Every family has a secret. But some secrets are more shocking than others. Some secrets take longer to come out. Angela Hamilton always had an inkling that there was something not quite right with her dad. She hated him and feared him. He was violent towards his wife and three children throughout their lives and prone to explosive racist outbursts. He rarely spoke about his past but it always seemed like he was running away from something. And it turns out he was. There’s a new SBS series called...
Jul 07, 2019•46 min
To subscribe to our new podcast Tiddas 4 Tiddas, click here. Marlee Silva is 23 years old. She grew up in suburban Australia with her sister and her parents, not realising that some people perceived her family as different. All that changed one day when she was 12 years old and it marked a turning point in Marlee’s life as a proud Kamilaroi, Dunghutti woman. Marlee is the host of our new podcast Tiddas 4 Tiddas, where every week she will be speaking to some of the brightest and most interesting ...
Jul 05, 2019•45 min
Richard Lowenstein first met Michael Hutchence when he was 23 making music videos for the likes of Hunters & Collectors and Cold Chisel. Michael liked what Richard made and commissioned him to make some music videos for INXS. Little did Richard know almost 40 years later he’d be the man making a documentary about his best mates life. The good. The bad and all the mysteries that followed him until the very end. Richard’s documentary, Mystify: Michael Hutchence is a captivating movie filled wi...
Jun 30, 2019•1 hr 11 min
Amanda Keller has been on our screens and in our ears for over 30 years. She’s done everything from host breakfast radio with Andrew Denton, and now Brendan Jones, to stick her head out of a submarine on national TV as a presenter on Beyond 2000 . She’s made people laugh and think for three decades and now, because of that, Amanda Keller is nominated for a Gold Logie. The shining star of awards in Australia. But behind those laughs, has been a very private home life. And she joins Mia now to tal...
Jun 23, 2019•47 min
On the 20th of June this year, con-man Hamish McLaren was sentenced to 16 years in prison after stealing more than $7.5 million from his victims, including his ex-wife Bec Rosen. Today on No Filter we're revisiting Mia's chat with Bec. The first time Bec Rosen met Hamish McLaren she thought he was a bit of a tosser. Bec was a single mum who had just ended a bad marriage and, along with her three young sons, she’d moved to Blueys Beach on the NSW North Coast. Bec’s family were in the early stages...
Jun 21, 2019•1 hr 2 min
When Pauline Hanson was elected into politics in the mid-90s, author Benjamin Law was in high school on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. He’d grown up in a very white area. But up until that point, he hadn’t really considered his race. Sure, he was Asian Australian, but that had never really been a problem. And then, Pauline Hanson made her maiden speech in Parliament and all of a sudden, Ben’s ethnicity was associated with something negative. His family was seen as different....He was Asian Austral...
Jun 16, 2019•52 min
When Georgie Dent was asked when her nervous breakdown began, she had to think. Really think. Was it at 19 when she found herself diagnosed with a disease she’d never heard of? Was it a few months later when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease? Was it at 24 when by all accounts, her life was perfect - working as a lawyer at a prestigious firm in Sydney and living with her then boyfriend and now husband, Nick? Or was it all of those things, combined? And did it really matter? Because it happen...
Jun 09, 2019•54 min
How do you prepare for an interview with a woman who changes people’s faces for a living? You look at your face for a very long time. At least that’s what Mia Freedman did before this interview with Dr Naomi McCullum, a woman also known as the doll maker. Dr. Naomi McCullum is a cosmetic physician who runs a luxury clinic in Sydney called The Manse, where she and her team sculpt women's faces using injectables, fillers, botox, and laser. As you can imagine, Mia had a lot of questions... Just a n...
Jun 02, 2019•33 min
A lot can happen in 30 years of someone’s life. You can build a solid career. Meet the love of your life. Have a baby. Mourn the loss of your dad. Enjoy the family you’ve built. And then watch it implode. Over the past 30 years, Angela Bishop has become one of Australia’s best-known entertainment reporters. She’s been on every red carpet at every awards ceremony in Australia, Hollywood, and London. And she’s met a lot of celebrities. In fact, we wouldn’t be going out on a limb here to say she’s ...
May 26, 2019•53 min
One in four adults and one in five children currently suffer from anxiety. And yet two in five people believe the condition is not a treatable mental health illness. Anxiety, defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome is a debilitating illness that people still aren’t talking enough about. But today on No Filter, we’re changing that. Because today Mia Freedman is joined by Dr Jodie Lowinger, the founder and Principal Clinical Psychologist of t...
