Accidental Gods

He is the creator of the Cynefin Framework, and originated the design of SenseMaker®, the world’s first distributed ethnography tool. He is the lead author of Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis: A field guide for decision makers, a shared effort between the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, and the Cynefin Centre.He divides his time between two roles: founder Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Company and the founder and Director of the Cynefin Centre. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organisational decision-making. He has pioneered a science-based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. By using natural science as a constraint on the understanding of social systems this avoids many of the issues associated with inductive or case-based approaches to research. This episode ranges widely across the path of his life and his ideas, aiming always at the core question of our time: how do we create the best conditions for a generative future we'd be proud to leave to future generations? Dave is engaged in large-scale projects with, for instance, the NHS, and world governments to work out how to gather real information from people in ways that work and that can lead to generative outcomes. We explore ways to change the substrate of our culture, not by jamming new technology into the toxic niches of Facebook and Twitter, but by evolving new ways of engaging with each other that allow us to find the 'adjacent possible' - the next best thing that we can do in any situation. If you want to connect more with the work that the Cynefin Company does, or to listen to aspects of Dave's work in more detail, please follow the links below. Dave's TED talkDave Snowden blogThe Cynefin Company

We live in a world where facts are at our fingertips and yet we increasingly live in conceptual silos where ideas are neither broad nor deep. How can we transform our ways of educating ourselves as we grow to adulthood/elderhood in a world where the ground is shifting under our feet? With Professor DJ Helfland, educator and astronomist. Professor David J. Helfand, a faculty member at Columbia University for forty-five years, served nearly half of that time as Chair of the Department of Astronomy. He also recently completed a four-year term as President of the American Astronomical Society, the professional society for astronomers, astrophysicists, planetary scientists and solar physicists in North America. He is the author of nearly 200 scientific publications and has mentored 22 PhD students, but most of his pedagogical efforts have been aimed at teaching science to non-science majors. He instituted the first change in Columbia's Core Curriculum in 50 years by introducing science to all first-year students. In 2005, he became involved with an effort to create Canada's first independent, non-profit, secular university, Quest University Canada. He served as a Visiting Tutor in the University's inaugural semester in the Fall of 2007 and was appointed President & Vice-Chancellor the following year to lead this innovative experiment in higher education. For six years in a row, Quest has been ranked #1 in North America in the National Survey of Student Engagement. ​He completed his term as President of Quest in the fall of 2015 and returned to Columbia to teach. His first book, "A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age" appeared in February 2016 and came out in paperback Aug 10, 2017.In this episode, we explore the nature of higher education in a changing world and the models that could work as we move into a time when what matters is emotional literacy and resilience and the ability to garner ideas and synthesise them broadly rather than learning 'more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing.' Prof Helfand TED Talk 'Designing an Education for the 21st Century' Quest University in British ColumbiaA Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age by David J Helfand Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal

How can we create a world where our children can grow in safety - both physical and emotional? How can we find that sense of psychological safety within ourselves? How can we find the authenticity and compassion to heal our own wounds so we don't pass them on? With Louis Weinstock, child psychologist and expert in complex trauma. Louis Weinstock is a psychotherapist who works with children and the child within us all. He helps people find light in the darkness - in the things the are unseen, unheard and unspoken. For over 20 years, he has expertly guided children and adults through some of the toughest challenges life can throw at us - loss, trauma, divorce, burnout and breakdowns. And now he has a new book: How our World is Making our Children Mad - and what to do about it. He's taking 'mad' in both senses of the world - the one that means 'not fitting in with consensus reality' and the one that means 'massively angry - enough to go on strike and take to the streets'. With absolute compassion, deep wisdom and years of insight, he opens up seven roots of our trauma and the fruits of healing that each offers if we heal it. In the podcast, we explore the origins of the book, and move beyond it to the ways we can heal ourselves and the divided culture in which we live. We touch on some of the moving case studies in the book, and the ways we can extend the learning they bring to ourselves, our inner children, and the children in our lives, always striving for healing of self and planet. I am always struck by Louis' deep authenticity, his emotional intelligence and his capacity to hold balance and find wisdom in the chaos of our world. As a starter for healing, this feels huge. Louis' Website and Book: https://louisweinstock.comThe Visionaries: Rites of Passage: https://thevisionaries.org.uk/our-impact/

How do we bring the world's media on board with the climate and ecological emergency? What would happen if they became the fourth arm of the climate movement? Donnachadh McCarthy, journalist, columnist, author and long term climate activist explains why this is the single most urgent action we can take. Donnachadh McCarthy is a professional eco-auditor, author and environmental campaigner. He is a former deputy chair of the Liberal Democrats and served on the board of the party for seven years. He is now not a member of any political party and enjoys working with people in all parties or none to address our common environmental crises. He is a former columnist with The Independent and has had articles printed in the Guardian, Times, Ecologist, Resurgence etc.He is the author of Saving the Planet Without Costing the Earth, Easy Eco-auditing, and The Prostitute State – How Britain’s Democracy has Been Bought. He is the co-founder of the successful cycling campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists. His environmental consultancy 3 Acorns Eco-audits helps deliver the Corporation of London’s City Bridge Trust eco-auditing programme for London charities. His Victorian home in Camberwell, was London’s first carbon negative home. It has solar electric and solar hot-water, a Clean Air Act compliant wood-burner, solid-wall insulation, rain-harvester and composting toilet. In this rawly honest conversation, he lays out the reasons why he believes that if we are to survive the Great Derangement, the media must become the fourth pillar of the environment movement. Along the way, we discuss his visit to the Yanomami and how it changed his life, his political experience at the rotten core of Britain's corrupt political system, and his swan-dive into a new future on the stage at Covent Garden. Join us to reframe the setting of your intent. Climate Media Coalition http://climatemediacoalition.org/ Donnachadh on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donnachadhBook: The Prostitute State: http://www.theprostitutestate.co.uk/buy.htmlPioneering the Possible by Scilla Elworthy

How do we design our built environment to be more than just 'sustainable' (doing things slightly less badly) and instead to be genuinely regenerative where all we build and make heals people and the planet? Professor. Janis Birkeland is Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in the University of Melbourne. Janis has dedicated her personal, professional and academic life to figuring out what is genuine sustainability - how to plan for a built environment that is not just 'less bad' than the alternatives, but actually returns more to the land and the people who live in and around it thn whatever went before. Throughout her professional career, she has been drawn to figuring out how cities and buildings, despite their huge impacts, can transform society and save the planet. First, she became an architect and urban designer, transferring into city planning. Later, she became a lawyer to better understand the barriers to systems change. Now she is an academic, author of many dozens of papers and a number of books, of which the most recent is ‘Net- Positive Design and Sustainable Urban Development’. She is a clear and consistent advocate for the design of human settlements that are socially and ecologically ‘net positive’ and has just published "Net-Positive Design and Sustainable Urban Development" (Routledge) which provides methods, models and metrics to enable practitioners and students to create eco-positive environments. It also includes a free computer app to facilitate net-positive designIn this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the myriad ways we could choose to design our buildings differently - and the many practical ways we could upgrade what exists as well as creating new models for what might arise. Janis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janis-birkeland-84135120/Net Positive Design WebsiteAlgae-Tecture: https://carloratti.com/project/algaetecture/Mycelial Bricks: https://wasterush.info/mycelium-construction/https://whitneyfungifun.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/sustainability-of-mycelium-bricks/https://happho.com/an-emerging-sustainable-construction-material-mycelium-bricks/https://www.certifiedenergy.com.au/emerging-materials/emerging-materials-mycelium-brick

What are the most effective tools we can engage to create new, different, better futures? How do we translate our visions of a generative future into action now? What are our bridging tools, that exist now and take us forward to a world that would work for everyone? Phoebe Tickell is an imagination activist, renegade scientist, systems thinker and social entrepreneur. Originally trained as a biologist (she has a first class degree in Biological Natural Sciences from Cambridge University), she now works across multiple societal contexts applying a complexity and systems thinking lens and has worked in organisational design, advised government, the education sector and the food and farming sector. Until 2021 she was working in philanthropy at The National Lottery Community Fund to implement systems-thinking approaches to funding and and leading insight and learning in the £12.5 million Digital Fund.On the way through, she has co-founded a series of organisations dedicated to systems change via innovative approaches, including 225 Academy, which delivered 5-day transformative experiences for young people aged 11-18 globally; Future Farm Lab, which created systemic interventions to the food system and the Our Field Project — an experiment in a group of citizens co-owning and co-governing a field of grain in Hertfordshire.More recently, she is founder of Moral Imaginations and RenaissanceU, a member of Enspiral, part of the Don't Go Back to Normal Project, on the board of Renaissance U, and an advisor to the Consilience Project. She's a certified Warm Data Lab host and an advisor to the International Bateson Institute. She recently led 1,000 people in a Collective Imagination journey in Berlin and then 4,000 in Sweden. In all of this, she took time out to talk to Accidental Gods about the nature of the present moment, how we can find the learning tools that will bridge to the future we want to envision, and how we translate those visions of the future into values. In a wide ranging, inspiring, edge-walking conversation, she explored the balance of inner and outer worlds, tangible and intangible and how we might connect them; she talks of falling in love with Solar Punk again (her Twitter handle is @solarpunk_girl, so that feels quite huge), having read that 'Solar Punk without the end of capitalism, is just greenwasher CyberPunk'. So we explore what cyber punk is, too, and Protopian writing, and how it relates to Thrutopian writing, before we move onto the nature of existing Solar Punk communities and how they frame their underlying values. This was a genuinely sparky conversation: it felt as if we really dug deep into the nuts and bolts of change and how it could happen - come along for the ride!SolarPunk links: SOLARPUNK: Life in the future beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrowHow We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (ft. @Andrewism) How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future (ft. @Our Changing Climate)

