Episoder
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How do we confront the mortality of someone we love? In the final episode of this season of Spirit Levels, our guests help Jenny through her existential fear of Frank’s death (it’s okay, he’s fine).
Lo Carmen, host of the podcast Death Is Not the End, talks romantic death pop, funeral song choices and turning ashes into records. Kimba Griffith, of The Last Hurrah Funerals, discusses the fine and varied ways in which you can send off your person. Memoirist Elly Varrenti shares the difficulty in forever being the ‘other woman’ when in a relationship with a widower.
Is it a coincidence this episode came about after we visited the Capuchin Catacombs in Sicily and saw all the mummies dressed in their Sunday best, so that their grieving relatives never have to let them go? No. But also, preparing for our own deaths is a vital part of life admin, and something we all need to give proper thought.
This will be the last episode from us for a while as we take time out to work on a special season. What a great time to play catch-up with our 28 episodes! Please stay followed and subscribed for those updates. See you on the other side…
LINKS
Jenny writing for The Guardian about Frank risking his life on their wedding day.
Lo Carmen’s podcast Death is Not the End.
The Last Hurrah Funerals.
Elly Varrenti’s writing.
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Newsletter.
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What are you afraid of, reasonably or unreasonably? And what can help combat that? Hypnosis? Exposure therapy? Flooding? Guidance? In episode 27 of Spirit Levels we use Jenny’s fear of sharks as a case study, meeting with Will Salter, a man who came eye to eye with a great white shark when surfing; Lola Broomhall, a freediver and breathwork practitioner, and hypnotist Jeremy Walker.
LINKS
Lola Broomhall: breathwork, physio, freediving workshops, professional mermaiding!
Hey, if you like the tune that’s playing near the beginning, when Jenny and Frank are talking about fear, that’s ‘Summer of Sad’ by Salty Lips.
St Andrews Beach Community Choir sang the ‘Don’t Be Scared of the Ocean’ refrain and are based on the Mornington Peninsula.
The Summit AI coach Jenny used (free!)
Hypnotist Jeremy Walker
A wonderful story about freediving by Michael Adams in the Australian Review of Books.
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Manglende episoder?
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We’re going to be in Bali by the time you hear this, gathering some more weird wellness intel, so this ep we handed the mic over to our listeners to find out how they start the day the right way. From oil pulling, to 5 Tibetan rites to doing naked squats in the elements… we really feel like we know them very well now.
LINKS
Among our contributors this episode were Mena from Human Thriving (who spoke about glucose)...
And Katie from Therapeutic Eating (who spoke about objectivity).
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Who the hell would want to be a Stoic? That was journalist Brigid Delaney’s thought when she was commissioned to write a book on Stoic philosophy. Brigid felt she was more Epicurean by nature if anything, but having now written the book Reasons Not to Worry: How to be Stoic in Chaotic Times, she's happy to admit Marcus Aurelius and co. rule her life.
In this episode, Brigid walks us through:
What to do when you have FOMO in your career.
What to do with feeling of failure.
What to do when you piss off your neighbour.
What to do when conflicts escalate.
How to cope with disaster.
How to create structure around your drinking habits.
And how to make your own shame vaccine.
Jenny reflects on how her thinking was transformed by Stoicism during a stint at Alcoholics Anonymous. Frank insists he’s a Stoic, despite regularly pulling hand guns on tradies.
LINKS
Brigid Delaney's book Reasons Not to Worry
Brigid Delaney's book Wellmania
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If your life coach is a psychopath, is that necessarily a bad thing? Coaching is marketed to wannabes as a luxury, business-class lifestyle that grants you total freedom and easy money. (And oh yeah, you might have to deal with some clients in crisis, too.) You’ve just got to learn how to hustle, which means paying a whoop-load of cash to other coaches to get 'the codes'. Possibly for the rest of your life.
This episode, Frank and Jenny revisit their favourite topic, piggybacking off the Netflix UK documentary Psychopath Life Coach.
We ask our guest Danielle Ryan – a former life coach who now makes explainer videos dissecting the scammier side of the industry – what trends she’s seeing. These range from the escalating industry of coaches coaching coaches, to the ‘fitness coach to business coach pipeline’, to business coaches rebranding as spiritual coaches.
