Marieke Hardy Is Going To Die

YUMI STYNES IS GOING TO DIE

Yumi Stynes is an author and broadcaster who has been making stuff for more than 20 years. She hosts the amazing podcast Ladies, We Need To Talk and co-authored the best-selling Welcome To series of guidebooks.

Yumi’s also a survivor. Because, frankly, she’s had to be. In this occasionally intense and very broad-ranging conversation, Yumi unpacks not only the thoughts she's given to her Dream Funeral but also what it is to navigate torrid and devastating upheavals in both public and private life.

TW: Me...

RANA HUSSAIN IS GOING TO DIE

Rana Hussain is a pioneer and a passionate advocate for social inclusion and reducing discrimination through the vehicle of sports and media. Growing up in the Islamic faith as the child of of Indian migrants, she has a strong religious connection to the rituals of death and dying. But Rana's also a pop culture fiend with a penchant for showbiz flourish who has some very strong plans for her own farewell party....

Instagram (IG @RanaBHussain)

Good.Human - GoodHuman.Au

OMAR SAKR: POETRY IN THE GENOCIDE

Omar Sakr is a poet and writer born in Western Sydney to Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants. He is an acclaimed, award-winning author and the first Arab-Australian Muslim to win the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. He is also - like the rest of the world - bearing witness to genocide. So where does art and poetry find its place amidst a horrifying and ongoing massacre? And what does it cost activists to keep showing up when staying silent is not an option?

Instagram (IG @OmarSakrPoet)

GENEVIEVE MORRIS IS GOING TO DIE

Comedian, actor, and all-round excellent human, Genevieve Morris has been a familiar face on Australian screens and stages for a many years. In 2017 she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, forcing her to pull out of a starring role in a comedy series and do some pretty major re-assessing of her life.

Recorded at dear Sammy Petersen's studio.

Instagram (IG @morris.genevieve)

Marieke Hardy Is Going To Die is a podcast made by Marieke Hardy (IG @marieke_hardy).

MONTAIGNE IS GOING TO DIE

Pop royalty, twitcher, songwriter, activist, artist. Montaigne released their first album, Glorious Heights, in 2016 and won Breakthrough Artist in the ARIA awards that same year. Their third album, Making It! ‘explored relationships, death, the universe and the anxieties of modern life’ and their latest music - self-produced after liberating themselves from corporate management - goes deep into family trauma and survival. Montaigne has been open about both their creative practice and their mental health over the years - so what does this free-thinking, articulate maker have planned for their own Dream Fune...

CELEBRATING JACK COLWELL

Sydney-based singer songwriter Jack Colwell was an accomplished artist and musician who worked extensively within the music industry. He released one studio album, Swan Dream, in 2020 - five years after his single, Don’t Cry Those Tears, was produced by Sarah Blasko and lauded as one of the best Australian releases of the year. Jack died at the age of 34 in 2024 after struggling for a long time with his mental health.

Celebrating Jack’s far too short life is his dear friend Sam Twyford-Moore who was with him for much of t...

VIRGINIA TRIOLI IS GOING TO DIE

Virginia Trioli is presenter of Creative Types on ABC TV and a former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and host of Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne. A two-time Walkley Award winner, she spent nine years as a news reporter, features writer, and columnist in Melbourne. Her new book A Bit on the Side: Reflections on What Makes Life Delicious is a gorgeous interrogation of food and memory, but Virginia's not afraid to tackle weightier matters of death and grief. And she's put a lot of thought into what her Dream Funeral...

BRUCE PASCOE IS GOING TO DIE

Bruce Pascoe is a writer and farmer with extensive knowledge of the Australian landscape that reframes the colonised whitewashing of centuries of First Nations innovation. He has published 36 books including Dark Emu, which won the NSW Premier’s Award for Literature in 2016. Bruce is a deep thinker and so articulate about what it is to bear witness to the cycles of life and death in the natural world, and what he feels about his own legacy…and how much there’s still left to achieve.

Instagram (IG @Bithee...

