Emerging Future Podcast

Nature-based soul-guide, Rev. Matt Syrdal, is re-wilding what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt says, “there is a constellation of relationships with the more-than-human world in which our sense of self-hood, community, and myth emerges from a deep conversation that is always happening around us. This 'window of the imagination,' is the way of co-participating and co-creating through our imaginal sense in a conversation with another that can’t speak (nature).” Nature is both the context and that which holds the wisdom to reveal one’s soul, which Matt explains is a realm of itself. Matt says the soul realm has nothing to do with primary relationships or vocation, is not culturally constructed, is completely beneath language, and is the place of connection with one’s own deeper mythos. Matt is studying with Bill Plotkin in The Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) at the Animas Valley Institute, a program designed for those called by Mystery to learn, co-develop, and implement an authentic, contemporary, Western, nature-based path to soul initiation. This path is marked by a descent into the underworld. This journey of descent is far from common in our Western, ascent-orientated culture. In this conversation Matt talks about why this work is vital to developing initiated adults in our patho-adolescent society, and helps develop elders and ultimately healthy communities. All this requires soul-centric development and an eco-centric consciousness.

Dr. Randy Woodley is a Keetoowah Cherokee teacher, songwriter, poet, activist, former pastor, missiologist and historian. He is a lover of plants and lives with his wife, Edith, co-sustaining the Elohah farm in the Willemette Valley in Newberg, Oregon where they utilize and teach principles of Permaculture, Biomimicry and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (TIK). Eloheh Farm seeks to be a model of regenerative agricultural and animal husbandry systems that support human needs while improving the earth and all creation inhabiting the web of life. We desire to live in harmony with the land. "Eloheh" is a Cherokee Indian word representing "harmony, balance, well-being and abundance. Those are just a few of the attributes of the Indigenous Worldview, which Randy says is a necessary worldview for getting where we want to go in this time of ecological disaster.

International best-selling author, speaker, and engaged citizen, David Korten, is a living embodiment of curiosity, compassion and courage, whose wisdom comes from many years of exploration and experience. In early adulthood David devoted his career to ending poverty. Later after holding a faculty position at Harvard he made a permanent break with academia which he says was the most intellectually liberating decision of his life. Fast forward a couple decades after being employed by the foreign aid establishment living and working in Africa , Latin America, and Asia, David completely defected from the establishment after recognizing the captivity foreign aid was actually creating. Eventually, David came to see the connection between the social and environmental devastation he was witnessing abroad and the economic policies practiced and advanced by the United States through its foreign policy, use of military power, and corporate reach. Finally embracing an Earth Centered Living Systems Frame David has since devoted his professional life to applying the lessons of life’s self-organizing evolutionary journey to the quest to displace a global corporate-driven money-seeking suicide economy with a life-serving living Earth economy. David says, “The key to the human future resides in a simple truth that resides in most every human heart. We are living beings born of and nurtured by a living Earth.” International best seller, When Corporations Rule the World is David’s seminal work, In this conversation David and I discuss his most recent book, Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth; David says, quote. "We will prosper in the pursuit of life, or we will perish in the pursuit of money. The choice is ours."

Activist Reverend Bianca Davis-Lovelace on The Poor People’s Campaign, a National Call for a Moral Revival Activist Reverend Bianca R. Davis-Lovelace is on a mission to fight on behalf of the marginalized, oppressed, and poor against systemic inequalities and injustices. Raised on the South Side of Chicago in a working class family, she learned to serve justice from her mother, a Chicago Police officer, and to love God from her father, a Baptist pastor. Reverend Bianca found her calling to activism in her twenties and grounded herself in that purpose by becoming a master of divinity. Among the many titles Reverend Bianca carries, she is Tri-Chair of the Washington State Chapter of The Poor People’s Campaign, a National Call for a Moral Revival, which is uniting tens of thousands of people across the United States to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality. The Poor People’s Campaign is reviving Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign of the same name exactly 50 years since 1968, when Dr. King was assassinated. Now 2018, 50 years later, beset by deepening poverty, expansive ecocide, systemic racism, and an economy harnessed to seemingly endless war, “The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” likewise beckons our nation to higher ground. With a modernized playing field, in the midst of a digital revolution, ubiquitous internet phone connectivity and social media combined with a keen sense of distributed organizational structure and resilience, Reverend Bianca is confident that the campaign will be effective in boldly carrying Dr. King’s anthem forward, changing the narrative, and making lasting change at the intersection of today’s deepest injustices. This conversation serves as part one of a two-part series on Reverend Bianca and the Poor People’s Campaign.

