In this third episode of our winter series BURN THE SHIPS, Darwin Shaw describes how he set fire to a medical career, with the near-guarantees it offered, to pursue acting and the creative joys it offered. “If you can hone in on what’s truthful to you and follow that,” he tells Warwick of his pivot from behind a stethoscope to in front of a camera, “I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it.”

What do you do when the normal tools you use to navigate life no longer work? When the ships that have taken you to a crossroads – or maybe a crosswaters – in your life are smoldering? According to our guest this week, Finnian Kelly, you set sail in a new craft to a new destination: intentionality.

Eryn Eddy had found a way to make her passion for music pay off — licensing her original compositions to VH1 and MTV and some of the most popular shows on television. But she longed to give people more than a song to listen to. She wanted to give them a truth to live by. That makes her the ideal first guest for our new series BURN THE SHIPS, in which we’re talking with men and women who have been brave enough to make dramatic pivots, leaving behind “safe” and familiar lives to do something dramatic, new, life-changing and significant – facing down and overcoming crucibles along the way.

The ultimate hope of every one of us is to live a life worthy of being remembered. If that’s something you’ve been thinking about during this season of New Year’s resolutions, you’ve come to the right podcast. This week, Beyond the Crucible founder Warwick Fairfax unpacks his timely new blog about ways you can commit in 2023 to live in a way that is true to who you are, anchored in a vision that is uniquely yours and therefore uniquely satisfying and significant.

A critical component of Beyond the Crucible’s recipe for discovering your unique path to a life of significance is to develop a strong team of advisers to help you lean into your gifts and passions along the journey, especially in the aftermath of a crucible. This week, Warwick talks to two men serving in that role to men and women all along the age-and-stage spectrum.

In our conversation this week with Karen, she shares with intimacy, vulnerability and, yes, humor about what she describes as her “crucible life” – the early death of her mother, her brother’s suicide and the cancer that took her husband in 2017 — two months before their 20th anniversary. From the ashes of those tragedies, she explains, she taught herself how to thrive through grief and help others do the same as a certified grief companion.

This week, Warwick talks with Bill Brown – his Harvard Business School classmate in the ‘80s — who describes how he was approaching the pinnacle of his business career, as a finalist in Toro’s search for a new CEO, when a medical diagnosis derailed his plans: he had Parkinson’s. But he has refused to let Parkinson’s beat him.

In our first episode of 2023, we’re joined by guest co-host Lexi Godlewski, who interviews the host of Beyond the Crucible, Warwick Fairfax. His face and voice you know, but the deeper parts of his story you may not! Warwick shares new insights, lessons and perspectives on how he moved beyond his crucible and created a life of significance after the failed takeover of his family’s 150-year-old media business.