Along the way, Frank and Jenny discuss Matthew McConaughey’s infiltration into coaching, sweat-lodge disaster guy James Arthur Ray, NLP, Landmark and Dale Carnegie. We also get Jenny’s Indonesian language teacher Jamsen on the show, to talk about how life coaches are taking over Bali and his take on whether that’s all bad.
By the way, if you dig this episode, you’ll love our eps Make Me a Life Coach and also the episode Energy Healing, Manifesting and The Placebo Effect.
LINKS
Danielle Ryan on the most common business coaching scams.
Danielle Ryan’s videos on NLP, part one and part two.
Jenny’s Bahasa teacher, Jamsen. Hire him!
Jenny talking about life coaching on ABC radio and Disrupt radio (scroll down to Mar 12).
Further reading: Is Life Coaching Just Modern Sophistry? (Quillette) Life Coaching Industry Scams (BBC). The Cult-like Language That’s Coursing Through Business (Inc). Jay Shetty’s monk back-story questioned (The Guardian).
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The English and the Australians – of which we here at Spirit Levels represent both – are notoriously prudish when it comes to nudity, so Frank and Jenny want to know if they can break their conditioning. This episode takes us from tischtennis halls of Berlin to the secret beaches of Australia. Listen along:
01.16 Frank slept in his mum and dad’s bed till he was six.
02.33 Titillation is not the same as nudity (yeah, Frank).
03.56 Lucian Freud: Oh my god.
04.20 Are all nudists = perverts or is that just an English equation?
05.48 Nude sport options in Berlin.
06.35 Visiting Stadtbad Neukölln.
08.41 Freikopterkultur (FKK) and ‘free body culture’ in Germany.
10.15 Ela, from Frankfurt Oder, tells us about FKK when she was growing up.
16.18 How Bravo magazine freaked out Ela’s sister’s host family in the US.
18.21 Finally! Time for the nude table tennis.
20.01 Naturists and conservation (featuring a cameo from a rare orchid).
22.35 Jenny and Frank go ‘beyond the wire’ in Portsea.
25.02 A sad story about jetskis.
29.44 Ritualistic nude events, like Dark Mofo’s Winter Solstice Swim and the Sydney Skinny.
30.20 Yoni sunning – the kinda Taoist practice that draws in solar energy and Vitamin D.
LINKS
Stadtbad Neukölln
Dark Mofo Nude Solstice Swim
The Sydney Skinny
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Sport psychology is psychology on steroids. Athletes experience success failure, goal-setting and pressure at a heightened level, so delving into their mindsets has so much to teach us mere mortals about optimising our everyday lives.
Our guest is mental fitness coach Brett Stephens, aka Moose. He’s a former professional footballer who then became a performance coach on the professional tennis circuit for over 20 years (including full-time for Pete Sampras in the last 5 years of the tennis legend’s career), also working with surfers, golfers and other athletes. He’s a larger-than-life character on the Mornington Peninsula in Australia, where he lives now.
We’ve time-stamped Moose’s interview below so you can jump to the key points.
05.55 Pete Sampras’s game plan when he didn’t win a tournament for two years
08.20 Moose’s philosophy of effort over perfection
09.25 Your attitude towards losing is more important than your attitude towards winning
09.52 How his first conversation with a new client goes
11.03 The trap of getting caught up in the outcome
11.34 Use negative thoughts as fuel
13.07 You may be evolving fast, but so is your industry
14.21 The language of mindset coaching
15.19 You can lose your temper, but you must reset fast
16.03 The impact of social media distraction on performance
18.29 How do you deal with, overzealous parents?
19.31 Is it important to visualise being number one?
23.51 The optimum state of ‘relaxed intensity’
25.08 The chief lesson Moose learned on his AFL journey
27.57 Working with Pete Sampras
LINKS
Moose as motivational speaker
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If you enjoyed our episode ‘What Can a Top Performance Coach Teach Us All’, or if you’re just a huge tennis fan, maybe you want to go a little deeper.
In this bonus episode, performance coach Brett Stephens, aka, Moose, satisfies our curiosity about what the tennis greats of the nineties were really like.
“Sort of name dropping a bit here, but that's what podcasts are about, right?”
“Absolutely.”
