Wild with Sarah Wilson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve been doing a bunch of Substack meetups around Australia over the past few weeks (the Sydney and Northern NSW ones are happening in March and you can register in the Substack post here). And several people in the community have posed some related questions to do with balancing where the world is at with your need for creative freedom, our own mental health, our tendency to run from hard topics and emotions. Yes, we MUST create and make art in these difficult, “liminal” times. I reference Teju Cole and late 19th-century philosophers to make my case. I also answer: How do you stay sane and be of service? How do I motivate myself out of depression to be of service?I share how I’ve been navigating things, lying awake many nights in a row, trying to rise to the challenges inherent in these questions.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maggie Jackson (award-winning author and journalist) has just written a book - Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure – that argues that while humans crave certainty, we actually experience a less anxious, more productive, happier life when we embrace not knowing.Maggie is known for her writing on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. She’s written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and New Philosopher.  But her latest work draws on a wave of new science that shows how building “uncertainty tolerance” (instead of running from what we don’t know or can’t get an immediate answer or fix for) is an antidote to the dangerous complexity of our times. Maggie and I chat about the wild idea of ocean swimming, using hedge words and actively championing leaders who say, “I don’t know” as ways to save humanity.SHOW NOTESUncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure is available now You can read Maggie's recent New York Times guest essay on uncertainty and resilienceLearn more about Maggie and her work hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More than 43,000 studies have been done to show how and why walking in nature (hiking) has so many mental and physical benefits. In this episode, prompted by listener Stefan’s question that came through on Substack, I talk through my favourite explainers and how it plays out for me. Conservatively, I would say I have done more than 500 hikes in my lifetime…and can vouch for the fact… it just works. Start walking and the movement, the phytoncides, and the fractals do their work on you.SHOW NOTESYou can learn more about the studies and hikes in This One Wild and Precious LifeHere is the 2-for-1 code for the Wanderlust Adelaide event: Go here and use TNBOGOIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maggie Dent (the “queen of common sense”;  parenting expert) raised four sons, largely solo, and went on to write about her experiences and lessons learned. She soon became highly sought after for her candid and loving take on raising young men (she’s also known as the “boy champion”). Maggie is host of The Good Enough Dad and Parental As Anything podcasts, and the author of nine books, including her bestselling boys’ books From Boys to Men and Mothering Our Boys.I’ve been doing an occasional series here on Wild addressing the issues affecting boys and men and was super keen to get Maggie on to answer some of the questions that keep coming up. Thank you to everyone who sent in their questions for Maggie.In this episode we cover where the issues are stemming from, how we can benefit from boys’ “aggression nurturance”, what good men can be doing to plug the “Andrew Tate gap”, why parents need to buy boys a guinea pig, the need for a bro podcast on hacks for being an uber-productive life partner… and why mums need to fart in front of their sons!SHOW NOTESYou can get hold of Maggie’s books here Listen to The Good Enough Dad and Parental As Anything podcastsLearn more about Maggie and her work via her website and InstagramHere’s a Wild episode on men and porn with Connor BeatonI have written about issues relating to masculinity, toxic men and why we should be worried about boys on SubstackIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you see the results of the survey published in the Financial Times that showed there is a growing political gap between millennial men and women? I was asked this week what my thoughts were, what’s causing the drift in both directions and other gaps, between young people, should we be worried and what to do?I reference lots of different articles and data and put all the links over at Substack where you have the option to WATCH these bonus episodes and you can also join a conversation afterwards in the thread (and post a question for future AMAs).SHOW NOTESExplore the full episode on my Substack, complete with links to references, thought-provoking articles, and podcasts.