Podcasts about this one wild

Dr Vanessa Andreotti (Indigenous Knowledge advocate; author) is a Brazilian academic who has developed a radical thesis for how to move through the multi-crises we face. In her book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism she draws on Indigenous wisdoms and entanglement theory to steer humanity through the destruction, grief and uncertainty as democracy, the growth model, “the West” crumbles around us. Dr Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, Canada where she is also one of the designers of the Facing Human Wrongs: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability course. She has written 100-plus papers on climate education, global justice and race. In this chat – the last in the current Wild series – she talks through how modernity is the most “adolescent” civilisation in history, how Indigenous cultures have the knowledge to assist us, how the West won't act until “the water is up to their bum” and the value of “black belt aunties”.Get your copy of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. Find out more about Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Martha Beck (author; “best-known life coach in America”) is about to release a book on anxiety. The international best-selling author – who holds three Harvard degrees in social science and was described by Oprah as “one of the smartest women I know” – specialises in helping people find meaning and integrity in their lives. In this episode, Sarah and Martha reconnect after 15 years to discuss their takes on the role of anxiety in our lives, and how it can be used to create purpose and direction (tune in to hear about the time Martha “bent a spoon with her mind” for Sarah!). They also share tangible techniques for using creativity to switch out of anxious spirals. Martha's book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose comes out in early 2025.SHOW NOTESHere's the newspaper column I wrote about my first meeting with Martha in 2010.I refer to previous podcasts with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor and Iain McGilchrist, and another on the role of creativity with Ian Leslie. You can read more about Martha's work here and connect on IG here. Preorder a copy of her upcoming book Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lyndsey Stonebridge (Humans rights academic, Hannah Arendt biographer) was worried about the banality of evil she was observing in the world and so dug down into the work of controversial philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt for insights. Her new book, We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience is a guide on how to live--and think--through a moment like the one we're in now in the wake of the US election. It draws on Arendt's ideas about totalitarianism, loneliness, the dulling of the mind, capitalism, as well as the imperative to love the world. Lyndsey is a Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and writes and broadcasts about a range of topical subjects: refugees, feminism and the moral mind. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. SHOW NOTESI mention the Wild episode with BBC Washington correspondent Nick Bryant Get your copy of Lyndsey's new book, We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience Read more about Lyndsey's work here and follow her on IG here --If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Luke Kemp (historical collapse expert; associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) has studied past civilisations and mapped out a picture of how long they tend to last before they collapse, what tends to tip them and what (if anything) can be done to stall their demise. Luke works alongside Lord Martin Rees and Yuval Noah Harari, is an honorary lecturer in environmental policy at the Australian National University and his collapse insights have been covered by the BBC, the New York Times and the New Yorker. His first book, 'Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse' will be published in June 2025. In this episode I get Luke to provide a bit of a 101 on how civilisations do indeed decline and perish and to update us on the latest theories on how and whether ours might make it through. The answer is surprising.SHOW NOTESHere's Luke's original report on complex civilisation's lifespans.Keep up to date with Luke's work hereA few past Wild guests are referenced by Luke. You can catch the episode on Moloch with Liv Boeree here, the interview with Adam Mastroianni here and my chat with Nate Hagens hereThe first chapter of my book serialisation – about hope – is available to everyone hereAnd here are the two chapters that I reference at the end--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on InstagramIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recently, I've been getting a lot of “Ask Me Anything” questions about the minutiae of writing about - and having to live through - collapse. I try to cover most of these kinds of questions as we work through the book Serialisation process, but a few get left behind. And so this week's Wild episode covers these off.You are welcome to join the 55,000 subscribers who are following the book, chapter by chapter, week by week, here. You'll be invited to upgrade (sorry to have to use such commercial language) to a paid subscription…this helps me to be able to dedicate most of my working week to writing said book. But don't feel obligated. You can stay a free subscriber and read these first few chapters here and a preview of every other one!SHOW NOTESHere's where you can start reading the first chapter of the Book SerialisationAnd here's the link to subscribe to my Substack newsletterWant to ask me your own question…post it here--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prof. Joel Pearson (Neuroscientist; AI and cognition scientist) returns to Wild, this time to discuss whether free will is an illusion. In our last chat (about intuition) the subject was raised and Joel promised to come back to discuss it further, particularly in the context of AI, algorithms, the rise of totalitarianism and our agency in systems collapse. Joel is the founder and Director of Future Minds Lab which applies neuroscience findings to art, AI, media, advertising and various philosophical quandaries. He's also a National Health and Medical Research Council fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He developed the first scientific test to measure intuition and wrote The Intuition Toolkit. In this conversation, we also cover the science of manifesting!SHOW NOTESI mention the chapter on Blame and the very robust discussion the Substack community had around it. You can join this hereHere's the previous episode where Joel talks about the scientific proof of intuitionGet Joel's book The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What without Knowing WhyFollow Joel on his Future Minds Lab Substack I previously had willpower expert Roy Baumeister on Wild to talk about how the female orgasm shapes the world! --If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this SPECIAL EPISODE British coach, author and broadcaster Elizabeth Oldfield and I sit down in her London intentional community home and interview EACH OTHER on…what is sacred (and how we access it), acedia ( the moral loneliness we feel in turbulent times), how we sit in the grief and despair of things, losing friends to the cause, how to be of service, how to be Fully Alive (the title of her book) and honour This One Wild and Precious Life (mine!).Elizabeth's book has been endorsed by Krista Tippett; she's written and broadcast for the BBC, The Times, and The Economist; was the Director of Theos, the UK's leading religion and society think tank; and her podcast The Sacred has featured Nick Cave, Jonathan Haidt and an incredible array of spiritualists and existential thinkers. This was a joyous meeting of spirits!SHOW NOTESVisit Elizabeth's website and subscribe to her Substack Buy your copy of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times hereThis One Wild and Precious Life is available