What is a Good Life?

Dreamworker and award-winning author Toko-pa Turner joins the show to talk about what it really means to let go – of the perceptions we project onto others, of the noise on the surface of life – so we can hear the "second attention" moving underneath. Toko-pa shares how she developed her own intimate relationship with dreams after leaving home at fourteen with no adult guidance, how a haunting nightmare revealed a core family wound, and the five keys of Courting the Dream. We talk about ritual as a way of honoring insight, the healing power of dream groups, and why she believes psyche doesn't end at the limits of our own bodies. A beautiful, grounded conversation about listening to the wisdom already moving through us.
Toko-pa Turner is a Canadian author and dreamworker whose work explores the reciprocity between psyche and nature. Her first book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, has been translated into ten languages and received the 2018 Gold Nautilus Award and the Gold Readers' Favorite Award. Her most recent book, The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams, is a depth-oriented guide to dreamwork and winner of the 2025 Gold Nautilus Award.
Her course, The Dream Lodge, begins September 22nd: https://toko-pa.com/product/dream-lodge-sept-2026/
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

This week we are in conversation with Laura Costello. Laura is Chief Communications Officer at Hometree, a nature restoration charity, and Ireland Lead with Purpose Disruptors. She led the Good Life 2030 Ireland project, which invited people across Ireland to imagine a brighter future and resulted in a national creative campaign promoting visions of wellbeing centred on connection rather than consumption. We talk about the question at the centre of her life and work – borrowed from a Mary Oliver poem – and how it shifted from a career question into something much bigger. We explore the difference between understanding the climate crisis intellectually and actually feeling it, the significance of our attention on each other, and what people across Ireland said when asked what makes a good life. 

For more of Laura's work:
Good Life 2030 project: https://www.goodlife2030.earth/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauracostello11/
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

Ewan Townhead is an entrepreneur, coach, and the author of Artist, Merchant, Seeker: Bring Your Whole Self to the Path of Work. He spent a decade helping build Coaches Rising, a coach-training school, before stepping back to finish a book he'd been writing for seven years. We talk about the model at the centre of it – artist, merchant, and seeker – and his long process of trying to bring all three into his work rather than choosing one. We explore his early discomfort with money and marketing, some past-life memories that changed how he thinks about death, and a period of burnout that clarified what he actually wanted to be doing. We close, as always, on his thoughts as to what makes a good life.
If you're trying to integrate different parts of yourself into your work and want a fresh perspective on how to do it, this is really worth a listen.
For more of Ewan's work:
Website: https://www.ewantownhead.com
Book: https://www.ewantownhead.com/book/
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 I was joined by OONA – an anonymous performance artist known for her works Milking The Artist, Dear David, and Look Touch Own. Recognised by her mask and dark sunglasses, she treats anonymity itself as both method and performance, examining power, value, and identity within digital culture.
We discuss data, extraction, the body as art, and what sovereignty means through physical, digital, and spiritual lenses. It is a really thought provoking and stirring conversation that left me optimistic about finding connection and intimacy in the places we'd least expect it.

For more of OONA's work:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/made.by.oona/
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

National Geographic Explorer Sarah Marquis has spent 25 years walking alone through some of the most remote landscapes on Earth — the equivalent of circumnavigating the planet on foot. Her expeditions include a 14,000km, 17-month crossing of the Australian Outback, three years walking solo from Siberia to Australia, and three months surviving off bush tucker in the Kimberley. In this episode, she talks about the seven-year-old girl who slept alone in a cave and never lost her sense of mission, why fear is a construction we choose to believe, how she learned to read the land through a herd of wild cattle, surviving a near-fatal fall in Tasmania that left her crawling out of a gorge with a broken shoulder, and the grief that followed her mother's sudden death. This is a conversation about instinct, consciousness, and what it means to build a life from the inside out.
Sarah is a force of curiosity and nature and it was both a joy and inspiration to sit with her.
For more of Sarah Marquis' work:
Website: https://www.sarahmarquis.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explorer_sarahmarquis/
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