The Collective

Who we say we are matters, but repetition may matter more. Every habit, relationship, discipline, and environment rehearses a way of responding to the world. Eventually, practice does more than sharpen a skill, it shapes the person performing it. Today, Chance and Shaun are joined by Wade Winfrey, a Marine veteran, father, fitness coach, and sobriety advocate, and Dr. Gino Collura, a behavioural s...

What does integrity cost when something you value is on the line? Isaac Miller and Matt Barnett join Chance and Shaun to explore what happens when our principles meet pressure, from relationships and work, to the decisions we have to live with. We discuss the difference between integrity and stubbornness, who else carries the consequences of our choices, and whether changing our minds can be an ac...

Some people are at their best when everything goes wrong. Danger provides a clear objective. Training takes over, priorities narrow, and being useful becomes simple. But when the immediate threat passes, ordinary life demands a different kind of competence, patience, ambiguity, restraint, and the ability to act without urgency. Today, we explore what happens when someone built to perform under pre...

Today on The Collective, Chance and Shaun sit down with Jeff Nichols and Fran Racioppi to explore a deceptively difficult question: What does excellence actually mean? Excellence is not a fixed destination. It changes with experience, responsibility, environment and purpose. What makes someone an excellent operator may not make them an excellent father, entrepreneur or leader—and the standards tha...

Grace isn’t giving up. It’s what we learn to offer ourselves after effort, not before. Today, Shaun and I talk about responsibility, low energy, relationships, and what it means to keep showing up when we don’t necessarily have much in the tank. Where is the line between recovery and avoidance? Between holding ourselves accountable and expecting more from ourselves than we currently have to give?...

Some people become the ones everyone depends on. They care for others, carry responsibility, solve problems, and help hold their families, teams, and communities together. Steve Wilson joins Chance Burles and Shaun Taylor to explore a question that came from his own reflection:Have we spent so much of our lives caring for others—or teaching others to care for the collective—that we forgot to teach...

Today's conversation explores a simple but unsettling question: What have you become comfortable ignoring? We spend so much time preparing for the challenges we expect that we often overlook the small signs of neglect quietly growing in our own lives. The habits we let slide. The conversations we avoid. The standards we slowly lower without realizing it. Those small compromises rarely feel sig...

What would you do if time and money were no longer constraints? Travel. Have fun. Chase experiences. Do all the things you've always wanted to do. But once you've done them all... then what? Today on The Collective, we're joined by former DEVGRU Navy SEAL and strength & conditioning coach Jeff Nichols to explore what happens when we remove necessity from the equation. If nothing is...

Today's conversation brings together three professionals whose careers have been built around serving others under extraordinary pressure. Dr. Lucius Pomerantz approaches the same challenge through medicine, combat sports, and human performance. Jonathan Vargas has lived it firsthand as a Los Angeles firefighter and host of the GrabLives Podcast, exploring what it truly takes to sustain a life of...

Men are often told to “be strong.”But what happens when strength becomes an identity a man feels compelled to protect? The Strong Man Trap begins when proving our strength becomes more important than using it well. Strength can mean physical power, endurance, composure, independence, authority, influence, or control. Each can help us protect, provide, lead, and carry responsibility. Each can also...

Where does real change actually begin? Is it created by institutions, policies, and leadership from above? Or does it begin with ordinary people who are close enough to a problem that they decide they can no longer wait for someone else to solve it? In this episode of The Collective, Chance Burles and Shaun Taylor are joined by Mark Grdovic, Jay Cheney, and James Geering for a conversation about g...

The best coaches never stop being students. Experience is valuable. Expertise is earned. But neither guarantees continued growth. Andrew Siepka joins us for a conversation about the hidden danger of becoming too certain. Whether it's training, leadership, business, or life, the moment we believe we've figured everything out may be the moment we stop improving. We'll explore why great p...

