The Brave Man Project with Hamish Niven

Christopher Folkens spent nine years making Catalyst: seven hard men in one room, every reason to kill each other, and one who asks questions.

• "Can we not see this? Can we not see how that is who we've become?"
• "What if our story is the lie?"
• "Which one of you is the worst of them all?"
• "Every moment of our lives is either choosing heaven or choosing hell based on what we choose. That's our choice."
• "That rage can calcify into cancer."
• "What if the story I've been telling myself is a lie all along?"
• "We're living to be right about the story we wrote."
• "Life has a tendency to continue giving us these lessons on a larger and larger scale until we freaking listen."
• "They wanted to call it Kill the Parasite."
• "Questions create choices and character is revealed through choices."
• "It's standing up for something instead of resisting what is."

Christopher Folkens spent nine years getting his film Catalyst out into the world. Seven men are thrown into one room with every reason to hate each other, and told to kill the parasite. The scenes in that room were structured improvisation, some roles played by non-actors who came from that background.

Hamish found the film flicking through Amazon and was up at three in the morning thinking about it. They talk about the story you tell yourself, what being right costs, the title the distributor wanted instead, and why questions create choices.

• The story you've told yourself hundreds of times, and what if it's a lie
• Being right about the people we hate, and what it costs us and everyone around us
• Questions create choices: freedom or fear, every morning, at every choice point

• Catalyst (2025) — Christopher's film, nine years from first day of shooting to release
• 12 Angry Men — Catalyst began as a modern reimagining of it; Christopher played the angry juror in the play at school
• Saw — the films where people are forced to kill; in Catalyst they want to
• Kill the Parasite — the title the distributor wanted instead of Catalyst
• The Asset — Christopher's short, an AI sci-fi thriller, premiering at the Beverly Hills Film Festival
• The Pulse nightclub shooting, Florida — the true story behind the feature he has just finished writing, told through two paramedics who defied orders to save lives
• Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. — the courage to do different

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisfolkens/

Website, Mystic Films: https://www.mystic-films.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0NAAAoXTWeOHRGRKemzDPg

Vimeo, Mystic Films: https://vimeo.com/mysticfilms

Catalyst trailer: https://youtu.be/cgpZrc7Mx6Y

Catalyst (2025) on Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/catalyst/umc.cmc.529abjfyyogvlqfit2qfxglg6

Catalyst (2025) on Plex: https://watch.plex.tv/en-GB/movie/catalyst-2025

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

Worth ten minutes, a quiet room and a pen:

https://hamishniven.com/the-damage-report

More on this:

Waking Up — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB_WteL8zy1KFp7I9WwQCTgyABavWOrVe

Before the Crash — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEQxwG7RzDe8

Taylor Roark was a Wall Street lawyer in New York, Tokyo and London, and at home, a glass of wine became the whole bottle. Then, at 2:30 on New Year's morning, a friend asked: "Hey Taylor, are you okay?"

• "Let me just have a glass of wine. Well, let me have half a bottle. Well, the bottle's already open. I might as well finish the whole thing."
• "I can't go save the galaxy. I have chores to do."
• "Some people, sadly, go to their grave, having refused the call."
• "I could probably count on one hand, maybe two, the number of people who were legitimately happy and satisfied with what they were doing."
• "You get golden handcuffs. You're paid well to stay in something that is maybe not very thoughtful and fulfilling."
• "I wish I had the courage to do what you, what you're doing."
• "When you're green, you grow, and when you're ripe, you rot."
• "But from the mindset of somebody who's in pain and struggling, they're a comfort. They're a relief."
• "Responsibility is simply the ability to respond to whatever's happening."

Taylor Roark went to law school almost by chance and ended up a Wall Street lawyer in New York, Tokyo and London. In his third year, at a review in Tokyo, a partner told him he was well on his way to partnership. He looked around and could count the happy lawyers on one hand.

