Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Accidental Gods
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| Finding the Courage to Care - Ways to build a Mothering Economy with author Jenny Grettve | 28 Aug 2024 | 01:26:10 | |
'Are we [in our WEIRD culture] intelligent enough to be more generous than we have ever been throughout history?' So writes Jenny Grettve, in her new book, 'Mothering Economy'. Jenny is an author, philospher, systems thinker and designer who joined us in Episode #228, talking about the principles and practice of her generative, systems-led design agency, 'When!When!' At the time, she said she was writing a new book - and now, ‘Mothering Economy’ is coming out at the end of this month (August), so we’re back in a wide, deep, provocative, generative conversation about what it might takes for us to have the courage to care deeply for ourselves, each other and the more than human world. She writes, ‘The profound mothering among humans that I envision is not a burdensome technological revolution, but rather a simple way of being together. We have a vast number of examples: what we lack is the intention and commitment to raise awareness…’ And so let's do all we can to raise awareness by exploring the ideas deep in Jenny’s book and searching our own beings for ways to show up with stronger, clearer, more open hearts. In the meantime, please enjoy this wide, deep, thoughtful, caring, connecting conversation with Jenny Grettve, author of Mothering Economy.
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| When is a Tree not a Tree? The 'Net Zero' Wood Burning Scam - with Dr Mary Booth of Partnership for Policy Integrity | 21 Aug 2024 | 01:05:12 | |
We live in a burning world. As we record, there are record wildfires across the Americas, record temperatures around the world, falling oxygen levels in the oceans and however much supposedly renewable energy we produce, Jevons' Paradox means we keep on burning fossil fuels. This is not a great combination, but even the so called renewables have more under the hood than appears on the surface. Burning wood - or grasses - for 'Green' Energy is both a massive accounting scam and one of the ways that the predatory industrial complex sucks in eye-watering quantities of public money - while selling us the lie that this is somehow net zero. It isn't, but sometimes we need someone who really knows what they're talking about to spell out the details for us and this week, our guest is one of those people. Dr. Mary Booth is the founder and director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, a Massachusetts-based think tank that uses science, communications, and strategic advocacy to protect forests and our climate future. Mary worked as Senior Scientist in the Environmental Working Group in the US, working on water quality. Now, she directs the PFPI’s science and advocacy work on greenhouse gas, air pollutant, and forest impacts of biomass energy and has provided science and policy support to hundreds of activists, researchers, and policy makers across the US and EU - and now that the UK is no longer in the EU (sigh) in the UK as well. I heard Mary on the Economics for Rebels podcast back in February and was blown away by her grasp of the essential science, and also by the sheer mendacity of the companies involved: the lies they tell, the false accounting they use and the extent to which they are destroying the biosphere to give us - or at least, those who set our policies and spend public money - an illusion of somehow being more 'green', more sustainable, more ethical. I wanted to give listeners to Accidental Gods the chance to hear Mary in action, so here we are: people of the podcast, please welcome Dr Mary Booth of the Partnership for Policy Integrity.
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| Beautiful Trouble - crafting a political Alternative - and an independent Scotland - with Indra Adnan and Pat Kane | 26 Jun 2024 | 01:25:01 | |
The question of how we reshape democracy, walking the fine line between stagnation and populist rage - is the defining problem of our time - with a coherent strategy, we can shape anything. In its absence, we’re going to end up spinning in pointless circles, arguing about trivia while the world burns. We set this podcast up months ago, thinking we’d talk about the example Scotland sets for the UK and the rest of the world as a way *maybe) to shape democracy. And then Nicola Sturgeon stepped down and Scotland fell into the kind of turmoil I thought only impacted England. And then the turmoil in England sparked a general election. So now we’re talking about how we can use this moment to affect the digital, distributed democracy that we need with two of the smartest people in our eco-system - people who give their entire lives to thinking about this question: Indra Adnan and Pat Kane of The Alternative.
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| Stop eating Chicken! - The future of food with Rob Percival, author of The Meat Paradox | 25 Jan 2023 | 00:53:54 | |
Rob Percival is a writer, campaigner and food policy expert with The Soil Association. His commentary on food and farming has featured in the national press and on prime time television, and his writing has been shortlisted for the Guardian’s International Development Journalism Prize and the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Food Sustainability Media Award. He works as Head of Food Policy for the Soil Association. The Meat Paradox is his first book, and goodness, it's been a world changer - since its hardback publication, Rob's become a global superstar: invited to speak to groups across the spectrum of industry and culture about the nature of our relationship with the food that we eat. We left our first conversation each feeling that we'd just begun to scrape the surface of possibility and it would be good to talk again. Radio 4 Book of the Week https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hf27 Bionutrient Food Association https://www.bionutrient.org/ | |||
| Cultures of Commoning: Quadratic voting, indigenous connectivity and pacifist chess with Ruth Catlow | 18 Jan 2023 | 01:11:04 | |
This week's conversation ranges over an astonishingly wide range of topics from ways to facilitate interspecies communication through play and ways to play 3-person pacifist chess (and thereby change the world), to the nature of democracy and how the use of quadratic voting on the blockchain to inspire artistic endeavours in north London might be expanded nationally and internationally on the scale of global governance to shift the cultural dominance away from capital hegemony to a more fluid, genuinely inclusive democracy. All this in conversation with Ruth Catlow. Ruth is co-founder (with Marc Garrett) and co-director (with Charlotte Frost) of Furtherfield, a project based in Finsbury Park in London which organises for inclusivity and equity in art and technology and advocates for their use in imagining and building real social change and positive environmental impact. Background and Bio:
Since late 2020, Ruth has been immersed in the massive Interspecies Treaty LARP as part of her participation in the EU Horizon 2020 funded CreaTures project. All participants advance more-than-human justice by playing the game as other species, representing them in Assemblies to discuss and plan an Interspecies Festival that will celebrate the signing of 'an Interspecies Treaty of Cooperation (known as 'The Treaty of Finsbury Park') in 2025. Furtherfield https://www.furtherfield.org CultureStake app https://www.furtherfield.org/culturestake/ Cade Diehm - paper co-written with Ruth https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/finsbury-park-2025 | |||
| Being the Change: Journeys in Service to Life with Gail Bradbrook | 11 Jan 2023 | 01:03:30 | |
This week's guest is a friend of the podcast, Dr Gail Bradbrook. Best known for her role in co-founding Extinction Rebellion, Gail is one of our nation's (and our world's) deepest thinkers on radical change: what will it take to shift the juggernaut of predatory capitalism from the orgy of extraction, consumption and destruction that has brought us to the edge of crisis, and instead turn it towards a celebration of life in all its forms? BIO: TED Talk - My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor https://youtu.be/UyyjU8fzEYU | |||
| Plan. Pause. Reset: Real Steps to Radical Transformation with Eva Schonveld and Justin Kenrick | 04 Jan 2023 | 01:14:53 | |
Eva is a climate activist, process designer and facilitator. She has co-convened the Transformative Conflict for Transition Network summit, supports sociocratic system development, decision-making and facilitation in many contexts including Extinction Rebellion Scotland. Long term friends of the podcast, Eva and Justin live and work right at the leading edge of change, exploring and testing ways to help people move into the flowing, more vulnerable, less triggered spaces that allow for genuine inner change, and therefore change in our outer relationships. The spaces this work creates are essential to the move to a future where people and planet flourish. In this first Accidental Gods podcast of 2023, we explore the things that make our hearts sing, and the ways Eva and Justin's work is transforming communities around the world, with a particular emphasis on their homeland of Scotland, where Independence feels a breath away. | |||
| Three years on: Manda's reflections on our third anniversary - and looking forward into 2023 | 30 Dec 2022 | 00:39:54 | |
As we move from our third to our fourth year, it seemed like a good time to look back on the origins of the whole Accidental Gods project - why and how we started and what our original aims were - and then to look forward to the coming year and what we're focussing on both on the podcast and within the membership. So much has changed even in such a short time. We're all more aware than ever of the tipping points around us, but also more aware of what we can do, of the many, many roles that are here to be filled by people who have time and energy and commitment to give to transforming the future. So this is a paean to possibility and a thank you to all who have been part of the journey this far. Upstream podcast with Della Duncan https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/upstream/id1082594532 | |||
| Food, Farming and Feeding the Soul: with Satish Kumar in conjunction with the Oxford Real Farming Conference | 28 Dec 2022 | 00:59:27 | |
