Cheng Lei was riding high in a successful career as a news anchor in China when her life changed in an instant. Lei is a Chinese born Australian citizen and mother of two, who spent more than three years detained in a Beijing prison after being wrongly accused of illegally supplying state secrets. In this emotional and candid conversation, Julia and Lei delve into her early life in China and then Melbourne, her exciting journalism career around Asia and the ordeal that changed her and her family...
Jun 25, 2025•51 min•Season 7Ep. 8
In this month’s book club episode Julia Gillard and Kathy Lette discuss Fundamentally, by Nussaibah Younis. It’s the British author’s debut novel and it follows the story of Nadia Amin - an academic disowned by her mother and dumped by her long-term partner, who accepts a job with the United Nations in Iraq to rehabilitate ISIS women so their home countries will take them back. While struggling to get the program off the ground amidst the opaque world of international aid, Nadia meets Sara, a fe...
Jun 11, 2025•37 min•Season 7Ep. 7
In this episode of Julia's Book Club, Julia and co-host Sarah Holland-Batt delve into Theory & Practice by Australian author, Michelle de Kretser. Short-listed for the Stella Prize, the seventh novel from the Miles Franklin winner tells the story of a first generation immigrant from Sri Lanka living in Melbourne in the 1980s. The young academic is writing a thesis on Virginia Woolf, who this podcast is named in honour of, when she begins a love affair with a man who is in a "deconstructed re...
May 14, 2025•40 min•Season 7Ep. 6
In this special episode, we take you inside Julia's first ever Australian live recording of A Podcast of One's Own. Recorded in front of an audience at the Australian National University in Canberra, home to the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, Julia is joined on stage by one of Australia's most respected journalists, Leigh Sales. The pair discuss Leigh's incredible career achievements, preparing for Prime Ministerial interviews, telling stories of tragedy, the power of podcasts and her ...
Apr 30, 2025•54 min•Season 7Ep. 5
In our April Book Club episode, Julia and Kathy unpack Butter, the cult Japanese bestseller by Asako Yuzuki. Inspired by the real-life case of the “Konkatsu Killer” and translated into English, the book follows journalist Rika Machida as she tries to get inside the mind of convicted serial murderer Manako Kajii. Kajii, a gourmet cook, is serving time behind bars for the murders of lonely businessmen who she seduced with her delicious home cooking. What follows is an intimate and unsettling relat...
Apr 16, 2025•36 min•Season 7Ep. 4
In this episode, Julia Gillard is joined by Dr. Beverley Ditsie – pioneering filmmaker, artist, and gender non-conforming activist – whose fearless activism has shaped the fight for queer rights in South Africa and beyond. From co-founding South Africa’s first multiracial LGBTQ+ rights group at just 16 to leading the country’s first Pride March in 1990, Beverley has been at the forefront of the battle for equality for decades. In 1995, Bev made history as the first openly lesbian person to addre...
Apr 02, 2025•54 min•Season 7Ep. 3
In our first Book Club episode of 2025, Julia and co-host Sarah Holland-Batt explore the newly-released Wild Dark Shore by Australian author, Charlotte McConaghy. Out this month, the mystery novel is set on a tiny, remote island near Antarctica, where Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers. The island is home to the world’s largest seed bank. But with sea levels rising, the family needs to move the precious cargo to safer land before it’s lost to the ocean. As each character is grapp...
Mar 19, 2025•42 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Eluned Morgan is the first woman to lead Wales. Before that, she made history as the youngest member of the European Parliament at just 27 years old. Ahead of International Women’s Day, Julia travelled to Cardiff to sit down with the First Minister in her office. In this season-opener, they discuss Ms Morgan’s political upbringing, her path to the leadership, building resilience, misogyny on social media, how her faith shapes her politics and her life away from from the public eye. Show notes: T...
Mar 05, 2025•43 min•Season 7Ep. 1
In the final episode of 2024 Julia sits down with her good friend Josephine Linden to discuss their favourite books of the year, and look ahead to the new releases they can’t wait to read in 2025. Thank you to all our listeners for joining us again this season, the whole A Podcast of One’s Own team hopes you’ve enjoyed the interviews and book club episodes as much as we have! Show notes: Books discussed by Julia and Josephine during this episode include: The Enigma of Room 662 by Joel Dicker The...
