This week I review a podcast that I found both light and breezy, but that was packed with top tips that are great for coaching.

I’m not sure if I was a late adopter of them or whether they were late bloomers but podcasts seem to have now popped up everywhere and you can’t swing a cat without hitting half a dozen podcasters who are recording themselves swinging cats, with more, or less, auditory success.

It seemed curious to me that streaming television became far more ubiquitous and simple than streaming radio (in the UK at least), but I think that the turning point was probably during the covid pandemic, as everyone touted around for things to do while cooped up at home, and friendly voices to hear, at a point where the voices you heard everyday were somewhat limited.

I think that that period also marked the point at which many entertainers (and particularly comedians and musicians, deprived of their usual gigs, looked for ways to get their voices heard and still earn a crust. I’m a big fan of Frank Skinner’s poetry podcast, and Off menu was a particular comfort in the early years of the decade, with talking about food seemingly opening a window into the lives of people in ways that you wouldn’t normally get to hear about.

There has also been a huge proliferation in podcasts about management and the wellness industry, with wildly differing quality. I thought I’d blog this week about one of the absolute gems that I’ve stumbled across and have had the pleasure of returning to time and time again as I’ve mined its accessible and practical approach for tactics and techniques that I’ve used in my life and in my coaching.

“Happiness and how to get it” is a ten part series (they never made a second season) that was launched exclusively on Audible back in 2020. The broad subject of the podcast is made plain by the title. It’s hosted by the likeable odd-couple of Mary-Ann Ochota and Charlie George.

Mary-Ann is an anthropologist and broadcaster and brings a questioning angle to the suggestions and approaches, while Charlie George is a touring comedian and writer, who had a more free spirited, hippyish upbringing.

The dynamic works quite effectively and almost feels like you have the two imps on your shoulders (if you’re listening on headphones), one taking the ‘sensible’ approach, in which you dutifully nod when you are agreeing to eat your greens and the other having a more unfiltered reaction and basically admitting that you’re never going to do that, or sustain it in its uncustomised form factor. Both being bright and erudite people does help to keep the topics light and yet informative in their pithy running time.

Over the course of the podcast they tackle a huge range of topics from stress, exercise, food, making and breaking habits (not the only coaching related content) and somewhat ironically for a podcast, digital detoxing.

In each episode they talk about the theme of the episode, and how it might relate to happiness, what their current life looks like on that front and their attitudes towards it. They introduce an expert (they have really great expert guests) and have them review what they think they know (and how close they are to getting it right). The expert then introduces a ‘study of the week’, which takes the form of one or more bits of research that might lead to practical things that can be done in the area being discussed.

Each of the presenters then takes away a bit of homework, based on the research, and keeps an audio diary. When they all reconvene they talk about what worked, and run through how the week went with the aid of the diaries. There’s then usually some more advice from the expert and the presenters talk about what things they might try and work into their daily lives.

It’s a real shame that there’s not been further episodes, and I for one would be interested to hear how long they kept up some of the habits that they said they’d be doing as a result of this series and what the long term impact of it has been.

As both have (deservedly) gone on to greater success, I hope that the series provided them with some practical tools that helped them on their way. I know that I, and my coachees, have benefited from the discussions on microrewards, the value of nature breaks and the idea of scheduling in a worry hour.

https://www.audible.co.uk/podcast/Happinessand-How-to-Get-It/B08P4BSPFG

If you’re already an Audible subscriber I’d hugely recommend you check it out. If you’re not, they often have free trials available and so, if you schedule that in for a stretch when you reckon you can sneak in 4 hours of podcasts into your daily commute, or exercise or whenever, I’d highly recommend it.