The LifeLong Leap

Janine Mathó

Our world is changing fast, and most of us are just trying to keep up. But how can we actually thrive in a world like this? Join future-of-learning expert and author Janine Mathó as she talks with researchers, educators, innovators, and everyday people about some of the biggest questions shaping our lives: How do we keep evolving as the world around us changes? What should work look like when technology can do more of what humans used to do? How do we prepare young people for a future none of us can predict? And what does living longer mean for how we learn, work, and build our lives? The Lifelong Leap brings these conversations together to help us cut through the noise and make sense of our changing world, together. Are you ready? Let’s take The Lifelong Leap together.

Episodes

  1. 4d ago

    Growing Up with AI: What Do Young People Need from Us Now? With Laura Knight

    Your child may already have a friend who's there at any hour, never gets tired of them, and never tells them they're wrong. For some young people, that friend is an AI. Some companion apps now pitch themselves to kids as the place to ask what they can't ask their mom or their best friend. Laura Knight, one of the UK's leading voices on AI in education, puts it plainly: Netflix once said its biggest competition was sleep; for some of these tools, it's your actual human best friend. But Laura isn’t here to frighten anyone, and she doesn’t think banning everything works. She has spent years helping schools, governments, and families live well with technology, and she sees educators as “makers of meaning” who help young people make sense of a world where answers are everywhere. She offers a way for the adults in children’s lives to step in. She explains why the story so many parents tell themselves, "my kids know more about this than I do," can quietly tell a child not to bring their problems to us, and what schools can do so kids share a worry with a trusted adult before it becomes a crisis. And because AI makes it just as easy to skip the struggle of thinking something through, we talk about what young people need in the classroom too, starting with the courage to fail early. Laura's answer is to treat growing up online like learning to swim: children start in the shallow end with an adult beside them and move into deeper water when they're ready. Online, too many of us skip straight to the open sea. I came away convinced that we need to get in the water with them. Chapters00:00 — What do young people need from us now?  06:11 — Why taking the middle ground takes moral courage  10:45 — AI isn't a race: Educators as makers of meaning  22:55 — Thinkers, non-thinkers, and the courage to fail early  32:07 — From hacking our attention to hacking our attachment  44:34 — Why every child needs a trusted adult 48:23 — Parents, schools, and the myth that kids know more  54:03 — Treat online life like learning to swim  57:30 — What gives Laura hope about AI About Laura KnightLaura Knight is Founder of Sapio, a consultancy specializing in AI, digital strategy, and innovation for education. She is an international keynote speaker, author, and award-winning thought leader in human-centered technology adoption. Laura advises schools, governments, and edtech organizations globally on digital transformation and responsible innovation. Links & resourcesSapio.company https://www.linkedin.com/in/asklauraknight/ CreditsHosted by Janine Mathó. Produced by Janine Mathó and Richard Lewis. Please listen, follow, rate, and review The LifeLong Leap on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @janinematho on social media. Visit janinematho.com and send your questions or guest pitches to hello@janinematho.com.

    Growing Up with AI: What Do Young People Need from Us Now? With Laura Knight

  2. Oct 26

    What helps people thrive at work? With Ooni Co- Founder Darina Garland

    Why would a pizza oven company give every employee £500 to spend on something unrelated to work?  For Ooni co-founder Darina Garland, it's part of investing in the whole person. Because organizations don't only produce products and profits. They create the environments where millions of adults spend their days, and those environments shape who we become.  Ooni is an organization taking its own LifeLong Leap, and encouraging its people to take theirs. I sat down with Darina to find out what it takes to build the conditions for people to flourish inside a fast-growing global company, and what happens to those commitments when the pressure is on.  We talk about what Darina learned about culture by visiting schools long before she built a business, how Ooni turned its values into something people experience every week rather than once a year in a performance review, and why an experienced new CEO who questioned the weekly all-company huddle ended up keeping it.  Darina is candid about what Ooni is still learning, including how to balance kindness with accountability as a company grows. We also explore why retention can be the wrong metric, what line managers rarely learn, and what changes a human-focused company needs as AI reshapes work. And at the end, Darina opens up about a year of big changes in her own life, and the question she keeps returning to as she redesigns it. I came away thinking about how much every workplace shapes the people inside it, whether anyone designed it that way or not.  Chapters00:00 — What helps people thrive at work?  02:36 — What schools taught Darina about workplace culture  07:11 — How Ooni keeps its values alive every week  11:45 — Caring for the whole person, and balancing kindness with accountability  16:14 — What can a great workplace develop in a person?  21:01 — Where to start: values, hiring, and a clear strategy  23:28 — What changes for a human-focused company in the age of AI?  25:51 — Can culture get equal weight when the pressure is on?  30:20 — A year of change: what helps Darina flourish now  32:39 — Worry, control, and the parts of life we can shape About Darina GarlandDarina Garland co-founded Ooni, the product business best known for its pizza ovens, with Kristian Tapaninaho in 2012. She is the former Co-CEO of Ooni; today she is an active founder focused on purpose and community, and is proudest of Ooni's employee engagement and team culture. Before Ooni, she founded Suklaa, a business focused on transforming global education through innovation and creativity. Links & resourceshttps://ooni.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/darina-garland-432a2317/ Credits: Hosted by Janine Mathó. Produced by Janine Mathó and Richard Lewis. Please listen, follow, rate, and review The LifeLong Leap on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @janinematho on social media. Visit janinematho.com and send your questions or guest pitches to hello@janinematho.com.