Author and integrator, Jeremy Lent, investigates the patterns of thought that have led our civilization to its current crisis of sustainability. In his book, The Patterning Instinct, Jeremy covers a vast expanse of territory. In time: from the dawn of homo sapiens to the present day and possibilities for our future. In geography: across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In ideas: investigating key questions about who we are.. and where we're headed. The themes of Jeremy’s book and our discussion include: Culture, Values, History: How culture shapes values, values shape history, and asks the question, “How will our values shape the future?” Human Nature: What is our true nature? The answer may shape humanity’s destiny. Science and Religion: The battle between science and religion is ultimately a false choice. Jeremy explains why. Power and Exploitation: The mindset of the Scientific Revolution also spawned genocides and environmental havoc. What made it unique in history? Consumer Society: Our rampant consumerism is ransacking the earth. What are its root causes? The Future: Is humanity headed for collapse? For techno-utopia? Or something entirely different? In this conversation, Jeremy addresses each of these themes with eloquence, humility, and heart.

Gayle Karen Young Whyte is a technologist, human rights advocate, leadership, adult and organizational development expert, and the former chief Talent and Culture Officer at Wikimedia. She consults senior leaders on personal development, organizational culture, and helps them be able for complexity. Gayle was in the process of becoming a monk when she became an executive, taking on the challenging role of Chief Talent and Culture Officer with Wikimedia, a global movement with a mission to bring free educational content to the world. Wikimedia’s most well known project, Wikipedia, which we all know as the free online encyclopedia and use frequently, grew to 100k volunteer contributors and 500m visitors/mo while she was in leadership. This endeavor and the business world became her spiritual practice ground. Gayle says, ”Working with culture is like understanding the role of dark matter in the universe—it’s everywhere, it’s influential, yet impossible to detect with the naked eye. If you want to understand the universe or want to deliver on a mission, you must mind this invisible force.” Gayle is the wife of the globally renowned poet, David Whyte, who is also a master conversationalist, so Gayle is well practiced in the art of conversation and brings elegance, humor, heart, and soul to this exchange.

Dr. Stephen Micheal Newby is six generations removed from his ancestor and namesake, Michael, an enslaved African man who likely survived the horrific conditions of the Middle Passage, only to arrive at The Newby Plantation in Jones County, Georgia, to a new life… a living hell. We now know that Michael, and the enslaved people, used music and rhythm to not only communicate to each other and form a new identity when they had been stripped of everything, but also used music to ultimately escape to freedom in the north. Generations later, the ghost of Michael is rising. The ghosts of the enslaved people that were stolen to build the Empire that is America are rising and demanding lamentation. If you honestly look at the past, our country was built off of stolen people and stolen land, and that domination paradigm that oppresses people and the earth is still the driving force behind our American culture and systems. It is this precise reason that Stephen is writing a symphony, the highest form of musical art in the European culture, to create the musical space that is required to enter into deep lamentation and remembering of our horrific past, and abiding peace, hope, and love that is pulling us forward into the future. Stephen describes the power of music, the connection between voice and the soul, and the experience of harmonizing with others as parts of the way forward as a culture. But, he articulates, that we must lament our past in order to experience the bottomless hope that resides on the other side of examination, reconciliation, and renewal for humanity. Dr. Stephen Michael Newby is an accomplished composer, gospel/jazz vocalist, and worship leader, and his work has been performed by many well-known symphonies and orchestras that have earned him numerous awards and grants. In addition to directing the Center for Worship, Dr. Newby serves as director of the SPU Gospel Choir and the Worship Arts Ensemble.