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris van Tulleken (doctor, TV host) is a London infectious diseases specialist known for his popular BBC health TV programs that he hosts with his identical twin brother (including the kids series Operation Ouch; they’ve won two BAFTAs). In his recent book Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?, which has been a #1 Sunday Times bestseller for 9 weeks, he exposes how ultra-processed food (AKA junk food) is making us fat and sick, destroying the planet, eradicating traditional cultures, shrinking our faces and making us infertile.We talk about why Pringles are “crack in a cardboard tube”, why he thinks sugar and a lack of exercise are not the problem (!) and instead how the issue is the fact Big Food does NOTHING BUT refine their “profit-making product” to make us more perfectly addicted to it and to eat greater quantities. We also cover how to spot the worst food offenders and how the best fix for beating weight gain is to turn addiction into disgust.SHOW NOTESGet your copy of Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?Connect with Chris on Instagram or X/TwitterI Quit Sugar: Your Complete 8-Week Detox Program and Cookbook and I Quit Sugar for Life are available on my websiteIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A quick, breezy episode that talks about how to navigate decision-making regret, honing in on landing in one's post-repro years and not having had kids. Thank you Megan from my Substack community who sent in the question: Do you regret not having had kids?You have the option to WATCH these bonus episodes over on Substack where you can also join a conversation afterwards in the thread (and post a question for future AMAs. I also post extra content, extracts from my book etc here. When you become a paid subscriber, you get access to bonus intimate conversations with me, as well as access to my one-on-one online coffee (or wine) sessions. This is how I’m doing things from now on – real, raw, intimate… and provocative. SHOW NOTESYou can watch this in full over on my SubstackBecome a paid subscriber to join the thread conversation and submit an Ask Me Anything question for an upcoming ep.You can book a One-on-One virtual coffee chat with me hereI reference a previous AMA episode in which I talked about my thoughts on marriage.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alain de Botton (School of Life founder; author) has written 15 books about the philosophy of living – such as The Art of Travel; Status Anxiety; Art as Therapy; and The Course of Love – but he has recently turned his focus to mental health and how philosophy can be used as a therapeutic aid. Alain argues that a mental breakdown can provide the opening a despairing soul seeks. Indeed, anxiety so often is its own fix.We sat down in WeAre8’s London office for this two-way conversation about the philosophical wisdoms we personally use to have a life of meaning in the face of despair. We also talk about the writing process (and why it’s a salve), the healing effects of figs and dark chocolate, how to love, plus a super fresh take on “adult boredom” (embrace your impatience, get to the point!).SHOW NOTESGet hold of The Therapeutic Journey here and the School of Life range of books hereFirst, We Make the Beast Beautiful is available in more than a dozen languages hereI also mention my Wild chat with AC Grayling on how to have a philosophy of your ownAnd my conversation with Pico Iyer as well as the episode with David WhyteWe recorded the episode at WeAre8 HQ in London – big thanks to the team for being such wonderful hosts!If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the Australian summer, I’ve been picking out some cracker eps that you might have missed or would benefit from revisiting. This chat with Beau Miles, a Patagonia and Outward Bound ambassador, author and YouTube star, is perfectly calibrated to keep the holiday spirit alive just a little longer.Beau used to be a mad explorer – he’s indeed conquered Everest base camp, became the first person to run 650kms across the Australian Alps, kayaked Bass Strait and the rest. But a few years back he made the switch to exploring the world closer to home and now inspires a league of fans who froth over his mad-as videos of running the length of the old Warragul-Noojee Railway line to learn its history (dressed in a train driver uniform, carrying a shovel and three jars of dried pasta, just to chuck a hardship bomb into the equation), eating his body weight in beans (to see what happens), and spending a night in the tree outside his front door. This is more of a fun two-way chat where the two of us compare notes on flipping your day-to-day life into a flirtation, getting out of life ruts, playing and loving being weird.Grab Beau’s book The Backyard Adventurer: Meaningful and pointless expeditions, self-experiments and the value of other people's junk Stay up to date with all his adventures via Instagram You can watch Beau’s films here If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild is having a bit of a break as the New Year gets started and we’ll be running a bunch of important or really poignant episodes that you might have missed along the way. Last year I lost my dear friend Tim Brown, my meditation teacher and confidente. He was an incredibly wise man and impacted a lot of people …some of you listening might have read my books - his wisdom and reality checks feature throughout…I don’t know how many times I’ve started with the sentence..as my meditation teacher Tim once said. Anyway, this episode in which he and I talk back and forth on …life…is very special to me and I feel his legacy needs