Why Social Connection Is Essential to a Bountiful Life with Julianne Holt-Lunstad

What does it actually mean to be a good person? And can we learn to become one? In this episode of Bountifull, I’m joined by philosopher Denise Vigani to explore Aristotle’s virtue ethics and the relationship between being a good person and living a good life. Denise challenges the idea that happiness is something we find, achieve or arrive at. Instead, she introduces a different way of thinking about happiness: as something we do through the everyday activity of living. We explore how our character develops through our habits, choices, relationships and communities, and whether we can deliberately become better people as adults. Denise brings these ideas into ordinary life, from learning patience in traffic to understanding why generosity doesn't mean giving everything away. We also discuss how our character shapes what we notice, why being good doesn't have to come at the expense of our own happiness, and the role our circumstances play in our ability to flourish. It's a conversation about the kind of people we become, the lives we create through our everyday choices, and what it actually means to live well.

So much of the health and wellness conversation starts with what we should do: eat differently, train more, sleep better, follow the plan and somehow find the discipline to keep doing it. But what if the plan isn’t the first thing we need to look at? In this conversation with Brittany McNabb, we go underneath the habits and routines to explore what might actually be driving our behaviour. Brittany explains why our nervous system, identity, beliefs and capacity all shape our ability to create lasting change — and why pushing harder can sometimes make things worse when we are already overloaded. We talk about chronic stress and functional freeze, why behaviours we call “self-sabotage” may actually be helping us cope, and how small, repeated actions can gradually build greater safety, self-trust and capacity. We also explore dopamine and modern life: why constant stimulation can leave ordinary experiences feeling flatter, why our attention can become harder to direct, and what we can do to create more space and less input. Before we get into the practicalities of food, nutrition and training, this conversation asks us to understand the system those plans have to land in. Because change becomes much easier when we stop fighting ourselves and start understanding what we actually need.

Alliv Samson has spent more than a decade building Kami, the education company she co-founded at university, into a global platform used by more than 70 million people. Along the way came enormous growth, motherhood, a partial exit and the chance to experience what life looks like when some of the things you once worked so hard for finally arrive. And perhaps surprisingly, Alliv’s biggest lesson is not about ambition or achievement. It is about peace. She talks about learning to be happier with what she has, kinder to herself when things do not go to plan, and more discerning about what deserves her energy. Her upbringing taught her that difficult things happen and that, somehow, you find a way through. Success has taught her something different: that you also have to remember to enjoy your life while you are living it. For Alliv, that now means protecting her relationships, nurturing her creativity, making room for curiosity and side quests, and no longer allowing work to occupy every corner of who she is. A thoughtful conversation about what success can teach us, what it cannot give us, and why a bountiful life might ultimately be much simpler than we think.

Something new is beginning at Bountifull. For more than two years, I’ve been having conversations with people around the world exploring a simple question: how do we actually live a good life? More than 80 conversations later, I’ve learnt an enormous amount. Along the way, I’ve started to see themes and ideas emerging across conversations with people from completely different perspectives, backgrounds, countries, identities and professions. There’s enough there that I’ve decided to turn some of what I’ve been learning into a book. I’ve begun writing it, and at the moment I’m thinking a lot about the conditions that make a bountiful life possible. What creates those conditions? What crowds them out? Why are so many of us encouraged to build lives that look good on paper, but don’t necessarily feel particularly good to live in? And what might we do differently? For the next few months, I want to give myself more room to write and think. Bountifull Podcast episodes will move to being published fortnightly on Sunday's at 10am NZT. In between, you'll still be hearing from me, I’ll be writing to you every week by email, sharing what I’m learning, the questions I’m exploring or wrestling with, and probably some of what happens as the book starts to take shape. If you don’t already get those emails, please join below. Lots of people tell me that they like my emails! I’d also really love to get to know more of you a little better. After all, I think a bountiful life is something we build with other people, not on our own. If there’s something you’ve heard in a Bountifull episode over the past couple of years that has stayed with you, something you learnt, something that made you realise something, changed your mind, or was simply really interesting, tell me. You can leave a comment on the episode below or send me a message, I've linked my contact form below. I read everything I get and I reply. I genuinely love hearing from you and the Bountifull Community around the world.

In this episode, I sit down with sociologist and demographer Paul Spoonley to explore how the population changes already underway could shape the life you’re able to build in the decades ahead. We’re living longer, having fewer children, becoming more culturally diverse and concentrating more of our populations in major cities. Paul explains why those shifts matter to you, from the future of retirement and healthcare to regional communities, migration and the number of people available to work. We also look at the choices underneath the statistics. Why are fewer people having children? How much is the cost and structure of modern life narrowing those choices? What makes you stay where you are or move elsewhere? And what happens when the systems built for one generation no longer fit the next? Paul argues that demography is destiny. Many of these changes can already be anticipated, which means the bigger question is what you choose to do with that knowledge. We talk about retirement, taxation, intergenerational fairness, the changing nature of work and what you might need to think about now as you prepare for a very different future.