Christiane Seuhs-Schoeller is a purpose agent. She has architected her life to support work and her purpose, which is: “The manifestation of love in the work we do in the world.” She is energizing her purpose through her roles at a number of for-purpose enterprises that she has co-founded, Encode.org, which liberates purposeful work and Evolution at Work, which focuses on discovering and enabling pathways to wholeness in the workplace. She is also a master Holacracy coach! Recently Christiane intentionally left her home in Vienna to fully embrace her work by "going nomad," which means she no longer has a home that she returns to after her trips. Instead, she listens and responds to where her purpose is needed most…next. She came through Seattle on her way to Japan to lead a workshop on the Language of Spaces, a tension-processing framework for organizations that are deliberately developmental and evolutionary. Christiane is a beacon of love and hope and brings warmth and generativity to the people and spaces she inhabits. I hope this conversation enables us all to manifest love in the work we do in the world!

Matthias Roberts is Christian and Gay. To many people these categories don’t mix. To Matthias, these aren’t categories. This is simply who he is, a gay Christian man who has not only found the courage to name that as his identity, but also to be a leader and example for everyone who identifies as LGBTQ and is pursuing faith. Matthias’s driving question is “What does it mean to be a queer person of faith? 
 Matthias is a podcaster. He hosts Queerology, a weekly podcast where he interviews queer people of faith. He blogs on this subject and is working on two different books. He recently graduated with a masters degree in Theology and Culture and is in his final year in getting his masters in Counseling at the Seattle School of Theology and psychology. Matthias is a brave soul working on healing those that have been harmed by narrow religious beliefs and helping encourage a sense of infinite belonging to themselves, their identities, and their faith.

#1 International best-selling author of Compassionate Capitalism, Blaine Bartlett, joins me on the Emerging Future Podcast. The title, Compassionate Capitalism, is intentionally an oxy moron because compassion is far from a central core value in the world of business. Blaine makes a case for why compassion is the essential antidote to widespread greed, accumulation, consumerism, and planetary destruction. By embracing compassion, Blaine says we can move our reality towards what we truly want...flourishing of all life on the planet. As you quickly discover from our conversation, Blaine's work is not compartmentalized to the business world. Although he travels globally consulting with multi-nationals, Blaine offers a deeply personal vision for the future that can be practiced and realized today, one that enables individuals, society, and the planet an opportunity to thrive. Our exchange was held on Blaine's back patio overlooking the Salish Sea and the Straight of Juan de Fuca, the body of water separating the U.S and Canada. It was the ideal setting to have this conversation as much of his work draws wisdom from the natural world. He offered his home, which he aptly named Avatar, as a retreat center for many years before moving there full time with his wife, Cynthia. An Avatar is a physical manifestation of an idea, much like any business at it's conception. Blaine once dreamed of his home, and he imagined it into reality. This is a core philosophy of Blaine's work. In his book, Compassionate Capitalism, which he co-authored with David Meltzer, he paints a vibrant picture of what the future of capitalism could be if approach it with compassion, which ultimately brings the heart and soul back into business. The idea of imagining our desired future into our current reality is integral to the purpose of the Emerging Future Podcast, which is to learn and embody wisdom from the curious, compassionate, and courageous co-creators of our desired and emerging Future.

