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What is a Good Life?

What is a Good Life?

Mark McCartney 184 Episodes Oct 13, 2026

What Is a Good Life? is a podcast that explores the fundamental questions of how we live, who we become, and what truly matters. For five years, the host has asked over 300 people the deceptively simple question: 'What is a good life?' Each conversation offers a unique perspective through stories, ideas, struggles, and joys. The podcast invites listeners to reflect on their own answers and provides a richer understanding of what it means to be human. New episodes are released every Tuesday.

Episodes

What is a Good Life? #193 - Living Life With Open Arms with Philippe Birker
What is a Good Life? #193 - Living Life With Open Arms with Philippe Birker Oct 13, 2026 3444 What happens when a hard-working founder is told by “the spirit world” to slow down and become a father? Philippe Birker is the co-founder of Climate Farmers, an organisation supporting the transition to regenerative agriculture across Europe. In this conversation he shares the question he’s living by: What do I want to leave behind?We talk about:A transformative ayahuasca retreat, and th
What is a Good Life? #192 - The Truth Will Set You Free with Kat Miles
What is a Good Life? #192 - The Truth Will Set You Free with Kat Miles Oct 6, 2026 3303 What does it take to stand up when something doesn't feel right?In this episode, we speak with Kat Miles, a Brixton business owner, community organiser, and founder and Chair of the Brixton Traders & Community Association (BTCA). She has traded in Brixton Village since 2011, and her shop became an informal hub for advice and support, which led her to found BTCA to give traders and the
What is a Good Life? #191 - Seeing The Humanity In Each Other with Nikkolas Smith
What is a Good Life? #191 - Seeing The Humanity In Each Other with Nikkolas Smith Sep 29, 2026 3441 This week we are joined by Nikkolas Smith, Hollywood concept artist, #1 NYT bestselling illustrator, and the creator of Sunday Sketch. We explore his journey from theme park designer to viral artivist. We talk about art as empathy, how art has helped him process grief and injustice, and the making of his hand-painted picture book The History of We – a 200,000-year visual journey back to h
What is a Good Life? #190 - Harrison Gardner on Building Your Own Security
What is a Good Life? #190 - Harrison Gardner on Building Your Own Security Sep 22, 2026 3907 Builder, broadcaster and author Harrison Gardner joins the show to talk about what it means to build your own security – the kind that comes from knowing you can meet your own basic needs. Harrison shares how he left Australia at seventeen with no plan beyond learning how the world works, the years he spent building preschools in an Indian slum, and how buying a derelict 200-year-old ston
What is a Good Life? #189 - What Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You with Toko-pa Turner
What is a Good Life? #189 - What Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You with Toko-pa Turner Sep 15, 2026 3622 Dreamworker and award-winning author Toko-pa Turner joins the show to talk about what it really means to let go – of the perceptions we project onto others, of the noise on the surface of life – so we can hear the "second attention" moving underneath. Toko-pa shares how she developed her own intimate relationship with dreams after leaving home at fourteen with no adult guidance, how a hau
What is a Good Life? #188 - Your One Wild & Precious Life with Laura Costello
What is a Good Life? #188 - Your One Wild & Precious Life with Laura Costello Sep 1, 2026 3470 This week we are in conversation with Laura Costello. Laura is Chief Communications Officer at Hometree, a nature restoration charity, and Ireland Lead with Purpose Disruptors. She led the Good Life 2030 Ireland project, which invited people across Ireland to imagine a brighter future and resulted in a national creative campaign promoting visions of wellbeing centred on connection rather
What is a Good Life? #187 - Artist, Merchant, Seeker with Ewan Townhead
What is a Good Life? #187 - Artist, Merchant, Seeker with Ewan Townhead Aug 25, 2026 3820 Ewan Townhead is an entrepreneur, coach, and the author of Artist, Merchant, Seeker: Bring Your Whole Self to the Path of Work. He spent a decade helping build Coaches Rising, a coach-training school, before stepping back to finish a book he'd been writing for seven years. We talk about the model at the centre of it – artist, merchant, and seeker – and his long process of trying to bring
What is a Good Life? #186 - Self-Sovereignty, Surveillance, and the Body as Art with OONA
What is a Good Life? #186 - Self-Sovereignty, Surveillance, and the Body as Art with OONA Aug 18, 2026 3545 In this episode I was joined by OONA – an anonymous performance artist known for her works Milking The Artist, Dear David, and Look Touch Own. Recognised by her mask and dark sunglasses, she treats anonymity itself as both method and performance, examining power, value, and identity within digital culture.We discuss data, extraction, the body as art, and what sovereignty means through phy
What is a Good Life? #185 - Sarah Marquis on Fear, Instinct, and Surviving Alone in the Wild
What is a Good Life? #185 - Sarah Marquis on Fear, Instinct, and Surviving Alone in the Wild Aug 11, 2026 3659 National Geographic Explorer Sarah Marquis has spent 25 years walking alone through some of the most remote landscapes on Earth — the equivalent of circumnavigating the planet on foot. Her expeditions include a 14,000km, 17-month crossing of the Australian Outback, three years walking solo from Siberia to Australia, and three months surviving off bush tucker in the Kimberley. In this epis
What is a Good Life? #184 - Resting in the Core of My Identity with Dr. Miriam Meckel
What is a Good Life? #184 - Resting in the Core of My Identity with Dr. Miriam Meckel Jul 21, 2026 2830 What does it actually mean to be human in an age racing toward AGI? In this episode of What is a Good Life?, Mark sits down with Dr. Miriam Meckel - award-winning journalist, professor of communication management at the University of St. Gallen, and founder of ada learning - to explore the question that has shaped her life's work: what is irreducibly human, and what are we at risk of losi
What is a Good Life? #183 - When Fear Becomes My Partner with Ralf Wetzel
What is a Good Life? #183 - When Fear Becomes My Partner with Ralf Wetzel Jul 14, 2026 3695 In this episode of What is a Good Life, host Mark McCartney sits down with Ralf Wetzel - a leadership scholar who has taught at leading European business schools, and a clown and mask performer whose solo show Absolutely Reliable! has played the Edinburgh Fringe. This episode is built around one question: what does it mean to have a good relationship with fear? Ralf grew up under surveill
What is a Good Life? #182 - Cities That Make Us Happier with Lior Steinberg
What is a Good Life? #182 - Cities That Make Us Happier with Lior Steinberg Jul 7, 2026 3355 In this episode of What is a Good Life, host Mark McCartney sits down with Lior Steinberg, a Rotterdam-based urban planner and co-founder of Humankind, a multidisciplinary team working toward urban happiness for all. Lior is also the author of the children's book The Car That Wanted to Be a Bike. Together they unpack why so many cities remain trapped in car-centric design decades after ur

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