to live on, joyfully, and playfully. SHOW NOTES The movie we mention, Groundhog DayIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild is having a break for a few weeks as the New Year gets started and we’ll be running a bunch of my favourite episodes that you might have missed along the way. I’ve chosen this chat with Julia Cameron, author of The Artists Way because her advice is the kind we all need for starting off something new, like a year, a year that’s likely going to require that we have solid footings and an expansive outlook. Happy 2024, everyone!SHOW NOTESJulia’s book Seeking Wisdom is available hereYou can check out her creative work on her websiteIn this episode, I also mention my interview about curiosity with DR JUD BREWER and my chat with SETH GODIN about the artist process.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild will be taking a pause for a few weeks over the summer period and we’ll be running a bunch of my favourite episodes that you might have missed along the way.I feel given everything going on in the world it's appropriate to share my interview with Aziz Abu Sarah, a palestinian arab peace broker who knows and and has lived, or lives, the conflict in Israel and Palestine. So much noise, so much horror and so hard to comprehend the pain and the complexity…But Aziz provides the most compassionate, humane throughline I’ve come across.SHOW NOTES Aziz’s dual narrative tour business is Mejdi Tours and he ran this tour with Impact SafariHe’s also written a book that shows how to travel as a force for peace  I ran a bunch of other interviews with peacebuilders while I was there, which you can find on my substack And here are the organisations employing the dual narrative approach that I promised to list:Combatants for Peace Bereaved Families Forum Interact International Hands of Peace Healing Across the Divides Creativity for PeaceTech for PeaceIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild will be taking a pause for a few weeks over the summer period and we’ll be running a bunch of my favourite episodes that you might have missed along the way.I’ve chosen this chat with poet Bayo Akomalafe because it is DENSE with advice for complex times, times in which humanity struggles to encapsulate things with tidy answers. Bayo riffs in this ep with the most uplifting advice for “relaxing into our entanglement with the world” and joining the chaos. Forever timely. Happy Christmas slash school holidays slash summer break if you’re in Australia, etc.SHOW NOTES You can connect with Bayo via his website and Twitter Here is the poem I ask Bayo to read out And here is the essay What Climate Collapse Asks of Us He references Ursula K Le Guin’s book The Ones Who Walk Away from OmelasIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild will be taking a pause for a few weeks over the summer period and we’ll be running a bunch of my favourite episodes that you might have missed along the way. I know a bunch of you have watched the Netflix series Blue Zones and some of you know that I worked on the project briefly and became friends with the National Geographic explorer - Dan Buettner who coined the term, wrote the book and started in the series. We actually caught up for dinner in Paris recently - we try to find each other in the world when we can to talk not so much about longevity, but how to max a life, short or long. I hope you enjoy this one...OH and if listening on a road trip heading off on Christmas holidays or some such and ur in the passenger seat…please do take a minute to rate Wild, give it a review share it amongst your friends. It helps out a lot. SHOW NOTES Get Dan's latest book, The Blue Zone Challenge here Watch Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Brooks (New York Times columnist; best-selling author) is both one of America’s best-known conservative commentators and one of its most committed to pushing the case for deep moral discussion. David’s also a regular contributor to The Atlantic and NBC’s “Meet the Press”, has 30 honorary doctorates, is a teacher at Yale and is something of a regular guest on Oprah, the Sam Harris podcast and so on. He wrote the books The Road to Character, The Second Mountain and the recently published How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.In this nourishing conversation we discuss whether humanism – coming back to moral, generous interactions with others – is the fix for our polarising times. We discuss whether you can be “right” with the Middle East conflict, the best-ever dinner party conversation starters (the only kind I’m interested in doing), and whether civilizational collapse is preventable. He has ideas…SHOW NOTESDavid's book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply See is available now, along with The Road to Character and The Second Mountain.If you would like to read more of David's work:How America Got MeanHow to Know A PersonThe Essential Skills For Being A HumanIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recently I was interviewed on the popular British podcast A Life More Wild which interviews prominent (mostly British) folk about what matters in life WHILE they hike in a favourite locale in the UK. It’s run by the outdoor holiday company Canopy & Stars, which is part of