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.

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 m ...