We are so excited to bring you this episode, which draws on some brilliant writing by Jonah Platt about why we should work to keep on bringing out what is 'implicit' inside us into the world of relationship - making it 'explicit'. In this conversation we tackle the world head on, from the most intimate relationships to the largest scale challenges facing us societally and politically, and we wonder together about the maturity, generosity and boldness it takes for us humans to keep talking and listening to one another. And we talk together about pragmatism - doing what it takes to improve things, rather than falling into trying to avoid certain feelings, or keeping ourselves self. It's a bold, warm, playful and important conversation - and we are very glad to share it with you.

The central work of our lives over the last 15 years or so has been as practicing integral development coaches, and as teachers of this way of guiding and supporting others. In this conversation we explore what it is to be a ‘coach’ in this way, to use our humanity, intelligence, hearts and life force to grow wings and then to help other people grow wings of their own. It’s such a rewarding, life-giving endeavour, and it teaches us ever more about being a person and taking care of others. Join us for an exploration of what ‘guiding people up and out’ might be, with inspiration from a lovely and inspiring poem by Ellie Steel.

“The concept that sits right at the heart of a sane and meaningful life,” writes Oliver Burkeman “is something like aliveness.” In this conversation we explore what it is to attend to aliveness, how we might come to notice its presence, and consider steps any of us can take to cultivate it. And we talk about how vital this is in an age where we may find ourselves encouraged in many places to become part of an algorithm - to act in life as if we were machines rather than creative beings who are part of a vast and inherently creative universe.

We make the world, and unmake that which doesn’t serve, by our everyday actions and inactions, our intentional taking care and our turning away. What does it take to have the courage, humility and compassion to attend as fully as we can to the world, to step towards a world we want to live in?

It's never too late to look at our lives, to set out on a new path, to begin the difficult and necessary and life-giving work of changing course, of learning how to bring ourselves in a way that deepens our depth, courage, love, kindness, truthfulness and contribution. It's never too late to learn something, to teach something. It's never too late to live - even in the very last moments of our lives. This conversation, marking the 8th anniversary of Turning Towards Life, takes us into an exploration of who we humans can be to one another, especially when we pay attention, when we remember our capacities to make worlds together, and when we commit to listen to one another with kindness, truthfulness, openness and care.

A conversation about discovering that the entire world around us—the first star breaking through darkness, rain dancing on rooftops, stooping to pick up an acorn—aren't distractions from life's important questions but invitations further into them. That we are never separate from the world, and that there are many ways in which the world is calling to us even when we feel alone. And that rather than retreating from the world to find the answers to our most urgent questions, perhaps we can soften back into contact with what surrounds us as a way into the answers.

'For the sake of what am I doing this?' is the question that animates this week's conversation. For the sake of fitting in? Of having feelings that I want to have? For the sake of serving? Of bringing the unique gifts I have to offer? For the sake of doing the big jobs, the ones that make a difference over the long term - such as pursuing love, justice, peace? Rather than pursuing quick wins that shrink our ambitions, might we find courage to take on impossible jobs and measure our lives not by immediate results but by unwavering dedication to the particular gifts that each of us has to bring?

We are far from powerless… though we often we imagine we are. And neither are we able to control how life goes… though we often long to be able to. Our making ourselves too small or too big rarely serves life. So what would it be to find a way to be in a responsive partnership with life itself - acting into life and then opening ourselves to life’s response, bringing the qualities we have to offer as humans and letting ourselves be changed by what comes?

A conversation about imagination as essential aliveness—and how treating life as purely literal diminishes our humanity. A great human power lies in choosing which story we live from, recognising that even dead ends become part of a larger narrative of redemption. What would change if we approached each day wondering along which secret aqueduct new life might be flowing toward us?

We spend so much energy trying to think our way to insight, yet a fuller understanding of our lives often arrives from somewhere beyond the usual way we know ourselves. When our hands are busy with ordinary tasks something vast can sometimes settle into awareness. What happens when we discover that our bodies know a kinship with the earth our minds may have forgotten? Could belonging be less about finding our place and more about recognising we never left it?

