Andrew Leigh

Speaker Key:

BP              Ben Pronk

AL              Andrew Leigh

BP              What we want our special ops to do and our SAS, in particular, is to be able to tackle those missions without precedent, to be able to come up with novel solutions to problems that we haven’t thought about before.

AL               My name’s Andrew Leigh and welcome to The Good Life, a politics-free podcast about living a happy, healthy, and ethical life.

                   In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full with humour, pleasure, meaning, and love. We’ll chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs, and carers about making the most of this one precious life.

                   If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.                     

                   Ben Pronk is a soldier’s soldier. At the Australian Defence Force Academy, he was the Academy Cadet Captain. He gained entry into the elite Special Air Services Regiment, a unit of 700 soldiers based in Perth.

                   After 9/11, he served on multiple deployments and was decorated for leadership in action. He finished his career as Commanding Officer in the SAS and recently retired after 24 years in the army. Ben’s now Managing Partner at Mettle Global Holdings, a consultancy focused on risk and crisis leadership.

                   Ben, thanks so much for joining us in The Good Life podcast today.

BP              My pleasure, Andrew.

Speaker Key:

AL              Andrew Leigh

CW             Cathy Wilcox

CW             Dreaming is where your imagination… It’s the gym for your imagination. It goes to be refreshed and so forth. And not having that was just dire for being able to create.

AL               Welcome to The Good Life, Andrew Leigh in Conversation, a podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full, with humour, pleasure, meaning, and love. We’ll chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, do take a moment to tell your friends or give us a rating. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   Born in Sydney in 1963, Cathy Wilcox became a cartoonist in 1984 and hasn’t stopped since. She’s worked almost exclusively for the Nine Fairfax newspapers and won a slew of awards, including Walkley Awards, the Stanley Award, and the Cartoonist of the Year on three separate occasions. She’s a children’s book illustrator and one of Australia’s most astute observers of political life. Cathy Wilcox, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

CW             Thanks, Andrew. Good to be here.

Speaker Key:

AL              Andrew Leigh

AD              Andrew Denton

AL               Now, isn’t it easy for people in our socioeconomic position to criticise cancel culture because it’s not coming for us?

AD              But it is coming for us. It’s coming for everyone. I see cancel culture as a circular gun. Yes, you may be firing it at who you want to fire it at right now, but eventually you’re going to fire it at yourself.

AL               Welcome to The Good Life, Andrew Leigh in Conversation, a podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full, with humour, pleasure, meaning and love. We’ll chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers, about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, do take a moment to tell your friends or give us a rating. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   It’s hard for me to imagine Australian comedy television without Andrew Denton. Via The Money or the Gun, Live and Sweaty, Enough Rope, Denton and a slew of other shows, he’s shaped Australian television and helped birth shows such as The Chaser.

                   I last interviewed Andrew a generation ago, in 1993, when I was a journalist on the Sydney University student newspaper, Honi Soit, and I’ll ask him a few questions about that interview in our conversation today. Andrew, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

Martha Nussbaum:

... hungry children like Hansel and Gretel. Have to go out into the woods to find their food and their parents have to... one's a broom seller and the wife, I don't know what she does, a housekeeper of some sort. And they don't have time to spend with the children and they also don't bring home the food. So, the children go out into the woods. Now, that's a complicated social problem and you'd have to solve it with an institutional solution. Instead, the story tells you, "Oh no, that's not the problem. The problem is a witch who lives in the woods and turns little children into gingerbread. And once you put the witch into the oven, the world is fine again." So, we get our minds accustomed to that sloppy, easy way of thinking about real problems.

Andrew Leigh:

My name's Andrew Leigh, and welcome to the Good Life, a politics-free podcast about living a happy, healthy, and ethical life. In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full with humor, pleasure, meaning, and love. We chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs, and carers about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

Andrew Leigh:

Martha Nussbaum is one of the world's top philosophers. The 71 year old professor at the University of Chicago has published more than 20 books and over 500 papers, and received more than 60 honorary degrees. Born in New York, she studied at Wellesley, New York University and Harvard, and has previously taught at Harvard and Brown. She converted to Judaism when she married Alan Nussbaum and remained in the faith after their separation. If there was a Nobel prize in philosophy, Martha would have won it. Evidenced by the fact that she was invited to give the John Locke Lectures at Oxford, and [inaudible 00:02:15] to the Kyoto Prize and the Inamori Ethics Prize. Her theme in Martha's work is political emotions. And her latest book is The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis.