May 19, 2019•46 min
On the 16th of May 2019, Bob Hawke passed away peacefully in his home with his wife Blanche d'Alpuget. Today on No Filter we're revisiting Mia's chat with Blanche. Blanche d’Alpuget has spent 62 of her 74 years exploring lust, longing and a lifelong quest for love. It was 1970 in Jakarta when a then married Blanche met a then married Robert Hawke. She thought his name was Robin. Little did she knew he would go on to become the great love of her life. Six years later, in 1976, she met Robert agai...
May 17, 2019•50 min
Today on No Filter, we're revisiting an episode that Mia did with Chloe Shorten on the 26th of April, 2017.... Chloe Shorten has attracted a lot of attention over the last few weeks. As the wife of Bill Shorten - who will potentially be our next Prime Minister - many have said that in this election campaign, they wished they could vote for Chloe. Chloe is a businesswoman, author, daughter of former Governor-General Quentin Bryce and mother of three. As a kid, she dreamed that she’d grow up, meet...
May 16, 2019•31 min
What do you really want to know? When preparing for an interview that’s the first question journalist, TV host and comedian Andrew Denton asks himself. Andrew has been interviewing celebrities and regular people for more than 20 years, first on his ABC show Enough Rope, and now on his new show on Seven, Interview. But he very rarely has the tables turned on him. Today, Andrew sits down with Mia Freedman to talk about dealing with depression, the ups and downs of his marriage to journalist Jennif...
May 12, 2019•1 hr 3 min
If you’ve ever been in a romantic relationship of any kind and you’ve been together a while, you will have probably encountered your partner’s mother. The image we have of a mother-in-law is pretty grim, generally. They don’t get great press. But for many women, their relationship with their mother-in-law is one of the most fraught in their lives and there are good reasons for this! They are intimately connected to your partner and so are you, obviously, but to one another, you’re pretty much st...
May 11, 2019•27 min
In December 2017, Kristen Roupenian’s life changed forever when her short story in The New Yorker went viral. ‘Cat Person’, which was published in The New Yorker ‘s December 11 issue, navigates a brief relationship between a 20-year-old university student named Margot, and an older man – Robert – who she meets while working in a movie theatre candy bar. You can read it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person It’s not a complex plot. But, like all the best pieces of fiction...
May 06, 2019•34 min
There’s a fresh new face on breakfast TV and her name is Brooke Boney. She describes herself as a proud Gamilaroi woman. And Brooke is proud. She grew up in a housing commission, was raised by a strong single mother and is the eldest of 6 kids. So how did she end up as The Today Show’s entertainment reporter smack bang in the middle of some high drama and unimaginable public scrutiny? She joins Mia now... Click here to subscribe to No Filter. CREDITS: Host: Mia Freedman With thanks to special gu...
Apr 28, 2019•42 min
Sex, drugs and rock and roll. That’s what we used to worry about when it came to the things that would mess up kids. These days the rate of things like teen pregnancy, smoking, drinking and drugs have fallen off a cliff. But they've been replaced with phones, screens, social media and video games, all of which are potentially addictive. David Gillespie knows exactly how we get addicted to these devices and why the addiction looks different in men and women. He joins Mia to talk about what’s happ...
Apr 21, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Julie Bishop hasn’t been a private citizen for 20 years. But a few hours after this interview was recorded, that changed. An election was called and Julie's position as the Member for Curtain came to an end. She’s been present for some of the ugliest moments in politics, both in Canberra and around the world. And she's dealt with it all with her signature class and style. She’s also always towed the party line. But now she can say whatever she wants and she joins Mia to do just that... Click her...
Apr 14, 2019•51 min
Turia Pitt has been through an enormous amount in her 31 years. She was an engineer and ultra-marathon runner when she was caught in a bushfire in 2011. She's recovered from having 70% of her body burnt, learnt to walk again, written 3 books, got engaged to her long-term partner Michael, raised millions for charity and given birth to her baby boy Hukavai. Now Turia's latest book is a gift to young women about how to maintain your self-esteem in an Instagram-obsessed comparison culture Four years...
Apr 07, 2019•41 min
The first time Bec Rosen met Hamish McLaren she thought he was a bit of a tosser. Bec was a single mum who had just ended a bad marriage and, along with her three young sons, she’d moved to Blueys Beach on the NSW North Coast. Bec’s family were in the early stages of rebuilding their lives when Hamish appeared and made himself indispensable. So indispensable in fact, that Bec and Hamish got married in 2011. And that was when Bec started to uncover the extraordinary lies her husband had told and ...
