the tortoise & the hare

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**the tortoise & the hare**

Fast and slow. Young and old. Hard and soft. Open and closed. Real and fake. Hide and seek. Pleasure and pain… Life is full of dualities and extremes and pick-a-sides. But most of our days are spent in the messy middle.

the tortoise and the hare is a weekly show from the crew who brought you The Slow Home Podcast (RIP). Each episode is a human-made, homegrown, perfectly imperfect conversation about the either/or of life and the vast grey area in between.

Because we all contain multitudes. So let’s talk about them.

Latest Episodes:

The (impromptu) Hostful Jun 09, 2021

Show notes

Brooke and Ben drop into your feed with an unscheduled hostful to talk through the happenings over the past month.

Links

Check out the new website and upcoming events
Pre-order Brooke's new book 'Care'
- Amazon
- Booktopia

Looking for more Slow?

Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Optimistic activism in a COVID impacted world with Em Ehlers Jun 02, 2021

Show notes

This is a conversation many months in the making, recorded a few months ago, Brooke chats with illustrator, writer and environmentalist Em Ehlers.

Links

Buy Hope is a Verb: Six steps to radical optimism when the world seems broken
Connect with Em on Instagram and Facebook
Pre-order Brooke's new book 'Care'
- Amazon
- Booktopia

Looking for more Slow?

Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hostful with the Mostful May 26, 2021

Show notes

Brooke and Ben sit down in their very 'echoey' living room next to their very loud dogs to talk through what has been happening over the last month or so. They also answer a number of questions posed by listeners in the first Hostful in quite some time.

This episode includes a slight disclaimer that some of the content may be a bit dated as it was recorded well over a month ago.

Links

Shred Kelly
Pre-order Brooke's new book 'Care'
- Amazon
- Booktopia
Pain and Prejudice - Gabrielle Jackson
Brooke talks to Slow Productivity Expert Louise Miller

Looking for more Slow?

Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Were back! Mar 12, 2021

Show notes

Brooke and Ben are back in your earholes.

They share updates on the last nine months, what they are doing now and their plans for the future.

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meditation, acceptance and relinquishing control with Kevin Janks - Life in the Time of Covid-19 May 21, 2020

Show notes

We've all heard about the transformative power of meditation, but how can we access it when uncertainty, stress and living through a pandemic make it difficult to simply sit still and breathe?

In today's episode Brooke is joined by friend of the show and founder of Centred Meditation, Kevin Janks, to talk through the power of meditation in challenging times.

Meditation allows us to decompress from 'fight or flight' mode and as Kevin explains, the time investment doesn’t need to be excessive. (Research has found that meditating for as little as 12 minutes a day can have a substantial impact over the course of three weeks). It can also be used to shift our perception of control, which is often the overriding emotion during times of crisis, and by doing so, release us from the stress of trying to control and uncontrollable situation.

Kevin also shares how meditation allows us to accept the current circumstances we find ourselves in (not in order to accept and give up, but in order to simply accept the way things are at the moment) and use that freedom to look at how we will move forward when we're able.

There's so much to be taken from meditation, particularly during such stressful times, and this conversation with Kevin is full of tools and takeaways that will hopefully help you.

Enjoy!

Looking for more Slow?

Find show notes, resources and links at slowyourhome.com/season6
Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Looking towards a 'new normal' - Life in the Time of Covid-19 May 14, 2020

Show notes

As we begin to see some countries relax their pandemic restrictions and allow the general public back into society at varying levels, naturally our attention turns to what that new version of daily life might look like. In this host-only chat, Ben and Brooke discuss what they hope the 'new normal' might entail, whether we should simply be re-entering or re-booting society, and what each of us can do now in order to set that in motion.

Australia’s government is talking about a snap back to pre-virus ways of doing things. But doesn’t that just mean a return to old problems? What if we instead adopted the theme of rebooting back into society, rebooting the way we managed our finance, our view on the environment and even our values?

Brooke and Ben dig in to what this means for them, why we need to reframe success and why we can take heart even amidst the pain and uncertainty.

Plus they pose some questions to you, the listener, that offer the chance to imagine your ideal post-Covid future and provide a place to begin creating it.

Looking for more Slow?