Satish Kumar is one of the absolute titans of the Regenerative movement in the UK. In 1962, he and and one of his fellow Jain monks made an 8,000 mile mendicant peace pilgrimage around the world, stopping in the capitals of what the nuclear nations of the earth: Russia, USA, China, France and the UK. He settled in the latter and soon became known for his work in connecting people and ideas. He founded the Small School in Devon and went on to found Schumacher College, deeply rooted in his ideas that education should engage head, hands and heart. In 1973, he founded Resurgence Magazine (now: Resurgence and Ecologist Magazine) and for the next forty three years, was its Editor in Chief, stepping down on his 80th birthday. This week, Accidental Gods teamed up with the Oxford Real Farming Conference, to speak with Satish as he prepares to head to Oxford where he'll lead a meditation for farmers on the morning of Friday 6th. We explore more deeply his concepts of education, food and farming and the re-connection of people to the living web of life. He ends with a meditation, similar to the one he will lead live in the conference. Now entering its thirteenth year, the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) is the unofficial gathering of the agroecological farming movement in the UK, including organic and regenerative farming, bringing together practising farmers and growers with scientists and economists, activists and policymakers in a two-day event every January. Working with partners, the conference offers a broad programme that delves deep into farming practices and techniques as well addressing the bigger questions relating to our food and farming system. Working with partners in the UK and internationally, the Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) brings the real food and farming movement together, attracting people from around the world who are interested in transforming our food system. In 2021 and 2022, the conference went entirely online, but the physical gathering has traditionally been in Oxford (it was set up as an alternative to the Oxford Farming Conference, which happens at the same time) and this year, there will again be a physical programme. ORFC has always been the place to share progressive ideas. Subjects include agroecology, regenerative agriculture, organic farming and indigenous food and farming systems. The broad programme delves deep into farming practices and techniques as well as addressing the bigger questions relating to our food and farming system. Crucially, it has always been the participants who provide the ORFC programme. The sessions reflect their diversity, ranging from the intricacies of soil microbiology to new kinds of marketing; setting up a micro-dairy to the value of introducing mob grazing and agroforestry to the farm; from the joys and tribulations of farming to the kind of economic structure we need to support the kind of food system we need. It is this diversity of participants and interests that keeps ORFC alive and growing. Online tickets are available. The ORFC works with the interpretation collective, COATI, to make sure sessions are accessible. Follow the conference on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook for all the latest news and speaker announcements. Online Programme https://orfc.org.uk/orfc-2023-online-programme/ | |||
| Traditional Solstice Celebration: Looking back and looking forward with Della Duncan and Nathalie Nahai | 20 Dec 2022 | 01:03:58 | |
As the year stills and tilts afresh, we bring you our annual moment of reflection with two podcast hosts we really admire. There's a meditation at the end, to bring you into your own space of stillness and reflection, but ahead of this, we delve into where we think the global human psyche is at this moment, how we feel when we look upstream, and what we see; and what makes our hearts sing, and what does it prompt us to do: core questions that open up a wealth of ideas, reflections and imaginings of how our world could be as we step forward into 2023, amidst all the tipping points, clear-eyed, strong-hearted and ready to give it all we've got.
Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist. Areas of her livelihood garden include hosting the Upstream Podcast, challenging mainstream economic thinking through documentaries and conversations including most recently, The Green Transition Pt 1: The Problem with Green Capitalism and Pt 2: A Green Deal for the People, supporting individuals as a Right Livelihood Coach, helping transition businesses and organizations as a post-capitalist consultant, and teaching and facilitating retreats and workshops on the Work that Reconnects, Systems Change, and Post-Capitalist Economics. Della is also the Course Development Manager of Fritjof Capra’s Capra Course on the Systems View of Life, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and a Senior Lecturer of Renegade Economics and Regenerative Livelihoods at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Santa Cruz Permaculture, Vital Cycles Permaculture, and Gaia Education.
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| Earthborne Rangers: Playing our way to a future that works with Andrew Navaro | 14 Dec 2022 | 01:25:12 | |
The average child in the western world attends 10,000 hours of school - and plays 20,000 hours of games. In the 'adult' world, many of us spend hours devoted to levelling up our characters and exploring imaginary worlds. If the Tech-bros get their way, we'll soon live entirely in the Metaverse and have minimal contact with the real world beyond the walls of our concrete hutches. But imagine a different world: where the people of earth have come together to solve the multi-polar traps of the climate, ecological, sociological, economic and political crisis of our times. How might the world look in a couple of thousand years if we've made it through to the flourishing future we want for our descendants? That's the premise of Earthborne Rangers, a tabletop card game that's the brainchild of Andrew Navaro, Founder and Creative Director of Earthborne Games, a company that 'creates breathtaking tabletop games that prioritize environmental sustainability in every aspect of their creation – from manufacturing to fulfillment. Every Earthborne product is made as sustainably as possible, with unparalleled transparency throughout the process. There’s a hopeful future on the horizon, one that reimagines our relationship with the Earth and the stories we tell on the gaming table, and we’re going to create it together. In this week's inspiring episode, we talk to Andrew about the game's genesis, about how where we set our energy defines where we go, and why it was important to him to create a game that fostered cohesion and community, sharing and exploring while still being fun and exciting to play. As the game nears completion and launch, we talk about the Kickstarter campaign that funded it and the design challenges, as well as the deeply thought-through ethos of the world Andrew and his team have created. As we head into the holidays, join us for a world of new ideas.
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| Living Well within our Limits: Actions for systemic change with Prof Julia Steinberger | 07 Dec 2022 | 00:41:45 | |
Professor Julia Steinberger researches and teaches in the interdisciplinary areas of Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology. She is the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for her research project 'Living Well Within Limits' investigating how universal human well-being might be achieved within planetary boundaries. She is Lead Author for the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report with Working Group 3. She has held postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Lausanne and Zurich, and obtained her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has published over 40 internationally peer-reviewed articles since 2009 in journals including Nature Climate Change, Nature Sustainability, WIRES-Climate Change, Environmental Science & Technology, PLOS ONE and Environmental Research Letters. As part of our drive towards finding the people at the leading edge of change, we wanted to connect with Prof Steinberger really to unpick the detail of personal and collective action. Each of us is only one person and the nature of the change can feel overwhelming even while it feels urgent. So we need to hear directly from the people whose entire lives are given to solving this problem and who have concrete ideas of what we can do and how, who can direct our priorities and show us where the best leverage points lie. Prof. Steinberger has clear ideas of how our culture can live within planetary boundaries and we unpick them in this podcast. Enjoy! Julia on Medium https://jksteinberger.medium.com/an-audacious-toolkit-actions-against-climate-breakdown-part-1-a-is-for-advocacy-7baa108f00e9 | |||
| Data is the New Plastic! Ethics, Accuracy and AI with Dr John Collins of Machine Intelligence Garage | 30 Nov 2022 | 00:59:05 | |
Dr John Collins worked for the UK's Central Electricity Generating Board in the days when such things were nationalised industries. His PhD involved creating a real-time dosimeter for workers in nuclear plants so they didn't have to wait 2 weeks to learn the results of the film-based dosimeters that were in use. In doing so, he saved the CEGB considerable amounts of money - and, mere importantly, saved the lives and health of the men and women who worked there. John on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjohnlcollins/ | |||
| Election Special 3 - Labour party Manifesto - anything worthwhile? with Jeremy Gilbert | 23 Jun 2024 | 01:05:59 | |
What are we being offered by the incoming Labour Government? What's good in their Manifesto (spoiler alert, not very much)? What's not good? What could be improved upon and how do we go about pushing them to a place where they actually do something useful that isn't simply a repeat of the same-old, same-old we've had for the past decade and a half? Jeremy's been on the podcast before back in Episode #95 - and he's always my go-to person for insight into progressive thinking within the current Labour party, and for a broader, more political scientific view of where we're at. As chance would have it the Labour party published their manifesto about thirty six hours before we were due to record, so I took the chance to ask Jeremy what he thought of it: what's good, what could be better, what can we who care about people and planet do to help shift us onto a trajectory where we're not barrelling towards the edge of the biophysical cliff. It's not the most upbeat of conversations - because the answers to all three are 'not a lot, but joining a union is probably one of the most useful things you can do' - but it gave us a chance to look into a bit of the ideological, conceptual and pragmatic views of the current Labour party - and how we can shape things for a world that will work. Jeremy's Website Green Party Manifesto | |||
| Telling the Truth and Moving Forward: Building the Moderate Flank with Rupert Read | 23 Nov 2022 | 00:57:49 | |
Rupert Read is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, but he is also a Green party activist, and a prolific speaker, media spokesperson and author advocating for a wholehearted, whole-culture response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency. A long-term friend of the podcast, Rupert joins us today to talk about his new book: 'Do You Want to Know the Truth: The Surprising Rewards of Climate Honesty' and to announce the launch of a new movement, the Moderate Flank, which aims to bring together a moderate majority of people who care deeply about anthropogenic climate change, but don't want to engage in polarising actions. In this deeply honest, raw episode, Rupert makes a passionate case for an anti-polarising movement which can engage people from all walks of life and furnish them with the tools for change that will help us to adapt to the coming changes - and to ensure that politically, economically, culturally, we create a more just, equitable - and regenerative - society that we can leave to the generations that come after us. Rupert's new book https://249897.e-junkie.com/product/1756224/Do-you-want-to-know-the-truth3F-The-surprising-rewards-of-climate-honesty Rupert's Website https://rupertread.net/ | |||
| End of year round-up: Manda's favourite podcasts, fiction and non-fiction of 2022 | 16 Nov 2022 | 00:56:08 | |
As we do each year, we've curated a list of the Accidental Gods' favourite podcast and books of 2022. Enjoy!
