Empowering Leaders

What happens to our relationships when the most available, most responsive, most patient listener in our lives is an AI?
Bryony Cole has been sitting with that question longer than almost anyone. As the founder of the Future of Sex platform, she stepped into one of the most uncomfortable conversations a person could choose to have, more than a decade ago, and never looked back. What started as a curiosity about technology and sexuality has expanded into something far broader: a serious, global reckoning with what intimacy, loneliness, and human connection look like in an increasingly digital world.
In this conversation, Luke and Bryony go to places that feel both strange and surprisingly close to home. From children in Australia using AI for companionship, to couples outsourcing their arguments to ChatGPT, to the very real question of what it means when your partner turns to an algorithm instead of you at 3am, this is a conversation that holds a mirror up to habits most of us already have but haven't fully examined.
Bryony is not an alarmist. She is also not naive. She calls herself a through-topian: someone who believes we will find our way through, but only if we are honest about what we are already doing and clear about what we want to protect.
Learn. Lead. Collaborate.
Start your leadership journey today with Aleda Connect, our signature, cross industry collaboration program. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect really is the learning experience of a life-time.
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Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a moment in this conversation where Matt Wadewitz describes getting a phone call at 3am. He'd saved the name in his phone just in case - because he'd hoped it was coming. The voice on the other end had a beautiful Spanish accent. It was Mikel Arteta.
That call is a good entry point into who Matt is and what he's built. Because Aleda Connect - the global leadership program he co-founded with Luke - didn't find Mikel Arteta through a cold pitch or a clever marketing strategy. It found him the same way it's found nearly every one of its 700-plus members: through word of mouth, through one curious leader telling another, through the simple and powerful idea that great people want to be around other great people.
This is episode 250 of Empowering Leaders, and it felt right to mark it with the person who was there for episode one. Matt and Luke go back further than Aleda - further than podcasting, further than leadership development - all the way to a cold Saturday morning at South Adelaide when a tall kid showed up without having trained, nicked Matt's position on the team, and still somehow left with a new best mate.
In this conversation they go back to the beginning. The ankle injury that ended Matt's AFL dream the night before he was supposed to sign with Essendon. The year he took a group of disengaged kids to a beach in Adelaide and told them they were going to solve an unsolved murder. The conversation with Luke where he was expecting a high-five and instead got talked out of a job he was about to take. And the question Luke put to him that changed everything: why not just take it further?
Eleven years later, the answer to that question is a community of leaders spanning sport, business, the arts, and everything in between - connected not by industry or geography, but by the shared conviction that you can always be better for the people you lead.
People mentioned and their conversations with Luke on Empowering Leaders
Steve Kerr & Mikel Arteta LIVE: The Leadership Playbook
Emma Hayes LIVE from London: For Women, By Women, Football & Beyond
Dr Troy Flanagan: Making history in the NBA with a 'no burnout' mindset
John Bertrand - Achieving the impossible
Eddie Jones - Striving to be the greatest of all time
Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson - The Thinking Teacher (Part 1)
Ben Northey — conductor, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Anna West — sleep specialist, Arsenal FC
Craig McRae — Collingwood AFC head coach, Aleda member
Stacey Morlang — Aleda team member
Timmy Bristow — school principal, Aleda member, previous podcast guest
Paul Waterson — founder, Australian Venue Co., Aleda member
Luke Beveridge — Western Bulldogs head coach
Neale Daniher — episode with daughter Bec Daniher — CEO of FightMND
Learn. Lead. Collaborate.
Start your leadership journey today. Meet with co-founder Matt Wadewitz or one of the amazing Aleda Connect facilitators to learn how you can grow within our signature leadership program.
Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly or monthly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.
Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brad Johnson holds the Western Bulldogs games record - 364 games. 558 goals, six All Australian selections, a Hall of Fame inductee. He is, by any measure, one of the greats of his generation.
This is a beautiful conversation with a genuinely extraordinary person that still trains like he's trying to earn his spot - he drove an hour to be first at the track the morning this conversation was recorded. He's genuinely, almost inexplicably, one of the happiest people you'll ever come across - and, according to Luke, has been that way since he was seventeen years old.
In this episode of Empowering Leaders, Luke Darcy sits down with his former teammate, and longtime friend for a conversation about what it actually looks like to give everything to something - in football, in business, in family - and still be standing tall on the other side.
They talk about Brad's son Jack, who is chasing a career in motorsport at serious cost, and what it means to be a dad who shows up without getting in the way. About his daughter Ella, whose singing career paused through COVID and might just be starting again. About the eight years he and wife Donna spent building Zena - a protective sportswear brand for women in contact sport - starting from nothing, holding strong through two years of dead ends, to now being stocked in Rebel Sport and sold internationally.
Brad opens up about his cancer diagnosis last year - a lump under his arm, six weeks of radiation, an operation, and a first clear scan six months later. He talks about what it took to stop trying to work through it and about Donna telling him to for once in his life to focus on himself.
You'll hear this brilliant past episode referenced: Paul Waterson: From intensive care nurse to running pubs with the Australian Venue Co. Check it out or re-listen now.
