This episode starts with dreaming and ends with dreaming – and in between, Luke Bateman takes us through everything that happens when you stop letting yourself do it.

Luke played professional rugby league for the Canberra Raiders – 71 first-grade games, thousands of hours of training camps and hotel rooms and locker rooms – and in almost all of that time, he kept his love of fantasy fiction completely hidden. The shame of it, he says, was shaped by a very specific idea of what it meant to be a man. And unpacking that idea has been the work of the last several years.

Luke is such an honest, beautifully articulate human – a man who has looked at himself with real unflinching honesty, done the hard yards to get back to himself, and is now talking about it in a way I hope reaches every person who needs to hear it. We talk about gambling and addiction and what it cost him. About what repair actually looks like. Why healing can’t happen inside shame. And we talk about books – the ones that cracked him open as a kid, the one that brought him home to himself after rehab, and the one he’s writing now.

His whole life, it turns out, has been a dreamer’s journey. He just had to go through a lot to get back to it.

We explore:

• The specific culture of professional rugby league and what it meant for his sense of self, his gambling addiction, and his mental health
• The inner child and parts work that was central to his recovery – including making peace with the version of himself he’d been most ashamed of
• What it means to call men in, rather than calling them out
• The men who went silent during his crisis, and what that silence told him about being a man.
• His two favourite books – and the one that brought him home to himself after rehab

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About Luke Bateman:

Luke Bateman grew up in Miles, western Queensland, where rugby league was the dominant culture. He played 71 NRL first-grade games as a lock for the Canberra Raiders before a chronic knee injury ended his career at 24. After leaving the game, he returned to rural Queensland, began posting book reviews to TikTok from a tractor in 2025, and within months had signed a two-book fantasy series deal with Atria Books Australia (Simon & Schuster). He now hosts his own podcast, In the Good Books, appeared on I’m A Celebrity Australia in early 2026, and is writing his debut fantasy novel, due in 2027.

Connect with Luke:

• Instagram: @lukebateman_
• TikTok: @lukesreads
• Podcast: In the Good Books on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts