Chatting with Humans

Bob Pondillo started in radio at fourteen and never stopped telling stories. In this episode he takes us from a tiny Ohio radio station to 30 Rock in New York, through his years writing comedy for radio stations around the world and teaching screenwriting and media history, and into his newest chapter as a novelist. Every one of his books began as a screenplay, and he shares how that happened, the...

Today I'm chatting with Joey Payeur, the sports reporter who covered my high school rugby team in Fort Saskatchewan 25 years ago, and a friend I'm so grateful to have back in my life. Joey's story starts before he was even born: a great-grandfather found as a baby on the side of a road in Belgium, and a dad who arrived in Canada with $300 and met Joey's mom at Expo 67 while running a carnival ride...

Today the tables are turned. Hayley Musgreave came on the show a few months back, and the second we stopped recording she said she wanted to interview me. So this one's a takeover. She's running the show and I'm in the guest seat. We go into my mental health story, which I call rounds instead of episodes (a nod to my boxing days), because every one of them felt like stepping into the ring. Round o...

Today I'm chatting with Kevin McNee, a men's coach and mentor, and lead author of The Sovereign Man (Sovereign Acres Publishing) Kevin and I get into what it means to take off the armour and let yourself be fully seen, and why that vulnerability is a form of strength rather than the opposite of it. He shares the 2013 turning point that cracked his life open, his faith journey from rejecting religi...

Today I'm chatting with Erin Leonty, founder and CEO of Leonty Consulting and the creator of Power to Care. Erin spent 25 years in corporate leadership associating power with authority and command and control. Then a coach asked her where she felt power in her body, and she had no answer. What she built from that question is a leadership program grounded in neuroscience, one that treats care as a...

Today I'm chatting with Shannon Sauer, a fellow co-author in Reclaiming Mental Health and someone who spent close to two decades navigating what gets called anxiety before she found her way back to herself. Shannon and I get into her chapter and the long arc that shaped it. She talks about being a sensitive, intuitive kid who felt most at home in nature, and how that connection faded as the world...

Today I'm chatting with Jen Morin, a co-author in Reclaiming Mental Health and a contributor to Sovereign Volume 1 , who now builds workbooks and affirmation decks to help people reprogram the patterns that keep them stuck. Jen and I get into her mental health journey, the years inside the system, the medications that never fit, and the COVID crash that became a full reset. We talk about why she n...

Today I'm chatting with Hayley Musgreave, who I first crossed paths with back in high school in Fort Saskatchewan and then reconnected with years later through a coaching program. She's a farmer in northern Alberta now, with cattle, mini donkeys, and a grain and hay operation, and she's been a steady light every time we connect. We share some similar threads in our mental health journeys, and that...

Today I'm chatting with Shannon Skelton, a co-author alongside me in Reclaiming Mental Health . We'd never actually sat down and talked before this, so it was a first, and she turned out to be a light, joyful person to spend an hour with. Shannon's chapter is called "A Walk Down Mania Lane," and it's about a manic episode brought on by a pharmaceutical. We get into the whole chain of events, what...

Today I'm chatting with Anthony Goodwin, one half of the duo who taught me Improv 100 through Grindstone Theatre and someone whose work sits at the intersection of therapy and improv. Anthony is an Australian-born clinical counsellor and improv instructor. He's the founder of Still Listening, his private therapy practice. We talk about the full-circle way improv and therapy ended up holding hands...

Today I'm chatting with Carey Abma, a co-author in Reclaiming Mental Health . Carey opens up about a chapter of her life she never expected to write, both literally and figuratively, and what it took to start choosing love over fear. We get into the breakdown that became her breaking open at the start of 2020, the years of self-abandonment that led there, and what it actually looked like to sit al...

Today I'm sharing a conversation I had with Richard Okwii and Adacet John Peter, the executive director and managing director of Murphy Charitable Foundation Uganda, a nonprofit working to support vulnerable children and communities in the northeastern region of Uganda through education, mentorship, and empowerment. I first came across Murphy Charitable Foundation through their Pen Pal program, wh...

Today I'm chatting with Lindsay Hayes, a former public school educator turned nature-based learning facilitator who has spent the last several years doing deep personal work and how that understanding has reshaped her approach to parenting, healing, and working with children. Lindsay and I met through our shared experience writing in Sovereign Volume 2, and this conversation goes to some really te...

Today I'm chatting with Linsay Doyle, a Feng Shui practitioner and founder of Reclamation by Linsay, who has spent the better part of 14 years burning herself down and rebuilding, on her own terms. Linsay's shares about her journey since 2011 when she was at her heaviest weight, deeply disconnected from herself and living a life that wasn't hers. Linsay shares what followed: leaving an eight-year...

Today I'm chatting with Nicole Murphy, a friend, collaborator, and my co-creator of the Creative Project Studio. Nicole is a media producer, event creator, and someone who has spent over a decade helping people bring their creative projects to life. This conversation went deep fast. We talk about Nicole's winding path from being called "dancing girl" in elementary school to art school, film school...

In this episode, I sit down with Kasia Piascik—HR professional, fellow author in the Reclaiming Mental Health anthology, and someone who has done the deep, unglamorous work of coming home to herself. Kasia's chapter traces her life from a gifted kid in a Mississauga classroom through depression, anxiety, addiction, and the labels that tried to define her, all the way to sixteen years sober and a l...

Today I'm chatting with Dr. John Battye. John is an improv instructor, arts educator, professor at Grant MacEwan University, and one of my Improv 100 instructors this past winter semester. John grew up in Blyth, Ontario, a small farming town with a surprisingly big theater at its heart. His grandmother helped found the Blyth Festival, and a chance encounter with the artistic director when John was...

Today I'm chatting with Ulrike Tooke, someone who has been on a long journey back to herself and she's sharing about some of that in this conversation. When Ulrike lost her mother at seven, she made a quiet but life-altering decision: to be strong, to hold it together, to stop being a kid. What she uncovered decades later was that in doing so, she had left a part of herself behind entirely. She sh...

Today I'm chatting with Daniel Brunelle. Daniel and I met in an improv class this past winter semester. Daniel came into this conversation with an openness that I really appreciated. We talked about what it actually feels like to walk into a room full of strangers and say yes to being seen and how that single act of showing up to an improv class became something much bigger than a fun weekend side...

Today I’m chatting with Alana Joy Newton. Alana is psychotherapist, former nurse, and a deeply intuitive human with a beautifully grounded presence. This is deep but also playful conversation and Alana opens some personal pages. We talk about Joy as a living part of her, Gene Keys, divine timing, and the ways grief lives in the body and extends far beyond how most generally understand it. Alana al...

In this episode of Chatting with Humans , I sit down with Jodi Dancause. Business owner, flower artist, soon to be published author and pattern-disrupting force (and light!). We talk about the unexpected emotional depth of running a flower shop and how Jodi meets people in life’s biggest moments, from celebration to grief, and how “it’s never just flowers.” From there, we move into writing, truth-...

Today I have the honour of featuring my mom, Carmen Thieson, in a conversation that takes us through family history, aging, creativity, career pivots, and what it truly means to keep growing. We talk about her outlook on staying young, her upcoming 50th wedding anniversary with my dad, spirituality, and her deep intuitive gift of knowing. She reflects on the career path she walked and how it shape...

Welcome to episode one of Chatting with Humans. Today, you're hanging out with me, Darrel-Lynne, host of this podcast. This episode is all about the why —what is fueling this podcast. The intention. I also share a bit about me and my journey to now, including the mental health healing journey I have walked and how I think human connection is more important than ever. This podcast is an exploration...