LINKS
Moose as motivational speaker
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This episode, we invite you to let it all hang out. Frank and Jenny visit the Finnish Church in London to take a pew in the basement sauna that brings everyone together, not just the congregation. There, rector Marjaana Härkönen talks about the connection between spirit and the sauna – ‘löyly’ – and what to drink while you’re busy connecting.
Now look, we know people banging on about saunas can be as annoying as people banging on about ice baths (hey – we’ve got an episode on that, too!), but when integrative wellness professor Marc Cohen told us the full gamut of what these sweat boxes can do for our meat vessels, we were genuinely surprised.
Always one to look at the worst-case scenario, Jenny recounts the grizzly deaths that occurred at the 2010 World Sauna Championships, and in sweat lodges such as that of one-time Oprah mascot James Arthur Ray. But surely she can see the logic in preparing for the worst (her favourite thing to do) by engaging in hormesis – the act of adapting to stress, such as extreme heat, and thus better preparing for future stresses.
Frank’s a lucky fella. He works at Peninsula Hot Springs, so he gets to have a sneaky sauna and ice bath combo every day. To make it up to Jenny, he’s built a grand stone and wood sauna at her place, together with an ice bath in a converted chest freezer.
PS: If you liked this episode, you'll love our sixth episode, Taking the Plunge: Cold Water Immersion.
LINKS
Wellness professor, Dr Marc Cohen
Finnish Church in London
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Is calling yourself 'Mother God' a legit way to promote healing around the world or a chronic case of spiritual narcissism? Is reading The Secret a neat way of visualising your goals or as entitled as Veruca Salt demanding a Oompa Loompa? Do energy healers really have special powers or is it the power of the placebo effect?
This episode, Frank and Jenny probe Jenny’s scepticism of energy healing and manifesting abundance. (Actually don’t say ‘probe’, that will bring up buried memories of the alien implant the Zeta Reticulans put in her pelvic bowl.) They’re aided by licensed psychotherapist Joe Nucci, who you may know from his no-bullshit social media videos, aimed at arming you with knowledge to navigate mental health (mis)information.
LINKS
Joe Nucci on Insta and his website.
Jenny’s blog New Age Guinea Pig.
An interesting paper, Extraterrestrial Pregnancies and Nasal Implants by Marika Moisseef.
Lo Carmen’s rad new podcast, Death Is Not The End.
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Vipassana is an intensive, 10-day form of meditation often likened to taking a heroic dose of a psychedelic trip, in terms of the profound realisations an individual can reach. And just like with hallucinogenic drugs, those with a predisposition to mental health issues, or who are at a vulnerable point in their life, can experience adverse effects – as the podcast Untold: The Retreat has found. Frank and Jenny talk to three people who completed a 10-day retreat and had very different experiences. Our lead interviewee is neuroscientist, AI engineer and 'extremophile' Dr Jack Allocca, who has found himself completely reassessing his life.
LINKS
Jack Allocca in Jenny Valentish’s book Everything Harder Than Everything Else.
Jenny’s Australian Financial Review article about Jack Allocca speaking to mastermind groups.
Jack Allocca on Instagram including a poignant post he made post-Vipassana retreat.
Untold: The Retreat podcast.
Vipassana subreddit.
Further reading #1: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. #2 Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. #3: A romantic rebellion against the tech era (The Guardian).
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Have you ever had your head scissored? Have you been piggybacked, by a muscular woman in a bikini? Fireman-carried across a five-star hotel room? Choked gently to sleep? If not, you can. Muscle worship sites are full of bodybuilding, tough-as-fuck women who are ready to arm-wrestle you into humiliation for a price.
Kortney Olson is larger-than-life in every way. A hoot, a scream, a boss – in fact, a motherfucking CEO – and a bodybuilder who’s smashed watermelons between her thighs on television shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live. That she hasn’t yet become President of the United States of America pains her. Even so, she’s like a superhero. In fact, the creator of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, dubbed her ‘the woman with the world’s deadliest thighs’. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger snapchatted about her: ‘Now, that woman is definitely fit.’
Kortney is Frank and Jenny’s guest this week, talking about her hectic high school years, her former meth addiction, and her pathway into muscle fetish – including some really close that we shouldn’t laugh at, but with her permission, we will.