What if we recognised that every single thing we do - and everything we avoid doing - is quietly shaping us into the kind of person we're becoming? A conversation about discovering that we're already practising something all the time, whether we realise it or not, and that our choices about where to place our attention might be more consequential than we imagine. What would it mean to get good at the things that truly matter to us, or to surprise and widen ourselves by practicing new things that are outside of our familiar, comfortable range?

How do we attend to the something in each of us that longs to break free through the cracks of our self-image? A conversation about discovering that sacred uniqueness within ourselves and others in the everyday mundane acts of living, loving, working and being genuinely present with one another.

We mistake ourselves for the stories we've been told and the ones we keep telling. But what if those stories are too small to contain who we really are? A conversation about discovering that the more we open our hearts to the world, the less we actually know about anything—and how this not knowing might be exactly where freedom lives. What happens when we stop trying to figure everything out and instead give ourselves fully to the mystery of being human?

What happens when we choose to author our own identity rather than only accept the stories handed down to us? How might we practice distinguishing between what belongs to us and what we've been told we should be? What becomes possible when we see ourselves as authors of our own ways of being in life?

We are much more powerful than we often imagine, and in surprising ways. For most of us, our power is not in being remembered long beyond our lifetimes, or in being able to change the world that is far from us. It is rather in that we are each made by one another, and we make one another, by how we live, what we say, how we listen, and how we act. When we start to see that we are literally making a world for others to live in right here and now, in our every way of conducting ourselves it can open great possibilities both for gratitude and wonder, and great responsibilities for us as parents, friends, colleagues and neighbours in our everyday lives. In this conversation we remember Joanna Macy, whose writing we have featured a number of times, who died on July 19. And we talk together about what it is to be ‘good soil’ for one another, so that we get to make a world together that we want to live in.This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Third

We are patterned beings, and the patterns we live get started very early in our lives. They bring both blessings and blind-spots. One of the great opportunities of a well-lived life is to come to see the patterns, inquire into them, and find ways to open more spaciousness in us than the patterns have allowed so far. This is what we might call ‘growth’ or ‘development’. In this conversation we talk about what it takes to do this, and about the Enneagram, a wise, kind and deep body of language and invitation that we have both found incredibly helpful in walking this path.

What happens when we allow ourselves to truly feel the reality that we will grow old, become ill, and die? How might we practice treating our deepest fears not as enemies but as intimate companions? Perhaps the recognition that these experiences unite us with every other human being who has ever lived offers a pathway from aloneness into a more genuine and heartfelt connection with others. And when we stop running from what we cannot escape, we might get in contact with a very strong feeling of the realness and aliveness of being alive.

Our immediate emotions about an event or happening usually sit on top of deeper currents of meaning, story, longing and commitments that may at first be obscured from view. If we want to become ever more active and intentional participants in our lives and relationships, there's much to be said then for first coming to know the emotion and then beginning to notice the commitments which lie underneath. This way we give ourselves an opportunity to cultivate something over time - a purposeful way of knowing ourselves and using that knowledge for the very practical purpose of being the person we each want to be. How might we begin to approach this inquiry and the new kinds of action that come from it? what

Can we practice a fierce, truthful loving form of gratitude for life itself that calls us until our care for the world in practical, tangible ways? How is this different from shallow or 'pop-culture' versions of gratitude that might have us tune out from our pain and the difficulties around us? How might the deepest kind of gratitude connect us to the source from which all life comes, and the incredibly unlikeliness of our being here, and so fuel our own aliveness? And how might attending to small things - the computer screen in front of us, a cup of tea, the cat - be a pathway in?

This week we explore the tension between bringing our wholeness to the world and the social pressure to maintain polished appearances. How might we practise opening our hearts to the whole of ourselves—including the uncomfortable, needy, and difficult parts? Moving from performing acceptability to becoming spaces where others can feel genuinely welcomed means cultivating the capacity to ask "what else is here?" with genuine curiosity. And this becomes the foundation for encountering our own and others' grief, rage, and vulnerability without turning away. It’s our sense that this is an ethical imperative—the gift we offer those who come after us and those we meet along the way.