The Holocene is over, we all know this. The Anthropocene may segue into the Symbiocene, with the opportunity to experience the surprising abundance of the world, but only if we work at it. Joe Brewer, bioregionalist and earth regenerator, offers a rawly honest evaluation of where we are, and where we could go. Joe Brewer has separate bachelors degrees in physics, mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies and a masters in atmospheric sciences. He is a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, experience designer, and serial social entrepreneur who brings a wealth of expertise to the adoption of sustainable solutions at the cultural scale. Among his notable achievements are the creation of an undergraduate degree program in Earth Systems, Environment and Society at the University of Illinois and design of new collaboration protocols for strategic communications among European NGO’s with WWF-UK and Oxfam, in the UK. He was an active member of the Center for Complex Systems Research from 2001 to 2005, where he studied pattern formation in self-organizing systems. He was a research fellow at the Rockridge Institute in 2007-08 analyzing political discourse in the United States. He contracted with the International Centre for Earth Simulation in Geneva in 2010-11 to help build a globally-focused high performance computing facility dedicated to holistic simulations of the dynamic Earth. His experiences as a social entrepreneur and cross-disciplinary scholar weave together a combination of skills dedicated to open collaboration, interactive design, and empowered civic action for catalyzing change toward greater resilience in our turbulent world.More recently, he has moved to Colombia and is engaged in regenerating an area of dry desert with the aim of returning it to flourishing biodiversity. He has written The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth and established Earth Regenerators, a community, a study group and a place to share ideas that will bring us closer to a prosocial world, focussed on bioregions where the human and More-Than-Human worlds integrate, where we organise with direct local democracy, create a steady state economy, based on shared values and not on growth, and where we predicate our actions on trusting the good intentions of others. In this deep, penetrating conversation, full of radical honesty, we discuss the end of the holocene and its implications, explore the age of the anthropocene and what may come of it, and how all of us can become earth regenerators - what it means, and how it might work. Joe outlines the processes of his 8 week course and his new GoFundMe project to birth a bioregion. Joe's Book: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-design-pathway-for-regenerating-earth/

Revolutions don't work, and we don't have time. What we need now is a Regenerative Renaissance where we all envisage the whole, beautiful, clean, thriving world we want, and set about making it happen. In this second part (of two) podcasts, Rieki Cordon of the SEEDS regenerative currency explains how a new economy could work, based on regenerative values and principles.Rieki Cordon of SEEDS says, 'We need a Renaissance over revolution because a revolution is technically just revolving. It’s having the same power structures, but with new people in power. What’s interesting about a Renaissance is it’s a fundamental shift of the paradigm. So it’s not something that’s “us vs them”; like a revolution where the mission is often, “let’s take down the 1%.”It’s more about rethinking how our systems are designed, and how we show up in society. We have fundamentally new technologies. We have a fundamentally different environment that humanity is operating in and we’ve never before had a global civilization."SEEDS is not just about money and value exchange, it's about finding ways we can be in the world that are genuinely regenerative: Reiki is also a part of HYDRA, which is evolving the rules and baselines for regenerative villages. In this second of two parts, we explore how a genuine regenerative renaissance might spread, how it might look and feel - how we can make it work. SEEDS: https://joinseeds.earthSEEDS conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqfAy1mKQGM

We all know that our economic system is broken - that the ways we share value are skewed so that the super-rich grow richer while the rest of the people and planet suffer. But if we're to replace the dollar as an international currency, what will work, how will it work, how can we make the transition to a genuinely equitable, regenerative currency? What does a Regenerative Renaissance look like? Rieki Cordon of SEEDS has an answer. First part of two. Rieki Cordon, one of the facilitators of SEEDS regenerative currency, describes the necessary regenerative renaissance as follows: "We need it (the renaissance) to be regenerative; if not, humanity is not going to be able to continue this experiment called civilization because our planetary ecosystem services will fail. That’s one side. The other side is we can build the most beautiful world and civilization the world has ever known. And why not? Why not make all of our rivers drinkable again? Why not live in forests full of food?" And why not create a currency that grows out of, through and alongside community so that never again do we enter into the bizarre transactional nightmare of debt and compound interest where, beyond a certain threshold, money is a self-replicating extractor, sucking value and life from people and planet. SEEDS currency is built on the blockchain, but it's not Bitcoin: the principles that govern its creation and exchange are built on the values of a genuinely regenerative renaissance. In this first part of two podcasts, Reiki describes how SEEDS arose and what it can do. SEEDS: https://joinseeds.earthThrutopia Masterclass: https://thrutopia.life

It's long been said that it's easier to imagine the total extinction of humanity than it is to imagine an end to capitalism. But Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics blew that away. An updated version has been released on the tenth anniversary of publication. Here, Della Duncan talks to Charles and his son Jimi about life, capitalism and building the more beautiful future our hearts know is possible.For over a decade, Charles Eisenstein has been a pillar of the movement to a regenerative future. His book is essential reading, his blogs and podcasts are always thoughtful interventions that offer insight at crucial junctures of our progress towards a more conscious evolution. He dares to go where others either fear to tread or just don't have the insight, and he leads by example: his life is based on compassion and the gift economy. He's one of the few people who lives as far as possible outside predatory capitalism. His son, Jimi, is a transformative animator whose clear, clever art explains complex regenerative principles in ways that everyone can understand. He, too, explores the edges of our being and lives them into reality. Here, these two remarkable people speak with Della Duncan of the Upstream podcast, celebrating the tenth anniversary edition of Charles's book, but also exploring the delicate and transformative moment in which we live, shining lights on ways we can live the change we need to see. As we head into Thrutopia, we are delighted to be able to bring you this as an introduction to thinking - and being - the transition. Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/sacred-economics-money-gift-and-society-in-the-age-of-transition/9781623175764Jimi's You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6IIFtrrKH_J3555XGJkl1AMusical Chairs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BZ-WGnZMXMRegenerative Agriculture: https://youtu.be/fSEtiixgRJICharles Eisenstein's website: https://charleseisenstein.orgCharles Eisenstein's Substack: https://charleseisenstein.substack.comThrutopia Masterclass: https://thrutopia.life

We all know the current system of politics and governance is utterly dysfunctional. But what will it look like - what will it feel like - to organise ourselves so that everyone has a voice, so that we come together as co-creators and build networks and movements based on our common visions and values? With Indra Adnan of The Alternative Global, author of The Politics of Waking Up. Indra Adnan is a psychosocial therapist, founder of The Alternative Global and author of The Politics of Waking up: Power and possibility in the fractal age. She has been a journalist, a director of a political think tank and a community organiser. She is always an activist. Her passion is the creation of methods of connection that allow everyone to be fully themselves, to find the place from which meaning and purpose arise and to act from there. She gave up her job at the think tank on the day the British MP Jo Cox was murdered in the run up to the 2016 Brexit Referendum, and has spent the time since then considering and creating ways to bring about the change we need to see if we're going to address the climate, ecological and cultural chaos of our time. In this conversation, we delve deep into the ways we might do things differently - how does a different kind of politics and governance work? How does it feel? What are the logistics and how might we bring it about? On the way, we consider the creation of an alternative media system - one that brings people together instead of splitting them apart - and the ways that local citizens action networks (CANs) can join together to create a movement of movements with unstoppable momentum. Indra's Book: https://systems-souls-society.com/insight/perspectiva-press/the-politics-of-waking-up-power-and-possibility-in-the-fractal-age/The Alternative Global: https://www.thealternative.org.ukSimon Anholt: The Good Country: https://www.goodcountry.org/simon-anholtDavid Wood: London Futurists: https://londonfuturists.com/Trust The People: https://www.trustthepeople.earthMarge Piercy: The Low Road: https://thechangeagency.org/testimonials/marge-piercy/Thrutopia: https://thrutopia.life

We all know that methane is a far more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2. But what if we could harness it and put it to good use? What if it we could power our cars and heat our homes on waste food? Will Llewellyn of Red Kite Management explains the potential and how to apply it. Will Llewellyn has worked in the renewables industry for decades. Now a co-director of Red Kite Management, he advises individuals and firms on the use of food waste, animal slurry and human effluent as feedstocks for biodigesters which can both reduce the leakage of fugitive methane into the atmosphere where it acts as a greenhouse gas and provide a power source for vehicles, a heating source for buildings and a potential baseline load filler in power generation.Will on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-llewellyn-31aa0420/ Waga Energy www.waga-energy.comCNG Fuels: https://cngfuels.comGeneco Biomethane: https://www.geneco.uk.com/our-services/biomethane

In a world in existential crisis, deep within what Joanna Macy called The Deep Unravelling, we have a critical need for road maps to help us navigate a way forward to a future we can't yet imagine. Rupert Read, originator of the Thrutopia concept, discusses how he came to coin the term, what it means - and, crucially, how we get there.Nobody can doubt now that we're in the midst of the climate and ecological emergency: doom scrolling is now a national sport. But if we think about doom, that's what we'll get and most of us would prefer that we had a way through to a future we'd be proud to leave behind. It's up to us to make this happen and Professor Rupert Read, with his long history of climate action through the Green Party, Extinction Rebellion and his writing, is well placed to make this happen. He's also the originator of the name, 'Thrutopia' - laying out the need for a Thrutopian genre in the Huffington Post back in 2017. As we head towards the Thrutopia Masterclass and endeavour to make this happen, Rupert and Manda discuss the need for this genre and how it might look and feel. Thrutopia Masterclass: https://thrutopia.life Rupert's Website: https://rupertread.netRupert's Paper: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rupert-read/thrutopia-why-neither-dys_b_18372090.html/IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdfUrsula le Guin: The Dispossessed: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-dispossessed/9781473228412Lawyers for net zero https://www.lawyersfornetzero.comClimate Emergency Centres network https://climateemergencycentre.co.ukMothership https://mothership.sg/2021/09/climate-crisis-halimah/Guardian article on fish: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/17/trawling-for-fish-releases-as-much-carbon-as-air-travel-report-finds-climate-crisis

