Spirit Levels
Jenny Valentish and Frank Magree
In this weekly show, Frank Magree and Jenny Valentish explore wellness claims. With the help of experts and enthusiasts, the pair road-test disciplines and experiences such as cuddle clubs, facilitated breath repatterning, tantra, motivational techniques, extreme weight cutting, saunas, fasting, colonics, and radical couples therapy, to see if they can extract practical benefits from the more out-there concepts. Now meet your hosts.
Journalist Jenny Valentish considers herself to have a healthy sense of scepticism. She’s a former amateur bodybuilder and amateur Muay Thai fighter (a professional amateur, if you will), with a tendency to treat her body mean to keep it keen. Her book Everything Harder Than Everyone Else delves into what drives athletes who push their bodies to extremes, while her Walkley-nominated memoir Woman of Substances examines a bigger picture about addictive behaviour and gender, crunching 300 studies and interviewing 30 experts in the process.
She has the perfect foil in actor Frank Magree, a cold water therapy and breathwork devotee, keen to go deeper into new age and anti-ageing activities. The tennis player in him is fascinated by peptides and recovery hacks. The performer in him harbours a not-so-secret desire to become more guru-like. Frank is an award-winning filmmaker 12 times over and as an actor specialising in bad dudes has been murdered 10 times by his estimation. Hopefully his obsession with longevity books and biohackers will preserve him as a fighting-fit fella in real life.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Top 10 Spirit Levels Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Spirit Levels episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Spirit Levels for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Spirit Levels episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
MDMA Couples Therapy (and Other Intimacy Ideas)
Spirit Levels
10/23/23 • 22 min
Australia looks set to be the first country to run an MDMA-assisted couples therapy trial. What is it about ecstasy that researchers and couples therapists found promising back in the 70s and 80s, before it was made illegal?
Frank and Jenny talk to ‘late-bloomer Boomer’ Charley Wininger about his regular use of ecstasy in his marriage (he’s now 74 and they’ve “rolled” around 80 times, which he likens to 80 honeymoons), and how as a couples psychotherapist he views ecstasy as “emotional superglue”.
Jenny and Frank recall their own Pammy Anderson/Tommy Lee-style first date that wound up with big promises being made and eyebrows being intensely groomed, and they get some advice on how to achieve such intimacy without the use of drugs, through the 36 Questions That Lead to Love, developed by groovy husband and wife researchers Arthur and Elaine Aron.
This episode was mixed by Ally Kallis. A Sonder X Production. Episode released 23/10/23.
LINKS
Frank’s film Sengatan on Prime Video.
Jenny’s latest book, Everything Harder Than Everyone Else: Why Some of Us Push Our Bodies to Extremes, on Audible. In paperback.
Jenny’s article on MDMA couples therapy in the Australian Financial Review.
The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.
Charley Wininger. and his book Listening to Ecstasy.
Sex educator Eleanor Hadley.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Is Vipassana Dangerous or an Antidote to Tech?
Spirit Levels
02/19/24 • 47 min
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).
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Make Me a Life Coach
Spirit Levels
10/10/23 • 18 min
As of 2023, the life coaching industry is worth $1.5 billion, with almost 23,000 coaches in the US alone. In Bali that figure is unknown, but if you've been to Ubud or Canggu lately you'll know it's quite possible that life coaches outnumber bottles of Bintang.
This episode is not about any coach who has actually conscientiously trained themselves to provide a specific, solid service. It’s not about coaches who are mindful about duty of care, or who will refer people on to medical or mental health professionals when faced with issues outside of their skillset. Nope. It's the frauds and the flakes we’re coming after. The coaches who are tapped into a system designed to instil fear that you’re not enough, and con you into thinking they're earning six or seven figures. Every Instagram post follows some nonsensical word-salad script. They've got a big emphasis on abundance and manifesting wealth, but offer no tangible advice. They come up with an absolutely astronomical price for their coaching and then urgently reduce it (for two days only!) to make it seem like a bargain. They use trauma (often in inverted commas) as a hook, and quite likely they'll be living and working illegally in a cheap country that's long had the boot of white people on its neck.
