Marianne Perkovic spent decades working in the finance sector. In 2006, she was the youngest chief executive of an ASX-listed company and in 2018, as a banking executive, she faced a grilling at a royal commission. This is not the standard path for nailing the best seat at Australian Fashion Week. In fact, becoming executive chair of the Australian Fashion Council in 2023 was meant to be her “fun board” (while giving her couture credibility with her two daughters).
Perkovic joins us to discuss her unlikely role determining the future of fashion in this country, and how she wrested control of Australian Fashion Week in her best Carla Zampatti outfit. She’s also the subject of a profile in the current issue of Good Weekend – "Seriously invested" – and today's episode is hosted by the writer of that piece, fashion editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Damien Woolnough.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Good Weekend Talks celebrates 300 episodes in May, and to observe the occasion we’re hosting a special live event podcast at the Melbourne Writers Festival, where Good Weekend deputy editor Konrad Marshall will be on stage in conversation with the iconic environmentalist, Bob Brown. We’re pleased to offer a 10 per cent discount on a limited number of tickets to the event. Just hit this hyperlink and then enter the promo code “GOOD10”, while tickets last.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stephanie Alexander is a national icon: an internationally renowned cooking guru, best-selling writer and inspirational founder of a nationwide kitchen-garden scheme for schoolkids. She's also the final arbiter of kitchen disputes in homes all over Australia – resolving disagreements about how to store tomatoes and when to take the sponge out of the oven – as the author of Australia's most famous cookbook, The Cook's Companion. The 2.8-kilogram culinary doorstopper turns 30 this year, and Alexander joins Good Weekend senior writer Amanda Hooton for a chat about restaurants and writing, eating and air-fryers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bob Carr has done hard jobs before. He was premier of NSW for 10 years, and later served as foreign minister under Julia Gillard’s government. But when his beloved wife, Helena, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2023, he faced the hardest job of his life – learning how to live without her. Carr worked through his deep shock and sadness by obsessively walking the Sydney streets he once presided over as premier, often weeping as he did so. He knows he made his friends uncomfortable by talking too much about Helena’s death at dinner parties. The silence of their shared Maroubra home was unbearable. Carr joins us to discuss his grief memoir, Bring Back Yesterday, about the loss of Helena and scrounging his way forward into what he calls “the left-over life” – a life still full of pleasures like reading, opera and the foam of a wave on your face as you enter the ocean. Today's episode is hosted by Sydney Morning Herald senior writer and columnist Jacqueline Maley.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we talk to Courtney Barnett, who broke into the musical mainstream a little over a decade ago as an Aussie singer-songwriter with deadpan delivery, with work veering from the witty and rambling to something evoking Margaret Atwood. The Grammy-nominated artist chats to Konrad Marshall from her home in Los Angeles, where she's about to release her fourth album, "Creature of Habit".

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kathy Lette is a comic writer and pioneering voice in contemporary feminism whose first book, Puberty Blues, was published in 1979. Co-authored with Gabrielle Carey, it catapulted her into the public eye, horrifying her headmistress mother with its graphic depictions of teenage sex and drug taking. She has subsequently written 21 best-selling books and today speaks with The Sydney Morning Herald’s deputy opinion editor, Margot Saville, ahead of the release of her newest novel, The Sisterhood Rules.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Todd Sampson began his TV career on Gruen, the long-running ABC series about advertising, before transforming himself into a human guinea pig to scrutinise the limits of the human brain and body.
His upcoming show, called Why?, explores the reasons behind why people turn to extreme beliefs and behaviours such as doomsday prepping, base-jumping or alien worship. In this chat, hosted by The Sydney Morning Herald science reporter Angus Dalton, Sampson talks about his upbringing, how he went from 'ad man' to TV, and the moment marrying a doomsday prepper really came in handy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Konrad Marshall is Good Weekend magazine's deputy editor, he's also the regular host of this podcast and he's just released a new book. Run For Your Life is a year-long journey on why we run, and explores a year Konrad spent in constant motion – jogging and sprinting, shuffling and loping, while also interviewing some of Australia's most interesting runners.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, we talk to reality TV star, youth worker and mental health advocate Brooke Blurton. Many know her as the first Indigenous and bisexual Bachelorette from the dating-show franchise, but she's also an author, presenter and podcaster. Blurton talks with Konrad Marshall about everything from growing up in Western Australia to life after The Bachelorette and her recent TV collaboration with Tony Armstrong. As well: the "surreal experience" of working on the new season of the SBS program, Going Places with Ernie Dingo.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.