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Audible's First Original Audio Series Is All About Marriage Equality

We Spoke to Osher Gunsberg all about "Listen to Love".

"I'm very lucky I get to go to work and help people fall in love, it's a really nice thing to do," the host of "The Bachelor" series, Osher Günsberg told HuffPost Australia.

"I'm very privileged and honoured to do it, and I see the benefits that falling in love and being in love have given in my own life. I want everybody to have that."

Günsberg is one of several celebrities lending their voices to Audible.com.au's "Listen to Love", a six-part audio series that the platform partnered with The Equality Campaign to create, exploring marriage equality in Australia.

In the past Audible's main offering has been downloadable audio books, but the launch of "Listen to Love" marks a big push toward expanding into original audio content, as well as a big statement from the international company on their stance toward marriage equality. Audible joins the ranks of organisations like Qantas, ANZ Bank, Optus, AirBnB, David Jones and many more that vocally support the push for marriage equality in Australia.

"The idea of one human being in our country having the right to tell another human being in our country who they can and cannot love is preposterous to me," Günsberg explained as he told HuffPost Australia how he became involved with "Listen to Love". Audible gave HuffPost the first episode ahead of all six episodes going live that you can listen to now.

"You look at other places where same-sex marriage has an equal opportunity under the law, guess what? The earth didn't open and swallow them up, no one got struck by lightning, fire and brimstone didn't fall from the sky, all that happened is there's more love in the country. And right now Australia needs as much love as they can get."

The series brings several different personalities for each of the six episodes, with topics ranging from sexual and gender discrimination in sport with Angie Greene, a stand-up routine all about what love is from comedian Joel Creasey, to LGBTIQ couples speaking about what marriage equality means for them and their families to Joel Carnegie.

Günsberg features on all six episodes, the "love god" reads classic poems about love, "The most beautiful things ever written about love have come in the form of poetry and I was very lucky to be asked to read some of the most touching and glorious love poems ever written."

"Honestly, you'll read some of these poems and you'll be ashamed of the things you've texted someone who makes your day brighter," he told HuffPost.

The head of Audible Australia and New Zealand, Matthew Gain, spoke about how the company believed in the power of storytelling. "People use our platform every day to hear and share a range of perspectives, across a multitude of topics. The powerful, personal stories of love that are imparted within the Marriage Equality discussion need to be heard, so it felt natural for us to amplify them."

Meanwhile, Günsberg had strong ideas about organisations like Audible getting involved in the marriage equality debate.

"We can only vote once every few years at the election booth," he said, "but we can vote every day with our wallets." By choosing to support companies like Audible, Günsberg referred to a "powerful transferal of energy" which results in fundamental policy changes. "If we believe in a company we can make them into an incredibly powerful thing," he said.

Günsberg no stranger to love, between his hosting duties of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette", he also runs a radio show on Sunday nights called Osher's Love Line.

"I used to go to a doctor who would say you need three things in life," he told HuffPost, "You need something meaningful to work on, something to live for and someone to live for. These are three things that are the cornerstone of having a happy life, and to be told you can't have a particular person to live for equal in the eyes of the law, that's utterly unfair and frankly not a very human thing to do to another person."

You can download Audible.com.au's "Listen to Love" series here, and listen to the first episode above.

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