The Sustainable Food Trust episode with Dr Michael Antoniou Global Governance Futures with Jacqueline McGlade ITS BLOODY COMPLICATED by Compass - Episode with Byron Fay of Climate 200 Catherine Weetman Circular Economy Podcast Catherine musing on sustainabilty https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/circular-economy-podcast/id1465879853?i=1000583550758 Catherine with Simon Hombersely of Xampla https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/circular-economy-podcast/id1465879853?i=1000582020564 The rest is politics w Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart - episode w Mark Drakeford https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-politics/id1611374685?i=1000579634739
The Club on the Edge of Town - Alan Lane https://salamanderstreet.com/product/the-club-on-the-edge-of-town-paperback/ Flourish - Sarah Ichioka and Michael Pawlyn https://www.triarchypress.net/flourish.html A People's Green New Deal - Max Ajl https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341750/a-peoples-green-new-deal/ Our Farming Life - Lynn Cassells and Sandra Baer https://chelseagreen.co.uk/book/our-wild-farming-life/ (also A Dairy Story - David and Wilma Finlay of The Ethical Dairy) https://www.theethicaldairy.co.uk/cheese-shop/dairy-story Louis Weinstock: How the World is Making our Children Mad and What to Do about it https://louisweinstock.com/how-the-world-is-making-our-children-mad-and-what-to-do-about-it/https://www.naominovik.com/2022/09/published-today-the-golden-enclaves/ The Barn at the End of the World by Mary Rose O'Reilley The Apprenticeship of a Quaker Buddhist Shepherd https://www.amazon.co.uk/Barn-End-World-Apprenticeship-Buddhist/dp/1571312544 Novels The Kingdoms - Natasha Pulley https://natashapulley.co.uk/books/ Tuyo - Rachel Neumeier https://www.rachelneumeier.com/writing/tuyo/ Kingdom of Silence Jonathan Grimwood (also Jack Grimwood and Jon Courtenay Grimwood) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingdom-Silence-Jonathan-Grimwood-ebook/dp/B086R544MD/ Naomi Novik - The Golden Enclaves - Lesson 3 in the Scholomance Trilogy https://www.naominovik.com/2022/09/published-today-the-golden-enclaves/ The Stranger Times by CK McDonnell (also The Dublin Trilogy by Caimh McDonnell) BUNNY McGARRY https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-stranger-times-the-stranger-times-1/9780552177344 https://whitehairedirishman.com also Kevin Hearn Ink and Sigil series | |||
| Regenerative by Design: Creating Communities that work with Charlie Fisher of Transition by Design | 09 Nov 2022 | 01:12:48 | |
In a world that feels as if all the certainties are breaking down, how can we build the communities of place and of purpose that will give us the resilience to bridge from the old structures to the new? Exploring deeply practical ways to build community with Charlie Fisher. His role over the past decade has been to build capacities within land-based organisations, primarily around urban affordable housing and mechanisms for holding land in the commons. He writes about, and runs workshops on, group dynamics, decision-making, housing finance, incorporation approaches, legal structures, stakeholder mapping, business planning, and visioning. In 2020, he was developing the Oxygen Fund, a £5m revolving equity fund with the Oxfordshire Growth Deal, which led him to explore how regenerative land use can be supported through Distributed Co-operative Organisations (DisCOs🕺) and web3 Regenerative Finance (ReFi) projects. He is in the core team of regenerative blockchain-based property developer Oasa, a Swiss Association, which bought its first piece of land in 2021 at Traditional Dream Factory in Portugal. In building this ecosystem together, he is the interface between various thematic working ‘circles’ and has led the design of our sociocratic coordination system. He is an adviser to the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation, and in 2023 he’ll be running a cohort-based course, Unearthing Common Ground, with 50 land trusts globally and 50 regenerative web3 projects to support exchange between traditional land trust projects and web3 practitioners. In this conversation, we open up the key question of building communities: what does it take to create the connections between people that make communities work? What questions matter and how do we know which things we can leave till later? How do we move from consensus to consent so that things move forward at the speed we need as our material supply chains falter? How can we engage the best in human creativity to build communities that will have the flexibility, heart and coherence to survive? Charlie is deeply embedded in so many of these questions, and finding ways through that work in the real world. With any luck at all, we'll be moving onto a 2nd conversation when a couple more of our hundred day segments have passed - so if you have questions, let me know.
Transition by Design https://transitionbydesign.org/ Community Land Trust network https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/ Garden City Principles https://tcpa.org.uk/garden-city-principles/ Nabeel Hamdi: Small change: Intelligent Practice and Practising intelligence https://uk.bookshop.org/books/intelligent-practice-and-practising-intelligence/9781844070053 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/garden-communities-set-to-flourish-across-england LILAC in Leeds http://www.lilac.coop/ Oasa Earth (which incorporates the Traditional Dream Factory in Portugal) https://oasa.earth/ | |||
| Fractal Improv: finding generosity, connection and compassion amidst our fear with Belina Raffy | 02 Nov 2022 | 01:09:38 | |
We know our climate is in crisis and that time is running out. But we also know that screaming at people to wake up is not working. What if we gave ourselves permission to tell the truth - and the skills to do it with humour and compassion so that we didn't trigger the resistances of fear? This Episode, we explore stand-up and improv in sustainable communications with Belina Raffy. Belina Raffy, Empress and Improvisation guide, is the director of Maffick Ltd & Applied Improvisation and Thrivability thought-leader, Thrivable World Quest co-founder and global captain. She believes that our ability to improvise gives us a choice about how to respond to life’s challenges. Improvisation helps us develop our creative thinking skills in service of a happier life, and play a vital part in our response to our complex, dynamic world. It is her passion to spread these mindsets and practices and support others discover the power of improvisation. In this sparkling, thought-provoking episode, we explore the differences between stand-up and improv, and how the structures of either and both can allow us to reach past the tribal screaming of our time, to a more gentle, compassionate, connected way of reaching each other. Humour reaches the places that charts, data and stats never will - and Belina has years of experience in creating spaces where people can find what matters most to them, and share it in ways that make us laugh - and care. Belina's website https://www.maffick.com/ Upcoming courses 1-hour online ‘Compassionate Climate Comedy’ on 7 Nov And next 7-week Sustainable Stand Up course starts 19 Jan Details at https://www.sustainablestandup.com/#courses Inga Foundation http://www.ingafoundation.org/ Red Cross Disaster Risk Reduction https://climatecentre.live/courses/participate/ The Frontier Development Lab https://frontierdevelopmentlab.org/ and https://fdleurope.org/ . | |||
| Compass: Charting a Progressive Route through the Political Maelstrom with Neal Lawson | 26 Oct 2022 | 00:51:53 | |
In a world where our 'democracy' is manifestly not fit for purpose, how can we turn the brief, bright fireworks of political sanity into floodlights of progressive values, of liquid democracy that leads to an equitable, regenerative culture? With Neal Lawson of the progressive campaign group, Compass. Neal Lawson was brought up in an activist household and joined the Labour party at sixteen. After university, he worked for the Transport and General Workers' Union and then was a speech writer for Gordon Brown during the New Labour years. He has been helping to lead the political campaign group, Compass, since its formation in 2003. He is more focused than ever on how to make big transformative change happen. He works on strategy, relationships, funding and fronting Compass. He writes for The Guardian,[9] the New Statesman[10] and OpenDemocracy[11] about equality, democracy and the future of the left, and appears on TV and radio as a political commentator. He was the author of All Consuming (Penguin, 2009), which analysed the social cost of consumerism. Lawson's writing has been heavily influenced by the late Polish Marxist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who described him as “one of the most insightful and inventive minds on the British political stage”. Compass itself is a home for those who want to build and be a part of a Good Society; one where equality, sustainability and democracy are not mere aspirations, but a living reality. We are founded on the belief that no single issue, organisation or political party can make a Good Society a reality by themselves so we have to work together to make it happen. Compass is a place where people come together to create the visions, alliances and actions to be the change we wish to see in the world. In this episode, we explore the recent history of politics in the UK and then open more deeply into the routes by which our manifestly broken political system could be transformed into something that will - in Neal's words - transform the brief flaring fireworks of hope into floodlights that can transform our nation, and the world.
