Episodes

Celest Anthony had been doing the maths since she was twelve years old.Only child. Two parents. At some point, she was going to lose them both. And if both her parents died, no matter how old she was, she would be an orphan. She had lived with that knowledge quietly for most of her life in the way that only children sometimes do. Counting what they have. Knowing it won't last forever.What she couldn't have counted on was the four years that preceded her father's death. Or what those years would take from her, and what they would ultimately give.

Kojo Baffoe had a dream. He wanted to qualify for and compete at the 1996 Olympic Games as a track athlete. But life had other plans.

Marilize De Clercq had prepared for a life she was about to meet. A nursery ready, a name chosen, a future fully imagined. At 39 weeks, everything changed. This story follows the stillbirth of her daughter and the emotional reality of what came after - the empty drive home, the months inside the house, and the slow, uncertain process of finding a way forward when grief has no clear shape or timeline.

Jess Hinds had spent her whole life finding ways to cope. She built quiet accommodations into her days without ever knowing that's what they were. Then she became a mother, and everything she had managed to hold together came apart.

The story about twelve boys and their football coach who were trapped inside the Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand gripped the world. Richard Harry Harris, an Australian anesthesiologist and cave diver, was the man called in to answer the question no one wanted to ask. His assessment was that most of them would likely die if they tried. He told the team to proceed.

Kamini Pather had built a career that looked, from the outside, like everything she had worked for.She won MasterChef South Africa. She hosted her own show, broadcast on Netflix North America. She was everywhere. And then her nervous system gave out. This story follows the years that no one saw.

Josh Prinsloo was twelve years old when the phone rang on a quiet Sunday morning. He was home alone.The voice on the other end told him his mother had died. And then life kept going. A brother's wedding, a new school, a new city. So Josh kept going too. For fifteen years, he filled his days with friends, music, and stories. The grief never really landed. Not then.

What does it feel like to breathe freely for the first time at 40 years old? Tanya Bothma has struggled with every breath since birth. After a meconium aspiration as a newborn and repeated severe viral infections during childhood, she was diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a progressive narrowing of the airways that no medication could reverse. By 2017, Tanya's lung capacity had fallen to just 14%, less than one litre of air. That year, she became the first patient to receive a bilateral d...

Nicole Engelbrecht never had to be told to keep a secret. She just knew. From an early age, she understood that what happened inside the house stayed inside the house, because children who grow up in chaotic environments learn the rules of survival before they learn anything else.

Conn Bertish was 36 years old when he noticed something strange. He was writing down a phone number and kept writing a nine when he meant to write an eight. He tried again. Still a nine. He reached for a clean piece of paper, wrote slowly, carefully, and it was still a nine. What followed was an MRI, a neurosurgeon, emergency brain surgery, and a diagnosis of medulloblastoma - a fast-growing malignant brain tumour that originates in the cerebellum. A tumour almost exclusively found in children under five. Not in 36-year-old men.

A case for optimism. In the prelude to the new season of Something Shifted, Sean Loots speaks to astrophysicist-turned-journalist and author of "The Bright Side" Sumit Paul-Choudhury, about the science and psychology of optimism. Drawing on stories from Ernest Shackleton's 1915 Arctic expedition, to Sean's "Joy Jar", and the research behind optimistic chickens, Sumit shares how he became an optimist after experiencing great loss.