William Trubridge is one of the greatest freedivers of all time. He’s set 18 world records. Won six world championship titles. In 2016 he became the first person to reach 102 metres on a single breath with no fins and no rope.

In 2019 he crossed Cook Strait entirely underwater, in a series of 934 breath holds over nine hours and fifteen minutes, to draw attention to New Zealand's critically endangered Hector's and Māui dolphins.

When you’re 100 metres underwater, panic burns the oxygen you need to get home. So he’s spent decades building a system for not panicking — and it turns out the system works in a queue, in traffic, and in the conversation you're dreading.

WHAT'S COVERED

- Sailing the Pacific as a toddler — a boat was home until he was ten

- The poem he wrote on an Auckland dance floor a year before he'd heard of freediving

- Two failed world record attempts — and the word that made all the difference for the third

- Risk vs stakes — and why refusing every dangerous thing is itself massively risky

- What actually happened at 127 metres, and why his lungs stayed dry

- The mental immune system

- Why the muscles you breathe with decide how you feel

- Nine hours underwater across Cook Strait

FIND WILLIAM Website: https://www.williamtrubridge.com/ Instagram: @‌willtrubridge — https://www.instagram.com/willtrubridge/

The Rebellion — his work teaching the mental immune system: https://www.rebellionimpactgroup.com/

The Mental Immune System programme: https://mentalimmunesystem.com/

MORE FROM WILLIAM

Oxygen: A Memoir — https://www.williamtrubridge.com/post/oxygen-a-memoir-by-william-trubridge

Breathe (2011) — the documentary following his attempt to become the first person to reach 300 feet on a single breath, no fins: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103163/

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At 17, Gráinne Moss swam the English Channel — the first Irish woman ever to do it. At 56, she became the 45th person on Earth to complete the Oceans Seven, the seven hardest channel swims in the world.

This conversation is about the 39 years in between.

We talk about the two failed attempts at the same stretch of water between Ireland and Scotland — one she was elated by, one that broke her.

About being stung head to foot by jellyfish and somehow swimming on for seven more hours.

About looking back at the White Cliffs of Dover three hours into the Channel — and her utter despair at realising she'd barely moved.

About finishing her first channel crossing at 17 with nobody there to meet her.

And about carrying everything she’s learned from ultramarathon swimming — the grit, the resilience, the purpose — into one of the hardest jobs in the New Zealand public service.

WHAT'S COVERED:

- The three hours that nearly ended her English Channel swim

- Being obliterated by a shoal of jellyfish — and why she got out of the water happy

- How you keep going when you can't see any progress at all

- What a good coach actually does

- Night swimming, box jellyfish and the Channel of Bones

- Leading Oranga Tamariki — where she put her focus, and why she says you have to know your own reasons before you take a job like that

ABOUT GRÁINNE

Gráinne Moss (née Gunn) grew up in Bangor, County Down, and started swimming in an unheated saltwater pool fed by the sea. She swam the English Channel in 1987 in 11 hours 52 minutes, aged 17, becoming the first Irish woman to do it. She moved to New Zealand in 1998 and swam the Cook Strait in 2001, and completed the Oceans Seven in June 2026 with the Tsugaru Strait in northern Japan — the longest span between first and final swim in the challenge's history. She is Chief Executive and Secretary for Regulation at the Ministry for Regulation, and was Chief Executive of Oranga Tamariki from 2016 to 2021.

Visit Gráinne's blog https://grainnemoss.com/ for detailed accounts of her swims and follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/swimirishkiwi/.

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Tew was chief executive of New Zealand Rugby from 2008 to 2019, and ran the Crusaders and the Canterbury Rugby Union from 1996 to 2001. He is now Director of High Performance at High Performance Sport New Zealand.

This week, he joins the podcast to talk about a career that started with a box of files inherited from a volunteer and ended up running the organisation behind the All Blacks — and about the decisions in between that he still thinks about.

That includes protesting the 1981 Springbok tour while his own family sat on the other side of it, taking Rugby World Cup matches away from Christchurch after the February 2011 earthquake, backing a coach the media wanted gone, and the review that put New Zealand Rugby's own culture under outside scrutiny.