the Alastair Sawday Group (they publish a massive range of hiking guides).For this episode, we do a circuit track in the Chiltern Hills (“Area of Outstanding Beauty”) in Buckinghamshire, about an hour out of London. I chose this one because it starts and finishes at a pub, passes by a very cute church that serves tea and scones on weekends and does a loop around the Prime Minister's holiday residence - Chequers. I share my various theories, tips and tricks for hiking in the chat amid birdsong and churchbells.SHOW NOTESHere's the trail I did. For more inspiring stories, simply search for A Life More Wild on your favourite podcast app. Don't forget to follow Canopy & Stars on Instagram for additional content.I have shared a bunch of epic hikes that I had done over the years, including all the details for accommodation, where to eat etc. You. can check them out over on my Substack: I’ve done a bunch of amazing multi-day Australian ones, several in the UK, Europe and more. If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hannah Barnes (BBC journalist; exposed the “Tavistock Clinic” scandal) has become the somewhat reluctant global voice on the raging child transgender debate. In her award-winning BBC investigation, and in her new book, Time To Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children, she investigates how the UK Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at Tavistock Clinic in London referred more than 1200 kids, some as young 9 years old for treatment to block puberty, largely in the absence of data and research about its safety and efficacy. Her research highlighted a whole range of complex issues about the well-being of teens, trans people and our culture broadly. In this chat, Hannah and I cover how 35 per cent of gender dysphoric teens are autistic, the massive uptick in kids identifying as trans worldwide (one study reports a 1000% increase in young people identifying as trans or nonbinary), and the important reasons why there are suddenly way more girls than boys wanting to transition.SHOW NOTESGet hold of Hannah's book Time To Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for ChildrenThe Australian situation regarding the age of consent is outlined hereAnd here’s the information showing the number of teen girls coming out as transI mention Jess Singal’s work on the subject. Find Jesse over at Blocked and Reported (this link has a bunch of extra reads on the topic relating to Hannah’s work) and read his original article for The Atlantic "When Children Say They're Trans"Catch up on my Substack writing on it here and hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Ask Me Anything I answer three questions: How should I do the massive cleanout of my life - to Kondo or to Wilson? What does your life in Paris look like? How do you find accommodation (in Paris and beyond) when travelling (or just living nomadically)?I cover a bunch of links that you can get over at my Substack page. You can watch the video version there, too, where I show how I reworked a dress I’ve worn every summer since I was 21 and take the opportunity to give my denim shorts, which I’ve had for 18 years, a send-off.SHOW NOTESYou can get hold of my Simplicious books hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Connor Beaton (men’s coach, porn addict mentor) helps men face their shadows. The US author and podcaster has coached thousands of men on “how to be good at being men”. The masculinity crisis is a persistent theme here on Wild (and in the world) and so I am having these chats to better understand it and how it impacts all of us. I asked Connor to join us to chat about porn – what it’s doing to men, what is not being satisfied and how it’s affecting relationships. We also cover why boys flock to Andrew Tate, what women really mean when they say they want a man to be vulnerable and what happens in relationships when women earn more than the bloke.If there are any specific angles or experts on men and masculinity you’d like covered here, do let me know over in my Substack comments.SHOW NOTESYou can follow Connor on Instagram and listen to his podcast Man TalksGet hold of his book Man Talks: A Practical Guide to Face Your Darkness, End Self Sabotage and Find FreedomLearn more via his websiteIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s question comes from concerned mum Emma, but it’s one that is cropping up a lot - What to do about the burden young people are shouldering in the face of a crumbling world? Emma is worried her 16-year-old activist son is taking on too much and she’s worried about his climate anxiety.Research shows one-third of young people have sought counselling or medical help for eco-anxiety. However, my answer to Emma and her son takes a different direction. What if kids are pissed off and we, the adults, are projecting OUR anxiety (and shame?) onto them? I also cover my recent warm jacket purchase and why it is so very not French-fashionable.SHOW NOTESI mention in this rant the previous Wild podcast episodes with Meg Wheatley and Paul Hawken and the one with Margaret Klein Salamon. We will continue the conversation over at my Substack if you’d like to join. It’s here you can also post another AMA question for me.