Exploring the liminal space between science and spirituality, philosophy and politics, art and activism - working towards the Conscious Evolution of humanity: a radical transformation of what it means to be human. We have the choice now, to transform - or to face the chaos of a failing system. Our…
Listeners of Accidental Gods that love the show mention: manda.
The Accidental Gods podcast is a transformative and enlightening journey that delves into personal growth, the future of humanity, and our connection to the world around us. Hosted by Manda Scott and Faith Tilleray, this podcast speaks directly to the heart and soul of seekers who yearn for a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world. From the very beginning, the speakers' empathetic tones draw listeners in and guide them through a necessary journey towards achieving a higher vibration within themselves.
One of the best aspects of The Accidental Gods podcast is its ability to articulate complex concepts in a light and engaging manner. Manda Scott's offerings are insightful and thought-provoking, allowing listeners to gain new perspectives on personal growth and reconnecting with all forms of sentience. The language used throughout each episode resonates deeply with the listener, fostering a sense of connection and understanding. Furthermore, the variety of topics covered in this podcast ensures that there is something for everyone interested in personal growth or the future of humanity.
However, one potential drawback of The Accidental Gods podcast might be its niche appeal. While it provides valuable insights for those interested in personal growth or the future of humanity, it may not resonate as strongly with individuals who do not hold these interests. Additionally, some listeners may find certain episodes to be repetitive or redundant if they have already explored similar themes extensively.
In conclusion, The Accidental Gods podcast is an important contribution to personal growth and our collective journey towards achieving a higher vibration. With Manda Scott's light and engaging tone, this podcast offers valuable insights that encourage us to connect with all forms of sentience around us. Whether you're seeking connection or want to become more involved on a personal level, this podcast is highly recommended for anyone interested in expanding their understanding of themselves and their place in society. Take a leap of faith and join this transformative movement.
How can Bioregionalism supplant the nation state as the natural unit of civilisation? Joe Brewer is living, breathing and teaching the ways we can work together with each other and the natural flows of water and life. We know that the current paradigm is breaking apart in real time, but how do we become the light that shines through the cracks? How do we build ways of being that reunite us with the web of life, create new/old ways of letting value flow and become what humanity has been and could be: stewards of that massive, magical, heartbreakingly beautiful living system that is the web of life. This week's guest, Joe Brewer, works at the leading edge of these ideas, testing out answers on the ground in communities of place, purpose and passion around the world. Joe is a trans-disciplinary systems thinker and Earth regeneration designer who has worked in everything from agroforestry work in Bioparque Móncora to starting a Waldorf Forest School (Sueños del Bosque) to co-founding a territorial foundation called Fundación Barichara Regenerativa and starting a trust to bring more local land into the commons. He was founder of the Earth Regenerators study group, which became Design School for Regenerating Earth, and is the author of The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth. Increasingly, he's becoming a leading global voice on the ways we can return to a bioregional way of living that is, as you'll here, how we have lived for over 99% of human history. It's the way that makes sense, that can heal our relationships to ourselves, each other and the living web of life. The question, always, is how we make this happen? How do we shift our entire culture out of a world where lines drawn on maps are more real than the flows of a river, back to a place where clean air, clean water, clean soil are our priorities, the non-negotiable baselines from which everything else arises? How do we shift our concept of value flows away from the accumulation of stuff in a zero-sum game to a place where human needs are trusted and met? Joe has such heart-warming, inspiring examples of how this is happening around the world: on all 5 inhabited continents, there are groups making this happen. As Joe says, this is the work of now. It's urgent. It's also the single most inspiring thing we can do. Bioregional Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-schoolDesign School for Regenerating Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-schoolJoe's book: The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth https://www.bioregionalearth.org/pathway/design-pathwayGovernance Futures https://governancefutures.org/Elinor Ostrom's work on Governing the Commons https://www.beyondintractability.org/bksum/ostrom-governingSociocracy https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/ProSocial World https://www.prosocial.world/Joe on Accidental Gods Episode #127 https://accidentalgods.life/bio-regionalism-the-design-path-for-regenerating-earth/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
As we head into the solstice- that moment when the sun stands still—whether you're in the northern hemisphere where we have the longest day, or the southern, where it's the longest night—this solstice feels like a moment of transformation. The world is turning over, turning a page. The old system is visibly—palpably—breaking apart. A new system will arise from the ashes, because there is always going to be a system. The question is what it looks like, works like, feels like. We are a prosocial, communitarian species, but our culture has shattered from our knowing of our integral place in the All That Is, so it's possible we might end up with a system predicated on hatred, underpinned by fear, where a small number of incredibly frightened people let their traumatised parts run a scorched earth policy in an effort to hold back everything of which they are most afraid, but I am increasingly hopeful that what we're seeing in places is the extinction burst of the old system: its death throes if you like. As I record this, there has been an estimated turnout in the US for the No Kings rallies of between ten and twelve million. This is an astonishing number. If it's true, it's well within shouting distance of the 3.5% of the total population that was considered a tipping point in previous social movements in our recent history: the abolition of slavery in the UK, the civil rights movement in the US, gay marriage in too many nations to count. The difference is that these numbers are based on a pre-internet age. We genuinely don't know what happens when people can see the images on their phones and realise how many of the people around them share the common values of decency, compassion, integrity, generosity-of-spirit. So if this is potentially a turning point in the making in the US, how do we make this bigger, grander, more of a global movement? We know we need total systemic change, but how do we make it happen? How do we create lasting change in our ways of organising everything from food to water to shelter to education. How do we sort our mess of a governance system so we can find those with the greatest wisdom and give them as much power as they need and no more, at all the levels of our culture? As ever, I think the answer lies in our narratives - when ideas become common currency, then we begin to build them into our visions of how the world is and has been and could be. If we can become bold, evolutionary imagineers and craft stories of a different way of organising, loving, relating, caring…then we can live it into being. Which means we need to know in the marrow of our bones what this feels like. Imagination begins in our perception of the possible and part of the horror of the Trauma culture is the systematic stifling of possibility. From our books to our movies to our TV to our TikTok videos, so much is predicated on Trauma Culture narratives of scarcity, separation and powerlessness. We are told this is the way the world is. That it is human nature to lack all morality and engage in zero sum strategies that belittle, disempower and crush everyone around us. Which it isn't. Nonetheless, predatory Capitalism is designed to keep us from imagining things differently. If we're stressed about earning enough to survive while at the same time being hooked on the things we absolutely have to have to feel better, and are being steadily more sedated by the incessant dopamine drips of social media…then we literally cannot step out into other ways of being. So this is our task now - to wean ourselves off the stuff we neither need nor (really) want; off the dopamine drips, and onto things that make our hearts sing so we can build new stories predicated on connection, agency and sufficiency; stories where we are self-conscious nodes in the web of life, and it's our job to ask 'What do you want of me?', listen to the answers, then carry them out to the best of our ability. That's it. Easy to say. Harder to do. But we can boil things down to 9 basic concepts:Three Values: Integrity, Compassion, Generosity-of-SpiritThree Baselines: Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Soil Three ReWoven Connections: between all parts of Ourselves; ourselves and Each Other; Ourselves and the Web of Life. What happens if every single thing we think or do or say or dream is based in these three sets of three? How would our days change? This isn't going to happen overnight, but we can make the commitment to live by them now. Here. This moment. It's not going to be easy: changing behaviours never is. But we have baselines to work from. And we might focus on one at a time. What happens if Clean Water is our priority? How does it change how we live? What happens if we make Integrity the heart and soul of every interaction through our days - beginning with ourselves? What does it feel like to commit to re-weaving clean, clear, courageous, compassionate connections between all parts of ourselves, ourselves and each other, ourselves and the More than Human world? Clearly I think the inner work is the foundation of everything, though I am aware that this isn't the case for everyone: if you work better in the outer world, if you'd rather lead with head than heart, that's fine, truly. Go for it. Find the Values that speak to you and the Baselines you can work with and go for it. If the Inner Work speaks more to you then know that we in the west need to heal ten thousand years of Trauma Culture in half a decade. It's been at least that long for some of us since our ancestors knew themselves to be an integral part of the web of life. This is the work of the spiritual warrior. It's going to take astonishing levels of courage and commitment. Nobody is pretending this is easy. But it is essential.And because this is the water I swim in, I'd like to share the basics of how we might get there. It starts with Grounding - with having a clear sense of our physical presence in the world, the flesh and the bones and the teeth of who we are; with sensing the solid earth beneath us as support, containment, holding, as the reality of who and what we are. When our feet are on the earth, there is nowhere left to fall. When we have a sense of roots going down into the earth, we have connection, holding and an open path from the heart of the earth to our heart. If we connect it on up to the heart-mind of the Universe, we have the three hearts in alignment. Just doing this is huge. But then, as we begin really to live in our bodies, so we can begin to recognise the places where trauma sits; the frozen places, the stuck places, the parts of ourselves that leap to our own defence - and are brilliant and wonderful and creative - but who are probably defending against threats that occurred decades ago, if not longer. We carry generational trauma, civilisational trauma. And the healing is ours to do: the good news is that there's a lot of help out there - that just as we really need it, we're beginning really to get to grips with how healing can happen. One to one work is good if you have the means: the time and the money, but many of us don't - and that doesn't mean we can't do the work. If you'd like to work in groups there's a huge amount. We offer Gatherings and the Membership, but there's Listen to Thomas Hübl Mystic Cafe — I'll link to his podcast Point of Relation in the show notes —Tara Brach, Michael Meade, Bill Plotkin, Jon Young…a host of others are offering online work that helps you to reconnect to yourself and the land. You have to find out what helps you best, but there's a lot out there. So we do the inner work. And in doing it, we become the still point in the whirling world that...
