Grey Areas with Petra Bagust

What does it mean to live, work, and find profound grace when an incurable brain disease slowly tries to strip away your capacity, your movement, and your voice? In this episode of Grey Areas, renowned Aotearoa director, screenwriter, and playwright Toa Fraser (No. 2, The Dead Lands, Sweet Tooth) joins Petra for a compelling kōrero while dealing with medication-induced dyskinesia about his career and his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Toa initially kept the disease hidden for five years, yet now chooses to view Parkinson’s as an invaluable path toward humility, collaboration, and gratitude. Drawing on the wisdom of Father Richard Rohr and the poignant example of his late father who faced his own physical decline with quiet equanimity, Toa reflects on what it looks like to use the second half of life wisely, how regular humiliation keeps the ego in check, and the life-changing impact of undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery while awake. The episode then weaves into an extraordinary moment of serendipity as Petra connects with Josh Hough, a young father diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's at just 37. After randomly crossing paths with Petra on a flight home from Auckland, Josh shares his own confronting yet miraculous experience of brain surgery, the exhaustion of raising a toddler while losing physical function, and how reaching out to Toa on Instagram during his darkest hours gave him hope. Together, their stories form an unforgettable celebration of resilience, human connection, and discovering that life is always worth living whole-heartedly. Support the show: greyareas.nz/support Song credit: Korimako, Performed by Aro, Written by Emily Looker and Charles Looker and published by Songbroker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Singer-songwriter Georgia Lines has sat inside the messy, sticky chrysalis of life, facing her deepest fears, and emerged into her thirties proud of who she is.🦋🩵 Georgia speaks publicly for the first time about navigating the painful, terrifying journey of walking through a divorce in her twenties, the exact life event she had feared most since childhood. She reflects on how the weight of shame and the terror of being misunderstood kept her from speaking about it when her album The Rose of Jericho was released. She talks about processing her feelings and the sheer resilience it took to pour her heart into those songs in the middle of packing up and moving out of her home. Together, Petra and Georgia explore the profound freedom of getting older, letting go of the need to control other people's narratives, and breaking free from the female reflex to apologise for taking up space. Georgia shares stories from her transformative year in Nashville, where southern hospitality and analog living helped her dismantle people-pleasing habits and see the emptiness of the fast-paced, AI-driven machine of modern pop songwriting. Georgia reveals what happens when you decide to tend to the quiet, unglamorous soil of creativity, choosing the tactile grit of cassette tapes and a brand-new snail-mail letter club called Dear Reader. They delve into wrestling with faith that will accompany you through the valley rather than acting as a transactional fix, the grounding ritual of sipping limoncello in an outdoor bath, and why you already have everything you need to make a good decision. Sign up to the snail mail letter club, Dear Reader, at georgialinesmusic.com/dearreader Support the show: greyareas.nz/support Song credit: Korimako, Performed by Aro, Written by Emily Looker and Charles Looker and published by Songbroker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you do when the initial relief of a late diagnosis wears off and your ADHD brain starts kicking your ass again? Petra sits down with counsellor, therapist, and researcher Charlotte Cummings for a deeply honest, liberating kōrero about the emotional reality of living with a neurodivergent brain. Charlotte opens up about her own journey toward an ADHD diagnosis, sparked by the sensory overload and executive function demands of parenthood, and explains why treating ADHD purely as a behavioral or workplace productivity issue misses the most crucial piece of the puzzle: our emotional, relational, and spiritual wellbeing. Together, Petra and Charlotte unpack the messy reality of ADHD distress, over stimulation, and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), offering practical tools to step off the relentless productivity wheel. Charlotte shares how she builds intentional scaffolding into her life through daily decompression rhythms, weekly Thursday night baths, and flexible monthly habits without self-judgment. It is a warm, liberating conversation about learning to honor your unique brain, establishing circuit breakers against negative self-talk, and creating enough room in the world to fully become yourself. Listen to Charlotte's podcast 'Mind You' on Spotify or YouTube, and find out more at charlottecummings.nz. Support the show: greyareas.nz/support Song credit: Korimako, Performed by Aro, Written by Emily Looker and Charles Looker and published by Songbroker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does leadership look like when you step onto the periphery and commit to being a good neighbour above pretty much everything else? In this expansive and unexpectedly funny episode of Grey Areas, Petra sits down with Archbishop Justin Duckworth, the dreadlocked, mostly barefoot Anglican Archbishop of Aotearoa, New Zealand Tikanga Pākehā. From growing up in Stokes Valley with no church background to living in central Wellington and working with people who live on the margins. His motivation was and is to make life a little more bearable for people who were struggling, to add a bit more joy, to prioritize those who aren't being prioritized, whose voices are not heard, or aren't heard enough. “I think… when I look back over my life, that is what drives me.” Justin is now based on a regional edge in Whanganui with his wife Jenny, and unpacks why locating himself on the margins keeps his perspective grounded and his heart open. Together, Petra and Justin get meta about the high-stakes cost of modern leadership, why we've created a culture where broken leaders are cast aside rather than restored, and how the "Western capitalist dream" has left a generation searching for a deeper, more meaningful story. Justin tackles complex global issues, from climate change and AI to political tribalism, through the lens of grace, forgiveness, and radical humility. Support the show: greyareas.nz/support Song credit: Korimako, Performed by Aro, Written by Emily Looker and Charles Looker and published by Songbroker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it take to stop drifting toward frailty as we age, to challenge the "live within your means" mindset, and completely rewrite how we approach both our finances and our health? Well, I’d ask Hannah McQueen… so I did. In this fiery episode of Grey Areas, Petra sits down with force-of-nature Hannah McQueen, chartered accountant, founder of EnableMe, and creator of the healthcare venture Age Brightly. Hannah traces her journey from calculating an eight-page calculus formula to pay off her own mortgage, to helping tens of thousands of New Zealanders break free from the "death grip" of compound interest and master the emotional psychology of money. Now, Hannah is taking that same bold, system-challenging energy into a new mission: ageing brightly. After witnessing a client face a sudden $750,000 crisis to place a parent into rest home care, Hannah began pulling on a thread that led her to launch Age Brightly, a private, geriatrician-led healthcare service aimed at detecting early biological decline, preventing unnecessary hospital admissions, and slowing down cognitive decline like dementia. Together, Hannah and I explore why money and health are deeply emotional rather than purely logical, the power of coming "down the mountain" to fight for families, and why we must start honoring our elders by giving them more good, vibrant years rather than just more years of existence. Support the show: greyareas.nz/support Song credit: Korimako, Performed by Aro, Written by Emily Looker and Charles Looker and published by Songbroker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices