Bountifull Podcast

What if getting healthier didn't mean eating less, giving up the foods you love, or spending your life following rules? In this third conversation with Brittany McNab, we're getting practical about nutrition, and challenging some of the advice that makes eating well feel far more complicated than it needs to be. Britt believes most women aren't lacking effort. They're putting enorm...

Consciousness, spirituality, transcendence. We hear these words often, but what do they actually mean, and how do they relate to everyday life? Scott Britton is an entrepreneur, author and podcaster whose interest in consciousness began when he realised that the life he'd worked so hard to build wasn't making him particularly happy. That realisation led him to explore spirituality and deve...

What does it actually mean to be a good person? And can we learn to become one? In this episode of Bountifull, I’m joined by philosopher Denise Vigani to explore Aristotle’s virtue ethics and the relationship between being a good person and living a good life. Denise challenges the idea that happiness is something we find, achieve or arrive at. Instead, she introduces a different way of thinking a...

So much of the health and wellness conversation starts with what we should do: eat differently, train more, sleep better, follow the plan and somehow find the discipline to keep doing it. But what if the plan isn’t the first thing we need to look at? In this conversation with Brittany McNabb, we go underneath the habits and routines to explore what might actually be driving our behaviour. Brittany...

Alliv Samson has spent more than a decade building Kami, the education company she co-founded at university, into a global platform used by more than 70 million people. Along the way came enormous growth, motherhood, a partial exit and the chance to experience what life looks like when some of the things you once worked so hard for finally arrive. And perhaps surprisingly, Alliv’s biggest lesson i...

Something new is beginning at Bountifull. For more than two years, I’ve been having conversations with people around the world exploring a simple question: how do we actually live a good life? More than 80 conversations later, I’ve learnt an enormous amount. Along the way, I’ve started to see themes and ideas emerging across conversations with people from completely different perspectives, backgro...

In this episode, I sit down with sociologist and demographer Paul Spoonley to explore how the population changes already underway could shape the life you’re able to build in the decades ahead. We’re living longer, having fewer children, becoming more culturally diverse and concentrating more of our populations in major cities. Paul explains why those shifts matter to you, from the future of retir...

This week on Bountifull, I’m joined by Brittany McNabb for the first in a four-part series exploring health, wellbeing, food and fitness from a very different angle. Brittany is a personal trainer with a background spanning psychology, business, psychotherapy, nutrition, meditation and behaviour change. Her work starts from a simple idea: lasting change is about far more than calorie deficits, mac...

What if some of the things we struggle to understand about ourselves have roots we can’t easily explain? In this episode of the Bountifull Podcast, I sit down with Shirley Johnson, a journalist, astrologer, tarot reader and past life regression therapist who has spent more than four decades exploring how we make sense of ourselves, our relationships and the patterns that shape our lives. Shirley b...

This week on Bountifull, I’m doing something a little different. My guest is Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant. After more than 80 conversations exploring what it means to live a Bountifull life, I wanted to ask AI the same central question. Not because AI has lived experience, but because it has been trained on an enormous body of human knowledge, ideas, philosophy and conversation. What would it...

Jeff Williams is the former mayor of Arlington, Texas, a civil engineer, business leader and author of The Unity Blueprint . After leading one of the most diverse cities in America, he believes a richer life begins not with what we accumulate, but with what we contribute. In this episode, Jeff shares why generosity, service and helping others are central to a flourishing life. We explore how frien...

We spend so much of our lives chasing happiness. But happiness naturally comes and goes, and it was never meant to be the only measure of a good life. In this episode, I sit down with philosopher Lorraine Besser to explore what happiness misses and why we also need meaning and psychological richness. Lorraine explains how novelty, complexity, curiosity and experiences that change our perspective c...

What can a lifetime spent protecting some of the world’s most extraordinary places teach us about how to live? In part two of my conversation with Lou Sanson, we travel from Antarctica to the highest levels of New Zealand’s conservation system — and into the lessons Lou gathered through a life of ambition, responsibility and service. Lou describes Antarctica as New Zealand’s landscape “on steroids...