Please ensure that you are comfortable and that you won't be disturbed while you settle into this solstice meditation. If you want longer in the middle, please feel free to pause the recording and restart whenever you're ready. This meditation is suitable for Summer and Winter solstice. What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass Guided visualisation/meditations similar to this one are available in the Accidental Gods membership, which aims to offer everyone a structured route towards heart-mind connection and opening; to connect you to the Web of Life such that you can ask 'what do you want of me?' and respond to the answers in real time as a self-conscious node in the living, hyper-complex system that is the web of life. If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Our guest this week, Rob Hopkins, is a towering figure in the world of regenerative change. Co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, he is host of the podcast 'From What if to What Next', stars in the groundbreaking French film 'Demain', speaks at TED Global and TEDx events and most recently, has created a collaborative music project with artist Mr Kit, ‘Field Recordings from the Future‘ which will be released on 17th of May 2025, alongside his new book,‘How to Fall in Love with the Future'. With the subtitle, 'A Time Traveller's Guide to Changing the World', this book does what it says on the tin - it offers a radical, moving, deeply inspiring dive into the people and movements throughout history who have used visions of the future to inspire positive change on a large and dramatic scale. From the life and writings of musician Sun Ra and the history of Black utopian movements to the latest neuroscience on what goes on in our minds—and hearts—when we travel through time, Rob brings essential new thinking to anyone overwhelmed with dread and anxiety for the future. He asks us to consider: what would the world look like if we all got to work imagining—and then building—a world we were deeply in love with?So this is our invitation to you: Listen to Rob now, then read his book, then explore what a genuinely flourishing future would feel like for you. And then together, let's make this happen. Rob's website https://www.robhopkins.net/Rob's book on Hive Books https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Rob-Hopkins/How-to-Fall-in-Love-with-the-Future--A-Time-Travellers-Gu/31447799What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
If you listen to this podcast for any length of time, you'll know that I believe the way forward is predicated on our finding shared values—I'd go for integrity, compassion, courage and generosity of spirit as the baselines—and then a suite of clear asks in the outer world and needs in the inner world. In logistical terms, at an absolute baseline, we need Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Soil. These are non negotiable and the fact that we currently have none of these is a grim indictment of how much we live in an economy that sucks the life out of everything rather than a society that grows. But we do have people who are working flat out to change the narrative on exactly these topics and this week's guest, Tim Smedley, is one of these. Tim is an award-winning sustainability journalist who has worked with the BBC, the Guardian, Sunday Times and Financial Times. He is also a celebrated non-fiction writer. His first book, Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution, was shortlisted for the UK's Royal Society Science Book Prize. His latest: The Last Drop: Solving the World's Water Crisis was a Times Book of the Year and has been described as 'Smart, Sobering and Scholarly' which it certainly is.This is one of those books that's both terrifying, utterly compelling and—I'm glad to say—ultimately inspiring. Yes, the world's water is in a desperate state. Yes, it has been horribly mismanaged almost everywhere by the kleptocracy that masquerades as a democracy in our modern world. But yes, we do have responses that will work, they have been carefully explored and water is one of those unifying elements that brings people together across tribal boundaries. We all need clean water and getting there means we need to find common principles by which we can live. Spoiler alert: turning water into a for-profit commodity is not a part of the solution. Regenerative agriculture, re-Wilding our waters, beavers (yay!) and sane water saving/sparing practices definitely are. Tim is so knowledgeable and his books are both brilliantly researched and utterly personal. He goes to the places he writes about and his first-hand experiences are priceless. I have put links in the show notes for both of his books, plus the Medium article on DeGrowth which is where I first came across his work. Please do explore afterwards. Tim's website https://www.timsmedleywriter.com/Medium on Degrowth: https://medium.com/the-new-climate/we-need-to-talk-about-degrowth-part-ii-4d71c44067b9Article in Prospect Magazine https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/environment-news/climate-change/70022/why-isnt-it-raining-extreme-weatherTim on LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timsmedleyTim on Medium https://medium.com/@tjsmedleyTim on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/timsmedley.bsky.socialTim's BooksClearing the Air https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/clearing-the-air-shortlisted-for-the-royal-society-science-book-prize-tim-smedley/1246586?ean=9781472953339The Last Drop https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-last-drop-solving-the-world-s-water-crisis-tim-smedley/7544965?ean=9781529058178What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
How do we let go of the sense of scarcity, separation and powerlessness that defines the ways we live, care and do business together? How can we best equip our young people for the world that is coming - which is so, so different from the future we grew up believing was possible? This week's guest, Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann is an educator, regenerative - and I would say renegade - economist who is Project Lead at the Regenerative Economics for Secondary Schools and Lead Author of the online textbook of the same name. Jennifer has taught economics for nearly thirty years, but as you'll hear, the Global Financial Crash led her to rethink the rules and structures of the system and now she's one of the world's leading thinkers on Regenerative Economics - how we can refocus away from business, markets and the structures of neoliberalism towards ways of being that are grounded in reciprocity, respect and responsibility, in the realities of being human in the twenty-first century. In 2023, Jennifer stopped working as a teacher and is now focused full time on shifting the paradigm in the education system and beyond, moving us away from the toxic mindset of scarcity, competition and the rise of oligopolies, towards an understanding of our place as integral nodes in the web of life. Her new two year curriculum is one of the most ambitious I've ever seen. It builds a solid, damning critique of the old paradigm and offers credible, structured routes through to a new one that would allow us all to flourish within a thriving ecosystem, to have not just an economy, but a way of being that is predicated in reciprocity, care, sharing and the kinds of lives we yearn to lead, but don't yet know how.Truly, this is evolutionary and if we can spread these ideas far enough, wide enough and root them deep enough in all that we are and do, I genuinely believe this is at least part of the key to the continuation of complex life on earth. Because, yes, we are that close to extinction. And yes, there is still time to veer from the cliff's edge.So if you do nothing else this week, please share this conversation and the links within it to anyone and everyone you know who cares about shifting the paradigm - or even is involved in the education system at any level. Enjoy.Jennifer on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-brandsberg-engelmann/Regen Economics on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/regenerative-economics-for-secondary-schools/Regenerative Economics for Secondary Schools - Project website (including online textbook with a creative commons license). 5/7 topics have been published + a Topic on systems thinking. https://www.regenerativeeconomics.earth/homeReimagining Economics: Five Transformative Shifts for Secondary Schools (Version for England) - A discussion paper to help curriculum authorities consider key changes to economics curricula. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R8e3wRmHYzqPl0Mfvv34oHv610F2RH8xveQ79xoZzYs/Regen Economics online Textbook https://www.regenerativeeconomics.earth/regenerative-economics-textbook/about-the-bookRegen Economics Open Letter on D.E.A.L https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/open-letter-for-a-course-in-regenerative-economicsDoughnut Economics book https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Kate-Raworth/Doughnut-Economics--Seven-Ways-to-Think-Like-a-21st-Century-Economist/21739630Teach the Future - Curriculum for a Changing Climate (Track Changes) ProjectWhere the Regenerative Economics for Secondary Schools got its starthttps://www.teachthefuture.uk/tracked-changes-projectHow captured economics stole our climate — and how we can reclaim it (Part 4/4)Katy Shields' article in Medium with a brilliant causal loop diagram showing the reinforcing feedback loops that prevent change in the economics disciplinehttps://medium.com/@katyrshields/how-captured-economics-stole-our-climate-and-how-we-can-reclaim-it-part-4-4-6de66f5255afKaty is also the co-producer of the Tipping Point podcast, a true-crime style podcast about the Limits to Growth report and how it was undermined by economists https://tippingpoint-podcast.com/David Bollier, the expert support for Topic 2: Commons, recently released the second edition of his book Think Like a Commonerhttps://thinklikeacommoner.com/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
We are honoured to bring to Accidental Gods, a recording of three of our generation's leading thinkers in conversation at the Festival of Debate in Sheffield, hosted by Opus. This is an unflinching conversation, but it's absolutely at the cutting edge of imagineering: this lays out where we're at and what we need to do, but it also gives us roadmaps to get there: It's genuinely Thrutopian, not only in the ideas as laid out, but the emotional literacy of the approach to the wicked problems of our time. Now we have to make it happen. Kate Raworth is a renegade economist, author of the groundbreaking book, Doughnut Economics: 7 ways to think like a 21st Century Economist and founder of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab which is seeing companies, cities and nations around the world working towards an economy that prioritises flourishing of people and planet ahead of growth for growth's sake. Kate is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, where she teaches on the Masters in Environmental Change and Management. She is also Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of 00 on behalf of which he cofounded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham. He has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. More recently he founded Dark Matter Labs - a field laboratory focused building the institutional infrastructures for radicle civic societies, cities, regions and towns. Dark Matter works with institutions around the world, from UNDP (Global), Climate Kic, McConnell (Canada), to the Scottish Gove to Bloxhub (Copenhagen). Indy has taught at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; Architectural Association, University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School. James Lock is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Opus Independents Ltd, a not-for-profit social enterprise, working in culture, politics and the arts. Opus works to encourage and support participation, systemic activism and creativity with project strands that include Now Then Magazine & App, Festival of Debate. Opus Distribution, the River Dôn Project and Wordlife. James was on the podcast quite recently - in episode #279 - and we talked about the upcoming Festival of Debate and the fact that, amongst many other outstanding conversations, he'd be talking with Kate and Indy who are easily up their in my pantheon of modern intentional gods. Afterwards, James and I discussed the possibility of our bringing the recording of that conversation to the podcast - and here we are. Enjoy!Opus Independents https://www.weareopus.org/Festival of Debate https://festivalofdebate.com/Kate Raworth https://www.kateraworth.com/Doughnut Economics Action Lab https://doughnuteconomics.org/Doughnut Economics book https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Kate-Raworth/Doughnut-Economics--Seven-Ways-to-Think-Like-a-21st-Century-Economist/21739630Indy Johar https://about.me/indy.joharIndy's blog at DML https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.orgDark Matter Labs https://darkmatterlabs.org/Indy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/indy-johar-b440b010/Indy on Substack https://indyjohar.substack.com/James Lock on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-lock-964a8014/Rob Shorter of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab on Accidental Gods #41 https://accidentalgods.life/doughnut-economics-action-lab/Indy on Accidental Gods #205 https://accidentalgods.life/becoming-intentional-gods-claiming-the-future-with-indy-johar-of-the-dark-matter-labs/James on Accidental Gods #279 https://accidentalgods.life/now-then-building-networks-of-citizen-power-with-james-lock-of-opus-in-sheffield/What we offer - Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership. This is where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to come along to an Ask Manda Anything hour on Sunday 8th June, you do have to be a member (but you can join for £1 and then leave again!)If you'd like to join our next Gathering 'Becoming a Good Ancestor' (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
We all know the future rests upon us building heart-grounded, spirit-led communities that link humanity to the Web of Life. We know that the key to this is building reciprocal relationships with our food and the land from which it comes. Doing this is…harder. So this week, we're speaking with Abel Pearson of Glasbren. Abel is a friend of the podcast - we last spoke in the depths of the pandemic when he was farming 3 acres and beginning to feed the local community in ways that helped the people in a ten mile radius really to connect with the spirit of the land on which their food was grown. Now, Abel and the team are farming 138 acres of National Trust property, and still producing food for people in the local area - but so much more than that, they are building communities of place, passion and purpose, centred on the land and the cycles of the seasons and the ways we can build authentic relationship, full of reverence for the many, many layers of life in, on and under it the soil. He says that everything he does now is for his young son and the children to come, in the hope that they might yet enjoy abundant foodscapes, clean rivers and regenerative cultures.Glasbren https://www.glasbren.org.uk/Support the Farm https://www.glasbren.org.uk/farm-supporterGlasbren courses https://www.glasbren.org.uk/coursesEpisode #25 with Abel https://accidentalgods.life/nurturing-our-bodies-and-souls/If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership. If you'd like to join our next Gathering (you don't have to be a member) it's on 6th July - details are here.And if you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work, you'll find us here.
We've known for decades that the 'Yell, Tell and Sell' strategy of belittling people, endeavouring to cajole—or shame—them into some kind of change doesn't work - in fact it can't work. It's not how we're wired. Cognitive neuroscience has been telling us this for decades but it's only recently that people have begun to listen. One of those who has been speaking in the wilderness for a long time—and is now finally being heard—is this week's guest, Renée Lertzman. Dr. Renée Lertzman is a researcher, advisor and strategist who translates relational psychology to change our approach to our planetary crisis. Applying her graduate training as a psychosocial researcher, she designs frameworks and methods, grounded in public health, clinical psychology and neurosciences, that guide people to take action and create impact on climate and sustainability issues. Over the past two decades, Renée has worked with global leaders, startups, governments, and mission-driven companies—including Google, IKEA, the California Academy of Sciences, and WWF—helping them navigate the emotional complexities of climate engagement. She's also the founder of Project InsideOut, an initiative that equips changemakers with psychologically grounded resources for collective transformation.This is the key to our survival. We need to learn how to engage ourselves and each other in ways that will transform ourselves and each other. We need to bring serious emotional literacy to the table so that we can create the containers, and attune to the anxieties and aspirations of people around us. We need, above all, to equip people to make sustained and sustainable change. This is the core of Renée's work and hearing her talk about it in depth is the first step to making it happen. Enjoy!Learn more at reneelertzman.com and projectinsideout.net.Renée on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneelertzman/Renée's TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/renee_lertzman_how_to_turn_climate_anxiety_into_action
