What if the person who was meant to protect you was the one you needed protection from?

This week on You're Gonna Want To Hear This, Marie Claire Australia Editor Georgie McCourt speaks with world champion runner Jess Denham, who is telling her story publicly after years of being unable to do so.

Raised in isolation and controlled by her parents, Jess appeared to be a sporting prodigy. But behind closed doors, she was enduring unimaginable abuse. Today, both of her parents are in prison for those crimes.

In this deeply personal conversation, Jess also speaks publicly for the first time about living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), sharing what it's really like to live with a condition that is so often misunderstood.

This is a story of survival, resilience and reclaiming your voice after years of being silenced. Jess also shares why she's fighting for stronger protections for survivors and helping change the way Australia responds to sexual violence.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains themes of childhood abuse and coercive control. If you or someone you know needs immediate assistance, call 000. For confidential 24/7 crisis support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au. Support is also available through Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or at beyondblue.org.au.

This episode covers:

• Growing up as a homeschooled child prodigy under total parental control
• Living a hidden double life as a champion runner while surviving abuse
• Isolation as a tool of abuse and why escape felt impossible
• Finding the courage to report abuse to police
• Living with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and dismantling the stigma around it
• How trauma shapes the brain and body in survival mode
• Rebuilding trust, identity and community after a lifetime of betrayal
• Healing through art and creative expression
• The fight against victim-blaming and sensationalized media reporting
• Advocating for stronger protection of survivors' counseling records
• A message of hope for survivors: "you're not your worst chapter"

Stay up to date with Marie Claire Australia on Instagram

🎧 Listen to You're Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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Credits:

Host Georgie McCourt

Edited by Helen Smith

Head of Vodcasting Rachel Fountain

With thanks to our amazing team at Marie Claire

You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There comes a point on Tradwife TikTok when the fantasy turns dark. The soft linen, the homemade bread and the children who never cry give way to something else: subservient wives, the manosphere, and a fight over who's allowed to be angry.

Caro Claire Burke went looking, and wrote Yesteryear, the runaway-hit novel about an American tradwife influencer who wakes up in the brutal 1850s. This week, Marie Claire deputy editor Mel Gaudron interviews Caro about the book all your friends are arguing about.

They cover why "tradwife" was a term invented by incels to describe a woman who doesn't exist, why culture adores unlikable men but punishes unlikable women, the Anne Hathaway film adaptation with Amazon MGM (Hathaway is set to play Natalie), writing about motherhood while seven months pregnant, and Caro's rallying cry: women disagreeing isn't catty and it isn't a failure. It might be exactly where we should be heading.

Plus, editor Georgie McCourt on the country-life fantasy that gave her two miniature donkeys.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke is out now. Go deeper at https://www.marieclaire.com.au.

Stay up to date with Marie Claire Australia on Instagram

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You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a Marie Claire podcast, produced by Are Media.

Guest host: Mel Gaudron

Marie Claire Editor-in-chief: Georgie McCourt

Supervising Producer: Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasts: Rachel Fountain

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When everyone else swam for shore, Charlie Verco paddled the other way: straight towards a great white shark. On a clear, busy Saturday morning at Coogee Beach in June 2026, the 25-year-old surf lifesaver and elite board paddler was training when a woman, Leah Stewart, was attacked just ahead of him. What he did next made headlines around the world.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains detailed descriptions of a shark attack and serious injury that some listeners may find distressing.

Charlie grew up a North Bondi nipper and is now one of the country’s best ocean paddlers, the youngest ever winner of the Molokai to Oahu Paddleboard World Championships. In this conversation he walks Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt through the rescue minute by minute: reading the shark’s behaviour, the moment Leah was dragged under, towing her to shore one-armed when she lost consciousness, and the lifeguards and paramedics whose training saved her life on the sand.

It is a story about courage, but Charlie is uneasy with the word hero. He talks honestly about fear, adrenaline and imposter syndrome, how surf lifesaving and sport trained him to think under extreme stress, what a shark expert later told him, and why he is now urging two things: better shark safety on Australian beaches, and for people to donate blood.

In this conversation, Charlie Verco joins Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt to talk about the Coogee Beach shark attack, what it takes to act in a crisis, fear of the ocean, surf life saving, and why blood donation saves lives.

