Wild with Sarah Wilson

Luke Burgis (ethical entrepreneur, mimetic desire expert) reckons none of us knows what we want. We like to think we are incredibly original creators of our artfully curated lives. But, in fact, we only ever mimic others’ desires. Luke’s thesis draws on the work of philosopher Rene Girard who coined the term “mimetic desire” and who has become an obsession among Silicon Valley bros. I was keen to find out why Girard’s idea has become so hot and asked Luke to join me to put things straight.Luke is a veteran entrepreneur, the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and the author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, named by the Financial Times as one of the most important business books of 2021.In this chat we cover how the social media pile-on is not so much about difference, why women are so often scapegoats and how Lamborghini cars came about due to a mimetic rivalry with Ferrari (and their bad clutches).SHOW NOTESWanting is available to purchase hereYou can follow Luke’s writing over on his Substack: Anti-MimeticFollow Luke on InstagramIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clancy Martin (professor of philosophy, multiple suicide survivor) has tried – unsuccessfully, obviously – to depart this mortal coil a dozen-plus times and has just published a book, How Not to Kill Yourself, that explores the complexity of one the most fundamental question we can ever ask – why live? Clancy teaches philosophy at the University of Missouri, is a Guggenheim Fellow, bestselling novelist, a father and… “suicide addict”. In the wake of having lost one of my closest friends to suicide, I reached out to Clancy to get his insights and wisdoms on this challenging topic. He shares the mindsets that can change a despairing person’s mind, how to deal with the sense of betrayal and anger after a loved one takes their life and how his own “suicidal addiction” started at 3. This beautiful conversation is mostly a reminder to live fully and wildly and… to care (particularly for those who care so deeply they despair).Get hold of Clancy’s book How Not to Kill Yourself: My life in suicide.If you or someone you know is struggling, the suicide and crisis lifeline can be reached by diallingIn Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 and the Suicide Call Back Service on1300 659 467In the US, call 988 and you will be connected to the National Suicide and Crisis LifelineIn the UK, contact the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 0800 689 5652If 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.

Susan Neiman (world-leading moral philosopher, socialist, Einstein Forum director) joins me to clear up a wholly frustrating and destructive dialogue stopper – wokeism. Susan is the Director of the Einstein Forum, in Potsdam, Germany. She has a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard and has written big, influential tomes on German guilt, the value of evil and how we all need to grow up, all through a philosophical lens. Her latest book is titled Left is Not Woke and in this episode, she explains why woke has become a loaded term, weaponised by the Right and has inverted to contradict Left or progressive principles. Susan plants the wild idea we need to abandon wokeism and become truly awake to the threat so much infighting is distracting us (sigh) from the rise of fascism. Much as Left infighting enabled Hitler to rise to power in the 1930s.The Show NotesLeft is Not Woke is available nowSusan mentions Paul Robeson’s performance at the Sydney Opera HouseI mention my Substack post listing centre-right writers, you can read it 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.

Frances Haugen (globally renowned whistleblower, author of The Power of One) singlehandedly created social media’s Big Tobacco moment. In 2021, the algorithms specialist exposed 20,000 internal documents to media and lawmakers that showed Facebook consistently and knowingly prioritised profits over public safety. A few months later, and at great personal risk, she “outed” herself on 60 Minutes and has worked tirelessly since to change laws on social media transparency around the world. What sees a 37-year-old woman do what hundreds of thousands of employees before her did not? Courage? Blind optimism? What fuels her commitment to truth? And what do we – the rest of us – need to do once we are armed with the truth? Frances also shares insights on The Zuck and what we should be doing instead of having an AI pause.Get hold of her book The Power of One.Frances and her team are building a movement to create social media that works for humanity, you can sign up here to hear about upcoming ways to get involved.If you want to learn more about the AI pause, and why many (women) oppose it, check out my post on substack 'Why we should NOT have a pause on AI'. 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.

Pico Iyer (bestselling travel writer; author of The Art of Stillness; Leonard Cohen’s close mate) studies the paradox of our desire to go out and explore foreign lands…and our need for stillness, the delicate dance between our outer and inner lives. Pico has spent 50 years writing about travel for more than 250 publications, but he also spent three decades living in monasteries and 48 years as a friend and travel companion of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And he concludes a bunch of things we cover off in this beautiful conversation: we move to feel moved; the benefits of global travel outweigh the carbon miles (understanding humanity is more important right now); and paradise is mostly lost. He also shares insights into how Leonard Cohen wrote Hallelujah, arguably the most stunning song ever recorded.Get hold of Pico’s new book The Half-Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World.Read more of his work via his website and you can also find Pico on Twitter.Listen to Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen.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.

Tyson Yunkaporta (Indigenous knowledge expert and renegade) is an Aboriginal scholar and founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Melbourne’s Deakin University. His prize-winning book Sand Talk explains how Indigenous methods are best calibrated for resolving the complex global crises we face today and it’s attracted fawning attention in sensemaking, complexity and integral circles globally. Tyson’s wild approach tips a stack of Western thinking on its head. He challenges…not just with ideas, but with the way, the how, of his knowledge sharing. We talk the IDW, wokism and red-pilling, but mostly how we in the West have forgotten how to read the patterns of the universe, which has seen Emu energy (narcissism) flourish, which then renders us unable to navigate complexity in an increasingly complex, multi-crisis world. This chat is big and challenging…so you know.You can buy Sand Talk here and Tyson’s new book Right Story Wrong Story is out in October.Discover more about the IK Systems Lab.Listen to the Douglas Rushkoff interview I reference.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Storr (award-winning UK journalist and author) writes about humans in fun ways, and goes to lengths to do this, including joining holocaust denier David Irving (undercover) on holiday. His books The Heretics, and Selfie, are about how self-obsession changed the culture.Will's latest book is The Status Game and it argues that “Everyone alive is playing a game whose hidden rules are built into us and that silently directs our thoughts, beliefs and actions. This game is inside us. It is us.” Will chats through how his thesis can explain the rise of Nazi Germany, how the world might deal with dangerous humiliated men (Putin, Trump, gun massacrists) and how it can produce more empathy in the world.​I mention my WILD episode with Mary Ann Sieghart, author of The Authority Gap which you can listen to here.The Status Game is available to purchase now.Join Will on Twitter and read more about his work via his website.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page.For 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.