Today he runs his own business, Galliant Trainings, coaching and facilitating workshops. He talks about refusing the call, the good alcoholic nobody worried about, and the question at a party that he couldn't answer honestly.

Chapters

00:00 The Good Alcoholic

03:26 Wrong Turn into Law

09:29 No One To Tell https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEQxwG7RzDe8

13:00 Count the Happy Lawyers

15:54 The Trapped Partner

20:11 What am I Chasing?

24:00 Green Grows, Ripe Rots

26:29 The Money Wasn’t Enough https://hamishniven.com/the-damage-report

29:56 Addiction as Comfort https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB_WteL8zy1IMWp1iosQsEc10IGnT2W_M

34:49 Hey Taylor, Are You Okay? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCndFFMmNzf8

42:48 Responsibility as Response

45:49 Spear in the Ground

• Golden handcuffs: well paid, quietly trapped, and not seeing there's a choice
• The good alcoholic: functioning, successful, and a bottle finished most nights
• Refusing the call, and the friend who asked "are you okay?" twice

• Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces — the step in the hero's journey where the hero refuses the call
• Star Wars — Luke tells Obi-Wan he can't save the galaxy, he has chores to do
• Taylor's lat; mentor, who taught him intuition — "when you're green, you grow, and when you're ripe, you rot"

Connect with Taylor

Website: https://www.galliant.life/

Men's Meditation, Monthly Mondays: https://www.galliant.life/mens-meditation-monthly-mondays

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetaylorroark/

Instagram, Galliant: https://www.instagram.com/galliant.life/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-roark/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetaylorroark

A little about Hamish Niven

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

Worth ten minutes, a quiet room and a pen:

https://hamishniven.com/the-damage-report

More on this:

I've Earned This — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB_WteL8zy1IMWp1iosQsEc10IGnT2W_M

No One to Tell — https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCndFFMmNzf8

Barely 40 and very well paid, Tom Morgan was sitting on a Manhattan trading floor when his whole being became bathed in love. Then a voice started in his head, and it didn't stop for two years.

Sound Bites

• "I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening or psychotic break depending on your biases."
• "I had this objectively incredibly desirable life. And I was looking around being like, shit, is this all there is?"
• "Like you're making so much money, you have no transferable skills, just hold on."
• "Toothpaste comes out of the tube and you can't put it back in again."
• "We have these 67 year old adolescents running the world who behave like adolescents."
• "God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience and shouts in our pains."
• "Don't employ a psychotically depressed life coach, just a piece of advice."
• "Give me your life and I will give you that salary."
• "If I had had hope, the dark night wouldn't have been dark."
• "Your choice isn't no death. Your choice is risking death through the adventure."

Tom Morgan jumped through every academic hoop, got fired as a football agent, then lucked his way into the City and on to New York. At barely 40 he had the salary, the Manhattan life and the commitments, and a desk in an office where, he says, everyone was pretending to work. Then he started asking whether this was all there is.

Today he runs The Leading Edge, a community for people hearing the same call. He talks about why it so often arrives around 36, what happened after the awakening, and why Wall Street never talks about it.

• Rich, successful and asking "is this all there is?", and why it so often arrives around 36
• A spiritual awakening on a trading floor, and the two years of hell that came after it
• The terracotta army: men told there's no second act, and what it takes to leave the Shire

• Bill Plotkin — his soul initiations in the wild, and his claim that this crisis is an established time of life
• Iain McGilchrist's hemisphere theory — it lit Tom up during lockdown, and it is his first theory of the voice
• C.S. Lewis — "God whispers in our pleasures…", the line Tom reaches for when the body forces the change
• The Gospel of Thomas — what you bring forth saves you; what you don't destroys you
• Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth — "spiritual nitroglycerin", and the patient zero of Tom's whole journey
• Carl Jung — "there's no greater burden a child can bear than the unlived life of the parent"
• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari — Tom loved it at the time, and now thinks it is catastrophically wrong
• The Matrix — for Tom, the best telling of the hero's journey
• Oldboy — the film he reaches for to describe the first night he felt his son's love
• Spring 1 from Max Richter's Recomposed — on the beach at Montauk, when he began to feel his boy
• Moloch — the force Tom felt sitting underneath Wall Street
• Tim Freke — our guest on episode 4, who told Tom that not everyone makes it out
• The Leading Edge — Tom's community of 150, and the network of networks he is building

The Leading Edge on Substack: https://newsletter.theleading-edge.org/

X: https://x.com/tomowenmorgan

Tom says he is less active on X than he used to be. Substack is where he writes.

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

David Chambers asks a head of risk what he does, and the man sits up and talks with total confidence. Then David asks about his relationship, and the chair rolls back.

• "It's decided by the person often who is speaking, who lacks safety."
• "We call them vulnerabilities to the system because it's how the system can be hacked."
• "Most men don't know that they don't feel safe."
• "There's a sinking, there's a backing away, the chair rolls back."
• "Confidence isn't always transferable between different areas of our lives."
• "The resentment is like the poison of relationships."
• "You need to ignore the financial load. Ignore it."
• "The other men just look at us with care and nod and go, yeah, I do that too, actually."

David Chambers spent 16 years testing software, where a weakness in a system has a name. It's called a vulnerability, because it's how the system gets hacked. Most men, he says, learned the same lesson about themselves long before they had words for it.

Today he coaches men on love, dating and relationships. He talks about why a man who runs a room at work goes quiet at home, why the money is a smaller share of the household load than men think, and why a safe space isn't decided by the person offering it.

What We Explore

• Why a man who is sharp and direct at work freezes when she asks where this is going
• Being told your feelings don't matter since the playground, then asked to speak them fluently in your thirties
• The household load men don't see, and a monthly check-in that stops resentment setting in

Connect with David

Website: https://www.theauthenticman.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theauthenticman_/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IAmTheAuthenticMan

X: https://twitter.com/iamauthenticman

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAuthenticMan

The Authentic Man podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1447910686

The Authentic Man podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/64n26CAX3FIhJj7aMR2CO6

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

A boy setting out his classmates' books asks his teacher where his own book is. Azul Terronez nearly lies, then admits he's afraid, and the boy hands him back his own advice.

• "Hiding from yourself is the game."
• "Well, you tell us, it's okay to be afraid to just do it anyways."
• "It had taken me 24 years and 30 days to write that book."
• "He was loving the identity he had created more than the person."
• "Great teachers are the ones who are listening to the young people."
• "Everybody likes to read about it, but nobody wants to go through it."

Azul Terronez spent his adult life playing the perfect straight man. Eagle Scout, husband, father of two, school principal. At 19 he had lost the man he loved to suicide, and he locked the whole thing away.

Nearly 40, he finally said three words to himself in the mirror. What followed rearranged his marriage, his family and his work. Today he coaches authors through Authors Who Lead, and says children taught him most of what he knows.

• Pretending to other people, pretending to yourself, and which one does the real damage
• What happens to grief, guilt and creativity when they sit locked in a box for 25 years
• A question from a boy, a book written in 30 days, and a life built without a plan

• Art of Apprenticeship — Azul's first book, written in 30 days, about learning from a mentor by serving them
• Born to Write, Scared to Start — Azul's free audio series on his website, on finding the confidence to start

Website, and the free audio series Born to Write, Scared to Start: https://authorswholead.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azul-terronez/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorswholead/

Authors Who Lead podcast

on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Qm8I3UO8FEoSh6xaElOFR

on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/authors-who-lead-learn-to-write-a-book-from/id1303212874

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

Corey's psychologist gave him a picture for his childhood: wet concrete, and everyone who walked past pressing in a footprint that set hard and stayed. He coaches boys' football now, and he reckons that if he can pull one footprint back out over a six-month season, that is a win.