This episode covers:

• The Coogee Beach great white shark attack: what Charlie Verco saw on Saturday 13 June 2026
• Why he paddled towards the shark instead of swimming to safety
• What it is like to come face to face with a great white shark
• How surf lifesaving training and Ironman racing prepared him to act under extreme stress
• Towing an unconscious woman to shore one-armed on a paddleboard
• What a shark expert later told him about great white behaviour
• The beach response: tourniquets, lifeguards and the teamwork that saved a life
• Managing fear, adrenaline and the shakes after a traumatic rescue
• Going back into the ocean: how Charlie feels about the water now
• Shark safety in Australia: drones, detection and what he thinks needs to change
• On being called a hero, and the imposter syndrome that comes with it
• Why he is urging Australians to donate blood, especially O negative

If this conversation raises issues for you, support is available.

In Australia, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 for 24/7 crisis support. To support the cause Charlie raises in this episode, you can donate blood through Australian Red Cross Lifeblood (O negative is especially needed in emergencies).

Donate blood (Australian Red Cross Lifeblood): https://www.lifeblood.com.au

Support Leah Stewart (family GoFundMe): https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-leah-stewart-victim-of-shark-attack-in-coogee

Follow Charlie Verco on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/char1ieverco/

🎧 Listen to You’re Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/youre-gonna-want-to-hear-this/id1849312864

Listen and follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2Vsxq2nZIMJLnywOXfuxqZ

👀 Watch and subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@marieclaireau

Credits:

Host: Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt

Supervising Producer: Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasting: Rachel Fountain

Learn More: You’re Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains themes of childhood abuse, physical punishment, sexual trauma and coercive control. If you or someone you know needs immediate assistance, call 000. For confidential 24/7 crisis support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au. Support is also available through Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or at beyondblue.org.au.

What if leaving your faith meant losing everyone you'd ever loved?

This week on You're Gonna Want To Hear This, Marie Claire Australia Editor Georgie McCourt speaks with author Bek Condello about her extraordinary journey out of one of Australia's most controlling Pentecostal churches.

Raised inside the Geelong Revival Centre, Bek grew up believing the outside world was dangerous. Every aspect of life, from education and friendships to marriage and work was dictated by church leaders. Curiosity was discouraged, obedience was demanded, and fear shaped almost every decision.

In this deeply personal conversation, Bek reflects on the childhood she now recognises as abusive, the lasting impact of religious trauma and the heartbreaking reality that leaving meant losing her family, community and identity.

She also opens up about purity culture, consent, body shame, marrying to escape one form of control only to enter another, and the years it took to trust herself and build a life on her own terms.

Today, Bek has transformed unimaginable loss into purpose. As the state of Victoria investigates high-control religious groups, she explains why sharing her story has become about much more than personal healing... it's about helping others recognise coercion, reclaim their autonomy and know they're not alone.

This episode covers:

• Growing up inside the Geelong Revival Centre

• How high-control religions shape identity

• Religious trauma and childhood abuse

• The psychological impact of fear-based faith

• Purity culture, consent and bodily autonomy

• Escaping a controlling church

• Rebuilding life after leaving a cult

• Learning to trust yourself again

• Why leaving is a process, not a single moment
• Bek's advocacy for survivors of coercive religious groups

Can You Handle a Girl Like Me? by Bek Condello is available from mid-July.

Stay up to date with Marie Claire Australia on Instagram

🎧 Listen to You're Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

👀 Watch and subscribe to You're Gonna Want to Hear This on YouTube 📺 for full episodes and clips.

Credits:

Host Georgie McCourt

Edited by Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasting Rachel Fountain

With thanks to our amazing team at Marie Claire

Learn More:

You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when the search for answers becomes a dangerous obsession?

Georgie sits down with journalist and author Hannah McElhinney to discuss her book Wormhole, the true story of her cousin Lauren.

Lauren spent much of her life battling debilitating symptoms and collecting diagnoses including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and POTS, while struggling to find meaningful answers from the healthcare system.

As her trust in traditional medicine eroded, she was drawn deeper into online communities promoting controversial and unproven treatments - including coffee enemas, bleach protocols, ozone therapy and hyperthermia treatment.

At just 37 years old, Lauren travelled alone to Malaysia for an alternative treatment she hoped would finally make her well. She never came home.

Hannah shares the heartbreaking story behind Lauren’s death, and the broader questions her story raises about health anxiety and the booming wellness industry.

The conversation also explores Hannah’s own experiences with IBS, OCD and health anxiety, and how her personal journey informed her understanding of Lauren’s search for answers.

This episode contains discussions of health conditions and unproven treatments, please see your doctor for medical advice.