here --If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I do these bonus episodes occasionally whereby I interview someone I serendipitously met on my adventures and who I wrote about in my books AND who struck a chord with readers. I track them down to see where they are now, and there is ALWAYS the most amazing follow-up story.This time, Nika Kovač, a controversial Slovenian activist and Obama scholar who once invited me on a gondola ride with a communist philosopher when I was stranded without a bed for the night and pregnant (read This One Wild and Precious Life to learn more) found me. And it turns out I'd been following her activist work from afar…without realising, she was the dynamic founding director of The Research Institute of 8th March, which won two referendum campaigns, one against the privatisation of water in 2021 and the other against political influence on public media in 2022. Nika also led the most extensive “Get-Out-The-Vote” campaign in Slovenian history ahead of the 2022 Parliamentary election, contributing to a 71 per cent voter turnout. BUT HERE'S THE JUICY BIT: Her latest campaign could achieve free and accessible abortion for all women in the EU. I've asked her to explain how the campaign works so everyone here can help achieve the goal…it's a wild goal (and it's a wild, wild life), but if anyone can do it, it's Nika. Join us for the ride!SHOW NOTESYou can learn about Nika here and follow her on IG here.You can get This One Wild and Precious Life in the US, UK, Australia, Spanish, Lithuanian, and more…here.Listen to my previous chats with The Lady in Red and Mammoth Dude.Watch and join the conversation on Substack.To get involved in the campaign with us:1. Read more here, and if you're an EU citizen, sign here.2. Send the info to all your EU friends.3. Share this Mark Ruffalo IG post and tag or message a Euro celebrity in your midst.4. Look out for posts by Nika and I on Instagram and share those too.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Iain McGilchrist (neuroscientist, psychiatrist, polymath, author of The Master and His Emissary) devised a thesis that sets out how the two sides of our brains can affect the way we both interact and create the world. The left hemisphere is a narrow, extractive, problem-solving “machine” that divides and conquers things, fails to see our part in the world and to fathom beauty, awe and responsibility. Our civilisation, Iain says, has become ruled by a left-brain mentality, which is killing us and leaving us “wretched”; we need to put the right side back in charge! Iain is an associate of Green Templeton College in Oxford and a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Society of Arts. His 2009 book Master and his Emissary became a cult read and the recent follow-up, The Matter with Things took him 12 years to write (and is 600,000 words long!). In this chat we cover why societies start out creative, happy and flourishing (right-brained!) but switch left and destructive as they expand; the secret to living a well and happy life and how to find meaning and beauty in a world we possibly can't “fix” (in the left-brain sense of the word). SHOW NOTESLearn more about Iain's work via his website and watch his videos here.Buy Master and his Emissary and The Matter with Things here.Listen to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's Wild episode.Here's the link to the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival that I'm speaking at this month.Here's the starting point for joining my book serialisation project.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Corey Bradshaw (global ecologist; author) has spent a career studying species populations and biodiversity loss and has the starkest of messages for humanity: we are in our own mass extinction event. Debate rages as to whether humans have an overpopulation problem or are in a fertility collapse, and which is more likely to take us down.The director of the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University talks us through the devasting finer points of this divide. We also cover why Australia has the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world, why we should be having one less child, what happens when bees die out, and the importance of supporting anyone trying to ban political donations. This conversation is a hard one, but like many in this space, Corey has a philosophy for living fully and joyously with the truth he feels compelled to share: Life is going to get far shittier than we can imagine; our noble obligation is to make it a bit less shitty.SHOW NOTESHere's the chapter in my book where I explain in full how fertility collapse is playing out. A REMINDER!! Corey will be joining the comments and is happy to answer any questions you have. You'll need to post them in the comment section of this post.Here's where you can get started with the Book Serialisation (Put Table of contents).Here's my Wild chat with Parag Khanna on the best place to live in the world going forward.Read Corey's blog Conversation Bytes--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

*(and that the wars, climate disasters, democratic upheavals etc today are VERY different to crises in the past)?This episode's question has been asked by too many of you to mention. Many of us have been in situations where we try to talk about the domino'ing of crisis - AI, nuclear, climate, food insecurity, democratic decline, political polarisation, fertility collapse - and get told we're just being a big old Henny Penny, and that crises happen all the time and humanity survives. The belief is that tech innovation, price mechanisms, progress (!) and human ingenuity will find a way to save us. However, this time is categorically different to past near misses and calamities. There are reams of science that prove it (sadly). So how do you explain this in a calm, convincing way at the next BBQ? Sarah provides a comprehensive rundown of all the points that one can make that set out a picture of how the collapse of complex systems works.SHOW NOTESHere's where you can start reading the first chapter of the Book Serialisation. And here's the table of contents.Here's the Meg Wheatley episode from the recent Collapse Series. Here's the written version of the explainer (should you want a printable version on hand!) Want to ask Sarah your question…post it here.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Nick Bryant (BBC Washington correspondent, author) has spent most of his career covering the events that many of us see as spelling the decline of the US, a once-great nation – the school shootings, Trump presidency, Roe v Wade, storming of the Capitol, George Floyd, conspiracy theories and…all the rest. But in his new book The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself Nick argues that the hate, divisiveness, racism and murmurings of civil war are part of the fabric of the country – “America is just doing America”. Nick has been a foreign correspondent for three decades, writing for the BBC, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and more. A copy of his previous book, When America Stopped Being Great sat on Joe Biden's Oval Office bookshelf. This chat sets out to give context to the issues swirling in the lead-up to the November election. We cover Gaza, RFK Jnr, Project 25, guns, media both side-ism and the fascinating history of American Exceptionalism.SHOW NOTESGet your copy of The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with ItselfI reference a post I wrote on Project 25. You can read it here.This 7am podcast about Project 25 is useful. And check out the Jim Jeffries clip on gun control. It's brilliant.You can get started with reading my next book here.