Our world is more magical than we know - more than we can know. Increasing numbers of us are realising that the 'citadel theory of mind' where we see ourselves as isolated units within the boundaries of our own skulls is not how the world works. But if it isn't, then how do we make sense of the worlds beyond consensus reality? How do we engage with the web of life and all that's around it in ways that are respect, reciprocal and generative? Robert (Bob) Falconer is a long time IFS practitioner and trainer. He is the author or co-author of many books, including Many Minds, One Self which he co-wrote with Dick Schwartz, who is credited with founding Internal Family Systems Therapy. For me, this is the form of therapy that leans closest into spiritual work, particularly into shamanic work, and Bob's book, The Others Within Us: Internal Family Systems, Porous Mind and Spirit Possession is a ground-breaking work that blows open the fallacies of the citadel mind model and opens us to a wide spectrum of other realities in other cultures, all of which acknowledge the existence of non-human, non-embodied energies that have at least a degree of agency and that can interact with human beings in ways that are either to our benefit or our detriment. Very few are neutral. So as we hurtle towards the edge of a cliff, pushed by our culture's endemic inability to engage with our own traumas, talking to Bob seemed pretty much essential. We talk quite a lot about IFS, which is Internal Family Systems therapy and at the start, we open up more of what that's about, though I do encourage you to read the book Bob co-wrote with Dick Schwartz. We also - and this is a trigger warning - explore some of Bob's own life history of harrowing sexual and physical abuse so if this is likely to trigger parts of you, then please only listen when you're feeling grounded and well resourced. Beyond that, we range far, wide and deep across the boundaries where science meets spirituality and philosophy meets psychotherapy, all of which is squarely in the area that I think needs most work, for all of us. Bob's website: https://robertfalconer.us/Bob on YouTube https://robertfalconer.us/youtube-channel/Bob's Books: Out now: The Others Within Us: Internal Family Systems, Porous Mind, and Spirit PossessionOUT ON 22nd MAY 2025 - Opening the Inner World: Spiritual Healing, Internal Family Systems and Emanuel Swedenborg Co-written with Dick Schwartz: Many Minds, One Self by Richard Schwartz and Robert Falconer Other books Thomas Zinser Soul-Centered Healing Lloyd DeMause The History of Childhood David Gordon White - Daemons are ForeverDreaming Awake Contemporary Shamanic Training: https://dreamingawake.co.uk Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
We are living through a time between stories—where the old economic narratives of scarcity, extraction, and separation are crumbling, and a new one is seeking to be born. At the heart of this transition is the question: What do we truly value, and how do we express that value in ways that nourish life?Imagine a society where every act of care, contribution, and kindness is not only appreciated but economically recognised. Schools, councils, and local businesses become part of an ecosystem where value flows back and forth amongst the people who create it. This doesn't replace wages or public services—it enhances them.This is a good step of the way towards a culture that's predicated on solid core values of compassion, integrity and generosity of spirit, and where we value what we care about, rather than what we can grab. So how do we build this in ways that work - and do so inside the current system? This week's guest, Peter Kemp, calls himself a professional dot-joiner. Peter is a UK-based digital innovator and social entrepreneur whose career has spanned web technology, media production, civic engagement, and alternative economics. He was a co founder of HullCoin, and currently serves as CEO of Value Squared (V2) Ltd and the Social Value Academy, organisations dedicated to reimagining how we understand, measure, and reward social value.As part of his work, Peter has helped to establish Citizen Coin - a digital, values-led complementary currency designed explicitly to recognise and reward social, environmental, and civic contributions that often go unpaid and undervalued in the mainstream economy. He says, 'The current economic model—predominantly built around fiat currencies and centralised systems—is increasingly failing to deliver equitable outcomes, community cohesion, or environmental resilience. Citizen Coin offers a new approach: a digital token earned through pro-social actions—such as volunteering, participating in community initiatives, or engaging in sustainable practices. These actions are verified by local authorities, public sector bodies, or accredited third-party partners. Unlike traditional money, which is often scarce and controlled, Citizen Coins are abundant where social value is being generated.'Crucially, Citizen Coin is not a replacement for fiat currency. Instead, it operates as a complementary economy—a parallel system that strengthens local resilience, incentivises positive behaviour, and redistributes recognition for care work and civic participation. More than a technology, this offers a shift in worldview—a move from scarcity to abundance, from extraction to contribution. As we face overlapping crises of inequality, climate, and mental health, complementary economies like this are no longer radical—they are necessary. Citizen Coin is not just about digital infrastructure or economic reform. It is about choosing a new story—one where we honour the unseen, uplift the essential, and move from domination to stewardship. It is about birthing an economy in service to life.Value Squared https://www.value-squared.com/#aboutCitizen Coin https://www.citizencoin.uk/If you're interested in joining us at a Gathering, or in the Membership, please follow the links below: Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
All flourishing is mutual, that's a given. And yet the schisms in our culture, the tribal divides and limbic hijack seem to grow deeper and more powerful by the day. It doesn't have to be like this. We do have the tools of connection, of genuine listening, of offering trust to gain trust and offering respect to gain respect, we just need to know how - and when - to put them into practice. If we're going to move forward into that future we'd be proud to leave behind, we need to start practicing these skills as if the world depended on them - because it does. This week's guest is someone who practices and teaches the deep, transformative skills of conflict resolution daily. Carm Aufderheide has a master's degree in conflict and dispute resolution (CRES), and qualifications in positive reinforcement dog training from the Karen Pryor Professional Dog Training Academy (KPA-CTP and CPDT-KA) and in Separation Anxiety from Malena DeMartini, bringing both to her consultations in her NorthStar Training Solutions in Oregon. Together, these put her right in the middle of quite fierce conflicts that rage around the dog training world over the various styles of dog training, most of which boil down to: do we use force or don't we? This is a perfect microcosm of the greater macrocosm of our torn and wounded world and Carm brings her dual skills to this with grace and intelligence and a fierce compassion that is a joy to encounter. I first came across Carm on the Functional Dog Collaborative podcast and was blown away by the clarity of her thinking, and her capacity to live true to her convictions. I made contact later that day and we set up time for the podcast. That was roughly six months ago, when the world was a different place. Now, recording on the day of the Pope's death, as our reality spirals deeper into chaos, it feels ever more essential that we learn these skills. Carm suggested a whole set of reading before we recorded and I have put a link to all the books, as well as Carm's NorthStar website in the show notes. Northstar Training Solutions https://www.northstartraining.info/ Street Epistemology https://www.streetepistemology.com/Albert Mehrabian's 7-38-55 Rule https://www.rightattitudes.com/2008/10/04/7-38-55-rule-personal-communication/Carm on the Functional Dog Collaborative podcast Carm's Recommended readingHow Minds Change by David McRaneySupercommunicators by Charles Duhigg High Conflict by Amanda RipleyThe Book of Beautiful Questions by Warren BergerNever Split the Difference by Chris VossWe Can Work it Out by Marshall RosenbergIf you're interested in joining us at a Gathering, or in the Membership, please follow the links below: Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
Our legacy - or status quo - media is owned and run by billionaires for billionaires and the stories they promote are the ones that will keep us all in line. How do we shift the global narrative towards a future of mutual flourishing?It is axiomatic of this podcast that stories – the good and the bad – are what got us to where we are. We are a storied species. Everything we do arises from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves, each other and our relationship with the communities of place, purpose and passion around us. Often, we're seeking respect and the pride of knowing we've contributed to the things we care about. But many of us are living in media echo chambers which have no connection to the other bubbles around us. So how do we bridge the gaps? How do we created a media eco-system, a commons, that works for the people by the people, growing stories of agency and empowerment, motivation and direction in, by and from our communities?This week's guest, Debs Grayson, is a facilitator, researcher and organiser living in Sheffield. She works for Opus Independents, where she spends most of her time developing relatable, accessible metrics to track progress towards the Sheffield City Goals, and also on the People's Newsroom Initiative (PNI). PNI is a project housed within Opus broadly focused on journalism innovation, and our recent work has been reimagining journalism as 'storytelling commoning' - collective practices of sharing and weaving together stories that can support a just climate transition.With a background in media research and campaigning for a transformed media system, she previously worked for the Media Reform Coalition running the 'BBC and Beyond' campaign, which also developed ideas of a 'media commons'. Alongside her role at Opus, she is currently working with the independent press regulator IMPRESS on various projects, including presenting Dis/Mis, a podcast on dis- and mis-information and how we build a trustworthy media. Opus: The People's Newsroom https://www.weareopus.org/the-peoples-newsroomElinor Ostrom 8 Rules for Managing a Commons https://earthbound.report/2018/01/15/elinor-ostroms-8-rules-for-managing-the-commons/Hastings Commons https://hastingscommons.com/ Amam Cymru https://www.amam.cymru/Amam Cyrmu post on the People's Newsroom https://amam.cymru/the-peoples-newsroom/what-is-a-storytelling-commons-and-why-is-it-so-hard-to-talk-aboutDis/Mis podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dis-mis-exploring-misinformation-in-modern-media/id1775649531Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
'If you're not changing the numbers, you're not changing the world.' So says this week's guest, Katie Patrick. Katie Patrick is a Silicon Valley based environmental engineer, climate action designer, and author of How to Save the World: How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We've Ever Played, now taught in Harvard University's graduate program and top recommended reading material by UNEP.Katie specializes in designing innovative apps, dashboards, and campaigns that drive environmental action by leveraging insights from behavioural science and game design. Her work combines rigorous research with creative execution to develop solutions that inspire sustainable behaviors and measurable impact. She has advised the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Google, the U.S. State Department, the University of California, the European Commission, Dassault Systèmes, the Institute for the Future, Magic Leap, and Stanford University, as well as numerous startups focused on behavior design for environmental action.Katie is passionate about biophilic design and envisions a future shaped by ecotopian principles. Her thought leadership has been recognized globally; she delivered a TEDx talk in 2020 and spoke at the UN General Assembly in 2021 on the role of creativity, optimism, and imagination in environmental change.In our conversation, we range wide and deep through and across the ways each of us can bridge the divides in our cultures and bring change to our local worlds - and thus to the wider world, exploring the power of gamification, evidence base and feedback loops to create real, enduring change. Hello World https://www.helloworlde.com/Climate Action Design School https://www.helloworlde.com/climate-action-design-schoolKatie on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-patrick/Katie's TED Talk. https://youtu.be/GOWYwEtzeH4/Katie's Book https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-save-the-world-katie-patrick/1671034Katie's Podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/6QaoYkmNqLSsn89zWMw3nl?si=540f4604608d4652Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
Suppose we accept that the current system is not broken - it is doing what it was always designed to do - which is to shovel wealth and power from the many to the few at a human scale and from the more-than-human world to the industrial/technical maw of predatory capitalism at an ecological scale.This is a death cult and it is in its death throes, but it will take us all down with it if we let it.Suppose then, we accept that, while the current system may not be broken, it is absolutely not fit for purpose, if that purpose is the continuation of complex life on earth; if it is the flourishing of humanity as an integral part of the web of life; if it is a world predicated on values of compassion, decency, integrity, generosity-of-spirit and absolute confidence in our place as conscious nodes in the web of life.IF this is the case - then we need a whole new system. We need a movement that will bring this system into being.In this solo podcast, Manda explores what the baselines of a new system might look, feel and work like.Manda's Substack post https://substack.com/home/post/p-158280401Jan Andrew Bloxham post https://substack.com/home/post/p-157874742Jason Hickel 'No the US is not a beacon of democracy' https://substack.com/@jasonhickel/note/p-158661867If you want to share the journey with us, we're here: Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
We grow up thinking we want to be happy (or at least, not-sad). But happiness isn't enough. What we need is wellbeing, and as Dr Mark Fabian quotes in the dedication to his book, Beyond Happy, "Wellbeing is about wholeness, not happiness, and wholeness is so much more demanding than happiness.' So what is wholeness, and what does it demand of us? As the old world crumbles and the new is struggling into being, what steps can each of us take to bring ourselves ever closer to a sense of being complete? This week's guest, Dr Mark Fabian, is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Warwick, and an affiliate fellow at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. In, Beyond Happy, his first book for a general audience, he explores how evolution has wired us to keep happiness just out of reach, leaving us perpetually stuck on a happiness treadmill. Instead of striving to escape it, he argues that we should focus on making the treadmill a place we want to be. Finding this place of relative equanimity begins with listening to our emotions, discovering intrinsic motivation and pursuing our authentic values. Mark coaches us through this process of self-actualisation and then knits it together into a collective, cooperative way of being, building relationships that matter and that work. Mark's book will be available in April - here: https://bedfordsquarepublishers.co.uk/book/beyond-happy/Or order from your favourite local independent bookshop. Please remember to put a review up on Amazon and GoodReads as well as anywhere else you feel is worthwhile. (this applies to every book you read and like - algorithms matter) andIf you want to share the journey with us, we're here: Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