As our world balances on the edge of transformation, how do we rewild ourselves and our inner cities? How do we build communities of place and of purpose that work, that give us resilience, life, hope - and a deep, enduring, magical connection to the earth? Jamie Quince-Starkey and Ross Nicholson of Down to Earth Derby describe the utterly inspiring work they are doing to achieve exactly this. Jamie Quince-Starkey has worked with planes, trains and automobiles, but he found himself most at at home in himself, and at peace with the world when he had his hands in the soil, growing thing to eat. Many of us might resonate with this, but Jamie took it a step further and set up Down to Earth Derby, a life-changing project that, as he says, "is an idea born out of conflict; the conflict of living life in the modern-day and the realisation of the negative impact we have on this planet. The challenge is making a difference whilst also being realistic and having an understanding of how life is for the average person; I know we can’t just jump ship and move to an off-grid community (imagine if the problem was that simple)!" It's not simple, and he was working full time and had recently become a dad, but even so, he set up the project and threw himself into its mission:- to work for our communities empowering everyone to be part of making Derby a world leader in nature-based urban regeneration. - to make living with nature a part of our everyday lives.- to create a movement with the people of Derby through a series of nature-based engagement projects and promoting the new city social.- to promote and contribute to a thriving sustainable-regenerative economy for everyone, making Derby a blueprint for world-class nature-based urban regeneration.Jamie was mentored by Tim Smit of the Eden Project, who introduced him to another Derby resident, Ross Nicholson. Ross is co-founder of Neo, an international network of 15,000+ individuals and companies across over 100 countries across the sustainable futures space which 'makes vital human connections to get stuff done.' And getting stuff done is what Down to Earth Derby is all about - this is about creating real change in a real city for real people, working on real regenerative principles. It's an idea that's evolving in real time and is replicable anywhere in the world. Making change from the ground up and the inside out. "DTE Derby is about growing people, connecting with nature and the importance of creating community."If you enjoy this, check them out - and see what you can do in your local community. Down to Earth Derby https://www.dtederby.orgEden Project https://www.edenproject.comRoss Nicholson's websitehttps://neojourneys.ioTim Gill Book https://uk.bookshop.org/books/urban-playground-how-child-friendly-planning-and-design-can-save-cities/9781859469293

Our current economy is based on idiocy, selfishness and bizarre ideologies. What happens if we completely replace it with a different, better system? How would it work? What would the world feel like? Professor Steve Keen, Honorary Research Associate with the Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security at the University College London, was one of the handful of economists to realize that a serious economic crisis was imminent, and to publicly warn of it from as early as December 2005 (http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15892/). This, and his pioneering work on modelling debt-deflation, resulted in his winning the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review (http://rwer.wordpress.com/) for being the economist whose work is most likely to prevent a future financial crisis. He is author of Debunking Economics, which explains in detail why the orthodox economic theory is not only wrong, but more of a threat to the survival of humanity and the more recent: New Economics: A Manifesto, which gives ideas of how we can shift to a new system of exchanging value.He is co-creator of the Minsky App and of the Ecocore Universal Carbon Credits. In this episode, we explore some of the wilder falsehoods of the currently orthodox model of economics, and dive into the ways we could structure a model that could work differently. Debunking Economics Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/debunking-economics-the-podcast/id1484374606?i=1000552938203Patreon Site: https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeenUniversal Carbon Credits: https://ecocore.org/proposal/

If we are to create a regenerative future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us, how can we shift the extractive, profit-based business model that imprisons our industries? What would happen if we unleashed the creative potential of those who are caught in a model that is no longer fit for purpose? Insights from Garry Turner, industrialist, businessman, thought leader - and change agent. Garry Turner has spent most of his professional life as an international product manager looking after £20m of business within a £3bn business within the chemical industry. Until 2018, he was locked into the life of job/mortgage/car/KPIs and all that goes with external validation. And then he woke up - and realised that any sense of meaning and purpose was missing. His journey since then is one of opening and awakening taken in the most grounded way, so that he can express fully what it means to be human at this time of total transformation. He still works in the same job in the same industry, but now he runs a podcast dedicated to human transformation, and describes himself as a 'strategic advisor and thinking partner', offering coaching to others on the same path. He spends his days working towards a generative future we'd be proud to leave behind. In this profoundly moving conversation, we delve deeply into his journey, from his surgery for testicular cancer, through a growing awareness of the change he can make in the world, to a place now where he is actively engaging in many different ways with people and ideas that can bring about the transformation we need to see. Garry's Website:https://www.garryturner.life/who-is-garry-turner/ Garry's podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/activating-consciousness-from-hexo-change/id1551686556?i=1000553135392 Garry's LinkedIn profilehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/garryturnerstrategicadvisor/Thrutopia https://thrutopia.life

What can you do if you want to be a gentle, careful, strategic activist? The kind who catalyses change in empathic ways, who strives to understand people in power and who uses the magic of hand-crafts to connect at the level where (r)evolution happens? Sarah Corbett of the Craftivist Collective does exactly this and empowers others to join her.At the age of three years old, Sarah Corbett occupied social housing to keep it standing (it's still up), and from then on, was a committed activist at the local, national and international level, first with her parents, and then later, as part of wider activist movements. But as an introvert, and a deep strategic thinker, she wanted to make change in ways that were gentle, but powerful, harnessing the power of connection, rather than outrage and confrontation. Founder the Craftivist Collective, she has spend the past fifteen years empowering crafts-people around the world to harness the power of their creativity, their clear intent, and their capacity to connect with lawmakers at all levels from the C-Suite of major retailers to MPs and civil servants - finding their humanity, and becoming a critical friend rather than another source of outraged triggers.Sarah’s work has helped change government laws, business policies as well as hearts and minds through her unique ‘Gentle Protest’ methodology. She works across the arts sector, charity sector and academia, as well as with unusual allies to reach people nervous of activism in an attractive and empowering way. Corbett regularly gives talks, events and happenings around the world. Her book “How To Be A Craftivist: the art of gentle protest” is now available in paperback. Her talk ‘Activism Needs Introverts’ was chosen as a TED Talk of the Day and has over a million views. In this episode, she talks us through from the beginnings of the Craftivist Collective with a letter to an MP embroidered on a handkerchief, to the summer-long campaign of the Canary Craftivists, focusing on the goals and ideals that bring people together from grandmothers to grand daughters, to seasoned WI campaigners, to first time activists finding a voice for their climate concern that doesn't involve banners, chants and confrontation with the security forces. Craftivist Collective Websitehttps://craftivist-collective.comBecome a Patronhttps://craftivist-collective.com/adopt-a-craftivistSarah's Manualhttps://unbound.com/books/craftivist/Pre-Order Sarah's new book https://unbound.com/books/craftivist-collective-handbook/

What's our economy for? Does it have to keep growing at the expense of all we hold dear; the things that make life worth living? Or can we re-imagine a new way of doing things that would value what matters most to us, and keep people and planet healthy? Yannick Beaudoin is Director-General for Ontario and Northern Canada with the David Suzuki Foundation and Director for Innovation and forOntario with the Wellbeing Economies Alliance for Canada and the Sovereign Indigenous Nations. He brings a ‘new economics for transition’ lens to the organisation to enable the transformation of Canada towards social and ecological sustainability. He has a background in marine geology, was former Chief Scientist with GRID-Arendal, a United Nations Environment Programme collaborating centre - and has a Masters from Schumacher college in Economics for Transition. We talk with him this week in his role in the Wellbeing Economies Alliance for Canada - and as part of the greater Alliance, which incorporates nations as far apart as Scotland and New Zealand, and organisations across the globe. David brings his sense of scope and place and humanity to the huge questions of today: What's our economy for? And if it's not fit for purpose, how can we shift the system to something which would bring people and planet into balance and harmony. David Suzuki Foundation: https://davidsuzuki.orgWellbeing Economies Alliancehttps://weall.org/Weall Canadahttps://weallcanada.org/Theory Uhttps://www.toolshero.com/leadership/theory-u-scharmer/Three Horizons Modelhttps://resources.h3uni.org/tutorial/three-horizons/Thrutopiahttps://thrutopia.life

Thrutopia is open to everyone who tells stories in whatever form. But if you're in the early stages of your writing journey and want some support, these are Manda's Ten Key Pointers to writing well: a basic Writing Apprenticeship in an hour!The Thrutopia Masterclass is designed to help us all generate the ideas, the frames and the stories we'll need to take us through to a future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that follow us. If you've ever wanted to tell stories, it's for you. It's an ideas generator, a narrative incubator and a dissemination guide. What is isn't, is a basic writing course. This isn't a basic writing course, either - but it's a selection of things that I feel really matter if you're going to write, the basics for creating your own writing apprenticeship. If it's useful, let me know. If you want more depth in any particular area, let me know. If you want another one, ranging more widely, let me know... Thrutopia Masterclass: https://thrutopia.life