Michael Preston is a Master Waldorf Teacher. I consider him a Wisdom Elder, someone who has lived a life of curiosity and authenticity, and in doing so has learned much about the deeper insights and wisdom that life makes available to us. And I’m deeply grateful that he taught my son's class from 1st grade through 3rd grade before retiring. At a young age, while pursuing his teaching degree, Michael was introduced to the work of Rudolph Steiner and Waldorf education. That was followed by a series of synchronistic events that gave him the inner assurance to pursue his life's work as a Waldorf educator. He left his home in New Zealand at age 17, hitchhiked across Australia with a few dollars in his pocket, convinced the Head of Waldorf teacher training in England through a series of letters that he was ready and committed to Waldorf training, and then eventually made it to Emerson College in Sussex, England to begin his vocational studies. In this conversation Michael reflects on his journey and eloquently provides context, educational philosophy, and depth in regards to Waldorf education. He reveals his love for humanity, particularly children, by telling his own story of development and search for a meaningful way forward. Michael has committed his life to training children to be whole humans, capable of moving through the world with intellectual inquisitiveness, compassion, and through socialization and play. His love for education is grounded in a doctorate in philosophy of education, which makes this a colorful and poetic conversation. Michael is also an accomplished ukulele player and recorder player. He has published numerous books on learning ukulele and will be releasing a recorder book to assist Waldorf educators in teaching recorder. Michael has directly influenced me personally and my family as a whole. His thoughtfulness and caring approach to life has been imprinted on our family for ever. The subject matter that Michael and I discuss in this conversation includes: Waldorf education The impact of technology on children Screens as the modern form of transportation Rudolph Steiner Anthroposophical Medicine Anthroposophical Society Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Primacy of Perception

[Unedited] More of Robert's Story... Robert's story of becoming an astrophysicist and studying at Princeton Robert's journey of sustainability Robert's first home made telescope Robert's hand-built sustainable house in Sequim, WA The start of In Context Magazine and the global network of authors Robert's journey through the dark night of the soul, suddenly and traumatically losing his wife and becoming a single parent Synopsis: Dr. Robert Gilman is a man of man talents. As a Princeton-trained astrophysicist, sustainability pioneer, engaged citizen, and cultural change catalyst, he is adept at making sense of complexity and discerning the signal from the noise in most territories of life. He founded the Context Institute in the 70s to explore more sustainable ways of living, and is now on a mission to create a global community of empowered change agents to help make a more graceful transition from the Empire Era to the Planetary Era (he explains those eras in the podcast) more graceful. This requires understanding and embodying what he calls the 3 harmonies: The harmony within ourselves The harmony others The harmony with nature In his course, Bright Future Now, Robert facilities quarterly cohorts who meet virtually for six weeks to start learning and practicing the 3 harmonies, gain tools for the journey and a better understanding of our cultural context within this transition time. As a recent graduate of the course I can’t recommend it enough. Not a day goes by where I don’t incorporate the content in my thinking and doing. Check out Context.org to learn more about Robert and the Context Institute’s community of cultural change agents.

Dr. Robert Gilman is a man of many talents. As a Princeton-trained astrophysicist, sustainability pioneer, engaged citizen, and cultural change catalyst, he is adept at making sense of complexity and discerning the signal from the noise in most territories of life. He founded the Context Institute in the 70s to explore more sustainable ways of living, and is now on a mission to create a global community of empowered change agents to help make a more graceful transition from the Empire Era to the Planetary Era (he explains those eras in the podcast) more graceful. This requires understanding and embodying what he calls the 3 harmonies: The harmony within ourselves The harmony others The harmony with nature In his course, Bright Future Now, Robert facilities quarterly cohorts who meet virtually for six weeks to start learning and practicing the 3 harmonies, gain tools for the journey and a better understanding of our cultural context within this transition time. As a recent graduate of the course I can’t recommend it enough. Not a day goes by where I don’t incorporate the content in my thinking and doing. Check out Context.org to learn more about Robert and the Context Institute’s community of cultural change agents.

Imagine if work was a contemplative practice...if work was a way to practice becoming more of yourself, to learn, to share, to collaborate, and to ultimately become more human. This is how Tom Thomison works. For well over a decade he has been on a quest to breakdown the employer/employee divide and create a new way of working that fosters all of these things by creating structures that revolve around purpose. The current default hierarchical structure of organizing has reached its limits. Tom is introducing a complete replacement to hierarchy...a holarchy. Based on the principles of Holacracy, Tom is pioneering a new way of working, and in this conversation, Tom articulates how his most recent endeavor, Encode.org, is revolutionizing the way work gets done. A seasoned entrepreneur and business builder with more than 30 years of experience, Tom is a recognized leader in self-organization practices and methods. In 2007, he co-founded HolacracyOne, LLC to further develop and mature Holacracy®, now a gold-standard replacement for conventional management hierarchies. Tom is currently a Founding Member and Partner at encode.org, an organization focused on the creation of necessary legal, financial and social structures to further support self-organization and the new world of work.

