What is a Good Life?

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

In this episode of What is a Good Life, host Mark McCartney sits down with Lior Steinberg, a Rotterdam-based urban planner and co-founder of Humankind, a multidisciplinary team working toward urban happiness for all. Lior is also the author of the children's book The Car That Wanted to Be a Bike. Together they unpack why so many cities remain trapped in car-centric design decades after urbanist Jane Jacobs first warned against it.
They talk about the "sidewalk ballet," how children's toys teach us to want cars, the surprising parallel between car culture and cigarette smoking, Barcelona's superblocks, and why trees are the best climate technology we already have. 
This is a thought-provoking conversation on how often change feels impossible until it is here.

For more of Lior Steinberg's work:
Humankind: https://www.humankind.city/
Personal Website: https://steinberg.nu/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liorsteinberg/
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 does it mean to live a truly meaningful life and why do so many of us feel an emptiness even at the height of our success?
In this episode, Mark sits down with Kadam Adam Starr, who has been an international teacher of meditation and Buddhism for over 20 years and is the principal teacher at Tara Kadampa Meditation Centre in Dublin. Adam walked away from a corporate media career in 2005 to pursue a different kind of question. What began as a planned year or two away became a complete reorientation of his life.
Together they explore the emptiness that often arrives in our late twenties and early thirties, the difference between fleeting pleasure and genuine peace of mind, and why Adam came to realise that the problem was never his career - it was how badly out of balance he'd become. They talk about the shift from an ego-driven life to one grounded in compassion, what a three-month silent retreat revealed about our shared humanity, and how living from a peaceful mind and a good heart can make life feel radically more simple.
This is a conversation about self-knowledge, the attention economy, meeting difficult people with friendship rather than judgment, and the realisation that a good life may come down to how we choose to show up each day.

For more of Kadam Adam Starr's work:
Tara Kadampa Meditation Centre: https://meditateinireland.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/tara_kadampa_meditation_centre/
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

Dr. Karen L. Jacob is a clinical psychologist, Program Director of the Gunderson Residence at McLean Hospital, and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She specialises in the assessment and treatment of personality disorders, with particular expertise in borderline personality disorder. In this conversation Karen talks about growing up with a love of art, spending four years after college searching for work that actually meant something, the influence of a father who treated the underserved his entire career, and what drew her unexpectedly to specialising in personality disorders. We also discuss a New Year's resolution with her husband that changed how she parents and how she works.
It's a conversation about what it looks like to build a meaningful life with joy, and staying open to a path that keeps surprising you.
For more of Dr. Karen L. Jacob's work:
Profile: https://www.mcleanhospital.org/profile/karen-jacob
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

In this episode, Dan talks with Mark about trading 80-90 hour work weeks and a self-medicating lifestyle in London for the forests and lakes of northern Sweden. He shares how his father's death became a turning point, how cold water swimming became a doorway back into his body, and how a small group of friends turned a Sunday morning dip into a movement. The conversation explores trust, surrender, community, and what it means to dissolve the "thick border" between yourself and the world.
Dan Allen-Hörnfeldt is Chairman of Umeå Kallbad, a community swimming and sauna association recently named one of Sweden's best places to visit in 2026, and Head of Nature for People at Rewilding Sweden. A former GB triathlete, he spent fifteen years in restaurants and pubs, winning two Michelin Bib Gourmands and twice being named London's Best Pub, before building a nationally recognised restaurant in northern Sweden with his wife. He has also competed at an elite level in open-water and ice swimming, including a podium finish at the Ice Swimming World Cup.
Learn more about Dan Allen-Hörnfeldt's work:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danallenhornfeldt/
Umeå: https://umeakallbad.se/

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