Hey Y'all,

What happens when a vet, wildlife broadcaster, and nature mystic sits down with Jaz and Trey? This. Sean McCormack - known to many as That Vet Sean, familiar from Springwatch, The One Show, and his Sunday Times pets column - takes us on an extraordinary journey from cocaine-swallowing puppies to urban beavers, from speciesism to secret grief, and from Catholic Ireland to finding his church in the natural world.

Expect big laughs, unexpected tears, and a conversation that might just change how you think about animals, the planet, and what it means to be human.

Timestamps:

0:00 — Intro & welcome: Who is Sean McCormack (That Vet Sean)?
1:28 — Exotic pets, zoo vets & the wild beginning of Sean's career
3:00 — The late-night call: cocaine, a puppy, and a kitchen surgery request
4:11 — What drives a child to become a vet? Nature, family & being the "weird kid"
5:32 — The hidden mental health crisis in veterinary medicine
6:33 — Vets have the highest suicide rate of any profession — why?
6:39 — How our relationship with pets has transformed in one generation
8:19 — Do pets truly serve the animal, or just us? The ethics of pet-keeping
9:54 — Speciesism: Why do we eat cows but not dogs?
10:49 — Grass-fed beef vs. dairy and eggs: the counterintuitive truth about animal welfare
12:50 — "It's not the cow, it's the how" — regenerative agriculture explained
14:45 — Kids who don't know where potatoes come from: our disconnection from nature
15:20 — Nature is everywhere, even in cities — but we've stopped noticing
18:05 — The Ealing Beaver Project: bringing beavers back to zone 4 of London
19:51 — Beavers solving urban flooding better than engineers — and David Attenborough's reaction
20:16 — Working alongside Sir David Attenborough on *Wild London*
21:10 — Shifting to spirituality: what does nature mean to Sean?
22:13 — Trey's seal colony encounter on Caldey Island (and being gently told off by Sean)
23:47 — Sean's spirituality: "My church is the natural world"
29:37 — No Mow May, dominion, and why human superiority is destroying the planet
31:22 — The hypocrite's dilemma: flying to Costa Rica as a conservationist
33:06 — Grief, loss, and the partner who wasn't out: Sean opens up
34:23 — The Irish relationship with death, wakes, and why grief shouldn't be hidden
38:20 — Three years of secret grief — and why speaking his name finally brought healing
43:35 — The forest walk video that went viral: "There's no shame in this"
45:52 — Growing up gay in Catholic Ireland: denial, self-preservation, and coming out at 18
47:35 — A second coming out: burnout, identity crisis, and hating a career he'd built his life around
50:49 — Sean's advice for anyone stuck on the wrong path: listen to that voice sooner
53:34 — "You're only as sick as your secrets" — on sharing, therapy, and moving forward
54:07 — Closing reflections: spirituality, openness, and honoring connection

Follow Sean: Instagram @thatvetSean
Wild London (with David Attenborough) - available on BBC iPlayer
The Ealing Beaver Project - Paradise Fields, Greenford, London

Spill The Spirituality is a project of the Methodist Church in Britain. New episodes every week - subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen.

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Hey Y'all,

In this episode, Trey and Jaz sit down with Scottish writer, broadcaster, and paranormal psychologist Evelyn Hollow — known for her work on Uncanny and The Battersea Poltergeist — for a wild, wide-ranging conversation about what ghosts might actually be, why consciousness is science's last great mystery, and whether the paranormal and the spiritual are closer than we think.

Evelyn takes us from the Battersea poltergeist case that became the number one podcast in the world, to modern-day ghost sightings (yes, there are ghosts in hoodies), to a fascinating theory that what we call ghosts might not be dead people at all — but glimpses through time. Along the way, the conversation moves into quantum physics, the politics of who gets to define the sacred, why so many women are drawn to paganism, and what it means that every culture on Earth seems to be accessing the same mysterious thing and calling it by different names.

Jaz also finally tells her abbey ghost story to an actual expert. The verdict? It's complicated.

Funny, mind-bending, and unexpectedly moving — this one will have you side-eyeing empty rooms for weeks.

