All-Time Greatest Podcasts

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...

Dan Brule is author of Breathwork: A 3-Week Breathing Program to Gain Clarity, Calm, and Better Health. Dan is a modern-day teacher, healer, and a world-renowned pioneer in this field of breathwork. Dan is awesome. He has spent four decades traveling the world, learning what he can from anybody who knows about breathing techniques that he didn’t know about. He’s putting them into this book. I’m so grateful to him for coming on this show and I’m grateful to you for listening. So please enjoy this conversation with Dan Brule and may your life never be the same, in a...

James is the author of Stuffocation: Why we’ve had enough of stuff and need experience more than ever, which he published in 2013. In this conversation we explore ideas in his new book, Time and How to Spend it: The Seven Rules for Richer, Happier Days, which was published this year in 2019. I think this is a very timely book because as James asserts, we have more free time than ever – and he quantifies that. There’s some scientific research, quite a lot of it in this book actually, but he shows how even though we have more free...

Donald was born in Irvine, Scotland, and became an expert on the relationship between modern cognitive behavioral therapy and classical Greek and Roman philosophy. His most recent book is called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius published this year in 2019. Part of what I love so much is that he brings to life these figures from antiquity, from ancient history, and helps us understand who they were, how they lived, and what lessons they have for us that are still relevant. In fact, maybe more timely than ever. I hope that you...

Wally Hines is the Director of Standards for JETPUBS Inc. His background includes a B.S. in Aeronautical Studies from the University of North Dakota, followed by various flying positions. He has flown for two regional airlines and, since 1996, has been a pilot for Sun Country Airlines. He has been at JETPUBS since 2001 and is one of its founders. JETPUBS provides manuals services and training materials to over 400 airlines and training centers worldwide. Wally discusses the writing process for his yet to be released book on fighting against false accusations from the government and his years-long battle to...

Today my guest is Commander Mark Divine. His nickname when he was in the Navy SEALs, was Cyborg. In his class of 185 participants, he was number one of those 19 that graduated. He’s unquestionably a leader and a warrior who teaches other leaders and warriors. Mark has written The Way Of The SEAL, Kokoro Yoga, Unbeatable Mind, and 8 Weeks to SEALFIT. In this episode we talk about how to transmute desire into certainty, how to achieve peace and contentment, how to live one day, one lifetime as a philosophy. You’ll hear from a man in this interview who...

Ian Manuel is a truly inspiring soul. He’s a spoken word poet who’s messages is the impossible is obtainable. When I first met Ian, he said, “God has given me the gift to compose words in ways that move people.” He had plenty of time to practice cultivating that gift while he spent a 26 year prison sentence, 18 consecutive years in solitary confinement, for a crime he committed at 13 years old. He received life in prison without the possibility of parole. In this interview, we talk about the crime that landed him there. We talk about this idea...

My guest is Scott Harrison. Scott is the founder and CEO of charity:water. He’s also the author of a book called Thirst: A Story of Redemption, compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World. Scott describes himself in this interview as having become at one point in his life early on, the most degenerate, hedonistic, sycophantic person that he knew. What is so awesome about Scott and his story is the fact that it is possible to change, and you’ll hear his transformation from a nightclub promoter and a party promoter. The more effective he was at...

Today my guest is Adam Piore, author of The Body Builders, Inside the Science of the Engineered Human. This is a fascinating book that explores the cutting edge of science and technology as it relates to the human body. Adam is an award-winning journalist based in New York. If there’s one thing that you take away from this interview, perhaps it’s this idea that we all have things we can be better at. It’s easy to look at somebody who’s where we want to be, who’s doing what we want to do and think they are probably amazing. But at...

He’s the first poet I’ve had on this School for Good Living Podcast and he’s written a book called Words to Dance to: A Book of Poetic Meditations. He’s already written his followup called And the Lights Came On: A Book of Zen Parables and Poetic Meditations. He reads one of these zen parables in this podcast. We talk about how to know when something’s really a hell yes, when something really is a part of your calling, the willingness to give up, and everything to pursue your truth. We also explore this idea that everything is sacred and the...

Today I have a conversation with a really amazing indigenous healer, Arkan Lushwala, who is a Peruvian ceremonial leader and was adopted by a Lakota Elder named Basil Brave Heart. Arkan has written a couple books and is a very humble man. In fact, he’s the only podcast guest I’ve had who, when I asked him to describe himself, says, “First, as a farmer.” Please take anything you hear in this interview with some caution, particularly some of the rituals and ceremonies that he talks about.

James Altucher is an amazing human being, a top-ranked podcaster, a next level thinker, an investor, entrepreneur, author, stand up comedian, and former hedge fund manager. James shares his perspective on trying to be 1% better each day and opens up about giving away everything he owned and living only in Airbnb’s for over 3 years.

Dr. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu is a psychologist and has training and clinical and community psychology, Yoga, meditation, and Chinese medicine. He holds a Doctorate from Harvard University. He’s been a teacher and counselor in Japan and the United States working with all ages from daycare to medical school. His current research is in the assessment of mindfulness and promoting personal wellbeing, leadership and social transformation. I was privileged to find Stephen’s book in the basement of the Strand bookstore in New York City. Please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu.