This episode is a first for the show: a live, walking conversation recorded on-premises at Vanilla Club, on the lush Cassowary Coast in Tropical North Queensland, before picking up later in the urban jungle of Sydney. (Please give me some credit for my assimilation into Aussie culture--- if you watch the video you will see I am reppin' the "high-viz," screaming neon orange hat, and a ripper of a neon yellow vest, thank you!) What unfolds here isn't a typical interview, but a shared journey through neolithic rainforest, across rivers with “potential for crocs,” and into deeper reflections on place, and community.

Our guest Danny Kinzer, is a former high-school classmate of mine. Physically speaking, imagine a composite of Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa; you get the picture stature-wise; but Danny has a better smile than either of them on their best day, and is one of the warmest braddahs you'll ever meet. Danny describes himself less as a storyteller and more as a voyager, guide, and student of relationship. He has worked in education and some adjacent spaces with some big names like National Geographic, Hōkūleʻa Crew, and The Biomimicry Institute, and has been associated with some stellar institutions, but a name-dropper he is not. And the tenor of this conversation is a lot more subtle. So we will just go with the braddah-ship.

As the walk begins, the conversation opens into the Hawaiian ecological concept of "kipuka" - pockets of life that survive disruption and seed future regeneration. Vanilla Club becomes a living example: a working farm that also acts as a sanctuary, and a meeting place for human, animal and plant life.

From there, we flow across disciplines and life chapters. Danny reflects on stepping away from competitive sport, when he realised the game mattered less to him than the people. That same instinct, to choose meaning over metrics (and the persistent, omni-optimisation that surrounds so many of us), threads through his studies in neuroscience and psychology, his later work in biomimicry, and a life shaped by walking, wandering, and listening.

Rather than chasing famous destinations, Danny speaks about “Lake Okobojis”: ordinary places made extraordinary through relationship. A small island village in China reached on foot. A spontaneous visit to Anaconda, Montana. Swimming mangroves in Bali. Danny is the type of guy who would be down grabbing a bag of rice and heading upriver in to the wild, and I just love it. Tripadvisor... schmipadvisor

The ocean emerges as a central metaphor - less a boundary than a vast connector, “a million rivers flowing at once.” Living in Hawaii, Danny shares how voyaging canoes and intergenerational knowledge have shaped his understanding of community, where children, elders, and ancestors are all part of the same crew. If I said it it'd be cliché, but Danny just lives the Aloha spirit.

Returning to the Cassowary Coast, the conversation closes where it began: with gratitude for a place that feels alive, unfinished (in a good way!), and willing to move without a fixed destination.

We hope you enjoy.

vanilla.club

In this episode, we are joined by Alex Woo, director of the Netflix hit "In Your Dreams."

As founder and CEO of Kuku Studios, Alex is a business-creative hybrid - something he is all too modest about, but something that is a key part of Alex's secret sauce.

Alex is also a dear friend and classmate. We went to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU together. I don't have any beer pong gone wrong stories to share, or drunken late night hijinks to tell, probably because Alex was in the cutting room, perfecting his craft, all the way back to the last millennium. I can tell you that even in high school the lore was that Alex was destined to be a master filmmaker.

We also learn plenty of tidbits about the movie making process. Alex gives some specific examples of how particular jokes get woven into the film---sometimes they are core elements in the early script, other times they are monkey-wrenched in there---like a particular "Don't Cha!"

Alex gives some vignettes of his childhood in the States and the Hong Kong, and how certain cultural and family experiences came to inspire the film.

Ultimately, 'In Your Dreams' really reminds us why storytelling is king, and why in a media landscape filled with lots of mediocre and increasingly AI-generated content, parents should opt for the high quality choice, like In Your Dreams.

We hope you enjoy.

Cairns Native Bee

In this breezy but immersive episode, Vanilla Club Podcast gets out of the studio and into the field, or the paddock, as they say Down Under. I sit down with Zac Peterson, founder of Cairns Native Bee/Hinterland Hives, and Anoob Davidraj, a fellow Vanilla Club team member, to unpack the remarkable world of bees.

What begins as a conversation about starting our own apiary at Vanilla Club, quickly expands into a sweeping exploration of the craft of beekeeping, and the science of the hive mind. They are wonderful creatures these bees!

As the episode unfolds, we dive into the chemistry of taste - how compounds, plant stress responses, soil profiles, and even pollination behaviours influence what we perceive on the tongue. This is terroir if I have ever seen it, applicable as much to Chardonnay grapes in France as it is to native Australian honey in Queensland.

One of the episode’s highlights is Zac’s breakdown of honey production: how bees perform the waggle dance to guide others to nectar, why honey flavour changes every season, and how a single hive with ten frames can produce ten completely different honeys depending on where its foragers decide to fly. With yields ranging from 30 to 60 kilos a year, each hive becomes its own micro-ecosystem of chemistry and flavour.

We discuss the calming effect of smoke, to the evolutionary reasons bees are more aggressive toward darker colours - a survival trait shaped by ancient predators. Are bees racist? We now know the answer.

Anoob shares a bit of his background with us, tracing his passion for beekeeping back to his childhood in South India, where his family produced seasonal honey from blooming rubber trees.

We then reflect on the future of ethical beekeeping, the alarming impact of agricultural chemicals, and the urgent need for younger keepers. In preparation of our own Vanilla Club honey concoctions, we are embracing the idea that we are partners with our bees; in fact their collective decision making determine the precise flavours of each season.

Keep it sweet!

We hope you enjoy.