• "When you're young, you're like wet concrete, and you had all these people footing footprints in you that were permanent"
• "If I'm a good boy, if I'm well behaved, then I can create safety in my own environment"
• "I really feel like my son has evolved beyond me in a lot of ways."
• "It's not my aspiration to be looked up to."
• "I wish you could see what I see in you."
• "Boys who don't have male role models have to find their own way"
• "My book is unintentionally helping men realise what their emotions are"

Corey Gaidzionis grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney, the oldest son in a house where his parents would not speak to each other. He carried the messages between them. Years later, his psychologist gave him the picture for it — a child is wet concrete, and everyone who walks past leaves a footprint that sets hard.

He coaches boys' football in Western Australia. He wrote a children's book about emotions. It started with a post-it note he put under his pillow every night for a month. He will tell you the football was never really about football.

• Wet concrete and permanent footprints, and whether you can ever pull one back out
• What a boy takes on when there is no man in the house, and the head-butting when the man comes home
• Six months with a boy on a football pitch against four days in the bush, and which one actually changes him

• The Little Book of Big Emotions - Corey's children's book. Characters for each emotion, space for the child to write, cognitive behaviour therapy underneath it. It fell out of him in a day after a month of post-it notes.
• Cognitive behaviour therapy - the framework sitting under the book's characters.
• The manosphere - what a boy often finds when there is no man to look up to.

Website: https://bigemotionsacademy.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corey-gaidzionis/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigemotionsacademy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coreyg76

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@coreygaidzionis

The Little Book of Big Emotions can be ordered through his website.

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

Cliff sat with his daughter, working through the tick boxes on her assessment form. She's that, so am I. She's that, so am I. He booked his own assessment not long after.

Sound Bites

- "It's like being in an aeroplane. If the masks come down, you put it over yourself first, then you help your child."

- "If you can learn to self-regulate, you can then lend your nervous system to your child."

- "So we're going to put some drugs into your daughter that could be dangerous for your heart. Okay. There's got to be different ways."

- "We're going through all these tick boxes, ticking all the same boxes."

- "Once you've got your diagnosis, you're like, I don't even know who I am anymore."

- "I would always make sure I brought a football because if you get to school and nobody's got a ball, we're like, my God, how am going to get through?"

- "I'm drinking and that's probably the only time I was unmasking because I was numbing the worries, the anxiety."

- "It got to a point where I really liked the naughty step because it's quiet."

Cliff's daughter used to turn a big yellow builder's bucket upside down and sit inside it with her toys. It took two other parents at the school gate, a teacher, and a waiting room full of toddlers before anyone worked out why.

Somewhere in the middle of filling in her assessment forms, Cliff started answering for himself. He was diagnosed with ADHD last year. He now runs the podcast Parenting, Autism and ADHD, which his daughter appears on, and is working towards ADHD coaching certifications.

Mentioned in This Episode

Snapdragons — the assessment service where Cliff sat in the waiting room, saw toddlers being assessed, and realised how much time they had lost waiting

Paul McKenna — the technique Cliff uses of changing the voice of the inner critic into a cartoon voice so it stops sounding vicious

Eckhart Tolle — the silent observer practice Cliff uses to break hyperfocus when his daughter needs him

Connect with Cliff

Parenting, Autism and ADHD on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ParentingAutismandADHD

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cliff_kilmister08

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cliff.kilmister

X: https://x.com/KilmisterCliff

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliff-kilmister-420a07bb

Work with Cliff — anxiety support, founding members offer, message him here: https://m.me/cliff.kilmister

A little about Hamish Niven

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

Half three in the morning, fifteen years into working nightclub doors, Ivan stopped saying "members only" and told an angry man the truth instead. He says it landed like a punch in the face — and the bloke came back a fortnight later and shook his hand.