If we are in the midst of the Great Derangement (thank you Amitav Ghosh), what tools do we have to help us shape a system that is actually fit for purpose? Who are our elders and what can they teach us? How do we learn to listen to our heart's (and hearts') desire and shape the communities of place, passion and purpose that will allow us to emerge into a different culture? Our two guests this week live and work at the heart of a global movement for cultural change. Looby Macnamara is the co-founder of the Cultural Emergence movement. She is an author, designer, gardener, song leader, mother, and artist. She has written four influential books including People & Permaculture and Cultural Emergence - and she has a new one coming out in September: Design Adventures: Discover a Creative Framework for Effective Change. She is also creator of the CEED card deck - Cultural Emergence Empowerment & Design. With her partner, Chris, Looby runs Applewood Permaculture Centre in Herefordshire, UK, where they facilitate courses and demonstrate permaculture of both land and people . Leona Johnson, host of Connection Matters Podcast, is a transformational life coach, connection facilitator, and guide dedicated to personal growth, cultural emergence, and regenerative ways of being. She has spent decades exploring how we heal the crisis of disconnection, within ourselves, in our relationships, and in the world around us.Through her work in nature connection, rites of passage, life coaching, and cultural emergence, she supports people to step into Connected Self-Leadership and what she calls ‘Everyday Spirituality' practical, embodied ways of living with depth, purpose, and alignment.Leona co-hosts the PEACE course with Looby and online with Jon Young, runs the Connection Matters Leadership Programme, Nature Quests around the world, and Children, Nature & Spirituality courses. At the heart of her work is a simple but powerful message: When we remember our interconnectedness, with ourselves, each other, and the other than human world, we step into our fullest potential and create the conditions for a thriving world.These two transformational women are part of a growing movement to shift the entire foundation of our culture. What happens if we stop being the hamsters in the wheel of modernity and become the lively, inspiring, inspired - and connected - individuals we could be? In this episode we explore the nature of cultural emergence, the values that could underpin our new culture and the real, grounded, practical ways we can begin the journeys of shift in ourselves and our communities. Cultural Emergence www.cultural-emrgence.comCultural Emergence Courses https://cultural-emergence.com/courses-overview/PEACE Course (24th - 29th June 2025) https://applewoodcourses.com/uk_courses/peace-empowerment-and-cultural-emergence/Applewood Courses https://applewoodcourses.com/courses/Looby's Books https://applewoodcourses.com/sales/books/Leona's website: https://www.leonajohnson.life/Leona's podcast Connection Matters https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/connection-matters-podcast/id1515564368Leona's FREE mini course on Elemental Connection https://pages.leonajohnson.life/elemental-connections-helloandIf you want to share the journey with Accidental Gods, we're here: Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/
We all know the current system of predatory capitalism is not fit for purpose. We don't (yet) all agree on how to fix it, but for sure, no problem is solved from the mindset that created it. So how do we begin to compost the debris of the failing system to grow something constructive, generative, connected communities that can act as a bridge from where we are towards that future we'd be proud to leave behind? James Lock is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Opus Independents Ltd, a not-for-profit social enterprise, working in culture, politics and the arts. Opus works to encourage and support participation, systemic activism and creativity with project strands that include Now Then Magazine & App, Festival of Debate. Opus Distribution, the River Dôn Project and Wordlife. I met James and other members of Opus in Sheffield last summer when we were all part of the Sheffield Social Enterprise Network summer conference and I was really blown away by their understanding of systemic thinking, by their absolute commitment to total systemic change and by the flexibility of their thinking. Here were people who were taking the concepts that we talk about and making them real, amongst real people in a real place. So we agreed that we'd talk first to James for an overview of what Opus is and does, how the thinking comes together and how we can each take ideas from here and scale them up and out in the places we live. Clearly each city, town, village, street is unique, but some principles are universal and I think we can all learn from the ways James thinks about things as he strives to create the bridges towards a new system. LinksOpus https://www.weareopus.org/Festival of Debate https://festivalofdebate.com/Opus 2024 Report https://www.weareopus.org/opus-annual-report-2024Opus on LInkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/opusindependents/Fairness on the 83 https://fairnessonthe83.nowthenmagazine.com/Citizen Network https://citizen-network.org/Dark Matter Labs Cornerstone Indicators https://darkmatterlabs.org/initiatives/cornerstone-indicatorsPlum Village podcast w Kate Raworth https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mindful-economics-in-conversation-with-kate-raworth/id1579910767?i=1000669364849James is Co Founder & Director at OpusCo Founder of Now Then MagazineCo Founder of the UBI Lab NetworkCo Founder of Festival of DebateCo Founder of Foundations EarthCo Founder of The River Don ProjectVoluntary Roles: Social Entrepreneur In Residence at Sheffield Hallam UniversityAdvisory Board Member on SYMCA Local Nature Recovery StrategyGeneral Secretary of the Independent Media AssociationSouth Yorkshire Social Enterprise Place Steering Group MemberAdvisory Board Yorkshire & Humber Office for Data Analytics
The old systems are no longer fit for purpose. What does an education system look like that's fit for the twenty-first century? Where we put self care, people care, earth care at the heart of what we do? This week's guest, Rachel Musson, has made it her life's work to fashion ways of learning for all ages that put this Triple Wellbeing principle into action. In everything she does, from leading ThoughtBox Eduction, to creating the Transforming Leadership Course, to writing her glorious, inspiring children's books, to her podcast, Two Inconvenient Women, with her fellow Thoughtboxer Holly Everett, she is being the change we need in the world. At this time where the old is breaking apart and the worst are full of passionate intensity, Rachel is a living example of the fact that the best of us can also be full of passionate intensity and that this can sow seeds of change that ripen into something close to miraculous transformation. Rachel is a beacon of inspiration and optimism, of how we can connect to the web of life and build networks of mycelial change in our personal and collective lives. ThoughtBox Education: https://thoughtboxeducation.com/Transforming Leadership Course: https://thoughtboxeducation.com/leadership The next online course after recording starts 4th June 2025Order Story Books https://thoughtboxeducation.com/storykitRachel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-musson/Rachel and Holly's podcast Two Inconvenient Women https://thoughtboxeducation.com/tiw-podcastEpisode 52 of Accidental Gods https://accidentalgods.life/living-to-learn/
How do we step past the magical thinking of the elites that says we can either use AI to 'Solve for Climate' - or just ignore the entire climate and ecological emergency completely? This week's guest, Paul Hawken, has been at the forefront of intelligent responses to the entire meta-crisis for decades. He has been profiled or written in hundreds of articles in the biggest newspapers across the world and has written nine books, six of which have become bestsellers, including Blessed Unrest, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation and Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. He's the founder of both Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration, which is the world's largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis, describing by agency, what each level of society can do, starting from the individual. If you're in the UK and waiting for Paul's new book to come out in August, then I'd thoroughly recommend you explore Regeneration as a good place to start. For those of you in the US, Paul's new book comes out on the 18th of March so you can get your pre-orders in now. This book is 'Carbon: The Book of Life' and truly, it's one of those books you'll read in a single sitting and then pass round to your family and friends so they can know the things you now know. I learned so much in this book: how supernovas are formed, how some really brilliant people worked out the formation of carbon - and one of them was knocked off the Nobel Prize because he began to believe there must be some kind of organising principle behind the formation of life. I learned the horrors of how we are destroying the ecosphere, but I also learned some of the wonders of humanity - how the Mi'kmaq tribe in Canada name large pine trees by the sound of the wind moving through the branches one hour before sunset in October - and then can return decades later and will know if trees have been damaged by comparing their names to the sound they hear. How other tribes in Alaska can predict the weather two years in advance by listening to the patterns in the web of life around them… Truly, this is a beautiful book, beautifully written and it contains within it, the seeds of hope that we speak of often on this podcast - that human creativity and compassion endure and are our gifts to the world. “Endlessly endlessly fascinating! Human beings, over the millennia, have come up with a thousand ways to carefully observe the world around us, and Paul Hawken has managed to collect and synthesize these observations—from the sweat lodge to the satellite—in a way that helps us see what now must be done. There's information, and then there's wisdom—and this book is a compendium of the latter.” BILL MCKIBBENPaul's Website https://paulhawken.com/Paul's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hawken-0792bThe link to purchase the book is here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316928/carbon-by-paul-hawken/Project Regeneration https://regeneration.org/
In these turbulent times, what values most strongly underpin our humanity and how can we nurture our relationships with all parts of ourselves, with ourselves and other people and with ourselves and the web of life? This week's guest is another podcaster. Mark McCartney is host of the 'What is a Good Life' podcast, which is now into well over 100 episodes. Mark is a coach and writer based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. He started his 'What is a Good Life' project in 2021, it became a podcast soon and now, in it's fourth year, he's interviewed over 250 people with humanity and sensitivity - and a glorious, marrow-melting Irish voice - that brings out the best in a suite of truly remarkable people. So this was my chance to turn the microphones the other way around and ask Mark what values underpin his life, that have brought him from Ireland to Peru and back to Germany? How has he navigated the turbulence that is common to our lives, how has he approached those moments that push us to ask the most important questions of who we are, and what we're here for. How has he found that sense of being, belonging, becoming that we all seek?Authenticity and the capacity for honest self reflection feel really critical now and in this conversation, Mark models both of these with deep humility and humanity as he and I explore integrity, vulnerability, humour courage, the capacity to listen to our body minds and act on instinct when it's right to do so - and how to let go of lifelong terrors and learn to love the objects of our fears. Nothing is certain any more - it never was, but we were able to seduce ourselves into thinking we could predict the paths our lives would take. Now that we know we can't do this, learning from people who are able and willing to walk in uncertainty seems to me one of the most valuable lessons we can embrace. So this is what we're doing. Enjoy. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-is-a-good-life/id1663668603https://www.whatisagood.life/p/the-silent-conversations
How do we shed the shackles of modernity and step into a new set of stories that could help us grow into the fullness of our potential? Alexander Beiner is one of a small band of people in our culture who is shaping the cutting edge of possibility, crafting new ideas of who we are, at the deepest levels of our Self and out into the widest view of our place as conscious nodes in the web of life. Ali is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the margins of culture into the mainstream, through writing, and by creating transformative experiences that invite us to find ways to evolve and thrive in the chaotic times we live in. He's the author of The Bigger Picture: How psychedelics can help us make sense of the world that details his part in a psychedelic clinical trial that took him deep into what it is to be human and he has recently launched Kainos, an alternative media platform and studio on both Substack and YouTube. He says of it, 'in an age of upheaval, we tell stories that help people make sense of the world and imagine new futures. Our films, articles and experiences combine cultural sensemaking with hope, imagination and impact.'He's an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture and was also one of the founders of Rebel Wisdom, which ran from 2017-2022 and explored the cutting-edge of systems change and cultural sensemaking. This is where we need to be: the edge place where spirituality meets psychology and mythology, where culture meets politics meets our desperate yearning to grow up and become the good enough ancestors we know we can be. We need path-finders, people who have the courage to stretch out beyond the edges of our being and Alexander is so clearly one of these - his explorations of what makes us human in the psychedelic realm merge with his documentary making and Kainos takes up where Rebel Wisdom left off, delving deeply into the nature of the moment and how we might become more than we are. This was a genuinely inspiring conversation in a series that I hope is helping you to make sense of these times, to accept that the old system is gone and that something truly generative could arise - if we all take part in its making. Alexander Beiner website https://www.alexanderbeiner.com/Kainos on Substack https://beiner.substack.com/Alexander on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-beiner-b9aa8b19/Kainos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@StudioKainosBooks mentionedOf Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Some The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker
In a world of turmoil where the only certainty is uncertainty, what happens if we who yearn for a future we'd be proud to leave behind began really to speak the quiet part out loud? What happens if we acknowledge the meaning crisis of our culture and state clearly that we need a world based on Love: on the raw, wild, wonder of life itself? And what happens if we shape our politics around this, instead of defensive attempts to make the death cult of predatory capitalism feel less... deathly?This week's guest, Jamie Bristow is someone who lives in the worlds where policies are made and, for the past sixteen years, he has been consciously committed to being a Spiritual Warrior with all this implies. Like Jon Alexander, Jamie started off life as an advertising executive before realising he needed to align his inner and outer worlds. Now, he's a writer and policy advisor working at the intersection of inner and outer transformation and sustainability. For eight years, he was clerk to the UK's All Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness and director of the associated policy institute, the Mindfulness Initiative, (where he helped to introduce mindfulness to a number of other parliaments). During this time he worked with legislators around the world to make mindfulness and compassion training serious matters of public policy and catalysts for a healthier political process. In 2023, he joined the Inner Development Goals team to lead on public narrative and policy development, emphasising the inner skills and qualities needed for a sustainable transition. His work includes influential reports such as Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out and The System Within: Addressing the inner dimension of sustainability and systems transformation. He is an associate of Life Itself, The Climate Majority Project, Mind & Life Institute and Bangor University.Jamie's website https://www.jamiebristow.com/Jamie's substack https://jamiebristow.substack.com/Jamie on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiebristow/Mindfulness Initiative Mindfulness initiative UN IDG Inner Development Goals Life Guild lifeguild.earthTransformative Skills Guide Transformative Skills Guide: Expanding the Definition of Climate Literacy (co-authored with US gov climate literacy experts)Jamie's Wiki psycho-social dimensions of societal resilience Desmog https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/06/between-optimism-and-despair-the-messy-middle-paths-through-climate-breakdown/Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/reconnectionThe System Within: addressing the inner dimensions of sustainability and systems transformation https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-bristow-bell/The Mindfulness Initiative Report on the result of 10 years of mindfulness in Westminster https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/mindfulness-in-westminster-reflections-from-uk-politicians Soulmaking Dharma with Catherine McGee https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/courses/immersive-online-programs/soulmaking-dharma/SoulMaking Dharma teachings https://hermesamara.org/teachings/soulmaking-dharmaSoulMaking Dharma Course https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/classes/2025-introduction-to-a-soulmaking-dharma/
Daniel remains one of the few people I know who is originally of the Trauma Culture but is living absolutely integral to his land - and we couldn't keep our conversation confined to 60 minutes. So we broke at an appropriate point and came back. This is the second part - please do listen to the first if you've only just found us - we literally paused the recording, took a breath and continued…As ever, if you're interested in Daniel's work visit his website. And if you have the means, do buy his books, they are genuinely beautiful. Stagtine, Wild Like Flowers and Dark Country are all out now and Plain of Pillars will be released in May of 2025.