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Professor Clive Hamilton (public ethicist; climate activist; founder of the Australia Institute) has led the emissions reduction conversation for decades. But he - controversially - has recently switched tack, arguing that climate mitigation is now impossible. And irresponsible. And that we must instead put our efforts (and last resources) into trying to survive as best we can. In this chat the professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, recently named a 'living legend' among Australian scholars, talks through the research published in his latest book Living Hot: Surviving and Thriving on a Heating Planet. We cover why Saul Griffith's “electrify everything” campaign is flawed, the safest place to live and what we should now be fighting for, and we discuss the contentious issue of class and the dangerous role of private schools (strange but true) to our survival. Clive's previous Zeitgeist-shifting books include Requiem for a Species, Growth Fetish and Affluenza. SHOW NOTESYou can get hold of Living Hot and The Privileged FewYou can read my Book Serialisation on Substack here. Here are the first two chapters, free to everyone.You can listen to my Wild conversation with Saul Griffiths here.My wonderful chat with Olivia Lazard on mineral depletion is a great backgrounder, too.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear wild friends! I'm taking a short break, but I wanted to share some of my previous interviews with guests who delve into themes of collapse, the meta-crisis, and the decline of the systems we've always known to grow—like GDP, technology, population, and prosperity.Many of you have joined my book serialization project on Substack, where we're navigating the collapse awareness journey together. These interviews provide valuable context for our journey. You can join us here if you're not already part of the project. I release one chapter of my book at a time, and we discuss its contents in the comments, tackling this big, beautiful, hard thing as a community, step by step. In the meantime, enjoy this wild conversation with Jonathon Rowson.--Jonathan Rowson (chess Grandmaster, metamodernist philosopher) is one of Britain's biggest minds and I have invited him onto Wild to talk, well, what's been dubbed the “meta-crisis” – the fundamental “meaning” crisis at the heart of “all the things” going on in the world today.Jonathan is a theoretical psychologist with degrees from Oxford and Harvard and a Ph.D on what it means to become wiser. He has worked on “complex collective action” problem solving, was Director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and has run events with David Attenborough and Jordan Peterson (not on the same stage!). Jonathan now runs Perspectiva, a research institute that seeks to understand the relationship between systems, souls, and society. This is a big chat, but I think you'll find this new and wild idea a helpful navigational tool for, well, “all the things”.SHOW NOTESAs I flag, my UK friends can preorder This One Wild and Precious Life here.Follow the Perspectiva community and their various events here.Jonathan is also on Substack and Twitter.His latest book The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life is out now.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear wild friends! I'm taking a short break, but I wanted to share some of my previous interviews with guests who delve into themes of collapse, the meta-crisis, and the decline of the systems we've always known to grow—like GDP, technology, population, and prosperity.Many of you have joined my book serialization project on Substack, where we're navigating the collapse awareness journey together. These interviews provide valuable context for our journey. You can join us here if you're not already part of the project. I release one chapter of my book at a time, and we discuss its contents in the comments, tackling this big, beautiful, hard thing as a community, step by step. In the meantime, enjoy this wild conversation with Olivia Lazard.--Olivia Lazard (peace mediator; rare minerals expert) exposes missing chunks in the “green” energy transition that many of us assume to be the “fix” to the climate crisis. Via her work as a fellow at Carnegie Europe and advisor on global security, she explains how the mining and extraction of rare earth metals like lithium, graphite and cobalt - to make the batteries etc for the new green “economy” - are both rare (there's literally not enough of them to make the transition), come with massive ecological costs (therefore rendering the “clean tech” very dirty), but are also destabilising the world in ways few are able to fathom. This is a very confronting reality, especially for climate activists and green economy evangelists.In this chat we go deep and wide into climate security issues, pull apart the techno-optimist “but AI and innovation will save us!” mindset, and what we really need to know about geo-engineering. This, on paper, sounds like a very “head-y” conversation, but Olivia also weaves in “heart” considerations that I think many of you are aching for in this debate. At the end, we discuss whether we have “hope”.SHOW NOTESConnect with Olivia on X / TwitterCheck out Olivia's TED talk to see the charts she talks about.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear wild friends! I'm taking a short break, but I wanted to share some of my previous interviews with guests who delve into themes of collapse, the meta-crisis, and the decline of the systems we've always known to grow—like GDP, technology, population, and prosperity.Many of you have joined my book serialization project on Substack, where we're navigating the collapse awareness journey together. These interviews provide valuable context for our journey. You can join us here if you're not already part of the project. I release one chapter of my book at a time, and we discuss its contents in the comments, tackling this big, beautiful, hard thing as a community, step by step. In the meantime, enjoy this wild conversation with Nate Hagens.--Nate Hagens (mindblowing energy futurist) was working on Wall Street when he realised…we don't have enough energy to fund the world's economy! Massive pivot ensued and he is now the global leader in energy systems, director of the Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future, on the board of the Post Carbon Institute, teaches an honours course, aptly titled Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota, oh and he also advises governments and institutes around the world on the future of energy!Nate and I met at a conference in Stockholm to address these very (meta)modern issues. In this chat we talk about how green growth is not possible, EVs are not the answer, and he makes a numbers-crunched case for how to live once collapse occurs, what he calls the “Great Simplification”. This is a big one. It changes (mostly) everything, including my own ideas about the climate crisis.SHOW NOTESYou can learn more about Nate's work here and listen to his podcast hereI also mention previous episodes with Tyson Yunkaporta, Douglas Rushkoff and Gaya Herrington--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Really Interesting Women - the podcastEpisode 131SARAH WILSONSarah is best known for being the founder of the global I Quit Sugar movement, a digital wellness program with 13 award-winning books that sell in 52 countries – which saw millions around the world transform their health. In 2022 she sold the business and gave everything to charity.She is an experienced journalist and broadcaster. She was previously the editor of Cosmopolitan Australia at age 29; host of MasterChef Australia; was a News Corp journalist and columnist; and has hosted ABC's Compass, Ten's The Project and has been a regular panellist and news commentator on Australian, UK and US screens for two decades.Her New York Times bestseller First, We Make the Beast Beautiful is described by bestselling author (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) Mark Manson as, “The best book on living with anxiety that I've ever read”, and was featured as the book of the year on NBC's Today Show. It's published in 27 countries. Sarah's most recent title, This One Wild & Precious Life, won the 2021 US Gold Nautilus Prize.She has been ranked in the top 200 most influential authors in the world (two years in a row), and now resides and works most of the year in Paris where she lives and loves a minimalist life. And this all reads like a bit of a career dream. But there have been plenty of nightmares along the way. Our discussion on resilience I found fascinating as well as finding out (to Sarah - and probably all of us in reality), what really matters. All these findings of hers are the result of countless hours of research and interviews and one of the many things I took away from this is the importance of nature. The incredibly positive impact it can have if we just 'get out there.'Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to Sarah Wilson's episode.The book referred to:First, We Make the Beast Beautifulhttps://www.amazon.com.au/first-make-beast-beautiful-Anxiety-ebook/dp/B01N12WLAXHer other books and links to her Substack can be found on her website:www.sarahwilson.comVisit instagram @reallyinterestingwomen for further interviews and posts of interesting women in history. Follow the link to leave a review....and tell your friendshttps://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/really-interesting-women/id1526764849

