Humans, being. with Lael Stone

What if the fight in the back seat is really a red flag... and your child is waving it at you?
In this honest, practical, and gentle solo episode, I'm talking all things siblings. The squabbles over who got more ice cream, the toddler showing the new baby a little too much "love", the teens hurling spicy words down the hallway... and the parent standing in the middle of it all, muttering, why can't you just get along?
This one comes straight from my DMs. So many of you have asked how to navigate sibling rivalry, and I wanted to sit down with you, like we're having a cuppa, and share what I've learnt over 26 years of being a mum and many years of walking alongside families. Why sibling conflict is so normal, what often sits underneath it, and what we can do in the moment when it all kicks off.
I explore:
Why family is one of the first training grounds for conflict
Kids being in balance and out of balance, and the "backpack" of big feelings
What gets stirred up in us as parents when our children clash
Spaciousness, safety and helping everyone be heard
Repair without forced apologies, and filling up each child's cup
Every time our kids fight, we get another chance to show them what conflict can look like... someone calm arrives, everyone is kept safe, everyone gets a turn to be heard, and there's always a way back to each other.
It's slow, it's messy, and some days we lose our cool completely. But little by little, that pattern can become theirs, and the sibling who drives them up the wall today might just be the one they laugh with the longest.
[Recorded October 2026]
About Lael Stone:
Lael Stone is an educator, counsellor, and author of Own Your Story: Understanding your past to create your future. With over 20 years of experience working with families, Lael helps people understand how their childhood imprints shape their adult lives – and how to do something about it.
Connect with Lael:
Instagram: @laelstone
Website: laelstone.com.au

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Connect with Humans, being:
Web: humansbeing.au
Instagram: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
Threads: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
Facebook: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
YouTube: @humansbeingwithlaelstone

Humans, being. is produced on the lands of the Bunurong and Wadawurrung people. We pay respect to their unique and diverse cultures and to elders past, present and future.

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Join me for the Parenting Immersion. My eight-week Parenting Immersion starts October 19th, working through themes like trust, boundaries, anger and repair to help you understand your own patterns and respond instead of react. Sign up now.

"You've gotta walk across the bindis a bit to get to the swimming pool."
What if everything you’re hoping for is sitting on the other side of the thing you keep avoiding?
In this open, tender and surprisingly funny conversation, I sit down with Osher Günsberg, a man who has been in Australian living rooms for nearly two decades, and who spent a lot of that time doing the hardest work of his life off camera.
We talk about the version of Osher that millions of us watched on Idol and The Bachelor, and the version who went home afterwards. He speaks with such generosity about sixteen years of sobriety, about the drinking and the painkillers, about periods of psychosis, and about the day he rang twenty-three people just to get through it. He’s very clear that none of it was solved by clever thinking. What saved him, every single time, was other humans.
We explore:
The three great lies our brain tells us: this is permanent, this is personal, this is everything
Why you can’t think your way out of thinking, and what to reach for instead
Speaking plainly about a psychosis diagnosis... it’s grim, but so is a compound fracture
Being a stepdad first, and the grace of honouring the dad who is already there
[Recorded Online June 2026]
About Osher Günsberg:
Osher Günsberg has been a familiar face and voice in Australian homes for close to twenty years, from Channel V to seven seasons of Australian Idol, a decade of The Bachelor, and the narration on Bondi Rescue. He’s also a podcaster, best-selling author, award-winning doco maker, mental health advocate, husband, dad and stepdad. He’s been sober for more than sixteen years and speaks about it the way it was first spoken to him, plainly and without shame, so the next person doesn’t have to work it out alone.
Connect with Osher:
Instagram: @osher_gunsberg
Podcast: Better Than Yesterday
Book: So What? Now What?
Linktree: /osher_gunsberg
If this episode hits close to home:
There are many doors into support, and they all do the job. National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline 1800 250 015, free and confidential, 24 hours; Lifeline 13 11 14. And Osher's own advice, which costs nothing: before you pick up a drink, pick up the phone.

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Lael's eight-week Parenting Immersion starts October 19th, working through themes like trust, boundaries, anger and repair to help you understand your own patterns and respond instead of react. Join the waitlist or sign up now.

"It's not the distress that hurts kids. It's being alone in the distress." Karen Young
With the noise of the world, the endless information, the sense that our nervous systems have hit the limit, I asked Karen how she's finding it, and she said it's a constant battle. Some days she wins it, some days she doesn't.
In this episode, Karen talks about wanting our kids to feel safer and do the brave things. Not one or the other. We discuss anxiety and how we've started pathologising a very normal human response, and in doing that we've made it harder to move our kids towards bravery. She opens up on her own childhood with no adult to lean into. We also discuss schools, and the one question she'd ask if she could only ask one. And step-parenting, which she says is the hardest thing she has ever done.
We explore:
Why anxiety is a normal human response, and what we've done to parents by putting "disorder" on the end of it
The difference between a child being unsafe and a child being uncomfortable, and why that distinction changes everything
What actually traumatises kids, and why it’s almost never the hard thing itself
Why kids are telling us they don't want more resilience, and what they want instead
[Recorded Online June 2026]
About Karen Young:
Karen Young is a former psychologist with an honours degree in psychology and a master's in Gestalt therapy. She founded Hey Sigmund after realising how much power sits in solid information, and her articles now reach millions of readers a year. She wrote the best-selling Hey Warrior for her own daughter, and she's the author of five other books. She's recognised for her expertise in school refusal, which she calls anxiety-based school absenteeism, and she's a mum to two children and two stepchildren.
Connect with Karen:
Instagram: @karenyoung_heysigmund
Web: heysigmund.com
Facebook: Karen Young Hey Sigmund

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Connect with Humans, being:
Web: humansbeing.au
Instagram: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
Threads: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
Facebook: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
YouTube: @humansbeingwithlaelstone

Humans, being. is produced on the lands of the Bunurong and Wadawurrung people. We pay respect to their unique and diverse cultures and to elders past, present and future.

