What is a Good Life?

Mark McCartney
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

What Is a Good Life? is a podcast about the questions that shape our lives: how we live, who we become, and what truly matters. For the past five years, I've asked more than 300 people one deceptively simple question: What is a good life? There isn't a single answer. Instead, each conversation offers a different way of seeing the world—through stories, ideas, struggles, joys, and moments of hard-earned wisdom. Together, they form a richer picture of what it means to be human. Whether you're searching for clarity, purpose, or simply a thoughtful conversation, this podcast is an invitation to reflect on your own answer. New episodes every Tuesday.

  1. 6d ago

    What is a Good Life? #184 - Resting in the Core of My Identity with Dr. Miriam Meckel

    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 losing? Miriam, the first female editor-in-chief of WirtschaftsWoche and former State Secretary for Media and International Affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia, opens up about a burnout that became a life-altering depression, the vulnerability of turning her private writing into her bestselling book Letter to My Life, and why she believes embodied experience — not intelligence — is what truly separates us from machines. It is a conversation about identity, friction, kindness, and what it takes to live a quiet, honest life. For more of Dr. Miriam Meckel's work:ada learning: https://www.join-ada.com/enLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meckel/ For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #184 - Resting in the Core of My Identity with Dr. Miriam Meckel

  2. Jul 14

    What is a Good Life? #183 - When Fear Becomes My Partner with Ralf Wetzel

    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 surveillance in communist East Germany, in a family where fear was something you lived with, not something you spoke about. He spent years trying to work through it - through therapy, yoga, and psychedelics, and eventually through improv and clown theatre. Along the way, we get into a teaching moment that tested everything he'd learned, and why a plastic clown nose turned out to teach him more about truth than theory ever did. This episode is for anyone who wants to reconsider their relationship with fear. For more from Ralf Wetzel:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralf-wetzel-3a742011/ For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #183 - When Fear Becomes My Partner with Ralf Wetzel

  3. Jul 7

    What is a Good Life? #182 - Cities That Make Us Happier with Lior Steinberg

    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 urbanist Jane Jacobs first warned against it. They talk about the "sidewalk ballet," how children's toys teach us to want cars, the surprising parallel between car culture and cigarette smoking, Barcelona's superblocks, and why trees are the best climate technology we already have.  This is a thought-provoking conversation on how often change feels impossible until it is here. For more of Lior Steinberg's work:Humankind: https://www.humankind.city/Personal Website: https://steinberg.nu/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liorsteinberg/ For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #182 - Cities That Make Us Happier with Lior Steinberg

  4. Jun 30

    What is a Good Life? #181 - Finding Peace Within Myself with Kadam Adam Starr

    What does it mean to live a truly meaningful life and why do so many of us feel an emptiness even at the height of our success? In this episode, Mark sits down with Kadam Adam Starr, who has been an international teacher of meditation and Buddhism for over 20 years and is the principal teacher at Tara Kadampa Meditation Centre in Dublin. Adam walked away from a corporate media career in 2005 to pursue a different kind of question. What began as a planned year or two away became a complete reorientation of his life. Together they explore the emptiness that often arrives in our late twenties and early thirties, the difference between fleeting pleasure and genuine peace of mind, and why Adam came to realise that the problem was never his career - it was how badly out of balance he'd become. They talk about the shift from an ego-driven life to one grounded in compassion, what a three-month silent retreat revealed about our shared humanity, and how living from a peaceful mind and a good heart can make life feel radically more simple. This is a conversation about self-knowledge, the attention economy, meeting difficult people with friendship rather than judgment, and the realisation that a good life may come down to how we choose to show up each day. For more of Kadam Adam Starr's work:Tara Kadampa Meditation Centre: https://meditateinireland.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/tara_kadampa_meditation_centre/ For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #181 - Finding Peace Within Myself with Kadam Adam Starr

  5. Jun 23

    What is a Good Life? #180 - The Art of a Meaningful Life with Karen L. Jacob, PhD

    Dr. Karen L. Jacob is a clinical psychologist, Program Director of the Gunderson Residence at McLean Hospital, and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She specialises in the assessment and treatment of personality disorders, with particular expertise in borderline personality disorder. In this conversation Karen talks about growing up with a love of art, spending four years after college searching for work that actually meant something, the influence of a father who treated the underserved his entire career, and what drew her unexpectedly to specialising in personality disorders. We also discuss a New Year's resolution with her husband that changed how she parents and how she works. It's a conversation about what it looks like to build a meaningful life with joy, and staying open to a path that keeps surprising you. For more of Dr. Karen L. Jacob's work:Profile: https://www.mcleanhospital.org/profile/karen-jacob For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #180 - The Art of a Meaningful Life with Karen L. Jacob, PhD