Hello, dear wild friends! I'm taking a short break, but I wanted to share some of my previous interviews with guests who delve into themes of collapse, the meta-crisis, and the decline of the systems we've always known to grow—like GDP, technology, population, and prosperity.Many of you have joined my book serialization project on Substack, where we're navigating the collapse awareness journey together. These interviews provide valuable context for our journey. You can join us here if you're not already part of the project. I release one chapter of my book at a time, and we discuss its contents in the comments, tackling this big, beautiful, hard thing as a community, step by step. In the meantime, enjoy this wild conversation with Meg Wheatley.--Margaret Wheatley (collapse theorist, global leadership consultant) is something of a legend in her field. She has worked for 50 years helping humans adapt to their world using systems analysis, chaos theory and deep spiritualism. Poets, scientists and philosophers quote her writing, she has worked in countless disaster situations and was commissioned to transform the leadership of large institutions. Plus she's the author of 12 books, including Who Do We Choose to Be? and Restoring Sanity. This is a challenging conversation and the subject has its deniers. Meg steers our focus to becoming the leaders we want to see amid the cascading crises facing the world and to create “islands of sanity” amid the despair. In this conversation, we cover the responsibility of the rich, why it's redundant to talk about saving the world, and how to sit in despair and create a meaningful life from it all.SHOW NOTESMeg references the poet David Whyte who has also been a guest on WildYou can purchase Who Do We Choose to Be? now and Restoring Sanity Find out about her workshops and events here--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear wild friends! I'm taking a short break, but I wanted to share some of my previous interviews with guests who delve into themes of collapse, the meta-crisis, and the decline of the systems we've always known to grow—like GDP, technology, population, and prosperity.Many of you have joined my book serialization project on Substack, where we're navigating the collapse awareness journey together. These interviews provide valuable context for our journey. You can join us here if you're not already part of the project. I release one chapter of my book at a time, and we discuss its contents in the comments, tackling this big, beautiful, hard thing as a community, step by step. In the meantime, enjoy this wild conversation with Gaya Herrington.--Gaya Herrington (Club of Rome adviser, “global collapse” expert) hit the headlines when she showed that a world-stopping 1972 MIT study and bestselling book predicting the collapse of civilisation by 2040 was…right on track. She was a KPMG economist and financial advisor to the Dutch government when she released the report in 2021. I read it and was left speechless.Gaya's now just published a book, Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse, which sets out a bunch of surprising ways we might be able to save ourselves in time. Gaya's message is stark: Economic growth must stop now! We are hitting the global limits of our more-more-more approach and the decline will be fast. What does the data tell us that can save us? The answer won't be what you're expecting. In this chat we flesh out how systems theory works, why we're obsessed with growth and why rich white men resist change the most.SHOW NOTESGet hold of the book Five Insights for Avoiding Global CollapseFeel free to read the now-famous 1972 paper The Limits to GrowthI mention the chat about the Indigenous knowledge system with Tyson Yunkaporta, you can listen to it here--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jem Bendell (collapse “poster kid”, academic) wrote the paper that launched the “Deep Adaptation” movement and spawned Extinction Rebellion. That was in 2018. The paper argued that societal collapse was unavoidable and would happen in our lifetimes, probably before the end of the 2030s, and it went very, very viral. The University of Cumbria Emeritus Professor and co-founder of the International Scholars' Warning on Societal Disruption and Collapse has now released a new book, Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse, which confirms the worst, but also provides, as per the subtitle, a path for a despairing soul to live beautifully beyond the doom. This conversation is confronting and Jem's honesty is brutal. He warns of food collapse in the next three years and that the economy could go (and our savings rendered worthless) any moment. But he also explains how we can use this reckoning to live a courageous, kind, noble life. For anyone on the collapse awareness journey, this is a crucial listen.SHOW NOTESYou might want to follow my book serialisation on Substack where we are doing the collapse awareness journey together, one step at a time.You can catch Jem in Sydney at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on 24-25 August, more details here.Jem offers a couple of online courses a year, on the topic of Leading Through Collapse.Here is the post he wrote about Talking to Relatives About Collapse we mentioned Want to know more, you can engage with Jem via the following:Find Emotional SupportVisit the Deep Adaptation ForumWatch some of Jem's talksRead his key ideas on collapseRead his book Breaking Together--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jean Twenge (psychologist; professor at San Diego State University) is regarded as the world expert on “generations”. She famously described millennials as “Generation Me” (also the name of her 2006 book) and first made the (controversial) connection back in 2017 between smartphones and the sharp uptick in anxiety and depression among Gen Z teens, which has since become one of our culture's top talking points. In her recent book, Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future she explains how themes such as narcissism, individualism, fear and tech addiction play out between the generations (including the Boomers, Xers, and the latest cohort, “the Polars”).In this chat we cover…Do millennials actually have it harder? Why do 60% of Gen Z girls have mental health problems? Why aren't young people aren't getting their driver's licenses? Is modern parenting setting kids up for failure? As well as the “slow life” phenomenon.You can catch Jean in Sydney at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas on 24-25 August, speaking at the following talks.The Machines Killing Our KidsThe Generation GulfContagious RealitiesSHOW NOTESSubscribe to Jean's Substack​, Generation TechHere's the teen mental health post I wrote on SubstackAnd here's the Substack post about the difference in young men's and women's political leaningsLearn more about the Festival of Dangerous Ideas here--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I asked fellow substacker Anya Kamenetz to help me answer the above