Dec 25, 2024•45 min•Season 6Ep. 19
In this special episode of A Podcast of One’s Own, we take you inside Julia’s live event with international best-selling author, Paula Hawkins, at the Hay Festival Winter Weekend. After the huge global success of Paula’s first novel ‘The Girl on the Train’, the pair sat down to explore her latest thriller ‘The Blue Hour’. Set on a Scottish tidal island connected to the mainland for just a few hours a day and home to only one inhabitant, the novel asks questions about ambition, power, art and per...
Dec 11, 2024•59 min•Season 6Ep. 18
Dr June Oscar AO is a is a proud Bunuba woman from the remote town of Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. Her remarkable decades-long career has taken her from a small office in a cattle station in a tiny Western Australian town, to serving a five-year term as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. June was the first woman to hold this role in its 20-year history and used her position to advocate for, and empower, indigenous women and girls a...
Nov 20, 2024•46 min•Season 6Ep. 17
Angie Murimirwa personifies the transformative power of education. Growing up in Zimbabwe, Angie was one of the first girls to receive support from the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) to go to secondary school. Angie is now the organisation’s CEO. In this episode Julia - who is Patron of CAMFED - and Angie discuss the huge barriers to education that many girls still face, and the impact finishing school has on not only an individual, but also their family and community. They also talk abo...
Oct 30, 2024•45 min•Season 6Ep. 16
It’s been arguably the most eventful US Presidential campaign in history and the stakes couldn’t be higher, not just for the United States, but for the world. There’s been two assassination attempts on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who became the first US President to be convicted of a felony over hush money payments to an adult film star. We've seen President and Democratic nominee Joe Biden sensationally withdraw from the race after the most disastrous presidential debate performance in his...
Oct 08, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 15
In this episode of Julia’s Book Club, Julia and co-host Sarah Holland-Batt delve into the latest novel by best-selling author, Elif Shafak. There are Rivers in the Sky charts the story of three characters from across history brought together by two great rivers, with one epic poem flowing through the story. Spanning centuries and continents, the novel follows a single drop of water from the Tigris to the Thames, from antiquity to the 19th century to the modern day. While exploring the rich histo...
Oct 02, 2024•44 min•Season 6Ep. 14
Alexis Wright is one of the most highly-regarded Australian authors in recent times, winning both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Stella Prize - twice. Her work is challenging the traditional publishing world and asking some tough questions. But her passions extend far beyond writing. In this episode, Julia explores Alexis’ early beginnings as a young activist, her lifelong dedication to Indigenous land rights and her concerns around global warming, as well as her literary success. Sho...
Sep 18, 2024•34 min•Season 6Ep. 13
In this episode of Julia's Book Club, Julia and Kathy Lette sit down to discuss Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors. Blue Sisters is the second novel from Mellors, following her bestselling debut Cleopatra and Frankenstein. It tells the story of three very different sisters – strait-laced lawyer Avery, party girl Lucky and stoic world champion boxer Bonnie – who are torn apart by grief and scattered to different corners of the globe after the sudden tragic death of their fourth sister, Nicky. As the si...
Sep 04, 2024•34 min•Season 6Ep. 12
Elif Shafak is a best selling author, a political scientist and an advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression. In this episode Julia and Elif journey on a candid and deep conversation about Elif’s childhood in Turkey, what drew her to writing, and the lengths she’s had to go to keep telling the stories of those who are often silenced. They also delve into Elif’s spectacular new novel There are Rivers in the Sky, and discuss why tackling the world’s water crisis is criti...
Aug 21, 2024•52 min•Season 6Ep. 11
In this month’s Book Club episode, Julia and Kathy Lette explore Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by internationally-renowned author, Salman Rushdie. In his memoir, the Booker Prize winner recounts the horrifying moment he was stabbed, almost to death, while on stage in upstate New York, preparing to deliver a lecture on keeping writers safe from harm. Julia and Kathy examine his incredible literary career, his life under 24-hour surveillance and the fatwa which led to the frenzied a...
Aug 07, 2024•46 min•Season 6Ep. 10
In this episode Julia sits down with Domtila Chesang, an incredibly courageous woman who has dedicated her life to ending female genital mutilation in her home country, Kenya. In this powerful conversation Domtila explains how the devastatingly harmful practice impacts girls and women around the world, and how she’s working to educate and empower communities in order to stamp it out. She details the pivotal moment in her life that started her journey as an activist. Julia and Domtila also discus...