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| The Kindness of Strangers: Ocean Rowing, Solitude and Transformation with Dr Roz Savage MBE | 19 Oct 2022 | 01:11:53 | |
What happens when we realise we're trying to be something we're not? For Roz Savage, this led to a transformation that took her from Management Consultant to the first woman to row solo across the world's 3 big oceans. Now she devotes her life to the healing of the planet. Dr Roz Savage MBE is an Ocean Rower, Author, Speaker, Lecturer, Sustainability Advocate. Her feats have been described by Sir Richard Branson as “Heroic, epic, inspiring, historic.” Best known as the first (and so far only) woman to row solo across the world’s “Big Three” oceans - the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian - Roz inspires us to think again about what is possible, and encourages us to step up fully into the potential of our highest selves. She's author of four books, the most recent of which, The Ocean in a Drop, is published in November 2022. She's a committed and vibrant speaker whose experiences have reached audiences across the world with her example of the potential for transformation that lies within all of us. In our conversation, we delved into her experience of the oceans - what led her to throw in her job and take instead to the high seas - and then how she is using the self-knowledge she gained then, the emotional, mental and spiritual transformation that arose, to bring change to the world around us. We explore politics and economics and theories of change that bring us to the cutting edge of what is possible. Roz's website https://www.rozsavage.com/about/ | |||
| Matereality and Corporate Mischief: reshaping Business as if the job were to create a world that works with B.Lorraine Smith | 12 Oct 2022 | 01:04:14 | |
What if businesses existed not to price-gouge consumers and destroy the planet, but to be part of a pathway to a flourishing future? What if the end-of-year reports were not expensive exercises in greenwash, but were actually truthful - and useful. With B.Lorraine Smith, creator of Matereality. B. Lorraine Smith is a writer, speaker, corporate mischievist, and generally curious student of life. She changes minds (most often her own), casting a dubious eye on the line between work and play. She holds a vision of a future where all industry is a force for healing and any exceptions compost themselves into history. She has been working towards this vision with global companies since 2004, bringing together activists, executives and thought-leaders. she shares what she finds as she goes along, telling as much truth as she can figure out how to spell. (Or, in the case of Matereality, how to respell.) Originally from Toronto, Canada, she spent a decade based in New York City and recently relocated to Montreal, all the better to explore the banks of the St. Lawrence River (whom she calls Lia). She runs ultra-long distances on urban trails, spins and knits her own original designs, and holds doggedly to the belief that our senses of connectedness and curiosity are our best assets.
Lorraine has consulted for leading change-agents and large companies, informing strategy and stakeholder dialogue to shift us to a regenerative economy. She is also a frequent speaker at conferences on sustainability and corporate innovation.
What would the world be like if corporations actually decided to benefit people and planet? Actually. Not their share holders or the vulture capitalists? With grace, humility and endless humour, Lorraine describes her journey and her conclusions of how we could re-shape the business world in time to change the trajectory towards global melt-down. This is an episode full of ideas at the corporate level, that we can nonetheless bring into our own lives. We all live in the corporate world. Even if we don't talk at C-Suite level, we are the glue that holds everything together - and we can change the ways we interact with the corporate Masters of the Universe. Lorraine's website https://www.blorrainesmith.com/matereality | |||
| Flourish: Designing new paradigms and expanding our agency with Sarah Ichioka | 05 Oct 2022 | 01:16:18 | |
What will it take to restore balance in our world? How can we repair our devastated environments, and secure future generations' survival? And what's they key to unlock the mindset shift to enable truly regenerative transformation? With Sarah Ichioka, co-author of 'Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency'. Sarah Ichioka is co-author with Michael Pawlyn of 'Flourish' a rich, inspiring book that outlines key paradigm shifts for this time of planetary emergency. Looking deeply into the web of life, Flourish proposes a bold, imaginative - and do-able - set of regenerative principles to transform how we design, make and manage our buildings and our communities. Sarah is an urbanist, curator, writer and podcast host. Connecting cities, culture and ecology, she has been recognised as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, and one of the Global Public Interest Design 100. She is founding director of the Singapore-based strategic consultancy 'Desire Lines' and is co-author, with Michael Pawlyn, of the book 'Flourish' and co-host with Michael of the Flourish podcast. In this expansive, incisive conversation, Sarah expands on the five paradigms she and Michael identified that are holding us back in the old 'business as usual' frame and the ways we can shift our world-view to new ways of thinking, being - and designing our lives. Drawing on the work of foundational thinkers like Freya Matthews, Donella Meadows, Janine Benyus and Ronan Krznaric, plus existing communities such as the Los Angeles Eco Village, Sarah shows us that the ideas and actions are already in place, we just need to build them bigger, proving that, as Willam Gibson has said, the future is here, it's just unevenly distributed. Flourish book: https://www.flourish-book.com Donella Meadows Leverage Points: https://donellameadows.org/a-visual-approach-to-leverage-points/ Freya Matthews: http://www.freyamathews.net | |||
| Planet, not Profit: Envisioning a genuinely sustainable future in a not-for-profit world with Jennifer Hinton | 28 Sep 2022 | 01:16:13 | |
We live in a world run by profiteers: the rush to make money destroys people and planet with equal disregard. But how would the world look if all businesses existed to promote wellbeing in all its forms? How could we make this work? Re-imagining our relationship to profit with Dr Jennifer Hinton of Lund University, Sweden. Dr. Jennifer Hinton is a systems researcher and activist in the field of sustainable economy. Her work focuses on how societies relate to profit and how this relationship affects global sustainability challenges. Her relationship-to-profit theory uses systems thinking and institutional economics to explain how key aspects of business and markets drive social and ecological sustainability outcomes. She started developing this theory in the book How on Earth, which outlines a conceptual model of a not-for-profit market economy – the Not-for-Profit World model. She holds a double PhD in Economics and Sustainability Science. As an activist, she collaborates with civil society organizations, businesses, and policy makers to transform the economy so that it can work for everyone within the ecological limits of the planet. She is a researcher at Lund University and a senior research fellow at the Schumacher Institute. In this episode, we explore the natuer of the various Growth vs Degrowth/postgrowth paradigms and how the shift to not-for-profit businesses worldwide could signal a shift to the end of profiteering and a change in the focus of humanity. If we're not simply driving for more profit for shareholders and bigger bonuses for the C-suite, then what can we be for? Can businesses pivot to a world where they actually exist to further the welfare of people and planet? What would that look like and how would it work? This is one of the keys to a flourishing future. If businesses continue to push for sales growth/profits growth at all costs, then we're finished. If they can begin to turn the extraordinary creativity that has seen their profits soar, to something worthwhile…then anything is possible. Envisioning a not for profit future: Paper https://nonprofitquarterly.org/envisioning-a-not-for-profit-world-for-a-sustainable-future/ | |||
| Re-Enchantment: Creating rituals to re-discover our embodied sovereignty with Isla McLeod | 21 Sep 2022 | 01:06:03 | |
What do we do when we feel disempowered, disconnected, alone and afraid? We can throw ourselves more deeply into social media, drink, drugs and deeper disconnection…or we can build rituals with intention, creativity, gratitude and kindness that re-connect us with the web of life. With Isla McLeod, ritualist and shamanic healer. Isla McLeod is a creator of ceremonies, ritual designer, transformational healer and companion at the thresholds. She has dedicated her life to bridging the gap between humanity and the soul of the earth. In her new book, 'Rituals for Life: A guide to creating meaningful rituals inspired by nature', she brings decades of experience in creating ritual and ceremony to the exploration of what ritual is and how it can enhance our lives, returning our sense of engagement, of being part of something greater, of 'turning up the dial on the beautiful'. In this, our second conversation on the podcast, we explore the origins of the book in Isla's own childhood in Nigeria and Japan, and the sense she had of being surrounded by rituals that held real power to connect. From there, we explore her sense of devotion to the Earth as a living being as she encountered it in Dartmoor and the sense of ritual as a doorway to the sacred. We delve deeply into what ritual is and how we can each create our own rituals for the thresholds that matter: what the key ingredients are and what we can play with and make our own. And finally, we explore a ritual for each season, that touch on different aspects of our lives, different thresholds and doorways. Isla McLeod website: https://islamacleod.com/ | |||
| Taking back the Power: Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and onto the good stuff with Howard Johns of OneZero | 19 Jun 2024 | 01:06:11 | |
Today we're blowing open a route towards energy security, reduced carbon footprint and saving money - all in the way we make, distribute and use power. If each of us could minimise our own power use, we'd be a step on the way to reducing our overall carbon footprint: more, we'd be changing the ways we think of ourselves as separate from the web of life. This week's guest is long time friend of the podcast Howard Johns. Howard is an activist, author, and serial entrepreneur in the field of energy generation - of how we power our lives, keep the lights on and keep ourselves warm. Howard is now CEO of OneZero energy, a team of energy experts and digital nerds with a shared passion for getting homes off fossil fuels. One of the biggest climate actions anyone can take is to retrofit their home with four components: Solar panels, batteries, heat pumps and insulation The combination of these makes homes more comfortable, but more importantly, it saves significant amounts of money and massively reduces the carbon footprint - weaning us off fossil fuels.
