Gooday, humans. Welcome to the show that goes where others don't, the show that rejects partisan, squabbling and tribal groupthink.

I'm Josh Zeps. I'm your humble warrior princess, hunting down the world's most fascinating minds to wrestle with one provocative question each week.

Much of modern culture and politics and media is tailor-made, especially social media,

tailor-made to pander to what we already believe and distort what we don't,

to reinforce our biases and exaggerate our differences.

But change doesn't happen in an echo chamber. to reinforce our biases and exaggerate our differences.

But change doesn't happen in an echo chamber.

It's time to leave the mental comfort zone,

to flex our minds and step on some landmines, folks.

It's time to have uncomfortable conversations.

This week on the show, it's like drinking from a cool stream, delving into the mind of one of of Australia's greatest novelist, Charlotte Wood.

You may have heard of the book The Weekend.

It exploded onto the scene in 2019 and was the read of the summer in Australia.

Charlotte is still fairly young. She's only written six novels. I mean, she's in her 50s,

but it's not like she's the grand dame of Australian literature,

but she's been shortlisted for Australia's biggest book awards like the Miles Franklin Award and the Stella Prize.

I first encountered her actually at the beginning of the pandemic when I was broadcasting on ABC Radio,

and she wrote a beautiful piece about the trap of the pandemic when I was broadcasting on ABC radio and she wrote a beautiful

piece about the trap of feeling busy and distracted all the time and that resonated with me.

I had her on the air and I thought, wow, who is this chick? I didn't say chick. Who is this

broad? I said, who is this fancy lady? I said to myself and then I thought I've got to get it back on the podcast, especially since she has a brand new book, not a novel this time, but a non-fiction book that deals with all of the kinds of things that I was speaking with her about last year. It's called the luminous solution, creativity, resilience and the inner life.

And my goodness, it was just lovely to have this conversation at a time in my life where I'm

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