Life Uncut - A REAR IN YOUR VIEW. That's a wrap 2021! 🎉

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Happy end of 2021 Lifers!What a freaking year!Today we are taking a bit of a walk down memory lane and revisiting some of the best and most impactful moments of 2021 on the podcast.We were joined by some absolutely incredible guests.There were a lot of laughs, a few tears and some moments that left us feeling changed.In today's episode, we highlight some moments with:Mark Manson, author of 'the subtle art of not giving a fuck'Our favourite accidentally unfilteredsIndia Oxenberg, survivor of the NXVIM sex cultEm Carey, the girl who fell from the skyMatty J, Bach uncut host and Laura's to be betrothedKath Koschel, founder of the kindness factorySheri Hockley, nutritionist Hugh van Cuylenburg, founder of the resilience project& Shonel Bryant, creator of support your girls.We feel incredibly #blessed to have had these wonderful people share their stories and their time with us and we can't wait to be back with you in 2022!We will still be recording from the floor of Britt's lounge room in our underwear so some things aren't changing!You know the drill, tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog and your friend and share the love becauseWE LOVE LOVE!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to a little bonus episode. What is it a bonus? That's a year in review. We're doing like a little sum up, a little rearing your boot. That's what I just went to say. I'll give you a little rear in your view, a little view of Maria. If there's anything that describes the year, that is it. A rear in your view.

That is what I literally just said. Britt has completely checked out. She's not even here. We are doing a year in review. We just thought we would take a little look back at 2021, some of our favourite moments, some of your favourite moments, some of the shit that went down, some of the memorable things, some of the things that we thought we just have to immortalise here forever.

Do you know what? I think we've spoken so much about how I've said it, and I kind of take it back. I've said that 2021 was a dumpster fire of a year. And I think for so many of us, there were some very challenging parts of 2021. But when I sat back and listened to the podcast and listened to so many of the episodes that we have covered, I also have loved so much of this year. And I think we can often in life choose to focus on the negative, or we can choose to focus on the positive. And the way that we perceive what's going on around us, our reaction to situations can definitely form our own personal feelings towards it and looking back I was like gosh we've had such a it's been such a huge privilege to interview some of the people that we've interviewed

it's been such a huge privilege to engage with so many of you from the community and so we wanted to put together this little episode a highlight reel looking back on our favorite interviews our favorite moments in time so we can walk down memory lane together 2021 hand in hand one thing that did happen in 2021 that I think we can look positively on is we welcomed producer Keisha to the team I like to think of that as a positive Laura do you it's really been a highlight I would say that it is my sweet of 2021 but we actually are going to trust her a little bit more than ever here and she's going to take over this episode she's going to go through some of the highlights this year you guys have had nothing but praise and love for Keisha much like us so

we are so stoked to be taking keisha into 2022 as well and also we just want to say that we hope that you guys had an incredible christmas we hope that you have a cracking new year and we'll be seeing you red hot and ready back in 2022 well actually we'll see you with a few bonus episodes before then but when we back and in 2022 we're giving you an extra episode a week now don't say we are not good to you but that is in the form of our radio show so we do have a radio show coming every saturday 10 to 12 we expect you to tune in because we're going to really need those ratings coming out of the gate so that would be great please just go and sit in your car even if you're not actually in your car just run your car turn the radio on and listen stream it on your laptop

put on an app okay get everyone you know to sit in their car turn the car on get your apps everyone just tuning just for the start otherwise they might come down on us hard yeah but there's only one other female-led radio show in the country it's Yumi Steins and Kate Longbrook which is the 3pm pickup and so we're up against the big guns the big guns they're great have been so incredibly fortunate to be given an opportunity to be the second female led radio show which is why we need you guys to listen on every fucking device you have anyway that episode from the radio will drop into the feed so you can listen to it at a later date but we prefer you to listen in real time but here we are we will hand you over to producer Keisha to give you a little walk down memory lane

we hope that you love this as much as we did creating it we can't wait to see you in 2022 two. Hey, lifers. It's Keisha here. What an absolute pleasure it is to be hanging out with you and looking back on the year that was 2021 and thinking about all the highs and the lows. There definitely were some sucks. Maybe this is something we could do, actually. I reckon we should start a thread in the Facebook group. It's not a wedding hashtag. Don't worry. It's also not a Photoshop request. Maybe we should start a bit of a thread of our suck and our sweet of the year. I think for a lot of people, myself included, suck of the year would have to be lockdowns. And my sweet of the year was for sure joining the Life Uncut family.

I'm so lucky I get to hang out with my two bosses who feel more like sisters now every day of the week. And we have absolutely loved making this podcast. It's just been one of the best things I've ever gotten to do in my life. So let's jump into it. The very first person that we are flashing back to is someone who has written a book or two in their time, sold 14 million copies, if I'm being more specific. It is Mark Manson, who is the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

Now, what I love about Mark Manson is he's no bullshit kind of attitude to life. I really, really enjoyed this chat and I loved what he had to say. So let's jump into it. Mark, for anybody who hasn't read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, can you give us a quick sort of rundown on what is the philosophy of not giving a fuck? What does it mean? The subtle art of not giving a fuck, it's a little bit of a trick. It lures people in by making this promise of like, oh, yeah, all your stress and anxiety, you can just not give a fuck anymore. But what the book quickly flips on you is the point that we all have to care about something. You have to give a fuck about something. And whether you realize it or not, you're always choosing what you're giving a fuck about. You're always choosing what you care about. and i think that realization of that that constant process of choice is an extremely profound one

because it calls into question a lot of things all across our life you know like if you're not happy why aren't you happy like why are you not choosing the things that will make you happy if you feel like a failure why are you not choosing the things that will make you feel like more of a success and so it's kind of this uh it's strangely a book kind of about almost radical responsibility but it's also about you know i wanted to write a book that was very much against kind of all the traditional cliche positive thinking type of stuff life is full of suffering and hardship and that's fine like it's there's no way to avoid that it's actually the suffering and hardship that makes life feel meaningful you no matter what you do you're

