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Jonathan Griffiths

The Brilliant Humans Podcast

Stories that
stay with you.

Every episode, someone shares the person who shaped them most. No self-promotion. No ulterior motive. Just humans being brilliant.


The people who
shape us most.

The Brilliant Humans Podcast starts from a simple premise: no one talks about themselves. Instead, guests talk about the person who inspired them, motivated them, or changed their life.

The teacher that stayed late. The colleague who believed in you when you didn't. The stranger who said exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment.

Every episode, a guest talks about their Brilliant Human — whoever they are, wherever they came from. The conversations are honest and specific. They go somewhere real. What emerges, episode by episode, is a portrait of what brilliance actually looks like when it isn't performing for an audience.

Brilliant guests. Brilliant stories. And proof that ordinary people do extraordinary things — and that most of them have no idea.

Hosted by Brilliant Humans founder Jonathan Griffiths — it was noticing particular trends on the podcast that led to the original research into what makes people brilliant that now underpins everything Brilliant Humans does for organisations.

From the research

In our original n=105 study, we asked people about the moments and the humans that shaped them. Three numbers have stayed with us.

3%

Only 3% named a boss as the person who shaped them most

The people who lead us are rarely the ones we see as brilliant. We think this is a shocking indictment of how leaders aren't inspiring their people the way they should.

11%

Left it too late to say thank you

One in nine people never got to tell the person who changed their life what they meant to them. The podcast exists, in part, because of that.

54%

Put kindness and empathy first — far and above anything else

When we asked 105 people what they most associate with brilliance in others, kindness came top by a wide margin. The things organisations measure least, people value most.


Every conversation,
every story.

Each episode is a different person, a different story, and the same underlying truth: brilliance is already in the room. See all episodes on YouTube →