Andrew Leigh:

Martha Nussbaum, thank you for appearing in the Good Life podcast today. I wanted to start with anger. Can you, for our listener, do your notion of transition anger from retributive anger?

Speaker Key:

JB               John Bell

AL               Andrew Leigh

AL              No-one has done more than John Bell to bring Shakespeare to Australians. Trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Great Britain in the 1970s, he went on to co-found Nimrod and then Bell Shakespeare in 1990. During its more than 30 years in operation, Bell Shakespeare has performed to more than 3 million Australians in schools, in cultural centres and in communities. It has performed some 29 of Shakespeare’s 39 plays. John has since stepped down as the Head of Bell Shakespeare but at 80 remains active and has just written a book titled Some Achieve Greatness about the lessons for leadership we can draw from Shakespeare John Bell, thank you so much for joining me on The Good Life podcast today.

Speaker Key:

AL               Andrew Leigh

PS               Peter Singer

AL       Peter Singer is one of the world's most influential philosophers. Born in Melbourne and educated at the University of Melbourne and Oxford. He's taught at Oxford, La Trobe, Monash and for the past two decades or so at Princeton University. Peter has written or edited more than 40 books including ‘Animal Liberation,’ ‘The Life You Can Save,’ and most recently ‘Ethics and the Real World’ – 82 brief essays on things that matter. He has three daughters and when he's not writing philosophy or reading it, he hikes and surfs. Peter Singer, welcome to the Good Life podcast today.

Speaker Key:

RK              Ronni Kahn

AL               Andrew Leigh

RK              So we were driving to see this AIDS clinic, but as we drove in, Selma said to me, oh, and yes, yes, one of the things I did was get electricity into Soweto. And it’s a city of millions of people. And honestly, the hairs on my arms stood up, and all I could think of, is what can it feel like to know that you’ve made that sort of impact on that many people. And somehow, it translated for me in saying, I want to know what that feels like.

AL               My name’s Andrew Leigh and welcome to The Good Life, a politics-free podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full with humour, pleasure, meaning and love. We chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers, about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends, or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   Ronni Kahn is the founder of food rescue charity, OzHarvest. Born into a Jewish family in apartheid-era South Africa, Ronni moved to a kibbutz in Israel at age 18 and lived there for the next decade. In 1988, she moved to Australia, where she worked as a florist and event organiser. Frustrated by the waste of food, she founded OzHarvest in 2004 and now oversees its operations across Australia.

                   OzHarvest works with a thousand charities and distributes around 20 million meals to those in need every year. Ronni was the 2010 winner of the Australian Local Hero Award and is helping people in other countries to establish food rescue organisations, like OzHarvest.

                   Ronni, welcome to The Good Life Podcast.       

Speaker Key:

BJ               Barry Jones

AL               Andrew Leigh

BJ               Because when you look at something of Bach, like The Art of the Fugue or the Goldberg Variations and so on, the level of complexities involved is astounding. But then, you see, when you’re exposed to it, it stretches the brain.

AL               My name’s Andrew Leigh and welcome to The Good Life, a politics-free podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full with humour, pleasure, meaning and love. We chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers, about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   86-year-old Barry Jones has led a full life. Nine years as a teacher at Dandenong High School, five years in the Victorian Parliament, more than 20 years in the Federal Parliament, including time as Australia’s longest-serving Science Minister. He’s written more than a dozen books, but that undersells it because he keeps on updating his books with new editions. Australia has four Learned Academies, but only one person who has been elected to all four of them.

                   He’s campaigned prominently on the death penalty and on climate change, having a little more success on the former than the latter. And he first came to prominence as Australia’s Pick a Box champion. Before there was Google, there was Barry Jones. Barry, welcome to The Good Life Podcast.