WHAT'S COVERED

• How he ended up in sporting governance
• The 1981 Springbok tour
• Why New Zealand Rugby apologised to players it never selected
• The February 2011 earthquake, and telling a city it had lost its World Cup matches
• How the Crusaders went from last to first in three seasons
• Appointing Wayne Smith, and backing him when the results hadn't arrived
• The Respect and Responsibility Review
• What he looks for when he's assessing people for leadership
• The performance conversation he's never started too early

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Sorenson won two world championships by the age of seventeen. But at twenty, despite playing the best tournament of his life, his team lost the final. That heartbreak led to an insight: it doesn’t matter how spectacular you are if you can’t make the people around you better as well.

Mark is one of only two New Zealanders to win world softball titles as both a player and a coach — four golds with the Black Sox, including the only three-peat in the history of the men's game, then World Coach of the Year after taking them back to gold in 2017.

This conversation is almost none of that. It's about what happened in between: the years he tried to lift his team by policing them, and the shift that finally made them follow.

We talk:

- The difference between having the title and having people follow you

- Why Mark told his own daughter she would never win a trophy while he was coaching

- How to hold high standards without humiliating anyone

- Being liked versus respected

- The honesty gap between team spirit and high performance culture

- Why rules without reason carry less weight

- When delegating a hard conversation is the strongest thing a leader can do

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A huge thanks to Celebrity Speakers for supporting this episode. If you want to book Mark Sorenson for a keynote and leave your audience hungry for more, visit celebrityspeakers.co.nz

Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike ‘Crono’ Cron spent 15 years with the All Blacks — more than 200 tests, two World Cups, and a reputation as the best scrum coach in the game.

In this conversation he breaks down how he actually does it:

Why he shows a photograph of cyclists shoving cigarettes in each other's mouths to every team he works with. How he used the Royal New Zealand Ballet to transform the All Blacks lineout. The three “big rocks” of coaching: systems, skills, and decisions.

We also get into why "what did you hear" is a safer question than "what did I say". Why a team that goes slack the moment you turn your back is a sales problem, not a character problem. And the line he uses when he knows his comment is going to hurt — it’s a master class on feedback.

For more about Crono:  https://www.mikecroncoaching.co.nz/

Mike’s book: ‘Coach’ https://www.harpercollins.co.nz/9781775542650/coach/

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

90 minutes into a 1,367km swim down the length of New Zealand, Jono Ridler turned his head to breathe and saw a large shark a body length away. He got out of the water for 20 minutes, then got straight back in — and kept going for another 89 days.

The kid who had to be bribed with candy to finish a swimming lesson ended up breaking the world record for the longest unassisted staged swim. In this conversation he breaks down the journey.

Along the way: the panic attack 100 metres into his first open-water race. The Cook Strait crossing that ended with him pissing blood. The 33-hour Hauraki Gulf swim where he hallucinated a snowman on the support boat.

From swimming for a reward, to swimming for an identity, to swimming for something that will outlast him.

We also get into the voice that tells you to stop (and why it only ever arrives at the edge of what you can do), how to train the mental skills necessary for his feats of endurance, and what he's learned about uncertainty since walking away from a 13-year career with no idea what comes next.

Jono Ridler | Speaker, Athlete, Advocate — https://www.jonoridler.com/

Live Ocean Foundation — https://liveocean.org/

Swim4TheOcean — https://www.swim4theocean.org/

FOLLOW JONO

Instagram: @‌jonoridler

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Jono-Ridler-61584529661244/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonoridler/

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read. You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience. It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At 8,200 metres on K2, in deteriorating weather and near the summit, Peter Hillary made what he calls a “bravely independent” decision: he turned around and descended alone into the storm. The rest of the group stayed together and pushed for the top.

It was one of the loneliest descents of his life — and it’s the reason he's here to tell the story. None of the others survived.

In this conversation, we trace how a lifetime in the mountains, with a father like Sir Edmund Hillary, prepared him for that moment: a childhood where a family holiday meant Kathmandu at age seven, a teenage ascent of Mount Aspiring twice in three days followed by a humbling introduction to Aoraki/Mount Cook, and the 1979 avalanche on the west face of Ama Dablam that killed a member of his team and left him hanging on a near-severed rope with a compound fracture.

We also talk why he rejects the framing that he grew up in his father's shadow — and how he thinks about it instead — and why whether he could live up to his father’s accomplishments was never the right question.