One Zero https://www.onezero.energy/ Indenture Hemp Insulation https://www.indinature.co/ Any Human Power (Manda's book) https://linktr.ee/anyhumanpower | |||
| The Meat Paradox: Ethics, morality and shamanic spirituality: exploring the politics of protein with Rob Percival | 14 Sep 2022 | 01:12:40 | |
We are human because for most of our evolutionary history, we have eaten meat whilst treating animals as relations and giving thanks to them. We held these the two sides of this paradox in tension. But in the past decades, we have created hells on earth in our industrialised farming and abattoirs so that eating from them is no longer remotely ethical. How do we resolve the paradox? Is global veganism the answer or are there other ways to create a generative relationship with our humanity and the food we eat? With Rob Percival, author of The Meat Paradox. For hundreds of thousands of years, we lived as forager-hunters, our lives intimately entwined with the lives - and then deaths - of the animals that we ate. And then we cut that link and now we eat meat in plastic packages with cute pictures on the front to remove our awareness of the death that has arisen. And yet at our deepest levels, we know that meat is murder. How do we resolve this paradox? Rob Percival is a writer, campaigner and food policy expert. His commentary on food and farming has featured in the national press and on prime time television, and his writing has been shortlisted for the Guardian's International Development Journalism Prize and the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Food Sustainability Media Award. He works as Head of Food Policy for the Soil Association. The Meat Paradox is his first book and it's one of the best, deepest, and most genuinely engaging that I've read of the many that seek to address the huge cultural divide that surrounds our consumption of meat. This is a book that delves into neuroscience (denial, cognitive dissonance and the lies we tell ourselves), indigenous spiritual/shamanic practice, ancient ancestral practice as depicted in cave paintings that were created over a span of 30,000 years (that's a long time for an art form) and the actual experience of what it is to stand in an abbatoir and make eye contact with a cow as she walks into the stun cage. Reading this book will change your life. Talking to Rob on the podcast was a joy and an inspiration and we ranged across all of these subjects and more. We didn't get to the last-line dedication to Odin, which I had thought would be the core of the podcast, but then I discovered in the pre-recording conversations that Odin is a rescue dog (which is wonderful, but not quite the backbone of a shamanic/spiritual podcast that I'd imagined). Nonetheless, this is a deeply felt, deeply touching podcast that delves deep into the very meat of our identities in the modern world. The Meat Paradox: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-meat-paradox-brilliantly-provocative-original-electrifying-bee-wilson-financial-times/9781408713815 Web: rob-percival.com https://rob-percival.com/ Twitter: @rob_percival_ https://twitter.com/Rob_Percival_ | |||
| Hagitude: Paving the way to empowered elderhood with Sharon Blackie | 07 Sep 2022 | 01:17:06 | |
"As elders, our job is to die, as eventually we come to live —always in service to life." How do we do this? How can we pass into our elder years with grace and rage and depth and honouring of who we are, and emerge wiser, and more attuned to our soul's calling. With Dr Sharon Blackie, author of Hagitude. Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist. Her highly acclaimed books, courses, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of myth, fairy tales and folk traditions to the personal, social and environmental problems we face today. As well as writing five books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted, her writing has appeared in several international media outlets, among them the Guardian, the Irish Times, and the Scotsman. Her books have been translated into several languages, and she has been interviewed by the BBC, US public radio and other broadcasters on her areas of expertise. In today's episode, we explore the writing of Sharon's latest book, HAGITUDE: what it is, how it came about, how the powerful old women of the European folk tales provide a model for what it is to live in the second half of life: we explore alchemy, the magic of the land, the Cailleach, death, dying...and Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax as the ultimate role model for older age!
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| Beyond the tribal divisions of right and wrong: Exploring Restorative Engagement with Sophie Docker | 31 Aug 2022 | 01:10:13 | |
We know that tribalism is destroying us, that the need for 'us' to be right and 'them' to be wrong and to become enraged when we're challenged…is what's destroying us. But how do we change? How do we connect across our differences and hear pain without attributing blame? Exploring all this and more with Sophie Docker of The Restorative Engagement Forum and Open Edge. Sophie Docker is a highly experienced workshop leader, facilitator and mediator working in organisations, education and community. She is Level 3 trained in restorative Justice and CNVC Certified Nonviolent Communication trainer with a number of other decision-making, dialogue communication and conflict engagement tools up her sleeve.
She has a degree in Politics and Economics and a Postgraduate diploma in Law but most of her learning came from meditation, and wide and wild experiments in living, being in community, collaborating and organising in economic, social and environmental justice campaigns and movements. Sophie's approach is underpinned by Nonviolent Communication and Restorative Practice, which she has been working with since 2012. She is a Restorative Justice practitioner registered with the Restorative Justice council and a Certified Trainer with the Centre for Nonviolent Communication and brings a systemic lens to these approaches using them personally and professionally to engage with presenting issues. Sophie's work focuses on transforming internal and external domination systems and experiencing ourselves as essential to life, and as part of a complex adaptive living system. Her work is influenced by relational neuroscience, transactional analysis, meditation, multiple conflict engagement modalities and a deep exploration into the dynamics of personal and structural power, privilege, violence and its impacts. In this episode, we explore the nature of our binary tribalism, our tendency to 'other' that which we don't understand and to become triggered when challenged. And then, with Sophie's guidance and experience, we talk of the ways we can move beyond that - how she has learned and is learning to step beyond our age-old tools of domination and power-over, into something where we allow our own pain but don't feel the need to project it out - and by being different, allow different outcomes. Links: Restorative Engagement Forum: https://restorativeengagementforum.com | |||
| Co-Creators of the future: exploring the birth of a new education system with YouthxYouth co-founder Zineb Mouhyi | 24 Aug 2022 | 01:03:53 | |
Zineb Mouhyi is the co-founder of two charitable organizations, YouthxYouth & the Weaving Lab. YouthxYouth is a movement to radically reimagine the future of education with the goal of accelerating the process of young people influencing, designing, and transforming their education. The Weaving Lab is a global community of practice with the mission of advancing the field of weaving, understood as the practice of interconnecting ideas, people, projects, organizations, places, and ecologies to support systems change. Zineb is also a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) where she collaboratively explores the question: How might we facilitate a planetary transition toward systems that serve all life? In this episode, we explore the death of the old system and the birth of the new: how can the older generations become the allies the younger generations need? How can we explore together what it is to live in the wreckage of a dying system and how can we be part of the emergence of something new, generative and flourishing? Because Zineb is deeply involved in education systems and how they might change, we explore how current education is often designed to facilitate control, to deliver workers who follow rules and orders, not lively activists who think for themselves. From here, we delve into the ways young people can reclaim their own education and mould it to serve the world that could be woven into being, not the one that is dying; how they can shift from One Truth thinking to the understanding of many truths; from linear concepts to systemic thinking, to the ways we might create toolkits to untangle ourselves from the depradations of capitalism. We explore ways to leapfrog change, to put people, project and places at the heart of a global community of practice, to move out of the logic of separation into the logic of connection. This is a conversation grounded in living practice of the ideals Accidental Gods endeavours to promote: finding ways to be the change, so that we might birth a new future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us... but really talking to those younger than us and finding what they need and how we can help them. Links: | |||
| A Wild Farming Life: Building a regenerative croft from scratch with Lynn Cassells | 17 Aug 2022 | 01:14:56 | |
Lynn Cassells and Sandra Baer met while working as rangers for the National Trust and soon realised that they shared a dream to live closer to the land. They bought Lynbreck Croft at the edge of the Cairngorms National Park in the Highlands of Scotland in March 2016 - 150 acres of pure Scottishness - with no experience farming but a huge passion for nature and the outdoors. Lynn and Sandra were newcomers to farming and to regenerative concepts, but in the past 6 years, as they have faced success and (some) failures and learned from both, they have seen regenerative farming becoming a far more widely held concept. In this heart-felt episode, we begin by exploring the writing process, and how Lynn, a new writer, came to write such a fluent book. From there, we delve deeply into the practicalities of farming in a relatively inhospitable landscape, but also explore the spiritual nature of land-connection, the ways we can give the animals with which we share our lives the fullest capacity to be all that they can be, so that we can become all that we can be: so that we can feel safe, and held in connection to the land and the tribes of the more than human world that surround us.
