When Sarah Ferris was told the cancer she thought she’d beaten had metastasised, her first thought was for her family.
“As a mother, you spend your entire life protecting your children from any pain,” the UK-based podcaster tells Woman’s Day during a trip home to New Zealand.
“To be the one that’s going to cause them the most pain is a hard thing to deal with.”
Yet just as she had in 2016 when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer, it’s humour that’s getting the family through. Having broken the news to the couple’s three children, Sarah’s youngest, her 16-year-old son, went off to bed.
“Night, Mum, love you,” he quipped.
“Hope you make it to the morning!”
Laughter as medicine
The joke isn’t denial, she says; it shows acceptance, a coping mechanism that lets her express any thought without restraint.
“I don’t carry anxiety about the diagnosis because that would just rob the moments that are good,” explains Sarah, 50.
“And why would you do that to yourself? To be able to take the anxiety away and have a laugh about it, that’s gold.”
Turning challenges into creativity
While many in a similar situation might down tools to focus on recovery, Sarah instead jumped into her podcasting work, all while dealing with the time-consuming and physically demanding side effects of cancer treatment.
The result is The BADmiral, season two of her popular podcast CONmunity, which was previously called Conning The Con. Across 12 episodes, the series exposes the decades-long deceit of Peter Cowell, an Australian perpetrating a bizarre scam.
The fake admiral exposed
Posing as a fake admiral, Cowell convinced maritime leaders, veterans and even the future prime minister of Fiji that the money he sought would fund International Sea/Air Rescue, a coastal search and rescue organisation he claimed had 14 fleets and multimillion-dollar funding, both of which were untrue.
For 25 years, Cowell had been falsely claiming he was in the navy, securing thousands of dollars from his victims.Late last year, Sarah’s production company launched its exposé of Cowell, and The BADmiral has racked up nearly 100,000 downloads since.
True-crome mastery
Like many of her popular long-form stories, this one has the hallmarks of a true-crime hit – a genre the Kiwi found herself excelling in after years working in property. She first started podcasting after her younger sister Emma Ferris was duped out of $300,000 by her supposed boyfriend.
“I’ve learnt that anybody who’s human, has a need and crosses paths with a person that has ill intent and wants your money can recognise what your need is,” Sarah tells.
“They shape themselves to reflect that back to you and fill in what they think you need. It might be love, it might be financial stability… They’ll exploit it, which is frightening.”
Red flags and deception
When Emma first talked to Sarah about her new beau Andrew Thomson and all the grand claims he’d made to her about his life, the red flags were immediate. Yet two days after meeting him herself, he’d quashed her concerns.
She recalls, “I walked away thinking, ‘Well, isn’t he just the nicest guy? He really loves my sister.’ He saw what my red flags were in him and washed them away. It’s a skill that’s super-dangerous.”
Turning the tables on Conman
As listeners of the first series of the podcast will know, Emma, an intelligent physiotherapy business owner and mum of two, astutely manages to recoup most of her money by conning Thomson back.
The cautionary tale of Conning The Con shot to the top of the Apple Podcast charts in New Zealand.
What started with a “low- bar” goal to save just one person from going through what Emma had was quickly realised as the sisters heard from listeners who’d recognised their own dating warning signs.
The series has achieved 2.6 million downloads since 2021 and has cemented Sarah as a talented storyteller. Since that first season, she has continued to expose fraud in several other self-produced podcasts, including Klooghless: The Long Con, which investigates Kiwi financial advisor Barry Kloogh, who stole more than $15 million from 81 people.
Giving victims a voice
“It all comes back to the victims,” she says.
“Having them feel some healing from having their voices heard.”
Partway through The BADmiral, Sarah reveals to her listeners that while making the podcast, she’s also been going through cancer treatment.
“It’s more natural to be private with it,” she reveals.
“But I feel like I have a platform that can help people to understand some of the awkward things around cancer. The trauma isn’t necessarily just for the person with cancer – it’s those people around you.”
Finding normal after trauma
For Sarah, life continues as normally as possible. While in New Zealand over the summer, she and her family are looking at houses with a view to returning home after 15 years in the UK. She continues to live by the lesson that most stuck with her during her podcasting.
“When I was doing my first season of CONmunity, the psychologist said something that resonated with me,” she reflects.
“It was that if you want to have a better response to trauma, to have some kind of control makes it easier to navigate your way out of it. For me, purpose is that control. If I can make a difference, that’s something I can hang on to.”
Season two of CONmunity streams on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