going to fail every relationship you have is going to hurt you at some point it you know like that's the cost of having close intimate relationships so there's there's literally nothing good in our life that doesn't have some sort of like negative association with it and so a lot of the book is aimed at helping people learn to accept that instead of try to run away from it one of the things where you sort of said like the question isn't why do you care about things that are trivial but why don't you have more important things in your life to care about like you've got everyone's got the same amount of bucks to give so why are you giving yours to such small insignificant inconveniences is actually a reflection that you don't have anything big

and important happening in your life. And that's the real problem. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's probably the most common question I get from people, especially people who read that book is how do I stop giving a fuck what people think about me? And my response is you can't, you have to care what people like, it's good. You care what people think about you. You know, we have a name for people who don't care what people think it's called a psychopath uh you should care what your mother thinks you should care what your friends think you should care what your co-workers think the problem is not caring what people think the problem is that you don't have anything more important in your life than what people think that's what's missing oh god i just love mark

manson he's so incredible he also has a really good website if you are the type of person who likes reading articles I tend to find myself on his website quite a lot so there's a little something for you to do over the holidays if you really enjoyed that chat with Mark Manson coming up next in our year in review this is one of our favorite segments of the podcast it definitely provides the most laughs it's called accidentally unfiltered and it's where you write in your most embarrassing stories and we did an entire bonus episode of your dating accidentally unfiltered and the episode was called we don't fuck on weeknights and here's why we did the call out for you to send us your most embarrassing accidentally unfiltered dating stories and we

will get into them in a second but one of you and I'm gonna keep you anonymous because I you know we do that for you you're all anonymous you're always anonymous no one needs to know this however one of you you're a fucking rock star you sent us a synopsis instead of sending us one accidentally unfiltered story you just went through your whole dating list and I'm gonna read this out because this just had me in hysterics and I also think this really encapsulates dating in the modern day so if you think you're having a rough time you're not alone todd couldn't get it up and sent me fake flowers to work andrew g andrew g shocking sleep apnea and i had to sleep in another room james he got locked out of his house and i had to break in for him as kuna guy caught a blue

tongue lizard and played with it for ages tim h rocked out to first date on viagra and coke turns out he was married tim l he could only come when i told him i wanted him to come in my mouth where does this girl get these dates josh won't fuck on weekdays there's so many more that was like the first five man i feel for you but i also i can relate two things two things did he bring the blue tongue lizard or did he catch the blue tongue lizard on the day i think he like they maybe they went for a bushwalk and he called a blue tongue lizard and then he was like well this is more interesting than date next thing who doesn't fuck on weekdays is that like a superstitious thing this could be like our new motto don't

fuck on weekdays do you know what I was thinking as you're reading that I was like I could write one of those and it would be so long to be fair I think I only have sex on Saturday nights when the kids are in bed yeah but I don't think that's because it's a rule I think that you just exhaust it like that's the day of the week you get to do it fuck where do I start that's literally what this girl wrote fuck where do I start I'm well known for liking my older men the silver foxes and I'm also bi. Anyhow, there's this guy that I got set up with on a blind date from a workmate. I've dated two people in the last eight years. So you can imagine how nervous I was. I reluctantly go on this date and this guy, oh my fucking God, he was sexy as fuck. There's a lot of fucks in

this. It's like, I thought we saw a lot. Like instantly I got the fanny flutters, ladies, you know, the kind. We started getting to know each other and we go on a couple of days. we had that big oh several times every time we hooked up I'm talking the sex is mind-blowing incredible this is why I like older men the floodgates were definitely opened eventually I tell him I'm bi and that I've had threesomes in the past my friends now I am very open with telling them what I get up to I tell them very intimate details of this guy and they are hyping me up I was just loving it they were like yes get it girl fucking hard have those orgasms They were asking me every single detail.

Everybody needs a woo girl in their corner. Everyone needs a sex woo girl. One night we were at his house getting very, very saucy. We didn't hear anyone come inside, so we kept going. When we finally realised someone was there, we stopped. We went to check it out. To my absolute horror, one of my mates was in the kitchen. I was so confused.

I was like, girl, what are you doing here? But she just looked at me like a ghost. That's when the old silver fox came out with a towel around him. Oh, shit, I'm really sorry. I forgot my daughter was crashing here this weekend. No. No. That's when I realised, that's when my friend and I realised simultaneously

that she's been hyping me up to fuck her dad. Mummy, is that you? How do you ever recover from that? Where does your friendship go? What happens? She was hyping me up and I had just thought that the day before I was telling her how good he was at going down on me. I couldn't see him after that because it was awkward

and she's still funny with me sometimes. But, hey, he was amazing. Oh, my God. Could you imagine that moment? Daddy's in the towel. You're in the middle there. She has just heard you having sex. So it's bad for everyone.

The friend's like, oh, my God, my dad's pounding someone. Then it realises they're pounding your friend. Then you realise you've said how good your daddy is at going down on you to your friend. I can't. It's just like the most awkward triangle I have ever come across. But imagine if they stayed together and then they got married and then she became a stepmom.