Tim Winton (author + climate activist) is a four-time winner of Australia’s most prominent literary award, the Miles Franklin, several of his books (Cloudstreet, Breath, Blueback) have been turned into movies, he has an Australian fish named after him(!), and he has been declared a “living treasure” by the National Trust. Notoriously private,Tim now only emerges to do press to speak out on big issues – toxic masculinity, fossil fuel sponsorship of the arts (and the “nippers”) and saving Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef.In this conversation we talk this wild idea: Is Australia’s colonial past and capitalist fixation holding us all back from being adults?Ningaloo Nyinggulu is screening on ABC iView in Australia and as Ningaloo Nyinggulu: Australia’s Ocean Wonder on Now TV for Sky Nature in the UK, Germany and Italy, and on Love Nature in Canada and 130 other countries.Here’s the excerpt from the toxic masculinity speech Tim gave during the book tour of The Sheperd’s Hut.Here's the speech he made at the Perth Writers Festival.I mention getting involved in Save Our Marine 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!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.

Ingrid Newkirk (founder of PETA, radical stuntwoman) is one of the most controversial – and wild - humans on the planet. After founding People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 1980 she campaigned to change animal cruelty laws, halted cosmetic and crash testing on animals and has largely rid the world of fur fashion.She didn’t take the mild, collaborative route, though. Ingrid has hung naked among pigs’ carcasses in London’s Smithfield market, famously raided Vogue HQ to protest their use of fur, along with a KKK meeting to stop the shooting of pigeons. Ingrid is now 74, her hobbies include Formula One racing (Michael Schumacher is a mate) and she is cited as a “hero” to countless celebrities, including Bill Maher (on her board) and Joaquin Phoenix (bought the film rights to her book Free the Animals). Ingrid reached out to me to chat on Wild. I’m not vegan and I wear wool. Our chat was both robustly challenging and moving.You can buy the 30th Anniversary Edition of Free the Animals here and read more about PETA Australia here.Here’s that Australian perspective data I mention, outlined in The Conversation essay and here’s a rebuttal written by another academic, also published in The Conversation.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.

Genevieve Bell (“superstar” Silicon Valley futurist, cybernetician) is possibly the world’s best-placed human to tell us what the future of AI holds for us. She is a Stanford cultural anthropologist, the Vice President of Intel, has been dubbed “technology’s foremost fortune teller” and has been inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame. Oh, and she has been South Australia’s thinker in residence. And holds a lazy 13 patents!Genevieve is now based at Australia’s ANU where she’s the head of the School of Cybernetics and in this episode, we wrangle with the idea of whether AI will kill us, do we need a global “pause” and how indigenous systems thinking could save us.Catch up on the Wild episode with David Whyte that I mention 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.

Roy Baumeister (infamous willpower psychologist + NYT bestseller) ​is one of the world’s most prolific and influential psychologists. He has published 700-plus scientific works, including more than 40 books, and has received the highest award given by the Association for Psychological Science for his lifetime achievements. He is the guy who coined the term “negativity bias” and “decision fatigue”, and writes about why we do stupid things, the psychology of heartbreak and S&M.​ ​Roy also, somewhat notoriously, wrote the book Willpower, which saw life-hackers worldwide take up morning routines and inspired Barack Obama to wear the same two suits for the entirety of his presidency. In this episode Roy, who’d been based out of Queensland until the pandemic took him back to the States, talks ​about ​all of the above and how it feeds into chocolate, radishes and the economic power of the female orgasm…and the tragedy of ​​male sex drive.If you want to catch up on the episode with Joseph Henrich talking about the WEIRD phenomenon of psychological studies, here it is.Read the Pew Research​ ​about young people having less sex​.​Buy Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength​You can follow Roy Baumeister’s work​ here.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Mayo (maritime union worker, author, official advocate for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament) joins me to answer your questions regarding the upcoming referendum to amend the constitution to recognise a Voice. It’s a big, historic and profoundly important moment for every Australian voter. We talk through the basics and drill down into the counterarguments – is there a need for more detail (short answer = no, it’s constitutionally inappropriate to provide more), does it veto laws (no, it advises only), does it give First Nations Peoples more rights (no, it grants no rights). I’ve designed things so you can be best prepared for the vote at the end of the year and for the conversation leading up to it. Also, as an episode to share widely!I encourage you to read the Uluru Statement from the HeartHere’s the referendum question: A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.Do you approve of this proposed alteration?Get hold of Thomas Mayo’s books, including The Voice to Parliament Handbook written with ABC journalist Kerry O’Brien, and his children’s book about the Uluru Statement, Finding Our Heart.Check out my Wild conversation with Prof Megan Davis and my interview with The Ethics Centre’s Simon Longstaff who talks about the ethical way to view your vote.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Angela Saini (One of the “World’s Top 50 Thinkers”, a leading UK Science Journalist + Author) is a misinformation expert whose intellectual range is truly wild.Angela has a masters from The Department of War Studies at Kings College London; she’s made documentaries on the climate crisis, birdsong (!) and eugenics; her previous books have tackled race science and gender inequality; she founded “Challenging Pseudoscience” as part of London’s Royal Institution and sits on a bunch of other esteemed British and global scientific boards. Of course, she was named one of the World’s Top 50 Thinkers by Prospect Magazine in 2020 and in 2018 she was voted one of the most respected journalists in the UK!In this WILD episode, we talk about the theme of her latest book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule. We smash the patriarchal idea that patriarchies have always existed; show how matriarchies tended to be cooler with gender fluidity; and how we ALL have a part to play in keeping the status quo propped up.Purchase The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule and read more of Angela's work here and join her on socials here.