MEHREEN FARUQI IS GOING TO DIE

Dr Mehreen Faruqi is the Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens and Senator for NSW. She is also a civil/environmental engineer with 20 years experience in sustainability and environmental management, and before her time in Parliament worked in local government, consulting and higher educations institutions. As the first Muslim woman in any Australian parliament, Mehreen has been a political outsider fighting for her right and the rights of others like her to be let inside on their terms whilst surviving racial discrimination, violence, and death threats. So how does this...

JON RONSON IS GOING TO DIE

Jon Ronson is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker, known for works such as Them: Adventures with Extremists, The Men Who Stare at Goats, and The Psychopath Test. He's also possessed of an insatiable curiosity and devilish intellect - so what plans has this provocateur made for his own Funeral, and how much thought has he given to who will deliver his eulogy?

Jon’s two TED talks have been watched more than 30 million times. In the US he is a contributor to This American Life, the Ne...

LIVE AT THE WHEELER CENTRE: BEN SHEWRY IS GOING TO DIE

Recorded live as part of The Wheeler Centre's Spring Fling program, this conversation features renowned Chef and memoirist Ben Shewry as he unpacks a lot more than the food and bev service at his Dream Funeral. Ben was born in New Zealand in 1977 and moved to Melbourne in 2002. He worked with chefs David Thompson and Andrew McConnell before taking on his first head chef role at Attica in 2005. Originally obsessed with the detail and balance of Thai food, Ben began to develop a style at Attica...

CELEBRATING JOHN CLARKE

John Clarke was a pioneering comedian, actor and writer, whose television appearances as farmer Fred Dagg in the 1970s marked the emergence of a distinctive home-grown style of New Zealand comedy. In 1977 Clarke moved permanently to Australia, where he was best known for the popular television series The Games and a series of satirical mock interviews with Australian Bryan Dawe. His wide-ranging talents included scriptwriting, music, documentary presenting, and literary pastiche, and his comic performances encompassed pratfalls, parody and political satire.

John died of a heart attack in 2017 aged 68 whilst hiking in...

PHIL JAMIESON IS GOING TO DIE

Phil Jamieson has spent the last quarter-century fronting one of Australia’s most popular and successful bands. An accomplished singer, songwriter and guitarist, Jamieson’s generation-defining lyrics and vocal melodies first became etched into rock fans’ DNA in 1995, when the Lismore-born quartet he helped form as an 18-year-old - Grinspoon - rode a new wave of alternative music to become the first act Unearthed by national youth radio station triple j with its debut single “Sickfest”.

 
So began a love affair that maintained its heat and passion for over one th...

CELEBRATING JASPER HAIGH

Jasper Haigh was a lively and troubled seventeen year old when he drove his car through an intersection in Geelong in 1987, dying soon after. His older brother Gideon - compartmentalising his shock and grief - grew up to be an esteemed writer.
He has published more than fifty books and contributed to more than a hundred newspapers and magazines in a decades-long journalism career. His cricket books include The Cricket War, The Summer Game and On Warne, and he has written on subjects from abortion, asbestos and architecture to incest and HV Evatt...

BEN LEE IS GOING TO DIE

Ben Lee began his career as a young teenager in the early 90’s, in the Australian lo-fi punk band Noise Addict, who were discovered by taste-making artists Sonic Youth and the Beastie Boys.

That began an extraordinary career that has been both eclectic and eccentric, and still growing more strange and fascinating each day. Whether collaborating in one-off projects like the Bens (with Ben Folds and Ben Kweller), producing a Grammy award winning music/comedy album for Margaret Cho (“Cho Dependent”), duetting with Sarah Silverman, writing a psychedelic childr...

LA PETITE MORT: MARYAM MASTER IS GOING TO DIE

Maryam Master is a playwright, screenwriter and author who loves creating stories for young people.

She wrote the acclaimed stage adaptations of David Walliams’ best-selling books Mr Stink, The Midnight Gang, Billionaire Boy and Ratburger – as well as Oliver Jeffers’ The Incredible Book Eating Boy, all of which premiered at the Sydney Opera House and toured across Australia.

She began her career in TV, writing for shows like Home and Away, Blinky Bill and the Jim Henson Company’s Bambaloo. In 2011 she was selec...