question. Anya is a parent and climate activist, a former NPR journalist and she has written five books loosely related to the mental health of young people in the face of difficulty. She is also the producer of Joanna Macy's incredible podcast with Jess Serrante, We Are The Great Turning. This question - How to parent in the face of collapse and crisis? - comes up often on my Substack and there was a particularly moving thread that opened up last week that spoke to this concern that so many parents have. Here it is, if you would like to read it. The gist is that while we (the adults) might be able to accept what is happening to the world on one level, when we reflect on the kids in our lives an incredible emotional dissonance kicks in. Anya and I talk about how to talk about the crises in front of kids, how to help them with their emotions, why prioritising enjoying the world is key and “parenting as activism”.SHOW NOTESWatch the video and join the conversation over on Substack Subscribe to Anya's Substack --If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greg Lukianoff (New York Times best-selling author, attorney) co-wrote the blockbuster The Coddling of the American Mind, which argued we were failing young people by rendering them fragile victims. Then, 10 days after October 7, he came out with the first book to comprehensively track the rise of cancel culture -The Canceling of the American Mind. Greg, who's also CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expressions) and I talk through the confused aetiology of cancel culture and free speech, why the debate has been weaponised by both the Left and Right and he also outlines a bunch of solutions for parents wishing to raise kids who won't buy into it. I am far from a free speech absolutist and take issue with America's obsession with the First Amendment, but the subject fascinates me because it exposes so many other fault lines in our society that need to be understood urgently. SHOW NOTESYou can learn more about FIRE hereSubscribe to Greg's SubstackGreg's new book The Canceling of the American Mind is available now--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jenny Odell (NYT bestseller, artist) wrote a bestselling book five years ago that Barack Obama declared one of his “books of the year”. “How to Do Nothing” stuck two fingers up to the productivity industry. Jenny followed it up with the recently published, “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond The Clock” that argues the original problem is our framing of time as a bunch of units we own, spend, must be efficient with etc. In this chat, Jenny explains that how we relate to time is our choice and she – fascinatingly – shows how radically rejecting our current take on time (and the productivity bro' efficiency hacks) can help us navigate climate dread, the capitalist trap and our collective sense of disconnect.SHOW NOTESJenny's book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock is available nowConnect with Jenny on Instagram and keep up to date via her website--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

OK, this week is a kind of personal and also sociological muse-fest (from someone who's been on ALL the apps since shortly after the last ice age). I cover how I first went on the apps in 2010 (and share what I wrote about it at the time), about my experiences on Raya and, yes, on the latest app people are talking about, Feeld. I had to drop my shame for this one. However, I include a bunch of sociological perspectives and reflections some of you might find useful (and very familiar).Note, I'm making the Substack version of this episode free for everyone. Over there you can find all the links to the articles I reference.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Frank Ostaseski (Buddhist; end-of-life teacher; elder) helps people die best. He has accompanied over 1,000 people through the dying process and trained thousands of healthcare clinicians and family caregivers around the world. He was also a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and has taught at Google and Apple Inc., has been honoured by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and appeared on Oprah and Sam Harris' Making Sense podcast. I asked Frank to join me to talk through his book, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.Death, grief and loss are always with us, but I feel we are needing moral and spiritual guidance more than ever (every 6-12 months or so I try to cover this issue on Wild, generally aligning with a dialling up in world events). In this chat Frank and I talk through simple techniques for coping with the loss we're feeling watching the carnage in Gaza, witnessing climate destruction and polarisation.SHOW NOTESGet hold of The Five InvitationsHere's Frank Ostaseski's website where you can find a bunch of resourcesYou might like to listen to the interview I did with death walker Stephen JenkinsonAnd this conversation with Clancy Martin about grief and suicideAs well as my glorious chat with Sister Helen Prejean and the other death row episode with Devin Moss--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I need to give everyone here a bunch of updates…Plus, the BONUS video episode I promised with Dr Louise Newson is now live. Louise answers your questions about libido, whether to take HRT, how to manage menopause when you have Hashimotos etc, you can find it here.SHOW NOTESHere's the Wild chat about perimenopause and menopause with Dr Louise Newson from earlier this week.Here's more information about my news…(hint: a new book which you can be part of, STARTING NEXT WEEK).--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Louise Newson (British GP; hormone specialist) is regarded as the “medic who kickstarted the menopause revolution”. For two decades women have been denied treatment for a debilitating condition that affects more than half the population, thanks to one (faulty) study that linked hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to cancer. Louise has been on a mission to undo the damage and educate women on their real choices.In this chat, I try to cover off what every woman I know is asking right now:Is HRT safe or not?How do I weigh up the risks and benefits?How do I know which hormone, how much and when?Are there Big Pharma interests at play?Do I need to take it if I'm healthy?And, Is it just me or has perimenopause and menopause got worse for this generation?NOTE: The next episode is a follow-up, where I get Louise to answer the granular, intimate menopause questions posed by the Substack community! Don't miss it.SHOW NOTESTo connect with Louise, and to check out her resources on menopause and peri-menopause, follow this linkYou can download Louise's Balance app here Get hold of her books hereAnd here's that New York Times article on menopause--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's question is one I always love answering…what do I stuff into my backpack, and what backpack do I actually use (ditto hiking shoes, tent, gear etc)? I do a show and tell for this one, so the video version over at Substack probably makes sense. I throw in some minimalist hacks, too.SHOW NOTESJoin the conversation over on Substack and post your own Ask Me Anything hereBook your one-on-one with me here---If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Parag Khanna (climate migration expert; AI founder) is a global strategist who forecasts human movement around the world and has a company, Climate Alpha, that predicts real estate values based on exposure to climate risk. He's also recently published a book - MOVE: The Forces Uprooting Us - that details how billions of us will be migrating, and living nomadically, within this century.Parag has been named one of Esquire's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century" and featured in Wired magazine's "Smart List" and has written several books on empires, global order, the future of conflict and migration… you get the drift. As fertility declines and large slabs of the planet go underwater or become too hot and too uninsurable (in a property sense), we're left to ask, where in the world should we live? And, should we bother “investing” in real estate anymore? Parag answers both, plus how we should be future-proofing our kids and why the best place to live is where the young people are flocking.SHOW NOTESVisit Parag's website to learn more and find all his books hereCatch up on my recent episode on Doughnut Economics with Kate RaworthHere's the Substack post I wrote explaining fertility collapse where you can also post further questions you might have. And here's the AMA episode I did on buying real estate in 2024.