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ethan Kross (University of Michigan neuroscientist, author of bestseller Chatter) is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the mind. I came across his work while researching anxiety and found his perspectives on when and how to tame our relentless head chatter (or monkey mind) refreshing. And wild. Ethan is all about appreciating the “beast” that is the fretty voice in our head, while modulating it artfully. We chat through some seriously effective tools such as talking to ourselves in the second and third person, temporal distancing, sorting your sock drawer and, yep, going for a hike. A life-hack-ish episode, but with scientific grunt.Check out Ethan’s new book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness ItYou can catch up on his work hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bo Seo (world champion debater, author of Good Arguments) knows how to argue really very well. The Australian immigrant, now based out of Harvard, is the two-time world debating champion and his new book applies his secret debating sauce to the meatloaf that is this polarised, bifurcated, relentlessly bickering world we now live in. Bo’s wild point is that the problem of polarization isn’t that we disagree, it’s that we need to disagree more. But I need to learn how to do it way better and kinder. He talks us through how to make killer points; how to combat bullshitters, neg’ers and bullies; when to walk away; plus how to argue with your partner and not lose your shit. He also warns against not arguing. “The cost of being too agreeable is a small life,” he says. At a broader level, the cost is a world unhinged.Connect with Bo’s work hereGet hold of his book Good ArgumentCatch up on my interview with Sara Ness: How to “win" difficult conversationsIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marcus Buckingham (British pop trend researcher, New York Times bestselling author of Standout Strengths) has researched the paradox of female unhappiness - which sees women get more miserable the more freedoms and choices they have - for several decades now (and used to contribute to Cosmopolitan magazine back when I was editor). Specifically – and inversely -  Marcus has worked to determine the thing that the happiest women are doing right. The results are jolting. Far from trying to find balance in their lives, they explicitly seek imbalance. They embrace the chaos, and the competing responsibilities and choose to “tilt” toward the stuff that strengthens them, or that brings them joy and love. In this chat, we establish how to work out what you love, how to tilt and why it’s imperative that we do so. As Marcus says, “Your brain on love is smarter”. You can read more about Marcus’s work here and join him on Twitter. Purchase Love & Work here.I mention other, wise wild people that I have “hunted down” after writing about their wisdom in one of my books:The Lady in RedJames HollisSheena Iyengar - discusses the paradox of choiceIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephen Jenkinson (Harvard-trained theologian, activist and elder) is an expert in dying. During his 20 years working in “the death trade” he counselled more than 1500 people to their death. He is also the founder of The Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house for the skills of deep living, he's the subject of the documentary Griefwalker and author of Die Wise: A Manifesto For Sanity and Soul.Stephen's wild idea is that we must learn to die well…so that we can live well. This is a challenging and poetic conversation. We cover euthanasia (it's death-phobic), elderhood (current boomers have failed at it) and not being “too late” to work it all out. Stephen reads from his book A Generation’s Worth and we reference his recent books Die Wise and ReckoningYou can get hold of all three at Orphan WisdomStephen is touring his Nights of Grief and Mystery show internationallyIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Douglas Rushkoff (author, cyberpunk OG (!) and documentarian) is named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, and studies humans struggling to live in an increasingly unhuman world. Which is to say most of us in 2023. I tracked down this big, excitable mind to continue an earlier WILD chat about billionaire apocalypse preppers (August 2022, with Mark O’Connell). Rushkoff has a wild theory – which he spells out in his latest book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires - for why it is all such a “thing”. It’s The Mindset. He also has an antidote, equally wild: we just need to be more human. We get chatting circular economies, Timothy Leary and how fleeing to Mars is fear of the feminine. Also, stay tuned for a follow-up bonus episode (for my Substack subscribers) in which Rushkoff bangs out intimate life hacks. Do listen to Douglas' podcast Team Human Get your copy of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech BillionairesListen to my previous chat with Mark O'ConnellIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Michael E. Mann (super notorious climate scientist; El Niño expert) is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (and more such academic titles). But he is best known for bringing the world the “hockey-stick graph” back in 1999, which showed a sharp “uptick” in global temperatures since the industrial age and signalled to the world “humans did it!”.This conversation, however, goes to a new chapter in the climate fight. We cover two doozies: the role of Russian interference in the Australian carbon pricing fight and the terrifying El Niño event set to hit as early as July. I also push Michael to be honest - does he have hope, or is it a professional front…Michael is touring Australia with Think Inc. in May/June 2023Pre-Order a copy of Michael’s book The Climate War hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margaret Atwood is best known for her mega-bestselling dystopian fiction, including the Booker Prize-winning novels “The Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments”, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and, most recently, the essay collection “Burning Questions”. The Canadian firebrand imagines future societies, specifically the worst scenarios in these future societies, worlds of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, human-made disasters and theocracies where women’s bodies are controlled by capitalist overlords. And this is the thing – her dark fantasies have a horrifying habit of coming true, Exhibit A: “The Handmaid’s Tale”, a portent for the new abortion laws in the US, the erosion of American democracy, even the January 6 insurrection.However, at age 83 Margaret, dubbed “the prophet of dystopia”, is turning her vibrancy and wild care to creating… utopias. Or rather, she is trying to find a way to save the world via an online program where participants work with experts to develop solutions to all the wicked problems we’ve created. Today we discuss how the subordination of women and theocracies follow particular economic cycles, why she’s not quitting Twitter (yet) and what hope will need to look like. We mention Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark and Paul Hawken's book Drawdown, as well as Martha Gellhorn: A LifeFollow Margaret on SubstackCheck out Practical Utopias here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Lewis (internet famous for her GQ interview with Jordan Peterson, pop culture expert) is a British journalist, BBC broadcaster and currently a staff writer for Atlantic magazine. Her work covers the rise of TikTok tics in teenagers, Harry-and-Meghan, Andrew Tate, the absurdities of US and UK politics…you know, all the chunky bits of life in 2023. She also wrote the best bestseller Difficult Women, A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and just released the BBC podcast series The New Gurus. However, Helen is probably best known for her 2018 GQ interview with Jordan Peterson, the controversial Canadian psychologist and messiah of the manosphere (the video version has been viewed 60 million times).My conversation with Helen was fast and intense and we cover the IDW, Andrew Tate (she declined an invitation to debate him), tactics for arguing with Galaxy Brains and why we don’t use pronouns in our bios. This episode is extra-long because Helen’s riff is that good.