The Monk on a Motorbike

I came into this conversation thinking I was finally going to understand Bitcoin. And I did. Kinda. But that turned out to be the least interesting part. Jeremy Jones is Senior Teaching Engineer at Coinbase, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. I've known him since 2008, when we were both volunteering at a Vipassana centre above Dharamsala in the Himalayas — the same year,...

Today my guest is Werner Meier, a realised Advaita master originally from Swiss Germany. Werner left his home in the Swiss alps in the seventies and headed for India  in search of enlightenment He ended up locking himself in a tiny cell at Amma’s ashram in Kerala for many years, enduring incredible hardships before he finally reached his goal   I met Werner in Tiruvannamalai in Southern India wher...

Today I'm talking to meditation teacher, Yanai Postelnik about old age, sickness, death and the Dhamma Yanai was diagnosed with bowel cancer just over a year ago and so has a very personal experience of both the Dhamma and ill health. He has led retreats on the subject and talks very openly and candidly about what he has been through, so far from being a morbid conversation I personally found...

Today my guest is Ayala Gill. Ayala has been committed to a path of insight and awakening since her early twenties. She has been practicing Iyengar yoga since 1977 -aged just six years old- Insight Meditation and Dhamma since 1995, Insight Yoga (including yin yoga and psychospiritual enquiry) since 2001 and the animistic practices of the Andean-Inkan Holy Mountain tradition since 2017. She says sh...

Today my guest is Ethan Pollock, meditation teacher and co-founder of Mindful Living Community. Ethan has been facilitating mindfulness groups and retreats for over a decade. In his early twenties he gave up a career as a commercially successful artist and spent five years training at Plum Village with the internationally recognized mindfulness teacher & Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. He is a qua...

Today my guest is meditation teacher Kirsten Kratz. Born and brought up in Germany Kirsten has practiced Buddhist meditation in Asia and the West since 1993. She started teaching in 2006 and since 2015 she has been ‘teacher in residence’ at Gaia House meditation centre supporting those on personal retreat there. Her love and understanding of the Dhamma has been strongly influenced by, among others...

Today my guest is meditation teacher Gavin Milne. Gavin teaches at Gaia House retreat centre in Devon, one of the largest Buddhist meditation centres in Europe Gavin has been practicing meditation for twenty years and gave up a career as a design engineer for the Red Bull Formula One race team to travel to Asia and the US to explore the Dhamma intensively before returning to the UK. There he becam...

Today I’m talking to Professor Marc Buehner about how we make decisions Marc is professor of cognitive Psychology at Cardiff University in Wales where he designed a course in decision making which he teaches to final-year students. I’ve always been pretty indecisive, so when I learned recently that you can formally study the decision-making process and how to make better ones I wanted to know more...

Sally Kempton Is a meditation teacher and author. As a young successful journalist and feminist living in New York in the early 70s Sally had an awakening experience after dropping acid for the first time. This got her interested in meditation and yoga and led her to become a monastic under the guidance of the Indian yogi Swami Muktananda For the next twenty years, she studied and practiced Hindu...

There are a lot of bleak predictions going around about artificial intelligence creating mass unemployment or even becoming sentient and enslaving humankind or killing us all off. In this episode, I speak to one of the world's leading authorities on AI, Professor Dave Cliff about whether the computers of the future will finish us off or save us.  Dave is a professor of Computer Science at Bri...

Today my guest is Michael Von Der Geest. Michael helps to run one of the big four accountancy firms EY which used to be called Ernst and Young. He is also the CEO of EY Seren their digital platform. He has helped to make mindfulness teaching widely available to their 250, 000 staff worldwide and sponsors their internal mindfulness support network which now has 10,000 members. Here he talks about h...

If you’re interested in Magick, what it is, and just as importantly what It isn’t, then you have to tune into this interview with Daniel Ingram This is the second time Daniel has appeared on my show. Daniel is famous for his teachings on Buddhist meditation and his controversial views about meditative attainments-but is less well known as a practitioner of Magick, something which he has been doing...

