Humans Aren't Robots

Dans takes us on an epic journey working around the world, from urban planning to innovating here in SA. The perfect HAR guest a mixture of a deeply human worldview with tech at the centre of all his thinking. Dans has a philosophical take on technology, the environment and people, and how culture and urban design can either foster or hinder connection.

From L’Oréal Canada to San Remo, Adelaide, Justina brings an artistic, creative and worldly lens to defining brand. She leans into experimentation, learning fast and redirecting when needed, bringing a philosophical perspective to both business and life. In this episode, we pause to ask: what does brand and marketing actually mean in 2026, and how do businesses cut through and amplify? A big belie...

Two founders. Zero filter. Eli Moulton started Plus One Dress Hire on maternity leave. What began as a practical idea became a movement - one built on sustainability, inclusion, and the belief that every woman deserves to feel extraordinary. Now she's building Em Body and redefining what it means to lead a brand with values at the centre. Justin James knew he wanted to be a chef at ten years o...

AI and learning was deeply divisive when large language models first arrived. Many saw it as a threat to the entire education system. Rebecca Weber saw opportunity for teachers and for students. After nearly two decades in education, Rebecca is now helping lead one of the most ambitious AI rollouts in Australian schools, building tools that are already saving teachers thousands of hours and reshap...

A real conversation about what it takes to manage scale at speed, empower teams to perform at their peak and juggle ambition with family life. We sit down with Adam Koch to unpack what leadership looks like beyond the title. Adam does not lead by having all the answers. He leads by getting great people in the room, asking better questions, setting clear direction and then stepping back so his team...

This episode explores how  LIV Golf Adelaide  has become the benchmark for live sport experiences. Peta St Clair unpacks how LIV pushes the edge, builds unforgettable moments, and why Adelaide is central to the magic.

This episode is a deep dive into the 40 Under 40 program—what it means, why it matters, and why more young South Australians should back themselves and apply. Sam and journalist David Simmons (Solstice Media) break down what they look for as judges, from compelling storytelling to impact beyond revenue. They tackle the struggle many South Aussies have with talking themselves up (hello, tall poppy...

In this episode, Sam chats with founder and educator Nicole Dyson. We always really enjoy chatting to Nicole and hearing about the ways she is challenging education systems, inspiring young people and building a new way of learning and adapting for kids in a world that is rapidly changing. We are now in a world where the average 12 year old will have 17 jobs in their career and 50% of jobs won't e...

This week Sam chats with entrepreneur, journalist and creator of Young Blood Men's Mental Health, Callum MacPherson. Young Blood is an amazing podcast all about men's mental health, challenging stigmas and striving for a world with less suicide. They chat about Callum's past in the media, how he is building his company, meeting amazing people and sharing life-changing stories. People's attitudes t...

Lauren is a Social Impact Specialist. She works for the Atlassian Foundation and was here in Adelaide to run a session at Southstart. Lauren works with dynamic, creative and purpose-driven teams and leaders. She had some great insight into companies that really live their values and encourage their teams, building aligned teams of people.

In this episode I chat with Ben Colley who works for Teamgage and founded the GOOD Product community here in Adelaide. I've been keen to have Ben on the podcast for a while, he has a really interesting background and has some great experience working with startups and building diverse teams - something I was really keen to chat about.

Purpose is a bit of a buzz word at the moment but it's something that is really important to people, and more and more it is essential to think about for customers. It's something I have been going back and fourth on for for a while, often it is assumed that to make an impact, your purpose needs to be huge - something that will change the world. I am trying to reframe this, I think we can approach...

At Digital Noir, we work in a creative environment and industry so creativity is kind of a given but creativity is in everyone, and in all industries. Creativity is how we approach problems, how we look at things, how we work with different skillsets to get to a common goal. So many business practices can really stifle creativity - we need to allow the time and the space for new ideas, creativity...

Fear is something that affects people in all walks of life. In all jobs and industries. It's an extremely strong emotion and something that can really affect our ability to perform at our best. We discuss Fear with our guests and interestingly hear it described in so many ways - all of our guests had a different take on how it can manifest in situations and ways of confronting it.

This season, each episode is a mash up of different conversations centred around a theme. This week's subject is Diversity. It's something we've been thinking about and discussing on the podcast for a while. Not just integrating diversity at a "high" level in a company, but actually looking at practicalities and some real issues faced by current and new staff. All these conversations were recorded...

A series of chats with some amazing speakers from SouthStart last year. This episode's theme is the Future of Work.

Craig described Southstart as a gathering of curious, creative chaotic individuals stumbling through the world trying to change the future somehow. I love that. Our chat focused on fostering that spirit and, more broadly, how we continue to do this outside of events like this. Some key areas of the conversation were: Southstart 2021 Community building How to have better (more meaningful) conversat...

I really enjoyed my chat with Nick. He is best known as the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Linktree. If you have not heard of them I am not sure what rock you have been under! Linktree is a tech platform that connects audiences to the online ecosystems of brands, celebrities, creators and causes. I am sure many of you have it on your Instagram account as we speak. Nick is a fellow designer an...

It was a pleasure chatting with Cormac. He was speaking at Pause Fest last year and we sat down and had a wide-ranging conversation. Storytelling is at the heart of everything Cormac does and in our chat, I discoed it has been a constant thread in his life and career, starting from, his Punk Rock roots in Ireland and taking him around the world in a variety of roles.

Alastair Simpson is a leader and mentor, serving as VP of Design at Dropbox. He loves working with multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex business and interaction design challenges. When we spoke to him, he was head of design at Atlassian, leading a cross-geo design team across a portfolio of their cloud Products and Platforms; Trello, Confluence, Platform, Design System, Ecosystem and Growth....

This week on Humans Aren't Robots we present a fantastic conversation with the world's leading authority on sextech, Bryony Cole. Sex Tech you say? What is that? Oh, just a 30 30 dollar industry and valued at 130 billion over the next 5 years. A perfect guest for our podcast. I started the chat by asking Bryony what one of the most defining moments in her life has been and from there we tackle a n...

On this weeks episode, we sat down with Trent Clews-de Castella - Co-founder of Phoria. PHORIA is a world-leading immersive tech studio that specialises in cutting-edge Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR/XR) technology. Trent started the business with some friends from school and they have grown to a team of over 30 people in Melbourne. We met Trent as they were demoing some of their i...

I had such a fun time talking with Miles Orkin. Miles is a UX lead at Google and spends a lot of his time thinking about how he can empower teams. Miles started his career writing to Thrasher magazine. Which basically makes him my hero! Miles had some fantastic insights into how to create an environment in your workplace that is geared towards maximum happiness and success from teams.

I was really excited to sit down with Dom Pym who is the Co-Founder of Up Bank and software development company Ferocia. I have heard Dom speak a few times and have been a fan of Up since it launched a few years ago. If you have not come across Up, it is at the forefront of changing the way we think about bank and banking. I fell in love with their customer-centric approach and attention to small...

It was an absolute pleasure to meet and chat with Kate earlier this year at Pausefest. Kate has followed her curiosity and passion and found herself the director of design at NEST which is now a Google company. She studied industrial design here in Australia and had dreams of designing more human connections with computers. She started her career at Emu design in Brisbane at a time when there were...