All-Time Greatest Podcasts

In this interview Sophie talks about how she used to weigh more than 350 lbs and made the significant change to lose and keep off more than half that weight. We talk about the mindset and behavior that allowed her to achieve such a massive transformation which also led Sophie to founding Shape House, an urban sweat lodge, and her creative process to writing her books.

Michael Bungay Stanier joins me today to discuss his views on commitment, change, and the role of curiosity in shifting people’s behaviors and mindsets. He highlights the difference between easy and hard change, how to make the desired shifts in your life, and the importance of uncovering individual challenges. Michael also shares his insights on coaching and highlights questions that can help shift conversations from advice to curiosity and create space for deeper insight.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona joins me today to discuss the power of indigenous wisdom and why he believes that people must be aware of the real history of indigenous people in this nation. He shares insights surrounding his creative process as an author, and why it is crucial to be disciplined in your writing instead of waiting for the inspiration to hit. Lewis also highlights several books and authors who have had a profound impact on him and his advice for writers seeking to improve their craft.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona joins me today to discuss the mystery of memory and how what we do and don’t remember can set the groundwork for writing new stories and changing our life trajectory. He shares his insights on energy, ritual, and the power of prayer, and how a single metaphorical snowflake can trigger an avalanche. Lewis also shares his insight on the healthcare system’s approach to healing and the impact of ceremony in creating significant, lasting change in people’s lives.

Nick joins me today to discuss why he believes our thoughts and emotions are similar and why he compares emotions to firecrackers. We discuss the importance of embracing our thoughts and emotions and the negative spiral that is created by suppressing them. We also discuss Nick’s perspective on using meditation to embrace your emotions, why some people find it difficult to see positive results from meditation, and why Nick believes life is like an ‘endless knot of discovery.’

Nick Egan joins me today to share how he discovered Zen and Buddhist practices and why it appealed to him. We explore how we often become the prisoner of our own perspectives and how we can liberate ourselves from these prisons. Nick shares strategies and practices we can use to transform our limitations and explains how we can use our thoughts and emotions to diminish the adverse impact of disempowering emotions. Nick also shares what inspired him to write his book, Shift: The Art of Transforming Limitations, and the lessons and insight he hopes readers will gain from it.

Lydia joins me today to discuss insight into her creative process while writing "Wait, It Gets Worse" as well as her writing routine and the dynamic between her and her editor throughout the process. Lydia shares when and where her love of writing began, and when she realized she wanted to transform her story and passion for writing into the creation of a book. Lydia also highlights the importance of feeling complete with your story by the end of your initial writing process, so you feel ready to release and surrender to the ins and outs of editing and publishing...

Lydia Slaby joins me today to discuss her book Wait, It Gets Worse, and some of the universal life lessons and insights that readers can gain from reading the memoir. She shares her story and discussed how her cancer journey put a stop sign in the road, allowing her the chance to pause and move forward with renewed direction and self-awareness. Lydia also shares the importance of tuning into all aspects of ourselves - mind, body, and spirit - and why it is crucial to ensure that you are indeed a human being, not merely a human doing.

Hal Elrod joins me today to discuss the power of The Miracle Morning and how it has up-leveled the lives of people around the world by laying the groundwork for more intentional, purpose-driven days. He shares the importance of choosing a mindset of gratitude, even when facing adversity, and what it takes to truly enact change in our lives. Hal also highlights how our alarm clocks can represent either the day’s first gift or the day’s first challenge and how small actions can be catalysts for large-scale change.

Bill Eddy joins me again to discuss how heredity, the environment and culture, as well as your early childhood development are contributing factors in the development of your personality. We discuss limiting your exposure to social media and why it’s often challenging for us to limit that exposure. We also discuss why Bill strongly advises parents to control and limit what their children see on social media, why it’s critical for Americans to learn about high conflict personalities, and why all human behavior is merely a series of patterns.

Bill Eddy joins me today to discuss the five types of toxic personalities that can ruin your life. We discuss how we can deal with high conflict personality types, the difference between personality disorders and people with HCP, and how someone can have a high conflict personality without having a personality disorder.