This episode covers:

• The true story behind Wormhole

• Lauren’s decades-long battle with chronic illness

• Why chronic illness can leave people vulnerable to misinformation

• The rise of alternative medicine and wellness culture

• The online communities that fuel medical distrust

• The dangers of unregulated treatments and medical tourism

• Chronic Lyme disease and the controversy surrounding the diagnosis

• The intersection of health anxiety, OCD and chronic symptoms

• Women’s experiences of being dismissed within healthcare systems

• The fine line between hope, desperation and exploitation

• How Hannah’s own health journey shaped her understanding of Lauren’s story
• What Lauren’s life can teach us about trust, wellness and living fully

Wormhole by Hannah McElhinney is available now.

Read more on Marie Claire: The 'treatment' that went horribly wrong in Malaysia, and the wellness world behind it

Stay up to date with Marie Claire Australia on Instagram

🎧 Listen to You’re Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts orv Spotify

👀 Watch and subscribe to You're Gonna Want to Hear This on YouTube 📺 for full episodes and clips.

Credits:

Host Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt

Edited by Charlie Potter

Supervising Producer Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasting Rachel Fountain

Learn More: You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever stood in a room wondering why you walked in, burst into tears over something small, or lain awake at 3am completely exhausted? You’re not going crazy, and you’re not “just busy”. It could be perimenopause.

Dr Mary Claire Haver is one of the world’s leading voices in women’s health: a board-certified OB-GYN, menopause specialist and #1 New York Times bestselling author whose books The Galveston Diet and The New Menopause sparked a global conversation about menopause, and whose appearances on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett and The Mel Robbins Podcast have reached tens of millions of women. Her new book, The New Perimenopause: An Evidence-Based Guide to Surviving the Zone of Chaos and Feeling Like Yourself Again, is the guidebook women have been desperately searching for.

This one gets personal. At 44, Georgie has been told by her own gynaecologist that she’s “just busy”, then handed an HRT script with no explanation of how to use it. Dr Haver explains why that dismissal is so common, what’s really happening inside the body during the hormonal “zone of chaos”, and why suffering through it is optional.

In this conversation, Dr Mary Claire Haver joins Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt to talk perimenopause symptoms, misdiagnosis, hormone therapy (HRT), brain fog, rage, weight gain, weight-loss drugs, osteoporosis, low libido, and the one message every woman needs to hear.

This episode covers:

• The perimenopause symptoms doctors dismiss: anxiety, rage, brain fog, insomnia, weight gain and low libido
• Why perimenopause can start in your mid-30s, 7 to 10 years before menopause
• How to tell the difference between depression, burnout, ADHD and hormone-driven changes
• Why so many women are misdiagnosed and prescribed antidepressants instead of hormone therapy
• Is HRT safe? The real benefits and risks of menopause hormone therapy
• Menopause and divorce: the viral “two camps” debate
• Why belly fat can double or triple in menopause, and why more cardio isn’t the answer
• Ozempic-style weight-loss drugs (GLP-1s), muscle loss and the “GPS” rule: GLP-1 + protein + strength training
• The osteoporosis statistic every woman needs to hear: 50% of women will have an osteoporotic fracture
• How vaginal oestrogen cuts recurrent UTIs (and sepsis) by 50%
• Low libido in perimenopause: the five causes of sexual dysfunction, and where testosterone fits in
• Dr Haver’s message: “Perimenopause is inevitable. Suffering is not.”

The New Perimenopause by Dr Mary Claire Haver is out now.

🎧 Listen to You’re Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts

Listen and follow on Spotify

👀 Watch and subscribe to You’re Gonna Want to Hear This on YouTube 📺 for full episodes and clips.

Credits:

Host: Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt

Supervising Producer: Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasting: Rachel Fountain

Learn More: You’re Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses mental health challenges, including suicidal thoughts and ideation. If you or someone you know needs immediate assistance, call 000. For confidential 24/7 crisis support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au. Support is also available through Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or at beyondblue.org.au.

What if the person you're most afraid of becoming is yourself?

Every month, writer Emma Hardy found herself trapped in a cycle of rage, despair, anxiety and emotional chaos. Then it would pass, and life would return to normal - until the cycle began again.

In this powerful and deeply personal episode, Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt sits down with Emma to discuss her debut memoir, Periodic Bitch: A Memoir of Menstruation, Madness and Monsters, a raw exploration of life with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).

Together, they discuss PMDD, from uncontrollable anger and emotional outbursts to the relief and complexity of finally receiving a diagnosis. The conversation moves beyond the condition itself, examining how women's pain is misunderstood, dismissed or pathologised, and why conversations about female rage remain so uncomfortable.