What do we do when the world isn't working for us? When our every fibre rages against the machine and our place in it? Maggie Ostara talks about her own path from a high-flying academic career, through to a life of clear purpose and contribution that has authenticity, integrity and power. Maggie Ostara, PhD left her job as the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Columbia University when she realised she’s not meant to work for anyone else. Twenty five years later at the height of of the pandemic, she created the Eight Pillars of Feminine Sovereignty and the six Feminine Sovereign Archetypes and then organised and hosted the online Women Evolving Our World Conference (and upcoming podcast).She is committed to helping people from all walks of life to connect deeply with the flow of life, to listen to the inner wisdom of their own bodies, and to find their own empowerment, authority, agency and resilience. Maggie says: “Now is the time for those of us who’ve been clearing our out-dated belief systems and building our skills and wisdom in the energetic and emotional realms to step forward and take our place among the leaders of today. For too many years, those who claim leadership in our world have valued profit and personal gain over the well-being of the majority of the human world, not to mention all the other beings with whom we share this planet. We are transforming and upgrading what it means to be a leader in alignment with the More Life principle: more life to all and less to none. I invite you to take the next step forward -- whether that’s simply in your own life, or in your family, community, neighbourhood or in your work in the world – shining out your values, your radiance, your compassion and your vision of the world you want to live in. Together we truly can make a difference!”Maggie has a thriving YouTube channel, teaches online courses, works with clients individually and in groups, provides business consulting, and particularly loves guiding Change Agents expand their body of work and its influence globally. She lives in occupied Pomo territory in Northern California with her non-binary 20 year old and her black feline familiar. In this episode, we explore what it takes to let go of the restrictions of the conventional world, and listen to the quiet urgings of the inner voice that pushes us to be other than our conditioning or society's expectations. With clarity and courage, she charts a course to a sense of self-compassion, self-awareness and connection to the flow of life that brings clarity to her life's purpose - and then shares the core of what she does in a way that makes it universally accessible. At the end, she offers a gift to Accidental Gods listeners, so that you, too, can share what the learning she offers. Gift package from Maggiehttps://womenevolvingourworld.com/accidentalgods/SovereigntybyDesign.comOstaraExperience.com

How can we use the leading edge of design thinking to create climate activism that really works? Dave Johnson is a lawyer, teacher, writer and design thinker who is bringing his breadth of understanding to bear on the climate and ecological emergency. Dave Johnson began his career as a trial lawyer in the courtrooms of Miami. After a decade, he came to Stanford to study design, tech and environmental law. He has worked for several Silicon Valley companies, with an increasing focus on teaching, first at Stanford Law School and then the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design at Stanford (a/k/a the d.school). His most recent articles are Design for Legal Systems, to be published by the Singapore Academy of Law, Mar/Apr 2021, and Designing Online Mediation: Does “Just Add Tech” Undermine Mediation’s Ownmost Aim?, published in 2019 by FGV Direito, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dave is currently working on a book entitled: Climate Activism by Design, bringing design principles to bear on citizen activists responding to corporate and governmental inaction on this immediate, existential crisis facing all of humanity. In this episode, we discuss the foundations of his book - how a trial lawyer shifted to design principles and thence to the design concepts behind climate activism: what it is and how to frame it such that we can find the best possible modes of action as the emergency becomes ever greater. Dave's website and blog https://climate-activist.com/designing-a-greenprint-elements-for-a-personal-eco-philosophy/Battle for Seattle - wikihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protestsFreya Mathews bookshttp://www.freyamathews.net/books

How can we improve our health, reduce the costs to the NHS by 50%, restore soil biodiversity, reduce flooding, reverse ecosystem decline and draw carbon down from the atmosphere into the earth's crust? Regenerative Farming does all of these and more - and Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust is at the heart of a movement to spread the word around the world. After studying biodynamic agriculture at Emerson College, he established a mixed community farm in Wales in 1973, producing at various times: wheat for flour production sold locally, carrots and milk from an 85 cow Ayrshire dairy herd, now made into a single farm cheddar style cheese.He was the founding chairman of British Organic Farmers in 1982, before joining the Soil Association, where he worked for nearly 20 years and during which time the organisation led the development of organic standards and the market for organic foods.His advocacy for a major global transition to more sustainable food systems now entails international travel and regular broadcasts and talks at public events.He is Patron of the UK Biodynamic Association and was awarded the CBE for services to organic farming in 2005.Patrick is passionate about the application of Nature’s principles of Harmony to food and farming, which is explored in the SFT’s latest initiative, The Harmony Project.In this episode, Patrick talks about the work of the Sustainable Food Trust in building a commons-based trust network which can co-create a global farm metric to assess farms around the world for their environmental impact in all ways. With this, farms can really begin to assess their own impact, and political institutions across the world can begin to rewards farms and farmers for restoring our land to the extraordinary fertility and abundance that we used to take for granted. Links Sustainable Food Trust https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/Patrick's Farm: https://holdenfarmdairy.co.uk/Patrick's Farm on social media: https://www.instagram.com/hafodcheese/https://www.facebook.com/Holden-Farm-Dairy-100227754976198/https://twitter.com/hafodcheese

How can we shape our culture to be one where everyone thrives? How can we write our new stories where everyone is heroic? How can we connect to the world of spirit in ways that include everyone? With Tamsin Omond, climate activist, strategist, organiser and author of DO/Earth. Since dropping banners against Heathrow Airport's third runway from the roof of the Houses of Parliament, Tamsin has consistently shifted public conversation on the climate and ecological emergency.They have organised a number of high profile protests, co-founded a Suffragette inspired environmental campaign - Climate Rush, coordinated (the successful) Save England's Forests coalition, founded a CIC - The Momentum Project - that mobilises the community surrounding London City Airport, led global corporate campaigns as Head of Global Campaigns at Lush Cosmetics and been a founding member of Extinction Rebellion.In 2021 Tamsin stood for co-leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales. They are also active in queer uprising; a theatre maker and the author of two books - RUSH! The Making of a Climate Activist and Do Earth: Healing Strategies for Humankind.In this episode, we explore the nature of activism and how it is evolving; how to create community from the ground up, based on Tamsin's experiences in East London, amongst others, and how we can shape a world where the transactional, zero-sum nature of our current system is no longer the driving force. Links: Tamsin's Website: https://www.tamsinomond.com/Tamsin's TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/how_we_re_going_to_solve_climate_change_tamsin_omondThe Artist's Way: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Artists-Way-by-Julia-Cameron-author/9781788164290SEEDS: https://joinseeds.earth/

We live on stories. We thrive on visions of futures we want - or terrify ourselves with those we definitely don't. But when it comes to our own near-term future, we don't have the stories that tell us how we got it right. So we need to write them - Urgently! One of the things that sets us apart from other species (as far as we know) is that we are forever building futures in our heads. Whenever we embark on something new: a relationship, a job, a project, a house move…it's fired and inspired by the stories we tell ourselves of how we'll feel, how others will engage with us, how our lives will be different - and often better. The futures might not pan out as we think, but we got ourselves where we need to be by our ability to shape ideas of a different reality. And yet when we're confronted by the greatest, deepest emergency our species has ever known and while we have plenty of dystopic stories of how bad it could be (think HandMaid's tale, or The Road, or even Don't Look Up), and a few utopias set in other worlds or other times or other realities, what we don't have is a big - vast - body of work showing how we could get to somewhere we'd all want to go: somewhere that future generations would look back and say of us, 'Yes, it was hard, but they did everything they could, they all pulled together, they created a vision of a flourishing world and we're building on the foundations they left us.' We need urgently to craft these stories: heroic journeys (or possibly post-heroic journeys) of how the world could be in the near term if we get it right, whatever that means. We need accurate, believable road maps of how to get from here to there. 'Here be Dragons' and big scary lines on the map doesn't cut it any more: we have to imagine things better. And it's hard. We need a whole lot of research of the things that are happening now in a whole range of fields from politics and economics to food and farming through business, work, the future of cities, education, technology, social media... and we need to explore how to stitch the ideas together into workable narratives that will draw people with them, even if they're bombarded by the 'business as usual' stories of our media. We need to give our media new stories to tell, that they will believe and want to share. And finally, we need the insights from industry professionals in publishing, film, TV, theatre… to help us get our new stories in front of the most possible people. So this is Thrutopia Masterclass. It's an Ideas Generator, a Narrative Incubator and a Dissemination Guide. It's a Think Tank and a community, a writing masterclass like nothing you've ever seen before. Come and join us! https://thrutopia.life. Or just share the link to this mini bonus podcast…https://thrutopia.life

In a world where governments are failing on all levels, can regenerative business be the change we need to see in the world? Can the new wave of meaningful work create the sense of coherence and community and connectedness to the earth that we need to take us forward? Nathalie Nahai is host of The Hive podcast, author of two books, international speaker and consultant with businesses big and small. Her clients have included Unilever, Google, Accenture and Harvard Business Review, among many others. Her most recent book, 'Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience', opens up worlds of business where profit is not the only motive, where psychological safety, meaning and solidarity are core business values and businesses are learning to walk their talk. In a world where government is failing so completely to address the many crises of our time, we spent an hour discussing whether business can fill that gap, and if so, how? When it is such a huge part of our lives, when the entire neoliberal model seems to be predicated on a cycle of wage-slavery followed by meaningless consumption, can work bring us back to balance with ourselves, each other and the ecosystems of which we are an integral part? Links: Nathalie's website: https://www.nathalienahai.com/Business Unusual: https://wordery.com/business-unusual-nathalie-nahai-9781398602212/Values Map: https://thevaluesmap.com/B Corps UK: https://bcorporation.uk/B Corps EU: https://bcorporation.eu/B Corps Global (US) : https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us