By now we know that we need to connect to the More than Human world. We know we need to grow into adulthood and elder hood. We know we need to move from a Trauma Culture to an Initiation Culture. But knowing these things is not the same as living them as a reality. To get here, we need waymakers, people of huge heart and raw courage to walk away from the limited, goal-based directions of our culture and step into the ways of being where we meet in open-hearted, full-hearted, strong-hearted relationship with the land and all that lives there. Daniel Firth Griffith is one of these people. With his wife, Morgan, and their three children, Daniel lives on 400 acres on the eastern side of the Appalachian mountains where he is steadily building relationship with the land. He lives amongst cattle, sheep, goats and horses - the latter used for logging, on land that was scheduled to be clear-cut when Daniel and Morgan first moved there. With a growing understanding that even the forms of agriculture we term 'regenerative' are still part of what I would call the Trauma Culture, Daniel and Morgan have been on a steady journey of transition through to something that feels to me entirely different. This is what we need to be. It's not clear cut. There isn't a hard and fast recipe because every bit of land is different and each of us is different and the routes to connection are unique... up to a point. But there are baselines we can learn: be human. Find what that means for you when 'human' is not simply being a wheel in an extractive system. We had a really long conversation and we stopped at about 90 minutes in and restarted so you can listen to it in two parts. We go down rabbit holes. We tell stories, or at least, Daniel does, big, deep, tear-flowing, heart-searing stories that made both of us weep...because stories are how we learn. This conversation, or these conversations, felt like sitting at the feet of an indigenous elder and the fact that this can happen in 2025, talking to someone of white ancestry who lives on lands stolen by colonialists... this is what gives me hope. We can't undo our past, but we can grow into what the future needs of us, and Daniel, Morgan and those who visit them are doing this. Daniel's an astonishing author as well as everything else, so please do visit his website and buy his books: as with everything else he does, they are filled with layers upon layers of meaning. Daniel's website https://danielfirthgriffith.com/
Democracy is breaking around us in real time and a small percentage of those in power would like us to become - at best - obedient subjects in a world dedicated to the destruction of ecosystems and the annihilation of compassion, empathy and all that makes us thrive. Clearly, we are better than this. So how can we harness the astonishing wonder of human co-creation in service to life and a world where humanity thrives as part of a flourishing web of life? This week's guest, Jon Alexander started off his professional life as a highly successful advertising executive - until the inherent contradictions in the Consumer narrative led him on a new path, to seeing people as Citizens in his words, 'people who actively shape the world around us, who cultivate meaningful connections to our community and institutions, who can imagine a different and better life, and who create opportunities for others to do the same.' This quotation comes from his book, Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us. It's is a genuinely Thrutopian view of possibility from one of the sharpest minds, and biggest hearts in this space of all potential and I wholeheartedly encourage you to read it - knowing that it came out three years ago - and the world has changed since then.When we first mooted this conversation over six months ago, we still thought Harris was going to win the US election, that democracy was stable and that - in Jon's words - we could affect change by creating acupuncture points in the system. And now we are where we are and none of these is possible. And yet, the cracks are where the light gets in and this is a time when we can abandon any belief that the old system is functioning any more. So what doors does this open? What new light is there at the end of the tunnel and how do we find the agency, motivation and connections to the people and places we love, to make the changes that need to happen if we're to create that future we'd be proud to leave behind? Jon is one of the people best placed to answer this. He's co-founder of the New Citizen Project which works to help organisations and businesses find ways to enhance Citizenship in all they do. And more recently, he helped found the Citizen Collective which we can all join and which holds regular online meetings to connect people who aspire to citizenship all around the world. This was a raw, honest conversation and neither of us is pretending we have all the answers. But we're exploring the ideas - and Jon brings such a wealth of experience to the table to open doors for all of us. I came away from this feeling that the routes forward are opening up. I hope you do, too. Jon's website https://www.jonalexander.net/Jon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-alexander-11b66345/Jon on NEXT TV in Hamburg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dvLFWTzXeUCitizen Collective https://medium.com/citizen-collective-updates/citizen-collective-is-here-and-id-love-you-to-be-part-of-it-525f113fd8de Join here: https://airtable.com/appIlFU7nEF8NgiMf/pagsPy8sTEAMKaZpu/form Polis AI-based connection https://compdemocracy.org/Our House https://ourhouseuk.org/Stephen Green on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenbgreene/
If what our culture most urgently needs is for a critical mass of us to grow into adults and then elders, how can we help our young people to step beyond the artificial boundaries of our old, rigid system into a world where they are fully connected to all parts of themselves, each other and the web of life. How, in effect, can we create an educational system that is fit for purpose in the emerging century?In this podcast, I joined with Tim Logan, host of the Future Learning Design podcast, educator, part of the team at Good Impact Labs and co-leader of the International Baccalaureate's 'Festival of Hope'. Tim is a highly experienced school leader, management consultant, coach, educator and researcher, has held previous pedagogical and well-being senior leadership positions in a variety of international settings and is proud to have consistently helped to build innovative, outstanding schools, supportive relationships and powerful educational visions. He says, 'The important question for now is, can we intentionally create more spaces in our schools that provide a qualitatively different kind of 'educational' experience? Transformational shifts are happening in educational and organisational cultures around the world right now. I am incredibly fortunate to be able to play a role in this.'I was on the Future Learning Design podcast just before the dark nights of winter with Ginie Servant-Miklos, Raïsa Mirza and Will Richardson and his podcast has become one of my essential listens of the week and had been planning to invite Tim here to talk about the transformational shifts happening in education and how they can help us lay the foundations for a world we'd be proud to leave behind. We were planning something for later in the year but we had a cancellation and he had a tech misfire and we both needed something fast to get the schedules back on track, so here we are with a joint conversation—one of those that ranges wide over the landscape of culture and learning and the 'citadel mind' and our history of optimising for everything and how we could, instead, begin to expand into a more porous mindset and look for resonance and help young people to become part of the emerging transformation of the entire web of life. Tim on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/teblogan/Tim's podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/future-learning-design-podcast/id1536832802Good Impact Labs https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/aboutNick Mulvey Live from COP26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-GBl6DeA50&t=1273sConcerned Bird Substack https://theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks-and-xs-role-in-2024-electionFestival of Hope https://ibo.org/festival-of-hope/ Systems Transformation Pathway at UWC Atlantic College: https://www.uwcatlantic.org/learning/academic/systems-transformation-pathwayGreen School: https://www.greenschool.org/School of Humanity: https://sofhumanity.com/
We are living through the death of democracy and the onset of Techno-Feudalism. But this is not a time when linear systems can hold and feudalism was nothing if not linear. So how can we be part of a transformative process that will let us lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave behind?Usually, on Accidental Gods, we talk to guests who seem to exemplify some aspect of the generative edge of interbecoming change that will take us towards the emergent future we need if we're not only to survive, but thrive. But once in a while it's just Manda, reflecting on the moment and offering pointers to things that might be useful to read or watch or listen to or think about. This is one of those, and it feels timely, in part because the Oxford Real Farming Conference too place recently and was immensely heartening - and partly because of the times we're in. This was recorded on Sunday 19th of January 2025 and if you're in the English speaking world listening to this podcast, then you'll be aware that basically democracy dies tomorrow. Though, as you'll also be aware, we never had true democracy of the people by and for the people, and certainly nothing that might have created a generative enhancement of the web of life. We had a kleptocracy at best, a kakiocracy at worst and all of it was working against the kind of future we want to leave as our legacy. So this is a podcast of ideas, most of which boil down to: It's time each of us committed ourselves in service to life. What does that feel like? How does it work and where will it take us? Let's find out. Oxford Real Farming Trust https://realfarming.org/programmes/land-based-wisdom/CFOSA https://consciousfoodsystems.org/Animate Earth Collective https://animate-earth.orgThe Wild with Indy Johar - the whyhttps://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/wild-with-sarah-wilson/id1548626341?i=1000677521024Changing our Civilisational Model - Michel Bauens on Substack https://substack.com/inbox/post/155005488And then at the macro level, Dark Matter Labs on Governance https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/media/v2/D4E1FAQFRu6lmVVqBvw/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/B4EZQsP1m3HAAc-/0/1735909140676?e=1738195200&v=beta&t=8kAX6cLW_kf4Lsvw8dYn2_9FG644-bWKa6SZy1QTXKk
What happens when people with chronic, unstable diabetes eat food grown in local, regenerative farms? Erin Martin talks to the Accidental Gods podcast about the dramatic and spectacular improvements in health her group FreshRxOK saw in Oklahoma when they instigated a 'Food as Medicine' programme, offering real food with good nutrient density to diabetic patients in some of the poorest communities.An Oklahoman on track to be a lawyer, Erin's first job in a retirement community inspired her to pursue a degree in gerontology instead. During her Masters program at USC, Erin ran a team of advocates serving over 700 low income older adults in the Southern California area. She was troubled by how little support people get as they age. So Erin founded Conscious Aging Solutions, a company dedicated to helping older adults navigate health and social systems so they can age successfully. As Erin's work focused on strategies for longevity, she found that food—access to quality food—had an enormous impact on our life spans.As her interest in food grew, she became certified in Regenerative Soil Advocacy. Erin moved back home to Tulsa during the pandemic to find that the supply chain disruptions had only intensified what was already a food system problem in the city. Lack of access to nutritious foods was contributing to poor health outcomes and high mortality rates for Tulsans, especially those with chronic conditions.In 2021, Erin co-founded a prescription produce program called FreshRx Oklahoma. The program's success has launched her onto the national stage. Now Erin champions food as medicine to promote the longevity of underserved communities, decrease food insecurity, support the environment, revitalize the agricultural economy, and decrease system-wide health care costs.Recorded on the day of the US Presidential Inauguration, we talk about the shift from a sickness service to a health service and how food can help us move towards a more regenerative system. Most particularly, we talk about the truly spectacular health improvement indices in the diabetic patients who benefit from the FreshRxOK programme. Erin's website: https://www.erinwmartin.com/Erin on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@erinwmartinFreshrxOK https://www.freshrxok.org/FreshRxOK on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@freshrxok
How can we bring wisdom to those with power and power to those with wisdom? If we were to step into elder hood and bring the best of ourselves to the table, could we create governance structures that would help to heal our cultural divides, create equity and guide is wisely through the coming crisis? Jenny Grettve believes we can and has set up a global council to make this happen. Jenny is a good friend of the podcast. She joined us in episode #228 to talk about designing and building a school along Doughnut economic lines and then again in episode #249 to talk about the evolution of a Mothering Economy based on the values of compassion and care for future generations. Jenny is an author, philosopher, systems thinker and designer, author of several books, most recently the Mothering Economy that we talked about the last time we met. Then, she was leading WhenWhen, a new feminist design agency that creates system demonstrators to test ideas generated by global researchers working with the climate crisis and sustainable life. She was still working there last November when Donald Trump managed to take the US Presidency again. Amidst all the shock and horror of that moment, I saw a post Jenny put up on LinkedIn, proposing the creation of a Global Council of Women as a way to bring forward the values that our world needs at this moment of total transformation. I signed up on the spot and then asked Jenny to come and talk to us about it, so that the idea might spread in the Accidental Gods spheres. And then as I was doing the reading for this episode, I found that Jenny had started the year in a new post - that she is now Head of Transformation at a European Council funded organisation called EIT - that's European Innovation and Technology - Culture and Creativity. Which means Jenny is now taking the wisdom of creativity right into the heart of the bureaucracy that sustains the super organism, at least in the EU. So here we are, considering the nature of wisdom and elder hood, how we might overcome the gender divides that so assail us in service to life - and how to bring creative ideas deep into the heart of machine. Please know that the Council is not only for women - the first meeting is exploring whole, healthy masculinity and how it can be prioritised in this world. Which feels like such an integral part of our thinking now. So please do join - the link is below. Women Council https://www.womencouncil.world/Jenny Grettve https://www.jennygrettve.com/EIT Culture and Creativity https://eit-culture-creativity.eu/Jenny on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennygrettve/EIT Culture and Creativity on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/eit-culture-creativity/Jenny in Episode 228 https://accidentalgods.life/evolving-education-building-a-doughnut-school-with-jenny-grettve-of-whenwhen/Jenny in Episode 249 https://accidentalgods.life/finding-the-courage-to-care-ways-to-build-a-mothering-economy-with-author-jenny-grettve/