**BONUS ** Join Helen and I over at my Substack, (this is precious) as we talk through our tips for remaining sane amid the noise – a productivity tip, a writing tip, two podcasts, two Substack follows, the book to read and the journalist to follow. Available only on Substack, Friday 3rd March.Subscribe to Helen’s Substack The Bluestocking – it's a good place to follow her writing and projectsThe New Gurus series can be downloaded here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rebecca Giblin (author Chokepoint Capitalism, media academic) joins me to explain how the Big Tech squillionaires are choking creatives – musicians, authors, screenwriters etc – and their customers. And in so doing, killing culture. Hmmm….Rebecca is a Melbourne Law School professor specialising in creators’ rights and the director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia. Her new book Chokepoint Capitalism (co-written with LA-based bestselling science fiction writer and Boing Boing website owner Cory Doctorow) was awarded a Financial Times' “best books of 2022” gong and is one the most talked about polemics doing the podcast rounds.In this chat, we discuss the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster debacle, “chickenization” (how the lock-in tactics used by Monsanto are now applied to live music), whether Spotify playlists are part of the problem, and what we can all do to win back culture again! A must-listen for creatives, music lovers, concert-goers.Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow is out now.Follow Rebecca on Twitter. She does good twit!If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Riggle (Ex-pro skater, philosophy professor at the University of California, YOLO expert) has become known for dissecting contemporary phenomena in a distinctly Socratic manner.In this chat, we delve into the philosophical significance of awesomeness (and its antonym, suckiness), the existential imperative of YOLO (!) and the aetiology of the high five. Nick’s theses on these cliched expressions ultimately lead to a wonderfully wild answer to the quandary of what makes life worth living in such a fraught era. To flesh it all out we draw on sporting analogies, the poetry of Mary Oliver and each other’s really rather near-death experiences. We mention philosopher Kieran Setiya, here you can listen to Kieran’s Wild episode featuring his take on how to love living a hard life.You can read more about Nick via his website and follow him on TwitterNicks books can be purchased via the below links:On Being Awesome This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Simon Longstaff (Philosopher, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre) is one of Australia’s most ethical thinkers. He mindfully stokes the national debate on cancel culture, corporate conduct, mask-wearing and psychedelic drugs (via his role as chair of Mind Medicine Australia). Simon guides contemporary moral thinking as the ethics commissioner for Cricket Australia, the executive director of The Ethics Centre, which advises corporates on how to make better decisions, and as a fellow of CPA Australia, the World Economic Forum and…oh, the list goes on. Simon also co-founded the contentious Festival of Dangerous Ideas!In this wonderful conversation we discuss his harrowing childhood experience with an ethical decision made by his mother and how it shaped his moral journey, how to counter “Free Speech at All Costs” evangelists and whether it’s ethical to quit Twitter... and much more!If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the mostSimon mentions 10 videos to help you navigate ethical quandaries…you’ll find them hereYou can join The Ethics Centre community hereLearn more about the Festival of Dangerous IdeasSimon also recommends Ethi-Call. You can call for free ethical advice here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yael Stone (Star of Orange is the New Black, Founder of Hi Neighbour, Climate Activist) and I have been IG friends, supporting each other’s climate work, for some years. In 2021 Yael Stone gave up her Green Card to combat climate change and committed to offsetting future overseas gigs by donating 50% of earnings to climate charities. Now she runs Hi Neighbour, a community platform that assists in the “just transition” for fossil fuel workers into low-carbon jobs.I have admired Yael's wildness from afar but decided it was time to meet IRL. For this conversation we sit in her garage in the small town of Bulli and discuss how much we love “wokism” intricacies, the complexities of the Geoffrey Rush case and how getting arrested as “a middle-class white lady” does no one any good. Be warned, this episode gets raw.Follow Yael on Instagram. This is best.And it’s worth watching Yael’s explainer for donating to climate charities hereHere’s a link to her awesome Hi Neighbour platform, with materials for rolling out her concept in your neighbourhood.You might also like to listen to the Saul Griffith episode I mention – about how to electrify your home.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s the time of year when we all need some inspiring, expansive perspectives and I reckon this chat with Tim, which I recorded a little while back, might be a great listen as you go about your summer road trips and making 2023 commitments.Tim trained with the Vedic tradition and has taught meditation to elite athletes, jail inmates, billionaires and kids for more than 20 years. The guy’s been part of my spiritual journey for 12 years and has guided me with my career, love life and various calamities. We meet for coffee and peanut butter toast most weeks…this episode we bring a recorder and discuss: trusting in the logic of the universe (the wild idea for the week) and how (and why) we should render ourselves choiceless (it's the ultimate freedom!). We also talk about the spiritual brilliance that is the movie Groundhog Day… which he likes to watch again. And Again. And again. Ha!The movie we mention, Groundhog DayYou can learn to meditate (and more!) with Tim hereFor more wonderful insights follow Tim on Instagram  If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This interview got a lot of (shocked!) feedback, so I figured I’d run it again as we start thinking about heading back to work. Again. And contemplating “what it’s all about”.British writer Oliver Burkeman has investigated pretty much every productivity hack, mindfulness trick, list-making system and happiness boost we've ever been fed. He concludes, almost none work. Ha!I followed Oliver's column in The Guardian, which he wrote from his home in Brooklyn, New York, for about 10 years and he is definitely my favourite anti-self-help self-help writer! It's been a few years since his last book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, and just as I found myself asking where Oliver Burkeman was at since quitting his popular column last year, I noticed he had a new book out that makes the startling point - we have a very short time on this planet, about Four Thousand Weeks (also the title of the book).  