  6. Jun 16

    What is a Good Life? #179 - Trust, Water & Rewilding with Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt

    In this episode, Dan talks with Mark about trading 80-90 hour work weeks and a self-medicating lifestyle in London for the forests and lakes of northern Sweden. He shares how his father's death became a turning point, how cold water swimming became a doorway back into his body, and how a small group of friends turned a Sunday morning dip into a movement. The conversation explores trust, surrender, community, and what it means to dissolve the "thick border" between yourself and the world. Dan Allen-Hörnfeldt is Chairman of Umeå Kallbad, a community swimming and sauna association recently named one of Sweden's best places to visit in 2026, and Head of Nature for People at Rewilding Sweden. A former GB triathlete, he spent fifteen years in restaurants and pubs, winning two Michelin Bib Gourmands and twice being named London's Best Pub, before building a nationally recognised restaurant in northern Sweden with his wife. He has also competed at an elite level in open-water and ice swimming, including a podium finish at the Ice Swimming World Cup. Learn more about Dan Allen-Hörnfeldt's work:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danallenhornfeldt/Umeå: https://umeakallbad.se/For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #179 - Trust, Water & Rewilding with Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt

  7. Jun 9

    What is a Good Life? #178 - The Courage To Be Heard with Lucinda Millward

    Lucinda Millward is the founder of The Baskerville Project and a practitioner in embodied relational practice - bringing creativity, the body, and the nervous system into collective inquiry. She works across executive education, the arts, and public contexts, holds degrees from the University of Oxford, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and RADA and King’s College London, and has served for seven years as Acting Course Director at the Fontainebleau School of Acting, alongside several years teaching at Guildhall. In this conversation, Lucinda speaks about what it costs to speak true - and why so many of us have learned not to. We explore the childhood roots of devoicing, the paradox of using other people's words to say what we cannot otherwise say, what it means to really look someone in the eye, and why she believes that in one's wound lies one's gift. A beautiful conversation about courage, presence, and what it means to let yourself be witnessed. Learn more about Lucinda's work at The Baskerville Project: https://www.thebaskervilleproject.com/For more from Mark McCartney:Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #178 - The Courage To Be Heard with Lucinda Millward

  8. Jun 2

    What is a Good Life? #177 - Complicated Locks, Simple Keys with Sam Smith

    This week Mark McCartney sits down with Sam Smith. Sam sees life as a big old experiment. He used to play professional rugby, before starting a few businesses. Now he spends his time speaking to people, writing and loving his family. Last year he wrote his first book, The Door Was Never Locked. His latest project with his friend Garth, Conscious Soup launches soon, it's a Living Experiment. They aren't sure what that means yet. In this conversation, Sam opens up about the moment he retired from rugby at 26 and collapsed on a bathroom floor crying, escaping this transition with work and alcohol, and how a simple repeated gesture from a coach changed the entire direction of his life. We explore identity, the stories we carry without questioning, what it really means to lead as a human, and why a good life for him is wanting all of it - even the hard parts. If you are navigating any big life transitions right now, this conversation may be particularly helpful. For more from Sam Smith: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conscious-soup-studio/You can grab a copy of his book: https://amzn.eu/d/07QwCqFQ And he'd love to hear from you: sam@thisisthechangingroom.comCheck out Sam’s next project with Conscious Soup here: www.conscioussoup.com For more from Mark McCartney: Newsletter: https://www.whatisagoodlife.com/ Website: https://www.mmcleadership.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife3875

    What is a Good Life? #177 - Complicated Locks, Simple Keys with Sam Smith
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About

What Is a Good Life? is a podcast about the questions that shape our lives: how we live, who we become, and what truly matters. For the past five years, I've asked more than 300 people one deceptively simple question: What is a good life? There isn't a single answer. Instead, each conversation offers a different way of seeing the world—through stories, ideas, struggles, joys, and moments of hard-earned wisdom. Together, they form a richer picture of what it means to be human. Whether you're searching for clarity, purpose, or simply a thoughtful conversation, this podcast is an invitation to reflect on your own answer. New episodes every Tuesday.

Information

  • Creator
    Mark McCartney
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    184
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Mark McCartney
  • Show Website
    What is a Good Life?