Timestamps:

• 2:41 — Introducing Evelyn Hollow: paranormal psychologist and broadcaster
• 3:00 — Growing up in Scotland; swapping forensic psychology for parapsychology
• 5:05 — The Battersea Poltergeist and becoming the number one podcast in the world
• 7:46 — Why aren't there modern ghosts? (There are — one wears a Nirvana T-shirt)
• 11:28 — Do ghosts have an expiry date? The half-life of consciousness
• 12:59 — Jaz's abbey ghost story: the woman at the foot of the bed
• 15:00 — Sleep paralysis, the priming effect, and why Jaz's story is hard to explain
• 20:15 — The Salem witch trials: mass hysteria or something more calculated?
• 23:48 — Is everyone accessing the same spiritual reality?
• 27:34 — Could consciousness be quantum? Why ghosts make scientific sense
• 29:00 — Weighing the soul and the 0.7 gram preacher's tale
• 32:24 — Paganism: pre-Christian faith and the power of the land
• 34:56 — Feminism and faith: who wrote the book?
• 38:09 — Local gods vs. universal truth
• 41:29 — What comes after death? Where consciousness might go

-----

Guest: Evelyn Hollow
Find her: Instagram @EvelynHollow

Spill the Spirituality is a project of the Methodist Church in Britain. Produced by John Ryan and Rachel Matthews. Hosted by Trey Hall.

Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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Hey Y'all,

In this episode, Trey Hall sits down with poet, author, and educator Jaspreet Kaur - also known as Behind the Netra - for a rich, wide-ranging conversation about identity, faith, creativity, and what it means to go deeper than the surface of things.

Jaspreet opens with a stunning reading of her poem Lost in Translation, a tribute to her mother and the experience of navigating intersectional identity as a British South Asian woman. From there, the conversation weaves through the healing power of poetry, the feminist roots of the Sikh faith, the book Brown Girl Like Me, and a deeply personal account of finding spirituality not in a place of worship — but in a library, a research project, and a girls' home in Punjab.

Timestamps:

• 2:29 — Introducing guest Jaspreet Kaur / Behind the Netra; reading of Lost in Translation
• 5:07 — Why do people love or hate poetry? How it was introduced in schools
• 6:50 — Rediscovering poetry through the Sikh faith: scripture written entirely in poetic form
• 7:31 — Poetry as therapy: using writing to manage anxiety at age 13
• 8:28 — The stigma around mental health in South Asian (and wider) communities
• 9:06 — Anxiety attacks at 13, the journal she still has today, and the move from free writing to poetry
• 9:46 — Pen to paper vs. typing: why handwriting feels therapeutic
• 13:13 — What spirituality looks like in everyday life; lessons from a toddler noticing a snail
• 16:14 — Brown Girl Like Me: writing the book, interviewing 150 Asian women, and why it was therapy
• 22:44 — Spirituality and Sikh heritage: growing up in a Sikh household
• 23:59 — The difference between practice and truly feeling faith
• 25:39 — A master's in gender studies and researching son preference in South Asian communities
• 26:24 — Finding spirituality through feminist research: the Sikh faith's founding principle of gender equality
• 26:52 — Why Sikh women keep the name Kaur; removing caste through naming
• 30:54 — Trey shares his own story: coming out as gay through scripture and direct experience of God
• 32:09 — When faith and culture conflict: a shared challenge across all traditions
• 33:23 — "Don't worry, next time you'll have a boy" — the rage of hearing that after a daughter's birth
• 34:11 — Channelling holy rage into writing and advocacy
• 39:18 — What does God feel like? Sun on your eyelids — a poetic description of the divine
• 41:17 — Trey shares his 12-step recovery journey and experiencing God in the rooms of recovery
• 41:59 — Powerlessness and surrender: the first steps and why a powerful God matters
• 45:04 — Can you be a feminist and surrender to God? Yes — we are contradictions
• 47:22 — Names for God that take energy and alertness to say; divine names across traditions

Guest: Jaspreet Kaur — poet, author, educator
Find her: Instagram, X, YouTube, Facebook — @BehindtheNetra
Book: Brown Girl Like Me

Spill the Spirituality is a project of the Methodist Church in Britain. Produced by John Ryan and Rachel Matthews. Hosted by Trey Hall.

Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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Hey Y'all,

What does it mean to be fully alive? Writer, broadcaster, and thinker Elizabeth Oldfield joins Trey Hall for a rich, searching conversation about the unravelling and reconstruction of faith, the radical politics of listening across difference, and why she's become a "fundamentalist communitarian" in the age of isolation. Elizabeth is the host of The Sacred podcast and author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times — a book that takes the unlikely route of the seven deadly sins as a map toward connection, aliveness, and grace.