This is the wild idea we discuss in this episode. Oliver asks, given life is short, what are you going to do about it? Oliver’s books that we spoke about:The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive ThinkingFour Thousand Weeks The Pomodoro timer app here  If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationsGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I discovered Jill's story in her viral TED Talk from 2008 (it became the most-watched TED talk ever!) in which the brain scientist describes watching the left side of her brain deteriorate over the course of four hours on the morning of her stroke and how she used her right brain to stay present and get help. I was transfixed. Ever since I've wondered, whatever happened to Jill Bolte Taylor? Did she go back to normal? Is she still living in her right brain and able to experience the “oneness” that spiritualists and quantum physicists can only point to? If so, is she lonely?This chat is one of my favourites in the Wild series and the wisdom Jill shares, I think, is perfectly placed to guide those of us seeking fresh thinking into the New Year.In this chat we get into her how stroke stripped her of her relationships and emotions, understanding the power of each hemisphere of the brain and techniques we can all use to go right and be legitimately and neuroscientifically wilder!You can purchase Jill's booksWhole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our LifeMy Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal JourneyWatch her TED Talk hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He was the captain of the Wallabies, the only Australian player to be included in World Rugby's team of the decade, but - wildly – retired at the height of his career to devote his life to climate activist projects here in Australia and in Africa. I recorded this interview shortly after David quit rugby and several months before he decided to run as an independent Senator in the Australian Parliament. He won the ticket and has gone on to become an extremely powerful and highly regarded political voice in this country and a bit of a figure of intrigue…how did such an introverted, considered WEAPON OF A FOOTBALL player wind up here? It seemingly makes no sense. This is why I figured many of you would love to listen to this chat (perhaps for a second time) in which he wrestles with how he can best make an impact. It provides some wonderful insight into the thinking that preceded his decision to enter politics.Dave and I became friends talking about activism, Jungian psychology and the meaning of life over Instagram some time back. In this chat, he talks with me about grief, why Australian men aren't waking up, the sadness of facing the climate reality, and – yeah – how to make a wild decision. Dave promised to send a list of the books that have shaped his wildness. He's a man of his word; Living Between Worlds - James Hollis Food Fix - Mark HymanFinding Resilience - Brian WalkerEverything is Spiritual - Rob BellThe Will to Change - bell hooksA Life on Our Planet - David AttenboroughCall of the Reed Warbler - Charles MassyIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sia is one of the most gifted and wild creatives on the planet, best known for the hundreds of hit pop songs she's written for herself, Beyonce, Rihanna and Kanye West, and for being notoriously private, rarely doing interviews. This is why I remain so damn chuffed that she agreed to be my FIRST guest here on Wild. I recall being soooo nervous and out of my depth. But also thoroughly enjoying this incredible human’s quirky company.In this chat, Sia gets intimate with me about fostering, why she uses medication to support her art (and keep her alive), and her wild idea - how she, as an artist, “runs with an idea” without apology. Oh, and I make her cry.You can find the details of Sia's film Music, her music and art here. Follow SIA on InstagramIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I share a glorious, wild, life-affirming story in this special episode. Some of you might have read my book This One Wild and Precious Life and remember the bit where I wind up in Mammoth in the Sierra Nevada and rant at a young guy sitting in a vegan smoothie café about his single-use plastic cups (he was drinking several vegan beverages). He takes it well and asks to read a few pages of the book (I was working on the draft of the climate chapter as we spoke). "Wow! Can you put that mind-blasting stuff in dot points?" he asks. I said I would if he quit his stinking single-use habit. I kept my end of the deal (I shoehorned the whole climate catastrophe into bullets!!). And, it turns out, so did he!! It was an adventure to find “Mammoth Dude” because - wait for it - he’s now quit consumption altogether(!), lives off-grid in a trailer in the forest with his dog and... had read my book! This chat brought me so much joy. We cover capitalism, loneliness, leaning into people, the magic of meeting strangers and those margins I put in my books for writing notes in. But the story gets even better…following our chat, Mammoth Dude (Avi Pell is his name) went on to live out one of the life dreams he flags in our conversation. If you want to see the video version of our conversation, and the details of the epic Mammoth Lakes hike I did, as well as the beautiful email convo between Avi and I (clue: he's started a hiking company and I'll be joining him on one of his tours!) I'll be sharing this with my membership community. Join the family at sarahwilson.substack.comYou can grab your copy of This One Wild and Precious Life here.I mention Sylvain Tesson's book Consolations of the Forest, you can get it here.And don't forget to favourite Wild on Apple and Spotify.If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to find peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one podcast episode? Ha! You 210% can’t. But if there is someone who can provide a vision for it, it’s Palestinian peace broker Aziz Abu Sarah. Aziz grew up in East Jerusalem and lost a brother to the conflict when he was nine when the Israeli military stormed his home in the middle of the night. At 18, however, he turned his hatred around and today Aziz is one of the world's most powerful and connected peacebuilders and cultural educators. He’s a National Geographic Explorer and Ted Fellow and has founded and led countless global conflict resolution organisations including Bereaved Families Forum and the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University and co-founded (with an American Israeli-Jew) the first dual narrative tour company (led by a guide from each “side”). We recorded this episode in Tel Aviv a few days before the recent Israeli election and we cover boycotts, Jerusalem (capital or not) and two wild strategies that *actually* work for most conflicts. Added bonus: Our chat cuts to the very heart of what it means to be human.