Pat Wright is a global musical legend. Growing up in Carthage, Texas, she started singing at age three in her father's church. After making her way to Seattle, she lived further into her calling as a singer and choir director and started the Total Gospel Experience Choir. Overcoming many challenges, Pat and her choir traveled the globe singing to diverse audiences sharing the heart and soul of gospel music. Pat Wright has sung, performed, and recorded with some of the world's most famous artists like Dave Matthews, Ray Charles, Michael Bolton, Pete Seeger, and Jimi Hendrix. She has sung for President Carter, President Clinton, and President Obama. She has been nicknamed "The Idol-breeder" because of the three Total Experience Gospel Choir members that have been participants on the hit TV show, American Idol. She is a frequent national anthem singer at many professional sporting events including the NBA, MLB, NFL, and MLS. The list goes on... Her passion for singing runs deep, and her love for God and humanity runs even deeper. In this conversation you'll get to hear from an authentic and honest Pat Wright, who shares her struggles and triumphs with grace and humility, and with fire and grit. As a women she found herself immersed in a patriarchal Black Church community that limited her and the choir's potential to share their gift. This ultimately lead to a more expansive journey, one that took the choir to 28 countries and 38 states impacting countless lives the world-over. There is something extremely unique and profound about Pat Wright's gift. She's not just a singer and a director. She is a conduit for love, justice and pace, and brings it all to and through her choir with the purpose of sharing it freely with the world. Pat's voice leading the Total Experience Gospel Choir is not something that can be explained or simply heard— it is something that must be experienced, and for me and many others, it has been truly transformative!

In this episode I share personal reflections about my understanding of the emerging future and what is required to flourish within the transition from and Empire Era to a Planetary Era. Today was a difficult day, and out of it emerged a sign, an omen, and a wisdom that carried depth and meaning that I'd like to share. This episode is unique because it’s my first Emerging Future Podcast without more than two people. However, It was prompted by my wife’s nudging, and she is 100% right…all the time. I hope you find some shared humanity in this story and can glean a better idea about me as a person as well as reflect about your own path. Please don’t hesitate to reach out or make comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

"We all have the capacity to have our fire kindled on behalf of the welfare of others and our own." -Sharon Daloz Parks Sharon was in grade school when she first imbibed an image of a shared commons.  Her mother made a rule that everyone in her class would get a birthday invitation because it was the right thing to do.  Years later Sharon would find herself exploring similar values on a larger scale as a Professor at Harvard.  She looked at faith as meaning-making, something that all human beings do, not just what religious folks have. This exploration lead to a collaboration with her now husband, Larry Daloz Parks and Cheryl and James Keen, to co-author the book Common Fire, an artfully crafted analysis of inspired lives that gets to the very primal dimensions of where our collective well-being is dependent... The Commons. Sharon describes the commons as, "a shared life within a manageable frame."  When referencing physical space, these are places where we all come together, either planned or unplanned, as ourselves, and are vital for a vibrant society.  The modern commons takes many shapes and forms.  It may look like Starbucks, a park, a baseball game, or a market.  Common Fire explains how integral these spaces are in creating a flourishing society because they create a sense of trust and a framework for understanding Other.  These outer landscapes are essential to developing the inner landscapes and capacities required for humanity to lead within complexity on behalf of the collective well-being of others.  However, this elemental, place-making, soul-shaping fabric of human society is at a premium in the world today, and it is creating a deep hunger to recover and reimagine the new commons. Although Common Fire was first published in 1996, it carries enormous relevance today as the velocity of change has accelerated leaving us with a gap in responsiveness, understanding and direction.  What Sharon articulates so elegantly truly gets to the core of what The Emerging Future Podcast is about: being present and courageous enough to lean into the complexity and unknown of the gap, and to wait expectantly for transformative moments that surprise us, and give us a deep sense of where we are and what's needed to move forward on behalf of Other and the future.