If you’re interested in Magick, what it is, and just as importantly what It isn’t, then you have to tune into this interview with Daniel Ingram This is the second time Daniel has appeared on my show. Daniel is famous for his teachings on Buddhist meditation and his controversial views about meditative attainments-but is less well known as a practitioner of Magick, something which he has been doing...

If you’re interested in Magick, what it is and just as importantly what It isn’t, then you have to tune into this interview with Daniel Ingram This is the second time Daniel has appeared on my show. Daniel is famous for his teaching on Buddhist meditation and his controversial views about meditative attainments-but is less well known as a practitioner of Magick, something which he has been doing f...

Today my guest is Nir Eyal. Nir is a bestselling author, tech entrepreneur university lecturer and investor who literally wrote the book on how to build habit-forming products The model he described in his first book Hooked has been used by countless tech startups such as Fitbod to build a huge customer base But in is his latest book, Indistractable, he explains how to stop getting distracted by t...

Today I'm talking to former Buddhist monk, therapist and climate change activist, Suvaco. Suvaco spent twenty years living as a monk in the jungles of northeast Thailand, getting up before three in the morning, meditating for many hours a day and walking for miles to beg for one meal a day. Born in Denmark and raised in Italy he now lives in the UK and works as a psychotherapist. Here he talks abo...

This time round I’m talking to shaman and healer, Ya’Acov Darling Khan. Ya’acov is very much a 21st century shaman. Based in Devon in the UK, he is a bestselling author and founder of the School of Movement Medicine. He has devoted the last 30 yeas of his life to bringing together ancient shamanic practices from different indigenous cultures around the world to make what he calls everyday shamanis...

If you’ve ever wondered what happens after you die, how the world looks when you’re enlightened, or can’t understand why you’re spending all this time meditating but still seem to get anxious and angry, then you absolutely, positively, 100% have to tune into this episode of the Monk on a Motorbike podcast This time around I’m talking to former critical care doctor, Daniel Ingram, who very controve...

If you’ve ever wondered what happens after you die, how the world looks when you’re enlightened, or can’t understand why you’re spending all this time meditating but still seem to get anxious and angry, then you absolutely, positively, 100% have to tune into this episode of the Monk on a Motorbike podcast This time around I’m talking to former critical care doctor, Daniel Ingram, who very controve...

If you’ve ever wondered what happens after you die, how the world looks when you’re enlightened, or can’t understand why you’re spending all this time meditating but still seem to get anxious and angry, then you absolutely, positively, 100% have to tune into this episode of the Monk on a Motorbike podcast This time around I’m talking to former critical care doctor, Daniel Ingram, who very controve...

If you’ve ever wondered what happens after you die, how the world looks when you’re enlightened, or can’t understand why you’re spending all this time meditating but still seem to get anxious and angry, then you absolutely, positively, 100% have to tune into this episode of the Monk on a Motorbike podcast This time around I’m talking to former critical care doctor, Daniel Ingram, who very controve...

To celebrate International Women’s Day, I’m launching a new season of Monk on a Motorbike podcasts with an interview with political activist, textile artist, and author Rachael Matthews. Rachael first came to fame in the 1990s when she was organizing knit-ins on the London Underground, and in clubs, pubs, museums and open spaces around the city. Here she talks about knitting as a politically subve...

Today my guest is Paul Douglas. Jailed at the age of 16 for his part in a murder Paul spent 12 years in prison where he learned mindfulness. Here he talks openly about the constant violence and the endless fear and depression of life behind bars. and how he eventually discovered meditation which he says transformed his life. Now he has been released he is training to teach mindfulness in the priso...

Today I’m talking to Venerable Candavissudhi. Ven Canda is a Buddhist nun in the Theravadan Thai forest tradition. Born and raised in England Ven Canda went to Asia at the Age of 19 where she discovered Vipassana meditation. She spent the next 10 years practicing mostly with her teacher  S N Goenkaji at his centres in India before becoming a nun and moving to Burma to deepen her practice and...

In this episode I'm talking to mindfulness teacher Sonya Russo. Sonya teaches mindfulness to prisoners in London's overcrowded and often violent jails.   Here she tells the story of turning her back on a successful career in journalism when,  after struggling with drug addiction and mental health issues she was introduced to mindfulness in rehab.  Cynical about it at first she credi...