LINKS
Kortney’s fitness apparel Grrrl
Kortney’s Insta
Kortney’s coaching programs
Kortney crushing watermelons
This episode’s source material, Everything Harder Than Everyone Else, audio book via Audible
Photo credit for Kortney cover art: Olga Filatova
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Are you related to either Jenny or Frank? If so, back away now – this one is NOT for you. Nor is it suitable for under-18s. Okay. In A Priest and a Navy Officer Walk Into a Bar, Jenny and Frank work out ways to role play that aren’t cringe-inducing, with the notion that starting a scenario in public – a bit like high-risk improv – is key. They recruit their friends Jan and Steve – who’ve been happily married for 50 years – to dress them in character for their latest date and then record the outcome, and you’ll meet a cast of their existing regular characters, from Xavier the masseur to Marcel the frottage-loving creep. There’s also a detour into props. No, not furry handcuffs from Sexyland. Frank builds the sort of props that a carpenter on a medieval movie would envy.
LINKS
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Have you just finished Dry January? Thinking about Feb Fast? Can’t face either just yet? Maybe you’re a ‘grey area drinker’. This term was coined in 2018 by Jolene Park, who has trained many grey area drinking coaches. Since then, a whole world of alcohol-free, sober-pride people has populated social media, talking openly about their drinking, moderating and quitting, without the stigma attached to labels like ‘alcoholic’. For mums, in particular, it’s almost become a new women’s lib. Similarly, ‘quit lit’ has really become a popular genre of memoir in recent years.
In this episode of Spirit Levels, Frank and Jenny talk to coaches Lissie Turner and Faye Lawrence, who have very different styles, as well as two women who are exploring experimentation and sobriety respectively – authors Rochelle Siemienowicz and Seana Smith. We look at how coaching works – as opposed to other methods such as rehab, AA and counselling – and how it can be improved. Host Jenny also talks about why she nearly went down the route of becoming a coach but decided she definitely wasn’t the best fit for the job.
LINKS
Host Jenny Valentish’s 2017 memoir Woman of Substances: A Journey into Addiction and Treatment was added to university course reading lists and used as educational material by treatment centres. And hey, 156 Amazon ratings give it a solid 4.4!
Lissie Turner’s Dissolving Patterns course and podcast, and her music industry book, Off the Record.
Faye Lawrence is an alcohol, ADHD and anxiety coach.
Seana Smith’s Sober Journeys website. Check out her favourite quit-lit books!
Rochelle Siemienowicz’s memoir Fallen, about pursuing hedonism after leaving the Seventh-day Adventists.
The latest quit-lit book out there is A Thousand Wasted Sundays, by Victoria Vanstone.
We love the Over the Influence podcast and community. Here’s their episode on Sober Code.
And here’s the Sober Code website.
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ASMR. Never before have four letters divided people into two camps so soundly: The “What’s that?” camp and the “Yes, I watch girls in Ohio pretend to give me a cranial nerve exam all the time” camp.
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response videos are commonly credited with helping people sleep and helping with anxiety. ASMR was only coined as a phrase in 2009, but those who get the ‘brain tingles’ will tell you they’ve experienced triggers their whole life – most commonly through whispering, clicking noises, hair brushing and quiet personal attention. Our beautiful interviewee Rea Moon is one such person, and now this Dallas grandmother has a super-successful channel of her own.
But let us tell you, there’s a WHOLE weirder world out there, including ASMrotica, mortuary-themed ASMR and the assembly of sniper rifles. You’re going to have to listen to find out.
Side note: just as you can order custom porn these days, surely there’s a market for custom ASMR? As Jenny is OBSESSED with ASMR, Frank comes up with his own recording, utilising her three favourite things: laundry, hankies and actor Ben Mendelsohn.
OH MY GOD, SO MANY COOL LINKS
Rea Moon ASMR (We love her series of videos doing makeup for young folk going to Pride, and of course you’ll want to see her famous lady on a plane one.)
Here’s Steve, from SRP ASMR, doing an eye examine. And he is indeed an optometrist.
Two of Jenny’s favourites, Sarah Lavender (here she is as the bored art student we mention in the episode) and Diane from Moonlight Cottage.
Here’s Julien Miquel, whose beautifully sonorous French accent tells you how to pronounce things.
Here’s the ASMR Live Lounge in Southsea, England, which we are 100% going to visit next time we’re over there.
