Sober curiosity is a new global movement, embraced by a whole world of awesome, interesting, cool, successful people who are using a different relationship with alcohol to make themselves even more awesome and successful. This podcast is about those people and their stories. It’s called Drunk AF. AF stands for alcohol free. It also stands for As Fuck. And it’s your call on whatever you want it to mean.
Hosted by James Hurman. Made possible by AF Drinks.
Justin Kan is an American serial tech entrepreneur and investor who is most famous for the founding the massively popular streaming platform Twitch. He’s next most famous for live streaming every moment of his life, live to the internet for eight months in 2007 via a head mounted webcam.
In 2019 Justin announced his decision to quit drinking alcohol, which he said had been a big part of his identity since he was in high school, and also one of the ways he handled high-stress situations as a young start-up founder. He tells us about why he gave up, and what’s happened since.
11 Apr 2023
Drunk AF Episode 12 - Emily Schildt
Emily Schildt is the founder and CEO of Pop Up Grocer, which is a family of curated shops that feature new, better-for-you products. Emily and her team seek out really awesome, exciting, and beautifully presented new brands and products that you don’t usually find in the big grocery stores. They’re the grocery items that are right at the forefront of where food and drinks are going.
We talk to Emily not so much as someone who has a different relationship with alcohol herself, but someone who’s really seeing the growth and change in the non-alcoholic drinks category, from which she stocks lots of brands including our brand, AF.
20 Feb 2023
Drunk AF Episode 11 - Harry Jowsey
Harry Jowsey is a star and the winner of reality TV shows Heartbreak Island and Too Hot to Handle, and a kind of professional smily hot guy internet sensation.
He was born in Australia, and did a year of high school in New Zealand where he was barred from attending his graduation dinner after removing his clothes and streaking through their sister school's prize-giving attended by the female pupils and their mothers. He was stood down for three days, and, well look who’s laughing now, Nelson College. He’s grown up to advise perhaps many of those exact female pupils on successful relationships via his Spotify show Dating Harry Jowsey.
He’s also an entrepreneur and investor, now living in LA, and he joins us fresh off an evening at the Grammy's.
23 Dec 2022
Drunk AF Episode 10 - Jordan Rondel
Jordan Rondel, aka The Caker, turned a childhood passion of baking in Paris with her French grandparents into her life’s work. She’s a New Zealander who lives in LA making cakes and cake kits. She’s baked for Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, collabed with Tezza, and had her ideas allegedly nicked by Chrissy Tiegen.
She talks to us about living a city where drinking is becoming less fashionable than eating cake.
14 Jul 2022
Drunk AF Episode 9 - Lotta Dann
Lotta Dann started drinking at age fifteen, trained as a journalist at age eighteen and spent the next twenty years perfecting both skills.
She built a successful career as a TV reporter, producer and director while simultaneously developing a remarkable aptitude for drinking a lot of alcohol.
Lotta became a household name when she confessed on national television in 2014 that she had a drinking problem. Her story on TVNZ’s Sunday programme struck a chord with thousands of women around the country.
She then literally wrote herself sober. Her blog, Mrs D is Going Without, began as a sort of personal diary but to her surprise people began commenting on it and telling her about their own struggles with alcohol.
And Lotta has never returned to drinking.
19 Apr 2022
Drunk AF Episode 8 - Tyler Rasch
Tyler Rasch is a TV personality, environmentalist, and author living in South Korea. Originally from the United States, Tyler wrote his university thesis on North Korean Law, then worked for the US-Asia institute and the Korean embassy in Washington DC, before moving himself to Seoul and becoming an unlikely sounding celebrity.
He’s been a cast member of several award-winning and intriguingly named TV shows – Non-Summit, Where is my Friend’s Home and Problematic Men.
The latter has been described as a talk show with a cast of "men with hot brains".
Tyler drinks a lot less than he used to, while living in a place that’s been described as ‘the country with the world’s worst drink problem’.
8 Jul 2021
Drunk AF Episode 7 - Dai Henwood
Dai Henwood is a comedian and an expert in punning his name, creating the shows Dai-namic Scenarios, Dai another day, Adapt or Dai and Roll the Dai, and a website called DaiSpace. He’s also the captain of team two on the hit TV3 show Seven Days.
Like most comedians, Dai graduated with a degree in eastern religions. He won the award for 'Best New Face' on TV2’s Pulp Comedy in 1999, the Billy T Award in 2002 and the New Zealand International Comedy Festival’s Fred Award in 2007.
Then, after famously being the pissed comedian on C4 television, he began to experiment with periods of sobriety before giving up booze entirely in 2018.
8 Jul 2021
Drunk AF Episode 6 - Siouxsie Wiles
Siouxsie Wiles is the pink haired science lady who’s been a regular feature of New Zealand’s journey through Covid-19. Besides being a distinctive visual feature of our news landscape over the past year, she also collaborated with the Spinoff cartoonist Toby Morris to create their ‘Flatten The Curve’ animation which became one the defining pieces of Covid science communication and took on a globally viral life of its own.
She was recently named New Zealander of the Year in recognition of her leadership thoughout the pandemic.
Siouxie used to drink but gave up when drinking alcohol began to make her feeling nauseous, and hasn’t looked back.
16 Feb 2021
Drunk AF Episode 5 - Guy Williams
Guy Williams is one of New Zealand’s most capable comedians. He began performing comedy in Wellington in 2007, then quickly rose through the comedy ranks with Jono and Ben, won the Billy T Award in 2012, was named by TV Guide as New Zealand’s sexiest male TV personality in 2014, went all the way to number two in the charts in 2015 with his single 'The Pigeon Song', recorded his first stand up special in 2017, and created and hosted his own TV show New Zealand Today in 2020.
Guy has never drunk alcohol, explaining that “I've got too much irrational self confidence as it is. If anything I need the opposite of a beer to rein me in.”
16 Feb 2021
Drunk AF Episode 4 - Michelle Dickinson
Michelle Dickinson is a national treasure. She is, by trade, a PhD in biomedical materials engineering, and set up New Zealand’s first and only nanomechanical testing lab at the University of Auckland. But kids know her better as Nanogirl, the superhero alter-ego she created to engage children of all ages with science. And this is her real superpower - communicating science in a way that makes it simple and fun, and inspiring people to learn about, and even fall in love with the sciences and what they can mean to us in everyday life. She’s the author of two bestselling books, she was this 2020’s Hi-Tech Inspiring Individual of the Year, she’s been made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, she’s kite-surfed with Richard Branson, explained Covid to kids with Jacinda Ardern, and designed dresses for Icebreaker. And she doesn’t drink…
16 Feb 2021
Drunk AF Episode 3 - Jimi Hunt
Jimi Hunt is a mental health change-maker with a penchant for raising awareness for mental health issues by doing things like riding a lilo 425km down the Waikato river, or building the world’s longest waterslide. He is the founder of mental health charity Live More Awesome, and his mission to improve mental health outcomes has seen him publish three books including his latest, called Inside Out: The ultimate guide to becoming a better human. Jimi was a New Zealander of the Year finalist in 2014, and holds the Guinness World Record for his aforementioned world’s longest waterslide.
And Jimi doesn’t drink – not because he gave up, but simply because he never started...
16 Feb 2021
Drunk AF Episode 2 - Claire Chitham
Claire Chitham has been described as ‘New Zealand’s sweetheart’. She's best known for her role as Waverley Wilson on Shortland Street in the nineties and noughties, and grew up as one of New Zealand’s most famous faces. She went on to star in numerous film, stage and television productions including Outrageous Fortune, Neighbours, Legend of the Seeker, The Jaquie Brown Diaries, and most recently, Fresh Eggs. She's gone long stretches of her life without drinking and uses a mindful relationship with alcohol to excel on stage and screen.
16 Feb 2021
Drunk AF Episode 1 - Lisa King
Lisa King was 2019’s MYOB Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, and also a 2019 New Zealander of the Year finalist.
After a career in marketing for many of the world’s biggest food companies including Cadbury, Fonterra and PepsiCo, Lisa King founded Eat My Lunch with her friend, the esteemed chef Michael Meredith. Their success on their mission to ensure no child goes to school hungry has made Eat My Lunch New Zealand’s most well known for-profit social enterprise.
In late 2020, Lisa launched her next venture, a company making alcohol-free G&T’s, which sets Lisa on a new social mission to make it easier for people to explore, as she has done recently, a different relationship with alcohol. This podcast series is part of that mission.
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