No Ordinary Monday

A phone call at 2:11 p.m. shattered a quiet Monday: Whakaari had erupted with tourists on the crater floor. From that moment, we step into a week where science, instinct, and grief collided—and where a volcanologist had to help decide whether recovery teams could return to an active volcano while families waited for news.

We sit down with Nico Fournier, the volcanologist who became the connective tissue between seismology,...

This is a bonus clip from this week’s episode with magician Sean Borland.

During our conversation, I asked Sean whether he’d be willing to demonstrate one of his mind-reading illusions live on the show. What followed was a classic “book test” — eight books to choose from, hundreds of pages, complete freedom of choice… and a single word.

I chose a book.

Then a page.

Then a word.

Sean tried to guess it.

What makes this moment fascinating i...

Candlelight. A creaking old house on a South African nature reserve. Wind outside, silence within. We sit down with world-touring magician Sean Borland to unpack the seance that electrified a room, the billionaire who dared him to go bigger, and the exact moment he chose to walk away from a career most performers only dream of.

Sean’s path wasn’t luck alone. He left a safe job, trained ten hours a day in rural China, becam...

A backpack full of rushes, a late‑night detour, and a cab ride that felt like forever. That near‑disaster on a dog‑trick commercial wasn’t just a wild production tale for Ben Stein; it became a mirror for the life he was building and the future he actually wanted. We bring you inside the highs and hazards of production and advertising, from public‑access beginnings and the award‑winning Paperclips documentary to brand rules so stri...

A brother’s warning over the radio. An 80‑metre abseil into darkness. A cone splits, lava surges, and the exact spot rigged with rope is swallowed in seconds. That’s the moment Aldo Kane, former Royal Marines sniper, expedition leader, and on-screen explorer, decided not to commit to the drop inside Nyiragongo's crater, a call that almost certainly saved his life. We unpack that decision and everything wrapped around it: risk,...

A fear of death can quietly shape an entire life. For Danni Petkovic, that fear was physical and relentless — years of death anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and a nervous system locked into survival mode at the mere idea of mortality. Everything changed when her brother was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. What followed was an intimate education in dying: navigating prognosis, care, logistics, legacy, and love in real time. Tha...

Bush Flying in Indonesia: From IT Desk to Remote Mountain Airstrips

A tidy flat, a good salary, a steady routine — and a growing knot of anxiety. That was Matt Dearden’s life before he walked away from IT and flew halfway across the world to become a bush pilot in Indonesia.

In this episode of No Ordinary Monday, Matt takes us inside the reality of remote aviation, flying for Susi Air across one of the most challenging aviation envir...

A backpack floats in brown water. The ward is a tent. The air is forty degrees. And still, patients keep coming. We open the year with Dr Lakshmi Jain of Médecins Sans Frontières, who takes us from NHS corridors to a flooded field hospital in South Sudan, where logistics, infection control and compassion collide in the harshest conditions. With planes grounded and supplies tight, she shows how medicine adapts when the plan dissolve...

What are the 3 most dangerous countries to visit for a backpacking trip? And how can you get in? Former CIA Counter-Terrorism Analyst Brent Giannotta joins the show to share his expertise. Carl and Ben also pepper him with every CIA movie reference and conspiracy theory they can muster.

Please follow Brent and subscribe to his Substack!

Some of the Topics Covered:

-Most Dangerous Places to Backpack

-Life or Death Backpacking Situations

...

A storm hits ten hours after the helicopter drop, tents bow under the wind, and the generators choke on spindrift—yet the drill keeps turning. That’s the edge-of-the-map reality behind a rare ship‑to‑helicopter ice core mission to West Antarctica, where we joined glaciologist Dr Peter Neff to chase air bubbles that hold the clearest record of our past atmosphere.

We dig into why tiny pockets of ancient air are such powerfu...

What happens when a seasoned therapist loses his footing and chooses to walk straight into the world’s darkest rooms? We sit down with Dr Chad Scott, a psychologist, prison therapist, and author, to trace a journey from illness and anxiety to a practice he calls reflective dark tourism—visiting sites of profound suffering with reverence to learn how to live.

Chad takes us through the steps into an Auschwitz gas chamber, th...

A phone call, a private jet, and a destination so secret no one would say it out loud—then a palatial compound, an accidental insult to a billionaire, forced vodka shots, a stage sinking into a swimming pool, and Andrea Bocelli arriving by helicopter. That’s only one chapter in conductor Robert Emery’s wildly unconventional career, and somehow it’s not even the most meaningful part.

We start by demystifying what a conducto...

What happens when a Secret Service interrogator plays Two Truths and a Lie with us on mic? We invited special agent and polygraph examiner Brad Beeler to stress‑test our storytelling and, more importantly, to reveal how professionals separate sharp detail from slick delivery. Three claims hit the table—a shoot in Antarctica, a cheetah lick in Namibia, and a bumblebee suit on a neuroscience series—and the questions get precise fast....

What does it really take to open a locked human safe? Not pressure. Not tricks. Presence. Retired US Secret Service special agent Brad Beeler joins me to unpack the art and science of getting to the truth when everything rides on a single expression or a mistimed pause. From presidential protection to high-stakes interviews, Brad shows how tactical empathy, careful prep, and an unwavering poker face can turn silence into clarity.

Headlights in the distance. Two elderly evacuees in the cab. A van bogged down a kilometre from the Russian border. That single night becomes the turning point for Tenby Powell, a former soldier and business leader who now runs one of the few foreign‑flagged humanitarian teams still operating on Ukraine’s front line.

We sit down with Tenby to unpack what aid work looks like when drones own the sky and mines haunt the verge...

A tiny part failed, a race unravelled, and a dominant team learned a lesson that reshaped its season. We sit down with engineer and technical leader Ruaraidh McDonald-Walker to trace the arc from childhood curiosity to Mercedes’ hybrid breakthrough, then step into the heat of the 2014 Canadian Grand Prix where creeping temperatures and unseen constraints forced brutal clarity. What failed wasn’t the obvious component; it was an ove...

A cheetah on a Hollywood set with Angelina Jolie. A Jack Russell with terrible timing. And a moment in a rural hospital that rerouted two lives toward a mission bigger than fame or adrenaline. We sit down with Namibian conservationist Marlice Van Vuren to unpack how a preventable loss led to N/a’an ku sê, a holistic model that protects wildlife while strengthening the communities who live alongside it.

Marlice grew up on a...

A ghost hitching a ride in the backseat shouldn’t make sense—until you hear how a veteran parapsychologist pulled the story apart and tried to verify it. We sit down with Loyd Auerbach, one of the most respected names in parapsychology, to explore why some experiences defy easy dismissal and how a single case nudged him toward the idea that consciousness may persist after death.

We start by setting the record straight on w...

A single whistle in the dark ocean shouldn’t decide a life, yet that’s exactly how Heidi found her way home. After ditching her aircraft in the Pacific and riding 12‑foot swells under a full moon, she watched search flares sketch the sky while a ship hovered just out of reach—until a launch zeroed in on the smallest, most human signal she had left. The twist? Her rescuers were Soviet sailors who couldn’t speak to the American aircr...