Hey, Mama. Oh, my God. I have one for you guys. Try to keep this short and sweet. I went on this Tinder date with a guy and we decided to meet in the city. I drove, he caught an Uber thinking it was going to be a big night. I guess that was the first red flag. I decided to have a couple of drinks and we ended up playing pool and having a pretty good time. Anyways, it was late and I decided I wanted to head home. He walked me to my car and awkwardly waited there. Me being me, I couldn't help myself and I offered him a drive home. He lived 40 minutes in the opposite direction. That was very

kind of you anyway we hopped in the car and I was driving oh my god I'm cringing already that this happened he lent in to kiss my neck as I was looking dead into the window but then he proceeds to whisper into my ear I just love your titty witties clearly thinking this was a turn on oh my god I'm still scared to this day I ended up pulling up to his house and I told him to get out he then turns to me and says come inside and play some battleships with me in a sexy voice I could not believe what was happening Khalid did not get the picture I still have secondhand embarrassment for him this day okay shout out to any men listening please never refer to them as teeny weenies that is not gonna get you anywhere I once had a guy on a first date say to me

you're so beautiful I think he was pretty drunk but I'm gonna he literally sounded like this you're so beautiful I'd slay a dragon for you and then stared at me really blankly then I still had sex with him of course you fucking course you did you're like okay sold are you giving me attention oh my god we're going they're in love we're gonna have children you had me a dragon the last date i went on before jordan told me i slept with him too he told me that i had a really masculine energy and that i was a boy in my he thinks i was a man in my past life i remember you telling me this and And then he said you had strong legs. I still hooked up with him.

This is Brittany and Laura just reinforcing bad behavior since 1986. Okay, I've got one. Okay, this one's pre-cooked. I was on a third date and we decided to go camping for a night not too far away. This is cute, I thought. I pictured toasting marshmallows over a fire under the stars and making love outside. I've watched too many movies, obviously. Firstly, it rained, so all that went out the window.

We went to bed in our separate sleeping bags, which at first I thought was a little off. I thought we would just be super cute and snuggle all night. This thought process soon changed drastically. In the middle of the night I woke up feeling really uncomfortable. I have IBS you see and I felt a pain in my tummy so I was thinking oh I probably need to go to the toilet soon. Then I felt something wet in my pants thinking oh great now I have my period too. I reached in to check wanting to be sure that it was my period. I know this sounds gross but I didn't want to get up in the cold and wet if I didn't actually need to. I touched it and pulled my hand out only to discover i had shit in my sleep in my undies and in my sleeping bag my date was literally laying

next to me and i was a shit burrito we shit we shit on one hand i tried to frantically escape my sleeping bag with only one good hand and find my way out of the tent i made it out and ran through the rain to the toilet so now i was a soaking wet shit burrito i cleaned myself up threw my undies out and tried to sneak back in thinking i'd escaped successfully in the morning when we woke up my date said oh my god all I could smell was shit all night the baby next door must have been eating a dead animal I'm ashamed to say I blamed the baby we've been dating for 18 months that I can't bring myself to tell him maybe one day after I've locked him down and married him I'll tell him I shat my pants on our third date it's so uncomfortable do you know I was trying to

think of embarrassing things that I've done on a date and the only thing I could think of well I'm actually it's a lie the only thing I could think of that I hadn't shared with you guys yet so this is the guy if you've been an OG listener you will remember I told you the story about a guy I dated for like a year we were in a situation ship he never ever actually wanted to confirm to be my boyfriend surprising why yeah shocker he was dating five other people no I think it was just because I was such a hot mess of a person at the time so at the time like I went through this period I didn't have IBS because I had all the tests done but there was something wrong with me okay there was something wrong with me I don't know what it was anyway I'd gone over to his house

for a date we'd only been dating for a couple of weeks and it was very casual at this point in time and he lived in a tiny one bedroom studio where the bathroom was in the bedroom so like the bathroom there's no escaping and then the lounge where the tv is was directly outside the bedroom it's this tiny little contained apartment anyway we were sitting there watching a movie and he cooked dinner he was a chef and I could feel my stomach just doing back lifts and I was like oh god oh god and there's no way for me anyway I was like I'm so sorry I'm gonna have to go to the toilet go to the bathroom like unleash the fury did you have music on no wait I turned the tap on to try and like mask it anyway so unleash the fury the fucking window wouldn't open so I was

like oh my oh my you've got to be kidding me so I just like you know you put some hand soap around like trying to like fan it around anyway nothing helped and then I left like I shut the bathroom door I shut the bedroom door I opened the bedroom window just in case and then I came back into the little lounge room area which was like attached to the bedroom and I sit down next to him we keep watching the movie and like I was gone for 25 minutes the guy knows what I was doing you're obviously doing a shit and he would have heard it because I was like I was like never go back in the bathroom you need to renovate please also don't light a match anyway we're sitting there watching the movie he doesn't say anything to me

10 minutes later it's the middle of fucking winter right 10 minutes later he just gets up and opens the balcony door. Saddle, Fred, saddle. I was like, I think I need to go home. Anyway, that happened. Turns out he never wanted to date me. It was so weird. So I think that segment encapsulates

what dating in 2021 can be like. Am I right? Next up for the year in review is what I consider to be one of the most powerful interviews of Life Uncut. Laura and Britt had the pleasure of sitting down with India Oxenberg, who was a part of the NXIVM sex cult for seven years.

This sex cult was ran by a guy named Keith Raniere and he manipulated people for 20 years under the guise of self-improvement, workshops and seminars and he even recruited some people like Smallville actress Alison Mack. They formed a separate kind of sub-cult of NXIVM called DOS and this is India's story. Now just a heads up before we get into this segment, we are going to be speaking about sexual assault and coercive control