Sound Bites

• "Tough guys don't like to be bullshitted to."
• "Because they respected that I was upfront, I was honest, and I told them the truth about why I'm not letting them in."
• "When you explain to them the reasons why before they ask, you'll get much further with people."
• "If you're not willing to face anyone, you're no good to me."
• "I therapise in class."
• "I'm just helping you open doors within your own mind to explore places that you might not have looked."
• "We've got a pharmacy of emotions and feelings."
• "You're enough, but you've just forgotten it."

Ivan Rakitic was eighteen and working backstage when Billy Joel drove through the gate and waved at him. That settled it — thirty-six years in security followed, fifteen of them on nightclub doors.

One morning after a bad shift, he sat down and asked himself why he turned men away at all, then rewrote what he said to every one of them. What the door taught him — that no man does what he is told until he is told why — is what he works with now as a therapist, and on the mats teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

What We Explore

• Why "members only" starts a fight and "mate, you look like you're angry" ends one
• What fifteen years of reading angry men at 3am gave him that no training course could
• Therapising in the dojo — an eighth-degree black belt who will not teach you to hurt anyone

Mentioned in This Episode

Billy Joel — Ivan was eighteen, backstage, when Joel drove through the gate and waved at him. That was the moment security work won him over.

Cus D'Amato and the book about Mike Tyson's life, written with the men who trained him, told Ivan that D'Amato took his fighters to a hypnotherapist. That single detail set him off down the path that became his second career.

Dr Bob Johnson — UK psychiatrist who worked at Parkhurst prison with men who had done serious harm. Now 89 and retired, he and Ivan still speak every month.

Sugar Ray Robinson — nicknamed Sugar because he was so sweet. Ivan points people to the documentary Pound for Pound.

Connect with Ivan Rakitic

Free strategy call with Ivan: https://calendly.com/ivanrakitic2069/free_strategy_call_with_ivan_rakitic

Website: https://ivanrakitictherapy.com.au/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ivanrakitictherapy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ivan.rakitic.802297

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ivan_rakitic_mens_therap

A little about Hamish Niven

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

They call it high-functioning. It just means you can't see the cost. He's had some days when he couldn't speak at all, and his mother sat beside him reading Nietzsche aloud until something switched back on.

This is a conversation about what it costs to look like you are coping.

Sound Bites

• "There is a physical sensation of discomfort when I lie. I feel physically sick."
• "What a high functioning autist is, is someone who's just as autistic as every other autist, but someone who can hide it more for the benefit of neurotypical people."
• "We can pay the ultimate price for fitting in apparently so well, when actually inside we're feeling absolutely out of sync with the rest of society."
• "It's like a computer that's overheating, the mouse thing starts to jump from place to place, and suddenly it's not moving at all. That's autism for you."
• "Veracity is the need for truth, order, and things making sense."
• "We're not a mistake. We're meant to be here. We're doing our job."

Hubert found out he was autistic at forty-two. He calls his lot the lost generation — men who got through school, work and relationships playing a game nobody gave them the rules to.

He has been a European Parliament intern, an award-winning entrepreneur and a van man. He has also spent days unable to speak, his mother sitting beside him reading Nietzsche aloud until something switched back on. This is a conversation about what it costs to look like you are coping.

What We Explore

• Why a white lie causes physical pain, and what that does to small talk, work and friendship
• "High functioning" — what the label hides, and who it is actually for
• The bridge between neurotypical and neurodivergent minds, and why Hubert thinks everything ahead of us gets built on it

Mentioned in This Episode

• Quinn, and the Autistamatic YouTube channel — where Hubert takes the idea of veracity, which he uses to hold truth, order and physical discomfort in one word
• Nikki Stevenson, writing in The Guardian in 2015 — called prejudice against neurodiverse people the last great prejudice
• Nikola Tesla — died penniless, and is Hubert's example of what a society wastes when it will not accommodate the people it depends on
• Star Trek — the version of a future human he was drawn to as a child and still is
• Elon Musk'sremark that nobody who spent an hour in his head would want anything he has