"Graphene is the most unusual and potentially the most valuable material on the planet." -Andrew Himes Andrew Himes, author, internet pioneer, and imagineer is now the Director of Network Orchestration for The Carbon Trifecta, a new non-profit initiative that uses CO2 as the path to a global sustainable economy.  You heard that right, it uses CO2 (carbon dioxide), which is currently the primary human cause for global warming and ocean acidification, by sequestering it in the form of graphene which can be used to create nearly every product known to man...only better. The Trifecta represents their 3-fold plan to: 1. Capture gigatons of CO2 before (and after) it enters the atmosphere. 2. Turn carbon-based businesses into allies, processing the CO2 into valuable graphene. 3. Accelerate market demand for graphene via 3D printing. The Carbon Trifecta is working to partner with researchers, CO2 emitters like coal fire generating plants, and pioneering 3D printers to help everyone involved focus on the CO2 opportunity and gain an understanding of the possibility of this path to global sustainability. The vision of the Trifecta can be realized by: -Using carbon dioxide that would otherwise be contributing to global warming and ocean acidification, to: -Address the increasing burden on the world's base materials caused by a transition to an advanced global economy, -By enabling the remarkable capabilities of computer software and 3D printing to deliver profoundly efficient, beautiful and locallymade materials and products - and by introducing graphene into 3D printing as a path for converting this technology into a manufacturing platform capable of delivering complex materials despite a limited number of jets. Having been discovered merely a decade ago, graphene is relatively new in our consciousness.  It is nothing short of a miracle material being both the strongest and most thermally conductive material known to man.  But it doesn't end there.  It is also extremely flexible, thin, lightweight and transparent.  It can be used to build nearly every physical thing we produce from clothes to buildings to computers, and can also filter salt water into fresh drinking water.   If the Carbon Trifecta initiative works, life on planet earth will change drastically.  We will essentially be able to build everything we need, locally, with zero negative effect on the environment by using additive manufacturing.  In other words it will be the end of the era of extraction of all of our precious and limited natural resources and the end of human-caused CO2 emissions causing global warming. In this conversation, Andrew not only talks about this innovative and valiant endeavor to save the planet, but he also offers his heart of compassion.  In fact, Andrew recently delivered the keynote address at the Eighth Worldwide Meeting on Human Values in Monterey, Mexico, where he unveiled what he calls his Grand Unified Theory of Compassion. Andrew's Grand Unified Theory of Compassion says that awareness multiplied by compassionate action times the power of networks yields the result of a flourishing world. "I wanted to describe compassion systematically — not just as a vague sentiment or a nice feeling — but as something measurable, replicable, structurally necessary." - Andrew Himes This theory is what drives Andrew's work and lives at the heart of the Carbon Trifecta initiative.  Be sure to share this episode with your networks.  The one ask that Andrew had from us is that we help get the word out to enable the Carbon Trifecta to become a real global story that people are conscious of, excited about, and committed to exploring on behalf of humanity and planet earth.

"My customers are students. Not parents. Not the board." — Raj Manhas Raj Manhas was born in a dusty village in a displaced family in northern India. His grandmother taught him compassion at a very young, and that became Raj's through-line for approaching life. He worked hard in school and on the family farm and eventually made his way to the U.S. as an engineering student at the University of Washington. From there, Raj's story took a series of random and unexpected transitions that lead him to the highest roles in public education as the Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools overseeing 8,000 employees. He also served as Executive Director for Seeds of Compassion, a series of events over four days when His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and other influential thinkers including well known brain and social scientists came together for an unprecedented five-day gathering in Seattle to engage the community in an in-depth conversation on compassion. 150,000 attended various events organized by Seeds of Compassion, and 44 million interacted with the Seeds of Compassion online broadcast. Raj doubled down on compassion in his final role as Superintendent of North Thurston Public Schools. By forming a culture around the whole child, the district made significant headway on increasing student performance and decreasing disciplinary issues by focusing on the social and emotional skills in addition to academics. He also persuaded local voters to approve a 20-year $175 million bond measure to remodel five schools and build a new middle school. Compassion became infectious and everyone from bus-drivers to teachers to students were swept up in the movement, which eventually expanded to the city's Chamber of Commerce. This created an opportunity for businesses to sign on as compassionate businesses. Now retired, Raj has time to reflect on his journey and where he might exude compassion next.