Mar 31, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Mandy Nolan has five kids to three different dads. Two of them she married and one was her defacto partner for many years. This is a woman who knows a lot about blending a family. And blending it again in a different way. And then again. The thing with blending though is that once you mix lives together, you can’t un-blend them. Once connected, the bonds Mandy and five kids have with all of their fathers and father figures are there for life in different ways. Mandy is the host of our new podcas...
Mar 24, 2019•37 min
When Josh and Sean Szeps met they knew instantly they'd found "the one." How did they know? Because Josh insulted Sean. The pair met in 2011 in a dive bar in New York, moved in together in 2012, were engaged by 2013 and married in 2014. While many gay couples feel that having a relationship and a family is difficult, for Sean and Josh they felt they were always in the right place at the right time. Gay marriage became legal in the US just as they were considering getting married, the price of IV...
Mar 18, 2019•56 min
For the past 20 years, Mia's guest has been the voice for over a thousand victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. Right now, Lisa Flynn is representing the father of one of the choir boys who was sexually abused by George Pell at the age of 13. This boy’s young life was never the same and “R,” as he’s been known throughout the trial, withdrew from his family and began taking drugs very soon after the abuse happened. Now Pell is serving a prison term of 3 years and 8 months for the abuse of ...
Mar 15, 2019•42 min
Six months after her husband died unexpectedly, Simi Polonsky gave birth to her third child. She was grieving the death of her husband, Shua, and celebrating the birth of her new son. And not in a million years did she think that her life would end up looking like that. Simi was born into a big Jewish family in Sydney, her father was an Orthodox Rabbi and she was one of seven kids. In her early 20s, Simi moved to New York with her sister. She married the love of her life, launched a successful b...
Mar 10, 2019•56 min
A woman’s work is never done. And author Gemma Hartley knows this. Whether she’s at home or in the office, there’s a whole layer of labour done predominantly by women that most men can’t even see. Emotional labour is being the person who notices problems, delegates solutions and makes sure life goes smoothly for everyone around her. It’s noticing there’s barely any milk left and then doing something about it - and changing the toilet paper roll when it’s run out. This work is invisible and exhau...
Mar 08, 2019•42 min
If people stop you in the street, what’s the first thing they say to you? "Hello!"? Or "How are you?" For author and journalist Carly Findlay her experience is very different. Carly was born with a rare genetic skin disorder called Ichthyosis, which affects approximately one in 200,000 newborns. Ichthyosis causes the skin to build up and scale and when people see Carly they often ask what happened to her. Did she get burnt? Has she had microdermabrasion? They often think by asking, they're being...
Mar 03, 2019•46 min
Roxy Jacenko doesn’t like being the centre of attention. If you are one of her 230,000 Instagram followers, you might find that hard to believe. But the Sydney businesswoman insists her businesses, selfies and TV appearances aren’t about fame or attention. They’re about money. This is the second time Mia has spoken to Roxy for No Filter. The first time, Roxy’s husband Oliver Curtis was in jail for insider trading. She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer and her life was... spiraling. And this ti...
Feb 24, 2019•43 min
If you grew up in the 70s in Australia, you probably look back on that period and smile. Maybe you think of it as a simpler time or "the good old days." But were they really? In his new book, The Land Before Avocado, journalist and broadcaster Richard Glover investigates whether the past really was as great as everyone thinks it was. As a child of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Richard takes us on a journey back to a place where every man could afford a house and every woman was known by her husb...
Feb 17, 2019•51 min
When Christine Armstrong, author of The Mother of All Jobs, became a mother it never occurred to her she would have to give up her job. At the time, she was working in London in a high level corporate job. But after the birth of her first daughter, she realised being full-time mum AND a full-time employee was bloody hard. So, she started looking for answers. She interviewed other working mothers and found, unsurprisingly, that she wasn’t alone. Christine realised there was a conspiracy of silenc...
Feb 10, 2019•45 min
Mia Freedman is bringing you a special episode of No Filter this week because our Executive Editor Leigh Campbell has some news... Leigh has been a high profile journalist for more than a decade. She’s worked at Cosmopolitan Magazine, Huffington Post and Mamamia. She has a huge following on Instagram and is the host of the You Beauty podcast. But if you've been following Leigh on social media you probably know all that. What you might not know is what's been happening behind the scenes of her In...
Feb 08, 2019•58 min