What is the nature of being and belonging in the current world? How can we honour the rite of passage that is happening, and let go of the old ways, let them die to the past, live in the liminal space of unknowing, and step into a future that emerges from the best of who we are? Isla McLeod is a celebrant, ritualist, walker-between-the-worlds and deep connector to spirit. She says of herself: "I am a creator of ceremonies, ritual designer, transformational healer and companion at the thresholds. Inspired by nature, forged by my longing, devoted to remembering. Lover of moss, mushrooms, trees, wild swimming and moonlight.It is my deepest wish to inspire and support a remembrance of what is sacred in our lives and guide people back home to the natural world. To create and hold space for others to journey within and recognise their innate creativity, wisdom and the unique medicine they bring to life. Through offering a container for transformation, held with the deepest love and respect, I hope to help others access those forgotten treasures that are their gifts to share with the world." In this episode, we explore her journey through depression and addiction, to deep, grounded earth-connection - to a place where she holds rituals for others, ushering in new love and new life, or helping people to die with meaning and connection. She unfolds the peaks and troughs of a journey that has seen her spent a year in a Buddhist retreat, two years in a yurt connecting with the cycles of the seasons and the lunar months, and now, working with and on the land, to help usher in the new emergent reality. This is a deeply connected, connecting episode. If you're exploring the ways you can connect with the Web of Life in a way that feels meaningful, Isla's journey is rich with experience and insight. Isla's Website: https://islamacleod.com/

How do we understand dreams in ways that make sense of 21st Century life? How can we interpret them in ways that have meaning for us as individuals, in the complexity of our lives? Rabbi Jill Hammer has explored the depths of dreams and dreaming with her new book - and here talks to us about what she learned, and some of the dreams that touched her most deeply.Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, is an author, scholar, ritualist, poet, midrashist, and dreamworker. She is the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion, a pluralistic seminary, and cofounder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, a program in earth-based, embodied, feminist Jewish spiritual leadership. Her own experience of dreams as a source of deep teaching, wisdom and connection to the All That Is (however we define it) led her to a lifetime of exploring dreams and how they can guide us in ways that bypass our conscious minds. Dreams led her to rabbinical school and then from there into the many areas of her teaching and learning life. The depth of this book makes it one of our generation's most useful dreaming handbooks - it won't tell you how to interpret your dreams: It will help you to find their depth and mine them for all they can teach you.North American listeners can PreOrder Jill's book here: https://ayinpress.org/undertorah/UK and Europe: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Undertorah-An-Earth-Based-Kabbalah-of-Dreams-by-Jill-Hammer/9781532362002Rabbi Jill Episode 12: https://accidentalgods.life/episode-12/

How can we find joy in life again? How can we create beautiful things to wear that allow us to be the best of ourselves - and build community while we do it? Alice Holloway is co-founder of London Urban Textiles Commons, and she's committed to finding the answers. Join us for an inspiring, sparky exploration of how our future can be different. Alice Holloway has a degree in jewellery making from Central St Martin's and a Masters in Design for the Cultural Commons from the London Metropolitan University. She is founder of the Little Black Pants Club, co-founder of London Urban Textiles Commons and is committed to helping people find joy and beauty in the creation of all that we need: to building a future of community and connectivity where we no longer depend on mass production or on real people being devolved into numbers. Her projects include a mobile Sweat Shop which brings a bicycle into a community so that people can power the creation of their own sweat shirts - and see the whole process, from the effort it takes to power the machine, to the machine itself, and the crafting of a garment that fits. In this inspiring, sparky conversation, we explore the ways we can bring morality, ethics, decency together with joy, beauty and the wonder of self-expression to create a world that leaves exploitation and the accumulation of capital behind. LinksLondon Urban Textiles Commons Elinor Ostrom: Evonomics Introduction: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/Elinor Ostrom: 8 Principles: http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmonsElinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-11-01/governing-the-commons-by-elinor-ostrom-review/David Bollier Podcast: Frontiers of Commoning https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/frontiers-of-commoning-with-david-bollier/id1501085005

How can we be the best possible stewards of the future for our children? How can we meet their eco-anxiety and teach them resilience, adaptation and give them the skills of systemic thinking that will help them navigate the uncertainties to come? Eva Bishop is mother of two young children, as well as being a long-term a climate activist and current communications director for the Beaver Trust. She is dedicated to finding ways that we can all create emotional and practical resilience in the face of the climate emergency - but in particular, how parents and care-givers can help young people develop the skills they will need to navigate a world that is undergoing total transformation - while at the same time, helping to be part of the change we need to see. In this broad-ranging, deep, challenging conversation, we explore the ways we can all be part of the solution, touching on: emotional resilience strategies; growing food and exploring the whole food system; education: what it is for, how it functions, and what it needs to become. Eva shares her 'Collective Human' strategies and 'MyActionMatters'. If anyone feels moved to help with these, there is room for a team, to bring funding together to expand them. We are all part of the solution. We just need to find what we're best at. Go for it. LinksEpisode 88 - Eva talking about the work of the Beaver TrustThe Beaver Trust Jo McAndrews You Tube: Eco-Anxiety: A Call to Action Restoring Shropshire Verges Project: https://middlemarchescommunitylandtrust.org.uk/guest-blogs/restoring-shropshires-verges-project-rsvp/Guardian article on city allotments

What is Power? How do we use it: both power over each other, and the power that fuels the world? How could we use it better? In this, our ninth season (and third year), we are aiming to look more deeply into the ways we might create a flourishing future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that follow us. With that in mind, our first guest of this new season is Richard Heinberg, author of the magesterial, 'Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival' which came out in September 2021. Richard is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He is the author of fourteen books in all, including some of the seminal works on society’s current energy and environmental sustainability crisis:His books include: Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (September 2021) power.postcarbon.orgOur Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy, co-authored with David Fridley (Island Press, 2016) ourrenewablefuture.orgAlso mentioned in the podcast: Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradoxPeter Turchin: https://peterturchin.com/The Evolution of Beauty by Richard Prum: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Evolution-of-Beauty-by-Richard-O-Prum/9780385537216

As we head down into the dark nights of the year, the quiet time of introspection, of assessing the year just gone and thinking forward to the one yet to come, Accidental Gods joins with the hosts of Upstream and The Hive podcasts: 3 women engaged in the best of change to bring the world to a flourishing future. This is now official solstice tradition - we three explore the questions we've asked others through the year, look at what moved us in our podcast interviews and what they are pulling us towards for next year. And we offer a solstice meditation at the end, to bring you, too, to the quiet point of looks-withinNathalie Nahai is an international speaker, consultant and author of two books: the recently published Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, and business best-seller, Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion. Her work explores the intersection between persuasive technology, ethics, and the psychology of online behaviour, and clients include Google, Accenture, Unilever and Harvard Business Review, among others.Through keynotes, workshops and consultancy, she teaches people how to understand the psychological dynamics behind evolving consumer behaviours, and how to ethically apply behavioural science principles to enhance their website, content marketing, product design and customer experience. In 2021 Nathalie launched TheValuesMap.com, a free tool developed in collaboration with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, to help people within organisations understand, communicate and practically express the values they stand for. A member of the BIMA Human Insights Council, Nathalie also hosts The Hive Podcast, and contributes to national publications, television and radio on the impact of technology in our lives.Della Duncan is a Renegade Economist who hosts the Upstream Podcast inviting you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. She is also a Right Livelihood Coach, a Senior Fellow of Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute in the London School of Economics, the Course Development Manager of Fritjof Capra’s Capra Course on the Systems View of Life, a Senior Lecturer at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Gaia Ed., Co-Founder of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and an Alternative Economics Consultant.Della holds a Master of Arts in Economics for Transition with Distinction from Schumacher College, a graduate certificate in Authentic Leadership from Naropa University, has completed Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects Intensive Program, and is a Gross National Happiness Trainer through the Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutan.The Hive: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-hive-podcast/id1387510537Upstream: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/upstream/id1082594532

What are the best, most readable, most inspiring and most give-able books this season? Manda's solstice list of her favourite Fiction and non-Fiction books read in 2021. Plus a bonus handful of must-listen podcasts. Here we go, people of the podcast - the books and their links. I've linked through Blackwells, because I used to love Heffers (part of the same chain) when I was in Cambridge. Do obviously feel free to support your local bookshop. KSR: The Ministry for the Futurehttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Ministry-for-the-Future-by-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/9780356508863/Cory Doctorow - Walkawayhttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Walkaway-by-Cory-Doctorow/978178669307/Victoria Goddard The Hands of the Emperor https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Hands-of-the-Emperor-by-Goddard-Victoria/9781988908144Mick Herron SLOUGH HOUSE - 7th Jackson Lamb thrillerhttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Slough-House-by-Mick-Herron/9781529378665/Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Iron-Widow-by-Xiran-Jay-Zhao/9780861542093Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Fates-and-Furies-by-Lauren-Groff/9780099592532NON-FICTION Davids Graeber and Wengrow - THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING : a new history of Humanity https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Dawn-of-Everything-by-David-Graeber-D-Wengrow/9780241402429/TAMSIN OMOND: Do/Earth: Healing strategies for humankindhttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Do-Earth-by-Tamsin-Omond/9781914168000/All We Can Save, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine K Wilkinson https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/All-We-Can-Save-by-Ayana-Elizabeth-Johnson-editor-Katharine-K-Wilkinson-editor/9780593237083Finding the Mother Tree https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Finding-the-Mother-Tree-by-S-Simard/9780241389348/Tomorrow is too late - Grace Maddrell https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Tomorrow-Is-Too-Late-by-Grace-Maddrell/9781911648321/The Future Earth - Eric Holthaushttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Future-Earth-by-Eric-Holthaus/9780062883162/Recapture the Rapture - Jamie Whealhttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Recapture-the-Rapture-by-Jamie-Wheal/9780062905468/Mariana Mazzucato Mission Economy https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Mission-Economy-by-Mariana-Mazzucato/9780241419731PODCASTSThe Hive: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-hive-podcast/id1387510537/Upstream: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/upstream/id1082594532/Emerge: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/emerge-making-sense-of-whats-next/id1057220344/Frontiers of Commoning: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/frontiers-of-commoning-with-david-bollier/id1501085005/Outrage and Optimism: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/outrage-optimism/id1459416461/What Could Possibly Go Right: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-could-possibly-go-right/id1520465627/Your Undivided Attention: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/your-undivided-attention/id1460030305/EcoCiv : https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ecociv-podcast/id1511996189/Farmerama: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farmerama/id1031542491/Farm Gate: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788/The Lodge Cast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-lodge-cast/id1530950902/Reasons to be Cheerful: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reasons-to-be-cheerful-with-ed-miliband-and-geoff-lloyd/id1287081706/Tom and Thelma Look Left: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/thelma-and-tom-look-left/id1553737688/

