The High Performance Podcast

Evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman challenges one of our most persistent beliefs about weight loss: that if you can’t stick to a diet, you simply need more discipline.

He explains why our bodies evolved to hold onto fat, why willpower can only take us so far, and how diet culture has turned eating into a cycle of guilt and shame.

Daniel also shares the story of his own mother, whose obsession with avoiding fat came...

This is a revisit of the conversation we previously had with Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ Team Principal and CEO, and it remains one of the most revealing interviews we’ve ever recorded.

Toto opens up about the childhood experiences that shaped him, losing his father at 15, being forced to grow up quickly and the financial hardship his family faced.

He also speaks candidly about periods of depression from the age of 18, seek...

What do you actually feel when you win? Jake and Damian explore one of the strangest patterns they've noticed across more than 400 High Performance conversations: so many people reach the top of their mountain, only to wish they'd enjoyed the climb a little more.

Damian unpacks the hedonic treadmill and arrival fallacy, and asks what we're actually optimising our lives for when every achievement simply moves the goalposts. Becau...

Former British Army paratrooper Josh Boggi’s life changed in 47 minutes when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan, losing both legs and his right arm. But surviving was only the beginning of learning who he was going to become.

Josh opens up about the five-minute conversation with a fellow triple amputee that gave him a new roadmap for life, and how sport helped rebuild his confidence, identity, and sense of purpose. He als...

Global music icon Anastacia has faced breast cancer twice, first diagnosed at just 34 at the height of her career and again ten years later. In this special episode, created in partnership with Postcode Lottery, she joins Jake to share how those experiences shaped her outlook on life.

Anastacia opens up about taking back control, the optimism that has carried her through difficult moments, and why early detection remains so impo...

On the morning of 11 September 2001, Sean Windeatt was a 28-year-old in Cantor Fitzgerald's London finance department, fifteen minutes into his usual morning call with a colleague in New York, when the line went dead. That colleague was inside the North Tower. By the end of the day the firm had lost 658 people alongside 61 Euro Brokers employees— around two thirds of its New York workforce, and more than any other company in ...

England Rugby World Cup winner Lawrence Dallaglio built his career on an extraordinary ability to create belief under pressure. But behind that drive was a deeply personal source of motivation: the loss of his sister Francesca when he was just 16.

Lawrence opens up about turning grief into fuel, finding the family he needed through rugby, and why the mental and emotional side of performance is so often underestimated. He also re...

Sir Steve Hansen won 93 of 107 Tests as All Blacks head coach — the most successful run in the history of professional rugby.

We re-visit our chat with Steve where he takes it apart: why "culture" is the most overused word on the planet, why he hates rules, why nobody would admit the All Blacks were World Cup chokers, and the two times he got it badly wrong and had to apologise to a whole squad. Plus the question about wa...

Why does a weekly to-do list feel so overwhelming on a Sunday night? Jake and Damian argue it's not because of your workload, it's because your capacity . Sleep, energy, confidence, clarity, control: when any of these drop, the same list of tasks stops looking like separate, manageable jobs and starts looking like one overwhelming message — everything, now.

In this episode, Jake and Damian hear from:

• Steve Peters on the...

Dina Asher-Smith has just made history as the most decorated athlete in European Championships history. An MBE, multiple major titles and four Olympic Games within reach, but at 30, one of Britain's greatest ever sprinters is still asking how much better she can become.

In this episode, Dina opens up about the realities behind those 10 seconds on the track, from how her menstrual cycle affected her performance to competing throu...

We revisit our conversation with Fernando Alonso - two-time Formula 1 World Champion, 437 Grand Prix starts, 32 wins - recorded in a rare moment where the visor comes off completely. Jake and Damian get behind the "robot" Alonso becomes the second his helmet goes on, and into the boy who started racing a homemade go-kart at three years old, in a family with no money, no expectations, and no competitive gene to explain where his cam...

What do you do when every option is on the table and you still end up with the same idea you always have? Jake and Damian tackle one of the quiet traps of creative work, and land somewhere counterintuitive: freedom doesn't make ideas bolder. Constraints do.

Damian unpacks David Epstein's Inside the Box and the psychology behind why unlimited time, unlimited method and unlimited scope send the brain straight to its safest, most f...

Ballon d'Or winner Michael Owen became one of the world's best footballers by developing an extraordinary ability to turn doubt, mistakes, and setbacks into self-belief. He joins Jake and Damian to reveal how that mindset was built, and why it eventually became one of his greatest challenges.

Michael reflects on the injuries that took away the explosive pace that defined him, and the painful eight-year gap between the player he ...

We re-visit one of the most emotional and gripping conversations we have ever recorded. Eight Olympic medals, five of them gold, and the first Briton ever to win the Tour de France. For one summer in 2012, Sir Bradley Wiggins was the most famous man in Britain — sideburns, gold medal, sat on a throne at Hampton Court. He couldn't bring himself to put the medal on.

Bradley takes us right back to the beginning: a council estate ...

What do you do when the people around you don't believe you can do it? Jake and Damian tackle one of the things listeners struggle with most — being doubted — and land somewhere they didn't expect: the doubt that really holds you back is usually your own.

Damian unpacks Albert Bandura's self-efficacy theory and why the two ways to build belief are evidence and self-talk, Alison Brooks' research on reframing nerves as...

Guenther Steiner is one of Formula 1’s most recognisable team bosses, building Haas from nothing and becoming known for his straight-talking approach to leadership. He joins us to reflect on ambition, pressure, and knowing when it’s time to walk away, as well as discuss his new position as CEO of MotoGP team Red Bull KTM Tech3.

Guenther opens up about his final years at Haas, admitting he stayed around two years too ...

We're revisiting this conversation with James Blunt because it's among the most disarming things we've recorded about belief, ridicule, and where confidence actually comes from.

James made his first album on nothing but belief. He'd burnt his bridges with every record label in Britain and was playing to about twenty people on the twentieth floor of a Ramada hotel — and he was still completely certain the whole world was go...

Jake and Damian tackle the question underneath almost every High Performance conversation: what do the best actually do differently, day to day?

Not the big moments. The small, repeatable ones. Because across hundreds of conversations on this show, the pattern is rarely talent or luck. It's that high performers have built a handful of habits they hold onto when nobody is watching, and they keep doing them long after most of us would...

Premier League icon Ashley Young joins us for a masterclass in longevity, self-belief, and turning rejection into an unstoppable competitive edge.

At 15, Watford told Ashley he was too small for a scholarship, a disappointment that became the operational system for his entire 20-year career. He explains why every manager's doubt or dropped selection became fuel to prove them wrong, from Antonio Conte's brutal pre-season at Inter...