So if that's a little bit troubling for you, please skip ahead about four and a half minutes and you can always call 1-800-RESPECT. Well, there's what DOS was and there was what we were told DOS was, and those were two entirely different things. so what DOS was was a recruiting mechanism for Keith to enslave and use women for his own benefit whatever it was financially sexually for power whatever that's really the basis of what DOS was what we believe DOS was was a women's empowerment group that was going to be one-on-one coaching and that was going to help us grow and become stronger empowered women using using a sort of sisterhood to achieve that and that it was going to be a secret because there were going to be things that we were going to do that was uncomfortable and kind of fringe that I was okay

with because I was open to it but I was also riding on the tail of five years of grooming to get me to that place of saying yes to something so vague and so nefarious ultimately I never knew anything about the details of the brand when I was recruited I was told that there would be a brand or a tattoo and that it would be small and I was okay with that I have a couple tattoos myself there were so many things that were concealed from us in the recruiting process that it was difficult to actually make an informed decision and we were also made to give collateral in order to receive more information about the secret group so you're already compromised before you've said yes I think it's important for us to highlight that if you haven't watched it yet we do

mention the name Alison Mack a few times so Alison Mack was an actress she was an Alison Mack was an actress someone that I watched growing up she was in Smallville I knew her I loved her but I guess she was this person that introduced you to the secret society DOS and she was your master she was under Keith Raniere she was ultimately the one that was grooming you and putting these restrictions on you and I guess did you ever hold any resentment towards Alison Mack or did you just see her as a loving guiding friend like a mother figure someone that looked after you or was there part of you that was like why are you doing these to me bit of both um i was definitely afraid of her punishment and her disapproval and because i'm an empath that really was an easy way to

manipulate me like her being upset or unhappy was terrifying to me because i was in this in this dos construct her slave she was my master she was ultimately in charge and in control of anything that i could do i didn't understand the gravity of that until later on but there were moments where i thought she was my friend it was not a natural relationship we were forced well i was forced to live with her and then from there i became her friend but really out of necessity there were things that we bonded over, but I look at it now and I have a lot less judgment for myself because I was surviving that. And I was trying to make the best of an unpleasant situation and trying to cherry pick and make, you know, make those even more better than they really were. I was

really trying to make it better than it was. So how did things change for you once you had joined DOS? Well, I felt like I had just been given this amazing secret and I admired Alison because she was excelling so quickly within NXIVM and I was kind of stagnant I wasn't moving as a coach so once I joined DOS I started to see things change in my life and I thought that it was because of DOS I didn't realize that it was pretty much arbitrary and that it was being decided by Keith and Allison was just the one you know doing the orders to to me from him I didn't really understand the connection early on but I thought that I was growing and I thought that I was improving and I actually believed that it was because of DOS. So it was it was hard to to make

the distinction. Another one of our favorite moments from 2021 comes from the vibrant and vivacious M. Carey. M. Carey is the girl who fell from the sky. At 20 years old she was skydiving in Switzerland on what was meant to be an adventure of a lifetime and her parachute failed. and it left her paralysed from the waist down, where she was told she probably wouldn't ever walk again. This chat with Em, it really shaped the way that I viewed my body. You know, I think all of us at some point in time would have struggled with a part of body image

or maybe not liking a particular part of ourselves. And after listening to Em's chat, I just felt so damn grateful for everything that I have and for what my body could do for me. Here's the chat with Em Carey. there's a chance you're not going to walk again what's that like well they didn't even say there's a chance they were just matter of fact like no this is permanent this is how it's going and it was tricky because they the doctors could speak English but we definitely weren't having a fluent

conversation and it was harder to understand exactly what was happening but yeah when they said you'll never walk again I just couldn't wrap my head around that because of just yeah because of how fast things changed and how fast it went from a fun holiday to the worst thing I'd ever been through I just couldn't wrap my head around that and I didn't believe it and I don't say that in a way it's like oh I never believed I could walk again which is why I can walk again I just mean like I literally couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I would never get back on my feet and walk were you angry did you feel resentful like I mean I guess when you're in a situation like that it could be so not that it's easy nothing about that situation is easy and I can't

even like put myself into your position to really understand what that would feel like but I can only imagine there would be a part of you that's really fucking angry at the instructor or at the system that something had gone wrong weirdly no I mean I felt anger but only maybe in the past two years that all came up for me but in the beginning I never I'm not sure why but I never had that mentality of like why me I just kind of thought why not me like I chose to skydive that was a risk fair enough so I didn't feel angry I more so felt like the instructor was also so badly injured and he I imagined would have felt so much regret and so deeply apologetic for what he'd done that I thought that that's enough I don't need to be angry at him as well so no I'm also just hoped

that he was okay and I felt really bonded to him weirdly thinking that we'd both gone through this thing that no one else would ever you know experience like every element of what I knew obviously couldn't work anymore I couldn't do the hobbies that I loved so I felt like every aspect of who I was was taken away so I thought who like who am I and I guess going through a breakup when you know you go through something like this and you think the people who love you and around you are going to support you and then being thrust into and I know that the breakup shouldn't be the thing to hone in on this but I think there's a part of that that must leave you feeling like well now I'm fucking unlovable as well you know and then having to deal with like

okay I have this disability and the person who I thought wanted to be with me it came with caveats he doesn't want to be with me anymore because of this well I was in hospital in Australia so it would have been within yeah within three months maybe two months later I'm not sure but while I was in hospital but yeah I did feel that and being so young as well he was my first serious boyfriend so I didn't have yeah I didn't have anything else to compare it to when I thought or if he's not going to let me through this and he knows me well like who will when I really put in effort to healing emotionally and thinking I'm going to make life good regardless of what the outcome is with me physically I just started to just notice things that I hadn't before like this sounds really dumb

but I don't think I ever realized that the sun set every single day and that I could choose to go outside and watch it like I had just never thought about that before and I think what really helped me even though it was hard to go through at the time was the fact that I was awake for the fall and that I have full memory of that and I have full memory of me thinking I had 10 seconds left to live so going from 10 seconds left to live to realizing I have the rest of my life it just gave me such an appreciation and such a different perspective to look at life through when I thought about that and I thought about how lucky I am I was like yeah like there's still a lot to be grateful for here so I switched the perspective from what have I lost like what

yeah I've lost my legs I've lost my boyfriend I stopped thinking about that and instead thought what have I still got and I realized I still have the use of my arms I still have my brain I still have my mind I still have my family and then I even started wondering like okay is there anything I've actually gained from this and at first I thought no of course not there's nothing good that's come from this but when I really thought about it I realized I'd gained heaps like I'd gained so much strength that I never knew I had I'd gained appreciation for my body which I never took the time to think about and I'd gained the knowledge that I survived something unsurvivable this is maybe like a harsh truth but so here's what I I don't know see for me since my accident