Speaker Key:

AB              Andrew Bassat

AL               Andrew Leigh

AB              You try to rely less on lacking business strategies. So, you really try to position yourself so that you’re… And you need to take risks, but the risk you take in poker, there’s a 66% chance you’ll lose the hand and be out of the tournament, you never want to take in business.

AL               My name’s Andrew Leigh, and welcome to The Good Life, a politics free podcast about living a happy, healthy, and ethical life. In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full, with humour, pleasure, meaning and love. We chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs, and carers, about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   Two decades ago, Andrew Bassat’s younger brother, Paul, was trying to buy a house in Melbourne. Trawling through newspapers, they began to wonder if maybe there was a smarter way in organising real estate listings. As the two corporate lawyers drew up a business plan, they quickly realised that if the internet was to truly transform a sector, it was more likely to be employment than real estate. And so, SEEK was born.

                   Today, SEEK is one of Australia’s most successful companies. It operates in 18 countries, lists over 4 million jobs. Each month, over 400 million people visit its site. The company is worth over 6 billion dollars. Andrew is its CEO. Now, what strikes you about him is he’s delightfully lowkey. Named EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year a few years ago. He lacks swagger, dresses casually and seems to relish working in a workplace where the signature colour is hot pink and arcade games adorn the foyer. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker Key:

DW             David Walsh

AL               Andrew Leigh

DW             My experience of gambling taught me to understand that the wealth and prestige that I grew to possess had very little to do with my talent. I didn't gain wisdom by standing on the shoulders of giants. I gained wisdom by serving the crowd.

AL               My name is Andrew Leigh, and welcome to The Good Life, a politics free podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast, we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full with humour, pleasure, meaning in life. We chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers, about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   David Walsh contains multitudes. Australia's most successful professional gambler. He built and stocked Australia's most successful museum, MONA in Hobart. His autobiography, Bone of Fact, jumps from Bayes’ theorem to bullfighting and includes an extensive discussion of his vegetarianism, atheism and past lovers. But for an autodidact, David's also surprisingly self-effacing. In reply to someone who tells him that MONA is the world's greatest museum, it emerged that it's not even the greatest museum starting with him.

                   He places a strong emphasis on luck, which led me to ask him to launch my book, The Luck of Politics in Hobart in 2015. I think he's one of the most interesting people I've ever met. I hope that by the end of this conversation, you'll think so too. David, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

Speaker Key:

AL               Andrew Leigh

BM             Father Bob Maguire

BM             If somebody tells me I was wrong, I go over it because maybe they’re wrong about me being wrong. Like somebody said to me once… A very nice nun, a woman religious, said to me, Bob, you sound as though you think you’re infallible and I said, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not infallible at all, I’m just in charge.

AL               My name’s Andrew Leigh and welcome to The Good Life, politics-free podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full with humour, pleasure, meaning and love. I chat with musicians and athletes, CEO and carers about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   Father Bob Maguire is one of Australia’s best known priests but to call him a priest is a bit like calling Nick Cave a guitarist. It’s true but it doesn’t quite capture the breadth of the man. Born in 1934 in Thornbridge, Victoria, Bob Maguire worked as a beekeeper and an army officer before becoming parish priest for Sts Peter and Paul’s Church in South Melbourne from 1973 to 2012. In that role, Father Bob campaigned on social justice issues, particularly homelessness, engaged with the community through radio shows on 3AW and Triple J and frequently clashed with the government and church authorities.

                   I got to know Father Bob in 2013 when he kindly joined me for an in-conversation event about my new book on inequality, Battlers and Billionaires. I quickly learnt why a thousand people came to his final church service. He’s incisive, amusing and passionate. Father Bob Maguire’s brand of Catholicism isn’t that of Daniel Mannix and Bob Santamaria and certainly not Prosperity Gospel.

                   His is a form of social justice Catholicism, larrikin Catholicism, in the vein of Australian Catholic leaders of the past, like Peter Kennedy, Bill Morris and Naples’ priest, Mario Borrelli. It means reaching out to the local community through his Bob squad and his Bobmobiles. Bob’s work over the years brought him multiple awards, including Victorian of the Year, and he’s recently had a documentary made about his life, In Bob We Trust.

                   He’s a passionate Collingwood supporter and it’s a pleasure to have him on the podcast today. Bob, thanks for joining us.