How can we get from the current edge-of-catastrophe to a world where we have addressed the huge issues of the climate and ecological emergency? Only in fiction can we bring the answers together in a vision of a better world. Author Kim Stanley Robinson talks about his 'The Ministry for the Future' - One of Barack Obama's favourite books of last year. 'If I could get policymakers and citizens everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future' Ezra Klein, Vox'A novel that presents a rousing vision of how we might unite to overcome the greatest challenge of our time' TED.com'A breathtaking look at the challenges that face our planet in all their sprawling magnitude and also in their intimate, individual moments of humanity' Booklist (starred review)'Gutsy, humane . . . a must-read for anyone worried about the future of the planet' Publishers Weekly (starred review)'A sweeping epic about climate change and humanity's efforts to try and turn the tide before it's too late' Polygon (Best of the Year)Kim Stanley Robinson is one of our foremost visionary writers. Author of 19 novels, numerous short stories, blogs and essays, his Ministry for the Future' was one of Barack Obama's 'must-read' books of 2020. This is one of the few genuine 'Thrutopian' novels which aims to take us from squarely where we are, through a clearly defined route (with all its pitfalls, prat-falls and fights back by the Status Quo) to a place where we have a decent chance of survival. In today's podcast, we explore the book, the author's experience of being invited to COP26 in Glasgow, and where we might go next. Buy the book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Ministry-for-the-Future-by-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/9780356508863KSR Website: http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/A view of KSR as one of the few contemporary novelists dealing with 'big ideas' of how we could be: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/kim-stanley-robinson-socialist-novelistKSR TED Talk - 'Letter from the year 2071' https://www.ted.com/talks/kim_stanley_robinson_remembering_climate_change_a_message_from_the_year_2071#t-594961Network for Greening the Financial System: https://www.ngfs.net/en

How can we shape our economies in a post-COP, decarbonising world? How can we build a way of exchanging value that actually works in favour of our planet, not against it? Dr James Meadway, former economic advisor to John McDonnell on how redistribution can take place, and how to reshape our political landscape. Dr Meadway's work has focused on developing viable alternatives to neoliberalism, and has published widely on democratic ownership, environmental economics, and automation and the digital economy.He was previously economic advisor to John McDonnell when he was Shadow Chancellor, and was chief economist at the New Economics Foundation. He is currently writing a book on the British economy after the 2008 crisis, and appears regularly on broadcast media as a commentator on UK politics.James holds a PhD in economics from the University of London, masters degrees in economics and economic history, and a BSc in economics and economic history from LSE. He has taught at SOAS, City, Cambridge and Sussex Universities.In this episode, we explore the repercussions of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow and how the world might respond - in particular, how we might respond as individuals, and as communities. LinksJames in the New Statesman: Why a green state is not enough to compensate for bad capitalists: https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/11/is-a-green-state-the-answer-to-the-climate-crisisJames just after the 2019 election: https://novaramedia.com/2019/12/17/labours-economic-plans-what-went-wrong/Aditya Chakrobortty in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/11/green-new-deal-bad-idea-policy-left-joe-biden-john-mcdonnell

How do we evolve the radical new sense of community, connectivity, mutual support - and resilience - that we need as we move into a world of climate breakdown? Jeremy Lent's book The Web of Meaning is the 2nd of 3 that build a picture of an eco-civilisation. In this week's episode, we explore the ways we can all be part of the solution. Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.Born in London, England, he received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day.His new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, offers a coherent and intellectually solid foundation for a worldview based on connectedness that could lead humanity to a sustainable, flourishing future.He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. He lives with his partner in Berkeley, California.He writes topical articles exploring the deeper patterns of political and cultural developments at his website Patterns of Meaning.In this week's podcast, we explore his most recent paper 'The End of Capitalism' and how our entire economic structure needs to change if we're to address the demands of the moment. From there, we move to the pillars of systemic change and how a shift in the world economy to one of reciprocity over extraction/abuse must be an integral part of the transition to a flourishing, interconnected future. Drawing from indigenous wisdom, and the 'Four R's' described by LaDonna Harris as the foundations of indigenous cultures across the globe, to the concept of fractal flourishing, citizens's assemblies and the crisis in sense-making, we move ever towards a model of how our world could be if we got it right. Jeremy's Website: https://www.jeremylent.com/Web of Meaning - book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Web-of-Meaning-by-Jeremy-Lent/9781788165648End of Capitalism Paper: https://patternsofmeaning.com/2021/10/11/solving-the-climate-crisis-requires-the-end-of-capitalism/Growth mitigation paper (referenced, not by Jeremy) https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/endf2_kuhnhenn_growth_in_mitigation_scenarios.pdfWhat Does an EcoCivilisation Look Like? https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/ecological-civilization/2021/02/16/what-does-ecological-civilization-look-likePodcast 38 with Accidental Gods: https://accidentalgods.life/fractal-flourishing/

As we lurch towards irreversible climate chaos, how can we begin to pull back from the edge? This week, we look specifically at the area of transport: how can we be mobile and yet reach the 3 Zeroes of Death, Emissions and Carbon? What would it mean to live in an area with fair, free, extensive public transport? And how can we make this happen. Our lively, inspiring conversation with Dr John Whitelegg has answers. Dr John Whitelegg, BA PhD LLB, is visiting professor, School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University and was formerly professor of geography and head of department at Lancaster University and a staff member of the global science policy organisation, the Stockholm Environment Institute. He has worked with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy and the Environment (Germany) and is an associate of the Kassel Centre for Mobility Culture (Germany) and a board member of the Californian organisation “Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities”.John has edited the journal “World Transport Policy and Practice for 25 years and has written 10 books. In the most recent book Mobility, he presents an evidence-based case for a transformation of the totality of transport and mobility policy to achieve three zeroes (zero carbon, zero deaths and injuries and zero air pollution). He has also worked extensively on practical measures to achieve 100% decarbonisation of land transport.In this episode, we talk at length about what needs to happen in our transport systems to bring about the three zeroes of death, emissions and carbon. John has travelled widely and worked in Germany, Sweden, and the outer Hebrides as well as many locations in the UK. He has a coherent set of ideas of what needs to be done - and we considered some of the ways ordinary people can begin to make these happen. Foundation for Integrated Transport: https://integratedtransport.co.uk/Center for Research into Energy Demand Solutions: https://www.creds.ac.uk/West Oxfordshire Community Transport: https://www.woct.org.uk/South Shropshire Climate Action Group: https://southshropshireclimateaction.org/Trust the People: https://www.trustthepeople.earth/the-courseArticle on Car free cities UK - 1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/26/city-entres-end-of-road-for-cars-brighton-bristol-yorkArticle on Car free cities UK - 2: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/31/york-to-ban-private-cars-from-city-centre-within-three-years

If the stories of our culture are of separation, scarcity and powerlessness, how can we build new stories, new myths, new ideas of how we can be different? Alina Siegfried has explored the deep concepts of the stories of our world, and how we can reshape them. We are the stories we tell ourselves - about who we are and where we're going. In our small day to day decisions, we think how our stories of ourselves will be enhanced by the things we do. So when all our stories have been about scarcity, separation and powerlessness, and how we can fight to gain more than those with whom we are in competition - how can we build healing, whole, healthy stories that will bring us forward to a flourishing future? Alina Siegfried is a performance poet, storyteller, and advocate for systems change. She has worked at Enspiral, in the New Zealand Government, and for the Edmund Hillary Foundation. Her book, 'A Future Untold' brings our stories to the heart of our systemic change. Alina's website: https://www.alinasiegfried.com/Aina's TEDx Talk: https://youtu.be/PM_xnvTVyEsIntroduction to Johan Rockstrom: https://youtu.be/yBjB-w5HD_M?list=PLxTt2Nm5dTv3awnK1ren4BtHNctW_v7zYCommon Cause Foundation: https://commoncausefoundation.org/about/The Long Now Foundation: https://longnow.org/Don't Think of an Elephant: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-All-New-Dont-Think-of-an-Elephant-by-George-Lakoff/9781603585941

