Gobsmacked!

Mia Walker belongs to an exclusive club: the one per cent club. For years, blissfully unaware, she lived with a condition that wasn’t normal – aphantasia. This revelation came as a shock when she discovered she couldn’t visualise pictures. Close your eyes and try to picture your front door, your mother’s face or a sunset. Most of us can. Mia can’t. There are no mental pictures at all.As if that wasn’t enough, Mia’s teens were plagued by chronic anxiety, eventually leading to years of agoraphobia. She certainly faced her fair share of challenges.However, running parallel to these struggles was another gift: poetry.She’s published thirteen anthologies and is now a published author. Her debut novel earned her feted status in America. Now a dystopian writer, she spends much of her life inhabiting post-apocalyptic worlds.It’s quite incredible for a woman who can’t visualise pictures in her head.Yet, I wonder if there’s a utopian element quietly running beneath it all. While Mia writes about worlds that have fallen apart, she’s spent her own life imagining one that could be different.Whatever label Mia has qualified for, it hasn’t defined her. She simply keeps innovating.The moment she surrendered to fear and literally walked out of the house wasn’t just the day she went outside. It was the day she decided fear wouldn’t dictate the rest of her story.This conversation explores imagination without pictures, fear, poetry, dystopia, utopia and what happens when you refuse to let a diagnosis become your identity.Welcome to Gobsmacked!

This episode of Gobsmacked! features Ruth Mary Chipperfield, an award-winning jeweller whose gold jewellery has sat alongside some of the most celebrated names in history.Diagnosed with narcolepsy in her early twenties whilst studying chemistry at university, Ruth found herself facing a future very different from the one she had imagined. Powerful drug regimes solved one problem whilst creating others, and as a newlywed she was confronted with a stark reality, mainstream working life simply was not going to fit.But Ruth has done something remarkable.Instead of allowing narcolepsy to define the boundaries of her life, she transformed her scientific mind, her fascination with gemstones and her artistry into something beautiful. Today, she creates and repurposes exquisite jewellery, breathing new life into old treasures whilst building a life that works with her condition rather than endlessly battling against it.Like the facets of a beautifully cut diamond, this conversation refracts in so many fascinating directions. Chemistry. Gemstones. Ketogenic living. Punishing medication. Endurance. Reinvention. Identity. Survival.At one point Ruth says:“I’ve chosen my hard.”Blimey, she is articulate.And this really is an absolute must-listen.

This episode of Gobsmacked features Tony Deas, a very popular fellow indeed and a proper Leamington Spa legend, known for his big personality, big energy and big presence. So much so, a snap of the dear chap himself in a pink hoodie went viral. That’s Tony.But what happens in the quieter moments? This conversation gets into loneliness and vulnerability when you’re the strong one for everyone else, the cheer-maker, the entertainer, whether that’s hospitality, personal training or just everyday life. And then it shifts. Tony talks openly about being floored by a cancer diagnosis, what that does to your head, the fear, the recalibration when life suddenly isn’t playing by the same rules. We also get into love, and the courage it takes to stay open to it, to choose vulnerability over safety, which sounds lovely until you actually have to do it.It’s a pacey, romping listen that moves between laughter, wisdom and real life, much like the man himself.

There are nights in life that divide everything into two halves.Who you were before. And who you become afterwards.Greg Weston knows that feeling better than most.One evening out with friends ended in a moment that changed everything. His head struck a kerbstone. What followed was catastrophic. Greg was taken to hospital and very quickly slipped into a coma. At one point he was not expected to wake up.This episode tells the story of what happened next.Greg’s long and stubborn climb back from the brink. From the frightening prospect of a vegetative state to the slow work of learning again. Moving again. Speaking again.And along the way, life had another surprise in store.Greg found love.The woman he now shares his life with carries her own story of a life altered in a single moment, giving them a rare understanding of just how suddenly everything can change.And at the centre of this story sits one mighty man who connects our paths. The late Matt Gallagher.Matt faced Motor Neurone Disease with a warrior spirit that left a mark on everyone who knew him. His courage and humour brought Greg and I into each other’s orbit.This conversation reflects on friendship, love, and the strange truth that sometimes the worst night of your life becomes the moment that reshapes everything.Greg Weston is a man who will not stay down.

When an interview begins with a gobsmacked moment, about needing to retreat to a “breakout room” to absorb the shocking news that your best friend is missing and her estranged husband is being arrested for murder, you know you are in for a gripping listen.As Gobsmacked!, the podcast, celebrates its fourth year, nearly 60 episodes, and listeners in 128 countries, we bring you an episode that sits right at the heart of what this podcast is here to do.We are proud to welcome Hetti Barkworth-Nanton.Hetti is Co-Founder of the Joanna Simpson Foundation, Chair of Trustees at Refuge, a Pride of Britain Awards winner, and a CBE recipient for her work supporting people affected by domestic abuse and homicide. It is a formidable public record, earned in the hardest way imaginable.She walked into the podcast studio with an extraordinary résumé. What follows is not a polished tour of achievements. It is a real conversation about as real as it gets. About what it takes to fight for justice without being absolutely destroyed in the process.Hetti embodies what Gobsmacked! exists to amplify. She has created platforms for people who are overlooked, underrepresented, or treated unfairly by life, and she does so without platitudes, performance, or looking away. A must listen.

There is a saying that into each life some rain must fall. For Larissa Astara Gray, the storm came early. At just thirteen, her life was thrown off course by an experience that no child should have to carry, and what followed was not a straight line but an absolutely wiggly one. There are points in Larissa’s life where she is very lucky to be alive to tell her story, and that truth matters.This is an honest and challenging conversation, not because it is sensational, but because the problems are real. This is not an academic exercise or an intellectual debate for Larissa. This subject is written into her body, her relationships, and her life experience. Drawing on that lived reality, she speaks with clarity and courage about how pornography and online sexual content are shaping young people’s understanding of consent, intimacy, and what becomes normal. Her willingness to talk openly gives us a chance to learn, not to look away. Silence has not protected young people. Avoidance has not helped. This conversation exists because the damage is already happening, and because understanding is part of how we begin to do better.