    What helps people thrive at work? With Ooni Co- Founder Darina Garland

  3. Oct 19

    The Future Doesn't Come with a Map. How Should Universities Prepare Students? With Andy Rich

    How can we future-proof college students when careers are changing faster than anyone can predict? And this isn’t just about college students; it’s about all of us. AI is changing how people find jobs, how employers hire, and what the first rung of a career looks like. Meanwhile, universities are under pressure to prove their worth in job offers and salaries. So what is a university for now, and how should it prepare students for a future without a map? I sat down with Dr. Andy Rich, president of Franklin & Marshall College, who is reshaping what a liberal arts education looks like. We talk about why Andy believes developing the next generation of leaders is “the most consequential work a person can do,” why preparing good citizens matters as much as preparing for careers, and why he thinks liberal arts institutions are made for this moment. Andy shares how F&M’s new Mehlman Leadership and Performance Institute puts leadership, an entrepreneurial mindset, and civic engagement at the center of the student experience, and why everyone benefits from learning to think like an entrepreneur. He also explains why asking new students what career they want makes them tense up, while asking what they’re curious about opens them up. We also explore which human capabilities matter more as AI advances, what universities should teach that AI can’t, and how colleges have reinvented themselves before. And for anyone still figuring out what comes next, at any age, Andy shares what he tells every graduating class. I came away convinced that the capabilities we once called soft are the ones we can least afford to leave to chance. Chapters 00:00 — What is a university really for? 02:15 — Why young people can see further than the rest of us 05:30 — Have we forgotten that colleges train citizens? 09:10 — Why liberal arts institutions are made for this moment 14:12 — Drawing new maps: leadership and an entrepreneurial mindset 17:28 — Ask students what they’re curious about, not what job they want 23:14 — If AI has the answers, what should universities teach? 29:05 — Why aren’t we using AI to solve our biggest problems? 35:37 — Universities have reinvented themselves before 41:00 — Success is never linear: Advice for every graduating class About Andy Rich Dr. Andy Rich is the 17th president of Franklin & Marshall College and a strong advocate for the liberal arts. He previously served as dean of the Colin Powell School at the City College of New York, CEO of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, and president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute. A Truman Scholar himself, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Yale. Links & resources https://www.fandm.edu/ https://www.fandm.edu/centers-institutes-and-initiatives/mehlman-leadership-and-performance-institute/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-rich/ Credits Hosted by Janine Mathó. Produced by Janine Mathó and Richard Lewis. Please listen, follow, rate, and review The LifeLong Leap on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @janinematho on social media. Visit janinematho.com and send your questions or guest pitches to hello@janinematho.com.

    The Future Doesn't Come with a Map. How Should Universities Prepare Students? With Andy Rich

