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In this day and age, the opportunities to embarrass oneself or view the embarrassment of others are legion.

I was embarrassed by a school mistake. But heart rates were normal without today’s madness

There are many things the digital age has delivered that make life better, but there is a cultural shift I am sure will send us all to the funny farm.

  • Nicola Redhouse

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Simon Castles never celebrated exercise, until he was in hospital thinking I might never be able to again.

I never celebrated exercise, until I was in hospital thinking I might never be able to again

In April last year I did the bowel cancer screening test sent out in the mail. To my shock – I had no symptoms – it came back positive. I was 54. This wasn’t part of the plan.

  • Simon Castles

The final paper trail: How to make your executor’s job easier

Where there’s a will, there’s an executor – the person who manages your estate when you’ve died. Who do you choose for this important role, and how can you help smooth their way?

  • Madeleine Heffernan
Leave it out: Objections to tough rules on blowers range widely.

The jet-skis of suburbia are more popular than ever. I can’t believe leaf blowers are allowed to exist

The noise of a leaf blower sounds like 1000 mosquitoes whining their way to the core of my brain. You can’t even go camping without someone pointlessly waving one around.

  • Jo Stubbings
Organ donations.

‘A second chance’: How do organ donations work?

Every year, hundreds of Australians receive a lifesaving organ donation. What’s it like to gift a kidney or have a change of heart, literally? And how do transplants happen?

  • Madeleine Heffernan
The career of Melbourne policeman Jason Doyle was brought to an end due to PTSD he experienced as a result of doing the job. 

Like Dezi Freeman’s victims, I made life and death decisions daily. They never leave you

A woman thanking me for saving her life, following a hunch and finding a missing person – there are moments from my job that will be with me forever.

  • Jason Doyle
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Where we once used online culture to share our lives, it’s clear that we are increasingly withdrawing.

I confess, I’m a lurker: How the utopia of my youth went horribly wrong

When I was compulsively sharing and being shared with, I was expressing the person I wanted to be. Now, I just silently observe the lives of others.

  • Wendy Syfret
Can it be 40 years ago? James Hughes in 1986 with his big brother, Karl.

It’s 40 years since 1986. Suddenly, I feel very old

Our peers knew us as the Headbangers. My mum joined People for Nuclear Disarmament. Every memory is a timepiece.

  • James Hughes

More of us are living alone – but it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re lonely

If I was inclined to, I could walk around the house nude, without even a sock to mar my eruption of atavism. But I’m not inclined to.

  • Anson Cameron

Have we all traded our anonymity for convenience?

Paranoia about being watched much of the time no longer feels like the ramblings of just tin-hatted conspiracy theorists.

  • Brodie Lancaster