TARA MOSS IS GOING TO DIE

Tara Rae Moss is a force and a shape-shifter. She is the bestselling author of 14 books of fiction and non-fiction, an experienced keynote speaker and documentary host, an award-winning advocate, holistic healer, funeral celebrant and practicing seiðkona.

Since 1999 she has written fourteen bestselling books under the name Tara Moss, published in 19 countries and 13 languages, including advocacy handbook for women and girls Speaking Out, her #1 non-fiction bestselling memoir The Fictional Woman, and the internationally bestselling postwar historical crime novels The War Widow and The Ghosts of Paris.

LA PETITE MORT: ANITA ISALSKA IS GOING TO DIE

Travel enthusiast Anita Isalska is a freelance writer and editor who specialises in Eastern Europe, France, and Australia. Anita has  authored several Lonely Planet guidebooks, including their Malaysia, Israel & the Palestinian Territories, and Romania & Bulgaria titles - but her most recent book, Lonely Planet's Guide To Death, Grief and Rebirth - offers something a little more unusual.

The book is divided into four key chapters: Celebrating, Commemorating, Mourning, and Offering and covers everything from Jazz funerals (New Orleans); Turning of the bones (Madagascar); Burial beads (South K...

ANDY GRIFFITHS IS GOING TO DIE

Andy Griffiths is one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors. He has written forty books—many in collaboration with illustrator Terry Denton—which have sold over 12 million copies in Australia, won 90 children’s choice awards and 10 Australian Book Industry Awards—including Book of the Year for The 52-Storey Treehouse in 2015. 

His much loved Treehouse series has been embraced by children around the world and is published in more than 35 countries. The thirteenth—and final book in the series—was published in 2023. 

So what does one of the nation's mo...

LA PETITE MORT: DAVID PARIS IS GOING TO DIE

As someone who has worked within political parties, unions and non-government organisations on social and environmental issues for the past 20 years, David Paris has been no stranger to the occasional brutality of public and private life. But when his health began deteriorating, he found himself facing an ongoing battle with chronic pain and fatigue - as well as feeling the slow and significant peeling away of a social circle unable to comprehend his at times invisible battle.

In darker moments, David has sought solace in those...

BENJAMIN LAW IS GOING TO DIE

Writer and broadcaster Benjamin Law is the brainchild behind a million projects that you love - The Family Law, Gaysia, the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101, Wellmania, and MTC's Torch The Place (to name but a few). He's also a regular writer for The Good Weekend, The Monthly, Frankie, The Guardian and AFR, as well as moonlighting as a documentary host, radio host, podcaster, and a literary scout for Hachette Australia.

In addition to his brilliant body of work, Benjamin is an activist and an ambassador for Plan International Australia...

LA PETITE MORT: THE LAST HURRAH FUNERALS

The Last Hurrah Funerals are a bespoke funeral service based in Naarm, who offer 'authentic and unique funerals' that take extra care to build a service truly personal and fitting. In their words: 

'The Last Hurrah hold no specific ethos in regard to how the dead should be farewelled; instead our primary aim is to support those who are grieving to farewell their kith and kin in a way that is meaningful to them, and to create funerals and rites that truly and authentically reflect the person w...

KIRSTY WEBECK IS GOING TO DIE

The brilliant Kirsty Webeck entered the Australian comedy circuit in 2013 and is now a regular fixture on the Australian comedy circuit. She's toured Australia with Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow, appeared on the Opening Night Comedy Allstars Supershow in 2021, 2022 and 2023 and The Oxfam Gala in 2024, performed on the Sydney and Perth Comedy Festival opening night galas and hosted the comedy stage at The Falls Festival in Byron Bay. 

Her TV appearances include Tonightly with Tom Ballard, Metrosexual, How To Stay Married, SBS' Celebrity Letters and Numbers, The Weekly with C...

CELEBRATING CHRIS WILSON

Widely known as ‘Australian Blues royalty’, Melbourne musician Chris Wilson was an Australian blues and roots musician who sang and played harmonica, saxophone and guitar. He performed as part of the Sole Twisters, Harem Scarem and Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, and fronted his band Crown of Thorns. Wilson's solo albums are Landlocked (June 1992), The Long Weekend (March 1998), Spiderman (2000), King for a Day (July 2002), Flying Fish (2012) and the self titled Chris Wilson (2018).