Anthea Lawson is a campaigner who’s interested in the connections between our inner lives and the world we create together. In a world of such astonishing inequity, where ever fewer people hold ever more power, how do those of us whose lives are given to change, meet the reality that we are embedded in the system? If we are an integral part of the problem, how can we live the solution into being? Is that even what we're here for? Anthea Lawson has thought about this in immense depth and with huge courage. Over two decades, she has campaigned to shut down tax havens and stop banks fuelling corruption and ecological destruction. She launched an award-winning campaign for transparency over who owns companies, which was taken up by many other organisations and has resulted in changes to the law in dozens of countries. She worked on the successful campaigns for an Arms Trade Treaty, and for the international ban on cluster bombs. She has worked for Global Witness, Amnesty International, and many other campaign groups. She's dug up Parliament Square in guerilla gardening efforts, and was arrested with Extinction Rebellion. In her writing she explores what we can learn from how we do campaigning: how our inner lives are entangled in our work to change the world. I’ve been exploring this as an associate at Perspectiva, and in her book The Entangled Activist: Learning to recognise the master's tools, to be published in spring 2021.She is interested, too, in the limits of campaigning in a time of breakdown, which I’ve been exploring through editing at the Dark Mountain Project.​Her book is a deep exploration of personal process that then expands so that it becomes relevant to us all - if we're activists (and frankly, if you're listening to this podcast, I imagine you're an activist at some point in your life even if you don't identify as such), then we are also an integral part of the system that is the problem - disentangling ourselves from this is not going to happen. So the question arises of how we can be the change we need to see in the world. Anthea has explored this in depth and it was such a pleasure to engage with her on this question. Anthea's website: https://www.anthealawson.uk/Perspectiva Press: https://systems-souls-society.com/insight/perspectiva-press/Dark Mountain Press: https://dark-mountain.net/

What is the bare minimum we need world leaders to agree at COP26 and what can we do if they fail? Rupert Read, academic philosopher, author and climate activist discusses the urgency of the moment - and how a 'moderate flank' of climate activists can grow out of the COP. Dr Rupert Read is a long term climate activist. On the day after this podcast goes out, he'll be in court on charges of Criminal Damage for pouring water soluble paint on the steps of a hard-core climate denying think tank. No stranger to action as well as thought, he is one of he nation's foremost climate philosophers and in today's episode, we explore together the nature of our current crisis, the hope (or otherwise) for international agreement at COP26 and action at an appropriate scale afterwards - and then look at how we as individuals can help foment a worldwide move towards a coherent, adaptive future, including ideas such as employee strikes mirroring the 'Fridays for Future' school strikes, the employers who are actively supporting climate action, and the ways we can begin to become more resilient and less dependent on 'business as usual'. We end by discussing the Thrutopia Masterclass, starting May 1st on which Rupert will be the inaugural speaker. Rupert Read web site: https://rupertread.net/Rupert's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/GreenRupertRead10 Tests for COP: https://greenworld.org.uk/article/10-tests-cop26Ocean Tipping Point Paper: https://tinyurl.com/2e25nm8sPerspective Article on Moderate Flank: https://systems-souls-society.com/what-next-on-climate-the-need-for-a-moderate-flank/New Statesman Article on employers allowing climate action: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2019/09/can-your-employer-stop-you-joining-climate-strikeSimilar article on Employers from Ian McGregor: https://theconversation.com/everyones-business-why-companies-should-let-their-workers-join-the-climate-strike-122976Tech workers global climate strike: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-workers-global-climate-change-strike/Companies who are participating in the climate strike: https://www.fastcompany.com/90403903/these-are-all-the-companies-participating-in-the-climate-strike

If we are going to meet the challenges of the climate, ecological and cultural crisis, we're going to have to change the systems that surround us: Education systems, health care systems, food systems, economic systems... ultimately systems of government. How can we do so peacefully and kindly without leaving vast numbers of people in freefall? The systems around us have grown up in a world that assumed them impervious to change. But - as Greta has said - change is coming. So how do we navigate it, and shape it to a flourishing future? How can we be part of the bigger change the world needs to see? Dr Anna Birney is Director of the School for System Change at the Forum for the Future. She is author of Cultivating System Change: A Practitioner's companion, and she is 'passionate about designing and facilitating systems change programmes that support people, communities and organisations to transform their practice'.Anna started facilitating multi-stakeholder processes around the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. At WWF-UK she ran a six-year education programme on system change which included setting up 56 communities of practice to knit together innovative practices. This experience supported her to develop practical system change frameworks for WWF-UK and Forum for the Future as well as organisations including Unilever, Nike, Shell Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Innovate UK and the NHS, through the System Innovation Lab - experimenting and learning how to develop different practices. This led onto setting up the School of System Change where as well as overseeing the learning and curriculum, Anna now coaches on a wide number of projects and initiatives including the Marine CoLab, the #Oneless project and Oxfam’s System Innovation in Woman’s Economic Empowerment. She is the author of Cultivating System Change: A practitioner’s companion which is based on her PhD.“Having cultivated the School since 2016 it gives me great pleasure to continue to engage and learn from participants, contributors and partners to evolve what we offer. I am most excited about how we can grow the number and diversity of facilitators and the diversity of learning, exploring what systems change practice might look like in different contexts and geographies.”Links: Forum for the Future: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/School for System Change: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/school-of-system-changeYouTube Video for the BaseCamp Course: https://youtu.be/B-oqDQkQ54UAnna's Medium page: https://annasquestions.medium.com/Anna's Book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/cultivating-system-change/anna-birney/9781910174098Cultivating the Future: Medium blog: https://medium.com/school-of-system-change/cultivating-system-change-a-practitioners-companion-e05e541c1726The Presencing Institute: https://www.presencing.org/

As we understand more of the climate and ecological emergency, it becomes increasingly clear that Regenerative Agriculture needs to be one of the mainstays of our plans for systemic change. Part 2 of 2 with Ffinlo Costain of Farmwel and the Farm Gate podcast.We live in an era of empty food, vast food miles and a burgeoning ecosystem emergency that is largely pushed by a chemical-based agriculture system that is poisoning waterways, oceans, and soil, destroying the biodiversity of our land and waters and harming the health of humanity. A regenerative farming system that works, in Ffinlo's words 'with nature rather than in spite of nature' can do so much to improve our health, bring us back into relationship with the living earth, restore our devastated ecosystems, restore the water cycle - and draw down CO2 into the earth so that as we build soil, we heal our climate. With so much to go right, why are we not doing this everywhere? That's one of the questions I ask Ffinlo Costain, host of the FarmGate podcast and Founder and CEO of Farmwel, a company dedicated to helping generate momentum towards sustainable mainstream agriculture and aquaculture, focussing on the environment, people's livelihoods, and farm animal health and welfare.Ffinlo is in the almost-unique position of understanding the problems, having solutions and having the ear of people in power. So if anyone's going to help us change, it's him. Join us for a fascinating, detailed, inspiring pair of podcasts. Farmwel: https://www.farmwel.org.uk/FarmGate podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788UNFCCC NDC calculations: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_08_adv_1.pdfSoil Health Report will be released Oct 20th 2021 - available here: www.foodandsecurity.net

How can we reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, build living soil from the chaos of industrial farming, while growing healthy nutritious food and restoring our devastated ecosystems? Regenerative farming has so many of the answers and this week we speak to the host of the FarmGate podcast, Ffinlo Costain. Two parts - this is Part One.We live in an era of empty food, vast food miles and a burgeoning ecosystem emergency that is largely pushed by a chemical-based agriculture system that is poisoning waterways, oceans, and soil, destroying the biodiversity of our land and waters and harming the health of humanity. A regenerative farming system that works, in Ffinlo's words 'with nature rather than in spite of nature' can do so much to improve our health, bring us back into relationship with the living earth, restore our devastated ecosystems, restore the water cycle - and draw down CO2 into the earth so that as we build soil, we heal our climate. With so much to go right, why are we not doing this everywhere? That's one of the questions I ask Ffinlo Costain, host of the FarmGate podcast and Founder and CEO of Farmwel, a company dedicated to helping generate momentum towards sustainable mainstream agriculture and aquaculture, focussing on the environment, people's livelihoods, and farm animal health and welfare.Ffinlo is in the almost-unique position of understanding the problems, having solutions and having the ear of people in power. So if anyone's going to help us change, it's him. Join us for a fascinating, detailed, inspiring pair of podcasts. Farmwel: https://www.farmwel.org.uk/FarmGate podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788UNFCCC NDC calculations: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2021_08_adv_1.pdfSoil Health Report will be released Oct 20th 2021 - available here: www.foodandsecurity.net

How can we build a progressive political movement that spans the world and that will take us to where we need to be: a future we can be proud of and towards which all of us will want to work? Taking politics, activism, progressive ideals with Jeremy Gilbert, Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London. This is one of our most nakedly political conversations - because politics is the language of power and those who rule over us do so with at least the vestige of a democratic mandate. To understand how to affect change, we need to understand how to shift the levers of power on a worldwide scale. But change always begins at home, so in this week's episode, we're talking about political activism in the UK and where it might go in the near term. Our guest is someone really well placed to discuss this: Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural and Political Theory at the University of East London. His most recent publications include Twenty-First-Century Socialism (Polity 2020) the translation of Maurizio Lazzarato's Experimental Politics and the book Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism. His next book, Hegemony Now : How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World , co-authored with Alex Williams, will be published in 2022. He writes regularly for the British press (including the Guardian, the New Statesman, open Democracy and Red Pepper) and for think tanks such as IPPR and Compass, is routinely engaged in debates and discussion on Labour Party policy and strategy, and has appeared on national television as a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party.He has been involved with both mainstream party politics and extra-parliamentary activism throughout his adult life, having been an active participant in the social forum movement of the early 2000s, a member of the founding national committee of Momentum (the controversial organisation established to support Corbyn's leadership of Labour), and being a former elected member management committee of Compass, a pluralist left-wing think tank and lobby group.Jeremy is an an advisor to and participant in a range of ongoing projects such as The World Transformed and the New Economy Organisers Network. He has also participated in many cultural projects, particularly connected with music and sonic culture, and is a founder member of Lucky Cloud Sound System and Beauty and the Beat, two successful and respected collectives that have been organising regular dance parties in East London since the early 2000s, at many of which he still regularly DJs.Jeremy also maintains a lifelong commitment to public education outside the academy, currently hosting Culture, Power, Politics, a regular series of free open seminars and lectures.Links: Jeremy's website: https://www.jeremygilbert.orgJeremy's blog: https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2021/06/04/2020-analysis/Jeremy's papers on Open Democracy: https://jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2021/06/04/2020-analysis/Guardian review of Jeremy's book 'Twenty First Century Socialism': https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/06/twenty-first-century-socialism-by-jeremy-gilbert-reviewJeremy at Novara Media: https://novaramedia.com/tag/jeremy-gilbert/Compass: https://www.compassonline.org.uk/The World Transformed: https://www.theworldtransformed.org/Momentum: https://www.theworldtransformed.org/