I have not at all had any body self-conscious issues like I like I think I look great love that no but let me tell you why because when I was in hospital no when I was on the ground after the accident and my legs weren't working before my accident I was only 20 but I was super fit loved the gym loved to go running so I had quite muscly legs and I remember pre-accident being like oh I wish my legs weren't so muscly whereas when I was laying there on the ground and my legs weren't working I was like I couldn't give a fuck what my legs looked like I would take any legs regardless of what they looked like as long as they worked like all I wanted was a body part that worked so from that moment any time I did have an insecurity on my body I would straight away be

like okay but what does that body part do for me and I would change I would like flick the switch from just instead of looking at my body as an object to looking at it as like the vessel that lets me experience life so like if you don't like your eye color think of what it enables you to see you know what I mean it's just changing the perspective of what your body can do and realizing that the way it looks is the most like irrelevant part about any of it and it's like you would never walk into a spinal ward and complain about the way that your legs look or you would never go up to a quadriplegic who can't even move their hands and complain about a part of your body or you'd never go into a burns unit and complain about your skin you know what I mean so it's just

I don't know I I just gave me this confidence not to think like oh I'm the hottest person in the world but just more so that it doesn't matter like it doesn't matter what I look like so I don't put to focus on it it doesn't even cross my mind man she is so right mk is just such a ray of sunshine i absolutely loved that chat with her next up in our year in review how could we possibly even contemplate doing a year in review without doing a big old shout out to our guy maddie j for the batch uncut episodes that him and laura did now to bring you behind the scenes a little bit for these ones man they worked so damn hard on these episodes they were often up i'm talking like early hours of the morning late recording these and editing them so that you could have

them in your libraries on Friday mornings. I could be a little biased. I think significantly funnier than the show. I don't know. You could be the judge of that. Here's one of my favorite episodes of Batch Uncut featuring the one and only Maddie J. Episode number 11. Let's just jump straight to it. Hot and ready and sexy and can't wait to get unpacking. And the budget restraints continue here on The Bachelor because on this episode, we're going camping. It's nice that they've kind of pitched this as like, we want to know

if the girls are outdoorsy and they like to, you know, just get one with nature and get out there and get amongst it. But really it was the arts department being like, fucking hell, guys. We cannot work under these restrictions. What have we got left? Oh, some tarpaulin and a couple of blow-up mattresses.

They're going camping. Get the jaffles ready. That'll do us for a full episode. No one's going to notice. It was literally a full episode of camping. My school camp had more budget than this. Oh, wow. You know, like normally every episode it changes locations. Like you'll have a day that'll be on a yacht and then you'll have it

at the Batch Mansion and then you'll have a group date that's somewhere else entirely. Like even just the travelling to and from dates cost money. They didn't have to travel. They literally just went, pitched a tent and stayed there for the duration of an entire episode. I'm, like, angry for Jimmy. One of the scenes, you can see the Batch Mansion in the background.

They're in the backyard. They're in the paddock. They're not really, are they? No, they're not, no. You can see Osher sitting there in the driveway of the Batch Mansion. Smoking his cigarette. He's like, oh, what are these idiots up to today? Make them dance.

When Jay and Jimmy are coming back to the cocktail party, they're coming back to the bonfire, the bush doof. Osh is DJing the glow sticks are out it's all kicking off Laura's shelved an MDMA love you Osh alright episode 12

let's do it there's only 6 girls left in the mansion how did that happen so quickly oh I've got an idea it's because they keep doing double episodes I mean the sad thing is

Laura with all these double episodes, it does mean the amount of batch uncut episodes that we do together is going to be cut short. It also means that these episodes have to go for a very long time in order for us to cover everything. So I hope that you are maybe going for a long walk. Maybe you're working at home and you just need some background noise. And I don't know, maybe you just need some friends in your ears for an hour. Everyone needs a friend, Matthew. Why are you laughing at that? That wasn't even a joke. I know. I just didn't know. I didn't know where you were going with that neither did i everybody just needs some friends

everybody out there laura on a four glass of wine the thing about friends is that you need them okay and everyone shoots the messenger because the messenger's going to get shot people know people know long walks being like what the fuck is laura talking about Messengers and friends. Another favourite moment of 2021 is when we got to meet the bloody legend. That is Kath Koschel. Kath was a professional cricketer who broke her back twice, who had to learn to re-walk three times.

She's also someone who has a bit of a tragic love story that led to her creating the Kindness Factory and really realising how kind acts can change your life. but I didn't want to start with that story because Kath brought us what I would consider to be one of the funniest accidentally unfiltered stories I have ever heard in my entire life so we're going to kick things off there but just a bit of a heads up before we jump into this segment there are mentions of suicide so if that brings up anything for you please call lifeline on 13 11 14 or skip ahead about seven minutes we want to start the way we start every interview and that

is with your accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story it's a great way to break the ice well I feel like I'm just on a brain scan there's so many to pick from this could take up the entire podcast no good one that my friends love actually sounds really kind of wanky but I'm motivational speaker sort of my my day job and we'll get into why I get a really unique story but I was in the US I got invited to a pretty exclusive event in the US and I didn't really know what it was about the way that the woman had explained it to me was that it brought together the world's most powerful and influential people and brands and to me it sounded like a like a cult and I was a little bit apprehensive actually I should do this event but they said they'd fly me

and my my assistant I didn't have one at the time so my best friend got a junket to to the US with me first class all this kind of stuff and bells should have started ringing at this moment when I'm sipping champagne in in first class and all that kind of stuff and I get to this event and we're having a sound check the day before and and again things should have been making sense the screens were bigger than any house I'd lived in and I looked like an ant as a 4,000 strong audience it was going to be the next day because all these seats were there and I was like okay the brief that I got were these people have everything they could ever want and need so you just bring humility so bring yourself humble them I can do that and they said to me

I said how long have I got for this talk and they said you've got eight minutes and I said wow that's a big story to fit into eight and I normally get 45 any chance I could have 15 just in the prep and and they said look the Dalai Lama only gets 12 so and I thought I thought they were joking I thought they were joking so I was like oh good one I guess eight will do and so I get there the next day and I'm in the green room and there's all these snacks and I love snacks there's this woman sitting there like an African-American woman black woman beautiful stunning and I was like gee she looks familiar and I said g'day I'm Kath and she said Kath really nice to meet you I'm Michelle and I was like, awesome. I was like, she's so beautiful. And I go, it's really nice to meet you.