Connect with Hubert

Hubert is not on social media. He can be contacted through me via this email address: [email protected]

The autism education channels Hubert recommends:

• Autistamatic: https://www.youtube.com/@Autistamatic
• Autistic AF: https://www.youtube.com/@Autistic_AF
• That Autistic Guy: https://www.youtube.com/@orionkelly

A little about Hamish Niven

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven

Pasco – I Went to Mexico to Expose Corruption and Came Back to Fix Myself

Pasco sold everything, flew to Central America with a backpack full of camera kit, and set out to break a corruption story that would make his name. Somewhere in Mexico, he realised the story was about him — and that shaming people changes nothing.

Sound Bites

• "I was reliant on weed to relax me. I was reliant on it to go to sleep. I was reliant on it to come down off an energetic day."
• "the more I do this work of practicing self-reflection and witnessing others, I realised the more it is all about the stories we tell ourselves, our identity, who we are is made up of these stories"
• "the sustainable change is the slow one, it's the hard graft, it's the individual, it's never gonna be these big, big changes"
• "In fact, I've not been in a Men's Circle where a man has decided not to share."

Pasco Ashton

6 men on Hackney Downs, sitting on the grass through the summer of 2020 because it was the only place they were allowed to meet. Pasco had been to one men's circle, liked what it did for him, and asked his mates if they were up for it. They said yes. 4 ½ years later, there are now 55 trained facilitators, running Circles across Europe, 1 Circle in the USA and 1 on the way in Asia.

Ashton got there the long way around; ecology, photography, Al Jazeera, chasing a career of service he couldn't quite name. 2 close friends took their own lives. He was smoking weed every day to get to sleep. And the big-systems change he'd spent his twenties mapping turned out, in the end, to run through one man at a time.

What We Explore

• Losing two friends to suicide, and the internal loneliness of being a man with no one to talk to.
• The "cheeky" joint, the "social" cigarette — the small words we use to shrink our own behaviour
• Why macro-scale greed and power struggles are just someone's internal fear, scaled up
• What actually makes a room psychologically safe, and why "safe space" has stopped meaning anything
• Rejecting money for four years, then realising it's the water of the system and just needs to flow

Mentioned in This Episode

• No More Mr. Nice Guy — the classic men's workbook where a lot of men first find the words "Men's Circle"
• Vice and Al Jazeera — where he worked as a journalist before walking away from that path
• Mexico — the assignment where he realised blaming and shaming doesn't create sustainable change
• His Dads' Club in Sheffield. Where 350 local dads joined, inside a year

Connect with Pasco

Free trial: four circles, no cost, no obligation — and the circles are the core of it. Members also get the two annual UK hikes and ad hoc London events. Pasco's note on finding them: just search "Men's Circle" and they're there.

Website: https://menscircle.club/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/menscircle.club/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@menscircle_club

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@menscircle.club

LinkedIn – Pasco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pasco/

LinkedIn – Men's Circle: https://www.linkedin.com/company/menscircle/

For 25 years, I lived a life that looked successful from the outside. Inside it was falling apart, and I was throwing fuel on the fire — addiction, alcohol. I was on a steep path to self-destruct.

November 2018. I chose life, and had to change everything.

I built The 13th Room because nothing like that existed when I needed it.

The Brave Man Project — this podcast. It is about men, but not just for men. Men who broke under the weight of their own performance. Men who rebuilt and climbed so much higher.

The 13th Room is a space for the successful man who needs to change and knows it. 13 sessions, you and me. No fixing. Pure witnessing. Starts with a free 20-minute conversation.

Podcast website: https://thebravemanproject.com

Hamish's website: https://hamishniven.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBraveManProject

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

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamish.niven

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamishniven/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hamishniven