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| The Politics of Being: Wisdom and Science for the new world with Dr Thomas Legrand | 10 Aug 2022 | 01:10:49 | |
Holding a Ph.D. in (Ecological) Economics and having studied international development, political science, and management, Thomas Legrand works in the field of sustainability for UN agencies, private companies, and NGOs. His focus is on forest conservation, climate change, sustainable finance, and organizational transformation.
His spiritual search, his thought as a social scientist and his professional experience have gradually converged on the importance of spiritual wisdom in humanity’s ongoing transition. Searching for a way to mainstream this understanding in the political and sustainability conversation, he has dedicated much of the last 10 years to researching and reflecting how we can radically rethink our model of development. The result is his book, 'The Politics of Being: Wisdom and Science for a new Development Paradigm' which synthesises so many of the foundations of Accidental Gods - the merging of a universal spirituality, grounded in connection with the web of life, and a political and social framework for a new way of organising ourselves and each other. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how Thomas first encountered shamanic spirituality and then explore the ideas that are the backbone of his book: how do we shape our new reality and, crucially, who is already doing so? Links Politics of Being website: https://politicsofbeing.com | |||
| Banking on the Beetles: Creating a local circular agro-economy with Liberty Nimmo of The Three Turnips | 03 Aug 2022 | 01:13:46 | |
By now it's obvious that our current system is destroying all life on the planet - and our food/farming system is key both to the current levels of destruction: industrial farming is eroding soil, poisoning the biosphere on land and sea, gobbling up fossil fuels and harming our health. Liberty Nimmo is part of a three-person team (The Three Turnips CSA) at Lower Hampen Farm in the English Cotswolds that is working towards a viable future. Their work aims to provide an environment where nature is allowed to flourish and thereby help to support a sustainable, diverse system of agriculture. In this holistic, regenerative approach they wish to benefit all life, building soil health, contributing to cleaner air and improving water quality. They operate a low input, low output farming system and constantly strive to reduce our energy requirements and aim to become carbon negative. In this episode, we explore the practicalities of starting from scratch in the evolution of a new regenerative project: what are the aims and values that underpin it, and how can a network of enterprises grow up, each sustaining the others, so that the end result is a community supported agriculture project that feeds and nurtures the local community. Links: | |||
| Of Course We Can! Lifting the lid on possibility with James Brown, mulit-Paralympian Gold Medalist and Climate Activist | 27 Jul 2022 | 01:10:41 | |
James Brown is an athlete, inventor, social entrepreneur, multi-Paralympian gold medal winner - and climate activist. There was a time when James was known most for his astonishing achievements across many sports. Between 1980 and 2015, he took part in no less than five Paralympic Games (winter and summer) as well as eighteen World Championship events. His range of disciplines was extraordinary: they included track running, cross-country skiing, triathlon, swimming, road/track cycling and guide-running. He has several Paralympic Gold medals, was holder of the 800m World Record for eight years and has three other World Firsts to his name, including being the first registered blind person to compete in a World Track Masters cycling event at the velodrome in Manchester. In 2018, everything changed for James when his daughter - then at university - broke down in front of him in a cafe in Exeter and explained all she had been reading about the climate and ecological emergency. James wept with her, but she offered hope in the shape of the newly formed Extinction Rebellion, and the possibility that non-violent direct action might help foment change. James committed to being at her side in whatever actions she took and within weeks, they were walking arm in arm to the blocking of the five bridges that were the first London Extinction Rebellion action. Since then, James has been arrested 13 times for his non-violent actions (once for spraying chalk paint on the road outside DEFRA in Bristol where it was raining so hard the chalk was washing off as they sprayed it one and was gone long before the arrest process was complete). Most recently, he spent two and a half months in Wandsworth prison for the action that propelled him to climate-activist super-stardom - when he climbed onto a plane at City Airport and superglued himself to the top. The Facebook Live video that he recorded at the time has gone viral and James received thousands of letters and emails while he was in prison, from people who felt desperate about the climate emergency and wanted to know how to find the same courage. So this is what we explore in today's episode - courage and agency and activism in an age of total transformation. What can we do, and how can we find the courage to take the action we know the world needs? James Brown Website: https://jamesbrownparalympian.co.uk | |||
| Bridging the Gap: finding truth, reconciliation and climate justice with Saurav Roy | 20 Jul 2022 | 01:05:36 | |
With a track record of founding startups at a young age, and executing entrepreneurial roles in global non-profits, Saurav Roy was selected as one of the youngest Global Shapers by the World Economic Forum at Bangalore in 2017. Since then, he has studied for a Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher Collage, and is now working for the Carbon Tracker Initiative, a London-based, independent financial think tank that strives to influence the nature of global finance, away from stranded fossil fuel assets. It has cemented the terms 'Carbon bubble', 'stranded assets' and 'unburnable carbon' into the financial lexicon. Saurav's Master's thesis focused on the 'just transition' elements of the Green New Deal with the realisation that 'everything would change and everything would stay the same' in terms of the balance between the global north's endless consumption at the expense of human dignity, ecosystem annihilation and cultural balance in the global south. He examined the lack of supply chain justice in the existing concepts, evolved radical, inspiring ideas of how a global token system might fund non-debt-based climate reparations, and created the idea of a 'Carbon Truth and Reconciliation Commission' - because not all climate devastation can be healed simply by throwing money at it. In this inspiring, thought-provoking episode, we explore these ideas in depth, evolving ideas and questions for COP27 and learn Saurav's three core concepts for healing our times. Saurav on LinkedIn | |||
| Trees, Trees, Trees! How we can grow food around, within and on them - with Ben Raskin | 13 Jul 2022 | 01:09:45 | |
Ben is head of Horticulture and Forestry at the Soil Association. Author or co-author of eight books including Zero Waste Gargenind, The Woodchip Handbook and The AgroForestry Handbook, Ben holds specialist knowledge and experience that includes Community Supported Agriculture, woodchip, and starting up new horticultural businesses. All told, he has been working in horticulture for more than 25 years and has been with the Soil Association since 2006.During that time he has chaired the DEFRA Edibles Horticulture Roundtable, sat on the boards of the Organic Growers Alliance and Community Supported Agriculture Network UK, and on the committee of the Farm Woodland Forum. His own experience includes running a walled garden in Sussex supplying a Michelin starred restaurant, working for Garden Organic at their gardens in Kent and running the 10-acre horticultural production at Daylesford Organic Farm, before moving to the Welsh College of Horticulture as commercial manager. More recently he is project managing an agroforestry planting at Helen Browning’s farm in Wiltshire and has acted as Horticultural Advisor and Board Member for the Community Farm near Bristol. This conversation follows on from the one on Regenerative Farming with Caroline Grindod, as part of our ongoing exploration of how we can transform our food and farming systems, heading for the complete paradigm shift that we need to an entirely new system and a new way of being in the world, while allowing farmers, growers and ordinary people to continue to flourish in the existing system. Ben's Website Ben's Books
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| The Jay, The Beech and The Limpetshell with author Richard Smyth | 12 Jun 2024 | 00:58:31 | |
Our guest this week is Richard Smyth, author, crossword designer, cartoonist - and father of two young children He's the author of five non-fiction books of which the latest is The Jay, the Beech and the Limpetshell which is one of those captivating works that is both memoir and eulogy of a dying world. It brings together Richard's passionate love of the natural world with his care for his two young children. It's a captivating read that shuttles back and forth along the time lines, weaving Twitter comments from 'Average Dad' with items from the memoirs of old Victorian naturalists who tasted bird's eggs and considerations of how we help the generations that come after us to fall in love with a world that is going to be so, so different from when we were young - however old you are now, whatever your memories. So this is one or our more reflective, peaceful, contemplative podcasts, a paean to the worlds of our youth and a hope for the future. Enjoy! | |||
| Weaving with the Land: The future of regenerative farming with Caroline Grindrod | 06 Jul 2022 | 01:09:20 | |
Caroline Grindrod is a consultant and coach in regenerative systems and leadership. Along with background in environmental conservation and upland land management, holistic management and experience in designing sustainable and regenerative food businesses, Caroline has a lifelong passion for personal development, wild spaces and a growing interest in regenerative leadership. She draws upon that diverse range of skills and experience to offer an ever-evolving and truly unique approach to working with ‘keystone’ people in food and farming.