Emma also explores the surprising cultural influences behind the book, from horror stories and hysteria to medical research conducted on rats, and the question at the heart of Periodic Bitch: when is a mood just a mood, and when does it become an illness?

In this episode:

• What PMDD actually is, and why it's often mistaken for severe PMS

• Emma's journey to diagnosis

• Georgie's personal experience living with PMDD

• The impact PMDD can have on relationships, careers and self-worth

• Why female anger is so often labelled as madness

• The link between PMDD, mental health and emotional regulation

• Medical misogyny and the challenges women face when seeking treatment

• Why PMDD remains under-researched and under-diagnosed

• The fascinating stories of women whose crimes were linked to premenstrual disorders

• How Emma learned to stop fearing her emotions and start understanding them

This is a conversation about hormones, identity, rage, resilience and the stories women are told about their bodies.

Buy the book: Periodic Bitch: A Memoir of Menstruation, Madness and Monsters by Emma Hardy.

If this conversation raises issues for you, support is available.

More from Emma on Marie Claire: Emma Hardy is starting the conversation on PMDD women have been waiting to have

Listen to You're Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts

Listen and follow on Spotify

Watch and subscribe to You're Gonna Want to Hear This on YouTube for full episodes and clips.

Credits:

Host: Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt

Edited by Charlie Potter

Consulting Producer: Jessie-Lee Klass

Supervising Producer: Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasting: Rachel Fountain

Learn More: You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if the worst thing anyone ever said to you became the story that changed your life?

This week, Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt sits down with playwright, screenwriter and memoirist Lally Katz to talk about My Cursed Vagina, her brutally funny, wildly honest and unexpectedly moving memoir drawn from the past fifteen years of her life.

Before the awards, theatre acclaim and Hollywood success, Lally was a woman searching for love in all the wrong places: emotionally unavailable men, disastrous dates, psychic readings, one-night stands, impulsive decisions and relationships that left her questioning whether something inside her was fundamentally broken.

Then, during a snowstorm in New York, a psychic named Cookie told her she was cursed. According to Cookie, the problem was not just Lally’s love life. It was her vagina.

What follows is a conversation that moves between laugh-out-loud absurdity and profound emotional honesty. Georgie and Lally unpack the stories women tell themselves about love, desirability, self-worth and the dangerous habit of mistaking longing for intimacy.

In this conversation, Lally and Georgie talk about love, sex, shame, motherhood, creativity, heartbreak and the messy, humiliating, funny, deeply human things women do while trying to be chosen, understood and loved.

This episode covers:

• The psychic reading in New York that inspired My Cursed Vagina

• Why women can mistake intensity, longing and obsession for love

• The boyfriend who called Lally his “flatmate” for eighteen months and refused to give her a key

• Chasing emotionally unavailable men across cities and continents

• Tinder, one-night stands, dating chaos and romantic fantasy

• Receiving a herpes diagnosis and deciding to talk openly about STI stigma

• The advice that helped Lally stop wasting her childbearing years with the wrong person

• Meeting the man who would become her husband and marrying him in Las Vegas three months later

• Miscarriage, motherhood and wanting both creative fulfilment and family

• Turning heartbreak into art and why writing everything down became a survival mechanism

At its heart, My Cursed Vagina is not really about sex, psychics or even bad relationships. It is about the universal desire to be loved, the private stories women build around that longing, and what happens when a woman stops apologising for wanting everything: love, work, sex, art, adventure, children and purpose.

If you have ever stayed too long, loved too hard, overanalysed a text message, mistaken pain for passion, or wondered whether everyone else has somehow figured relationships out before you, this episode will hit home.

Listen now to You’re Gonna Want To Hear This with Lally Katz.

My Cursed Vagina by Lally Katz is out now.

🎧 Listen to You’re Gonna Want to Hear This and follow us on Apple Podcasts:

Listen and follow on Spotify:

👀 Watch and subscribe to You're Gonna Want to Hear This on YouTube 📺 for full episodes and clips:

Learn more:

https://www.marieclaire.com.au/life/youre-gonna-want-to-hear-this-podcast/

Credits:

Host: Marie Claire Editor Georgie McCourt

Edited by Charlie Potter

Supervising Producer Leah Porges

Head of Vodcasting Rachel Fountain

Learn More: You're Gonna Want to Hear This is a production of Marie Claire and Are Media.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.