Hunger & Heart with Kaila Colbin

Sir Graham Henry has the best win record in All Blacks history - but there was a moment in the early stages when he almost walked away from it all. In 2001, as the highest-paid rugby coach in the world, he lost a Lions series he expected to win. He hit a wall, resigned, and moved back to New Zealand. Six months later he took a job as a provincial assistant coach. He went from making $1 million a y...

For two years, the same question repeated in Sam Dakin's head a thousand times a day. He had no idea what was happening to him. Turns out, Sam — who was training for the Olympics at the time — was suffering from OCD. Not the light-switch, hand-washing version most people picture, but the intrusive-thought kind that loops in your head all day and won't let go. It wasn’t until he found a Red...

A thousand miles down the Yukon River, from Canada into Alaska and up to the Arctic Circle. It’s the definition of remote — more people have been to the top of Everest than have been past Dawson City. No support boat, no resupply, no road, and no rescue worth the name. Get it wrong out there and you're days from help, not hours. The Yukon 1000 is the longest paddling race in the world, and Jon Fri...

William Trubridge is one of the greatest freedivers of all time. He’s set 18 world records. Won six world championship titles. In 2016 he became the first person to reach 102 metres on a single breath with no fins and no rope. In 2019 he crossed Cook Strait entirely underwater, in a series of 934 breath holds over nine hours and fifteen minutes, to draw attention to New Zealand's critically endang...

At 17, Gráinne Moss swam the English Channel — the first Irish woman ever to do it. At 56, she became the 45th person on Earth to complete the Oceans Seven, the seven hardest channel swims in the world. This conversation is about the 39 years in between. We talk about the two failed attempts at the same stretch of water between Ireland and Scotland — one she was elated by, one that broke her. Abou...

Steve Tew was chief executive of New Zealand Rugby from 2008 to 2019, and ran the Crusaders and the Canterbury Rugby Union from 1996 to 2001. He is now Director of High Performance at High Performance Sport New Zealand. This week, he joins the podcast to talk about a career that started with a box of files inherited from a volunteer and ended up running the organisation behind the All Blacks — and...

Mark Sorenson won two world championships by the age of seventeen. But at twenty, despite playing the best tournament of his life, his team lost the final. That heartbreak led to an insight: it doesn’t matter how spectacular you are if you can’t make the people around you better as well. Mark is one of only two New Zealanders to win world softball titles as both a player and a coach — four golds w...

Mike ‘Crono’ Cron spent 15 years with the All Blacks — more than 200 tests, two World Cups, and a reputation as the best scrum coach in the game. In this conversation he breaks down how he actually does it: Why he shows a photograph of cyclists shoving cigarettes in each other's mouths to every team he works with. How he used the Royal New Zealand Ballet to transform the All Blacks lineout. The th...

90 minutes into a 1,367km swim down the length of New Zealand, Jono Ridler turned his head to breathe and saw a large shark a body length away. He got out of the water for 20 minutes, then got straight back in — and kept going for another 89 days. The kid who had to be bribed with candy to finish a swimming lesson ended up breaking the world record for the longest unassisted staged swim. In this c...

At 8,200 metres on K2, in deteriorating weather and near the summit, Peter Hillary made what he calls a “bravely independent” decision: he turned around and descended alone into the storm. The rest of the group stayed together and pushed for the top. It was one of the loneliest descents of his life — and it’s the reason he's here to tell the story. None of the others survived. In this conversation...

Sir Wayne Smith — aka “The Professor” — is one of the most decorated coaches in New Zealand rugby history. In this conversation he opens up the systems behind decades of winning. The season the All Blacks spat into vials so a scientist could map their hormones — and why every fix was cultural, not chemical. The Henry V video that rebuilt a last-placed Crusaders side. The honesty card players hande...

He found the cable-box switch that unlocked adult content when he was just five years old. For the next three decades, porn was Dr Luke Sniewski’s coping mechanism for loneliness, stress and fear - through a professional football career in Italy, a burnout that ended his training business, and relationships that all ended the same way. He spent nearly a decade trying to willpower his way out. It n...

