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In this Arise Stories podcast conversation, three articles come together around one underlying question: how does power become normal enough that we stop noticing it?
This episode explores the invisible labour that keeps everyday life running, the cultural assumptions that shape who gets cast as the hero, and the institutions, communities and media systems that influence what we learn to recognise as truth.
From unpaid care work and whose time is considered interruptible, to Moonlight, Hollywood hero narratives, whiteness, faith, representation and competing systems of belief, the conversation looks at what happens when structures become so familiar that they begin to feel natural.
Across all three pieces, the pattern is similar: what remains invisible can still organise identity, belonging, authority and power.
And once we learn to see the structure, a different question becomes possible:
What have we been treating as natural simply because we were taught not to notice it?
