Kicking off 2026 with a superstar! With millions and millions of views and tens of thousands of adoring fans Caolan Ward is BY FAR my most famous guest {he'll love that intro! Hahahahahahahaha}.

As is the norm, our conversation meanders between all sorts, from his professional goals as a social media influencer to more personal New Year resolutions and how he plans to keep himself accountable professionally and personally.

It was great chatting to him and getting a better understanding of how the 'influencer economy' works.

A great lad with a bright future it's been my pleasure working with him and wish him all the very best with his plans for 2026 and beyond, some of which at least are revealed in this epiosde.

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

I love the idea of people who have listened to my conversations {or that have just heard that I'm doing podcasts} and then deciding to reach out to me asking to come on. However, this practically never happens, ever.

So bareing this in mind I was bowled over when Aidan text me explaining that he had a stammer and thought that it would be a great challenge for him to come on. What a legend!

We all suffer some form of anxiety around speaking publicly and can only imagine that this is masssively ramped up when you have any kind of speech impediment. Aidan on the other hand had the balls to bite the bullet and I'm delighted he did.

We talk about how and when his stammer is triggered, cover some of the tricks he developed along the way to deal with it and have a genuine conversation about how he has sought help and how he has to a large degree overcome it.

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Endurance athlete Graham Macken joins me again to walk us through his most recent epic challange, a 5,000km coast to coast 'Race Across America' or Raam for short, otherwise known as the toughest race in the world.

We talk death, psychedelics, near death experiences, depression, mortality, Rhabdomyolosis, sleeping in dodgey motels and a whole lot more.

We also cover his hallucinations during the race and what they might mean and also delve into the realitites of cycling non stop from coast to coast, from how he was burning 22,000 calories a day {not a misprint} to forgetting who and where he was and what he was doing.

In short, Graham is a bonifide mad bastard.

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Instead of doing a 'season in review' episode I decided to have a think about what's next and do what I can to exorcise some ideas that have been rattling around the auld head.

I'm also completely starved of conversation around the types of topics that I tend to talk about on the solos so if this is something you might be interested in (for publication or otherwise) let me know on [email protected] 

It's been emotional!

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The thumbnail that accompanies this episode (@offtheleadofficial on Instagram) is a graph depicting someone's weight loss. I use this graph as an analogy for visualisations generally.

I also speak of the importance of volume when it comes to creative output. 

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I finally added a girl to my list of boyfriends!

'Human centric' viewpoints, the autistic spectrum, real world applications, jiu jitsu, taeqwondo, sharks, bears and antidepressants, just your usual 15 or so minutes of madness.

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

Today's episode is essentially an attempt to organise what's bubbling around the old noggin.

I cover the physiological, psychological, behavioural, turmeric, placebo, attention, multitasking, consciousness, Pat Macnamara, Terence Mckenna, cultural, natural, spiritual, cortisol, hemispheric specialisation and William Shakespear.

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Don't underestimate the extent to which we create our own realities, outside of objective facts. The stories we tell ourselves (and others) are of the utmost importance, how we frame our experiences is of the utmost importance, the 'labels' and language we use are of the utmost importance.

I get into my social media use and reframe the trinity of 'Body, Mind and Soul' from the perspective of 'nourishment'.

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