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 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. 4d ago

    What is a Good Life? #190 - Harrison Gardner on Building Your Own Security

    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 stone cottage in the west of Ireland led him to found Build School. We talk about learned helplessness, why he stopped building other people's houses to teach them to build their own, and how impact shapes his life. This is an inspiring conversation about building your own capabilities and committing more fully to your life. Harrison Gardner is an author, broadcaster and builder based on the west coast of Ireland. He presents Build Your Own Home on RTÉ, has written three books on self-building and the housing crisis, and hosts The Tools at Hand, a podcast about people who use whatever they have to hand to build exactly what they need. It all traces back to one belief: people don't need permission or expertise to fix what's broken around them. He's also Chairperson and co-founder of Common Knowledge, a social enterprise sharing practical skills with everyone. You can learn more about Harrison's work at www.harrisongardner.net For more from Mark McCartney:The Podcast's Newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@whatisagoodlife3875⁩

    What is a Good Life? #190 - Harrison Gardner on Building Your Own Security

  2. Sep 15

    What is a Good Life? #189 - What Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You with Toko-pa Turner

    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 haunting nightmare revealed a core family wound, and the five keys of Courting the Dream. We talk about ritual as a way of honoring insight, the healing power of dream groups, and why she believes psyche doesn't end at the limits of our own bodies. A beautiful, grounded conversation about listening to the wisdom already moving through us. Toko-pa Turner is a Canadian author and dreamworker whose work explores the reciprocity between psyche and nature. Her first book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, has been translated into ten languages and received the 2018 Gold Nautilus Award and the Gold Readers' Favorite Award. Her most recent book, The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams, is a depth-oriented guide to dreamwork and winner of the 2025 Gold Nautilus Award. Her course, The Dream Lodge, begins September 22nd: https://toko-pa.com/product/dream-lodge-sept-2026/ 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? #189 - What Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You with Toko-pa Turner

  3. Sep 1

    What is a Good Life? #188 - Your One Wild & Precious Life with Laura Costello

    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 than consumption. We talk about the question at the centre of her life and work – borrowed from a Mary Oliver poem – and how it shifted from a career question into something much bigger. We explore the difference between understanding the climate crisis intellectually and actually feeling it, the significance of our attention on each other, and what people across Ireland said when asked what makes a good life.  For more of Laura's work:Good Life 2030 project: https://www.goodlife2030.earth/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauracostello11/ 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? #188 - Your One Wild & Precious Life with Laura Costello

  4. Aug 25

    What is a Good Life? #187 - Artist, Merchant, Seeker with Ewan Townhead

    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 all three into his work rather than choosing one. We explore his early discomfort with money and marketing, some past-life memories that changed how he thinks about death, and a period of burnout that clarified what he actually wanted to be doing. We close, as always, on his thoughts as to what makes a good life. If you're trying to integrate different parts of yourself into your work and want a fresh perspective on how to do it, this is really worth a listen. For more of Ewan's work:Website: https://www.ewantownhead.com Book: https://www.ewantownhead.com/book/ 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? #187 - Artist, Merchant, Seeker with Ewan Townhead

  5. Aug 18

    What is a Good Life? #186 - Self-Sovereignty, Surveillance, and the Body as Art with OONA

    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 physical, digital, and spiritual lenses. It is a really thought provoking and stirring conversation that left me optimistic about finding connection and intimacy in the places we'd least expect it. For more of OONA's work:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/made.by.oona/ 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? #186 - Self-Sovereignty, Surveillance, and the Body as Art with OONA

  6. Aug 11

    What is a Good Life? #185 - Sarah Marquis on Fear, Instinct, and Surviving Alone in the Wild

    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 episode, she talks about the seven-year-old girl who slept alone in a cave and never lost her sense of mission, why fear is a construction we choose to believe, how she learned to read the land through a herd of wild cattle, surviving a near-fatal fall in Tasmania that left her crawling out of a gorge with a broken shoulder, and the grief that followed her mother's sudden death. This is a conversation about instinct, consciousness, and what it means to build a life from the inside out. Sarah is a force of curiosity and nature and it was both a joy and inspiration to sit with her. For more of Sarah Marquis' work:Website: https://www.sarahmarquis.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explorer_sarahmarquis/ 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? #185 - Sarah Marquis on Fear, Instinct, and Surviving Alone in the Wild

  7. Jul 21

    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

  8. 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
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5
out of 5
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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 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
    190
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Mark McCartney
  • Show Website
    What is a Good Life?

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