Three people lost to suicide in three years. The last was his brother, Jerome.

So endurance athlete Stefan Ozich picked a challenge that genuinely scared him — running Te Araroa end to end and back again, something no one had ever done. He called it The Long Path, after what the trail’s name means, and ran it for men’s mental health.

This week on Take It From Us, Stefan talks to Kent about why he keeps putting his body through gruelling events most of us would never attempt, and why he thinks New Zealand’s mental health crisis is really an identity crisis.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

Election day is 7 November and politics is everywhere right now... but here’s a different kind of perspective on it. 

We’re re-releasing our conversation with Grant Robertson about what the job costs the people doing it — whichever way you vote (Todd Muller’s episode is back in your feed today too).

“I’m a catastrophiser,” admits New Zealand’s former Deputy Prime Minister.

Behind years of COVID decisions sat a panic attack he didn’t see coming. As pressure mounted to replace Jacinda Ardern, he was ready to reluctantly say yes — until one sentence from his partner Alf stopped him cold.

Grant talks about the physical toll of “giving 110%,” the counselling that got him through his final year, the homophobia that was a constant, and the phrase he uses to interrupt his worst-case thinking.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

With the election on 7 November, we’re re-releasing two conversations that have nothing to do with how you vote, and everything to do with what politics asks of the people in it (Grant Robertson’s episode is back in your feed today too).

In May 2020, Todd Muller was elected leader of the National Party — one step from a boyhood dream of being Prime Minister. Within five days, panic attacks were so severe he could barely get through speeches, the words on the page moving and disappearing.

After 53 days, he stepped down. He spent three years rebuilding, made it back to the front bench, but couldn’t sustain it. In 2023, he walked away from Parliament.

Hit play to hear what hundreds of men have said back to him since.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

Nic Russell has been through more than most — breast cancer, a heart transplant and Parkinson’s. None of it comes close to 2005, when her three-year-old daughter Kenzie died of bone cancer.

Even when she could no longer walk, Kenzie wanted to be alive. Nic has carried that with her ever since. It doesn’t mean pretending things are fine. She’ll have a pity party, but she won’t live there. She leans on good friends, cold water and dark comedy.

When Kenzie died, the professional support stopped. So Nic started Kenzie’s Gift, a charity which has since helped nearly 8,000 young New Zealanders whose parent or sibling is seriously ill or has died.

Hit play to hear who got Nic through the nights, and why she called her memoir Bollix.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

Mia Simcock didn’t know what a psychotic episode was until she had one.

She was 19 and studying at Otago when she went five days without sleep and lost touch with reality. A second episode a few years later brought a bipolar 1 diagnosis, and her first instinct was to tell her parents they couldn’t tell a soul.

In this episode, Mia tells Kent why she eventually stopped hiding it, what she has to do to manage her health from the minute she wakes up, and why people struggle to believe she’s unwell because she looks capable. She’s now training to become an occupational therapist so she can help others going through the same thing.

Mia is also in training for the Auckland Half Marathon to raise money for the Mental Health Foundation, you can donate here.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

For nearly 20 years as a firefighter, Jemarl Paerata pushed the trauma to the back and drank to keep it there. But one day, after a cardiac arrest callout, he asked the boys in the truck, "Do you ever feel like there might be a little bit more?"

The reckoning saw Jemarl give up heavy drinking, leave the fire service and start Te Kaiārahi out of Piha. Since 2022, thousands of rangatahi have come through his programmes — surfing, bush walks, cold water, breathwork, and the stories of Tāne Mahuta and Māui. 

In his own words, Jemarl would rather be a lighthouse than a tugboat — helping to show young people the way they could lead their lives.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

"You don't feel Kiwi enough for the Kiwis, but you don't feel Arab enough for the Arabs."

Eman Ghandour was 10 when her family moved from Jordan to Dunedin. Growing up, she tried to get her "ratio" to 50/50 Kiwi and Arab, and it kept landing at 80/20. While at Otago Uni she lived as a Kiwi with her friends, then came home to Arab Muslim parents and a constant sense of guilt. Her mid-20s, she says, were the worst years.

In 2021 she started a group chat for young ethnic women who were feeling the same pull. That chat became the Khawat Network, Arabic for sisterhood, and it's now 300 strong.

This week on Take It From Us, Eman talks to Kent about the depression that came with years of trying to fit in, and what young women in her community need from a therapist.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

Jason Blyth was nine years old when he asked his psychiatrist a question no child should have to ask: why was he the one being brought in for treatment, when his mother was the one abusing him?

Between the ages of two and fifteen, Jason saw around 20 different clinicians. He begged, repeatedly, to be taken away from a home where his own reports describe genuine fear for his life. Nothing changed. By eleven, he'd stopped asking.

Jason Blyth’s story is a Hollywood epic of survival and redemption. From childhood abuse and isolation to trauma and addiction, he hit rock bottom but rose again. Today he inspires audiences as a keynote speaker and youth advocate with a message of resilience, hope and the power of choice.

Visit Jason's website here.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

Flynn Mitchell spent three years in a Dunedin university flat built for wheelchair users — accessible kitchen, accessible bathroom, full independence. Then he moved home to Auckland and lost all of it. Now he needs a carer just to wash his own dishes.

He's not alone. Ray Finch, CEO of the Laura Ferguson Trust, says nearly 4,000 physically disabled adults across New Zealand are living with ageing parents, not by choice but because nothing accessible exists for them. With most of those parents renting, Ray warns hundreds could end up homeless within a decade.

The Trust is building a solution — 160 co-designed homes. Flynn's future is part of the pitch.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

On New Year's Eve 2022, Sam Cox went through the windscreen of a car doing over 100km/h down a gravel road outside Rangiora. His best friend Kaide, who was driving, didn't survive. Sam did — with a brain injury so severe it took him five months to even understand Kaide was gone.

Now 19, Sam talks to Kent about memory loss, losing his old friend group, the dad he lost not long after and the mum he now calls his rock.

He also opens up about the one thing keeping him going: the sense that he's been given a second chance and he wants to make the most of it.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here. 

Shane Cameron spent 17 years as a professional heavyweight boxer — a Commonwealth Games bronze, a world title shot and the 2009 fight against David Tua that ended with him in an ambulance. He didn't watch the footage back until last year. 

In this episode, Shane talks to Kent about the memory loss, anger and mood swings he now lives with day to day, and what happened when he asked to be tested for brain damage: a neuropsychologist told him CTE can't be confirmed until after death. 

He also opens up about being diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD as an adult, the toll boxing took on the people around him and why he's trying to be a different kind of father this time around.

You can buy Shane's autobiography Mountain Warrior here.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text or a voicemail by clicking here.

If you need support, here are helpful links, phone numbers and resources: https://ember.org.nz/resources/in-a-crisis

Kent Johns is a health coach, broadcaster and motivational speaker. Visit his website here.