--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's AMA, I cover an intriguing phenomenon in male-female dynamics playing out in the dark, twisted underworld that is dating culture - hypergamy. The phenomenon that has existed for eons whereby women date/marry “up” in educational status, income, age, height etc and men tend to partner “down”. Where does this sit today with a generation dating online? Plus, does it explain (or not) why some older women partner with younger men? I explain how I've been tracking this phenomenon for exactly 20 years, through “man droughts”, the “baby bonus”, Sex and the City tropes and more.SHOW NOTESJoin the conversation over on Substack and post your own Ask Me Anything here.I mentioned my Gaza post over on Substack, you can read it here ---If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olivia Lazard (peace mediator; rare minerals expert) exposes missing chunks in the “green” energy transition that many of us assume to be the “fix” to the climate crisis. Via her work as a fellow at Carnegie Europe and advisor on global security, she explains how the mining and extraction of rare earth metals like lithium, graphite and cobalt - to make the batteries etc for the new green “economy” - are both rare (there's literally not enough of them to make the transition), come with massive ecological costs (therefore rendering the “clean tech” very dirty), but are also destabilising the world in ways few are able to fathom. This is a very confronting reality, especially for climate activists and green economy evangelists. In this chat we go deep and wide into climate security issues, pull apart the techno-optimist “but AI and innovation will save us!” mindset, and what we really need to know about geo-engineering. This, on paper, sounds like a very “head-y” conversation, but Olivia also weaves in “heart” considerations that I think many of you are aching for in this debate. At the end, we discuss whether we have “hope”.SHOW NOTESConnect with Olivia on X / Twitter Check out Olivia's TED talk to see the charts she talks about.Listen to Nate Hagen on WILD here and Douglas Rushkoff here ---If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A cracking Ask Me Anything question this week that gives us a chance to talk about crazy-making tech bros and their antics. My answer sees me dive into p(doom) numbers, Freud, techno-optimistic manifestos and fertility collapse. Fun! Join the conversation over on Substack and post your own Ask Me Anything here.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Raworth (“renegade” economist; inventor of the “doughnut” systems model) has one of the most dynamic and controversial theories for “fixing” or adjusting to the planetary mess we're in. Back in 2017 she released her book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist and it became a cult read – the Pope, Extinction Rebellion and the UN General Assembly praise it. It designs an economy that allows humans to flourish while ALSO not destroying the planet – existing within the planetary boundaries. In this chat, Kate, an Oxford professor and Club of Rome member, and I talk about how the current economic model is fundamentally flawed (all those supply/demand and growth models have never been peer-reviewed!), how to debunk a Stephen Pinker disciple and how to balance the reality of looming (locked-in) collapse and living fully (the two are actually connected). Kate is a brilliant delight of a human – this chat is fun.SHOW NOTESFind visuals of a “rational economic man” and her doughnut head here You can find out if your city has or is taking part in the Doughnut Economics Action Lab If you're from Melbourne, check out Regen Melbourne and Kate also mentions Takethejump.orgHere's the chat with Nate Hagens on energy collapseHere's my Wild episode with Jason Hickle on degrowth economicsHere's my chat with Gaya Harrington about the Limits to Growth report--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's AMA, I share my hacks and my “mindset” for sifting through, retaining and managing all the data inflow (amino supplements, tilting, biting off more than I can chew as a tactic and advice gleaned from systems thinkers). And I wade into when to speak out and when not to wade into a rally and take the mic (and the responsibility that comes with being a privileged white woman who looks as tame as a mum from an OMO commercial).SHOW NOTESJoin the conversation over on SubstackSubscribe and post your own Ask Me Anything here--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Johann Hari (bestselling author Stolen Focus and Lost Connections) has written another system-rattling book, this time about the new weight loss drugs that everyone is both talking about AND not talking about. I've been wanting a wild mind to come chat about the phenomenon for over a year. Johann happened to reach out and tell me he'd been experimenting with Ozempic, had travelled the world interviewing 100-plus experts on the matter and was up for a chat. In this conversation, we talk through what he lays out in his book Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. We cover how the drugs work on our biology; the emerging risks; how the rich are the guinea pigs in this particular science experiment; the implications of a world with no appetite (“What will become of the dinner party?”); and the fact these drugs mask the real problem – how Big Food manipulates our hormones with their Franken-foods. And, so, here we are again, told to fix a systemic problem with the same mindset that caused it in the first place (ie: manipulating nature with additives for profit). The Ozempic debate is a lot. This chat goes there!SHOW NOTESJohann's book Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs is available now Connect with Johann on Instagram and buy his books hereListen to my Wild chat about Ultra-Processed Food with Dr Chris van TullekenRead my Substack post on the Ozempic “divide” here --If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we become aware of climate collapse and its ripple effect on the financial and energy systems, and as houses become uninsurable and fossil fuel markets get wobbly, do things like investing, mortgages, and retirement savings become moot?A Substack reader asks me how I'm personally prioritising these things, and I answer candidly. The chat moves into prepping and homesteading considerations. Background posts and pods about collapse are provided over at Substack, where you can WATCH these bonus episodes and join a conversation afterwards in the thread (and post a question for future AMAs).SHOW NOTESJoin the conversation over on SubstackSubscribe and post your own Ask Me Anything herePrevious episodes you might like to listen to Meg Wheatley, Gaya Herrington and Nate Hagens--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annabel Abbs (English novelist; author of Sleepless) was crippled with insomnia. Rather than fight it she looked for its productive plus side and discovered that many incredible creatives have needed to stay awake to access their best selves – their Night Selves. Particularly women, as it turns out. Annabel chats to me about how famous writers, painters and Hollywood stars have used their sleeplessness to create their best work, and the science that explains why this happens - the role hormones play, how the nocturnal quietening of the prefrontal cortex affects women's ability to access their creative courage and how we can access our body's hallucinogens! We also cover why it's good to stay