And she said, yeah, likewise. She said, what are you, what are you doing back here? And I said, I'm speaking today. I'm opening the whole, whole conference. She said, what are you going to talk about? I said, well, I guess my life story, but essentially kindness. And she said, it's one of my most favorite things to hear about and to learn about. I was like, oh, that's really lovely. I said, what are you doing? And she said, I'm on after you. And I was like, what are you talking about she said oh this is in 2018 and she goes and I don't watch tv or anything like that and she says I'm going to talk about the me too movement and I said wow I've heard about that and she said I'm sure you have so she's sitting there and she goes she goes hey I'm going to go

out the front do you mind if I watch I'm going to leave you here I'd really like to listen to what you're going to talk about and I said of course like I said I'll do the same as soon as I finish I'll run around like I really want to hear what you got to say and I was like what a wonderful woman so then I sweat starts I'm like where am I like what's going on I get out and I'm two minutes into the eight that I've got start sort of you know sharing everything's gone really really well and then I look off center on stage to the right and I was like and everything just started to make sense just sitting next to her husband Barack Obama and I'm like and I just go holy fuck that was Michelle Obama what the fuck did I say did I swear oh my god oh my god and I was like where

and I look to the left and it's the Dalai Lama like sea of red and yellow all like the who's who of the world in this room and I just shat myself like this like the sweat was dripping off me and I nearly ruined the whole thing and I was just like so I finished the talk and had to apologize to her for basically saying I'm a fucking idiot I'm so sorry I didn't know like I of course I know who you are like of course I just like I was so nervous and she's like Kath it's fine I loved your story I got this like standing ovation that everyone's like on me but I was like holy shit how has this happened and yeah my parents hate me for that so like how this is incredible bowing down to this person I was like yeah I didn't really think so but she

100% would have loved the fact because she would have thought you knew who she was and just didn't care or didn't clock it she would have loved that you treated her like normal but I think this is so fucking at least you didn't say you look familiar at least you didn't ask her what she did for a job I was like she does I was like she's stunning like she's she's so beautiful like she's got the runaway says like people like that have an aura but she genuine i've never really experienced anything i'm like this woman is stunning and her voice and all that and i'm like like yeah she did look for me i'm like maybe it's just because she's so beautiful was there any kind of explanation or do you think he just wasn't ready to face a life on the outside

like starting again was he still not walking or where do you think it stemmed from after he's done he seems to have done all the hard work you would literally like you said you'd signed a lease you're one day away from your life what do you think happened? I don't know and I think I've heard from a lot of I think we're called survivors of suicide you know when someone very close has passed away in that way and there's so many different responses and it's such a relative experience and I think it's such a personal experience for Jim it was so inexplicable he was never going to be the guy that did that like Jim was never going to be the guy that did that and so many stories out there like that right you know smiling depression all that kind of stuff

he didn't have an existing mental health condition he didn't seem to be struggling there was support available all those sorts of things but there was so much going on for him that I'm still learning about today that still just gives me so much empathy for him and his struggle and all those sorts of things and I think even individually for both of us we never know what another person is truly thinking right like we can think that we do and we can say that this person is my everything and I know everything about them but we all have little secrets like I do I haven't told a lot of people certain parts about my life and things like that and that's just because they're our own and I don't think he wanted to share that outwardly with anyone his mum and I were incredibly close

and she didn't see it there was no warning sign or anything like that his friends you know I feel like I just I exhausted them post his his passing just by calling him and going but when that moment happened could he have meant that and it's like well he could have Kath but we don't know mate like it's you know and so I think you can run yourself into the ground honestly asking so many questions all those photos that we've got together are they and he's smiling in them does he mean that smile or was that moment as special to him as it was to me and you rack your brain and you're never going to have the answers to that for Jim a lot of people say you must be angry and I was like absolutely not angry is not an emotion that I felt towards him certainly at all I felt a little

bit of anger towards myself you know why did I not see that coming this is you know a fair while ago now but no it was yeah if anything I probably loved him more not for any other reason than I just it was just so special. Kath is a really impressive woman her episode is something that I've found myself going back to quite a few times I think I've listened to that episode about six times myself just because I seem to get so much out of it I think she is amazing. Coming up next as a part of our rear in your view as Brittany Hockley would say is actually the girl who started Accidentally Unfiltered as a segment. It is Brit's sister, Sherry Hockley. Sherry is a nutritionist and she joined Life Uncut to talk about our somewhat complex relationship that we have

with diet culture and with food in general and exercise. But her Accidentally Unfiltered was, as Brit would say, a volcano. It was aptly themed with coconut oil. I just think it's absolutely brilliant. Here is Sherry Hockley. Yeah, my at home lube story. So I'm going to throw Jay under the bus here because it's happening to Jay my my new fiance everybody sorry Jay we were getting getting down and dirty one night and uh we were doing massage Mondays which is where we you know is what exactly what it sounds we do a massage every Monday which always leads to like beautiful beautiful sex we didn't have any lube and I said to him oh babe there's some um there's some coconut oil in the pantry go get that because guys and I'll give you a pro tip