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Whether or not our bodies need help detoxifying is a hotly debated topic. Feeling sluggish after a bumper holiday season, Frank decides to try a 16:8 fast, then ups the ante to a five-day juice cleanse with a course of colonics. That’s all very well when you’re paying for the privilege in a luxury resort, but how hard is it to commit under your own steam, on home turf?
Jenny chips in by offering a sexual incentive if Frank can stay the course. As for the colonics? Frank hasn’t been beaten by a pipe like that since he was in Romper Stomper. Be sure to go to our Instagram to see what came out.
We also talk to more seasoned fasters, including one trooper who did a 10-day water fast.
LINKS
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Just started up at the gym again? What's more likely to turbo-charge your session than a big scoop of pre-workout? Motivational speeches! This genre was first adopted by weightlifters who wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger screaming encouragement over rousing strings as they bench pressed, but it has since infiltrated the mainstream. Boiled down to its essence, the premise is: You’re the underdog. Nobody knows how much you’ve suffered. Nobody cares either. So now you need to dominate.
Absent fathers are a common theme, and so the narrator takes the form of Dad; sometimes Encouraging Dad, but more often Shouting Angrily from the Sidelines Dad. Their voices tend to be uncredited, though ministers, athletes and business leaders feature heavily. And Denzel Washington. Lots of Denzel Washington. These stand-in dads live in a labyrinth of playlists proliferating on Spotify and YouTube – so you can listen at the gym or watch stock-footage montages of people screaming in the rain on your laptop.
This episode, Frank and Jenny talk to kettlebell sport athlete (and owner of Art Gym in Hobart) Eilish Kidd about how she went far down the rabbit hole of this genre. Boxer and ex-Special Forces guy Steven Body talks about how training in the military was designed to weed out anyone less than alpha, and how he loves pull-your-finger-out motivational speeches.
We also talk to ultrarunner and performance coach Luke Tyburski about his own form of motivational speeches – the internal kind. He’s experienced horrific injuries and setbacks, and he’s got some great ideas of how to get you pushing through.
Moved, Frank records Jenny the daddy of all motivational workout speeches.
LINKS:
Eilish Kidd and Art Gym in Hobart
Luke Tyburski – ultrarunner and mindset coach
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Since the launch of Spirit Levels in October, we've road-tested a Melbourne cuddle club, MDMA couples therapy, extreme weight cutting, insomnia fixes, biometric tests, ADHD coaching, facilitated breath repatterning, cold water therapy and ecstatic dancing, not to mention we tried to turn Frank into a spiritual life-coach guru.
Next week, on January 9th, we'll be human guinea pigs once more, back with episodes on sober coaching, role play, muscle fetish, peptides, hypnotism, DMT, saunas, the cult of motivational workout speeches, colonics, fasting, naturism (turns out we play table tennis even better without clothes), ASMR, sensory deprivation and a ton more.
Till then, thanks so much for the reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, the downloads, follows and Insta comments – we deeply appreciate each and every one. Don't forget to tell us what you'd like us to try next.
Jenny and Frank
LINKS
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We're 12 episodes into Spirit Levels podcast, so as 2023 draws to a close, we recap our first three months of wellness adventures, from the pseudo to the sensible. NB: We should add that we recorded this while in the throes of Covid (thanks, Berlin!). We would definitely sound more pumped otherwise.
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What’s the difference between 5 Rhythms, Ecstatic Dance and Contact Dance? We crack open a cacao in Melbourne and Bali to find out. Over the melancholic cry of sound bowls, Frank wistfully recalls a few near-orgies he’s attended in Ubud and Canggu, but Jenny finds her experience pleasingly more like an old ravers’ home without the drugs.
Our guests this week, 5 Rhythms teacher Chloe Stuart and ecstatic dance DJ Jazzy O, explain how dance can provide therapy, connection, community, free us from judgmental behaviour and – if the stars align – give us an orgasm on the dance floor.
Thanks to James Ballard for the composition and production of outro banger Frankie Flowers. He makes heaps better music than that with his project September 87.
LINKS
Feel the ecstasy at Jazzy O’s Soundcloud.
Experience 5 Rhythms and yoga courtesy of Chloe Stuart and Sam Pawson at Studio Paradise.
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