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" page Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seth Godin never does anything the normal way. The prolific marketing guru and disrupter joins us here on Wild for a second time to chat about what he describes as the most important project of his life, a crowd-created Climate Almanac, created by a 300-person army of scientists, artists and teachers from 41 countries who turned around the 97000-word book in 120 days. The wild idea we wrestle with in this episode is the very act of not doing climate activism the normal way. We talk about ditching activism and plastic recycling, ratcheting up capitalism (!!) and how to market discomfort as “sexy” (as many of you know, this is where I feel so much progress gets stuck – a resistance to leaving the capitalist cocoon of convenience). Activists and the Concerned ‘n’ Frustrated – this is an episode for you. It is peppered with pithy elevator pitches and helpful factlets about leaf blowers and patio heaters. Connect with the whole Carbon Almanac project here or purchase the book hereListen to the Kim Stanley Robinson episode that we reference hereYou can listen to my first Wild chat with Seth hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversationGet your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest will “shock you into noticing the world differently.” The glorious Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian-born Yoruba poet, author and teacher at universities and institutions across the UK, the US, Canada and India. He has also won the 2021 New Thought Walden Award which honours empowering spiritual ideas and philosophies that change lives and make our planet a better place. Bayo uses “trickster philosophy” and intense metaphors to present truly wild – but intuitively sound - ways to cope with the complex, existential challenges that we face. This is a madly challenging conversation and we touch on relaxing into our entanglement with the world, and how to be a fugitive. Bayo invites us to abandon "solutionism" and to ask different questions: What is climate collapse asking of us? What if the way we’re responding to the crisis is part of the crisis? What if the “answer” is to join the chaos and give in to nature? Bayo is a sage for our times and I truly encourage everyone to experience his wild mind and words…and to learn how to become a fugitive!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 Omelas If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageSubscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode continues the fascinating-slash-frightening journey I’ve been on with you, to understand what we should prioritise as we face potential existential end times. Today’s guest, Harvard researcher and philanthropist Holden Karnofsky, brings the AI, effective altruism, longtermism and anti-growth debates together with the clarion call: “This is our moment, this century is make-or-break, pay attention people!” It’s not an idle or hysterical call, it’s one that Holden has researched extensively and is backed by global leaders in the space. As some background: Holden founded Givewell, the charity evaluator that has raised more than $US1billion for charities that have saved more than 150,000 lives (Bill Gates, Sam Harris and the now disgraced billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried use it) and Open Philanthropy investigates more speculative causes. So if this is the most important century, what does it mean for us? What are our responsibilities? What’s going to happen? Buckle up, says Holden, because, “we live in wild times and should be ready for anything to happen”. Here’s the "most important century" blog post series we talk about.I also flag Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. As well as this Vice article about how scientists can’t explain how AI works.You might also want to go back and listen to the episodes with Peter Singer on effective altruism, Will Macaskill on Longtermism and Elise Bohan on misaligned AI and transhumanism......If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The fashion industry produces 20% of global wastewater and more carbon emissions than ALL international flights and ALL maritime shipping COMBINED. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. Ex-Vogue journalist and founder of The Wardrobe Crisis (the book, podcast and academy) Clare Press joins me to wrestle the quandaries: Is vegan leather ethical? Are recycled plastic leggings green? What labels are legit carbon neutral? Does the stuff I donate to St Vinnies just go to landfill? (Yup.) Is it true when I return something online it goes to landfill and not back on rack? (Double yup!). I wanted to do this episode to set the truly shocking facts straight and share the tangible better options, but also to posit the wild idea of redefining fashion style in a new, far more creative way. Dig in!Check out The Wardrobe Crisis, the book, podcast and academy of courses Follow Clare on instagram We discuss an Atlantic article about returning online purchases, you can read it here. Clare’s Recommendations:The scorecard/resources for finding “good” brands: The Or Foundation, Oxfam’s Naughty or Nice, Fashion Revolution and Baptist World Aid Guide. The book to read: Loved clothes last by Orsola De CastroThe recycling app: UpparelThe influencer to follow: Maggis ZhuThe documentary to watch: 'Slay' The label: The Social Outfit in Newtown based in Sydney, or check out the sister organisations in Melbourne and London. I mentioned that Kay Montano in London had recommended a 1951 film The Man in the White Suit .....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s a young Australian human rights lawyer and barrister who has been at the centre of the most era-defining legal cases in the world. She has represented Julian Assange since 2010. She led the Amber Heard case. She worked on the case against the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan and a case against the Catholic Church over child sex abuse. She was also a legal adviser to The New York Times in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal and regularly fronts up to the International Court of Justice and various UN human rights bodies representing the poor, oppressed, the maligned. Her name’s Jen Robinson, and she grew up in a low-income family in the small rural town of Berry, proudly schooled in public education and went on to be a Rhodes scholar and to work alongside Geoffrey Robertson and George Clooney’s wife Amal. Jen and I get mighty fired up about …speaking up...speaking up as an act of vitality and antidote to depression. We also cover why we want our friends to send their kids to public schools, the inside take on the Assange case, what we need to know about the Amber Heard case (big slap in face for me) and her new book, How Many More Woman, which shares how women can beat the legal system at its own game (and speak up!).You can now purchase Jen’s book, How Many More Women hereFollow Jen on Twitter .....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We crave adventure to break up the ho-hum of our everyday lives. But busting ruts doesn’t have to be all about conquering Everest or ticking off bucket list challenges. We can get the same result as a “backyard adventurer”.Beau Miles, a Patagonia and Outward Bound ambassador, author and YouTube star, 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 a 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" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Life is hard. And yet so much of contemporary life compels us to fight this fundamental reality. We are meant to be happy! We are meant to live our best, most #blissful, potential-stacked life! But I talk with Kieran Setiya, a professor of philosophy at MIT, who argues we should #NotLiveOurBestLife. It’s better to aspire to a life that is, well, good enough. Kieran has appeared on Sam Harris’ podcast, written for the New York Times, the London Review of Books etc bringing a philosophical argument to pop issues such as the Dave Chapelle quandary, baseball and the worth of having a midlife crises.  