Natural Genius: Deep Conversations. Meaningful Lives.

Jamie Butemeyer works at the intersection of expression and belonging: the ways we learn to edit, perform and suppress parts of ourselves to stay connected, liked and safe. Her path began in theatre, dance and pageants, where being impressive became tied to love and belonging. Later came New York auditions, yoga, Aspen, organising, coaching and The School of Expression.  Across the different forms...

Graeme Boden has built a life of significant professional achievement, deep family commitment and sustained contribution to others. Across a long career in finance, resources, corporate planning and governance, Graeme worked with BHP, Bougainville Copper, major US resources companies, Sons of Gwalia and numerous ASX-listed and emerging businesses. In his twenties he joined BHP’s Ok Tedi copper-gol...

Wendy Fyfe has spent much of her career helping people see more possibility in themselves, their work and each other. In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with her long-time friend, strategist, facilitator and executive coach Wendy Fyfe about curiosity, connection, limiting beliefs and the small shifts that can change what feels possible. Wendy has spent decades working with executives, senior leaders...

What becomes possible when we become still enough to notice more of what is already available within us, between us and around us? Peter Spence returns to Natural Genius, moving beyond the high-performance foundations of his first episode into stillness, connection, human potential and quantum thinking. Pete has spent decades across Australian cricket and elite sport, including the NSW Cricket Ass...

Leave enough room to notice what you didn’t plan for. Six months after Hamish Curry’s first Natural Genius conversation, we catch up after his nearly two months of travel through Japan and the US. The stories begin with road trips, Hamish's adult children, the all-important snacks, unexpected festivals and places discovered simply because they sounded interesting. They open into a bigger ques...

In this second Natural Genius conversation, Sam Bell and Tina Köstler go deeper into women’s sexuality, menstruation, embodied consent, pleasure and women speaking openly with other women. Tina is an intimacy and embodiment coach, tantra facilitator and founder of TinaKoestler.com. After years in high-performance startup environments, including senior operations roles at Choco, she moved into work...

Sometimes the clearest signal is short. Julie Jungalwala describes intuition as a quiet, non-insistent invitation. She describes today’s technological environment as “compression”, making space to hear your own signal a more deliberate practice. Julie is a Harvard instructor in Professional & Executive Development, author, workshop leader and executive coach. Through Human Possibility and the...

What comes after a life designed for freedom? Tanner Gesek builds across startups, venture investing, writing and music. He is founder of Copilot, Venture Partner at WAGMI Ventures, and a pianist and composer whose music has passed 750,000 streams. In this conversation, Tanner and Sam explore a question sparked by David Brooks’ The Second Mountain . A long-held script shaped by The 4-Hour Workweek...

Rachel McIver has spent more than 30 years in HR, corporate leadership and leadership development, including senior roles at Coles and almost five years as Chief People & Culture Officer at Nando’s Australia & New Zealand. Today she is CEO & Principal Consultant of The Rachel McIver Group, helping senior leaders move from functional expertise to strategic enterprise leadership. Rachel’...

Waris Hussain is a growth marketer and builder focused on alternative education. He works in growth at Praxis, a college alternative focused on practical skills and careers, and also has his agency, Catalyst Creatives. His path has moved through graphic design, UX, growth, startup operations, AI and product building, including early work with Career Hackers. He also shares what he learns generousl...

Sarah Lynn Harrison works at the intersection of identity, brand, business and human potential. A brand and content strategist for more than a decade, she first became known through Little Miss Melbourne, the successful Melbourne lifestyle blog she began in 2010. Today Sarah is an identity strategist and facilitator, a.k.a. “The Identity Queen”, helping founders, leaders and organisations get clea...

For more than 20 years, Maggie Doyne and the people around her have been building something that once seemed impossible. Maggie is Co-founder and CEO of BlinkNow, author of Between the Mountain and the Sky and the subject of Jeremy Power Regimbal’s documentary of the same name. Together with co-founder Tope Bahadur Malla and a largely Nepali team, BlinkNow has grown from a small children’s home in...