Peter Hillary has dedicated his life to mountaineering, adventure, and the outdoors. He also continues his father’s contribution to the Nepalese people who have meant so much to the family. Peter is chair of the Himalayan Trust, founded by Sir Ed, which does extraordinary work providing health and education for remote communities in Nepal. Find out more and support his work at http://himalayantrust.org

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A huge thanks to Celebrity Speakers for supporting this episode. If you want to book Peter Hillary for a keynote and leave your audience hungry for more, visit celebrityspeakers.co.nz.

Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sir Wayne Smith — aka “The Professor” — is one of the most decorated coaches in New Zealand rugby history. In this conversation he opens up the systems behind decades of winning.

The season the All Blacks spat into vials so a scientist could map their hormones — and why every fix was cultural, not chemical. The Henry V video that rebuilt a last-placed Crusaders side. The honesty card players handed back when a teammate broke the standards — and the cards Smith found pushed under his hotel door on tour. Why he doesn't believe in team talks. Why he wore sunglasses to speak to one All Black before games. What the self-coached 1924 Invincibles still teach anyone leading a team a century later.

And then there's the Black Ferns: the party bus that traumatised him until Kendra Cocksedge told him to stop asking about the music, the coin toss where his captain overruled him, and what coaching the women's game taught him about how different teams find their best.

▶ Want to learn these systems from the inside? Explore the Crusaders Leadership Programme™: https://crusadersleadership.com/

▶ Register for the upcoming Crusaders Leadership Programme™: https://bomanz.myshopify.com/products/clp?variant=42228067205233

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He found the cable-box switch that unlocked adult content when he was just five years old. For the next three decades, porn was Dr Luke Sniewski’s coping mechanism for loneliness, stress and fear - through a professional football career in Italy, a burnout that ended his training business, and relationships that all ended the same way.

He spent nearly a decade trying to willpower his way out. It never worked - because the behaviour was never the problem.

Dr Luke Sniewski's doctoral research at AUT studied meditation as an intervention for men with problematic pornography use - research that ended up revealing something he didn't expect about what actually helps people change.

In this conversation, Luke explains why you can't quit a behaviour you refuse to understand, what meditation actually is, why the saviour instinct leads to burnout, and how to talk to your kids about the things you hope they never do - without judgment, and without driving it into secrecy.

Connect with Luke's Somawise community: https://www.skool.com/somawise-tribe/about

Jo Robertson's TEDx talk on young people and porn, referenced in this episode: https://tedxchristchurch.com/jo-robertson

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Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dillon Boucher was so sure he'd made the 2000 Olympic team that his wife had already booked her flights. But when they announced the squad in alphabetical order — by the third one he knew he hadn’t been selected.

What Dillon did next is the definition of commitment.

He quit his job, started a coaching business so he could keep a ball in his hands all day, and trained until his fingertips split open.

By his own admission, pursuing basketball full-time back then was “absolutely madness.”

Dillon made the Tall Blacks the following year and went on to become one of our greatest ever.

In this conversation the unlikely legend unpacks how someone with no natural athleticism built a career at the top: the coach whose belief changed everything, why every loose ball is critical, the difference between consequences and punishment, and why the willingness to do hard things is the most underrated strategic advantage there is - on the court, in the boardroom, and at home.

Whether you're leading a team, raising kids, or wondering if you're good enough for the room you're in, this one's for you.

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A huge thanks to Celebrity Speakers for supporting this episode. If you want to book Dillon Boucher for a keynote and leave your audience hungry for more, visit celebrityspeakers.co.nz.

Hunger & Heart is brought to you by the Crusaders Leadership Programme™. Whether you're coaching under-5s or a professional team, we all want the same thing: to build cultures of trust, get the best out of our people, and grow players into leaders.

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ lets you get up close and personal with some of the greatest rugby legends of all time — people like Sir Wayne Smith, Sam Whitelock, and Kieran Read.  You'll connect with a global group of ambitious, caring coaches from a range of codes and backgrounds, and most importantly, you'll gain skills and techniques to drive impact and outcomes for your team.  

The Crusaders Leadership Programme™ is a two-week high-intensity virtual experience.  It is delivered exclusively online, accessible from anywhere. 

Hunger and heart Listeners get 10% off the full price of the program. Use the code HUNGER at checkout. Find out more: crusadersleadership.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.