First of two episodes exploring regenerative farming in practice. The second is with Ben Raskin in 2 weeks' time. Roots of Nature We Are Carbon (Caroline has featured on this podcast, and recommends it) | |||
| Finding the adjacent possible: routes to political and social transformation with Dave Snowden of The Cynefin Company | 29 Jun 2022 | 01:05:02 | |
He is the creator of the Cynefin Framework, and originated the design of SenseMaker®, the world’s first distributed ethnography tool. He is the lead author of Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis: A field guide for decision makers, a shared effort between the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, and the Cynefin Centre. He divides his time between two roles: founder Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Company and the founder and Director of the Cynefin Centre. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy and organisational decision-making. He has pioneered a science-based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. By using natural science as a constraint on the understanding of social systems this avoids many of the issues associated with inductive or case-based approaches to research. This episode ranges widely across the path of his life and his ideas, aiming always at the core question of our time: how do we create the best conditions for a generative future we'd be proud to leave to future generations? Dave is engaged in large-scale projects with, for instance, the NHS, and world governments to work out how to gather real information from people in ways that work and that can lead to generative outcomes. We explore ways to change the substrate of our culture, not by jamming new technology into the toxic niches of Facebook and Twitter, but by evolving new ways of engaging with each other that allow us to find the 'adjacent possible' - the next best thing that we can do in any situation. If you want to connect more with the work that the Cynefin Company does, or to listen to aspects of Dave's work in more detail, please follow the links below. | |||
| Designing Education fit for the 21st Century with Prof David John Helfand | 22 Jun 2022 | 00:52:29 | |
We live in a world where facts are at our fingertips and yet we increasingly live in conceptual silos where ideas are neither broad nor deep. How can we transform our ways of educating ourselves as we grow to adulthood/elderhood in a world where the ground is shifting under our feet? With Professor DJ Helfland, educator and astronomist. Professor David J. Helfand, a faculty member at Columbia University for forty-five years, served nearly half of that time as Chair of the Department of Astronomy. He also recently completed a four-year term as President of the American Astronomical Society, the professional society for astronomers, astrophysicists, planetary scientists and solar physicists in North America. He is the author of nearly 200 scientific publications and has mentored 22 PhD students, but most of his pedagogical efforts have been aimed at teaching science to non-science majors. He instituted the first change in Columbia's Core Curriculum in 50 years by introducing science to all first-year students. In 2005, he became involved with an effort to create Canada's first independent, non-profit, secular university, Quest University Canada. He served as a Visiting Tutor in the University's inaugural semester in the Fall of 2007 and was appointed President & Vice-Chancellor the following year to lead this innovative experiment in higher education. For six years in a row, Quest has been ranked #1 in North America in the National Survey of Student Engagement. He completed his term as President of Quest in the fall of 2015 and returned to Columbia to teach. His first book, "A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age" appeared in February 2016 and came out in paperback Aug 10, 2017. In this episode, we explore the nature of higher education in a changing world and the models that could work as we move into a time when what matters is emotional literacy and resilience and the ability to garner ideas and synthesise them broadly rather than learning 'more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing.'
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| How the World is making our Children Mad - and what to do about it - with Louis Weinstock | 15 Jun 2022 | 00:59:18 | |
How can we create a world where our children can grow in safety - both physical and emotional? How can we find that sense of psychological safety within ourselves? How can we find the authenticity and compassion to heal our own wounds so we don't pass them on? With Louis Weinstock, child psychologist and expert in complex trauma. Louis Weinstock is a psychotherapist who works with children and the child within us all. He helps people find light in the darkness - in the things the are unseen, unheard and unspoken. For over 20 years, he has expertly guided children and adults through some of the toughest challenges life can throw at us - loss, trauma, divorce, burnout and breakdowns. In the podcast, we explore the origins of the book, and move beyond it to the ways we can heal ourselves and the divided culture in which we live. We touch on some of the moving case studies in the book, and the ways we can extend the learning they bring to ourselves, our inner children, and the children in our lives, always striving for healing of self and planet. I am always struck by Louis' deep authenticity, his emotional intelligence and his capacity to hold balance and find wisdom in the chaos of our world. As a starter for healing, this feels huge. Louis' Website and Book: https://louisweinstock.com | |||
| Connecting with Power: How the media could reframe our world - and why they must - with Donnachadh McCarthy | 08 Jun 2022 | 00:54:25 | |
How do we bring the world's media on board with the climate and ecological emergency? What would happen if they became the fourth arm of the climate movement? Donnachadh McCarthy, journalist, columnist, author and long term climate activist explains why this is the single most urgent action we can take. Donnachadh McCarthy is a professional eco-auditor, author and environmental campaigner. He is a former deputy chair of the Liberal Democrats and served on the board of the party for seven years. He is now not a member of any political party and enjoys working with people in all parties or none to address our common environmental crises. He is a former columnist with The Independent and has had articles printed in the Guardian, Times, Ecologist, Resurgence etc. He is the author of Saving the Planet Without Costing the Earth, Easy Eco-auditing, and The Prostitute State – How Britain’s Democracy has Been Bought. He is the co-founder of the successful cycling campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists. His environmental consultancy 3 Acorns Eco-audits helps deliver the Corporation of London’s City Bridge Trust eco-auditing programme for London charities. His Victorian home in Camberwell, was London’s first carbon negative home. It has solar electric and solar hot-water, a Clean Air Act compliant wood-burner, solid-wall insulation, rain-harvester and composting toilet. In this rawly honest conversation, he lays out the reasons why he believes that if we are to survive the Great Derangement, the media must become the fourth pillar of the environment movement. Along the way, we discuss his visit to the Yanomami and how it changed his life, his political experience at the rotten core of Britain's corrupt political system, and his swan-dive into a new future on the stage at Covent Garden. Join us to reframe the setting of your intent. Climate Media Coalition http://climatemediacoalition.org/ | |||
| Net Positive: Designing a regenerative future with Prof Janis Birkeland | 01 Jun 2022 | 00:59:26 | |
How do we design our built environment to be more than just 'sustainable' (doing things slightly less badly) and instead to be genuinely regenerative where all we build and make heals people and the planet? Professor. Janis Birkeland is Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning in the University of Melbourne. Janis has dedicated her personal, professional and academic life to figuring out what is genuine sustainability - how to plan for a built environment that is not just 'less bad' than the alternatives, but actually returns more to the land and the people who live in and around it thn whatever went before. Throughout her professional career, she has been drawn to figuring out how cities and buildings, despite their huge impacts, can transform society and save the planet. First, she became an architect and urban designer, transferring into city planning. Later, she became a lawyer to better understand the barriers to systems change. Now she is an academic, author of many dozens of papers and a number of books, of which the most recent is ‘Net- Positive Design and Sustainable Urban Development’. She is a clear and consistent advocate for the design of human settlements that are socially and ecologically ‘net positive’ and has just published "Net-Positive Design and Sustainable Urban Development" (Routledge) which provides methods, models and metrics to enable practitioners and students to create eco-positive environments. It also includes a free computer app to facilitate net-positive design In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the myriad ways we could choose to design our buildings differently - and the many practical ways we could upgrade what exists as well as creating new models for what might arise.