This podcast is predicated on the belief that if we all work together, we can still lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave as our legacy. And it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is now urgent; that we need to let go of the assumptions we'd made about career paths or future constructs and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the process of making it through. Five years ago when we began, it was possible to imagine that the world might stabilise with a vestige of the old system as a scaffold for the new. That assumption is growing increasingly ragged. At the same time, it's becoming increasingly obvious, at least to me, that the shifts we need to be in the world are primarily inner; that the truly urgent work is in healing both our own and the global human psyches, that we need urgently to remember how to connect with the web of life so that we can ask it 'What do you want of me?' and respond to the answers in real time. That we need, in short. to evolve. But we need mentors and guides along the way. It is possible that we could perhaps each carve out our own route, but part of being human is sharing best practice, is having elders and mentors who open the doors of possibility for those who strive to walk the ways of healing. And this week's guest is one of those elders and mentors; he's a trailblazer of the most incandescent kind. Professor Christopher Bache is professor emeritus in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and on the Advisory Council of Grof Legacy Training. He grew up in a Catholic household in the southern US and spent 4 years at a seminary training to be a priest before deciding this wasn't the path for him. Moving into academia, he took degrees in the US and at Cambridge and finally a PhD by the end of which he had concluded that, 'using language derived from finite existence to describe an infinite God was like shining flashlights at the stars.' He duly finished graduate school as 'a deeply convinced agnostic with a strong atheistic bent' and went on to teach the philosophy of religion as an academic study. So far, so academically straight. He took a post teaching at Youngstown University in Ohio - and then he read Ian Stevenson on reincarnation and Stanislav Grof's work on LSD. And 45 years later, I read his book, 'Diamonds from Heaven: LSD and the Mind of the Universe' and realised that here was someone who had walked with the Heart Mind of the Universe. Here is someone who has taken himself to the edge of being, in order to understand the process. As you'll hear, over the course of 20 years, he took 73 truly heroic doses of LSD in very carefully controlled conditions and then, over the past 20 years, he has reflected deeply on the results. I'll let him tell his story: it's truly remarkable. And what he brings to us is visions of how humanity could be: it's not guaranteed - but it's the opening to a door of possibility where every one of us can play a part, where, as he says, if we can align ourselves with the needs of the living planet, find out what's ours to do and devote ourselves to doing it, we have no idea what might arise. For many of us, this feels like a true dark night of the soul. So I offer this conversation as a ray of potential, that out of this immense pressure, might arise the conscious evolution of humanity: if we can all find ways to be the change. Chris Bache website https://chrisbache.com/ABOUTChris Books https://chrisbache.com/BOOKS-1New Extended Edition of The Living Classroom https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Living-Classroom-Second-EditionStanislav Grof (a website devoted to him and his works) https://www.stangrof.com/Bill Barnard Liquid Light Book https://liquidlightbook.com/Soul Centered Healing https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/soul-centered-healing-a-psychologist-s-extraordinary-journey-into-the-realms-of-sub-personalities-spirits-and-past-lives-ed-d-thomas-zinser/310221?ean=9780983429401
Is it possible that 2024 might have been the year of 'Peak polarisation' around the world and that from hereon in humanity might grow less divided, not more; that we might use technology and social media wisely to bring the best of ourselves to the table, becoming the best we can be in service to life? Audrey Tang certainly thinks so in this wide-deep, mind-expanding conversation, we explore everything from the dual nature of AGI to the potential for liberational education that gives young people a sense of agency, interaction and the common good, to ways to rescue democracy to recipes for sound sleep. Until recently, Audrey Tang was Digital Minister of Taiwan: the country's first transgender, post-gender, and youngest ever Minister of state. In this role, Tang helped bring the .g0v movement into the mainstream and brought with it the concept that democracy could be a social technology with a focus for good. In 2014, at the time of the Sunflower Revolution in which Tang took part, confidence in the government was measured at 9%. Six years later, it was up to 73%. In that time, there had been shifts in everything from the concept of education, to healthcare, to the provision of broadband, to the online submission of taxes. Then the pandemic hit and, by any measure, Taiwan's response was one of the most flexible, emotionally and politically literate in the world. With no need for lockdown, they kept public confidence high and the death rate low. More recently, the Government began 'pre-bunking' the possibility of foreign interference in the General Election of 2024 and the end result saw all three parties agree that it had been a free and fair election, with a population who felt heard and engaged. How different is this to the western experience of maximal polarisation. Since the end of May 2024, Audrey Tang has been Taiwan's Ambassador at Large in charge of Cyberspace Governance, instrumental in bringing ideas of a post-polarised world to those who dance amongst the levers of power - and doing so with charm, grace and a fierce, sharp intellect that makes the balance between polarities feel like the only possible way forward. Audrey is probably not entirely alone in swimming both deep in the world of code and stretching wide across the understanding of what it takes to bring humanity to a place of agency, connection and sufficiency, but I don't know of anyone else who has this as a life's goal. This was the most mind-expanding, heart-firing conversation imaginable, and it was an astonishing joy and an honour. I hope it inspires you to be part of a growing, evolving, re-connected world. Audrey has been the subject of a documentary: 'Good Enough Ancestor' - at the time of this podcast, the trailer is available, but the full video will be released in early January 2025Plurality.net https://www.plurality.net Download and donate here https://www.plurality.net/chapters/Good Enough Ancestor Trailer https://youtu.be/L_AAhYk6I3M Good Enough Ancestor https://vimeo.com/1010351047/07c278e0d0 TimeShifter App https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/timeshifter/id1380684374Vivid App https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/vivid-double-your-brightness/id6443470555?mt=12Tenet movie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6723592/
Druidry is the indigenous spirituality of the islands of Britain, but how does is live in the contemporary world? What are the values and practices that make it so suited to the inflexion point of the moment? Why - and how - does it mesh so well with other, more spiritual traditions? And how does the practice of Will, the honing of intent, create the magic we need to see in our world? This week's guest, Philip Carr-Gomm, has spent his life studying, and writing about all of these things. Philip began studying Druidry as a spiritual path with Ross Nichols, the founder of The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. Later, he took a degree in psychology from University College London, and trained in psychotherapy for adults at The Institute of Psychosynthesis, in play therapy for children with Dr Rachel Pinney, and in Sophrology – a system of mind-body training for deep relaxation and personal development. He has also trained in Montessori education and founded the Lewes Montessori School. In 1988, he was asked to lead The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. For thirty two years, he was the Chief Druid of Britain until, in June 2020, he handed on this role to his successor, Eimear Burke. He is now involved in the work of the ACER Integration programme and the Sophrology Institute. He's a prolific author, having written or contributed to over two dozen books, mostly exploring Druidry, but more recently he has written The Gift of Night: A six step programme for better sleep, and Seek Teachings Everywhere: Combining Druid Spirituality with Other Traditions. He is co-creator of two sets of Celtic Oracle cards and has written the text for two tarot sets. He is host of the magnificent 'Tea with a Druid' which is part of his active, pro-active YouTube channel. On his website, he says, "Something magical happens when the worlds of psychology and spirituality are brought together. Every discipline in psychology helps to reveal the extraordinary nature of the human being, but add the insights of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition – the ancient knowledge and esoteric teachings passed down through the ages – and we enter awe-inspiring territory that has the power to transform us."And this feels perfectly aligned with this podcast, and with the times. So as we head down into the long-nights of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and up into the long-days in the south, we offer the wisdom of the grove and the mountain and the river. Philip's website https://philipcarr-gomm.com/The Art of Living Well https://artoflivingwell.org.uk/The Sophrology Institute https://sophrology.institute/The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids http://www.druidry.org/Tea with a Druid https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnjpTLSK6D733dGegH7n2wLlg-y2NiYF-&feature=sharedPhilips YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@PhilipCarrGomm/videosThe Gift of Night https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-gift-of-the-night-a-six-step-program-for-better-sleep-philip-carr-gomm/7408262?ean=9781644119297Seek Teachings Everywhere https://philipcarr-gomm.com/book/seek-teachings-everywhere/The Druidcraft Tarot https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/druidcraft-tarot-use-the-magic-of-wicca-and-druidry-to-guide-your-life-philip-carr-gomm/5068090?ean=9781800691179The Druid Plant Oracle https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-druid-plant-oracle-working-with-the-magical-flora-of-the-druid-tradition-philip-carr-gomm/6048210?ean=9781800691599The Druid Animal Oracle https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-druid-animal-oracle-philip-carr-gomm/5777280?ean=9781800691247
Traditionally, we have offered a meditation for the solstice - and these are available in the links below. This meditation aims to offer a long-wide-deep perspective on our place as conscious nodes in the web of life - the journey that brought us here and the places humanity may go. Please give yourself plenty of time both to experience the journey and to reflect afterwards. If it helps to write down your feelings, images, ideas or sensations afterwards, please do. Winter Solstice Meditation https://media.transistor.fm/25cbf6e7/e9f16280.mp3Summer Solstice Meditation https://media.transistor.fm/4dbb7991/ddc721bc.mp3
This is the fifth year of our traditional Winter Solstice podcast gathering in which Nathalie Nahai of 'In Conversation with Nathalie Nahai, Della Duncan of The Upstream Podcast and I sit around our virtual dark-nights fire to reflect on the podcasting year just gone and explore what has changed for us since the last time we three met in one place. By any measure, this year has been pretty turbulent and our capacity to predict anything at all for 2025 is fairly ragged, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating Della's news, and sharing the ways we find stability and maintain sanity in a world that feels increasingly precarious. Whatever else is happening, friendship is the glue that builds community and all of us - we who make the podcasts and everyone who listens - are building a de facto community of passion and purpose. So thank you for being there. I hope you enjoy what follows. Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a co-host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, a faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and the designer and co-facilitator of the Cultivating Regenerative Livelihood Course at Gaia Education.Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She's author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She's a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.LinksDown the Rabbit Hole - https://charliebennettauthor.co.uk/shopTransformative Adaptation - https://shop.permaculture.co.uk/products/transformative-adaptationHow to Be an An Anticapitalist in the Twenty-first Century - book https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/933-how-to-be-an-anticapitalist-in-the-twenty-first-century?srsltid=AfmBOoq4Q9LtVqpS7BkvtrBsQwBW3eHwnbD9SKoDXxt-rT9_2BL1DdEG How to be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century - article in Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/God, Human, Animal, Machine https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/god-human-animal-machine-technology-metaphor-and-the-search-for-meaning-meghan-o-gieblyn/5885978?ean=9780525562719The Psychological Drivers of the MetaCrisis https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-psychological-drivers-of-the-metacrisis/id1680606350?i=1000639851812Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/feeding-your-demons-ancient-wisdom-for-resolving-inner-conflict-tsultrim-allione/1740345?ean=9781848501737Feeding your Demons online https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-feeding-your-demons
It's that time of year - when all we really want is to curl up and reflect, go inside, become the potential that will arise in the unfolding spring. If you want things to listen to or watch or read as you head into the long-nights, then these are (some of) the things that have caught my attention this year. Enjoy!Books: Non-FictionHospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machada de Oliviera https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hospicing-modernity-parting-with-harmful-ways-of-living-vanessa-machado-de-oliveira/6401710?ean=9781623176242Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as we Know It by Ginie Servant-Miklos https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pedagogies-of-collapse-9781350400498/ NB - you can download the pdf for FREE!Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Foundations for Collective Wellbeing by Yuria Celidwen https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/flourishing-kin-indigenous-wisdom-for-collective-well-being-ph-d-celidwen-yuria/7727216?ean=9781649632043Right Story, Wrong Story Tyson Yunkaporta https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/right-story-wrong-story-adventures-in-indigenous-thinking-tyson-yunkaporta/7645728?ean=9781922790439Down the Rabbit Hole by Charlie Bennett CharlieBennettauthor.co.ukFiction: Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-ministry-of-time-kaliane-bradley/7445878?ean=9781399726344 Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/venomous-lumpsucker-ned-beauman/2764635?ean=9781473613577Denise Baden 'Murder in the Climate Assembly' You can get a feel for the book here: https://www.dabaden.com/murder-in-the-climate-assembly/Kickstarter here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dabaden/murder-in-the-climate-assembly Katherine Addison 'Throne of Dragons' - due March 11th US and a few days later UK https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-tomb-of-dragons-the-cemeteries-of-amalo-book-3-katherine-addison/7764905?ean=9781837864393FilmsRichard Wain: The Oath of the Hopeful https://youtu.be/JFNEPx9NYVkRoots so Deep https://rootssodeep.org/The Shopping Conspiracy Trailer: https://youtu.be/OVfZw_eqJW8 Full film: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81554996 Future Council - not yet released: https://theregenerators.org/future-council/see-the-film/ PodcastsFarm Gate 1 'What is Bill Gates doing to Africa's Food?' https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788?i=1000675185519Farm Gate 2 'Down the Rabbit Hole with Charlie Bennett' https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788?i=1000678521906The Great Simplification: Future Council: How Children are responding to our Planetary Crisis https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-great-simplification-with-nate-hagens/id1604218333?i=1000678061953 What is a Good Life with Mark McCartney - Rekindling our Wild Nature with Diarmuid Lyng https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-is-a-good-life/id1663668603?i=1000677421697Wild w Sarah Wilson Indy Johar: the Starkest Collapse Prognosis I've heard https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/wild-with-sarah-wilson/id1548626341?i=1000677521024
