Today’s guest is Peter Faulding - a world-leading confined space rescue and forensic search specialist. He has pioneered the use of side-scan sonar in forensic searches for missing persons underwater in the UK and is a world leader in underwater search techniques. He has assisted in the search in many cold cases and has located human remains and evidence that had gone undetected for years, in some of the most remote locations on land and underwater. Peter is a qualified commercial diver, helicopter and fixed-wing pilot, and holds both a UK and United States FAA pilot's licence. His first book which we discuss in this conversation is What Lies Beneath - a memoir on his life and career journey from caving with his father aged five to the many rescue and murder cases he has been involved with.Peter has had such a varied and fascinating career - from his time in the caves and mines aged 5, to six years spent in the 10th Volunteer Battalion, Parachute Regiment where he passed the gruelling training to earning the coveted Maroon Beret and qualified as a military parachutist. To setting up his company Specialist Group International and his work in forensic search and confined space rescue, advising top police and military both here in the UK and in the USA, as a guest of the American Secret Service, presenting to their specialist teams and the FBI.Peter has lived an extraordinary life – and it’s that I am sure will inspire you. Here is my conversation with Peter Faulding.------------------Peter on Twitter / Website / Specialist Group International Buy Peter's book here What Lies Beneath: My Life as a Forensic Search and Rescue ExpertDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here

Today's guest is David Auerbach, a former engineer at both Microsoft and Google and now a technologist, writer and author of two books – Bitwise: A Life in Code and his most recent book, Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities.Today, we talk about David’s background in software engineering and what it was like to work at Microsoft on MSN Messenger and then at Google in the relatively early days of the tech giant’s gargantuan growth.We also discuss his latest book – he explains the meganets term that he coined and how As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of beast: an ever-changing systems that operates beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them.But before we get into the conversation, a quick word about today’s sponsor.Vowel.com is a game changing AI powered video conferencing platform that has an in-built AI powered meeting summary software that records all your meetings and automatically generates useful summaries at the end! I use it for all my meetings now and have found it so invaluable that I’m also using it for the podcast too to summarise the top takeaways from each episode.If you want to try it, sign up at Vowel.com using my code “daniellecode” for 3 months free of Vowel. Be quick though as this offer expires in 7 days.Enjoy!David on Twitter / Website / Buy Meganets here Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here 

Today’s guest is the incredible Mark Murdoch, founder of Mahogany a multi-faceted music company which is behind the hugely popular Mahogany Sessions on YouTube, famed for its live acoustic sessions with amazing singers in phenomenal locations that include artists fields, warehouses, cemeteries, churches. All these acoustic sessions are filmed with beautiful cinematography making the experience even more enthralling. I am not exaggerating when I say this channel got me through the pandemic.We discussed the adversity he overcame as a child trying to find his way in the world, how music saved him and led him on this wonderfully enriching career journey which has brought joy to so many millions whilst also empowering the very creatives that could have been left behind during the pandemic lockdowns.This is one of my favourite conversations - honest, open, vulnerable, inspiring, heart warming. But before we get into it, here’s a quick word about today’s sponsor.Vowel.com is a game changing AI powered video conferencing platform. Vowel has built-in AI powered meeting summary software that records all your meetings and automatically generates useful summaries at the end of each one! I use it for all my meetings now and have found it so invaluable that I’m also using it for the podcast too to summarise the top takeaways from each episode.If you want to try it, sign up at Vowel.com using my code “daniellecode” for 3 months free of Vowel. Be quick though as this offer expires in 7 days.Now back to the episode. Here is my conversation with Mark Murdoch.Enjoy!Mahogany Sessions on YouTube / Instagram Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here

Welcome to the Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind their game-changing work.I may have only just wrapped up series 8 but I am so excited about series 9 that I thought I would bring it forward so it will be launching imminently.And upcoming guests on this series include Mark Murdoch, the founder behind music channel Mahogany Sessions, author and engineer David Auerbach, Kevin Kelly who was the founding Executive Editor at Wired, Hana Walker-Brown who has written a book on brain injury and sport, Peter Faulding – a confined space rescue and forensic search specialist... and more, yet to be announced!I wanted to spread out the scope of guests for this series by focusing on innovators from different fields in order to widen the experiences of the guests I speak to so please do let me know what you think and, as always, please do hit the subscribe button so you are the first to hear each new episode as it comes out.The conversations in this series are even more open and inspiring than ever before yet they are packed full of so many great lessons for all founders and innovators – because these game changers inevitably found themselves with the odds stacked against them, like so many others, and they are here to share their stories and the lessons they learned along the way.I look forward to sharing them with you over the coming weeks.Goodbye for now. 

As it’s International Women’s Day, I wanted to do what we did last year and hand the episode over to some of the amazing women I have had on the show in the past year, and of course I will link to each of their original episodes  below so that you can check them out in full.In order of appearance in today’s show, we have the wonderful Cat Noone of Stark, Noor Shaker of X-Chem and Glamourous AI, Ayah Bdeir of LittleBits, Jane Metcalfe of Wired and Neo Life, Dr Mary-Lou Jepsen of Oculus and OpenWater, Deb Liu of PayPal and Ancestry.com, Jennifer Phan of Passionfroot, Polina Marinova Pompliano of The Profile and Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon of Stemettes.These incredible women each share one piece advice to their younger selves – some of them are utterly heart warming whilst others are funny, useful, serious and above all, they are all important messages I wanted to share with you today. So I hope you enjoy them and check out the full episode of each because they are brilliant and I want you to know about them and share their inspiring stories. Enjoy! 

I wanted  to say a massive thank you for listening to Series 8 of the podcast and thank you to my wonderful guests Steve Furber, Dean Forbes, Michael Gibson, Jennifer Phan, Alvy Ray Smith, Polina Marinova Pompliano and Andrew Zuckerman.Since the beginning of this year, we have learned so much from these inspiring stories - from Steve Furber’s quest to reverse engineer the human brain to Dean Forbes journey from homelessness to billion euro exits. I am forever grateful to my guests for trusting me with their stories and I hope you get what you need from these episodes too be it inspiration, valuable lessons or empowerment in the knowledge that if these people can do it, you can too.So today, as we close out Series 8, I wanted to leave you with some of my favourite snippets from each episode where I ask each guest what’s one piece of advise they’d offer their younger selves.In order of appearance in this episode:Dean ForbesMichael GibsonAlvy Ray SmithSteve FurberJennifer PhanPolina Marinova PomplianoAndrew Zuckerman Enjoy!Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here

I believe in pure intention. And if your intentions are pure, you're going to create something of value that people will connect with. Andrew ZuckermanThe medium that he works in is almost secondary to the fact that he's a thinker and an intellectual first. David Meredith on Andrew ZuckermanToday’s guest is Andrew Zuckerman, a celebrated filmmaker, photographer, author, podcaster, founder who has worked with the likes of Apple and Puma.Andrew is best known for creating collections of hyper-real images against stark white backgrounds which he has then turned into well-loved books including Creature which featured endangered species of animals, Bird and Flower which are self-explanatory, and Music which included these same format-images of greats such as Iggy Pop, Lenny Kravitz, Chrissy Hinde, John Legend and many more and it included interviews with them too. There was also his Wisdom book where he spent a year travelling all over the world photographing and interviewing esteemed elders including Nelson Mandela, Clint Eastwood, Dame Judi Dench, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and many more!As well as the photography and books, Andrew previously co-founded, co-created and co-hosted two podcasts with Spencer Bailey, Time Sensitive and At a Distance which I was a huge fan of.If that wasn’t enough, Andrew has done creative work with many top name clients including Apple and Puma and is co-founder of Superflower a wallpaper and textile company that creates patterns from photographs of nature. I learned so much from this interview with Andrew and I am sure you will too.Enjoy! Andrew Zuckerman website / Instagram / Store / Twitter / Superflower Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here