What if the way you show up in every moment, at work, at home, with strangers, is shaping not just your life, but the lives of hundreds of people you'll never meet? In this episode of the Bountifull Podcast, Sian sits down with bestselling author, 2x TEDx speaker and researcher Marcy Axelrod to unpack her life's work: understanding what it truly means to show up. Marcy introduces her three...

What happens when a childhood spent exploring wild places becomes the work of an entire life? In part one of this two-part conversation, I’m joined by Lou Sanson, one of New Zealand’s most influential conservation leaders. Lou grew up on the West Coast of New Zealand, learning to cross rivers, climb mountains, cook over fires and navigate the backcountry. At 13, he encountered two forestry workers...

What happens when the life you worked so hard to build no longer fits? In this episode, I’m joined by Andy Johns for a deep and honest conversation about the valley between two mountains — the liminal space between who you were and who you are yet to become. Andy spent 17 years in Silicon Valley climbing the first mountain of life: career, achievement, status, success, and external validation. But...

Most of us are building lives we are not fully present for. We optimise, produce, tick things off and tell ourselves we will get to the good stuff once things calm down. But things rarely calm down. They speed up. And one day you look around and realise your kids have stopped coming to you, your relationships are running on autopilot, and the life you worked so hard to build is one you are barely...

In this episode, I’m joined by Renée DiResta, Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, who studies social media, online manipulation, AI, misinformation, and how messages move across the internet. This conversation started with a simple question: how do we stay safe online? But it...

In this episode, I’m joined by Marley Rose Harris, founder of the Higher Self app and creator of the Clear the Fear method. I wanted to speak to Marley because I was interested in how she works with fear. Where it starts, how it gets stored, and why it can keep showing up in decisions around money, love, work, safety and self-worth. Marley’s life changed after losing her dad to suicide. That loss...

In this episode, I’m joined by Holly Cardew, an Australian entrepreneur, founder and friend of mine, for a conversation about ambition, self-belief, work, independence and what it means to build a life that actually feels like your own. Holly has always had a very practical kind of confidence. She does not wait until she knows everything before she starts. At 12, she was packing sponges for $5 an...

In this episode, I'm joined by Christopher Seward, a documentary filmmaker and editor whose work includes Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, Ariel Phenomenon (UFOs), One Child Nation, and more than 40 documentary films. Christopher edited top-grossing documentaries including Fahrenheit 9/11, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and Sicko, both earning him American Cinema Editors Guild awards for Best Document...

In this episode, Dr Aarti Soorya explores the nervous system not as something to “fix,” but as something to understand, listen to, and work with. Aarti trained as a physician, became chief resident, and then moved into functional medicine after feeling that conventional medicine was missing something deeper. But even functional medicine, with its labs, supplements, and protocols, didn’t fully answ...

Denise Chapman Weston is a Playologist, therapist, inventor, and deeply imaginative thinker whose work invites us to look again at one of the most misunderstood parts of being human: play. In Part 2 of this conversation, Denise takes us beyond the story of her own childhood promise and into the deeper question of what play actually is. Not just fun. Not just recreation. Not just something children...

Denise Chapman Weston is a Playologist, therapist, inventor, and deeply imaginative thinker whose life has been shaped by a promise she made to herself as a child: never stop playing. In Part 1 of this conversation, Denise shares the origin story behind that promise. Growing up in Chicago with a Shriner clown for a father, she was surrounded by humour, imagination, and a sense that life did not ha...

For a lot of people, getting older does not feel like winding down. It feels like being pushed to the edges before you are ready. In this episode, Andrew Middleton shares what happened after a LinkedIn post about turning 66 unexpectedly resonated with thousands of people who felt exactly the same. What followed was not just a viral moment, but the beginning of a much bigger conversation about age,...