Neha Kirpal is a social entrepreneur and mental health advocate whose life has been shaped by resilience, caregiving, and the courage to turn pain into purpose.

In this episode, she speaks candidly about growing up with a mother living with schizophrenia, navigating childhood trauma, and how those experiences led her to build one of India’s leading mental health platforms. From survival patterns to self-belonging, Neha reflects on what it truly means to move from strength to wholeness.

This is a thoughtful, deeply human conversation about caregiving, identity, grief, and the ongoing journey of coming home to yourself.

A quietly powerful listen for anyone interested in resilience, mental health, and healing.

Dr. Marc Boaz is an existential psychotherapist, academic, and policy advisor whose work rethinks trauma through a deeply human lens. In this episode, he speaks about his own experiences, the inner work that shaped him, and how meaning-making became central to healing.

Marc shares insights from his career across psychotherapy, teaching, authorship, and national policy — especially his work with marginalized communities and the UK Trauma Council. His reflections offer a grounded, compassionate reminder that healing isn’t about “getting over” the past, but learning to live with it in ways that honour who we are.

A thoughtful and quietly powerful conversation for anyone interested in resilience, identity, and mental health.

Growing up in Cornwall, surrounded by the music and lyrics of 80s pop, Alan Green always had a deep connection to sounds, music, and storytelling. Sure enough, he took on his path of adulthood, the big-city, structure and stability.

Until the unexpected happened. A redundancy notice. A pause. And a question: “What now?”

In this episode, Alan shares how that moment of uncertainty became a turning point, leading him to rediscover his voice as a writer and creator. His book, Sound Advice, blends lessons from his life, his love for music, and his belief that the lyrics we live by often shape who we become.

After a successful 20-year career as a journalist and corporate executive, Carole Hopson made a bold decision to step into the cockpit. Today, she is a Boeing 737 Captain with United Airlines, based in Newark, New Jersey, and she's one of the few Black women in the world to hold that position.

Carole’s journey wasn’t easy. Having faced an accident, financial sacrifice, the rigor of flight school, and motherhood, she pursued a dream that had waited decades to take flight. Alongside her aviation career, she remains deeply connected to her love of storytelling as the author of A Pair of Wings, a novel inspired by Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to earn a French pilot’s license.

Through her work, Carole celebrates courage, legacy, and representation. Her nonprofit project, The Jet Black Foundation, aims to send 100 Black women to flight school by 2035 to create a new generation of pioneers in aviation.

This episode is about more than flying; it’s about resilience, purpose, and daring to rewrite your story mid-flight.

Solange Ndip is the founder of Solange Rising Star (SRS), a survivor-led movement born from her own experience of SA trauma and resilience. What began as a deeply personal journey of healing has grown into an organization uniting survivors, witnesses, and allies to transform pain into collective power.

“Our voices, once silenced by fear, can become the sound of hope.”

Through initiatives like Kacherkatan, inspired by the metamorphosis of a butterfly, Solange and her team empower survivors across Cameroon’s rural and conflict-affected regions through education, advocacy, and creativity. Her story is one of courage, community, and refusing to let silence win.

"So what if it's hard? So what if it takes time? So what if I've stumbled before? I will keep going."

Lt. Col. (Dr) Dharamdatt Goel (Retd.) is a Motivational Speaker and Corporate Trainer, with a Doctorate in Psychology, and a Postgraduate Degree in Personnel Management. In 2002, he lost a leg below the knee while on an operation at the Line of Control. However, he was undeterred as he embraced many adventure sports, and made it to the Limca Book of Records as the first Indian to paraglide with an artificial leg. He's also the author of the bestsellers 'When People Doubted My Ability to Walk, I Decided to Fly,' and 'The Magic of So What'.

Megan Davis is a lawyer turned author of two novels, The Messenger and Bay of Thieves. The latter released in 2024 follows two women, Vanessa and Kate, who get dragged into a glamorous but dangerous world of financial crime and corruption spanning London all the way to the south of France.

Bay of Thieves was the Sunday Times thriller of the month for July 2024. It's been described as "A timely, gripping, and richly nuanced financial thriller that exposes the Riviera’s seedy underbelly".

"I had this idea that fraud and corruption were very complicated concepts, and they needed time to cook up. But at that point, I realized how simple it was and how it was actually the easiest thing to do. It's very easy to bribe someone, to falsify documents and to lie. I didn't do it more out of fear than anything else, because I'm quite cautious. But I could really imagine doing that kind of thing."

To stay up to date, follow me on Instagram and X (Twitter) @smitatharoor. Stream and follow us on your favourite podcast platform.

Dr. Satyen Sharma is a consulting psychiatrist who has been working in Punjab and in and around Delhi for 16 years. He was trained at the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College, in Pune, India.

Satyen has held leadership positions as Secretary and then President of the Indian Association of Private Psychiatry. His areas of interest are addiction psychiatry and general adult psychiatry.

"It would be so common for a family from Punjab to bring in a young, strapping, healthy boy, 20 years of age, who's been using heroin for some time. And they would tell me, 'Doctor, this boy, we want you to remove his heroin habit. And we have given him no work at all.'

Now he's free to work out on his addiction, which is so counterintuitive. The first thing I would say is that if he doesn't have any responsibilities or anything to look forward to, what motivation does he have to go off drugs?"

To stay up to date, follow me on Instagram and X (Twitter) @smitatharoor. Stream and follow us on your favourite podcast platform.

Sindhu Wadhwa likes to call herself a glorious mess. On good days, she wears her ADHD diagnosis like a crown, on other days she is a reluctant adult. Sindhu is also a freshly minted cat lady.

For the last 19 years, Sindhu has been a clinical psychologist and a practicing psychotherapist. She currently heads the therapy team for MindSmith India which is a premium brain health platform. Sindhu is also on the advisory panel as a mental health expert for TRIOMPH (Transplant Recipients of India and Organ failure patients - a Movement to Provide Hope), a national support group in India for organ donation. Sindhu likes to write and speak on women's mental health.

"The gift was, I got a lot of time alone. I literally built a world inside me, I could imagine things. I suppose while it was undiagnosed ADHD back then, it was always somebody who had a thousand windows open in this house of life. So imagine you have all the windows of the house open. And there is a lot of wind coming in, sunlight coming in. This is my house is life in my head. So I grew my own beliefs, I started to have deeper self awareness and reflection. I was always that child who was far more aware and cognisant of internal chatter than perhaps other people. So while it can be a curse, it can lead to severe anxiety, but I see it as a gift."

Robert Newcome is an author and retired Army officer best known for his novel The Name Beneath the Stone. In addition, Robert has worked a retail manager and a management consultant specialising in leadership training. During lockdown he posted a 500-word story every Saturday and he now writes full time. War is often a setting for his novels. 

"I joined the Army, at the age of 19. At the age of 20 I was serving in Northern Ireland, leading a platoon of soldiers. When I joined the Army, my mindset would have been, we're the good guys. In Northern Ireland, it was the time of The Troubles. We were there essentially stopping Catholics from attacking Protestants and vice versa. And the sense of, I'm part of an organisation that is here primarily to benefit people. And my whole upbringing I guess up to that point had been, England, Britain, a good place. We've done good around the world."