LiSTNR LAUNCHES EXTRAORDINARY NEW DOCUMENTARY SERIES
SECRETS WE KEEP: SHAME, LIES & FAMILY
Journalist, Amelia Oberhardt, thought she knew her mum. Until she died. At her mum’s wake, Oberhardt discovered a photo of her mother as a teenager, wearing a wedding ring, standing beside her apparent husband and cuddling an unknown baby. Determined to find out more, and to understand what the photograph represented for her family, Oberhardt embarked on a journey that led to the hidden secrets of 1950-1970s Australia.
This is the premise of Secrets We Keep: Shame, Lies & Family, the new original audio docu-series from the LiSTNR News team. The first two episodes of the nine-part season are available now.
The series delves into a subject both extraordinary and surprisingly common – the hidden histories of secret pregnancies, shotgun marriages, forced adoptions, and the challenges faced by young women in impossible situations. It is the story of what happens when young women, from just a generation ago, are put in impossible situations, and where this messy knot of secrets leaves families decades later.
To create this podcast Oberhardt, and LiSTNR’s team of award-winning producers, have navigated their way through a dark era of 1970s Australia. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1971-1972, 1 in every 28 babies born in Australia was adopted*. For context, in 2020-21 this figure was 1 in 1145 babies*.
Podcast host, Amelia Oberhardt, said: “I have been on this journey to find answers to my own family secrets for more than a decade. In that process, I found out so much more about the time that my mum was coming of age. It wasn’t easy to be a young woman in Australia through the 1960s and 1970s.
“What surprised me during the making of this series, is just how common this story is for so many families and how many are still impacted today. I really hope this series can help to heal these families, because it certainly helped change the way I feel about my mum.”
LiSTNR Head of News and Information, Melanie Withnall, said: “This first season of Secrets We Keep is a deeply personal journey for Amelia, as well as a companion podcast for anyone seeking to untangle their own family secrets. Knowing the extreme sensitivity of the subject matter, the LiSTNR team has taken exceptional care and applied a best practice trauma informed approach to creating the content.
“We are very proud of this first series. In future seasons, the LiSTNR News team behind Secrets We Keep will continue to explore extraordinary news stories that have become woven into the fabric of Australia.”
Episode one and two of Secrets We Keep: Shame, Lies & Family is available now on LiSTNR. New episodes of the nine-part series will drop every Tuesday.
Source: *Australian Bureau of Statistics.
About LiSTNR:
LiSTNR is a curated and personalised, free app offering radio, podcasts, music, and news, creating a new audio destination for all Australians. Featuring a fun and intuitive onboarding process, LiSTNR delivers an audio destination that is built for individual listeners’ routines and preferences. Highly personalised, it provides listeners a new world of audio entertainment, with their own daily feed of audio and easy discovery of new content through curated recommendations. Available across a large array of devices including both iOS and Android, CarPlay and Android Auto, Google Assistant and Alexa and Android TV, LiSTNR enables a fantastic listening experience, anytime and anywhere. Open your Ears to a new world of audio – download the free app today. LiSTNR.com
Contact details:
Kath Rose 0416 291 493