Resilience Unravelled

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Dr Russell Thackeray and guest Carol Murray discuss her resilience after a skydiving accident 29 years ago in which both parachutes failed, causing a 3,100-foot fall; she endured 26 surgeries, chronic pain, two and a half years in a wheelchair, and relearned to walk, noting fear was a major psychological barrier and that hydrotherapy helped rebuild confide...

Host Russell Thackeray welcomes guest Andrew Gregor, a British-born, California-based architect and residential remodelling contractor who has transitioned into publishing novels. Gregor recounts being born in Beirut, sent to UK boarding school at 10, studying architecture, building an award-winning practice in Germany, then moving to the US and starting a renovation company. He discusses how arch...

In this Resilience Unravelled episode, host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Dr. Joel Davis Brown about consciousness as worldview and self-positioning within society, and how marginalised communities often lack the “luxury” of drifting through life unaware of systemic inequities. Brown defines marginalised communities as those denied full access to life, liberty, and freedom, and discusses causes...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Georgina Woodley in Perth, Australia about her background in big-four consulting, strategy, and 20+ years in market research, and her interest in applying personal-development “energy” concepts to organisations. They discuss how people sense workplace culture, how individual mood and “underlying human state” affects meetings, authenticity, and leadership respon...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray welcomes Fort Lauderdale–based visual artist, therapeutic arts practitioner, author, and two-time cancer survivor Nerissa Balland, who discusses her work at the intersection of creativity, resilience, and personal growth. After being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in 2016 while pregnant and parenting a toddler, she navigated surgeries, immunotherapy, later recurrence,...

Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Melbourne-based clinician and BBM (Brain Benefit Movement) founder Aram Cargill, a father of nine and former musician who developed a protocol to improve self-regulation and executive function, informed by raising a daughter with level 3 autism and two sons with ADHD and publishing multiple journal papers. They discuss ADHD diagnosis via DSM indicators, how ADHD tra...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Dr. Kim Foster, an MD and former family doctor now living on Vancouver Island and spending summers in London, about identity and change. Foster explains identity as the “I am” stories people tell themselves, often inherited from parents, teachers, or society, and argues even positive labels can be limiting. She shares her own shift from being “the artistic one”...

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled with Dr Russell Thackeray, Antonio Michael Downing discusses growing up in Trinidad and Tobago with his grandmother, who taught him to read from the King James Bible and to sing Anglican hymns, before her death led to his move at age 11 to rural Northern Ontario. He describes the shock of migration, being renamed “Michael” at school, and how losing familiar...

In this Resilience Unravelled episode, host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Chris Hill, a London-based “lived experience practitioner” who helps people with mental health and addiction by teaching an educational “separation model” that distinguishes the conscious self from mind/body mechanisms. Hill shares his own 20-year history of addiction and explains addiction as dopamine-driven habitual wiri...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Dale Atkinson from near Reading, a former finance compliance consultant who now works as a patient advocate, audits companies for “patient trust leaks,” sells adjunct wellness modalities, and writes. Dale recounts that in 2024 his partner was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and surgically cured, then he was found to have a large esophageal tumour and late...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Jodie Herbert in Canberra, Australia, founder of Ability Pathways Australia and a carer of three children on the autism spectrum. They discuss neurodiversity as natural variation in thinking, differences in autism categorisation (ASD 1–4), and how modern workplaces with constant digital channels can make neurodivergent needs harder to accommodate. Jodie describ...

Dr Russell Thackeray welcomes Dr. Denis Cronson, a South African-born medical doctor now based in Switzerland, to discuss leadership through a biological lens. Cronson describes moving from trauma surgery into 20 years of organisational health and executive consulting, observing how overcommitment, “success but sacrifice” cultures, and failure patterns deplete leaders and spread dysfunction throug...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray welcomes Andrea Carter, a Canada-based organisational scientist known for validating a way to measure belonging and leading studies across 3,500 people in 13 companies, later extended across eight industries and 150,000 employees. This is a genuinely fascinating episode and worth a full listen..! Andrea argues resilience is often treated as a solo sport—“exile with a dead...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Sydney-based psychologist, former HR/leadership development director, and secular Buddhist teacher Lenore Lambert about her work Flourish Personal Growth and her “People Against Rushing” (PAR) intentions: a 20% time buffer, blank diary spaces, and “be where you are.” Lambert outlines her “nine elements of human flourishing,” adding safety factors to Seligman’s...