In his latest book, Life is Hard, he draws on Aristotle, Wittgenstein, and Simone Weil - as well as Groundhog Day and Joan Didion – to guide us to a good life, which entails embracing pain and hardship. In this chat we cover: How to make friends; what if the whole world turned sterile; the beauty of chronic pain and Kieran’s thesis for “the meaning of life” (it’s a cracker, and it’s not 42!).Grab Kieran’s book Life Is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our WayRead some of his essays and connect with him via his websiteHe mentions he came across Wild via this interview with Katherine May .....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He is regarded as the greatest science fiction writer alive and his most recent book, set in the climate catastrophe-wracked near future, The Ministry for the Future, is recommended widely by Barack Obama and Ezra Klein and such is the accuracy of his futuristic depictions Kim Stanley Robinson is now called upon to consult on climate solutions by the Pentagon and at COP26. But Kim is also a mad hiker and his latest book The High Sierra: A Love Story is a hiking guidebook-slash-meditation-slash-dedication to what he calls psychogeology (the way places shape the ways we think). I’ve been busting to have this chat. The Ministry for the Future blew my mind when I read it at the end of 2020, and we cover a bunch of expansive and wild ideas: how moving your desk outdoors can restart your career, geoengineering, donut economics and what your hiking gear says about your lack of critical thought (Kim is an ultra-lighter; wait until you hear how much is backpack weighs for a week’s trek!). Kim is 70 now and in many ways I find this chat to be inspirational fodder for mapping a life well-lived.Grab a copy of The Ministry for the Future Kim’s latest book is The High Sierra: A Love StoryWe also mention: Nan Shepard: The Living MountainThomas Piketty: Brief History of EqualityKate Raworth: Doughnut EconomicsAnd here’s a link to Network for Greening the Financial Systems.....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you listen to Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, Russell Brand or maybe a bit of Lex Freidman? They are the biggest names in podcasting (and beyond) and they started out as progressive voices, robustly questioning the status quo and challenging dominant interests and often bringing alternative spiritual or psychological perspectives to the big debates. But a trend has emerged among this crew of “bro-casters”. My guest in this episode, Australian psychology academic Matt Browne, argues that as their fame rises, many slide into taking on “guru” status. Matt is cohost of DECODING THE GURUS, a somewhat controversial podcast that does as it says on the packet, and I get him on to dissect this pop cultural phenomenon for us. We talk: the intellectual dark web (IDW); “galaxy brain”; what’s the deal with their all-meat diets and love of MMA; why young men flock to these gurus; and what it all says about the world, specifically our need for good, humble leadership. It’s a bit of a “meta” chat this one, but wild and intriguing too. I challenge everyone to determine their own take as they listen to Matt and I dissect the topic (he and I don’t agree on it all, BTW).Listen to Decoding the Gurus hereFollow Matt on twitterMatt mentions two non “pseude psychological bullshit” podcasts to look out for: Very Bad Wizards and Two Psychologists Four Beers......If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is a massive “authority gap” that exists in the world today, where women are taken way less seriously than men and still treated as less competent. They are interrupted four times as often as men and are overlooked for not being as confident as a bloke (while studies show that men’s perceived additional confidence is mostly “bullshitting”). And, yet, as my guest London-based journalist and broadcaster Mary Ann Sieghart explains, there are only wins to be had by closing this authority gap.Mary Ann both coined the term and wrote the book by the same name and she shares with me that when gender parity is achieved men experience less divorce, less suicide, less addiction, their chances of dying a violent death are almost halved and their happiness increases; while nations with female leaders have less corruption, better health outcomes and experience a spike in GDP. I find this chat wild in its dispelling of the misconception that making the world more balanced is a zero-sum game (that as women achieve gains, men lose out). Quite the opposite! Our chat comes on the 10-year anniversary of former Australian PM Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech…Mary Ann leaves us with a super interesting insight on this, too.Grab Mary Ann’s book, The Authority GapFollow her on Instagram and TwitterHere’s the data on the gender gap in Australia that I refer to. And here’s Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech in full. .....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if we could bioengineer our bodies to live forever, would we and should we? What if we could avoid all the awkward bits of sex and just neatly copulate with a robot? And what if we never had to go through the bother and pain of pregnancy and could instead use artificial external wombs? Would we? And should we? Transhumanists say these are moot questions because the superhuman or post-human train has well and truly left the station. We’re only decades from these altered, souped up realities. Oxford transhumanist scholar Elise Bohan and I roll our sleeves up to discuss the litany of moral questions that arise from this, like why the hell were we not consulted on this before the train took off? Has anyone stopped to ask if this is what humanity wants or can handle morally? We chat about the singularity, the particularly worrying effects on men and dating and Elise posits a timeframe for AI intelligence taking over from human smarts (!). If ever there was a conversation in history to get us talking about what matters and makes for a flourishing existence, this is it. Take a deep breath…Grab Elise’s book, Future Superhuman: Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-Break Century I refer to the book Klara and the Sun by Kazuo IshiguroAnd we reference previous podcast chats with William Macaskill.....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know the latest IPCC* Assessment Report? The one that came out at the end of 2021 that the UN secretary general dubbed “Code Red for humanity”? Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis was one of its lead authors responsible for its 3 million words of truly stark wake-up-call content.This episode I catch up with her at the Byron Writer’s Festival (where she was launching her new book on climate grief) and volley her with questions compiled by my Substack membership community.What does the report predict for Australia in 20 years? What can I tell my Dad when he says “we’ve always had climate warming cycles”? Is carbon capture and storage a furphy? Joelle rallies off the facts, but also shares a beautiful wisdom on climate grief, or “solastalgia” as it’s often called. * International Panel on Climate ChangeGrab Joëlle's book now Humanity's Moment: A climate scientist's case for hope....