awake in a full moon, why women need to invest in blackout curtains (to cut their cancer risk!) and the role of feminist rage in all this!SHOW NOTESGet hold of Annabel's Sleepless: Discovering the Power of the Night SelfYou can connect with Annabel on IG here and read more about her work here I write a lot about different philosophical salves for insomnia in First, We Make the Beast Beautiful---If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Isabelle Reinecke (founder Grata Fund) is leading a super exciting landmark legal case that could force the Australian Government to actually stick to its climate commitments and stop approving fossil fuel projects immediately. By as early as the end of this year. Seriously! It's called the Uncles Australian Climate Case (it's being brought by two Torres Strait Islander elders) and it's being referred to as “Bigger than Mabo” (if it wins). There is a lot of international attention on it and it's being supported by a team that led a similar (successful) case in The Netherlands.This is a short, straight-to-the-point episode to get you abreast of this monumental opportunity for change so you know what to do to support it. Let's do it!SHOW NOTESYou can watch our chat and learn more about the case over on my SubstackYou can get involved by sharing this podcast with everyone you know and sharing any news items, social media shares etc.Social media accounts you can follow: On Twitter: @gratafund and @isreineckeOn Instagram: @australianclimatecase @isabelle.reinecke and @gratafundOn Facebook: @australianclimatecaseHashtags to follow: #ClimateCaseAU #MuralKalmelSipaYou can sign the pledge and engage further HERE!The Good Weekend did a cover story on the case, read it here---If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anna Funder (international bestselling author of Wifedom) pens books about power. She is the author of the international bestsellers Stasiland, about the Stasi, which is being made into a TV series starring Elizabeth Debicki, and All That I Am, about the Nazis, which won the Miles Franklin Award. Her latest book, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life, sees Anna take on the patriarchy. She exposes how literary giant George Orwell wrote his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy “out of existence”, despite (and possibly because of) her pivotal role in his work.Anna and I talk through Orwell's misogyny and his own “doublethink” (believing two contradictory ideas while blanking out awareness of the contradiction), plus how doublethink works to keep patriarchy going. We dig into the delicate issue of the cancellation of these kinds of figures (we both agree they shouldn't be), the passive voice technique, why women must “claim their pronouns”, the power structure difference between France and Australia and how women write books.SHOW NOTESGet your copy of Wifedom hereYou can read more about Anna here and follow her work on InstagramThis episode of Wild was recorded at Work Club, my workspace while I was in Sydney--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In last week's interview with a Palestinian and an Israeli Father, I promised to share how we met, a story that involves a famous actor, an Irish author and a bizarre email chain that starts in the Australian outback. Here it is. For some fun. And to remind us all of the power of story and of reaching out to humanity.SHOW NOTESCatch the original interview hereRead Apeirogon by Colom McannLearn about Parent's Circle and donate here.Join the conversation and watch the video over on Substack--If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Lewis (The Atlantic columnist, BBC podcaster, pop culture decoder) has become a darling of the heterodox podcasting community (and this podcast; catch my previous Wild chat with her about THAT GQ interview with Jordan Peterson here), and, relatedly, a pet target of the extreme Right and Left's ongoing cancelling zeal. In this interview, I invite Helen to talk through several very online eruptions that are crucial for fathoming what the hell is going on in the world today. We cover the feminist-trans wars playing out on “TERF Island”; why Kara Swisher has fallen out with Elon Musk and why the Left failed the October 7 “Hamas test”. Mostly this is a conversation about the role of discerning dialogue when the extreme Left and Right are dominating the online arena.SHOW NOTESListen to my previous Wild chat with Helen Here's the episode I did with Hannah Barnes about the trans debate in the UKCheck out Helen's brilliant The Bluestocking SubstackGet hold of her most recent book, the bestseller bestseller Difficult Women, A History of Feminism in 11 FightsCheck out her Blocked and Reported episode hereWe reference a few of Helen's recent The Atlantic columns: The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test; Is Kara Swisher Tearing Down Tech Billionaires? and Why I'll Keep Saying “Pregnant Women” If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan (peace activists with Parent's Circle) are the two protagonists from Colum McCann's Booker-Prize-longlisted book Apeirogon. Both lost their daughters to the conflict, ten years apart. Yet in spite of – or because of - this horror they became dedicated friends, or “brothers”, committed to opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestine and working with “the enemy” via Parent's Circle, a peace group set up for parents from “both sides” who've lost a child.I spoke to Bassam and Rami on day #169 in the conflict and they'd just come from seeing the Pope. We cover how Bassam decided to study the Holocaust while imprisoned in an Israeli jail as a teenager for seven years, why Israelis are trapped by their victimhood and how we've all been locked into seeing this conflict as a football game of two sides.This interview is a chapter in an incredible story that involves a big-time Hollywood actor, who reached out to me while I was camping in remote Western Australia, a secondhand book find, a six-way email chain and an incredible love that reaches across history, walls and global fragmentation. NOTE: I will cover the very intersecting story of how we (the dads, Colum, the actor and I met) in the next episode. SHOW NOTESRead Apeirogon by Colom McannLearn about Parent's Circle and donate here.If you want a bit of extra background to this whole story, I write about it here on Substack.I mention Naomi Klein's work on the role of victimhood. A good starting point is this podcast interview with On the Nose. Naomi has also released two chapters from her latest book Doppelgänger for free online that cover her thesis super well.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Liv Boeree (world poker champion; astrophysicist; game theorist) is on a mission to explain why we are all trapped in a zero-sum, race to the bottom…with climate, AI, social media and politics. Why do we keep digging up resources, consuming carbon, getting stuck in nasty online spats and building robots that could kill us? Why don't we just STOP?? Why CAN'T we just STOP?!It's because of "moloch" – a game theory "force" that sees us do something we know is bad for us - because everyone else is doing it and if stop we'll be disadvantaged - until we wind up ruining everything for everyone. I've been exploring this concept for a while and invited Liv to talk about her antidote to “competition gone wrong”, which I think will intuitively gel for many of you. In this chat we talk about the death spiral of beauty filters, why AI is repeating the nuclear arms race and the joy we share for steadfastly searching for a win-win solution that will see us in a race to the TOP.SHOW NOTESSubscribe to Liv's SubstackFollow Liv on Instagram and via her YouTube ChannelRead my original Substack post about Moloch Listen to the Wild episode with Meg Wheatley on civilisation collapseWatch the beauty fillers video Liv produced The Moloch Trap of AI Beauty Filters and Is the Media Moloch Driving Us Mad? Read Scott Alexander's Moloch essay we talk aboutIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Substack subscribers have posed some