Life is a Festival

About Life is a Festival

Through intimate, long-form interviews, Life is a Festival unlocks the wisdom of cultural pioneers to help listeners integrate transformational experiences and create more joy and adventure in their daily lives.

Publisher

Eamon Armstrong

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

17 Nov 2018

Latest episode

17 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

3 of 185 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   17 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   183 - Chris Stakich (Summit): The Lie of the Linear Path

   Host [Host Name] interviews Chris Stakich, CEO of Summit, about rejecting the linear path and building a life centered on connection over achievement.

2. 

   6 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Ian MacKenzie: The Lost Boys of the Manosphere

   Today on Life is a Festival, Ian MacKenzie and I unpack “Inside the Manosphere:” the performance, the status games, the Lamborghinis that need to be witnessed to exist. We trace it back to father absence, the failure of the nuclear family, and generations of uninitiated men. We explore the distinction between grief and grievance, asking why male pain so readily converts into domination rather than surrender. MacKenzie shares his own four-year cycle of wilderness vigils, sits of four days without food or water, as a counter-image to the Manosphere's hollow heroism, describing initiation not as a heroic feat but as a devastating encounter with one's own smallness. The conversation moves through the crisis of young male loneliness, the complicity of wellness culture in creating the pipeline, and lands on eros and queerness as unexpected antidotes, arguing that the manosphere's deepest poverty is its total absence of genuine intimacy, play, and erotic aliveness. Ian MacKenzie is a filmmaker, writer, and host of the Mythic Masculine Podcast, which explores modern masculinity through the lens of myth, ritual, and culture-making. He is the co-director of The Village of Lovers, a documentary about the intentional community of Tamera in Portugal, and writes on Substack under The Deep Masculine. He is co-facilitating the inaugural Cascadia Men's Conference later this year near Vancouver, Canada, inspired by the 40-year-old Minnesota Men's Conference founded by Robert Bly. Links: Ian MacKenzie Website (https://www.ianmack.com/my-story) The Mythic Masculine Podcast (https://www.themythicmasculine.com/podcast) The Mythic Masculine | Ian MacKenzie | Substack (https://themythicmasculine.substack.com/) The Village of Lovers (https://thevillageoflovers.com/) Timestamps: (05:19) Why Myth Matters (12:22) The Manosphere as Hyperobject (22:17) Nuclear Family vs the Village (28:24) Women as Status Props (35:34) Status Scarcity Hierarchy (37:38) Tamara Village (46:11)  Crisis of Uninitiated Boys (51:02) Ian’s Wilderness Vigil Initiation (01:02:12) Eros Queerness Integration

3. 

   19 Dec 2025

   Jenna Ansell (Medicine Festival): Beyond Festival Utopia

   After seven years and more than 180 episodes, this is the final episode of Life Is a Festival in its current form. It felt right to close this chapter with a conversation with my friend Jenna Ansell, cofounder of Medicine Festival about what festivals have promised, what they’ve delivered, and what still matters. In this conversation, we explore why the utopian promise of festival culture feels strained in 2025, whether large gatherings can still act as engines of cultural change, and the difference between individual transformation and collective healing. We talk about ancient ritual technologies, the role of land and lineage, the limits of peak experience, and why play, myth, and the trickster still matter in dark times. Jenna Ansell is the co-founder and managing director of Medicine Festival in the United Kingdom. With a background in social anthropology from Cambridge and international relations from Johns Hopkins, she has worked across political, cultural, and conscious events for over twenty years. Through Medicine Festival, Jenna has helped create a large-scale ceremonial gathering centered on indigenous wisdom, community healing, and relationship to land, and is emerging as a key bridge-builder between festival culture, academia, and spiritual traditions. Timestamps (08:45) – The missing tipping point: why festival utopia never arrived (10:15) – Festivals as liminal spaces and temporary autonomous zones (14:00) – Status-quo festivals vs revolutionary festivals (17:00) – Land, ritual, and why Burning Man falls short (21:00) – What makes Medicine Festival fundamentally different (27:30) – Peak experiences, healing culture, and getting stuck in the underworld (29:45) – Collective healing, ancient traditions, and remembering community (38:00) – Rites of passage, myth, and why festivals still matter (44:00) – Advice to young festival builders in 2025 (47:00) – Utopia, striving together, and redefining success Links: Medicine Festival: Home (https://medicinefestival.com/) MEDICINE (@medicinefestival) (https://www.instagram.com/medicinefestival/?hl=en) rogueriding - 𝐉𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐋 (https://www.instagram.com/rogueriding/?hl=en) How Festivals Build Real Communities from Utopian Visions TEDBRC 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdOHIy8y7pE)

Inside a recent episode

183 - Chris Stakich (Summit): The Lie of the Linear Path

Published 17 Apr 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And I knew that that was just the beginning of this this next step of the journey. But after going through Harvard and graduating, I was looking at that next step, which is everyone I knew was going into investment banking. And then the investment bankers become the private equity people. And then the private equity people start their own firm. And I just could more transparently see through it. And I bet a lot of people feel like this, but it was almost like falling back and you know, thinking about myself, my own life and, you know, what is this life experience going to be, you know, if I follow this path? […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

142 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

46 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 68 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

97

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

95

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.