  4. Oct 8

    Living the Leap: What If the Life You've Built No Longer Fits? With Faith Lyons

    Have you ever felt like the life you're living isn't quite the life you want? This is the first episode of Living the Leap, a special series featuring people in the middle of change, before they know exactly how their story turns out. Faith Lyons and her husband had built a good life in London: a thriving career, friends, family nearby, and two young children. But when they sat down together and compared the values they wanted their family life to reflect with how they were actually living, "zero percent matched." So they decided to change it. In 2024, Faith, her Finnish-American husband, and their two children left London for rural Finland. Nearly two years later, they're building a house on family land, raising their children in a language Faith is still learning, and figuring out who they are in the life they chose. Faith is the founder of The Nugget App and spent nearly 20 years living and working in cities around the world. We talk about how she and her husband knew something needed to change, how they made the decision together, and what the move has changed about motherhood, marriage, work, identity, and her definition of success. I loved meeting Faith in the middle of her story, while the answers are still unfolding. Chapters 00:15 — What if the life you built no longer fits? 03:49 — Do your values match the life you’re actually living? 10:06 — How do you make a life-changing decision together? 12:56 — The move was only the first hard decision 16:22 — She didn’t realize how fast she was going until she stopped 21:33 — “I still don’t know who Faith is in Finland” 29:32 — When changing your life changes your definition of success 36:20 — Staying can be a decision too 42:50 — Learning to trust the big decisions About Faith Lyons Faith Lyons has traveled to 64 countries and called six home. She spent nearly 20 years living and working in global cities from Guatemala to Miami, DC, Port-au-Prince, Singapore, NYC, and London, managing multi-million-dollar humanitarian responses and global partnerships. After becoming a mom and experiencing how isolating parenthood can be without welcoming places for families, she founded The Nugget App to help families find places they can enjoy together, from baby to grandparent. In 2024, Faith and her Finnish-American husband packed up their two young children and traded London for rural Finland, moving to the forest for more time together and a slower pace of life. Faith is a huge proponent of living a life of many chapters and knowing when to slow down to enjoy the current one. Links & resources Join us! The Nugget App https://www.thenugget.app/ Instagram: @thenugget.app LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/falyons/ Book a call: https://gumdrop.ai/faith/ Credits: Hosted by Janine Mathó. Produced by Janine Mathó and Richard Lewis. Please listen, follow, rate, and review The LifeLong Leap on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @janinematho on social media. Visit janinematho.com and send your questions or guest pitches to hello@janinematho.com.

    Living the Leap: What If the Life You've Built No Longer Fits? With Faith Lyons

  5. Oct 5

    Becoming More Capable: Why You Don't Have to Push Harder - With Dr. Dan Peters

    Have you ever found yourself carrying more and more simply because you can? So many of us feel that the only way to keep up with the pace of life is to take on more and move faster. But what if becoming more capable doesn't mean pushing yourself harder? Psychologist Dr. Dan Peters and I talk about the surprising difference between competence and capacity, why highly capable people are often so good at overriding the signals that tell them to slow down, and how to notice what your body is telling you before you've pushed yourself too far. We also explore a question that's getting harder to ignore: if AI allows us to do more and move faster, does that mean we should? Dan shares what technology can genuinely help us with, where human connection still matters, and why understanding ourselves doesn't always lead to real change. And after nearly three decades of working with people, Dan shares something he wishes he'd understood much earlier about becoming who we really are, rather than who we think we're supposed to be. This conversation made me rethink what it actually means to become more capable in a world that keeps asking more of us. Chapters 00:14 — Becoming more capable of meeting change 04:06 — When your usual strengths stop working 07:05 — Are we taking in more than we can hold? 10:55 — High performers are very good at overriding the signals 15:44 — If AI lets us do more, should we do more? 19:00 — We confuse competence with capacity 25:30 — When people no longer fit the systems we built 34:12 — Understanding yourself isn’t the same as changing 40:26 — How much of who we are have we learned to hide? About Dr. Dan Peters Dr. Dan Peters, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist, author, speaker, coach, and host of Make It a Great One with Dr. Dan. For more than 30 years, he has helped people reconnect with themselves so they can live with greater presence, authenticity, and purpose. As Co-Founder and Executive Director of Summit Center, he brings together decades of clinical psychology, coaching, and leadership experience to help people become more fully themselves. Links & resources Dr. Dan Peters: https://www.drdanpeters.com/ Make It a Great One with Dr. Dan Peters: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/make-it-a-great-one-with-dr-dan-1-podcast-for/id1157097748 Credits: Hosted by Janine Mathó. Produced by Janine Mathó and Richard Lewis. Please listen, follow, rate, and review The LifeLong Leap on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @janinematho on social media. Visit janinematho.com and send your questions or guest pitches to hello@janinematho.com.