Dillon Boucher was so sure he'd made the 2000 Olympic team that his wife had already booked her flights. But when they announced the squad in alphabetical order — by the third one he knew he hadn’t been selected. What Dillon did next is the definition of commitment. He quit his job, started a coaching business so he could keep a ball in his hands all day, and trained until his fingertips split ope...

Nobody is born good at hard conversations. Not even the people who teach them. I’ve spent years running Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead™ programme. I built the Courageous Communication™ programme specifically around the skills of having hard conversations. But teaching it and living it are two different things. In this episode I sit down with my colleague Hannah Hudson to talk honestly about what it's...

⚠️ Please note: this conversation talks about depression and mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling, free help is available through Lifeline - call 0508 TAUTOKO, that's 0508 828 865. Sir John Kirwan is one of New Zealand's greatest All Blacks — but, while he lived the life of a champion, his mental health suffered. He's since become one of the country's greatest wellbeing advocate...

Dame Farah Palmer wasn't the most talented athlete in the room. She was nearly invisible at her first university orientation week. And then… someone from the rugby club noticed her. In this conversation, Kaila Colbin sits down with one of New Zealand's most decorated sportswomen: three-time Black Ferns World Cup captain, Dame Companion, first woman elected to the New Zealand Rugby board, and one o...

What does it take to hold professional athletes to the highest standards - without ever raising your voice? Maggie Cogger-Orr is one of New Zealand's top rugby referees and the current Referee of the Year. Originally from Canada, she grew up playing gridiron football before falling in love with rugby - and after two ACL injuries ended her playing ambitions, she went all-in on refereeing. She's now...

Rob Hamill is one of New Zealand's most storied and decorated rowers - a silver at the World Championships in 1994, the winner of the first ever Atlantic Rowing Race in '97, and a man who has lived a life most people couldn't imagine. But beneath the athletic achievements is a story that shaped everything. When Rob was 14, his older brother Kerry went missing while sailing through Southeast Asia o...

He lost his dad to suicide, surfed for 40 hours straight and built one of Australia's most powerful mental health movements — one wave at a time. Blake Johnston is a World Record holder, mental health advocate, Director of Cronulla Surfing Academy, and the man behind the world's largest paddle out. But before any of that, he was a kid from Cronulla who loved the ocean more than anything — and had...

Sarah Kessans came to New Zealand for a two-year postdoc. Thirteen years later she's still here - an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury working across synthetic biology, space research, and agricultural climate science. But before all of that, she was a 20-year-old from Indiana with $500, no ocean experience, and an idea she'd read about on a plane. In this episode, Sarah tells th...

Few All Blacks have ever been as loved as Andrew Mehrtens. Ask him why, and he'll tell you he was just the kid next door who got a winner wish. Growing up bilingual in the small North Canterbury community of Tuahiwi, Mehrts wasn't the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest. What he had was something harder to define - and harder to hold onto. In this conversation, Mehrts opens up about the confron...

What do you do when Sir Edmund Hillary tells you your ambition isn't big enough? For Jamie Fitzgerald, that question led to one of the most remarkable expeditions in New Zealand history - becoming the first Kiwis to reach the South Pole unsupported on foot. But before Antarctica, there was the Atlantic. In 2003, Jamie set the world record for rowing 5,000 kilometres across the ocean - with three w...

This week, no new Hunger & Heart episode. We’ve paused for renovations and will be back next week, bigger, brighter, and bolder than ever. See you then! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel Taulelei became a Trade Commissioner for New Zealand at just 25. She's built companies, represented New Zealand at international trade forums, and co-owns the Tokomanawa Queens, a championship-winning team in the Tauihi Women's Basketball League. In this conversation, Rachel opens up about: why she was thrilled when her D1 basketball-playing daughter transferred colleges, even though it mea...

Wesley Clarke led the Manawatū Women's Sevens to back-to-back national finals, claiming the title in 2016. He stepped onto the international stage as assistant coach of the Black Ferns from 2015 to 2022, delivering World Cup victories in 2017 and 2022.  He’s now head coach of the Manawatū Turbos in the National Provincial Championship — a team that once fired him. In this conversation, Kaila...