Tarik Abdullah, aka Chef Tarik, found his purpose at a young age, "Feed the People. Teach the Kids." This lead Tarik to learn his craft everywhere from the restaurant kitchens of Seattle to the poorest neighborhoods in L.A. His love for food ran just as deep as his love for kids, and Tarik found a way to bring children into his own learning process, effectively passing on his knowledge of food and cooking to the next generation while he was learning. Underneath Tarik's vocation as a chef is a deep passion, drive, and heart for creating authentic community. It's not surprising when you hear about his upbringing in Seattle's Central District where he experienced a rich, black cultural community, a deep Muslim faith tradition, and a diverse neighborhood that introduced him to foods from all over the globe and taught him the importance of saying "hello" to people on the street. Following his passion lead Tarik into the limelight. He starred in ABC's The Taste, a reality TV show where chef's compete with each other while being mentored by a celebrity chef. Tarik was chosen by none other than Anthony Bourdain as his mentor. He went on to host another TV show from Vice, called Munchies, and also had a stint as Kanye West's personal chef. But the limelight isn't at the heart of who Tarik is or why he does what he does. Tarik has a rare gift for seeing beyond color lines, ethnic borders, and gentrifying neighborhoods into a place of authentic community where anyone and everyone is welcomed and celebrated. This vision for community is manifesting in The Black and Tan Hall, Tarik's latest venture. It's a performances venue, gathering space, restaurant, and lounge all wrapped up into one beautiful opportunity for anyone who's interested and inspired to participate as an owner. Tarik and his partners have designed the Black and Tan Hall as a co-op, a shared-ownership model among people who buy in and participate. The board approves ownership requests and offers a range of ways to buy in, sometimes even with no money at all. Regardless of cash, all owners are required to participate at some level to support the endeavor, whether it's serving drinks or fixing the toilet. Just like Tarik himself, the vision is beautifully inclusive and inspiring.

Chris Clark is on a journey to become fully human in the world and help others recover their native tongue. He has been on a quest since he was eight years old, driven by an innate connection to nature, to discover the depths of the soul and find common ground for humanity. An unlikely journey has led Chris down the path of Christian fundamentalism and orthodoxy to a more relaxed and inquisitive relationship and understanding of faith. Along the way Chris recognized and studied similar cultural patterns between church structure, non-profits, corporations, and ultimately culture at large in order to find a way to build common ground in the globalism era. In this episode we hear Chris's journey of self-discovery and discuss the following: -Limits of meritocracies and our dominant worldview shaping our corporate structure and political systems -Reinventing Organizations by Fredric Lalou -Guiding metaphors for how people organize -Essential qualities and patterns that unite us as human beings -Evolutionary Teal Organizing, the emerging way of organizing with current breakthroughs in human consciousness -Building common ground in the globalism era -The difference between leadership and authority -The power of Systems Thinking -Reinventing Organizations Wiki - Chris was instrumental in organizing this wiki as a way to make Teal Organizing resources available for everyone to use as well as to contribute to.

Joe Brewer is on a mission to secure the existence of a complex thriving global civilization in 100 years. In this inaugural episode we discuss the following: -The deep psychology and cultural evolution practices that are required for systemic social change. -The illusion of separation and how to liberate ourselves personally and culturally from the stories that enslave us. -Becoming a resilient culture in the face of planetary ecocide. Joe is a culture designer working to help create large-scale behavior change at the level of global civilization and is doing so by combining his unique background in physics, math, philosophy, atmospheric science, complexity research, and cognitive linguistics. Joe also shares his own journey towards resilience which began in rural Missouri. He is an internationally renowned public speaker, thought leader, and founding member of the Cultural Evolution Society.