Our guest this week is Marko Randelovic. He’s a documentary maker who has lived in Bali for years and has made it his personal mission to mercilessly meme the local life coaching industry. You can also check out his excellent reel, The Birth of a Bali Life Coach, inspired by The Coaching Masters' self-confessed psychopath life coach Lewis Raymond Taylor, who comes under discussion.
Hey, we all wish we could have someone to make our decisions for us sometimes, or to be our personal cheerleader, particularly when we’re at a crisis point. But listening to this episode might help you to choose that person wisely...
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Spirit Levels trailer
Spirit Levels
09/18/23 • 1 min
In this weekly Acast show, launching October 3, 2023, journalist Jenny Valentish and actor/filmmaker Frank Magree pressure test the wellness industry, from the weird to the wonderful to the WTF. Jenny is a former amateur bodybuilder and amateur Muay Thai fighter (a professional amateur, if you will), with a tendency to treat her body mean to keep it keen. Her book Everything Harder Than Everyone Else delves into what drives athletes who push their bodies to extremes, while her Walkley-nominated memoir Woman of Substances examined addictive behaviour and gender.
She has the perfect foil in Frank, a cold water therapy and breathwork devotee, keen to go deeper into new-age and anti-ageing activities. The tennis player in him is fascinated by peptides and recovery hacks. The performer in him harbours a not-so-secret desire to become more guru-like. Frank is an award-winning filmmaker 12 times over and as an actor specialising in bad dudes has been murdered 10 times by his estimation. Hopefully his obsession with longevity and biohacking will preserve him as a fighting-fit fella in real life.
The pair will road-test disciplines such as rebirthing, tantra, motivational techniques, NLP, cuddle therapy, extreme weight cutting, saunas, fasting, colonics, DMT and MDMA couples therapy, to see if they can extract practical benefits from the more out-there concepts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Fetish of Muscle Worship
Spirit Levels
02/12/24 • 36 min
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Grief is the Price of Love
Spirit Levels
04/22/24 • 39 min
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.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
03/11/24 • 11 min
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
Leave us a voice message for a future episode on Speakpipe
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What Can a Performance Coach Teach Us All?
Spirit Levels
03/11/24 • 31 min
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
Leave us a voice message for a future episode on Speakpipe
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Walk the Talk: Motivational Speeches
Spirit Levels
01/08/24 • 33 min
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Getting Shredded
Spirit Levels
11/13/23 • 32 min
Bodybuilders are perfectionists. They’re fastidious on internet forums, economical in their IRL conversations, and at the gym they wear ‘No excuses’ singlets. As kids they may have been the ones insisting on only eating orange food, or completing a Rubik’s Cube in 15 seconds.
This episode, we're looking at shredding, the art of getting jacked – be that for bodybuilding, gymfluencer photo shoots, athletes who need to drop a weight class, actors who need to look buff, or just because.
Jenny recounts her lead up to competing in bodybuilding (a once-only venture), when she transformed into a human Cadbury's Curly-Wurly and brought home gold and bronze medals, but at a cost to her health. This is a rare fish-out-of-water insight into the surreal world of bodybuilding, part sport, part spectacle, which comes laden with risks and rewards. What draws people to it? Who excels at it? What gets spoken of and what doesn't? And more pressingly, what did Frank think about the dramatically changing body of his girlfriend?
Our guests this week are Paul Jayilian, Jenny’s trainer and a world champion, who goes deep into the alchemy of ‘peak week’. Also, Jenny’s posing coach, Nat Kitney, who aims to be a soft place to land for her clients, in a sport that’s all about being hard on yourself.
LINKS
Paul Jayilian’s Empire Fitness
This episode was mixed by Ally Kallis. Episode released 14/11/23
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Spirit Levels have?
Spirit Levels currently has 33 episodes available.
What topics does Spirit Levels cover?
The podcast is about Health & Fitness, Australia, Mental Health, Personal Development, Wellness, Fitness, Podcasts, Melbourne, Self-Improvement, Education, Relationships, Health, Sexuality and New Age.
What is the most popular episode on Spirit Levels?
The episode title 'Make Me a Life Coach' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Spirit Levels?
The average episode length on Spirit Levels is 29 minutes.
How often are episodes of Spirit Levels released?
Episodes of Spirit Levels are typically released every 6 days, 23 hours.
When was the first episode of Spirit Levels?
The first episode of Spirit Levels was released on Sep 18, 2023.
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