Speaker Key:

AL               Andrew Leigh

AH              Alex Hutchinson

AH              And, yes, this is the nature of sport, right, for everyone who makes it, there are a lot of other athletes who are putting in the hours and the chips don’t fall quite in the right place. And so having that goal to pursue was actually something that gave a huge amount of meaning to my life.

AL               My name’s Andrew Leigh and welcome to The Good Life, a politics-free podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full, with humour, pleasure, meaning and love.

                   We’ll chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, please take a moment to tell your friends or rate us on Apple Podcasts. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   Alex Hutchinson is one of the world’s best writers about the science of exercise. A former middle and long-distance runner for the Canadian national team, he’s no stranger to the rigours of hard exercise. But he’s also a pretty accomplished scientist, with a PhD from Cambridge University and a background working for the National Security Agency on quantum computing in nanomechanics.

                   In recent years Alex has worked for publications, from New York Time to Runner’s World, writing columns that have titles like Jockology or Sweat Science. His books include which comes first, cardio or weights, fitness myths, training truths and other surprising discoveries from the science of exercise, and most recently his new book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance. Alex, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

Speaker Key:

AL               Andrew Leigh

AF              Alan Finkel

AF              The other important thing I’ve been trying to encourage is for teachers and parents to help their children to aim higher, to set their aspirations higher. The cruellest thing you can do to a young child is to not encourage them to set their aspirations high. You’ve got to help them set their aspirations high and then teach them how to achieve those.

AL               Welcome to The Good Life: Andrew Leigh in Conversation, a podcast about living a happy, healthy and ethical life. In this podcast we seek out wise men and women who have lessons to teach us about living life to the full, with humour, pleasure, meaning and love. We’ll chat with musicians and athletes, CEOs and carers about making the most of this one precious life. If you like this podcast, do take a moment to tell your friends or give us a rating. Now, sit back and enjoy the conversation.

                   Alan Finkel is an engineer turned neuroscientist who founded the Silicon Valley company, Axon Instruments. He started two magazines, Cosmos and G, served as Chancellor of Monash University and is just coming to the end of his five-year term as Australia’s Chief Scientist. He’s passionate about innovation, science history and education and few Australians give a better speech.

                   Alan, welcome to The Good Life podcast. I wanted to start with your dad, David Finkel, who came out to Australia at the age of 32 as a holocaust survivor. How did it shape you to grow up as the son of somebody who had fled the Nazis?

Speaker key:

AL               Andrew Leigh

CN              Cal Newport

AL                    Cal Newport is one of the world's great experts in ‘attention management’ - in making sure we can become more productive and live happier lives. He is, in short, the kind of person I’d most hoped to speak with when I started the Good Life podcast. Cal has published eight books. He is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University, and is somebody who manages to live a life of focused attention in a world constantly competing for our attention.

His first book was How to Win at College, and his most recent book is A World Without Email. I want to talk with Cal during this conversation about the arc of his work and the way in which his focus has changed. Cal, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

CN              It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.

Andrew Leigh:

Robert Putnam was once described as the General Motors of American academia, a compliment delivered before the auto maker was bailed out. He's produced nearly a dozen books on topics ranging from arms control to poverty. But these aren't just any books. They're both door stoppers and conversation stoppers, intensely researched, peppered with insightful anecdotes and rigorously analysed data.

I first got to know Bob when I took his Social Capital course in 2001, and spent a year working part-time as one of his research assistants. The team of half a dozen of us would analyse data or prepare literature reviews, and then present them to the others who'd pick them apart. Once Bob was satisfied we'd comprehensively tackled the narrow topic we'd been assigned, it'd be filed away as an input for him to use when writing the relevant section of his next book.

I'd never seen anything quite like it in academia. When I returned to Australia, I wrote Disconnected, a much shorter, Australian version of Bob Putnam's seminal book, Bowling Alone. Bob gave me thoughtful feedback on the draft even though he'd, by then, moved onto other topics. He isn't just someone who writes about the ties that bind. He practices social capital too. Bob, thanks for appearing on The Good Life Podcast today.

Robert Putnam:

It's great to be with you.