A pancreatic cancer diagnoses in 2018 led to Chris' death at 62 in January 2019.

Celebrating Chris is his...

OSHER GÜNSBERG IS GOING TO DIE

Osher Günsberg is easily one of Australia’s most recognisable media personalities. From his radio career in Brisbane, to music television in the 2000’s, host of the original Australian Idol, The Bachelor franchise and The Masked Singer - Osher has been a guest in Australian living rooms across generations. He’s one of Australia’s leading podcasters, and an in-demand speaker who is a passionate advocate for positive conversations around mental health and climate action - which is why planning his Dream Funeral generates such an open, radically honest, and highly...

POH LING YEOW IS GOING TO DIE

The feverishly beloved and brilliant Poh Ling Yeow is a multi-talented artist known for her diverse creative pursuits - including painting, cooking, and television presenting. Since her breakthrough on MasterChef Australia, Poh has emerged as a prominent figure in the Australian culinary landscape. She's also experienced - particularly across the last year - an immense amount of loss and grief. As someone keen to unpack what it means to mourn and the specific things it teaches us, she's fronting up with gusto to build her dream Funeral and interrogate what...

CELEBRATING AIDAN FENNESSY

Aidan Fennessy was an Australian playwright, stage director and actor, known for his work with the Melbourne Theatre Company, where he was at one time associate director. A brilliant and revered playwright, his writing career began in the 1990’s, and took off with National Interest in 2012, a critically acclaimed dramatisation of the story of the Balibo Five murdered journalists – the youngest of whom was his cousin Tony.

Aidan died of cancer in September 2020, during the Melbourne lockdowns.

Celebrating Aidan is his partner and mother of his two children, the writer Nova...

CLEMENTINE FORD IS GOING TO DIE

Writer, podcaster, columnist, activist, feminist - Clementine Ford has very much lived her life unapologetically in the public eye since her early days of blogging and stirring shit UP. As a human being who has received more than an okay number of death threats, how does she feel about planning her dream Funeral? And after losing her mother at a young age, does she feel more or less afraid of facing her own mortality?

Clementine Ford (IG @Clementine_Ford)

Marieke Hardy Is Going To Die is a...

LA PETITE MORT: ANDREA GOLDSMITH IS GOING TO DIE

Writers obsessed with the themes of death and mortality often find comfort in the words of fellow artists interrogating same. What is it that they're seeking in the musings of those who turn to face the Reaper? What does it tell them not only about their own creative practice, but life itself?

Andrea Goldsmith is an award-winning novelist and occasional essayist. Death has featured in most of her 9 novels; indeed, in the forthcoming, The Buried Life, the main character is a sociologist of death. Her fascination...

BEN QUILTY IS GOING TO DIE

Australian artist Ben Quilty has always been an outspoken human - passionate about art, social justice, and the general messy business of Being Human. But as someone who has had a front-row seat to death and mortality - not just through his work, but also through his activism - how does he feel about planning his own Funeral? What does he wish he'd said and refrained from saying? This is an earnest Dream Funeral from one of the country's most reflective and creative minds.

Ben Quilty is a...

CELEBRATING DANE CRAWFORD

In these special episodes, we celebrate the life of a person who has died via someone who loved them deeply - keeping the memory of them alive through shared recollections, joy and grief.

These conversations can be intensely raw, and many tears are shed. Please move gently as you listen.

TW: Grief, suicidal ideation.

Dane Crawford was a sparkly-eyed, sweet natured man who loved his work in construction. He died suddenly in 2018 at 37 years of age. 

Celebrating Dane is his former partner Tommy Murphy - a...

AMY TAYLOR IS GOING TO DIE

Frontwoman for Australian punk icons Amyl and the Sniffers, Amy Taylor has always leaned into a robust zest for life and a beautiful, chaotic energy. That lust for experience explodes in your face every time she performs - marching around the stage with an unbridled and infectious exuberance. Yet alongside this love of life, Amy's always had a fascination and pragmatism about death...and the plans for her Dream Funeral are unsurprisingly grandiose and befitting a rock n roll goddess.