Find show notes, resources and links at slowyourhome.com/season6
Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Loneliness and learning to look forward with Sarah Wilson - Life in the Time of Covid-19 May 07, 2020

Show notes

Lots of airtime has been given to the stress that parents and carers of young families are currently under, juggling working from home or job loss with remote schooling and caring for kids too young to understand why everything is different. Amongst all of that there has been little time given to the question of how people in single-person households are faring, so in today's episode Brooke sits down with friend of the show Sarah Wilson to talk loneliness during lockdown.

Sarah is a former journalist, TV presenter, activist and author of one of the best books about anxiety and depression published over the past few years, First We Make the Beast Beautiful. With her incredible depth of knowledge on living with anxiety, Sarah shares not only how she's finding lockdown, but also why she thinks anxiety has given her an advantage to coping with strange times.

Brooke and Sarah also discuss how COVID-19 will impact Australia in terms of social, economic and climate issues, and talk about the need for resilience and the differing levels of emotional resilience across generations.

One of the other really common conversations people are having now revolves around what our 'new normal' might look like, and Sarah offers her typically thought-provoking, status-quo challenging insights and shares why we need to be both "slow and outraged" as we move forward.

Looking for more Slow?

Find show notes, resources and links at slowyourhome.com/season6
Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Understanding your stress response and how to balance it out with Ellen Carr - Life in the Time of Covid-19 May 01, 2020

Show notes

Undoubtedly we are living in times of heightened stress. Uncertainty, fear, anxiety, living in close quarters, loneliness - they're all stressful experiences and in some way or another, we're all grappling with them as we live through the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today's guest, Ellen Carr, is a holistic coach and yoga teacher who believes that Ayurveda - the ancient sister science of yoga - offers us a way to learn how to identify our stress responses, and importantly, how we can begin to balance them out.

In today's episode Brooke and Ellen talk about Ayurveda, how it can help us live a more well-rounded life and why it's so important to identify your stress responses, particularly in a time of high stress. They also discuss:

What is a 'dosha' type and why is it an important part of Ayurveda?
How to discover your dosha
What happens if you're split across two or even three dosha types
Some practical actions that will help calm your nervous system, no matter what your dosha
What are some of the more common stress responses?
How do we identify our stress responses and work to balance them out?
Why naming it can help in alleviating some of the stress

Enjoy!

Looking for more Slow?

Find show notes, resources and links at slowyourhome.com/season6
Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How to make remote learning work for your family with Sarah Durack - Life in the Time of Covid-19 Apr 22, 2020

Show notes

Remote learning is one of the biggest changes many of us are facing as lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders continue, and Brooke and Ben know they're not alone in finding the transition challenging.

Today’s guest Sarah is a high-school science teacher from Sydney who has some incredibly helpful, practical tips on how we can make this learning-from-home experience a little less stressful for everyone.

The tips and suggestions Sarah offers apply to kids of all ages, but Brooke also knows there are a lot of parents of older high school students listening who have specific concerns about their kids' schooling, so she and Sarah delve in to that at the beginning of the episode.

Sarah also offers some advice on how to best advocate for your kids if they are struggling under the current learning conditions, as well as how to make some of the learning (which for many students is almost 100% digital and online at the moment) more analogue.

Lastly, Sarah and Brooke talk about the ways in which local communities can come together and help show support to teachers during this tough time.

Enjoy!

Looking for more Slow?

Find show notes, resources and links at slowyourhome.com/season6
Follow us on Instagram @slowhomepod
Sign up for the Slow Post, Brooke's weekly slow-living love letters
Or leave a rating or review in iTunes

Join The Tortoise Community: https://brookemcalary.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Permaculture in a crisis with Robyn Rosenfeldt: Life in the time of Covid-19 Apr 20, 2020

Show notes

This week, Brooke is joined by return guest and permaculture expert, Robyn Rosenfeldt, for a fantastic conversation centred on the vital role of community in times of crisis.

Robyn talks about the devastation of the summer bushfires and how that crisis highlighted the issue of food security in her community, before sharing the similar impact the Covid-19 crisis is now having on local supermarket shelves.

In times of crisis there is a tendency to turn our attention to community, and Robyn and Brooke talk about the importance of being community-minded as an antidote to the challenges that face us now and that may await us in the future. Robyn shares the three pillars of permaculture - earth care, people care and a fair share - and speaks about what they look like in daily life, and how we can all harness them to create stronger communities.

Brooke and Robyn also speak about the tricky business of living a values-aligned life while also raising independent-minded children, how to pick your battles and why compromise is an important tool.

Enjoy!

Looking for more Slow?