In this episode:

• 0:00 — Welcome to Spill the Spirituality; introducing Elizabeth Oldfield
• 1:43 — Elizabeth's journey: growing up with "incredibly dilute background Christianity" and a brush with a youth festival that changed everything
• 5:28 — Describing the ecstatic encounter: "encountering the love that is the fundamental logic of the universe" — and how it compares to psychedelic experiences
• 8:28 — The unravelling, the "bad atheist" years, and cycling around Manchester in the rain arguing with a God she didn't believe in
• 11:38 — What church looks like now: living in an intentional community in Peckham, South London, and why Elizabeth has fallen back in love with church by lowering her expectations
• 13:52 — "I am a fundamentalist communitarian": why hyper-individualism is making us sick, lonely, and easy to politically manipulate — and why community is an act of resistance
• 14:03 — "Lash yourself to other people": committing to people and places even when it's difficult
• 21:05 — Elizabeth's podcast The Sacred: what she has learned from deep listening across the political and theological spectrum, and why she's "basically fallen in love with every guest"
• 27:45 — Practical lesson 1-0-1: how to actually listen to people who trigger you — background practices, nervous system regulation, and the spiritual practice of staying curious
• 28:28 — Understanding homophily (the love of the same): writing your "people like me" and "not like me" lists, and how to interrupt the body's threat response
• 35:01 — The neuroscience of righteousness: why being confirmed in what we already think feels like a sugar rush, and why surprise and learning feel like a full meal
• 39:53 — Introducing Fully Alive: why a book about aliveness unexpectedly became a book structured around the seven deadly sins
• 43:11 — Elizabeth's definition of sin as disconnection and fracture — and why the desert monks had it right long before neuroscience caught up
• 45:18 — On confession, lust, and bearing our darkness with grace rather than denial or dismissal
• 49:41 — Why Elizabeth couldn't write a book until she found her own voice — weaving ideas and life together honestly
• 52:12 — Elizabeth's benediction: "May we be brave and honest enough to be human together"

Links & Resources:

• Elizabeth Oldfield's podcast: The Sacred
• Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield
• Wintering by Katherine May
• Don't Talk About Politics by Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano
• Michael Pollan's new book on consciousness

Spill the Spirituality is a project of the Methodist Church in Britain, produced by John Ryan and Rachel Matthews.

Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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Hey Y’all,

Jaz and Trey dive into a thought provoking question: what would you save in a fire? What begins as a practical conversation quickly turns into something much deeper about memory, identity, and what truly matters. They reflect on the difference between sentimental and essential, and how faith shapes what we hold onto when everything else falls away. With honesty and warmth, this episode invites you to consider what you would carry, what you might need to let go of, and how spirituality reframes what is truly worth saving.

Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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Hey Y’all,

Jaz and Trey continue the conversation with 2026 BBC’s Pilgrimage stars Ashley Banjo, Hasan Al-Habib, and Tasha Ghouri in this powerful Part 2 episode. Picking up where they left off, the group dives deeper into the emotional and spiritual impact of the journey, reflecting on unexpected moments of vulnerability and connection. They unpack how pilgrimage challenged their assumptions, strengthened relationships, and opened space for honest conversations about belief. With warmth, humour, and depth, this episode explores what happens when different faith stories meet on the road together.

Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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Hey Y'all,

In this special episode, we sit down with four of the stars from the BBC’s Pilgrimage 2026 - Patsy Kensit, Hermione Norris, Jayne Middlemiss, and Ashley Blaker - for an honest, reflective, and often deeply personal conversation about their journey.

From questions of faith and identity to moments of vulnerability on the road, Part 1 explores what happens when very different lives and beliefs come together on a shared spiritual path.

Key Themes

• Spiritual curiosity vs religious structure
• The power of shared experience
• Vulnerability as a catalyst for connection
• Walking as a metaphor for inner change
• Finding common ground across different beliefs

Standout Moments

• Early conversations where differing beliefs are openly challenged
• Moments of unexpected emotional honesty between participants
• Reflections on why stepping outside everyday life creates space for deeper thinking
• The first signs of group connection forming despite differences

Join the Spill the Spirituality community, follow the show and reach out to the hosts - we'd love to hear your thoughts, stories and feedback!

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