The Big Soup

Alastair Ballentyne

Greetings traveller, sit down and let me get you a bowl of The Big Soup where we dip the ladle into life’s simmering cauldron of ideas, concepts and conversations. This isn’t about sugar coating the challenges we face awakening and seeking an aligned life in a weird spacetime, where cretins pose as croutons. This is about savouring the nuances of life’s flavours and exploring their textures. Why ‘The Big Soup’? Life is the big soup, everything is an ingredient but not all flavours are meant to go together! Your base broth may be different, but sometimes you’ve got people insistent on throwing in their flavours where they don’t belong, especially if their taste buds are used to a dominion of bland, boring, beige and belligerent textures. We want flavour. Texture. Nuance. Balance and a delicate dance between influences to create a harmony that tingles the tastebuds of the mind. This isn’t about walking past the soup-pot simmering and taking a whiff then claiming you’ve got a measure of it. This is about taking a sip, a slurp, dunking the bread and saying YEAH BWOIS. (This is a technical term). What to expect: Open conversation - unscripted, no stale bread ideas forcing themselves into the bowl. Forward thinking openness - the past already happened, we are here to create an expansive future. Not one that is based on an imagined vision of a rose-tinted past. We have to move on. Big ideas in smaller portions - because we approach life and the world expansively but take things step by step. Tangents - what is life without its meandering strolls down the avenues of the mind?Your Soup Server (Host): Alastair Ballentyne - someone who got bored of bland chat, recycled ideas, driven by curiosity and a desire to create mischief for a higher purpose. Always on the search for the best ingredients, interesting flavour combinations and something stimulating to the senses. All of it underpinned by a desire to talk, laugh, examine and challenge the things we cling to in life. Why you’ll love (or at least claim to): Kickflip the table - not your table, that would be inadvisable, but the tables we were raised to desire a seat at are no longer fit for purpose or function in this world. So let’s flip them with style and panache. Joining the dots - the world is more interconnected than we are lead to believe, that is something at the heart of this podcast’s mission to dive into A license to weird - consider the big soup your power juice to unleash your inner weirdo, go against the grain, you may not have listened yet but we’re already your big cheerleaders. Subversive and suggestive - the world needs some new flavour shakers, and in times that lack nuance, a way through it all is to get right down into the tiny cracks others may choose to ignore. Who will enjoy ‘The Big Soup’? You are bored of echo chambers claiming to be upholding ‘free speech and ideas’ You are hungry for ideas You believe that most ‘deep talk’ is so shallow it may as well be a puddle You believe life is too short for anything without flavour You like the sound of my voice You are a cool person

  1. 09/17/2025

    (Dr Love edition) Improving communication in connection

    In this episode of the big soup we are taking a little look at some of the wild and weird takes around communication and relationships from social media. We are living in very disconnected times and we are creating so many unnecessary rules for ourselves when it comes to connecting with other people and also communicating our needs. Everyone is different, every relationship is different. Not one piece of advice is going to work for everyone and we need to make sure that we carve our own pathways when it comes to connection of any kind, not just romantic relationships. As someone who is actively working in the spirituality/well-being/personal development world, a lot of of my work oscillates around helping people with their relationships. Whether that is the relationship with themselves or the relationship with others, part of the problem I see often is people struggle with self advocacy. One of the fundamental foundations of self advocacy is being able to communicate your needs as well as understanding your needs across the board in life. It is such a shame that we allow people to create these imaginary obstacle courses that people have to to navigate just to reach a foundational level of connection. As someone with a history of trauma and healing, there have been times in my life where I’ve been disconnected, difficult to know and also lacking an understanding of how this would create problems both for myself and others. As we start to explore different ideas around communication and connection, it can help act as a balm for these very disconnected times we’re living in. Because particularly regressive ideologies thrive in environments isolation, disconnection. Connect better with yourself, connect better with others and we are activating more drops in the wave of positive change.