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Hawken (Project Drawdown founder) is the climate activist who, for decades, has shown us how we can *actually* make a difference. He’s been an activist since the 1960s (he was once seized by the KKK), is the most influential voice on corporate sustainability and created the legendary Project Drawdown, which calculated the top 100 actions that bring down CO2 (tl;dr: educating girls and tackling food waste top the list). Paul's latest project Regeneration (a book and website) takes things even further and provides the world’s largest listing and network of climate solutions geared not at fixing the crisis but rebuilding our sense of connection to the planet.In this chat, Paul and I talk honestly about why 98% of people are still not changing their behaviour even though we now know the facts AND we are now living IN climate change, whether “drawdown” is possible and how to be most effective as a climate activist in light of all this.SHOW NOTESGet hold of Paul’s books Drawdown and RegenerationPlay around on the Regeneration site to find very tangible solutions to things you might be doing or projects you might want to dive into.Get your copy of This One Wild and Precious LifeIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Let’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Figured many of you here would like to hear the conversation I had recently with Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals over at the British intellectual podcast Intelligence Squared. It’s one of my favourite podcasts, and so I was supremely thrilled when they invited me to lead an "in conversation” about self-help scepticism. Here’s the blurb they ran: Oliver Burkeman is the anti-self-help author that everyone interested in self-help should read. He encourages us to embrace uncertainty and imperfection in a world obsessed with self-improvement and relentless goal-setting. For over ten years he wrote the popular ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’ column for The Guardian and his latest book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals, was a huge bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Sarah Wilson is the founder of the global ‘I Quit Sugar’ movement, was editor of Cosmopolitan Australia at the age of 29, and has interviewed two Australian prime ministers, Beyoncé, Brené Brown, the Dalai Lama and dozens of moral philosophers, effective altruists and existential risk experts during her career. Her most recent book, This One Wild and Precious Life, won the US Gold Nautilus Prize and describes how she spent three years hiking around the world, following in the footsteps of Nietzsche and Wordsworth and emerging with a blueprint for living a wilder, more connected life. For this episode, Burkeman and Wilson come together at Intelligence Squared for an engaging discussion about the limitations of the traditional self-help industry, the importance of mindfulness, and practical strategies for leading a more balanced and purposeful life.SHOW NOTESCatch my interview with Oliver (about his book Four Thousand Weeks) hereCheck out Intelligence Squared hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margaret (Meg) Wheatley (collapse theorist, global leadership consultant) is something of a legend in her field. She has worked for 50 years helping humans adapt to their world using systems analysis, chaos theory and deep spiritualism (she’s good friends with one of my heroes the Buddhist monk Pema Chödrön). Poets, scientists and philosophers quote her writing, she has worked in countless disaster situations around the world and was commissioned to transform the leadership of large institutions such as the US Army and the National Park Service. Plus she’s the author of 12 books, including Who Do We Choose to Be? and the forthcoming Restoring Sanity. Meg has also researched the collapse of civilisations throughout history and is a leading voice among a community of scientists, economists, historians and philosophers who are arguing that our civilisation is also currently heading toward collapse. This is a challenging conversation and the subject has its deniers. Meg steers our focus to becoming the leaders we want to see amid the cascading crises facing the world and to create “islands of sanity” amid the despair. In this conversation, we cover the responsibility of the rich, why it’s redundant to talk about saving the world, and how to sit in despair and create a meaningful life from it all.Meg and I also recorded a second and even more challenging episode that can be found over at my Substack. In this extra episode we cover how long we’ve got left (when will collapse occur?), how to cope when others are still consuming and distracting themselves away from the issue, how to raise kids in this knowledge, where to live in coming years… SHOW NOTESMeg references the poet David Whyte who has also been a guest on Wild You can purchase Who Do We Choose to Be? now and preorder Restoring Sanity (coming March 2024)Find out about her workshops and events hereOther Wild conversations with elders: Stephen Jenkinson, Sister Helen Prejean and Margaret Atwood If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s question comes from long-time reader, frequent and generous commenter Kei Ikeda, but it’s one I’ve been asked a few times - What goes into producing Wild? My short answer would be: a lot of swirling self-doubt, over-analysis, faking-till-making and ad hoc recording set-ups. Here, I chat (on a cold Paris afternoon) about my recording equipment, how I contact guests, how the costs stack up, how the brand advertising and sponsorship works and more.I flagged a few previous episodes you might want to catch up on with Sheena Iyengar and Sister Helen Prejean.In 15 minutes (OK, 20 minutes) I don’t cover everything, so I invite you to ask me anything I missed in the comment section over on Substack. Also, I’ll start a thread on Sunday (again, over at Substack), as suggested by a bunch of you, where we can maybe thrash out a few ways to keep Wild going together. See you there.