Step 7: Adopt a Whimsical Persona — If you’ve ever tried to get off an antidepressant you know how tough it can be. Yet, as I’m here to tell you, it’s not impossible. Fact is, I’ve just managed such a feat and now feel completely qualified to advise you on doing the same. True, I’m not a…

The hijacking of Eros — Children’s consumption of online pornography. Is there any conversation quite so awkward? Guarenteed to make everyone present uncomfortable, feel shamed for their own consumption of pornography, and set you up forevermore as the resident overwrought prude for having raised it. And yet, you have concerns over the way children’s sexuality…

Until it didn’t. — Keto, my friends. Hacking your body’s metabolism through dietary changes to burn ketones for energy, instead of the body’s usual energy source: bad, nasty, unfashionable glucose. Naturally, you wonder, am I someone who might be capable of this extreme new way of eating? But after dining out with your keto…

As a 13 Year Old I Had Really Bad Judgement — I still remember the day Mel Gibson and I met. He was a handsome young man in army greens, looking for adventure, and lying about his age to enlist to fight in some random war. …

Imagine for a moment that guys are the ones menstruating — What might Freud’s take be if men got periods instead of women? Period Envy, of course. All our womanly distresses would be traced back to our inability to menstruate. Poor women, would go the theory, forever inferior thanks to their empty, menstruation-free lives. In her classic 1986 essay, ‘If Men…

What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? — Believe it or not, there was a time not so long ago where stalking wasn’t a thing. I mean, it was, but you had to be a celebrity to have one of them. Jodie Foster had a stalker, for example, a man named John Hinckley who was obsessed with her…

It Didn’t Go Well. — You know how it is. You’ve written something over 600 words and you know it’s good. Or, at least not terrible. I mean, you ran it through Grammarly, credited the image, and managed some paragraph breaks. What more is there? …

Mothers, Daughters and Conversations Not Had. — My mother is strong. Not emotionally, but physically, and the strength persists to this day, despite being in her mid-seventies. As I helped her support my unwell father, lifting him into a sit-up position, I could feel the difference in our capabilities, with her doing the lion’s share. She was…

But Forgets to Say Please. — You’ve got to hand it to the Australian government. In July 2020, the Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, stood up at the National Press Club, looking for all the world like an embarrassed schoolboy, and urged Australian women to have more babies, amid concerns the falling birth rate has compromised the…