beautiful thought-provoking questions this week. Do I suffer from a broken heart and how do I cope with it at a spiritual level? Do I stand by my I Quit Sugar message all these years later, particularly given an awareness of the triggering effect of restrictive messages? And where do we draw the line when someone we love uses the “mental illness card” to justify piss-poor behaviour. I recorded this with my long-suffering assistant Liana who I got to hang with yesterday.Access the full recording on Substack and join the conversation in the comment section and don't forget to add your questions to the AMA thread.You can catch my post about why I now distance myself from my bipolar diagnosis here.You can listen to my Wild chat with David Whyte here I mention David's book When the Heart Breaks: A Journey Through Requited and Unrequited Love Learn more about Liana hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prof. Joel Pearson (Neuroscientist; AI and intuition expert) developed the first scientific test to measure intuition, dragging it out of the woo-woo realm and into a cognitive framework. He's now written The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What without Knowing Why to show us how and when to use this mysterious superpower in our lives (not while rock-climbing on a date, not at a casino!).Joel is the founder and Director of Future Minds Lab which applies neuroscience findings to art, AI, media, advertising and various philosophical quandaries. He's also a National Health and Medical Research Council fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of New South Wales, Australia.In this chat we cover when and how to use intuition, why intuition is hijacked by anxiety and depression, whether AI will ever be able to have intuition, aphantasia and a bunch of deep, wide questions about what it means to be human, including the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Mostly, Joel is a great conversationalist, someone you'd want to sit next to at a dinner party.SHOW NOTESGet Joel's book The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What without Knowing WhyFollow Joel on his Future Minds Lab Substack You might also like to listen to my WILD chat with Sheena Iyengar, the scientist who first ran those “paradox of choice” studiesAnd with George Paxinos, regarded as the world's leading brain expert on whether our brains are “good” enough to save the planetI mention the book Klara and the Sun by Kazuo IshiguroIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Frankopan (Silk Roads author, Oxford historian) has just written a mega-history book called The Earth Transformed that reframes human history not via various major battles and legendary leaders but through a climate lens. Floods, droughts and, invariably, a volcano or two, dictated the fall of the Roman Empire, the fate of Cleopatra, the rise of gossip and beer halls, slavery and the different flavours of religion that exist around the world. I was keen to talk to Peter to find out what we might be able to learn from the past about adapting and surviving climate upheavals, what the factors that saw climate destroy some civilisations and not others and what it means to live in an era where climate calamities are global in scale, as are all the fundamental aspects of society – trade, finance, disease routes, warfare capabilities. Oh, and at the end we talk about what is entailed in writing a book that's more than 600-pages!This conversation feeds into previous episodes about limits to growth with the Club of Rome's Gaya Harrington and collapse theories with Meg Wheatley.SHOW NOTES The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is available hereRead more about Peter via his website and you can connect with him on Twitter/XIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's question has come in from many of you over recent weeks. It's an important one to ask as we grapple with the horror in the Middle East and our sense of powerlessness, as leaders around the world seem immobilised by geopolitical interests. I've invited Palestinian peace broker Aziz Abu Sarah to help answer it. Aziz is one of the world's most powerful and connected peacebuilders. He's a National Geographic Explorer and Ted Fellow. He has founded and led countless global conflict resolution organisations and helped broker peace deals in more than 60 nations, including Syria and Afghanistan.I put it to him: Is there a role that those of us outside the region can play that will actually help, not hinder, the ultimate cause – peace and the cessation of the bloodshed and humanitarian disaster? What is the right thing to do on social media? What should we post and not post? Do protests, boycotts, and petitions work at this point? And is peace possible any time soon? I learned a lot more than I expected to from this chat – some of Aziz's answers are very very confronting. Strap in for this one, dear friends. It's big and hard. It's also longer than my normal AMAs (and forgive me for the sound quality - I don't quite have the budget yet for a producer for these Friday episodes!).I encourage you to head over to my Substack for additional content, including:Where Aziz will join the comments thread and happily answer additional questions there.I will share the credible peace organisations, influencers and journalists that he recommends we support.I will also share some other useful links that explain points raised in our conversation, including the Israeli bias in media.SHOW NOTESYou can listen to our previous conversation hereHere's Aziz's website, social media and his book, Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler's Guide to World PeaceIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Kelly Weinersmith (behavioural ecologist and space expert) and her husband Zach have just spent four years researching a subject that perplexes many of us – why all the fuss about moving to Mars? Which begs, can we actually build a human settlement on Mars? And, would we want to?They share their findings in their new book A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? which became an instant New York Times bestseller and Scientific American's #1 Book for 2023.Kelly, an adjunct with Rice University in Texas, joins me to talk through both the broad and the granular implications of what I think amounts to a “destroy and run” attitude to our relationship with Earth. I have a lot of questions, like: What's with the tech bros and their obsession with living on a dusty, toxic planet? Who would “own” space settlements? Who would control the oxygen? Surely we're not going to let Elon run rampant with this? And can you actually have sex in space? If you're after a TL;DR, Kelly concludes: “Space: quite bad”.SHOW NOTESA City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? is available hereThe Wild episode with Douglas Rushkoff about billionaires and their apocalypse bunkers is hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Devin Moss (atheist chaplain and humanist) late last year ministered a convicted murderer to his death by execution in the state of Oklahoma. Significantly he provided the prisoner, Phillip Hancock, spiritual counsel for more than a year, and “prayed” with him in the execution room…all without drawing on notions of an afterlife or a forgiving God entity. Which begs, what does spiritual counsel look like without “God” and the promise of hope that comes with It? What can be turned to? What are the practices and consolations that work to provide peace and cosmic perspective in the face of this final terror? In this chat, Devin and I talk about humanist approaches to death and, to life more broadly. This is a conversation for everyone (all of us?) grappling with a world facing increased existential threats.SHOW NOTESYou can listen to the Wild episode with Sister Helen Prejean hereHere is the original New York Times article about Devin and Phillip's relationshipIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it's where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet's connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.