Marshall Goldsmith joins me again today to discuss his stakeholder-centered approach to coaching and how it creates a constellation of accountability. He shares his coaching philosophy and why he believes it’s harder to change people’s perception than it is to change your own behavior. He explains why he decided to offer performance-based coaching rates and the benefits he’s received with this pricing model. He also shares his book writing process, why he recommends working with a co-author, and how to determine which field you want to become recognized as a world-class expert.

Marshall Goldsmith joins me today to discuss internal and external validation and how getting them mixed up can make us feel like an impostor or victim. He shares the biggest mistakes many coaches make and how to become a more effective leader. He discusses the challenges of achieving long-lasting changes in behavior, strategies to achieve it, and the importance of letting others know your goals for creating lasting change in your life and career. He also shares his coaching philosophy, the difference between feedforward and feedback, and his advice for other coaches and service-driven professionals.

This week in my 5th solo podcast episode, I’m going to explore five questions on the topic of authenticity. In my coaching practice I find this topic to be one that everyone wrestles with. What does it mean to be authentic? What does it mean to feel comfortable in your own skin and how can we do it? One of the questions that I like to ask people that I work with when I coach is who’s the most authentic person you know and what about them makes you think they’re authentic? What you need to know is you don’t...

So as I prepared for this solo cast I thought, what could I share that might be of value to you? I want to do two things: 1) I want to share with you a story about my six year old daughter, and 2) I want to invite you to really think about your own routine. Is your routine supporting you? As a coach I have seen (I've seen in my own life as well), that all human behavior is a series of patterns. Maybe today is an opportunity to really look at that and consciously map out what your...

Today I want to share with you, in case it’s useful to you, a bit about my journey to creating the Life’s Best Practices Breakthrough Coaching Program. I suspect that you also have something you want to create or something you’re in the middle of creating and you might be wondering, is it worth it? You have a gift, something that you want to share. We all have gifts and talents, but how can you share that with others in a way that’s ultimately fulfilling? At one point in my life I wanted to write and see produced my own...

Welcome to the School for Good Living podcast. This is the 2nd solo episode this month and it’s just you, me, and my producer Dallan. Today I open up about my own struggles with identity and how a sweat lodge experience in New Mexico helped me clarify the constant questions – Who am I? What do I want? Why am I here? Challenging questions that we carry most of our lives but rarely get the opportunity to dedicate our awareness to. There is this idea that any one of us is so much more than anything we could possibly use...

Hello my friends, it’s Bryan here. This month I’ve chosen to focus on our relationship and explore what it means to be a listener. Sitting in a sound booth, I have no idea where this podcast goes, who receives it, or what impact it might have. I might not know you, I might’ve met you before, or you might be my best friend. I want to build this relationship a little further by sharing with you a little bit about me and about the School for Good Living – what it is, why it exists, and what it could do...

My guest today is Carl Honoré, author of a book called In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. Carl is an award winning writer, broadcaster, and TEDTalk speaker. He’s considered the voice of the global slow movement and talks about how to thrive in a fast world by slowing down. His TED talk on this same subject has been viewed more than 3 million times. He spent a decade working as a journalist before really diving in to this slow movement thing. He makes the point that when we slow down (at the right moments) that ultimately we’re...

Today my guest is Clark Strand, author of Waking Up To The Dark: Ancient Wisdom For A Sleepless Age. Clark is someone who has written six books and several well known publications. In this interview Clark talks about something called bimodal sleep and he shares research done by a doctor named Thomas Wehr. Dr. Wehr was looking for human beings’ primordial pattern of sleep – wanting to know how did human beings sleep before the electrical age. We also touch on light pollution – what it’s doing to our environment and what it’s doing to our bodies. Clark shares the...

My conversation today is with Dean Burnett. Dean is a neuroscientist, a lecturer, an author, a blogger or podcaster, a pundit science communicator, and comedian. Dean discusses with us his book, “Idiot Brain, What Your Head Is Really Up To”. It’s one of five books that he’s written in the last few years. This book goes through and takes a look at why we do the things we do and offers some of the latest scientific rationale, but in a very humorous way. We talk about depression and mental illness, something he’s written about extensively. We talk about the blog...

