Service update: It's been a little while since the last episode due to life, work and other projects requiring energy. The podcast is a labour of love, and I am giving myself the grace that I would grant others to produce content in a way that is sustainable and uplifting for them. The things we love should be a pleasure, not a chore. I am so grateful to the podcast for the amazing connections, friendships and community that it has given me and so, as a thank you to listeners, here is a very special episode that I bring to you as a placeholder before releasing another mini series in the summer.

Joy is...Tiny Little Moments.

Matt Pycroft specialises in working in remote and hostile environments as a highly experienced filmmaker and photographer. Having begun his career creating short research-based films for the United Nations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he fell in love with life on the road and expedition filmmaking. He holds a few strings to his bow and is the host of The Adventure Podcast, an ongoing series of long-form conversations with pioneers of exploration and discovery. He is also Creative Director of Coldhouse, a content agency and platform for authentic storytelling. Coldhouse reflects Matt’s passion for seeking out untold stories and learning from working in extreme environments. No concept is too complex or location too remote.

It might be because we quickly discovered that our brains and emotions work in a similar manner, but there is very little in this conversation about what people might instinctively think of when they hear the word ‘adventure’: the mountains, the oceans, the bravado, the danger. Instead, what quickly becomes the heart of this conversation, is a much deeper and profound adventure: the adventure that comes from being truly vulnerable with ourselves, when we are broken open and have to find a way to put the pieces back together.

We talk about masculinity and the difficulties of finding an emotional vocabulary in a society that conditions, men in particular, towards anger; the discomfort of stopping when our brains are wired for being constantly occupied; what success and betterment actually look like; how we can evolve and learn through celebrating and supporting others, and the power of human experience and connection.

I am so grateful for Matt’s openness and trust in sharing his personal reflections, and I urge you to listen to him over on the Adventure Podcast for more insightful conversations, alongside some practical specialist episodes on planning your own adventures.

Follow: @mattpycroft @coldhouse_ @theadventurepodcast

www.coldhousecollective.com

www.theadventurepodcast.co.uk

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Joy is...Feeling Known.

Lindsey Freeman is a writer and sociologist interested in endurance, hapticality, atomic and nuclear cultures, and poetics. Her most recent book, Running, is about practice, love, queerness, and long-distance running, published by Duke University Press. Although described as a feminist and queer handbook of running, it’s a book for all runners.  It’s a book that celebrates the freedom and opportunity for self-discovery that running offers, whilst untangling identity, the body, failure, friendship...in fact the whole spectrum of what it means to lace up our shoes. 

Lindsey is at once both an intensely astute social and cultural observer and an incredibly gentle and empathetic soul, who embodies and explores what feeling, physically and emotionally, as well as thinking about, the world around us might mean for us individually and collectively. Running is the pivot point, both for Lindsey's book and for this conversation, but this is really about how we can create spaces from a place of deep understanding of our thinking, breathing, feeling bodies that are welcoming for all people who think and breathe and feel. In other words.

/www.lindseyfreeman.net

@atomic_lindsey_freeman

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Joy is...Shared Humanity.

Christine Yu is a New York-based, life-long athlete and award-winning journalist, who writes about sports, science and health. Her interest in the intersection between sports science and women athletes led her to her first book UP TO SPEED: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes, which disentangles myth and gender bias from real science in order to address the huge research gap in supporting women athletes to excel at every stage of life. Ultimately, this is book that is not just a road map for women and girls but an examination of the systemic injustices in sports and science that affect all people in the hope of uncovering ways to make the system more equitable for everyone.  

Running is so much more complex than simply lacing up your shoes; it is embedded within the cultural, political and social web that means that our bodies, particularly female and non-binary bodies, are never just, and should never be limited to, being 'one thing'. Over the course of this conversation, we unpick the assumptions and beliefs that have contributed to these limitations and explore how, by embracing the multi-faceted nature of identity in how we both conduct, interpret and act upon research, we might create spaces that feel equitable for all people.

Christine is an incredibly informed and insightful person and there are so many 'a-ha' moments in this interview that I hope will speak to anyone who feels that they are being forced into a pre-existing jigsaw puzzle that doesn't fit their needs.

www.christinemyu.com

@cyu888

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