Awareness matters. But awareness alone doesn't change anything. This week on The Collective, Chance and Shaun are joined by Zak, founder of MenTell, and Sachin Latti, CBSA veteran, mental health advocate, and ultra-endurance athlete, for an honest conversation about Men's Mental Health Month, community leadership, and what meaningful change actually looks like. Together, they examine the d...

Growth is celebrated. Maintenance is often ignored. We're taught to push harder, move faster, and keep climbing. But what happens when the next step forward isn't another advance? What happens when the right move is to consolidate, recover, refine, and protect what you've already built? This week, Chance and Shaun sit down with Greg Lapin and Sam Laird for a conversation about ambition...

Nearly 600 episodes ago, The Collective started with a simple idea:Bring together interesting people, have meaningful conversations, and see what we could learn. Since then, we've had the privilege of speaking with operators, athletes, coaches, psychologists, authors, entrepreneurs, and countless others who have challenged the way we think about life, performance, and growth. Today's episo...

Psychedelics are often seen as a gateway to insight, healing, and transformation—but the reality is more complicated. In this episode, we break down what these experiences actually offer, where people get misled, and why the real work begins after the experience ends. We explore:The difference between genuine insight and convincing illusionWhy powerful experiences don’t always lead to real changeT...

Travel is more than movement. It’s exposure to uncertainty, culture, risk, discomfort, growth, and perspective. In this episode of The Collective, Chance and Shaun sit down with Christian Lane, former CBSA officer turned advocate and podcaster, and Boris Milinkovich, former Canadian military and security, safety, and preparedness expert, to discuss what it truly means to move through the world. Fr...

Most of what we think we know comes from controlled environments—practice, planning, conversation. But there’s a difference between understanding something and stepping into it. Field time closes that gap. This week, Dallas Alexander and Seb Lavoie join us to talk about the lessons that only come from being out there—where things get tested, mistakes carry weight, and you start to see what actuall...

Every decision we make begins with a line. Sometimes it’s tentative, sketched lightly in pencil. Other times it’s decisive, carved with a sword. On this episode of The Collective, Chance and Shaun sit down with Randy Turner and Seb Lavoie to explore the act of drawing the line — when to be flexible, when to commit, and how those choices shape our path forward. We dive into:Recognizing when a line...

Color makes things easy. Black & white forces you to actually see. When color is stripped away, what remains is contrast, light, shadow, texture, and story. The fundamentals of photography become impossible to ignore. In Vet Photo Contest 6, the theme is Black & White. Veterans from across the community submitted their work, each interpreting the theme through their own lens and experience...

Simplicity is not basic. It’s disciplined. In this episode of The Collective, we examine the KISS principle — why simple systems outperform complex ones in high-performance environments. Joined by Greg Everett and Steve Gowin, we explore how complexity often masks insecurity, why elite performers return to fundamentals, and how tangible, repeatable habits solve problems that overthinking never wil...

Color makes things easy. Black & white forces you to actually see. When color is stripped away, what remains is contrast, light, shadow, texture, and story. The fundamentals of photography become impossible to ignore. In Vet Photo Contest 6, the theme is Black & White. Veterans from across the community submitted their work, each interpreting the theme through their own lens and experience...

What makes a veteran? Is it combat? Deployment? Time served? Or is it something deeper — something internal? In this episode of The Collective, we sit down with Rudy Reyes, to unpack one of the most loaded questions inside the military community:What actually defines a veteran? Many who served hesitate to claim the title unless they’ve seen war. Others believe expanding the definition weakens it....

Context changes everything. In this episode of The Collective, we examine how external situations shape behavior—and how internal narratives shape interpretation. The same action can be praised in one environment and punished in another. Without context, judgment fails. Without introspection, growth stalls. Shaun and Chance are joined by Kia Tualla to explore the relationship between environment,...

What happens to brotherhood when the uniform comes off and the structure disappears? In this episode of The Collective, we explore how real trust and loyalty are rebuilt when there’s no rank, no mandate, and no mission forcing people together. When the systems that once created proximity vanish, most people drift. This conversation asks what actually holds when everything else is stripped away. Sh...