How can we embrace our humanity and use it in service to the earth and all that lives? How can we bring the best of ourselves to the best of the Web of Life in full understanding of the chaos of the moment, with full and open hearts? Deena Metzger has given her life to finding answers - and shares them here.From her experience at three years old when she saw the spirit of her grandmother at the foot of her crib, Deena Metzger's life has been devoted to the exploration of the worlds of spirit and of humanity, combined, in search of an answer to the question: What is your Calling? Working as a poet, novelist, therapist, healer and visionary, she has brought together Nineteen Ways to a Viable Future - a route by which all of humanity can become the best of ourselves and thus be what the web of life needs of us. In this conversation, we explore some of those Ways and the routes by which Deena reached them, together with her thoughts of the present and future as we move into the time of crisis. In her own works, Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over fifty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies (Healing Stories) which creatively address life threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration.Deena has spent a lifetime investigating Story as a form of knowing and healing. As a writer, she asks: Who do we have to become to find the forms and sacred language with which to meet these times?She conducts training groups on the spiritual, creative, political and ethical aspects of healing and peacemaking, individual, community and global, drawing deeply on alliance with spirit, indigenous teachings and the many wisdom traditions. One focus is on uniting Western medical ways with indigenous medicine traditions.Deena's website: https://deenametzger.net/

In a world of uncertainty, transformation and potential catastrophe, how can we find our own truth and, from there, speak with authenticity to the children and young people in our lives about the world that is coming? Louis Weinstock is a celebrated psychotherapist who finds ways to help people of all ages connect with their own truth and share it. In this episode, we explore our attitudes to death, loss - and the climate emergency - and how we can hold the conversations that need to happen. Louis Weinstock is a remarkable man - a deeply committed therapist who does his best to make his skills available to as many children and young people as need them - and so many do. He focuses on grief and loss, initially around death and diagnoses of fatal illness, but increasingly the existential grief of our dying ecosystem and the despair, rage and frustration at a world that is not acting as it could or should. In this profoundly moving podcast, we talk in depth about how all of us can exist with our grief and despair, how we can hold them tenderly, and how, from these places of resilience and strength, we can hold the conversations that need to happen in our widening circles. About Louis: Louis works with children, and the child inside us all, the one that wants to be loved, the one that wants to cry, the one that knows what it wants, the one that really does dance like no-one’s watching, the one that spends timeless hours looking at bugs under a piece of bark, the one that keeps getting back up no matter how many times they fall down.He helps people find a light in the darkness, especially in grief, in the shadow, in the things that are unseen, unheard, unspoken. Her sees death as our greatest teacher, and avoidance of it our biggest mistake. He made an audio course all about death and life here: it will help you become more fully alive in your everyday existence. He runs Magic Power of Grief circles at festivals, and in other spaces and places.He believes the body is deeply intelligent, and our ‘symptoms’ are just fragments of our soul seeking wholeness. Rumi once said “What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe”.He loves using design, collaboration and creativity to solve big, meaningful problems. One way he does this is by helping to run a charity – Apart of Me – that helps kids transform their grief into compassion. This project also has two side projects which are focused on helping younger children grow into emotionally empowered leaders: Earthlings and Bounce Works.Making a home for experience in words is his favourite spiritual craft. You can check out some of his writing here. His book about How The World Is Making Our Children Mad And What To Do About It - is available now. See also Episode 131 of the podcast where we talk to Louis about it.Louis Weinstock: https://louisweinstock.com/A Part of Me https://www.apartofme.app/Wider Horizons Summer Festival: https://widerhorizons.events/

How can sound edge us closer to the centre of ourselves, bring us closer into connection with our own authenticity and with the heart of the earth? Caro C has produced the Accidental Gods Podcast since its inception. Here, she talks about the wild magic of sound in all its forms. Caro C has been described as a Soul Enchantress (BBC Radio 3) and a 'One Woman Electronic Avalanche' (BBC Introducing), she's a composer and musician, a sound engineer and a solo performance artist. She's a rock climber and a dreamer, a creator of magic with all things sound. She created the music that is our signature at the head and foot of the podcast and she's been our engineer and producer for nearly two years, weaving miracles with technology and weaving our conversations in ways that bring them to coherence while always being a balm to the ears. As she launches her new album, Electric Mountain, we talk about her journey into sound, her experience of earth-connection and conscious evolution and how she weaves all of these into into a deeply connected, dream-woven life. Links: Caro's Page: https://carosnatch.com/Caro on Bandcamp: https://carosnatch.bandcamp.com/

Ece Temelkuran is an astonishingly astute, great-hearted writer. Joining us from Zagreb, she gave us an hour of wisdom, insight and compassion, based around her book 'TOGETHER: 10 Choices for a Better Now' - with an international audience and some cracking questions, this is our gift to you this weekend. Ece Temelkuran is an international columnist, political analyst, novelist and sharp, brilliant, astute - and great hearted - writer. Her books 'HOW TO LOSE A COUNTRY' and 'TOGETHER' have been met with great international acclaim. (she shared a stage at the Edinburgh Festival with Ed Milliband, of the outstandingly successful 'Reasons to be Cheerful' podcast. He was also something political at one point in the UK, when such things mattered...) She was our guest in podcast 74 -and on the first Sunday of September, she returned with a one hour Zoom-based Bookclub to delve deeper into the compassionate wisdom of her books.

How can we embed circular thinking in our food, energy, water & waste to benefit people and the planet? LEAP Micro Anaerobic Digestion is building the systems in the UK, Nigeria, Malaysia and around the world to create local zero waste cultures that provide food and energy to their communities. Rokiah Yaman is the Project Director for LEAP Micro Anaerobic Digestion. A part of the project from the start, she coordinates the LEAP demonstration sites, oversees fundraising and planning activities, and manages infrastructure and operational logistics, helping to bring micro AD technology and the closed-loop ethos into public spaces where people can see who it works in their own communities.In this episode, Rokia talks us through the technologies involved in Micro Anaerobic Digestion, and introduces us to the projects in London, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Nigeria and Malaysia. We find out how it works, and how we can make it work in urban and rural settings, as part of the power spectrum of the future, where circularity is embedded in the way we live and we generate our own energy closer to home, giving us autonomy and agency and cutting the mega-corporations out of the loop. As ever, our signature music comes from Caro C, but this week, we have additional music at the head and foot from Billy Surgeoner's album 'Hey Mountain Hey' - the track is The Pollen Path Leap: https://www.madleap.co.uk/Hey Mountain Hey: BillySurgeoner.BandCamp.com/track/the-pollen-path/

In a world where the only constant is change, how can we find the best of our wisdom? How can we find true connection to the spirits of the places we live so that we might learn better how to be in the transition that is coming? How, above all, can we approach death with equanimity, and even joy? This week, we explore all of this with author, mythicist - and elder - Sharon Blackie.Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer and internationally recognised teacher whose work sits at the interface of psychology, mythology and ecology.Her highly acclaimed books, courses, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of our native myths, fairy tales and folk traditions to the personal, social and environmental problems we face today.As well as writing four books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted, her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Irish Times, the Scotsman and more, and she has been interviewed by the BBC and other major broadcasters on her areas of expertise. Sharon is one of those rare people who walks her talk in every part of her life. Through the past decades, she has lived in each one of the Celtic lands: Scotland, then Ireland, then Wales, always in remote areas with few people and a wild, powerful landscape. Her deep roots to our mythology and to the spirits of place have left her uniquely placed to speak to and of the old ways of our ancestors - and the ways we can avail ourselves of the ancient wisdom of lineage and place to weave new ways of being that will help to guide us through the change that is coming. This week's podcast is a deep, deep dive into our shamanic past and our future. Join us and step beyond the veils. Sharon Blackie Website: https://sharonblackie.netBooks: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/sharonblackie

How are we going to create the power that we need in a world where fossil fuel use has to end? How can we end the central control of power and keep safe our data in a world where data-mining is a pernicious - and lucrative - as coal mining? Howard Johns has spent all his professional life finding answers. He shares them here. Howard was a climate activist on the front lines until he realised that he needed ways to say 'yes', instead of 'no'. Accordingly, he set about building solutions, eventually founding Southern Solar a national solar energy company, and Ovesco a locally owned renewable energy cooperative. At the same time he chaired the trade body representing the UK solar industry, finding himself once again a campaigner around energy policy in the process. A believer in solutions, Howard is convinced we have all the technology and money we need to implement the climate and energy solutions we need. It is now time for lots of people to get involved with making it happen.Howard TED talk: https://youtu.be/pkGAMb5sYvgHoward's website: https://www.howardjohns.net