Talkin Tough

Western Bulldogs 2016 AFL Premiership player and mental health advocate Tom Boyd joins the boys for a super insightful chat different to most of our others so far. Tom provides us with great insight into his journey as a professional athlete, the impact the pressure had and the fantastic work he does now to support mental health.   

During an AFL Football career littered with individual and team success, fame and a $7 million fortun...

Fireman & father Mike Longshore, who also happens to be Mike’s brother in law, joins the boys to share his journey from Texas in the USA to how he ended up here in Australia and everything in between.  

We make sure to hit Mike with the hard questions around his career including how many cats has he saved and is there actually a fireman pole in the station! As well as answering these tough questions, Mike also shares openly how ...

A great mate of the fellas, Matt Underwood, welcomes Mike & Ben along with all of the poddy gear into his home for a yarn while they were on the road recently in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. When it comes to managing mental health, Matt is open to giving anything and everything a crack if it can potentially help. From meditation through to hypnosis he has tried it all and it all came about after a simple sleepless night...

Mary O’Brien from Are You Bogged Mate? sits down on the couch with the fellas for this episode and talks all things mens mental health. After spending her whole life working in rural and remote Australia, Mary knows country blokes. She’s worked with them, for them, and beside them and mostly importantly she knows how to talk to them. This unique perspective inspired the launch of Are you bogged mate? which is aimed help connect cou...

The innocuous decision to leave work one morning to go and give his wife a hand to change a flat tyre ended up changing everything! One moment Wardy was going through the motions of changing the tyre and in a split second, jumping through the air before being hit by an out of control truck hurtling down the freeway. 

Dan Ward, AKA Wardy, catches up with the fellas while they were in South Australia recently to recount the day he was...

Meet Jane Kellock, a 4th generation farmer from South Australia and a founding member of Ski For Life. Jane wears many hats and the fellas have the absolute pleasure of chatting with her about all the different roles she plays in her life and the lives of others. Life on the land can be tough and this is an especially tough conversation considering the drought that South Australia is currently experiencing, a period that Jane descr...

In this episode of Talkin Tough, the fellas have the pleasure of sitting down and having a yarn with the founder of Veterans In Construction and ex-SAS soldier, Dave Farrell. Dave shares some mind-blowing stories from the SAS selection course to the battlefield that speak to the old-school definition of tough as well as the experiences of some of his courageous comrades who displayed the ultimate act of bravery by putting their han...

In this episode, Mike ‘Legless’ Rolls & Ben ‘Blind’ Pettingill walk their talk, asking one another how they are really going as they navigate every day life. From business to new babies, the fellas chat and catch up openly and honestly. 

Talkin Tough is a podcast proudly brought to you by Ski For Life, an Australian charity committed to promoting mental health, wellbeing & suicide prevention. 

If this Talkin Tough episode has...

After a successful 11 episode Season One of Talkin Tough in 2023, the fellas are back! Mike & Ben are picking the podcast microphones back up and sharing how they and their guests are challenging what it means to be tough by talkin through the tough stuff. 2024 was a huge year for both of these guys; they each welcomed daughters in to their families, they spent a ridiculous amount of time on the road facilitating mental health ...

As the first year of Talkin Tough comes to a close the boys sit down to reflect on where and why it all started and what we have learned along the way. Join them as they take a look back at   the incredible conversations they have had, acknowledge the rawness and relatability that the everyday legends shared with us and unpack some of the words of wisdom we can all take away. The mission was to redefine what it means to be tough. W...

“I lost my first good mate at 18 to suicide.... There’s been seven all up now, suicides... all of them close mates."

'Tully’ tears into the studio from outback New South Wales and has a chat with Mike and Ben about riding the rollercoaster of life and his connection to suicide. Staying in check with his own mental health has been huge for him since the start of adulthood when he lost his close mate to suicide and unfortunately has ...

“I remember going back to school and I remember sitting there, looking at everyone, and going ‘why has this happened to me?” Life is easy for these people. Who have I pissed off? Why is my life so bloody hard.”

A mate of the boys this week rolls in for a few yarns about life.Stu Foy had to grow up quick as an only child, from fighting the frontline of the black Saturday bushfires at 13 years old, then losing his mum not long after.

“I just had these walls up, these really big walls, relationships with people were challenging for me and I just knew they should have been better”

Tiff made the call to jump into the boxing ring and start fighting! She loved it but she didn’t realise at the time, that decision and her love of copping a whack to the chin was closely connected to numbing a whole heap of pain from the past.T

iff Cooke is tough in a lot of ways but sh...

“Everyone asked me 'How’s things?', 'Yeah I’m good' when really, I wasn’t.”

Tradie, cancer survivor and athlete,Josh Robson joins Mike & Ben behind the mic this episode to share how his version of tough was rocked by a sudden diagnosis of testicular cancer. Now he likes to go by ‘Robbie One Nut’ and that self appointed nickname alone,says a lot about this blokes mindset. Josh shares with us some of his highest highs, lowest low...

“That was the lowest moment in my life, I’m in a much better headspace now to look after myself and I’m the happiest version of myself that I could ever be. But, I still have those thoughts.”

This episode, the fellas chat with mental health advocate, Mick Donehue.The thing about Mick is he is your typical country bloke who grew up with a solid family, plenty of mates, loved playing footy and living life to the fullest or at least t...

“The thing that I had to really come to terms with was I would go to bed every night a quad, wake up a quad and everyone else’s life would just roll on.”

Join the fellas as they chat with Joel Sardi, a great guy who became a Quadriplegic after an unfortunate accident at the pub one night with the boys. Joel speaks openly & honestly about the challenges he has faced since his life changed in an instant. From losing his independe...

“What people didn’t know, and I hadn’t told anyone for 20 years, was that I’d lost my brother to suicide. But what they did know was ‘Watty’s mad onskiing’...so I just said ‘Yep, I’ll go for a ski’”

The boys have the honor of having a yarn with one of the founding Ski ForLife members, Tim “Watty” Watt. Watty shares with the fellas his experience of losing his brother to suicide over two decades ago but how it still rocks him regula...

“Then I just burst into tears for the first time since losing my eyesight. I recognised from that day the power of speaking up & how important it is to let other people in.”

In this episode of Talkin Tough Ben is in the firing line as Mike asks the tough questions and together they relive his experience of losing his eyesight overnight at age 16 due to a rare genetic disorder, Lebers Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. Ben has now liv...

“There were times I wanted to go back to the way things were. But eventually, there was a focus on self and reclaiming some sort of identity”

This week on Talkin Tough, Ben is in charge of the hard hitting questions and interviews his co host, Mike “Legless” Rolls. This chat unpacks Mikes experience of navigating life before, during and after surviving meningococcal septicemia at 18 years old. Over a decade on from this life changi...