    (Dr Love edition) Improving communication in connection
  2. 09/08/2025

    The Great Spiritual Reset - Revisting Saturn & Neptune in Pisces with the Pisces Full Moon Eclipse

    Welcome back to episode 10 of the biggest soup where we are exploring what I am referring to as ‘The Great Spiritual Reset’. At the time of recording, we were on the day of the Pisces full moon eclipse. This eclipse is returning as to themes particularly of the Saturn and Pisces transit as it is currently retrograde in the sign of Pisces for those of you following tropical zodiac (which I do due to its seasonal correlation as an earth - heavens bridging practice). But also over the coming months we will be revisiting themes of Neptune and Pisces when it retrogrades into Pisces itself. These two planets set the tone for a lot of of what we know to be spirituality, personal development, online business and various other different movements that Rose up since 2012 in our collective consciousness. Neptune in Pisces was a very boundary time, a lot of great stuff came from it, however it was also a time of rampant delusion, people proclaiming themselves to be divine Oracle, prophets anything that made them supposedly infallible and beyond scrutiny. Then Saturn rolled up in Pisces in 2023, we saw so many things get called into question. Accountability was sought and depending on how people reacted to it during this time will dictate how they will fair when Saturn & Neptune roll back into Aries for a 2.5 & 14 year transit respectively. Blood moon Eclipses are times of change, personal evolution, structures can evolve, shift or fall. But importantly, it was said to be a time where leaders would be toppled. So if we take that idea to look at how we can create better and more robustly supportive pathways of spiritual expression, we’re onto something! As the illusions and delusions folks are hanging onto from that time will not cut it come 2026 and beyond. If you want my help, support, and assistance on your personal journey of spiritual awakening, self development and wellbeing - head over to my site and explore the different options I have available for you! www.alastairballentyne.com

    The Great Spiritual Reset - Revisting Saturn & Neptune in Pisces with the Pisces Full Moon Eclipse

About

Greetings traveller, sit down and let me get you a bowl of The Big Soup where we dip the ladle into life’s simmering cauldron of ideas, concepts and conversations. This isn’t about sugar coating the challenges we face awakening and seeking an aligned life in a weird spacetime, where cretins pose as croutons. This is about savouring the nuances of life’s flavours and exploring their textures. Why ‘The Big Soup’? Life is the big soup, everything is an ingredient but not all flavours are meant to go together! Your base broth may be different, but sometimes you’ve got people insistent on throwing in their flavours where they don’t belong, especially if their taste buds are used to a dominion of bland, boring, beige and belligerent textures. We want flavour. Texture. Nuance. Balance and a delicate dance between influences to create a harmony that tingles the tastebuds of the mind. This isn’t about walking past the soup-pot simmering and taking a whiff then claiming you’ve got a measure of it. This is about taking a sip, a slurp, dunking the bread and saying YEAH BWOIS. (This is a technical term). What to expect: Open conversation - unscripted, no stale bread ideas forcing themselves into the bowl. Forward thinking openness - the past already happened, we are here to create an expansive future. Not one that is based on an imagined vision of a rose-tinted past. We have to move on. Big ideas in smaller portions - because we approach life and the world expansively but take things step by step. Tangents - what is life without its meandering strolls down the avenues of the mind?Your Soup Server (Host): Alastair Ballentyne - someone who got bored of bland chat, recycled ideas, driven by curiosity and a desire to create mischief for a higher purpose. Always on the search for the best ingredients, interesting flavour combinations and something stimulating to the senses. All of it underpinned by a desire to talk, laugh, examine and challenge the things we cling to in life. Why you’ll love (or at least claim to): Kickflip the table - not your table, that would be inadvisable, but the tables we were raised to desire a seat at are no longer fit for purpose or function in this world. So let’s flip them with style and panache. Joining the dots - the world is more interconnected than we are lead to believe, that is something at the heart of this podcast’s mission to dive into A license to weird - consider the big soup your power juice to unleash your inner weirdo, go against the grain, you may not have listened yet but we’re already your big cheerleaders. Subversive and suggestive - the world needs some new flavour shakers, and in times that lack nuance, a way through it all is to get right down into the tiny cracks others may choose to ignore. Who will enjoy ‘The Big Soup’? You are bored of echo chambers claiming to be upholding ‘free speech and ideas’ You are hungry for ideas You believe that most ‘deep talk’ is so shallow it may as well be a puddle You believe life is too short for anything without flavour You like the sound of my voice You are a cool person