Amy Taylor (IG @CaltexCowgirl)
Amyl and the Sniffers...

CELEBRATING NIKI CHAWLA

In these special episodes, we celebrate the life of a person who has died via someone who loved them deeply - keeping the memory of them alive through shared recollections, joy and grief.

These conversations can be intensely raw, and many tears are shed. Please move gently as you listen.

TW: Violence against women, murder, justice system, mental health.

Nikita Chawla was a beautiful, kind-hearted, gentle, energetic and ambitious young woman with a passion for performing arts and dance. Her life was taken in a brutal act of...

SAM PANG IS GOING TO DIE

You know comedian, radio and television presenter, writer and occasional Logies host Sam Pang from - well, everywhere. He's the first to leap in with a witticism (or devastating sledge) when the occasion calls for it, and not shy about naming and shaming those who could use taking down a peg or two. But how do you plan a Dream Funeral for a man who is most comfortable outside the spotlight looking in? 

Sam Pang on HYBPA (IG @HYBPA)

Marieke Hardy Is Going To Die is a...

LA PETITE MORT: MALIA DEWSE IS GOING TO DIE

Why do so many of us resist writing a will until it's too late?

Holistic end-of-life planning is more than formal documents (will and advanced care plan). It reflects our values, interests and the breadth of our lives: emotional housekeeping, end-of-life, our legacy and more. It needs doing before it’s really needed.

A long-held interest in death and dying, as well as both positive and challenging personal experiences with loved ones’ dying and death, drove Malia Dewse to establish Beyond the Will...

TONY BIRCH IS GOING TO DIE

The brilliant writer and academic Dr Tony Birch was born in inner-city Melbourne, into a large family of Aboriginal, West Indian and Irish descent. An altar boy and exceptional student at his local Catholic primary school, in adolescence, Birch went 'off the rails' as a teenager. He was expelled from two high schools for fighting and found trouble with the police for the same reason. Although somewhat adrift following his expulsions, he remained a voracious reader – once, when he was arrested by police, all they found when they patted him down wa...

CELEBRATING MIKE NOGA

In these special episodes, we celebrate the life of a person who has died via someone who loved them deeply - keeping the memory of them alive through shared recollections, joy and grief.

These conversations can be intensely raw, and many tears are shed. Please move gently as you listen.

TW: Substance abuse, mental health, suicide.

Mike Noga was a singer/songwriter and former drummer of the alt-rock band The Drones - who won the inaugural Australian Music Prize in 2005 for their album Wait Long by the River...

MARK WATSON IS GOING TO DIE

Hyperactive, prolific and emotionally generous UK comedy superstar Mark Watson has won numerous awards for his work in standup over the years. Yet with all his success - in television, radio, and as the author of seven (!) novels, with an eighth on the way in 2025 - he's struggled a great deal with anxiety and mental health issues, both publicly and privately. What does a Dream Funeral look like for someone who has lived such a massive life, with some deeply human triumphs and regrets?

TW: Suicide

...

LA PETITE MORT: SISTA ZAI ZANDA IS GOING TO DIE

Every second week on MHIGTD we explore a conversation about mortality and survival with human beings who have skin in the game. And today we're asking the question: what does African philosophy teach us about the eternal nature of life? 

Sista Zai Zanda (Sista Zai/VaChihera) is an Afrofuturist, Poet and Womanist. Sista Zai was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and raised in a large extended family. VaChihera is from the Karanga language group and now lives as a Black African settler on Kulin Nations.

ADAM LIAW IS GOING TO DIE.

As irritatingly clever and kind and funny as he is, it pains me to tell you that chef, TV host and writer Adam Liaw is definitely going to die. But he's okay about it! Sort of, kind of, whenever he actually gives the idea of his own mortality some thought - which isn't often. In this episode, Adam puts his formidable brain to the task of planning his Dream Funeral - discussing legacies passed down via food, updating wills, and whether children should ever be allowed at funerals...

Adam...