Clearly we're at an inflection point in the history of humanity. Our experiment with a notional democracy is failing and either we find something that actually works, or we sink into autocracy. And given that the current global flavour of autocracy is in deep denial of the climate and ecological catastrophe that's currently underway, then that's a pretty fast road to extinction: you can't deny your way out of biophysical reality. So what can we do, we who care deeply about passing an inhabitable - thriving - world to the generations not yet born? We need to go back to basics. We all need clean water, clean air, safe shelter and good nutritious food - and we are rapidly heading for a space where just accessing these will become more of a priority than our recent experiment with unleashing ancient sunlight has led us to believe. But more than this, the community that grows around these, particularly the growing and sharing of food - is the glue that keeps us together. We are a prosocial species. We are astonishingly creative when we put our minds to it. So what happens when we put our minds to creative ways of growing and sharing food that are founded in solid values of cohesion and connectivity? One of the things that happens is the Open Food Network which is a global community of farmers, growers, community food enterprises and software geeks with a common belief that world food systems are broken - and that better, more connected, open, resilient systems can arise in their place. They are building alternative food systems from the bottom up: this is their theory of change and this is a recent podcast about a new OFN project called the Power of Food.So this week, I've been talking to Nick Weir who helped to set up the Open Food Network UK. Nick has a background in IT account management, but, as you'll hear, he is also a long-term grower who co-founded the Stroudco Food Hub and Stroud Community Agriculture and is deeply passionate about the role of innovative food systems in creating a kinder, more interconnected society, and the ways in which the Network can model a new way of working which empowers people to bring more of themselves to their work. If you're feeling crushed by the global political chaos, I hope this conversation cheers you as it did me, with living examples of change happening on the ground, and the ripple effects it can have. Open Food Network Global https://openfoodnetwork.org/Open Food Network uk https://about.openfoodnetwork.org.uk/Power of Food podcast https://www.wearecarbon.earth/power-of-food-collaboration/ Open Food Network resources https://about.openfoodnetwork.org.uk/resources/Landworkers' Alliance https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/our_vision/Sustain https://www.sustainweb.org/about/Social Farms and Gardens https://www.farmgarden.org.uk/about-us/what-we-doThe Power of Food theory of change https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oSn8g-b-GlVku9g9TOKoVO0GvxSRSuCy/Living Justice https://livingjustice.earth/projects/
How do we become the change we need to see in the world? What are the actual, practical steps to grounding, connecting and resonating with the world? We're on the brink of cataclysmic change. Knowing this, we have choices: we can either fold into despair, terror, rage…whatever rises up in us as we watch the whole biosphere hurtle towards irrevocable tipping points. Or we can become the change we need to see in the world: each of us. This is a cliché by now, but that doesn't stop it being true. Here are others: we are the people we have been waiting for and if not us, now then who and when? We've been saying these for a long time and if you're listening to this podcast, then you're already on board, at least intellectually. You know there is no going back, that ideology cannot win out over biophysical reality and avoiding ecosystem collapse doesn't just mean moving to regenerative farming or buying second hand clothes or even changing all the narratives of all the world's media systems - good though each of these things would be. But there's been a gap between what we know and how we behave, between where our better selves might push us and the behaviours that are locked into the core of our being, our firmware, if you like. But now - this minute now - we're hitting the buffers where the old paradigm is so obviously not fit for purpose that we need something new. The core questions are what? And how? And this is where we're going with the podcast just now - After Dr John Izzo of the Elders Action Network reminded us of our purpose on the earth, and Andrea Hiott of Waymaking helped us embrace paradox - now we're talking to someone who can help guide us into the embodied reality of a different way of being. Dan McTiernan is a certified Transpersonal Psychology Coach, embodied meditation teacher and breathwork instructor. With is wife Johanna, he's the co-founder of embodied coaching organisation, Earthbound. He hosts the Being Earthbound podcast which is absolutely on my must-listen list, as is the Substack blog from which it arises. He's a facilitator on Alef Trust's Nurturing the Fields of Change programme and is the project leader for the Embodied Permaculture Project - an international 2-year action research project exploring the impacts of holistic wellbeing on outer ecological change work. The first 9 weeks of this programme are about to be released as a self-study course - and by the time this podcast ends, you will want to join up with that - I'll put a link in the show notes as soon as I have one - hopefully before this goes live. He is currently working with Alef Trust and the A Team Foundation to deliver an innovative project supporting farmers and growers in the UK with a programme of embodied wellbeing known as Calmer Farmer which will be launched in January 2025.As you'll hear, Dan is working at the leading edge of the change we need to embody. He has straightforward practices that any of us can do to help us with grounding, attunement, opening and integration so that we can be the nodes in the web of life. This is key people: we need to stop trying to think our way out of this with our head minds. It doesn't work. It's not going to work. We need to come into our physical bodies, find that truly calming place of peace - and then find connections we can trust with the wider web. This is what we're here for. And Dan has routes to get there. For more information about this coaching approach, to book a 1-1 appointment or to find out more about Earthbound's courses and practice group: www.earthbound.fiFor more information about Calmer Farmer: www.calmerfarmer.orgTo read more about Dan's work and to listen to the Being Earthbound podcast: www.beingearthbound.substack.comThe Embodied Permaculture Course is here https://earthbound.fi/embodied-permaculture-course
This week sees the launch of a new book: Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible. The main editors and contributors are friend of the podcast, author, activist and co-founder of the Climate Majority Project, Rupert Read and - new to the podcast - Morgan Philips who is an educator, currently working for Global Action Plan, an environmental charity that mobilises people and organisations to take action on the systems that harm us and our planet. Full disclosure, I'm also a contributor - the book is published by Permanent Publications, the book-publishing arm of the Permaculture Magazine, and Maddy Harland, who edits the magazine and has published the book, brought together the five articles I wrote on Thrutopia: what it is, why we need it and how we get there, and fitted them into the mix. The book launch has been timed to coincide with the end of COP29. At the time of recording, we have no idea how that will go, but if it's like all the previous 28 COPs it will be a triumph of obstructionism and irrelevancy masquerading as action. We might be surprised. We hope we are. But even if the nations who truly understand the magnitude of the meta-crisis somehow manage a worldwide diplomatic miracle and succeed in making it clear that we need total systemic change - we still need guidelines that help us see how this can happen: ideas of what to do at local and national levels, examples of the kinds of deliberate democracies that we'll need to bring everyone on board; templates of how the world can be if we actually bring all our creativity to bear on the single most important issue of our time. This is exactly what this podcast is for - the whole of it - and this particular episode lays out the detail, from the concept of a 6th Mission for the UK government (and any other national government that wants to take it up) to examples of how we might shift our educational focus, to why building flood defences is really not enough, never going to be enough and how we could shift our communities to stop reacting and start…adapting. None of this is easy. We do know this. But we can at least start the important conversations. This is what we're doing here - and we hope you find it inspiring enough to buy the book and read it, give it to your friends, family and colleagues - do whatever it takes to help your local community to find creative, flourishing, inspiring ways to meet the chaos of our world. TrAd book https://www.permanentpublications.co.uk/port/transformative-adaptation/TrAd Collective https://transformative-adaptation.com/Climate Majority Project http://www.climatemajorityproject.com/Climate Majority Complimentary Approach https://climatemajorityproject.com/safer/The Rojava Project https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-democracy/rojava-democracy/Solar farms can be havens of biodiversity https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/solar-farms-biodiversity-pv/Kikaru Komatsu https://sites.google.com/site/kmthkr/home/publications
We are not going back. But how do we go forward now in a world where the old norms are under assault by people who move fast and break everything? How do we find a place of balance and compassion - for ourselves, each other and the More than Human world - so that we can move forward in a way that isn't just a replaying of the old binaries? Our world changed irrevocably with the results of the US election on the 5th of November. On this podcast, we talk a lot about total systemic change and now that change is happening in front of our eyes. Clearly, there is no going back from here. So how do we who care deeply about a flourishing future - who wish there to be a survival of complex life in all its amazing creativity - navigate this new landscape? How do we embrace the polarities and dichotomies of an unpredictable world so that we can embrace the infinite complexity - and unknowability - of the future? This week's guest is someone who has devoted her life to exploring the paradox at the heart of our existence. I first met Andrea Hiott through her 'Love and Philosophy' podcast which has become part of my essential listening list. From the outset, Andrea struck me as someone whose way of viewing life is, if not unique, then definitely exceptional and well worth exploring. As you'll hear, she is someone who throws herself into learning: she can talk with authority on everything from philosophy and phenomenology to neuroscience and ecology and as we speak, she's completing her doctorate, which is called Ecological Orientation. She's an author of various books, including Thinking Small, The long, strange trip of the Volkswagen Beetle, and has long worked on issues of motoring and mobility as a consultant, writer, and ghostwriter. She has appeared in films and TV shows, such as The Bug and Cars that Changed the World. She's been on a whole variety of other podcasts, and has worked extensively for museums, artists, collectors, and agencies. She is also developing the philosophical framework of Waymaking and the practice of Navigability and I have never in my life spoken with someone who has evolved their own philosophy to the extent that they can talk about it in depth and in detail and make so much sense. There's a YouTube where Andrea does exactly this - I've put a link in the show notes. On top of all this, she is founder of the private educational consulting platform, Making Ways and pours her energy into collaborating with other thinkers and creators at the intersection of multiple different philosophical, cognitive and ecological landscapes, so that she can create a deeper, more emergent understanding of the world we live in. We booked this conversation over six months ago and we were not particularly hinging it around the US election. But we recorded this one week to the day after the vote that has so completely changed our world so it would have been impossible not to reflect on this. Andrea is a US citizen, currently living in Europe, so she has a particular set of perspectives - and a capacity to see beyond the polarities that feels particularly useful now. I felt a lot calmer after this conversation than I did going into it and that wasn't all about the pony with colic that put our recording back by a day. So in the hope that this helps you, too, to deepen into this moment of absolute change, https://www.andreahiott.net/https://making-ways.ck.page/profilehttps://www.youtube.com/@waymaking23https://www.youtube.com/@DesirableUnknownhttps://www.facebook.com/TheBugMovieThinking Small Book
How do we all respond to the seismic events of the US election? Specifically, how do those of us over 50 respond? (and how would the younger generations like us to respond)? This is the question of now. It would be hard to discuss anything else, but my guest this week is uniquely placed to address these questions. As you'll hear, John Izzo was once an ordained Minister in a Presbyterian Church. Now, he's a bestselling author, speaker, and thought leader focused on social responsibility. He's a Board Member of the Elders Action Network and the Elders Climate Action group and one of the co-hosts of a podcast called The Way Forward Regenerative Podcast which is expressly aimed at people over 50 who want to explore what it means to be an elder. I met John on that podcast back in the summer and was so impressed with his approach to things. John is a deeply thoughtful, deeply spiritual person who takes his time to look at things from all angles. He's dedicated his entire career to helping individuals and organisations discover purpose and foster meaningful change. He is absolutely committed to exploring the role of elders in creating a regenerative future. And we need this now, more than ever. Originally we had scheduled this week's guest for a recording on the 4th of November. Clearly this wasn't going to be as constructive as a conversation held in the wake of the election, whatever the outcome. And so we rescheduled and spoke together on Thursday 7th, which gave us time to process the results and speak more directly to a future that is unknowable, but not entirely unpredictable. How do we feel? What world do we want to create? How best can we bring alive a flame of hope from the ashes of the old system? These are our questions - a starting point, not an end point and no doubt this conversation will continue for the rest of our lives. This is our truth for now. John's website https://drjohnizzo.comJohn's books https://drjohnizzo.com/books/Elders Action Network https://eldersaction.org/Elders Action Network on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EldersActionNetwork/Elders Action Network on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCMAJFT3jmRlQHnM4p6Rrh7g&ved=2ahUKEwjF-Iq3ubuJAxXRVkEAHZtzH98QFnoECBgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3JK2afgUEPwxIJz-tO0ZRMElders Climate Action https://actionnetwork.org/groups/elders-climate-actionThe Way Forward Regenerative Conversations podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-way-forward-regenerative-conversations/id1651941803
Edit cover photoManda Scott 2.7Kfriends Add to storyEdit profileManda ScottIntroThrutopian Novelist: ANY HUMAN POWER. odcaster @AccidentalGods. Smallholder. Evolutionary economistEdit BioWorks at Self-employedStudied at Schumacher College
If you're over 40, the world you grew up believing in no longer exists. The younger generation approaches the polycrisis with open eyes, striving to find and nurture resilience, to listen to the whispers of synchronicity and let it lead them - and us - to a world that works for all life. Today, we're talking to Elliot Riley. Elliot is an educator, permaculture designer and practitioner working to bring wellbeing, reforestation and perennial food production into schools. Elliot graduated during the pandemic. When he left school, he was planning to join the paratroops, but after what he describes as a 'Thunderbolt moment', he shifted tack and, despite not having the grades, was able to get a place to study history at the New College of Humanities. One pandemic and a degree later, he realised that mainstream education struggles to equip us for the challenges of a changing world. After two years upstream, studying Trauma-Informed Education and permaculture in the Dominican Republic, Elliot returned to his hometown, where he now works at The Saint Leonard's Academy, leading a wellbeing programme called Future Growth, which supports students whilst transforming the community's waste into a regenerative food forest. Through an initiative called OFFSET, Elliot's working to spread the mission further.Elliot's Patreon Page for OFFSET https://www.patreon.com/offsetfoodforests/about/Elliot's instagram account for OFFSET food forest: https://www.instagram.com/offset_food_forests/The One World Orchestra's first single https://open.spotify.com/album/62UZvSNV1gtBXdqLQLdfrw?si=WIdwzar_RvivoA-P3dBiAThe Human Hive https://www.thehumanhive.org/our-storyVaughan Wilkins and links to his PhD thesis on the Zoochosis of humanity https://www.vaughanwilkins.com/thesis Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/enrol/