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Right, we’re doing something different this episode. Uber-talented radio/TV/podcast host and contrarian Josh Szeps has me on his Uncomfortable Conversations podcast to chat sugar, cannonau wine, class wars, woke-speak, ethics, the decline of innovation in wealthy countries, how men around the world behave on dating apps and the perils of looking like could be on an insurance ad. For some context: Josh is currently the host of afternoons on ABC Radio Sydney and you might also have heard him hosting a bunch of other TV, radio and podcast shows here and in the US where he was a regular on NBC’s Today Show, or the time – earlier this year – when he ‘annihilated’ Joe Rogan during a rambling frustrating chat about vaccines. Check out Josh’s podcast Uncomfortable ConversationsFollow Josh on Twitter and InstagramThat Harvard study I mention? Check it out hereI also mention my podcast ep with Lech Blaine. You can listen here As well as the Will Macaskill chat on Longtermism…listen here ....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If only we all learned to think more we might solve the problems of the world. This is a thesis British philosopher A.C. Grayling has devoted much of his life to via his 40-odd books, the philosophy college he founded in London and his engagement in global debates on euthanasia, the existence God, Brexit and beyond. In his latest book, For the Good of the World, he applies it to the challenge of achieving global agreement to solve the various global catastrophes we have created. In this fun chat we talk “Graylings Law”, the “hard problem” of consciousness and why tech bros and young men love stoicism; I present him with the ethical quandary of putting lentils in SUV tyre valves as an act of global good; and he shows us how to develop our own life philosophy…by loving, engaging in and wrestling with thinking. He also leaves us with some wild quotes and reads and wisdoms with which to start the process.Purchase your copy of For the Good of the World: Is a Universal Ethics PossibleIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is an intense one. It’s with multi-Walkley Award-winning Australian photographer Andrew Quilty who has spent the past eight years living and working in the Afghanistan capital Kabul, documenting the conflict for publications around the world. We talk about the details of the decades-long occupation and go into the story of that day - one year ago - when the Taliban arrived at the gates of Kabul as the allied forces and tens of thousands of Afghans tried to flee in scenes of chaos and tragedy (which he shares in his new book August in Kabul). But, really, this conversation is more about meaning. And what makes life worthwhile when the standard accoutrements are stripped away by destruction and human ugliness? I recommend looking up Andrew's photographs as you listen to him in this episode share his very raw account of life in a war zone, his take on the morality of capturing and sharing images of humans in their worst moments, as well as his very intimate reflections on finding meaning in “homecoming”.Andrew’s book, August in Kabul is out this weekScroll his photographs as you listenWe mention Sebastian Junger’s Tribe… you can grab it here ....If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In exclusive pockets around the world rich, white (mostly) men are prepping for end times. They are hoarding resources and building bunkers, putting billions into funding their place on Mars. They could be funding renewable energy projects, or putting their efforts into restoring political stability, you know, finding ways for humanity to survive on our beloved Earth. But no. Irish author and journalist Mark O’Connell conducted something of a perverse pilgrimage of these pockets for his book Notes from an Apocalypse and in this episode I talk with him about how we should feel about such a dividing phenomenon. And, importantly, what we can learn from it…before it becomes our future. Follow Mark on TwitterGrab Mark’s book, Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and BackIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our existential risk – the probability that we could wipe ourselves out due to AI, bio-engineering, nuclear war, climate change, etc. in the next 100 years – currently sits at 1 in 6. Let that sink in! Would you get on a plane if there was a 17% chance it would crash? Would you do everything you could to prevent a calamity if you were presented with those odds? My chat today covers a wild idea that could – and should - better our chances of existing as a species…and lead to a human flourishing I struggle to even imagine. Longtermism argues that prioritising the long-term future of humanity has exponential ethical and existential boons. Flipside, if we don’t choose the longtermism route, the repercussions are well devastating.Will MacAskill is one of the world’s leading moral philosophers and I travel to Oxford UK, where he runs the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Global Priorities Institute and the Forethought Foundation, to talk through these massive moral issues. Will also explains that right now is the most important time in humanity’s history. Our generation singularly has the power and responsibility to determine two diametrically different paths for humanity. This excites me; I hope it does you, too.Learn more about Will MacAskill’s work Purchase his new book What We Owe the Future: A Million year view If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The wealthy elite once signalled their status with expensive handbags and super yachts. Now they do it with what Rob Henderson calls “luxury beliefs” - so-called politically correct pronouncements that, in reality, only the rich can afford to live by and thusly differentiate them from the rest of us. We’re talking about such wokenesses as “defund the police” and calls for drug legalisation, death to marriage and putting “polyamorous” on your dating profile. Of course, defunding the police is all very well if you can afford to live in a gated community with low crime and security guards. It should be said, Rob, now a moral philosopher at the University of Cambridge, comes at this wild idea from a very unique perspective. He grew up poor, a foster kid who was doing drugs at the age of 9 and who had to learn to decode elite signalling as an outsider once he hit the liberal US university scene. This is a super juicy and confronting thesis, evidence of which I can’t stop noticing everywhere and I loved the way Rob applies the wild idea to online dating, cancel culture and conservative politics.Follow Rob on TwitterCheck out Rob's WebsiteAnd you can read the New York Times op-ed we talk about. His book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class will be published in the European fall of 2023.We chat about Joseph Henrich’s WEIRD theory and class myths in Australia from my Lech Blaine chat, both ran a few episodes back. If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.