Mark McCartney
193 episodes listed below
Slow questions for a more truthful life.
What is a Good Life? gives spacious attention to people thinking aloud about how to live with more truth and care. Recent conversations move through wilderness, money, song, death, ritual, embodiment, service, and the long search for belonging.
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What is a Good Life? is a contemplative interview series about the questions people keep living into. It does not rush. Each conversation begins with a guest's present inquiry, then follows the thread into memory, practice, belief, and the often unfinished work of becoming more fully human. Recent episodes have considered right relationship with self, others, the living world, and the sacred. They have also lingered with wonder, wildness, song, grief, belonging, success, money, leadership, and the heart as a place of discernment. The show's strength is its patience. A thought is allowed to circle before it lands, and an abstract idea is often tested against a remembered scene. Ally Kingston's episode moves through morning pages, media abstinence, motherhood, and the countercultural act of listening for one's own inner life. Sam Lee brings childlike enchantment, wilderness guiding, song, danger, and story into the same field of attention. Joel Monk speaks about aliveness through meditation, embodiment, trauma integration, pleasure, and the practice of seeing familiar places freshly. Bruce Anderson's conversation turns around gifts, rituals, beauty, nature, love, and the ache to belong. Kaylyn Lehmann's episode uses death and regret as clarifying forces for a life chosen more deliberately. Bogumil Baranowski frames money and capitalism through kindness, usefulness, and the question of how to help. Nicholas Janni brings leadership, transformation, the divine, and the difference between feeling better and being changed. Dr Scilla Elworthy centers the heart and the lifelong inquiry of who a person really is. Across these episodes, the show prefers depth over performance. It is intimate, but not confessional for its own sake. It is spiritual, but not detached from bodies, homes, work, family, or fear. The conversations keep asking what kind of attention a good life requires, and what might become possible when people stop moving quite so fast.
Made for: For listeners drawn to reflective interviews about meaning, spirituality, mortality, embodiment, and belonging. It especially suits people who prefer spacious conversation over prescriptive self-improvement.
What sets it apart: The show centers one deceptively simple life question, then lets each guest's lived experience reshape it. Its quiet force comes from pairing philosophical seriousness with concrete memories, practices, and moments of moral choice.
A project exploring the big questions around how we live, who we are and what actually matters. Over the past four years, I’ve sat with more than 300 people — artists, parents, executives, wanderers, therapists, and strangers and invited them into a simple but profound inquiry, "What is a good life for you?" The conversations explore presence, paradox, uncertainty, and the moments that shape a life - love and loss, trust and fear, clarity and not knowing. It’s an invitations to slow down, to listen deeply, and to bring you into conversation with your own life. There are new episodes every...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Patient guest conversations make the values and inner commitments behind work, leadership and decision-making easier to examine.
Mark begins each conversation on What is a Good Life? by asking what question the guest is carrying through life. That reliable opening gives the interviews both focus and room to move.
One opening question sends your tidy certainties into the wilderness, where wonder gets the last word.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A calm, searching conversation about attention, self-trust, and learning to live in right relationship.
Ali frames the episode around recovering the capacity for right relationship with ourselves, with others, with the living world, and maybe with the sacred or divine.
A quiet conversation about wonder, song, and staying open when life gets less certain.
Sam Lee and Mark treat wonder as something lived, not admired from a distance. The conversation moves from childlike curiosity and whether enchantment can survive middle age to singing as protection, release, and a way of honoring what trauma leaves behind.
A reflective conversation about embodiment, service, and the ordinary habits that dull wonder.
Joel Monk's conversation on What is a Good Life? returns again and again to the question of what it means to deepen, mature, and awaken into humanity, and to offer gifts in service of something larger.
Belonging is treated as a lived practice across spirit, self, other people, and nature.
Bruce Anderson presents belonging as a practice shaped by love and beauty, moving through four domains: spirit, self, other people, and nature.
A steady case for leadership as transmission, presence, and transformation rather than technique alone.
Nicholas Janni centers the discussion on what it means to be fully human, fully open to the divine, and willing to act as a source of healing and awakening.
Philosophy for steadier ordinary life.
Live sermons for hard spiritual questions.
Moral clarity in spoken form.
Raw resistance from Key Largo.
Ali opens with a question about right relationship.
Sam Lee joins Mark for a conversation that starts in wonder.
Joel joins Mark for a conversation about deepening, maturing, and awakening into one’s humanity.
The host opens by mentioning his training through Casey and Bruce's Core Gift Institute.
This episode explores how confronting mortality through personal experiences and literature can guide one's definition of success and living a meaningful life.
A podcast exploring the question 'What is a good life?' through conversations with diverse guests, starting with a discussion on the guiding question 'How can I help?'
Nicholas Janni joins Mark for a thoughtful conversation led by curiosity.
A conversation exploring the question 'Who am I?' and the search for meaning and purpose in life.
Host Mark invites coach Jasper to explore the evolving question of what constitutes a good life, discussing personal growth and the shift from performance optimization to deeper meaning.
Host interviews Rasmus about his lifelong question of why people aren't happy and what it takes to be happy.
Host Mark interviews Rob about his lifelong question of how to make life more joyful and fulfilling within constraints.
A conversation exploring the question 'What is a good life?' with a guest who works on designing deliberate societal transitions.
An interview exploring the guest's guiding question of 'what is the next right thing' as an artist and creative person.
Host discusses with author Diane her book 'What Matters Most' and how it aligns with the podcast's theme of defining a good life.
A conversation exploring the question of how to find rootedness and belonging amidst constant change and uncertainty.
An interview exploring the guest's personal philosophy and the question of what constitutes a good life.
A conversation with poet Mike about the question of what makes a good life, exploring themes of mortality and the breath before death.
An interview exploring leadership's role in navigating complexity and the gap between performative leadership and authentic human connection.
A conversation exploring the question 'What is a good life?' with guest Kate, focusing on the inquiry into human thriving and interdependence.
A conversation exploring the question 'What is a good life?' through a dialogue about purpose and alignment.
A conversation exploring the question of what makes a good life, with guest Ella reflecting on her struggle with saying 'I know' and learning to embrace not knowing.
An interview exploring God's most important message for humanity, framed around the question 'What is a good life?'
An interview exploring the role of questions and the tension between knowing and not knowing in living a good life.
A conversation exploring the guest's journey to finding purpose and the challenge of balancing helping others with personal well-being.
A conversation with poet Janine Marie Haugen about her lifelong exploration of the nature of reality and the magical possibilities of life.
This episode explores how to reclaim the sacred in business by aligning with one's purpose and authenticity through a personal journey of self-discovery.
Glenn Behenna discusses how his family's community involvement influenced his own life purpose of making a difference for others.
This episode explores how to live a meaningful life through philosophical inquiry, focusing on personal principles and global challenges like climate change.
This episode explores how to embrace vulnerability and authenticity in life's messy journey through a personal conversation with Felicity Reed.
Dave Gribben explores the question of what parts of himself he has left behind in his pursuit of life and ambition, reflecting on personal identity and self-discovery.