Highly Functional

What we cover: The (contested) neuroscience of empathic overactivation — what mirror neurons can and can't explain Untangling three terms that get used interchangeably: secondary traumatic stress, vicarious...

Episode 20: Baduizm & The Botanical Ritual Nearly thirty years after Baduizm, Erykah Badu is still writing the rulebook on her own terms — from the ritual she built her debut around, to That Badu (her own cannabis...

Episode 19: F*ck Optimisation, I Want to Live (The Case Against Being the Best Version of Yourself) We've turned rest into a deliverable. This week: why busyness became a status symbol, what the research actually says...

A fifty-year lineage from a 1973 arts festival in a dying dairy town to the reason medicinal cannabis is legal in Australia today. This week we trace the throughline from the Nimbin Aquarius Festival including its roots...

Hope isn't a mood — it's a practice. This week: a global survey putting women's voices at the centre of cannabis research, an honest lap of Australian cannabis law reform, and the case for building our future homes out...

Grief isn't just sadness; neuroscience shows it activates the same reward circuitry as craving, and complex grief overlaps heavily with trauma responses like PTSD. This episode widens the lens to include climate grief...

Episode 15: Manifesting in the End Times — Millennials, the Lion's Gate, and Why We're All Suddenly "Into" Astrology Again It's the 8/8 Lion's Gate, and millennial astrology culture is having a moment — but the research...

"Rest is resistance" shows up on tote bags and therapist Instagram stories — but where does it actually come from, and why does choosing to stop feel so hard when you're high-functioning and professionally exhausted...

Burnout is chronic for millennials but what does the research say about the medicine we use to help us? Today we deep dive into the real research around CBD and the psychological sabotage of optimisation, wellness...

Chronically Curious: Tailoring Your Endocannabinoid System Everyone's endocannabinoid system is different — which means the strain that works wonders for me might do nothing for you (or the opposite). In this episode, I...

The "munchies" is real neuroscience, not just a stoner cliché — THC hijacks the brain's hunger and reward circuitry, and this episode breaks down exactly how. But we take it further than the joke usually goes: how...

Mid-year is hitting, the sensory overload is real, and we are officially breaking up with hustle culture. In this episode, we’re ditching the #girlboss pipeline for radical compassion, anti-burnout boundaries, and a...

Have you ever walked out of a doctor's appointment feeling entirely dismissed, misheard, or told that your chronic stress was "just hormones"? In this episode of Highly Functional , we explore "The Green Ceiling"—the...

Have you ever noticed a point where your routines seem to hit a wall, or what used to bring you instant calm starts feeling a little less effective? In this solo episode, we are going Beyond Baseline . We explore the...

In this solo episode of Highly Functional , we explore the rapidly expanding cultural phenomenon of the sober curious movement , driven heavily by high-performing millennials. We dismantle the deeply ingrained corporate...