Anna Beuselinck has spent decades paying close attention to people: how they behave, what helps them grow, and what allows more joy, impact and ease into work and life. She is an ICF-certified executive coach and organisation strategist who has worked across leadership, culture and organisational development with global organisations including Nike, Gap, Nestlé, Reebok and Genentech, as well as fo...

What happens when someone urgently needs oxygen delivered to their tissues and compatible blood is not immediately available? Carl Rausch has spent much of his working life trying to solve versions of that problem. Carl Rausch is a chemical and medical engineer, biotechnology founder and senior executive whose career has spanned some of the formative decades of modern biotechnology. He was Founder...

People have a radar. They sense when a leader’s words, behaviour and genuine intent do not align. Trust is built less through grand gestures than through the small, consistent signals people experience over time. Victoria Jones is Senior Manager, Leadership and Capability at UniSuper and a Director and Chair of the Professional Development Committee at Women in Super. Across more than 20 years in...

Sarah Jade Green makes ambitious creative work feel more possible. She calms pressure, sees patterns, builds practical systems and helps people move before everything is perfect. Sarah is Head of Creative at Village Cinemas, where she is building a new in-house creative department for one of Australia’s most iconic cinema brands. Across 16 years in design, brand strategy and creative leadership, s...

Marisa Hallsted brings brightness, candour and contagious energy to a conversation about what it takes to feel fully alive. Marisa is the founder of Reality Architecture™, a philosophy exploring how the invisible architecture beneath our identity shapes the life we experience. She is also founder and CEO of Seeded Sound, an app combining original music, nature recordings and subliminal affirmation...

Money can be coming in and financial stability can still feel out of reach. Lucas Z. spent three decades following his passions for photography and music. His event photography business became financially successful, yet his money problems intensified and, beneath the outward success, he felt deeply unhappy. A friend helped Lucas see that money, business, success and inner healing were not separat...

What happens when a global investor begins painting the future of AI and humanity? Ludovic Bodin has spent decades building and investing across Europe, Asia, Latin America and Silicon Valley. He is founder and CEO of BOBIC Generational Wealth, co-founder and managing director of Kalibrio, and author of Atomic Scaling . Today, his work spans AI, finance, entrepreneurship, investing and art. In thi...

Fiona Smolenaars can meet someone looking for work, meet an employer who needs exactly that person hours later, make one introduction and help create a job. She has spent more than thirty years turning that instinct into work that strengthens people, organisations and regional Victoria. At the heart of this episode is a practical skill many people were never taught: how to ask. Fiona shares the wo...

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with Michelle Crawford about building a creative life across photography, styling, writing, food, hospitality and community, and becoming more fully yourself through decades of practice. Michelle is a Tasmanian-based stylist, photographer, writer and host whose work has appeared in Country Style, Graziher, Galah, Inside Out, Lunch Lady and Delicious. She has co-wri...

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with Daniel Epstein about Portraits in Faith, developing faith through listening, sacred stories, photography, Uncle Bob and Aunty Barbara Randall, Mutitjulu, behaviour change, gratitude, love and becoming more whole. Daniel Epstein is an author, photographer, founder of Portraits in Faith Foundation, and founder and principal of Daniel Epstein & Associates. He...

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with Kelly Wendorf about horses, belonging, corporate shamanism, and what leadership can become when we start recognising organisations as living systems. Kelly is the founder and CEO of EQUUS, an ICF Master Certified Coach, author, international speaker, spiritual mentor, systems-change leader and socially responsible entrepreneur. She works with senior leaders, F...

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with Lucas Maddy about practical wisdom, Bitcoin, AI, music, self-reliance, focus, friendship, and designing a life that stays connected to the real world. Lucas brings a rare mix of farm practicality, technical literacy, musical feeling and care for how people live with technology. He created Man Camp at Network School, teaching practical skills, responsibility, a...

In this episode, Sam Bell speaks with Jake Randall about philosophy, poetry, entrepreneurship, investing, community, travel, Network School, AI, and the question that keeps shaping his life: what makes a good life? Jake is a wanderer, entrepreneur, investor, poet, engineer, and incurable optimist. This conversation moves from nomading through Asia and landing in Las Vegas, to writing poetry in the...