How does an understanding of what makes dogs tick, help us to understand ourselves and our place in the world? What does it take to feel safe - as a human, or as a dog (or cat, or horse, or... anything)? And how can we help ourselves and each other find regulation in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous)?Andrew Hale is a Certified Animal Behaviourist who specialises in working complex behaviour cases, especially those involving 'Reactivity and Aggression.' Look around you at the world. Look at the news. What two words best describe the nature of our local, national and geo-political processes? Andrew is one of those remarkable people committed to a Dog Centred Care approach, working with empathy and compassion to understand why any being is behaving in this way. His focus is on dogs, but what we're learning - and the reason I have invited Andrew onto the podcast - is that all the theories of secure or ruptured attachment, of the need for autonomy, agency, confidence and safety, apply in dogs as much as they do in people -or indeed, any sentient being. This conversation dives deep into trauma (or at least, trauma responses), our capacity for secure attachment in the modern world, our parenting skills, our skills as people who choose to share our lives with other animals - and ultimately, our skills in helping ourselves cope with a culture that's increasingly going off the rails. It's not about to get any better, either. So the more we can find our own stability, the more we can help others. Which is what this episode is all about. Relax, get yourself a cup of tea and let's explore what really makes us tick. Dog Centered Care https://dogcc.org/Dog Centered Care TV on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DogCentredCare/videosDog Centered Care Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/dogccCandace Pert Molecules of Emotion https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/molecules-of-emotion-why-you-feel-the-way-you-feel-candace-pert/355476Attachment and Bonding in dogs and people https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4348122/
How can we achieve total systemic change? And are there politicians anywhere who are ready to make it happen (in a way that supports the continuation of complex life on this planet, not the scorched-earth destruction of the right)?The short answer is that yes, there are people deeply embedded in politics who know how dire things are and that we need urgent change. One of these is Natale Bennett, former Green Party leader and now Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, one of two Green Party members of the UK's House of Lords. She is also the author of the book Change Everything: How We Can Rethink, Repair and Rebuild Society, which was published by UnBound in 2024.Her thesis is that what has been called political common sense over recent decades—that greed is good, inequality doesn't matter and we can keep treating the planet as a mine and a dumping ground—has been a recipe for disaster. The ideology of neoliberalism has delivered poverty and destruction, with a few benefiting while the rest of us pay. We need urgent change - and we have the routes to do it. Many ideas and arguments in this book have been inspired by the people she has met around the UK. Every idea in it has been road-tested, honed by interaction. We can only get through this dangerous stage by relying on the collective ingenuity, talents and creativity of millions of people, all empowered to “do politics”. This book aims to synthesise the voices Natalie has heard and read –and encourage them to step forward. They collectively represent true common sense.That's why she chose to publish it with Unbound using crowdfunding. You can order it through them, or it should be in your local bookstore. YouTube Introduction to Natalie's book https://youtu.be/US7EaCHR0ZsOther links of things we mentionedPlanetary Health Checks https://www.planetaryhealthcheck.org/Florida Congressional Race - details of where you can support this are in the blog https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/15/2275160/-Hard-evidence-that-having-a-candidate-in-every-district-makes-a-big-differenceThe Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity-david-graeber/5715204?ean=9780141991061Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/bullshit-jobs-the-rise-of-pointless-work-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-david-graeber/2523934?ean=9780141983479Christian Felber's book, also called Change Everything, exploring the Economy for the Common Good https://christian-felber.at/en/books/change-everything/
We know we need to shift from our Trauma Culture to a resilient, connected Initiation Culture where we can open our heart-minds to the Web of Life, ask 'What do you Want of Me?' and respond to the answers in realtime, with flexibility, authenticity and a grounded awareness of our place in the huge complex system of the More than Human World. Knowing this, and being able to do it are two different things. But it's possible, and our guest this week is someone who walks this path with enormous grace and huge integrity.Cynthia Jurs met her root teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the early 1980s, and in 1994 received his transmission of Dharmacharya, becoming a teacher in his tradition, the Order of Interbeing. In 1990 she traveled to a remote cave, 13,000 feet up in the mountains of Nepal to meet the 106-year-old Lama Kushok Mangden Rinpoche, from whom she received an assignment - she was to engage with an ancient tradition of Earth Treasure Vases - that's our English transliteration. The actual translation is 'vessels giving life-essence to the earth'. And so she did. She received these small pottery vessels and has spent the past 34 years making pilgrimages around the world to engage in sacred practice with local communities, gathering prayers and whatever is sacred to the people of the land she is in, as an offering to be interred with these vessels in the earth. There have been three generations of vases, and there may be a fourth so that in the end, there are 108 of them. The practice is still on-going and engages people all around the world. In 2018 she was given the honorary title of Lama at Tolu Tharling Gompa in Nepal by Ngawang Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche. She has written of her experiences in a book, 'Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing our World,' and if you're interested at all in how we can connect with the web of life, I absolutely encourage you to read it. These days, inspired by her years of service and connection with others who care, Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia—a path deeply rooted in the feminine, honouring indigenous cultures, and devoted to collective awakening. If you want to join her, Cynthia leads meditations, retreats, courses, and pilgrimages to support the emergence of a global community of engaged and embodied sacred activists. You can find her offerings and join the global healing community at: www.GaiaMandala.net and there is more about her book at https://www.summonedbytheearth.org/Her book is here: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/summoned-by-the-earth-becoming-a-holy-vessel-for-healing-our-world-cynthia-jurs/7556979?ean=9781632261328
Our two guests this week are deeply embedded in the creation of Tiny Homes as a way for us meet the needs of all within the bounds of the living planet. Both are living absolutely at that sharp, bright edge of inter-becoming from which our more flourishing future will emerge. Rachel Butler is the founder of Tiny House Community Bristol, Chair of Bristol Community Land Trust and is a member of Bristol's One City Homes & Communities board. Her root mission is within systems change/paradigm shift: to re-common as much land as practicable, enabling as many people as possible to move back onto and reconnect with this land, by co-creating and co-residing in Tiny House Regenerative Settlements. She believes that, at this critical time of human-created poly crisis, as the current system collapses and composts, it's also time for the human species to rejoin the web of life, in sacred reciprocity; healing our relationships to self, each other and community; not only human, but of all beings and kinds.Maddy Longhurst is a director of Tiny House Community Bristol alongside Rachel and, for the last 4-5 years has been helping to create their Tiny House development in Sea Mills, Bristol, as well as another small tiny house community off the radar. Since having to leave her rented home this August, she and her daughter have decided to exit the mainstream housing system so as to no longer be subject to its unethical, exploitative ways, but to live, for now, in the fertile margins until their tinies are created. She's UK coordinator of the Urban Agriculture Consortium, weaving relationships between people working in the urban and peri-urban agroecological transition. She is also Studio Coordinator for Constructivist, a regenerative design school for built environment professionals, and part of the Strategy circle for Bristol Commons. Some of her current areas of work are on Reimagining the Greenbelt as a place for regenerative settlements, prototyping Landed Community Kitchens and developing a model for Tiny Homes for land regenerators in the city. As you can imagine, our conversation ranged from how grinding bureaucracy so often gets in the way of genuinely restorative, regenerative practice, to the philosophy and practices that are the foundations of the change we need to see in the world. We explored the actual social technologies that moved things forward and learned of two workshops that sound totally transformative. Since recording, it's become apparent that the one in Bristol with El Juego is not really open to other participants, which is sad, but I have no doubt they'll be back - and that Maddy and Rachel will be able to engage with the teaching and bring it into life here and elsewhere. I've put links in the show notes to the Fearless Cities event in Sheffield on the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd of November. If I go, I swear I'll be at a microphone in time for the Ask Me Anything Gathering in the Accidental Gods membership that day. This is also a good time to remind you that Dreaming your Death Awake is on the last Sunday of October, 27th from 4-8pm UK time. It's on Zoom and anyone can come. Tiny House Community on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/tiny-house-community-bristol-ltd/ https://www.tinyhousecommunitybristol.org - this is the Tiny House Community Bristol website - please have a look at the Sea Mills page where you can see and support their planning applicationThe THCB Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/364360747248042/THCB Instagram @tinyhousecommunitybristolOther related sites of interest: https://www.bristolclt.co.ukhttps://wecanmake.org/https://thebristolcommons.org/https://www.bristolonecity.com/https://www.in-abundance.org/https://coexistuk.org/https://www.urbanagriculture.org.uk/https://www.fearlesscities.com/https://www.fearlesscitiessy.org/https://eljuego.community/El Juego Tour details here: https://eljuego.community/tour-reino-unido/https://www.regenerativesettlement.comhttps://www.agroecologicalurbanism.org/building-blockshttps://www.urbanagriculture.org.uk/ongoing-projects/fringe-farming/for those interested in policy around community led housing (CLH): Bristol's CLH policy page https://www.bristol.gov.uk/council/policies-plans-and-strategies/housing/community-led-housing-policiesAlso maybe this for great examples of tiny homes around the world: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoNTMWgGuXtGPLv9UeJZwBwAlso another progressive 'compact homes' policy https://www.teignbridge.gov.uk/planning/custom-and-self-build/compact-homes/defining-compact-homes/Accidental Gods Online Gathering: Dreaming Your Death Awake online Gathering 27th October 4pm - 8pm UK time https://accidentalgods.life/dreaming-your-death-awake/
How do we move beyond our myopic focus on carbon/CO2 as the index of our harms to the world? What can we do to heal the whole biosphere? And what role is played by water-as-verb, forest-as-verb, ocean-as-verb? This week's guest is an environmental journalist and author who has answers to all of these questions - and more. Judith Schwartz is an author who tells stories to explore and illuminate scientific concepts and cultural nuance. She takes a clear-eyed look at global environmental, economic, and social challenges, and finds insights and solutions in natural systems. She writes for numerous publications, including The Guardian and Scientific American and her first two books are music to our regenerative ears. The first is called 'Cows Save the Planet' and the next is 'Water in Plan Sight'. Her latest, “The Reindeer Chronicles”, was long listed for the Wainwright Prize and is an astonishingly uplifting exploration of what committed people are achieving as they dedicate themselves to earth repair, water repair and human repair. Judith was recently at the 'Embracing Nature's Complexity' conference, organised by the Biotic Pump Greening Group which offers revolutionary new insights into eco-hydro-climatological landscape restoration. She's a contributor to the new book, 'What if we Get it Right?' edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, who was one of the editors of All We can Save.Judith has been described as 'one of ecology's most indispensable writers' and when you read her work, you'll understand the magnificent depth and breadth of her insight into who we are and how we can help the world to heal. Judith's website https://www.judithdschwartz.com/Do The Impossible website https://www.dotheimpossible.earth/Embracing Nature's Complexity Conference https://www.thebioticpump.com/tum-ias-conference-2024Judith's paper at the conference https://bioticregulation.ru/conf2024/Judith-Schwartz.pdfBook - What if we get it right? https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-If-We-Get-Right-ebook/dp/B0BPX5GWP8
How do we build the local futures we all know we need? What does it actually take to become a good enough ancestor? Or even the best ancestor we can be? Our guest this week, Helena Norberg-Hodge, has given her life to exploring the answers, and helping birth them into being. Helena Norberg-Hodge is one of the Elders of our culture. She's a linguist, author and filmmaker, and the founder and director of the international non-profit group Local Futures, in which role, she has initiated localization movements on every continent, and has launched both the International Alliance for Localization (IAL) and World Localization Day (WLD). She's a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of the Alternative Nobel prize, the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, and Local is Our Future (2019), and producer of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness. Almost fifty years since her journey began in Ladakh, Helena is still collaborating with thought-leaders, activists and community groups across the globe which gives her a uniquely rounded insight into howour local futures could look and feel - and the routes to getting there. I've known Helena since I was at Schumacher college - I rented a room in her house for a while, so we know each other well and I was able to press her in ways I wouldn't normally feel able to do with a podcast guest, so we could drill down into the details of her ideas for a different way of being. At heart, we need to get rid of global trade and move back to a localist economy based in sufficiency. The devil is in the detail, obviously, but if we have an idea of where we're going, we stand more chance of getting there. So I hope this inspires you to action. Please do follow up some of the links - and definitely watch this new film: Closer to Home - the vision it offers of a generative, working local future is beautiful. Helena's website https://www.helenanorberghodge.com/Local Futures https://localfutures.orgWorld Localisation Day https://worldlocalisationday.orgFilm: Closer to Home: Voices of Hope in a Time of Crisis (YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJBWvUEZ-50Helena's book Ancient Futures https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ancient-futures-learning-from-ladakh-helena-norberg-hodge-hodge/2771495?ean=9780712606561Book Local is our Future: Stepping into an Economics of Happiness https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/local-is-our-future-steps-to-an-economics-of-happiness-helena-norberg-hodge/7409197?ean=9781732980402
Here is an Autumn Equinox Meditation to help set you up for the shift from the long days to the long nights. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, there's a Spring Equinox Meditation here.
This is our regular September bonus episode - a brief look at where we're at - how I (Manda) see things just now as we head deeper into the moment of transformation.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