—

Lael's eight-week Parenting Immersion starts October 19th, working through themes like trust, boundaries, anger and repair to help you understand your own patterns and respond instead of react. Join the waitlist or sign up now.

The loudest voice in our heads often says: “what are you waiting for?” Luke Cook has spent his whole life answering that question by just jumping in.
Underneath the million followers and the characters and the Netflix devil is a guy who shared that his ongoing battle is feeling like he falls short of everything. That rejection still stings, seventeen years in, and it stings because he still cares. We talk about what we make things mean, and how quickly we all default to our not-enoughness. We talk about his boys, and the birth pool, and the terrifying business of being watched that closely by three small humans. And we land somewhere I loved: if you are having fun, you are probably in the right place.
We explore:
Why Luke doesn’t experience his biggest leaps as risks
The thing school tries to beat out of you that turns out to be your secret sauce
Growing up the last of five in a Bible college, and why a minister's kid was always going to end up performing
The joyous, ridiculous business of poking fun online, where the line sits, and what he does when he gets it wrong
The gap between how the world sees you and how you see yourself, and the inadequacy story that runs underneath it
Three boys, two home births, and the best piece of advice he has for partners in a birth space
The imprint he hopes is loudest in his sons' heads when they grow up
[Recorded Online June 2026]
About Luke Cook:
Luke Cook is a Sydney-born actor, writer, director and content creator who has lived in Los Angeles since he was twenty-two. He is best known for playing Lucifer Morningstar in Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and most recently starred in the Stan Original series Good Cop/Bad Cop, which earned him a Logie nomination. Away from the screen he has built an audience of around a million people on Instagram through his original comedy characters, co-founded the health and wellness brand Shakewell, and is dad to three young boys with his wife Kara.
Connect with Luke:
Instagram: @thelukecook
TikTok: @thelukecook
Web: thelukecook.com
Shakewell: getshakewell.com

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Connect with Humans, being:
Web: humansbeing.au
Instagram: @humansbeingwithlaelstone
Facebook: @humansbeingwithlaelstone

Humans, being. is produced on the lands of the Bunurong and Wadawurrung people. We pay respect to their unique and diverse cultures and to elders past, present and future.

—

Lael's eight-week Parenting Immersion starts October 19th, working through themes like trust, boundaries, anger and repair to help you understand your own patterns and respond instead of react. Join the waitlist or sign up now.

“Play is an on-ramp, not a reward” Dara Simkin says early on in our conversation. Yep, that resonates. I too have spent most of my life saving play for after the list is done. The list is never done.
Dara brings play to boardrooms and leadership days, and what she describes is a generation of adults so addicted to achievement that they have optimised themselves right out of their own lives. We talk about grief hiding inside what looks like resistance, about her redefining success as ease, and about the morning her five-year-old lost it over a Rubik's Cube and what she chose to do instead of fixing it.
We explore:
The difference between real curiosity and judgment wearing a curious costume
Play as a recovery tool for a fried nervous system, and why the micro moments count
Achievement addiction, and how gold stars and trophies quietly become a mortgage and a boat you’re not sure you wanted
Why adaptability is just play in a fancy suit, and what that means for the kids coming up behind us
The question she asks herself at the end of each day: “how was I human today?”
[Recorded May 2026]
About Dara Simkin:
Dara Simkin is a Melbourne-based speaker, facilitator and organisational culture specialist, and the founder and Chief Play Officer of Culture Hero. Born and raised in the US, she moved to Australia at 25 after winning a video competition that sent her around Tasmania in a camper van, and she has spent the last decade researching, designing and facilitating play at work. In March 2026, she co-published Full Stack Human with data scientist and futurist Tane Hunter, about how we hold onto our humanity and adaptability in a world moving faster than we are.
Connect with Dara:
Instagram: @darasimkin https://hbp.s.gy/buJKhq
Web: culturehero.co https://hbp.s.gy/qtzEtI
LinkedIn: Dara Simkin https://hbp.s.gy/dDDAGI
Book: fullstackhumanbook.com https://hbp.s.gy/P49x3Q

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Connect with Humans, being:
Web: humansbeing.au
Instagram: @humansbeingwithlaelstone

Humans, being. is produced on the lands of the Bunurong and Wadawurrung people. We pay respect to their unique and diverse cultures and to elders past, present and future.

—

Lael's eight-week Parenting Immersion starts October 19th, working through themes like trust, boundaries, anger and repair to help you understand your own patterns and respond instead of react. Join the waitlist or sign up now.