Host Russell Thackeray welcomes Duncan Starr-Boltt, a Cambridge-based Brit who lives in Crete most of the year, and explores his journey from mechanical engineering into personal training, coaching, and running a CrossFit gym. Duncan describes intense fitness challenges (including a wall-ball world record of 452) and how proving fitness shaped his identity, later easing once he felt he’d proven it...

In this Resilience Unravelled episode, Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Celeste Warren, a US-based former chief diversity and inclusion officer who retired after nearly four decades in global corporations and now consults, speaks, and promotes her book The Truth About Equity. Warren explains why equity is often misunderstood as preferential treatment and uses the “rocks and fence” analogy to show e...

Dr Russell Thackeray welcomes writer and nonprofit leader Deborah Santana from Los Angeles to discuss her work and memoir, Loving the Fire: Choosing Me, Finding Freedom. Deborah explains her nonprofit Do Little, which supports women and girls in health, education, and happiness, and describes her lifelong commitment to challenging exclusion, shaped by growing up with an interracial family and seei...

Host Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Jersey City-based meditation teacher, yoga teacher, and licensed massage therapist Oneika Mays, discussing her love of reading and music, the value of stories, and how technology, social media, and AI affect attention and thinking. Mays describes being introduced to meditation over 15 years ago and teaching for about 10, explaining that an injury and over-relia...

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled, Dr Russell Thackeray speaks with Veronica Mason, a Sydney-based coach, speaker, and neurotech founder who lives near Bondi Beach and describes the area’s intentional, health-conscious community. Mason shares her half-Australian, half-Mauritian upbringing and how feeling different helped her later embrace her identity, including as part of the LGBTQIA+ comm...

Dr Russell Thackeray discusses the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the USA, Mexico, and Canada and argues it will be a continent-sized resilience test rather than a tactics story, highlighting four pressure points: rapid shifts between microclimates (from Seattle/Vancouver to high-altitude Mexico City to Texas heat), heavy travel and an expanded 48-team, 104-match format that disrupts sleep and circadian r...

Dr Russell Thackeray interviews Dr. Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj, an executive advisor, adjunct business school faculty member, and author focused on leadership transformation and human potential. They discuss how introductions differ across Western and other cultures, and how women leaders may adopt “masculine” communication to gain credibility. Both critique “bring your whole self to work,” arguing a...

Dr Russell Thackeray interviews futurist and former venture capitalist Ryan Vet, who recounts his family name’s changes after immigrating to the US and his career path from a childhood lemonade stand to a multinational marketing company and 20 years in venture capital, exiting in 2021 to research, write, and speak about the future. Vet outlines his “generational pendulum” framework across seven so...

Russell interviews Adrian Kelly in Northern Ireland about his varied career and ideas on success. Kelly began as a criminal solicitor, then left the profession after the 2009–2010 financial crash and fee cuts, pivoting into a renewable energy wind-turbine business that grew to 30 staff, raised about €20 million, and sold products from China to the US before he departed in 2018. He later moved into...

Host Dr. Russell welcomes returning guest Dane Johnson to discuss resilience through gut health, Crohn’s and colitis as autoimmune inflammatory bowel diseases, and why cases are rapidly increasing, which Johnson attributes to combined factors like toxins, pathogens, stress, EMF, poor sleep, and ultra-processed foods, including glyphosate exposure. Johnson shares his history of severe illness, fail...

This week on Resilience Unraveled, JB Glossinger explains how childhood bullying and being held back in third grade led him to adopt the name “JB” (James Brian) and build a life around Emotional Intelligence and consistent systems rather than short-lived motivation. He describes creating the Morning Coach daily coaching show 21 years ago, producing about 6,000 episodes, shifting to a paid model in...