th...

Masculinity is one of the hottest debates in our culture right now. Boys are growing up in a world that never switches off, where social media, peer pressure and online figures shape how they see themselves and each other.

Daniel is right in the thick of it. He spends his days in schools across Australia, speaking to tens of thousands of young men about identity, relationships and mental health. His work is about giving boys the spa...