01:49 AFL Legend Brad Johnson & Luke Darcy: 17-Year-Olds at the Western Bulldogs
03:49 The Athlete Brad Johnson Was — Endurance, Speed & Strength
04:52 Brad Johnson's Positivity: Natural or Performed?
06:02 Parenting Kids Who Chase Big Dreams — Ella's Singing & Jack's Motorsport Career
08:31 Supporting a Motorsport Career: The Real Cost of Jack Johnson's Racing Dream
10:33 Leadership Lessons from Jack Johnson's Pitch to Melbourne Business Leaders
12:01 Brad Johnson on Parenting Differently to His Own Father
14:34 364 Games for the Western Bulldogs: Habits, Discipline & the Scotty Wine Story
17:16 What AFL Players Underestimate When They Retire
18:42 Brad & Donna Johnson on Starting Zena Sport — Building a Business from Scratch
23:36 Finding Your Lane: Stop Chasing Everything (The Hedgehog Moment)
25:17 Brad Johnson on the Aleda Leadership Community
26:21 What Brad Johnson Is Most Proud Of at 50
31:10 Brad Johnson's Cancer Diagnosis: Radiation, Surgery & First Clear Scan
34:04 Brad Johnson's Daily Routine After Cancer — Walking, Sauna, Weights & Golf
35:24 Leadership Advice: Bring Your Quality to the Table
39:12 Collaboration, Paul Waterson & Learning Outside the Sporting Bubble
42:09 The AFL Premiership Brad Johnson Never Won — and How He Made Peace With It
We are privileged to have Brad as part of our Aleda Connect community. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.
Start your leadership journey today. Meet with founders Luke Darcy, Matt Wadewitz or one of the amazing Aleda Connect facilitators to learn how you can grow alongside people like Brad within our signature leadership program.
Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Timmy Bristow was nine years old when he ruptured his pancreas playing footy at recess, crawled to the tap, and waited alone in a dark staffroom until his mum finished her shift. By the time she arrived he was blue. A few hours later he was on an ambulance plane to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne with a thirty percent chance of surviving surgery.
While Timmy was in hospital, of the young AFL players who showed up on the ward to help cheer up the young patient was… Luke Darcy. But in that moment - neither of them could have possibly known they'd end up here, having this conversation today.
Timmy grew up in country Victoria, excelled on the sporting field, and for twenty-one years carried the secret that he'd been sexually abused by someone in a position of authority and trust - in an institution that covered it up. He held it through his teens, through footy, through becoming a husband and a father. Until his sister said she'd tell their parents herself if he didn't.
In this conversation on Empowering Leaders, Timmy and Luke talk about what that silence cost and what breaking the silence felt like. They talk about the 28.5% of Australian children who will experience sexual abuse before they turn eighteen, about Timmy’s mammoth effort to run seven marathons in seven states in seven days for Bravehearts, and about what Timmy has built on the other side of all of it - an incredible school he leads the way he wished he'd been led, a personal philosophy of connection, vulnerability and consistency, and a refusal to become a statistic.
We are privileged to have Timmy as part of our Aleda Connect community. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.

Learn. Lead. Collaborate.
Start your leadership journey today. Meet with founders Luke Darcy, Matt Wadewitz or one of the amazing Aleda Connect facilitators to learn how you can grow alongside people like Timmy within our signature leadership program.
Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Lexi Edmondson walked down to Bondi Beach to celebrate finishing her master's degree, she had no idea her life was about to change forever. What began as a summer evening by the water for hundreds of people became one of Australia's most devastating acts of violence - and Lexi ran towards it.
In her most in-depth interview since the December attack, Lexi sits down with Luke Darcy to take us inside the night itself. She talks about the chaos, the moment her training kicked in, and about how the iconic Bondi community responded in the aftermath. Lexi shares the healing power of reconnecting with the people she helped, and the extraordinary gesture from Rabbi Levi Wolf and the Jewish community that brought everyone together.
Armed with fresh surf lifesaving training and sheer instinct, Lexi and fellow volunteer Jimmy McIntosh became part of the community of first responders who helped treat and carry 60 people to safety that night. In the days that followed - amid the grief, the trauma processing, and the slow work of rebuilding - Lexi and Jimmy fell in love.
In the six months since Lexi has been able to identify what a tragedy like the deadly Bondi attack can strip away - the corporate ambitions, the performative rituals of modern dating, the conditions we place on living fully. Lexi shares why she has walked away from a path she thought she wanted, returned to clinical practice to help people one-on-one, and said yes to a relationship that moved at the speed of life.
Plus: the ChatGPT proposal fail, the ring they promised not to buy (and then bought!), and the moment Lexi's mum clocked Jimmy before Lexi even had a chance.
Lexi speaks beautifully about the importance of community, finding courage, championing feminine leadership, and finding the light when everything feels so dark.
Learn. Lead. Collaborate.
Start your leadership journey today. Head here to find out more about our signature, cross industry collaboration program, Aleda Connect. Curated and facilitated by experts, running for 8 fortnightly sessions, Aleda Connect is the learning experience of a life-time.
Empowering Leaders is proudly partnered with Victoria University. Find more information about studying at VU here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.