    Becoming More Capable: Why You Don't Have to Push Harder - With Dr. Dan Peters

  6. Oct 1

    How to Focus When Everything Wants Your Attention - With Mark Tigchelaar

    Have you ever sat down to do something that really needed your attention and a few minutes later realized your mind was everywhere except where you wanted it to be? I do it too. And all those little moments add up to something bigger. Because attention isn’t only about getting our work done; we need it to read, learn, think something through, notice what’s happening around us, and really listen to another person. So what happens when we live in an environment that is constantly pulling our attention somewhere else? And can we learn to take it back? Our guest is cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Mark Tigchelaar, named by The Times as “the world’s leading expert in focus.” He has spent more than two decades studying attention, focus and sustainable performance. But Mark doesn't only study how our brains perform. He's climbed Mont Blanc, completed a 72-hour Hell Week with the Dutch Navy SEALs, and learned to skydive, putting his knowledge of focus to some pretty extreme tests. We talk about why we get distracted even when we've put our phones away; what happens in our brains every time we're interrupted; why scrolling isn't actually giving us a break; and why Mark believes we need to create more “islands of attention in a world full of noise.”  And we take the conversation beyond individual habits. What happens when our workplaces make it almost impossible to focus? What does sustainable high performance actually require? And what should we be teaching children about attention and learning in a world of AI? This conversation made me think differently about something most of us give away hundreds of times a day without really noticing: our attention. Chapters 00:14 — Can we learn to take our attention back? 02:11 — What jumping out of a plane taught Mark about attention 07:09 — Create islands of attention in a world full of noise 14:57 — The hidden cost of every interruption 24:06 — Your mind may be more distracting than your phone 35:05 — Scrolling isn’t relaxation. It’s sedation. 40:51 — What does sustainable high performance really require? 50:17 — What are we teaching children about attention? 56:08 — What do we need to protect in ourselves? About Mark Tigchelaar  Mark Tigchelaar is a cognitive psychologist and bestselling author named by The Times as “the world’s leading expert in focus.” His six books on focus and attention have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has trained over 100,000 people across 1,600+ keynotes on how to work with — instead of against — a distracted brain. Diagnosed with severe dyslexia only after secondary school, he turned his own struggle with attention into his life's work. His mission is simple: help people stop scrolling their lives away. Links & resources Mark Tigchelaar: https://marktigchelaar.com/ Focus On/Off: https://marktigchelaar.com/author/ Mark Tigchelaar on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-tigchelaar-focus/  Credits: Hosted by Janine Mathó. Produced by Janine Mathó and Richard Lewis. Please listen, follow, rate, and review The LifeLong Leap on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @janinematho on social media. Visit janinematho.com and send your questions or guest pitches to hello@janinematho.com.

    How to Focus When Everything Wants Your Attention - With Mark Tigchelaar

  7. Sep 18

    How Do We Thrive in a World That Never Stops Changing?

    How Do We Thrive in a World That Never Stops Changing? That question has taken me around the world over the past few months, into conversations with researchers, CEOs, educators, innovators, athletes, and people right in the messy middle of changing their own lives. But one conversation I keep thinking about happened around a low table in a school in Bangalore, with a group of nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds. We talked about the future. AI. Climate. War. What adults are doing. And whether young people can actually make a difference. I’m Janine Mathó, a future-of-learning expert and author, and in this first episode of The Lifelong Leap, I’m sharing why I started this podcast, some of the questions I can’t stop thinking about, and a glimpse of what’s coming. Because as quickly as the world is changing, there’s a more important question that affects all of us: What capabilities do we need to develop, and what conditions do we need to create, to thrive in a world of continuous change? You’ll hear from people across disciplines and around the world, and you’ll also hear from people living through change before they know how it turns out, in special episodes I’m calling Living the Leap. I’m so glad you’re here. We have some extraordinary conversations to explore, and I think they will change the way we think about what comes next. I can’t wait to get into them with you. Chapters 00:00 How do we thrive in a world that never stops changing? 02:31 Our children are already living with the future 05:02 What do attention, AI and learning have in common? 07:21 What you’ll hear on The Lifelong Leap 09:55 What do humans need to thrive through continuous change?

    How Do We Thrive in a World That Never Stops Changing?

  8. Sep 12

    Welcome to The LifeLong Leap

    Our world is changing fast, and most of us are just trying to keep up. But how can we actually thrive in a world like this? Join future-of-learning expert and award-winning author Janine Mathó, who has spent more than 25 years studying how people learn, grow, and navigate change, as she talks with researchers, educators, innovators, and everyday people about some of the biggest questions shaping our lives: How do we keep evolving as the world around us changes? What should work look like when technology can do more of what humans used to do? How do we prepare young people for a future none of us can predict? And what does living longer mean for how we learn, work, and build our lives? The Lifelong Leap brings these conversations together to help us cut through the noise and make sense of our changing world, together. Are you ready? Let’s take The Lifelong Leap together.

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Our world is changing fast, and most of us are just trying to keep up. But how can we actually thrive in a world like this? Join future-of-learning expert and author Janine Mathó as she talks with researchers, educators, innovators, and everyday people about some of the biggest questions shaping our lives: How do we keep evolving as the world around us changes? What should work look like when technology can do more of what humans used to do? How do we prepare young people for a future none of us can predict? And what does living longer mean for how we learn, work, and build our lives? The Lifelong Leap brings these conversations together to help us cut through the noise and make sense of our changing world, together. Are you ready? Let’s take The Lifelong Leap together.

Information

  • Creator
    Janine Mathó
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Janine Mathó
  • Show Website
    The LifeLong Leap