Andrew Leigh:

As a science-loving rationalist, I've always loved Tim Minchin's songs, and everything from dogma to alternative medicine. He's even been kind enough to let me quote snippets of them in two of my books. But I remember the moment when I thought, "This guy's a genius." It was midway through the School Song in Matilda when they start turning lettered blocks over. And you realise the song doesn't just work lyrically and musically but also visually because every line corresponds to the next letter of the alphabet. Now 43 years old, Tim grew up in Perth before moving to Melbourne, London and Los Angeles. Then he had a really bad experience with a project. And now he's home. I think I speak for many Australians in saying we're sorry that Larrikins didn't work out but delighted to have Tim back here. He's presently doing a tour, the Back Tour, which is currently showing in Canberra. Tim, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

You seem to have grown up in a fairly musical family. Your uncle, Jim, was a bluegrass musician. You talk about family singing around the piano. You played with your brother, Dan, in bands. Did you always expect you'd go into entertainment?

Andrew Leigh:

Alain de Botton is the closest thing Western society has to a secular priest. Born in Switzerland, raised in Britain, he's written books on Proust, travel, architecture, religion, sex, arts, the news, and love. In 2008, Alain founded The School of Life, an educational company that offers advice on life issues like achieving calm, having better relationships, and making sense of a messy world. It's videos with titles like How to Get Attention Without Attention Seeking, The Importance of Kissing, The Charms of Unavailable People, and Why You Don't Need to be Exceptional, have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. His new book is titled The School of Life. Alain, welcome to The Good Life podcast.

Alain de Botton:

Thank you so much. What an honour for me.

Andrew Leigh:

Australia's 27th Prime Minister, Julia Eileen Gillard was born in the Wilshire port town of Barry. When she was a child, her parents John and Laura were told that Julia's chronic lung problems would improve with warmer air. So to seek better jobs and to help the younger daughter's health, they became 10 pound poms and sailed to Australia when Julia was four years old, clutching a toy koala. She attended Unley High, Adelaide Uni and Melbourne Uni, before becoming a partner at Slater & Gordon at age 29. Pre-selected third on Labor's Victorian Senate ticket in 1996, the nation narrowly missed out on Senator Gillard, and Julia became the Member for Lalor in 1998.

In opposition, she held the immigration and health portfolios. When Labor won government in 2007, became Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and Deputy Prime Minister. In 2010, she challenged Kevin Rudd for the Prime Ministership and served for three years and three days, before again losing the leadership to Kevin Rudd. Among her attainments are education reform, climate change and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Since leaving Parliament in 2013, Julie has served as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, Chair of Beyond Blue, and Chair of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, For a woman who wants to get a seat in Parliament, she now has no shortage of chairs. Julia's one of my great heroes, and not just because she appointed me as her Parliamentary Secretary in the final months of her Prime Ministership. And it is a true delight to have her on the Good Life Podcast today.

Julia Gillard:

Thank you Andrew. It's wonderful to be here.

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

ANDREW LEIGH, HOST:  Marcus Zusak is one of Australia's great storytellers, aged 45. He's the author of six novels, The Underdog, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, When Dogs Cry, The Messenger, The Book Thief, and Bridge Of Clay. Marcus has a flair for phrases and talent for tales. He also really loves other people's books, and regards reading as an essential part of a good life. Marcus, it's a delight to have you on the podcast today.

MARCUS ZUSAK, AUTHOR THE BOOK THIEF: Thanks for joining me. There's absolute pleasure. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. We'll see how we go. Hopefully I can, you know, do your program justice.

ANDREW LEIGH, HOST: Alice Pung is one of Australia's most talented young writers. The author of Unpolished Gem, the Edited Collection Growing up Asian in Australia, Her Father's Daughter, Laurinda My First Lesson, Writers on Writers, Alice Pung and John Marsden, Close to Home Selected Writings. And then four children's books - Meet Marley, Marley’s Business, Marley and the Goat and Marley Walks on the Moon. Alice also writes for nonfiction publications such as the monthly and has a part time job as a as a lawyer at the Fair Work Commission, when she's not looking after her kids. I have no idea how she manages to be so talented and so prolific, but I'm delighted to have her on the good life podcast today.

PUNG: Oh, thanks so much, Andrew. It's a delight to be on this podcast today.