What is a Good Life? | What 300 Conversations Revealed About a Life Well Lived

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Overview

⏱️Schedule:  Doors 18:30 → Talk 19:00→ Q&A → Mingle
🗣️Language: English

What is a good life?

It's the oldest question we keep forgetting to ask. Philosophers, religions, and thinkers have grappled with it for millennia—yet it rarely comes up in day-to-day conversation. We talk about career goals, fitness targets, bucket lists. But when was the last time you sat down and genuinely asked yourself: what would make this life feel well-lived?

This isn't a lecture. It's an inquiry—one that Mark McCartney has been conducting for five years, with hundreds of people, across cultures and contexts. What began as private interviews has grown into a podcast, a newsletter, a book in progress, and now this session with you.

What we'll cover:

• Patterns from 300+ conversations: What keeps emerging when people describe a life well lived? Themes like presence, connection, and—surprisingly—adversity show up again and again.
• Real stories, not theory: Drawing on his own life and the candid reflections of his podcast guests, Mark shares the kind of genuine human anecdotes that don't make it into self-help books.
• A question worth sitting with: At several points in the evening, you'll be invited to reflect on your own life—what fulfilment has felt like, what gets in the way of it, and what a good life might look like for you now.
• Collective meaning-making: This is a participatory session. Through small group conversations and wider discussion, the audience becomes part of the inquiry. Expect moments of genuine connection, recognition—and the occasional laugh.

Speaker

Mark McCartney

Mark McCartney is a facilitator, writer, and host of the "What is a Good Life?" podcast. For five years, he's been exploring this question with hundreds of people. Before that, he spent over a decade in international finance—until his curiosity grew into something more fundamental: what do we actually find meaningful, and what really matters to us?