coconut oil is not healthy for you it is not a superfood by any means but it is a great lubricant so I sent him to get the jar of coconut oil and he comes running back into the bedroom and I said oh hold on like I actually use that for cooking sometimes so just put a small amount into a Tupperware container bring it back into the bedroom and leave the rest in the pantry so he does he scoops it out he puts it into a Tupperware container but I've really got to set the scene for you guys so we use it it's great it's fun it's a really good lubricant use it a couple more times and then next time massage monday rolls around i'm in the dark i'm naked we're getting down to it we're using the coconut oil it's really great you know he gets the container out it's everywhere

it's on me it's in me and then i was like jay i feel funny like i feel really bitty like i can feel like there's stuff all over me and it wasn't just coconut oil what do you mean bitty like you know when like when you rub your hands really fast together and bits of skin come up on your hand oh yeah like it felt like there was sand or something on me everywhere the little boobies were just like covered in in bumps pretty much and so i was like just put the light on and so i'm laying there stark naked and he puts the light on and i am covered head to toe in black mold the coconut oil had gone moldy in the container this is wrong on so many levels because black mold's literally toxic.

You had that shit all over your body. That is fucked. It is so fucked. It had gone moldy in the container and it was a dark and I couldn't see and he had literally massaged mold all over my body. It was in chunks all over me. It was disgusting. Next up for our year in review, we are chatting with Huven Kylenberg.

He is an author, he is a motivational speaker, he's a podcaster and he's also the creator of The Resilience Project. Laura and Britt had a really candid conversation with Hugh about something that I think impacts all of us every day, whether we are aware of it or not, and that's comparison culture and the way that social media plays a role in our everyday life. And I just absolutely loved this moment with Hugh van Kylenburg.

It's because we do live in a society that is very consumerist driven. We're advertised to constantly. Like we are told you get the next newest best thing, you will be happier. I mean, every time that Apple brings out a new phone, there's a line around the street every time you know adidas brings out new shoes there's a line around the street like we are very very consumer driven in the society that we live in but how do you think and i think just going on for something that you just said brit this idea of comparison

culture it's something we talk about a lot on this podcast and i think because we both work a lot in the social media world we really do see how fake it is and how much people put on this so fake facade but at the same time we even get sucked into it from time to time what role do you think comparison culture plays into into the mental health battles that people are having in this day and age it has an enormous impact on us it's an example I was chatting to someone the other day about this if a friend came up to us and said oh I've got a promotion I've been promoted at this job like they said it to us and they sat us down said I'm so excited we would say I'm so happy for you that's just so and we would feel that but the way it's presented on social media I think our

first thing is to go I haven't had a promotion in ages or gosh I'm not getting paid that amount of money. The way that Instagram or whatever it is, whatever your Instagram is probably the most common one, the way it's presented and packaged up, we just can't help but compare ourselves because we're comparing ourselves to everyone. So then we don't look at our friends and go, oh, my friend's got a promotion. Great. We go, that's someone else who's doing better than I am. But if that sat down and told us face to face the good news, we would just, we would feel joy for them. So there's so much happening. A very good friend of mine, Ben Crow, was talking to me about this other day. And we were talking about three main places we get our information, consuming

information from right now, social media, the news and advertising. And if you just think about the three roles they play and what they do to us. So the news is skewed massively to the negative. So I think it's something like there's an index that measures positive to negative language in the news. And I think at the moment in 2021, it's something like 88% of what we hear on the news is negative. I could be a bit off there. It's close to 88%. So we have a lot of negative news. Social media is predicated off shame. So whenever you jump off social media, you feel regret and shame. You feel like I'm not enough, basically. That's what you feel like. And think about the amount of hours we spend on social media. That's the main feeling we get from it is I'm not enough.

And then we have advertising. And the role of advertising is to make us feel like if we had this certain thing, our life would be better. Now, according to research done not too long ago, the average amount of advertising impressions we receive a day is 5,000. So we get 5,000 reminders a day that our life could be better, plus we spend however many hours on social media feeling like I'm not enough because I'm not like this person. And then we have this negativity on the news. I think that all adds up to the amount of anxiety right now in the world is just, it's off the charts. And I feel like these three things are a big part. I'm not saying turn off the news. We need to engage in what's happening, but just be aware that that's like

a deliberate, like there's a lot of good news happening in the world as well. And we've got to tune into that as well. To finish off our review of 2021, we're going into an episode that was recorded quite recently. Laura and Britt sat down with Chanel Bryant. Chanel Bryant is a lifer. She's a member of our community. She's a mum of two. She's a wife. We're so incredibly grateful for the time that Chanel took, which is something that she doesn't have very much left of because Chanel has terminal cancer. And she joined the podcast to talk about grief about leaving a legacy for her family about advocating for your own health to talk about gratitude to talk about love it was an incredibly powerful and moving conversation so I can think

of no better way than to wrap up 2021 than by thanking you Chanel and really telling you that we are so grateful for what you provided for life uncut she's like it's not good it's a really bad prognosis and i'm so sorry to do this to you and you know i don't want to be doing this over the phone in this way but it's terminal life just stops you know hence the docuseries called life on standby it just stops and but yet when you're a young mum it has to fucking go on my kids are inside waiting for dinner you know like I'm so sorry Chanel I just can't imagine what it's like to be that in that moment and like you just said to know that someone has just literally told you that there is an end point for you and it's probably not far away but you're like well