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Like many of us, Anand Giridharadas (American political commentator, bestselling author) despaired how the world had become stuck in a fractured suckhole and he could no longer convince people to change their hearts and minds to be kinder and better. So he went on a mission to find out how to persuade more effectively, resulting in his recent book The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy.In this chat, the former foreign correspondent and New York Times columnist argues this wild idea: Progressives working on issues like race equality and climate (and, um, an Indigenous Voice to parliament) need to give up on political purity and… persuade! This is not your usual “effective communications” thesis. We cover what we can learn from the Russian bot farms, A.O.C. and a cult deprogrammer. This episode comes at a critical time, as many of us are 1. feeling defeatist about progressive/humane discussion today, and 2. seeking techniques to equip us for being of service in a troubled world.  SHOW NOTESGet hold of Anands’ book The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and DemocracyFollow Anand at his Substack The.InkIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For something a bit different this week, I’m posting an important conversation I had a few days ago via the Small Giants Academy with its co-founder Berry Liberman. Berry is also an impact investor, filmmaker and philanthropist who founded Dumbo Feather magazine on top of all this. The conversation was titled Sensemaking in the Metacrisis: How to be of service in troubled times and it’s a big, wild, looping and uplifting chat about everything going on.As with the weekly AMAs, the video version of this interview will be posted over at my Substack and it’s over there that you can engage in a conversation with me, the community and Berry afterwards.SHOW NOTESLearn more about Small Giants AcademyHere’s an explainer of Three Horizons that Berry referencesYou can read about Berry’s reflections on the recent Scandinavian sensemaking trip. Mine are here Books to delve into: Walking the Tiger by Peter Levine, God is an Octopus by Ben GoldsmithAnd someone in the chat asked for “my dancing & running playlist”If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are many ways to challenge the AI juggernaut that has been unleashed on the world, but Tracey Spicer (multi-Walkley winning journalist, feminist) tackles it through a gender lens. In her latest book, Man-Made, she shows how the unresolved biases that exist in the world today are being fed into the emerging AI. The implications of this bigotry being embedded into our future are profound and could render any progressive work being done to address consent, pay gaps and so on moot. Tracey has won two prestigious Walkley Awards in recognition of her journalism work, was awarded the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year, accepted the Sydney Peace Prize with Tarana Burke for the Me Too Movement, and won the national award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership. We talk about sexbot design, the significance of Siri et al being female, how our period tracker apps put us in danger and how she wrote this book with a crippling case of long covid.SHOW NOTESGet hold of Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the futureCatch up on the Wild chat with ChatGPT expert and linguist Emily M. BenderTracey mentions good work being done by Andrew Leigh MPWe also talk about the work of Caroline Criado-Perez who you can follow on her Substack Invisible WomenIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing with this new weekly format, each week I’m answering a hoary question from my Substack community (you can join here and post YOUR hoary - or otherwise - question in the thread). This week I answer Dan: What do you think of marriage?I take the opportunity to pull apart those studies that surface every few years that try to tell us that marriage makes you happier. Turns out it makes MEN happier than it does women, and not for very long (about two years). By implication, I also answer why I never got married. My answer has something to do with the Shaman from Eat Pray Love…If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie Murphy Paul (US science writer and author of The Extended Mind) recently came out with a bold theory about how we think – we don’t think with our brains, instead, we think with our bodies, feelings, physical spaces and other