Spirit Levels

By: Jenny Valentish and Frank Magree
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  • Summary

  • 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.


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    Jenny Valentish and Frank Magree
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Comedy & Humour Hygiene & Healthy Living Personal Success
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Episodes
  • Grief is the Price of Love

    Grief is the Price of Love
    Apr 22 2024

    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.

    The Last Hurrah Funerals.

    Elly Varrenti’s writing.

    Spirit Levels on Instagram.

    Newsletter.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    40 mins
  • Facing Fears

    Facing Fears
    Apr 14 2024

    What are you afraid of, reasonably or unreasonably? And what can help combat that? Hypnosis? Exposure therapy? Flooding? Guidance? In episode 27 of Spirit Levels we use Jenny’s fear of sharks as a case study, meeting with Will Salter, a man who came eye to eye with a great white shark when surfing; Lola Broomhall, a freediver and breathwork practitioner, and hypnotist Jeremy Walker.


    LINKS

    Lola Broomhall: breathwork, physio, freediving workshops, professional mermaiding!

    Hey, if you like the tune that’s playing near the beginning, when Jenny and Frank are talking about fear, that’s ‘Summer of Sad’ by Salty Lips.

    St Andrews Beach Community Choir sang the ‘Don’t Be Scared of the Ocean’ refrain and are based on the Mornington Peninsula.

    The Summit AI coach Jenny used (free!)

    Hypnotist Jeremy Walker

    A wonderful story about freediving by Michael Adams in the Australian Review of Books.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    36 mins
  • Optimal Morning Routines

    Optimal Morning Routines
    Apr 8 2024

    We’re going to be in Bali by the time you hear this, gathering some more weird wellness intel, so this ep we handed the mic over to our listeners to find out how they start the day the right way. From oil pulling, to 5 Tibetan rites to doing naked squats in the elements… we really feel like we know them very well now.

    LINKS


    Among our contributors this episode were Mena from Human Thriving (who spoke about glucose)...

    And Katie from Therapeutic Eating (who spoke about objectivity).

    Spirit Levels on Instagram.

    Our newsletter.



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

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