I've just got to get back in to the spaghetti on the stove like my kids are waiting that's it and that's fight or flight I guess like okay I can't be around the kids right now I know that and luckily we've got a really good community around us we did move away from family and we literally called the neighbors and dumped the kids over right at the neighbor's house straight away and Luke went and did that and whilst he was away he was trying to set all the kids when he got there as well so he was gone for about half an hour and I was just sitting there and the person I want to call his mum obviously and I can't call her I'm sitting there just with this intense fear not knowing what to do and desperately wanting Luke to come home feeling alone shaking you know

you're just it's so difficult to explain and I found myself getting drawn to write this death list it sounds so morbid and so weird but I just wanted to write notes in my phone of things that I needed to do like and I think it was that mum and that like maternal part of me it's like if I'm gonna die my kids need all these things and it just kicked in and I tried to almost block it instinctively I'm like god just relax just try and settle into this news don't focus on your death just yet and it just kept coming and I was just like on it is it's coming for a reason just write down what you need to write down and in that moment I've still got it on my phone you know I wrote down things like writing letters to the kids on their wedding days and recording

videos on you know like you know it's like it's just all those things that you know you're gonna miss Chanel are you saying that you wrote this like this did this death list come in this half hour that you're waiting for Luke yeah yeah literally such a mom I couldn't not do it I just I had to and I felt like I wasn't honoring myself if I didn't and you know what it's grounded me that that list has grounded me so much through the uncertainty of his time and I keep going back to it and you know I did that the other night I had a night at accommodation I someone had booked me this beautiful night and I was like I'm gonna go and I'm gonna fucking write these letters and record these videos and do these things it was hideous it was the worst thing I've ever done in

my life and I didn't even last the whole night I ended up calling Luke I started getting hysterical and I was like I can't do this and then I couldn't breathe very well it is in my lungs so it's kind of everywhere in my lungs and they're just waiting for them to fill up with fluid effectively so my breathing is a little bit more labored and the cough it's just going to progressively get worse and because I was so emotionally upset it was triggering the physical parts of me and until luke said he's like i'm just gonna come and get you i just couldn't calm down until he was there i just felt so far away i was 10 minutes up the road so i've been told if i don't have treatment i'll be lucky to see christmas so that's weeks away

i'm so sorry thank you like what can you do you know it's it's fucked it's so fucked but i can't control it you know i can control writing letters to the kids i can control bringing forward our wedding day our renewal to this weekend as opposed to in five months time i can control my goodbyes and creating memories and traditions with the kids now taking videos so they're the things i'm controlling and i'm you know that's that mom in me and i'm doing that and that's all that i can do so then once i do that i have to let go like it's the ultimate lesson in surrender ultimate lesson but yeah look i'm still hopeful i'm realistic i understand the type of cancer that i have i understand the prognosis i've accepted it we're still looking into some

interesting alternative treatments that i'll be starting literally tomorrow there are very limited mainstream options but i'm very much at a point of there's a clinical trial i might be able to get into slim chance that it will do anything for me high chance that it's going to impact the quality of my life and there's no crystal ball i might last months you know they get this shit wrong all the time they do they do they do you hang on to that but i have accepted that it's correct and we'll see where we end up but it's that limbo land of like quality over quantity making special memories i want to go out in my way we're setting things up having those fucked conversations i want to die at home i want the kids to be around i want them to experience

death in a way that's not mainstream i want them to have these beautiful little traditions and things that they can do to be a part of it and to really understand what death is as opposed to mommy gets wrapped with a you know she comes over and then she's wheeled out of the room and then you go back home and she's just not there that's not what I want for them at all so putting the work into that as well is also another thing that's bringing me calm and ease at the moment in knowing that again I'm doing all that I can to set them up to cope with this and deal with this in the best way that I can you know but you said something to me about boundaries and you were like do you know what this last period has made me very very aware of my boundaries it's made me

very acutely aware of what's important to me and if I didn't want to do it I wouldn't fucking do it and I was like yeah there's nothing that's going to cut through the shit in life like knowing when the end is coming like what has this been like in creating priorities in your life how do you navigate this next part and this next phase of life it's so difficult to explain it's the highs are high and the lows are low and they're both there simultaneously and the highs are phenomenal I can't explain I wish I could explain to you how beautiful the moments are right now like I've done therapy for years I've been working on these things for myself and you know you have a breakthrough in therapy and you deal with these things and you're like this is great I can see where this

has come from and blah blah blah I spoke to my therapist the other day and I was like we've been working on this issue for like a year it's gone it's instantly dissolved and all those things are just everything's just clear I've never let love reach me in this way before I never knew that it was accessible in this way like I feel like I have been cracked open to my core like literally like a morbid way of saying it but like corpse on a body just cut open and every single ounce of love is penetrating my entire body my entire being and to fully allow that in is magnificent it is the most glorious thing I've ever experienced in my life and to be able to share that with my family and my kids and to actually fully let that reach me a bit of a

take-home message with that I'm trying to share that with people at the moment is this is actually accessible all the time people around us do have the capacity to show us love in this way but it's all our shit that gets in the way to block that we block it so many intricate moments that I've had that are just so beautiful at a time like this when life is just fucked to have the beautiful moments like that so clearly and so frequently just allows such a sense of calm and ease and peace into leading into this next transition for me the more at peace i can find with this i can come with this the better it is for everyone around me wow chanel is just a phenomenal woman we actually have never received as many messages on our social

media as to what we did after that episode with chanel i think she made a lot of us look at life through a different lens and we're so so immensely grateful for it and with that we are wrapping up our year in review 2021 that's what it was it was a whole lot of things it was filled with a lot of good stuff was filled with a little bit of bad stuff as well but we got through it together and i'm very very grateful to have done it with you guys that's it for 2021 we cannot wait to be back in your ears or your ear holes as laura would say in 2022 we've got a whole bunch of incredible guests coming your way lots of new topics and we will have an additional podcast drop in the form of our radio show that is starting uh january 15 i think is the date so

we're going to catch you in like two and a half three weeks something like that I hope you have a wonderful end to the year and I just thought I would wrap this up by letting you know that I am recording this in a lounge room it's my lounge room so not Brit's lounge room but I'm in my underwear in true Life Uncut form and I don't see much of that changing in 2022 you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friend particularly a self-isolating friend tell them about Life Uncut it might just get them through some kind of lonely days that a lot of us or experiencing it at the moment and share the love because we love love