Today's guest is Polina Marinova Pompliano, writer and founder of The Profile –a  newsletter and media company that profiles the world’s most successful people from founders to athletes, actors to authors and many many more in between.Previously, Polina was at Fortune magazine as a journalist and editor where she wrote Term Sheet – a daily digest on businesses deals and the people behind them.Polina is also the author of Hidden Genius: The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World's Most Successful People – a book which distils the mental frameworks that so many of the high achievers she has profiled use to view the world and to achieve their extraordinary success - from Navy Seal David Goggins to Spanx founder Sara Blakely, Pixar’s Ed Catmull and Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York.In this conversation, we talk about Polina’s upbringing in Bulgaria before moving to the US and how feeling like an outsider shaped her view of the world and how she learns. We also talk about some of the frameworks used by the high achievers which she details in her book and the lessons they share on taking risk, failure, building a community and the importance of storytelling. Enjoy!Danielle ------------Pre-order Polina's book, Hidden Genius herePolina on Twitter and Instagram / Sign up to The Profile newsletter hereDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here

Today’s guest is Jennifer Phan - co-founder of Passionfroot - a platform empowering creators to partner directly with brands and agencies to monetise their product and services, be it a podcast, a newsletter or YouTube channel.Born to immigrant parents, Jen started her career as VC investor before seeing a gap in the market for creators who are trying to earn money directly from their work. Passionfroot takes care of the admin and business side of earning a living from your work and helps to remove the barriers and gate keepers which have historically been in place and held many creators back.In this conversation, Jen and I discuss the wave of creators turned entrepreneurs, why she wants to empower creators anywhere in the world, what the next frontier for creator entrepreneurs looks like, as well as some of the platforms she recommends to help you grow your community.This is a great conversation with lots of fantastic lessons for founders and creators so I hope you get as much value out of it as I did.Please let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.Jennifer on Twitter / Passionfroot website / Passionfroot Podcast, Creators on Air here / Newsletter hereDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham  / Newsletter here 

Dr Alvy Ray Smith is the co-founder of Pixar, a computer scientist and pioneer in the field of computer graphics. After starting his career in academia, Alvy had an epiphany following a serious skiing accident. He decided to move to California to combine his two passions - art and computers - in a place where he felt something good was about to happen. Alvy was always a pioneer. From creating his first computer graphic in 1965, Alvy became an original member of the Computer Graphics Lab at the New York Institute of Technology, he witnessed the birth of the personal computer at Xerox PARC, and he was the first director of computer graphics at George Lucas’s Lucasfilm. It was there that Alvy gathered some of the smartest people he knew to develop computer graphics software, including early renderer technology. He and colleague Ed Catmull then spun out to co-found the famous Pixar, soon followed by the hiring of Lucasfilm colleague John Lasseter, and Steve Jobs as an investor. It was at Pixar that Toy Story would be made - the very first, entirely computer-animated, feature film. In 2006, Pixar was sold to Disney for $7.4 billion.Alvy also co-founded Altamira Software and has created a number of computer art pieces including the famous Sunstone with Ed Emshwiller which featured in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Alvy was also the first Graphics Fellow at Microsoft.In this interview, Alvy recounts his career from the early days at Xerox PARC to how Pixar got started. We discuss the Pixar journey in detail, as well as his latest book – A Biography of the Pixel  (here)- including how innovation is born from three strands: An idea, chaos and a tyrant. And how Steve jobs was both the saviour and the tyrant in the incredible Pixar story.Alvy has combined his two passions – art and computer science – to spend his career showing the world what computers can do.  A true pioneer, this is one of my favourite conversations. I hope you enjoy it too.-----Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnhamAlvy Ray Smith on Twitter @alvyray / website Buy Alvy Ray Smith's book A Biography of the Pixel here. -----This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. Image of Alvy Ray by Christopher Michel.