Life Matters - Separate stories podcast

Your partner uses a ute for his business. But after it broke down, his family offered to buy a new one. You got one at a great price which they kindly paid for, and arranged to have the tray modified so it would better suit your purposes. The family are unhappy about it and prefer it to be kept in original condition. You don't want to cause any ill feelings with the family, so how can you explain why it's imperative for you to do this, without a fight?

'Isolation' has become a mainstay in our vocabularies during the coronavirus pandemic. But intrepid explorers Sophie Ballagh and Ewan Blyth were isolating long before the rest of us were. They journeyed to the bottom of the earth in a bid to get away from it all, exploring the ice-clogged waterways of the Antarctic peninsula by kayak. The pair documented their adventures in a documentary called ICEolation.

If you've been watching the coronavirus news this week, you may have reacted with a bit of alarm after seeing that cases seem to be slipping out of Victoria and into other states and territories. The NT and NSW have reported cases that came from people travelling from Victoria, and contact tracing is underway. So as cases pop up around the country, Coronacast listeners are wondering: are we losing control?

With loneliness now acknowledged as a health risk, the importance of friendship cannot be overstated. In a quest to get to the heart of the matter, journalist Lydia Denworth investigated the science behind this vital relationship between human beings, friendship.

At almost six feet tall, Enid Lindeman was a striking figure in society circles in the first half of last century and not easily forgotten by those who met her. Hailing from the famous Lindeman wine-making family, hers was an often unconventional life, but how can a woman whose life for a time filled the pages of society columns now be almost forgotten?

All it took to raise money for the bushfires was some elderly citizens and a brilliant idea. The residents of Hepburn House in regional Victoria made a calendar of re-imagined famous movie posters, starring themselves. Great-grandmother Peggy Warren is the cover girl. She said that despite the age of the models, an extremely good time was had by all. Sales of the calendar, A day at the cinema at Hepburn House, have raised over three thousand dollars.

With huge amounts of coronavirus testing going on, one of the more disturbing statistics is the number of people who are refusing to be tested. Victoria's Premier Daniel Andrews said on Monday that as part of Victoria's testing blitz, more than 900 people had refused tests. So why is it happening? Tegan and Norman go through our huge list of audience questions and comments to try and find out.

There's been a sharp rise in housing stress in Australia. Data from the Australian National University shows just over 15 per cent of Australians couldn't pay their rent or mortgage on time in May. That figure was just under 7 per cent in April. Now there's concern that the coronavirus is not only fuelling housing stress and financial hardship, but that housing stress and social inequity could also be a risk factor for the virus.

The Morrison government has committed more than a billion dollars and 500 new jobs over the next ten years to fighting the war against breaches of our data security. Cyber attacks on essential services are now commonplace, and terms like state actors, denial of service and firewall breaches are sadly all part of how competing interests do their work. But what can individuals do to improve their own personal cyber security?