Hunger & Heart with Kaila Colbin

For two years, the same question repeated in Sam Dakin's head a thousand times a day. He had no idea what was happening to him.
Turns out, Sam — who was training for the Olympics at the time — was suffering from OCD. Not the light-switch, hand-washing version most people picture, but the intrusive-thought kind that loops in your head all day and won't let go.

It wasn’t until he found a Reddit thread talking about the phenomenon that he finally started to understand what was going on. The relief was extraordinary.

He’s spent the years since talking about it openly, because almost nobody does.

Sam is a double Olympian and Commonwealth Games team sprint bronze medallist who retired after Glasgow this year — while he was still fast, and while he still loved the bike. We get into what nerves are actually for, why a gold medal is worth nothing without the four years behind it, what it takes to do the job nobody assigned you, and how to walk away from something before you start to hate it.

WHAT'S COVERED
— What an intrusive thought actually is, and how it differs from the OCD everyone thinks they know
— Why the relief came from being diagnosed, not from being cured
— Why nerves only ever turn up when something matters
— The difference between athletes who deliver on the day and the ones who don't
— “Depth of medal”: why the podium was never the thing being chased
— Changing how athletes are paid in New Zealand
— Doing the work nobody asked you to do
— Retiring before the love ran out
Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin. Find out more at Hunger & Heart with Kaila Colbin | Raw Conversations with sports legends
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A thousand miles down the Yukon River, from Canada into Alaska and up to the Arctic Circle. It’s the definition of remote — more people have been to the top of Everest than have been past Dawson City. No support boat, no resupply, no road, and no rescue worth the name.

Get it wrong out there and you're days from help, not hours.

The Yukon 1000 is the longest paddling race in the world, and Jon Frith is the man who decides who is allowed to start it.
More than 1,500 teams apply. Just 30 make the start line. They paddle 18 hours a day, sleep for three and once they're out past Dawson City, they're on their own.

Jon spent 32 years in the British Army. Competed in the Yukon 1000 because he’s passionate about pushing himself. Now he runs the whole thing.

In this conversation he tells me about his extraordinary life before he found the event. Why the Yukon 1000 has no prize money. What happened the first time he saw the river. And why, while thousands of miles away, he can’t stop thinking about what might just be around the next bend.

Find out more about the race (and get your application in? You know you want to) at yukon1000.org.
Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin. Find out more at hungerandheart.com.

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.
The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  
The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

William Trubridge is one of the greatest freedivers of all time. He’s set 18 world records. Won six world championship titles. In 2016 he became the first person to reach 102 metres on a single breath with no fins and no rope.

In 2019 he crossed Cook Strait entirely underwater, in a series of 934 breath holds over nine hours and fifteen minutes, to draw attention to New Zealand's critically endangered Hector's and Māui dolphins.

When you’re 100 metres underwater, panic burns the oxygen you need to get home. So he’s spent decades building a system for not panicking — and it turns out the system works in a queue, in traffic, and in the conversation you're dreading.

WHAT'S COVERED
- Sailing the Pacific as a toddler — a boat was home until he was ten
- The poem he wrote on an Auckland dance floor a year before he'd heard of freediving
- Two failed world record attempts — and the word that made all the difference for the third
- Risk vs stakes — and why refusing every dangerous thing is itself massively risky
- What actually happened at 127 metres, and why his lungs stayed dry
- The mental immune system
- Why the muscles you breathe with decide how you feel
- Nine hours underwater across Cook Strait

FIND WILLIAM Website: https://www.williamtrubridge.com/ Instagram: @‌willtrubridge — https://www.instagram.com/willtrubridge/
The Rebellion — his work teaching the mental immune system: https://www.rebellionimpactgroup.com/
The Mental Immune System programme: https://mentalimmunesystem.com/

MORE FROM WILLIAM
Oxygen: A Memoir — https://www.williamtrubridge.com/post/oxygen-a-memoir-by-william-trubridge
Breathe (2011) — the documentary following his attempt to become the first person to reach 300 feet on a single breath, no fins: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103163/
Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At 17, Gráinne Moss swam the English Channel — the first Irish woman ever to do it. At 56, she became the 45th person on Earth to complete the Oceans Seven, the seven hardest channel swims in the world.

This conversation is about the 39 years in between.
We talk about the two failed attempts at the same stretch of water between Ireland and Scotland — one she was elated by, one that broke her.
About being stung head to foot by jellyfish and somehow swimming on for seven more hours.
About looking back at the White Cliffs of Dover three hours into the Channel — and her utter despair at realising she'd barely moved.
About finishing her first channel crossing at 17 with nobody there to meet her.
And about carrying everything she’s learned from ultramarathon swimming — the grit, the resilience, the purpose — into one of the hardest jobs in the New Zealand public service.

WHAT'S COVERED:
- The three hours that nearly ended her English Channel swim
- Being obliterated by a shoal of jellyfish — and why she got out of the water happy
- How you keep going when you can't see any progress at all
- What a good coach actually does
- Night swimming, box jellyfish and the Channel of Bones
- Leading Oranga Tamariki — where she put her focus, and why she says you have to know your own reasons before you take a job like that

ABOUT GRÁINNE
Gráinne Moss (née Gunn) grew up in Bangor, County Down, and started swimming in an unheated saltwater pool fed by the sea. She swam the English Channel in 1987 in 11 hours 52 minutes, aged 17, becoming the first Irish woman to do it. She moved to New Zealand in 1998 and swam the Cook Strait in 2001, and completed the Oceans Seven in June 2026 with the Tsugaru Strait in northern Japan — the longest span between first and final swim in the challenge's history. She is Chief Executive and Secretary for Regulation at the Ministry for Regulation, and was Chief Executive of Oranga Tamariki from 2016 to 2021.
Visit Gráinne's blog https://grainnemoss.com/ for detailed accounts of her swims and follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/swimirishkiwi/.

—

Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere.
Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Tew was chief executive of New Zealand Rugby from 2008 to 2019, and ran the Crusaders and the Canterbury Rugby Union from 1996 to 2001. He is now Director of High Performance at High Performance Sport New Zealand.

This week, he joins the podcast to talk about a career that started with a box of files inherited from a volunteer and ended up running the organisation behind the All Blacks — and about the decisions in between that he still thinks about.

That includes protesting the 1981 Springbok tour while his own family sat on the other side of it, taking Rugby World Cup matches away from Christchurch after the February 2011 earthquake, backing a coach the media wanted gone, and the review that put New Zealand Rugby's own culture under outside scrutiny.

WHAT'S COVERED
How he ended up in sporting governance
The 1981 Springbok tour
Why New Zealand Rugby apologised to players it never selected
The February 2011 earthquake, and telling a city it had lost its World Cup matches
How the Crusaders went from last to first in three seasons
Appointing Wayne Smith, and backing him when the results hadn't arrived
The Respect and Responsibility Review
What he looks for when he's assessing people for leadership
The performance conversation he's never started too early

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.