Today my guest is Nathalie Molina Niño. Never having met before, I was interested to interview Nathalie because she has some very different perspectives and experience in life from me. She’s Latina, originally from Ecuador in South America, who came to the United States. She was raised here, learned english perfectly, spent time as the family’s interpreter in some ways, and describes in this interview the experience of feeling like she didn’t belong here, but reframes an experience that is so common and so disempowering one where she feels she belongs…everywhere. Today Nathalie is an impact investor, focused on making...

Pascal is Singularity University’s Chair for Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation. He is the cofounder and enfant terrible of Radical Ventures – his work focuses on the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, culture, and global impact. Pascal has founded a series of startups and he has a deep background in technology. Pascal has written a book called The Heretic, Daily Therapeutics for Entrepreneurs and has blogged and written a newsletter for a long time, more than 1,200 posts. In this interview, he shares a lot of what he’s seen in the world of technology, what’s on the horizon, how our world will...

Hello my friends, today my guest is Akshay Nanavati – author of Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth, and Happiness. In this book, Akshay defines Fearvana as the bliss that results from engaging our fears to pursue our own worthy struggle. Akshay has lived in Bombay, Bangalore, Singapore, Austin, and Eden Prairie, Minnesota because, hey, why not? So in this interview he shares his experiences, what he’s done with his life, including joining the Marine Corps, where he spent time sweeping in front of vehicle convoys to find explosives. He’s skydived, mountain biked, scuba...

Brian is the founder and CEO of several companies, including 1-800-GOT-JUNK but also a high school and a college dropout. Regardless he has built what has become a nearly half a billion-dollar group of companies. In his book WTF?! (Willing To Fail: How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success, Brian talks about passion and if you don’t know exactly what you’re passionate about, how to approach finding your passion or not bothering and just making a commitment instead. If you have an entrepreneurial bone in your body, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation with Brian.

In this episode my guest is AJ Jacobs – author, journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig. AJ has written four New York Times bestsellers, with his writing combining memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self help. His genre immersion journalism, has also been called stunt journalism, where he goes deep into a particular topic or experience and then writes about it (sometimes for years). His most recent book and the one that we explore most in this interview is, Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey, where he endeavors to thank everyone who was involved in making his morning cup...

Erwan Le Corre is the acknowledged founder and leader of the concept of Natural Movement. He’s been called one of the fittest men in the world and a fitness visionary by Men’s Health magazine. Born in France, he grew up with a black and white TV, no remote, no video games, no personal computers and no internet. His father encouraged him to run, crawl, climb, and jump. He was introduced to karate at 15 years old which taught him discipline, method, and commitment. At 19, he’d been training for seven years in both natural and urban settings. At 27, he...

“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.” David Burkus was named one of the world’s top business thought leaders by Thinkers 50 and he’s a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review. In this episode David shares about the idea that networking is not necessarily about making new connections, but it’s about understanding the network you’re already in and making new connections as part of that. We talk about weak ties, dormant ties, how most of us allow our networks to grow organically, but David says we shouldn’t. And as we get into the writing and the creativity...

Michael Bungay Stainer is founder and CEO of Box of Crayons and author of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever. He’s also written Do More Great Work: Stop the Busy Work, Start the Work that Matters. He is also a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University and was the first Canadian coach of the year in 2006. Box of Crayons is a company that helps organizations do less good work and more great work. Michael is a teacher of 10 minute coaching, to help busy managers and leaders build stronger teams and get...

Today my guest is Mark Thompson – The World’s #1 CEO Coach, a title that he inherited from Marshall Goldsmith, our friend and mentor. Mark is in the MG 100 with me (the Marshall Goldsmith 100). He’s a leader inside that group, a member of 50 Thinkers, and he is also the coach to some of the top leaders in business. Some of his clients include CEO and cofounder Logan Green, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, the CEO of the World Bank Jim Kim, Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Charles Schwab, and Steve Jobs. He’s one of these people that seems to...