minds. Her work on the topic won awards, was presented as a TED talk viewed by more than 2.6 million people and has been described by New York Times’ Ezra Klein as having “radical implications”. In this conversation we discuss how our bodies can read other people’s minds and solve problems when our brains can't, why schools and workplaces stunt our thinking, how to get our clearest thoughts and why all those productivity hacks are…wrong.I’ll continue the conversation over on my Substack where I’ll share more detail on how I loop.SHOW NOTESAnnie's book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain is available now. I refer to my conversation with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor about right-brain thinking, listen here.And my interview with Tyson Yunkaporta that covers in detail, Indigenous complex thinking. If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

News! Sarah is now answering your questions.No fanfare here…I’m just launching into this by announcing I’ll publish an extra 10-15 minute episode here each week where You Ask Me Anything and I Answer it. Questions are posted via my Substack newsletter which you can subscribe to here. To kick off: SARAH, WHY DID YOU MOVE AWAY FROM AUSTRALIA?I’ll keep things raw, frank, and short in these episodes. I won’t apologise for the background noises and stumbles. Nor for being contentious. I’m doing these extra episodes to be provocative because that’s what the world demands of us now. I answer this first question by referencing the larrikin myth, the reckoning of the Voice referendum, the way Australia’s land forces its people to “endure”.You have the option to WATCH these bonus episodes over on Substack where you can also join a conversation afterwards in the thread. When you become a paid subscriber, you get access to bonus, intimate conversations with me as well as access to my one-on-one online coffee (or wine) sessions. This is how I’m doing things from now on – real, raw, intimate… and provocative. SHOW NOTESYou can watch this in full over on my SubstackBecome a paid subscriber to join the thread conversation and submit an Ask Me Anything question for an upcoming ep.You can book a One-on-One virtual coffee chat with me hereI reference the Larrikin myth episode, a conversation I had with Lech BlaineHere are my thoughts on the Voice from a recent SubstackHere’s the Nate Hagens episode if you missed itIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Missy Sims (TikToker, Republican, lawyer taking down Fossil Fuel companies) could be described as the modern-day Erin Brockovich. Late last year she filed a world-first lawsuit on behalf of Puerto Rican municipalities against Exxon, Chevron and Shell. Claiming the atmosphere-destroying emissions they produced were directly responsible for the deaths and horrific damage caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017. And - wait for it - she’s doing it via the laws she uses to take down mobsters.I started reading about the case, then about Missy, with her 2.2 million TikTok followers and her belief that God steers her vigilante work, and I had to know more. I also wanted to get her inside take on whether this wild approach to the climate emergency might just work.SHOW NOTESHere's the Shell TINA document Missy referencesYou can follow Missy on TikTok hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nate Hagens (mindblowing energy futurist) was working on Wall Street when he realised…we don’t have enough energy to fund the world’s economy! Massive pivot ensued and he is now the global leader in energy systems, director of the Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future, on the board of the Post Carbon Institute, teaches an honours course, aptly titled Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota, oh and he also advises governments and institutes around the world on the future of energy!Nate and I met recently at a conference in Stockholm to address these very (meta)modern issues. In this chat we talk about how green growth is not possible, EVs are not the answer, and he makes a numbers-crunched case for how to live once collapse occurs, what he calls the “Great Simplification”. This is a big one. It changes (mostly) everything, including my own ideas about the climate crisis.SHOW NOTES Here’s the link to vote for Wild in the Podcast Awards. I promise it only takes a few secondsYou can learn more about Nate's work here and listen to his podcast hereI also mention previous episodes with Tyson Yunkaporta, Douglas Rushkoff and Gaya HerringtonIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Mastroianni (experimental psychologist, Substacker) recently published a study in Nature that hit headlines. The paper, co-published with happiness expert Daniel Gilbert, demonstrated that everyone (literally) thinks the world is in moral decline, that we are less honest, and less kind, and that we need to return to the golden days of yore. The controversial bit? Everyone has ALWAYS thought this. And ALL of us are wrong.Adam and I talk through the mad cognitive biases that steer us to this error and cover a bunch more that explain why being smart doesn’t make you happy, why we forget what we've learned and why we all (again) think the general public is stupider than us (we can’t all be right!?). I was overdue for a confrontation on my biases and my moral despair…you?SHOW NOTES Follow Adam's Substack - Experimental HistoryRead The illusion of moral declineIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily M. Bender (ChatGPT expert) is a linguist, a scholar of the societal impact of language AI and a professor at the University of Washington where she’s director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory. She recently became internet-famous for her no-nonsense, almost comical, papers that criticise the hype around large language models (LLMs) and ChatGPT. Her message is: Don’t believe the tech bro’ hype; it’s spin!In this chat we cover whether AI can take over the world; the real motives behind Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s excited calls for an “AI pause”; where longtermism, the singularity, effective altruism, pro-natalism and transhumanism (I’ve covered these in previous eps and on my Substack) all fit into the palaver; plus what we really should be terrified about. This is a thoroughly important and correcting conversation.SHOW NOTESI flag this explainer that I wrote on my Substack: Say it isn’t so: Human EugenicsYou can read Emily’s papers “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” and the “Octopus Paper” Here’s the Statement from the listed authors of Stochastic Parrots on the “AI pause” letterEmily also wanted to point everyone to this paper on AI Safety vs. AI EthicsAnd if you want to do more of a deep dive into all this, check out her podcastIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ian Leslie (British journalist, curiosity expert) is worried the world has become too fixated on absolutes and predictability just as our life circumstances are swinging the other way. The fix, he says, is to cultivate curiosity. He got curious about curiosity and wrote a book called, yep, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It and we met in London at the WeAre8 offices to talk about why some people are incurious, what’s stopping us from being more curious, the role of cities and travel and the need to engage in mysteries instead of puzzles.In this conversation we get quite urgently to this very wild point: To survive going forward we need to reclaim our curiosity. And we share ways to go about this.SHOW NOTES You can get hold of Ian’s book Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on ItFollow Ian’s curious ramblings on his Substack The RuffianHere’s the Wild episode with Dr. Jud Brewer on curiosity as the fix for anxietyI mention my chat with the poet David Whyte about asking beautiful questionsIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Gladys McGarey (102 years old, founder of the “holistic” medicine movement) has lived a big, wild life and joins me to chat through her secrets for doing it (life) like you really only have one of them. Recognised as *the* pioneer of alternative medicine, Dr Gladys is a founding diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine and cofounder of the American Holistic Medical Association.In her long life, Gladys practiced as a general practitioner for seven decades, had six kids, lived with dyslexia (before it was a supported thing) and almost died twice. At 86 she went to Afghanistan to work in a war zone; at 94 she says she finally “found her voice”; and at 100  she did her first TED talk. Today, nudging 103, she’s still a practicing doctor and has just published a new book, The Well Lived Life.We talk through her daily step count, recovering from divorce at 70 and hone in on her #1 tip for living longer – “Spend your energy wildly”.SHOW NOTESThe Well Lived Life is available hereYou can follow Glady on InstagramYou might like to listen to the interviews with Julia Cameron, Margaret Atwood and Sister Helen PrejeanIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Rowson (chess Grandmaster, metamodernist philosopher) is one of Britain’s biggest minds and I have invited him onto Wild to talk, well, what’s been dubbed the “meta-crisis” – the fundamental “meaning” crisis at the heart of “all the things” going on in the world today.Jonathan is a theoretical psychologist with degrees from Oxford and Harvard and a Ph.D on what it means to become wiser. He has worked on “complex collective action” problem solving, was Director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and has run events with David Attenborough and Jordan Peterson (not on the same stage!). Jonathan now runs Perspectiva, a research institute that seeks to understand the relationship between systems, souls, and society.This is a big chat, but I think you’ll find this new and wild idea a helpful navigational tool for, well, “all the things”.SHOW NOTESAs I flag, my UK friends can preorder This One Wild and Precious Life here.Follow the Perspectiva community and their various events here.Jonathan is also on Substack and Twitter.His latest book The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life is out now.I mention a bunch of previous wild episodes that you might like to listen to:Sensemaking with David Fuller, Indigenous Knowledge Systems with Tyson Yankaporta and the Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor episode.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.