Jul 24, 2024•36 min•Season 6Ep. 9
In this month’s Book Club episode, Julia and Sarah Holland-Batt discuss The Wren, The Wren by Man Booker prize winner, Anne Enright. Shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the novel is told in three voices and explores an Irish family’s love, betrayal and intergenerational trauma. Julia and Sarah delve into Enright’s poetry and unique writing style. Show notes: The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright is published by Penguin and available at all good bookstores: https://www.penguin.com.au...
Jul 10, 2024•39 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Katrina Gorry is a trailblazer on and off the pitch. Last year she stole our hearts in her record-breaking performance in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, making the highest number of tackles and covering the most ground of any player in the tournament. Katrina helped the Matildas reach the semi-finals for the first time ever, catapulting her and the rest of the team to the status of national treasures and putting women’s football on the map in Australia for the first time. Speaking to Julia just aft...
Jun 26, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 7
In this episode of Julia's Book Club, Julia and Sarah Holland-Batt sit down together in London to discuss The Sun Walks Down, by Australian author Fiona McFarlane. The Sun Walks Down tells the story of a remote South Australian town in the 1880s where a young boy has gone missing during a dust storm. As the community rallies to find 6 year old Denny Wallace, readers experience the search, the town dynamics and the complex landscape surrounding them from the perspective of various characters, inc...
Jun 12, 2024•40 min•Season 6Ep. 6
For many Australians, and tennis fans around the world, Jelena Dokic is a household name. In this episode, she opens up to Julia about her childhood surviving poverty and fleeing war-torn Yugoslavia, to her meteoric rise to fame on the tennis court, all the while silently suffering at the hands of an abusive father. Now, the self-described 'victim, survivor, thriver' speaks openly about how she’s overcoming her mental health struggles and vicious online trolls to lead a happy and fulfilling life...
May 29, 2024•40 min•Season 6Ep. 5
In this month’s Book Club episode Julia sits down with her good friend, best-selling author Kathy Lette, to discuss The Fraud , by British writer Zadie Smith. The Fraud is a historical fiction novel set in the Victorian era, centred around a real life London court case - The Tichborne Trial. England is captivated by the case, in which a man claims to be Sir Roger Tichborne - the heir to a large fortune and long believed dead. Julia and Kathy delve into the book’s exploration of race, gender, age...
May 15, 2024•36 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Katy Gallagher is Australia’s Federal Minister for Women, Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service. In this candid conversation Julia and Katy delve into Katy’s early life growing up in Canberra, the tragic loss that shaped her path forward, her career in ACT and federal politics and how she’s working to better the lives of all Australian women through the Federal Government’s new strategy for gender equality. Show notes: Learn more about the Federal Government’s strategy for gen...
May 01, 2024•48 min•Season 6Ep. 3
In the first ever Book Club episode of A Podcast of One’s Own, Julia and co-host Sarah Holland-Batt delve into Australian author Anna Funder’s new work Wifedom. Wifedom tells the untold story of Eileen O'Shaughnessy and her marriage to George Orwell, one of the most famed English writers of all time. Funder recreates the Orwell’s’ marriage, taking readers through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. Eileen’s story has been largely ignored by the history books, and as Funder ...
Apr 17, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 2
In this episode, Julia sits down with activist, sexual consent champion and a voice for her generation, Chanel Contos. Chanel was a catalyst for transforming how consent education works in Australia. In 2021, aged just 22, she sparked a national media storm when she exposed the alarming level of sexual assault in Sydney private schools. From here, the “Teach Us Consent” Campaign was born – an online petition asking for sexual consent education in Australian schools, which quickly gained more tha...
Apr 03, 2024•44 min•Season 6Ep. 1
In the final episode of 2023, Julia takes a look back at the incredible conversations of Season 5. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 20, 2023•44 min•Season 5Ep. 14
Sam Mostyn has had a formidable career in executive positions, working across business, sport, climate change, the arts, policy and not for profit. She recently led the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, and was the first woman AFL Commissioner, where she spearheaded the creation of a women’s league. Now Sam is taking over from Julia as Chair of Beyond Blue, Australia’s leading mental health support service. In this episode, Julia and Sam discuss mental health, gender equality and how women ca...
Dec 12, 2023•51 min•Season 5Ep. 13
Elly Desmarchelier is a proud disabled woman who uses her voice to advocate for the 1 in 5 Australians living with disability. Elly was the public face of a national campaign to maintain and defend the integrity of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme, taking the fight all the way to Parliament House in Canberra . Elly and Julia discuss the barriers and discrimination Elly has faced and overcome throughout her life, and her determination to pave a smoother path for the next generatio...
Nov 08, 2023•50 min•Season 5Ep. 12
