The High Impact Athletes Podcast

Marcus chats with viral Olympic athlete and back-to-back gold medalist Michaela Blyde of the NZ Sevens. They dive into the pressures and nerves of playing for your country, the culture and psychology of champions, meeting a childhood hero in Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce and more. Michaela is a firecracker of a human - unfiltered, hilarious, and world-class in her sport. You don’t want to miss this one...

Marcus chats with 2024 Olympic high jump champion Hamish Kerr, who is also a World Indoor Championships gold and bronze medalist, Commonwealth Games gold medalist, Oceania and New Zealand record holder, newly crowned memelord, and is otherwise known as the Flying Kiwi. Topics include what it feels like to win gold in a stadium of 80,000 people, the rarity and challenges of a gold medal jump-off, t...

Marcus chats with Liv Boeree, one of the most successful female poker players of all time. Liv is the only woman to have won both a European Poker Tour event and a World Series of Poker bracelet, and has amassed tournament winnings of over $3.5m dollars over her career. They talk about what makes a world-class poker player, whether poker skills are born of nature or nurture, and the experience of...

Marcus chats with David Nyika, one of New Zealand’s most successful boxers. Olympic bronze medalist, Commonwealth Games double gold medalist, undefeated as a professional: Dave is a shining talent in the ring and he’s just getting started. He also has a huge heart and is known as ‘The Nice Guy’. We get into all things boxing as well as a variety of topics outside the ring, including his Ugandan he...

Fernando is a veteran ballet dancer, having spent years at Houston Ballet after graduating from the Royal Ballet School in London. Fernando dives into the pressures and social difficulties of being a male ballet dancer as an adolescent, the struggles of constant rejection, and the power of fully expressing your feelings through dance.  Fernando has a profound and pragmatic approach to the food he...

“The quickest way to become a millionaire in racing is to start out as a billionaire.” Ellis Spiezia is known as the electric renegade and is the first native electric racing driver. He, along with his parents Michelle and Francesco, comprise the Ellysium Racing Team. Marcus chats with the team about the pros and cons of electric vs combustion racing, the financial and lifestyle realities of getti...

Julia is an Olympian and triple Commonwealth Games Medalist hammerthrower, winning one gold and two silvers across 12 years. She has snared six national titles and set 8 national records in New Zealand. Julia is also a weapon in the classroom, having been Head Girl and Dux at high school and graduating in economics from Princeton, where she became Princeton’s first female track & field athlete...

Jamie Farndale is an athlete scholar. He was captain of the Scotland Rugby 7s team, which made history in beating New Zealand (the first Scottish team in any version of rugby to do so) and in winning a world series. He is also studying business sustainability at Cambridge University alongside his pro athlete career.  Jamie chats with Marcus and Hugo about his atypical pathway to becoming a profess...

Erin and Dylan talk about Erin’s dual citizenship and how that came about, why she chose to represent NZ and her pathway to pro tennis with all of its lumps and bumps, and the factor that allowed her to move from an also-ran to a top 30 tennis player. Off the court, Erin talks about who taught her to be charitable, her experience of pledging a percentage of her income, the organisations she choose...

Marcus chats with Ryan Fox, PGA and DP World Tour golfer and winner of the Dunhill Links Championships and Ras Al Kaimah Classic in 2022. They dive into the compelling nature of golf, what makes it so hard, and why people keep coming back. Golf is mentally excruciating, and Foxy shares some of the methods he uses to keep his mindset on track. Foxy comes from an insanely impressive line of world-be...

Naya comes from a family of track athletes and football players. She came to volleyball late but has had a stellar career spanning many countries and awards.  After discussing the pathway to professional volleyball (definitely not a typical one), Marcus and Naya dive into the unseen side of sport - abusive coaches, negative environments, and speaking up for what’s right despite pushback. Off-court...

Marcus and Dylan chat with Sasha de Sola and dive deeply into Sasha’s on-stage and off-stage life. On-stage topics include: Sasha’s journey from the Kirov Academy as a young woman to Principal Dancer at the San Francisco Ballet, her insanely physical daily schedule, the most difficult thing about ballet, what happens when dancing ends, and whether ballet dancers are artists or athletes (or both!)....

In this episode, Marcus and Dylan chat with Tampa Bay Bucs NFL player Patrick Laird about his winding journey to pro football, how he became known as “The Intern”, his first NFL touchdown , reading and teaching kids to read, his short-lived career as a hip-hop producer , charity and giving back, and dietary choices.  In Patrick’s words, “I’ve been on a good amount of podcasts but the depth of stuf...

In this episode, Marcus and Dylan team up with professional tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipas to discuss the pressure of representing his country at the highest level of competition from junior to professional, his passion for filmmaking and storytelling, the recent uptick in the popularity of tennis in Greece, and the importance of family and charity.

In this episode, we turn the tables and interview our host Dylan! Marcus and Dylan discuss Dylan’s experience as an Olympic silver medalist with Canada, his life-threatening accident just before the 2018 Olympics, and his perspectives on relationships in skating. Dylan offers his outlook on giving, and talks about what drew him to HIA.

In this episode of Larger Than Ourselves, Marcus teams up with professional tennis player Gaby Dabrowski to discuss the pressure for success at an early age, the weight of athletic potential, and the deeper meaning in a career. Gaby expands on her experience playing Mixed doubles at the US Open, the WTA player council, and the importance of charity selection.

In this episode of Larger Than Ourselves, Dylan teams up with static bike triple world record holder to discuss her rise to the top of the triathlete podium, and her training to cycle 3000 miles around the coastline of the UK’s main island to raise awareness for global health. Kate expands on how sport can transcend entertainment, how to fight against societal pressures not to be charitable, and K...

Hugo is a triple Olympian and a veteran of the New Zealand Black Sticks hockey team. He has been considered one of the best hockey players in the world, and vice-captained the NZ team at the Tokyo Olympics. Hugo is one of HIA’s earliest pledgers, and after receiving his MBA with distinction from the Heriot-Watt Edinburgh Business School he worked in business development with Lever Room and banking...

In our very first episode, Host Dylan Moscovitch and High Impact Athletes Founder Marcus Daniell discuss the organization's backstory, Marcus' work to connect athletes with effective, evidence-based charities, and just how important it is to harness the power of the collective athlete voice to educate the world about the outsized benefits of giving effectively. Marcus expands on how he f...