No Filter

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Koko Casey was a flight nurse. She spent her career flying into disaster zones and distant countries, keeping critically ill strangers alive at 30,000 feet, until the night a routine medical retrieval turned into the plane crash she was never supposed to survive. On the 17th of November, 2009, the jet she was working on ran out of fuel in a storm off Norfolk Island and ditched into the ocean at close to 200 kilometres an hour. Koko and everyone else on board lived. What came next very nearly took her life anyway.
In this episode, Koko tells Kate Langbroek what the official story leaves out: the sixteen years of chronic pain and PTSD that followed the crash, the slow slide into addiction and self-loathing she now calls "the hitchhikers," and the points where she came closest to not making it at all, including an overdose discovered by her own children. She talks about the group therapy session that changed how she spoke to herself, the flying lesson she booked to face her fear head-on, meeting the man who would become her husband while he was landscaping her backyard, and the decision to legally change her name as a symbol of who she'd become. She also talks about her work today, presenting to the Royal Australian Air Force's Human Performance and Safety team, and what it took to finally put her story on the page.
If you or anyone you know needs to speak with an expert, please contact your GP or in Australia, contact Lifeline (13 11 14), Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800) or Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636), all of which provide trained counsellors you can talk with 24/7.
Koko Casey's book, Stay: From Flight Nurse to Patient, is out now through New Holland Publishers.
What To Listen To Next:
Listen: "I Didn't Know How to Deal With It": Jason Donovan on the Years That Almost Broke Him
Listen: Cassandra Thorburn: "I Have My Own Platform To Say My Truth"
Listen: Jennifer Robinson On Amber Heard, Brittany Higgins & The Price Women Pay For Speaking Out
Listen: Everyone Thinks Ally Langdon Has It Together. She’s Here To Tell You She Doesn't
Listen: "I Went to a Really Dark Place": Jessie Stephens on the Six Months Nobody Saw
Listen: Sophie Delezio Wouldn’t Change A Thing
Listen: Liane Moriarty Was Terrified To Write A Big Little Lies Sequel. She Did It Anyway.
Listen: Harriet Dyer: "It Should Have Been A Dealbreaker. I Chose Him Anyway"
You can now watch our show in full length video on the Apple Podcast app - make sure your phone is up to date and we can't wait for you to see. CLICK HERE.
SUBSCRIPTION GIVEAWAY: The You Beauty hosts have bundled together their all-time favourite beauty products and two Mamamia subscribers are winning the lot. Subscribe to Mamamia to be automatically entered to win. Current subscriber? You're already in the draw. T&Cs apply.
Discover more Mamamia Podcasts here.
Watch No Filter on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram here. Follow us on TikTok here.
Feedback: podcast@mamamia.com.au
Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice message, and one of our Podcast Producers will get back to you ASAP.
Rate or review us on Apple by clicking on the three dots in the top right-hand corner, click Go To Show then scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the stars at the bottom and write a review.
CREDITS:
Guest: Koko Casey
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Bree Player
Audio and Video Producer: Josh Green
Content and Social Producer: Jess Chan
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we have recorded this podcast.

Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here is a very special episode of Unleashed, Mamamia’s podcast for Gen X women.
One of the hosts of Unleashed, Dr Ginni Mansberg, has been going through something incredibly difficult. Ginni’s mum had been very ill for a long time and made the decision to choose voluntary assisted dying.
Ginni wanted to talk about what was happening with her mum and her family on Unleashed. And rather than just having a conversation about VAD, they decided to tell the whole story.
It’s about what happens when you know someone you love is going to die. About family, grief, love and all the complicated feelings that come with saying goodbye.
And it’s Ginni telling that story as both a doctor and, ultimately, as a daughter.
This is part one of a three-part series, beginning one month before Ginni’s mum’s death. Listen to part two and part three here.
Please take care while listening. This episode discusses voluntary assisted dying, death and grief. If this conversation brought up hard feelings and you need some help, please call Lifeline here.
In your ears today is Cath Mahoney, Bruna Papandrea and Ginni Mansberg
Check out our Unleashed music playlist for some feel good throwbacks!
The End Bits:Follow us on Instagram, DM us thoughts, feelings and questions @unleashed.show
Love the show? Hit follow on Apple or Spotify — it helps other Gen X women find us.
Executive Producer Grace RouvraySenior Producer and Audio Editor is Tina MatolovSocial Media Producer is Annaliese Todd
Did you know some of our shows are now in video on the Apple Podcast app? Make sure your phone is up to date and check it out here!
Get access to Very Peri, Mamamia's exclusive perimenopause series, for just $59. 25 world-leading experts, over 20 on-demand sessions, available now. We’ve sorted through the noise so you don't have to. Go to veryperi.com.au and join me today. You hot? Same.
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Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Want to listen before everyone else?
Mamamia subscribers get exclusive early access to No Filter from 6am every Saturday, a full two days before regular listeners. Click here to subscribe now.
Jason Donovan has spent almost forty years being reinvented in public: teen heartthrob, chart-topping pop star, tabloid cautionary tale, musical theatre mainstay. In this conversation with Kate, he finally puts it all together in his own words, including the night at LA's Viper Room he still doesn't love talking about, and what he now understands about why it happened.
Jason opens up about growing up the son of an actor in 1970s Melbourne, being cast alongside a young Kylie Minogue years before Neighbours, and the strange, competitive spark that pushed him toward a pop career of his own. He talks candidly about his recent, surprisingly honest turn in Kylie's new Netflix documentary, revisiting their relationship on his own terms rather than a tabloid's. He reflects on turning down Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and on his father Terence Donovan's legacy fighting for Australian content quotas in the 1970s, a movement he says made his own career, and Hugh Jackman's and Cate Blanchett's, possible. And in a moment he says he's never spoken about publicly before, Jason talks about losing his dad earlier this year, and what it means to bring Randle P. McMurphy to life in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on the very Melbourne stage his father once performed on.
Jason Donovan stars as Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, exclusively at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre from 13 November. Tickets at cuckoosnest.com.au.
What To Listen To Next:
Listen: Cassandra Thorburn: "I Have My Own Platform To Say My Truth"
Listen: Jennifer Robinson On Amber Heard, Brittany Higgins & The Price Women Pay For Speaking Out
Listen: Everyone Thinks Ally Langdon Has It Together. She’s Here To Tell You She Doesn't
Listen: "I Went to a Really Dark Place": Jessie Stephens on the Six Months Nobody Saw
Listen: Sophie Delezio Wouldn’t Change A Thing
Listen: Liane Moriarty Was Terrified To Write A Big Little Lies Sequel. She Did It Anyway.
Listen: Harriet Dyer: "It Should Have Been A Dealbreaker. I Chose Him Anyway"
You can now watch our show in full length video on the Apple Podcast app - make sure your phone is up to date and we can't wait for you to see. CLICK HERE.
SUBSCRIPTION GIVEAWAY: The You Beauty hosts have bundled together their all-time favourite beauty products and two Mamamia subscribers are winning the lot. Subscribe to Mamamia to be automatically entered to win. Current subscriber? You're already in the draw. T&Cs apply.
Discover more Mamamia Podcasts here.
Watch No Filter on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram here. Follow us on TikTok here.
Feedback: podcast@mamamia.com.au
Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice message, and one of our Podcast Producers will get back to you ASAP.
Rate or review us on Apple by clicking on the three dots in the top right-hand corner, click Go To Show then scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the stars at the bottom and write a review.
CREDITS:
Guest: Jason Donovan
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Bree Player
Audio and Video Producer: Josh Green
Content and Social Producer: Jess Chan
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we have recorded this podcast.

Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Want to listen before everyone else?
Mamamia subscribers get exclusive early access to No Filter from 6am every Saturday, a full two days before regular listeners. Click here to subscribe now.
For the best part of a decade, Cassandra Thorburn has been publicly known as one thing: Karl Stefanovic's ex-wife. The headline that ran when their 21-year marriage ended in 2016, and pretty much every headline since.
But Cassandra was a journalist and a television producer long before any of that, working across Australia, New Zealand and the US, and in the years since her divorce she's quietly rebuilt herself over and over: a season of Dancing with the Stars, a children's book, a podcast on surviving separation, a stint as a dental nurse, aged care work through the pandemic. She is, by her own account, someone who has never really had a plan. She's just kept saying yes to the next thing.
Then, at the start of this year, she was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer, one so uncommon that fewer than two per cent of Australian cases look like hers.
This time, she decided, she'd be the one telling the story. She's spent the months since documenting her treatment in unflinching detail on her social media platform and working with the Breast Cancer Network Australia to make sure other women don't miss what she nearly did.
Cassandra Thorburn is Breast Cancer Network Australia ambassador for Carmans Fun Run Sydney at Melcalfe Park, Pyrmont - To join or donate, visit bcna.org.au/events
What To Listen To Next:
Listen: Jennifer Robinson On Amber Heard, Brittany Higgins & The Price Women Pay For Speaking Out
Listen: Everyone Thinks Ally Langdon Has It Together. She’s Here To Tell You She Doesn't
Listen: "I Went to a Really Dark Place": Jessie Stephens on the Six Months Nobody Saw
Listen: Sophie Delezio Wouldn’t Change A Thing
Listen: Liane Moriarty Was Terrified To Write A Big Little Lies Sequel. She Did It Anyway.
Listen: Harriet Dyer: "It Should Have Been A Dealbreaker. I Chose Him Anyway"
You can now watch our show in full length video on the Apple Podcast app - make sure your phone is up to date and we can't wait for you to see. CLICK HERE.
SUBSCRIPTION GIVEAWAY: The You Beauty hosts have bundled together their all-time favourite beauty products and two Mamamia subscribers are winning the lot. Subscribe to Mamamia to be automatically entered to win. Current subscriber? You're already in the draw. T&Cs apply.
Discover more Mamamia Podcasts here.
Watch No Filter on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram here. Follow us on TikTok here.
Feedback: podcast@mamamia.com.au
Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice message, and one of our Podcast Producers will get back to you ASAP.
Rate or review us on Apple by clicking on the three dots in the top right-hand corner, click Go To Show then scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the stars at the bottom and write a review.
CREDITS:
Guest: Cassandra Thorburn
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Bree Player
Audio and Video Producer: Jacob Round
Content and Social Producer: Jess Chan
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we have recorded this podcast.

Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Want to listen before everyone else?
Mamamia subscribers get exclusive early access to No Filter from 6am every Saturday, a full two days before regular listeners. Click here to subscribe now.
Jennifer Robinson has spent her career standing beside people who have found themselves up against some of the most powerful institutions in the world.
The Australian human rights lawyer has represented Julian Assange and Amber Heard, and her new documentary Silenced examines what can happen to women who speak publicly about violence and abuse.
In this episode of No Filter, Jennifer talks to Kate Langbroek about the grandmother who inspired her life’s work, what she witnessed while representing Amber Heard, and how social media shaped the public response to the Depp-Heard case. She also explains why Brittany Higgins’ story became central to Silenced, and the extraordinary personal cost that speaking out can carry.
Jennifer also takes Kate inside her 14-year fight to help bring Julian Assange home, and reflects on what that case taught her about power, the media and her continuing belief that change is possible.
At the heart of the conversation is a difficult question: what is the price women pay for speaking out, and how do we make it safer for them to use their voice?
Silenced is in cinemas now.
What To Listen To Next:
Listen: Everyone Thinks Ally Langdon Has It Together. She’s Here To Tell You She Doesn't
Listen: "I Went to a Really Dark Place": Jessie Stephens on the Six Months Nobody Saw
Listen: Sophie Delezio Wouldn’t Change A Thing
Listen: Liane Moriarty Was Terrified To Write A Big Little Lies Sequel. She Did It Anyway.
Listen: Harriet Dyer: "It Should Have Been A Dealbreaker. I Chose Him Anyway"
Listen: Amy Shark: “There’s No Way I Should’ve Made It”
You can now watch our show in full length video on the Apple Podcast app - make sure your phone is up to date and we can't wait for you to see. CLICK HERE.
Get access to Very Peri, Mamamia's exclusive perimenopause series, for just $59. 25 world-leading experts, over 20 on-demand sessions, available now. We’ve sorted through the noise so you don't have to. Go to veryperi.com.au and join me today. You hot? Same. Buy today and save 40%
Discover more Mamamia Podcasts here.
Watch No Filter on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram here. Follow us on TikTok here.
Feedback: podcast@mamamia.com.au
Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice message, and one of our Podcast Producers will get back to you ASAP.
Rate or review us on Apple by clicking on the three dots in the top right-hand corner, click Go To Show then scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the stars at the bottom and write a review.
CREDITS:
Guest: Jennifer Robinson
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Bree Player
Audio and Video Producer: Josh Green
Content and Social Producer: Jess Chan
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we have recorded this podcast.


Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.