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| Imagination Activism: exploring radically better futures (and SolarPunk) with Phoebe Tickell | 25 May 2022 | 00:46:31 | |
What are the most effective tools we can engage to create new, different, better futures? How do we translate our visions of a generative future into action now? What are our bridging tools, that exist now and take us forward to a world that would work for everyone? Phoebe Tickell is an imagination activist, renegade scientist, systems thinker and social entrepreneur. Originally trained as a biologist (she has a first class degree in Biological Natural Sciences from Cambridge University), she now works across multiple societal contexts applying a complexity and systems thinking lens and has worked in organisational design, advised government, the education sector and the food and farming sector. Until 2021 she was working in philanthropy at The National Lottery Community Fund to implement systems-thinking approaches to funding and and leading insight and learning in the £12.5 million Digital Fund. On the way through, she has co-founded a series of organisations dedicated to systems change via innovative approaches, including 225 Academy, which delivered 5-day transformative experiences for young people aged 11-18 globally; Future Farm Lab, which created systemic interventions to the food system and the Our Field Project — an experiment in a group of citizens co-owning and co-governing a field of grain in Hertfordshire. More recently, she is founder of Moral Imaginations and RenaissanceU, a member of Enspiral, part of the Don't Go Back to Normal Project, on the board of Renaissance U, and an advisor to the Consilience Project. She's a certified Warm Data Lab host and an advisor to the International Bateson Institute. She recently led 1,000 people in a Collective Imagination journey in Berlin and then 4,000 in Sweden. In all of this, she took time out to talk to Accidental Gods about the nature of the present moment, how we can find the learning tools that will bridge to the future we want to envision, and how we translate those visions of the future into values. In a wide ranging, inspiring, edge-walking conversation, she explored the balance of inner and outer worlds, tangible and intangible and how we might connect them; she talks of falling in love with Solar Punk again (her Twitter handle is @solarpunk_girl, so that feels quite huge), having read that 'Solar Punk without the end of capitalism, is just greenwasher CyberPunk'. So we explore what cyber punk is, too, and Protopian writing, and how it relates to Thrutopian writing, before we move onto the nature of existing Solar Punk communities and how they frame their underlying values. This was a genuinely sparky conversation: it felt as if we really dug deep into the nuts and bolts of change and how it could happen - come along for the ride! SolarPunk links: SOLARPUNK: Life in the future beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrow How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (ft. @Andrewism) | |||
| BioRegionalism: The Design Path for Regenerating Earth with Joe Brewer | 18 May 2022 | 00:56:31 | |
The Holocene is over, we all know this. The Anthropocene may segue into the Symbiocene, with the opportunity to experience the surprising abundance of the world, but only if we work at it. Joe Brewer, bioregionalist and earth regenerator, offers a rawly honest evaluation of where we are, and where we could go. Joe Brewer has separate bachelors degrees in physics, mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies and a masters in atmospheric sciences. He is a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, experience designer, and serial social entrepreneur who brings a wealth of expertise to the adoption of sustainable solutions at the cultural scale. More recently, he has moved to Colombia and is engaged in regenerating an area of dry desert with the aim of returning it to flourishing biodiversity. He has written The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth and established Earth Regenerators, a community, a study group and a place to share ideas that will bring us closer to a prosocial world, focussed on bioregions where the human and More-Than-Human worlds integrate, where we organise with direct local democracy, create a steady state economy, based on shared values and not on growth, and where we predicate our actions on trusting the good intentions of others. In this deep, penetrating conversation, full of radical honesty, we discuss the end of the holocene and its implications, explore the age of the anthropocene and what may come of it, and how all of us can become earth regenerators - what it means, and how it might work. Joe outlines the processes of his 8 week course and his new GoFundMe project to birth a bioregion. Joe's Book: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-design-pathway-for-regenerating-earth/ | |||
| Regenerative Renaissance: Managing the new economy with Rieki Cordon of Seeds. Part 2 of 2 | 11 May 2022 | 00:41:09 | |
Revolutions don't work, and we don't have time. What we need now is a Regenerative Renaissance where we all envisage the whole, beautiful, clean, thriving world we want, and set about making it happen. In this second part (of two) podcasts, Rieki Cordon of the SEEDS regenerative currency explains how a new economy could work, based on regenerative values and principles. Rieki Cordon of SEEDS says, 'We need a Renaissance over revolution because a revolution is technically just revolving. It’s having the same power structures, but with new people in power. What’s interesting about a Renaissance is it’s a fundamental shift of the paradigm. So it’s not something that’s “us vs them”; like a revolution where the mission is often, “let’s take down the 1%.” It’s more about rethinking how our systems are designed, and how we show up in society. We have fundamentally new technologies. We have a fundamentally different environment that humanity is operating in and we’ve never before had a global civilization." SEEDS is not just about money and value exchange, it's about finding ways we can be in the world that are genuinely regenerative: Reiki is also a part of HYDRA, which is evolving the rules and baselines for regenerative villages. In this second of two parts, we explore how a genuine regenerative renaissance might spread, how it might look and feel - how we can make it work. SEEDS: https://joinseeds.earth SEEDS conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqfAy1mKQGM | |||
| Regenerative Renaissance: Weaving new worlds with cryptocurrencies based on community, with Rieki Cordon of Seeds. Part 1 of 2 | 04 May 2022 | 00:49:45 | |
We all know that our economic system is broken - that the ways we share value are skewed so that the super-rich grow richer while the rest of the people and planet suffer. But if we're to replace the dollar as an international currency, what will work, how will it work, how can we make the transition to a genuinely equitable, regenerative currency? What does a Regenerative Renaissance look like? Rieki Cordon of SEEDS has an answer. First part of two. Rieki Cordon, one of the facilitators of SEEDS regenerative currency, describes the necessary regenerative renaissance as follows: "We need it (the renaissance) to be regenerative; if not, humanity is not going to be able to continue this experiment called civilization because our planetary ecosystem services will fail. That’s one side. The other side is we can build the most beautiful world and civilization the world has ever known. And why not? Why not make all of our rivers drinkable again? Why not live in forests full of food?" And why not create a currency that grows out of, through and alongside community so that never again do we enter into the bizarre transactional nightmare of debt and compound interest where, beyond a certain threshold, money is a self-replicating extractor, sucking value and life from people and planet. SEEDS currency is built on the blockchain, but it's not Bitcoin: the principles that govern its creation and exchange are built on the values of a genuinely regenerative renaissance. In this first part of two podcasts, Reiki describes how SEEDS arose and what it can do. SEEDS: https://joinseeds.earth
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| Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Politics - Election Special 2 with Baroness Natalie Bennett of the Green Party | 10 Jun 2024 | 00:38:00 | |
in this second election special, we talk to Natalie Bennett (or Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle if we're going to be forma - but she said we didn't need to be) - one of two Green Party members in the House of Lords. Natalie is author of the Book 'Change Everything: How we can rethink, repair and rebuild society' - one of the essential books of our time that outlines in detail how we can create the total systemic change we need. Natalie will be back in the autumn to discuss this in more detail, but in the meantime, we had a broad, deep conversation on the UK election - where it's going, where it could go and how each of us can help move a progressive, radical, thoughtful, compassionate, useful, climate-and-meta-crisis-aware agenda so that an incoming government will listen to us. As she says, 'The Tories are Toast', but there's still a lot we can do to elect as many Green MPs as possible. Natalie Bennett website: https://www.nataliebennett.org/ | |||
| Thrutopia Bonus: 10th Anniversary of Sacred Economics: Charles and Jimi Eisenstein with Della Duncan | 29 Apr 2022 | 01:00:23 | |
It's long been said that it's easier to imagine the total extinction of humanity than it is to imagine an end to capitalism. But Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics blew that away. An updated version has been released on the tenth anniversary of publication. Here, Della Duncan talks to Charles and his son Jimi about life, capitalism and building the more beautiful future our hearts know is possible. For over a decade, Charles Eisenstein has been a pillar of the movement to a regenerative future. His book is essential reading, his blogs and podcasts are always thoughtful interventions that offer insight at crucial junctures of our progress towards a more conscious evolution. He dares to go where others either fear to tread or just don't have the insight, and he leads by example: his life is based on compassion and the gift economy. He's one of the few people who lives as far as possible outside predatory capitalism. His son, Jimi, is a transformative animator whose clear, clever art explains complex regenerative principles in ways that everyone can understand. He, too, explores the edges of our being and lives them into reality. Here, these two remarkable people speak with Della Duncan of the Upstream podcast, celebrating the tenth anniversary edition of Charles's book, but also exploring the delicate and transformative moment in which we live, shining lights on ways we can live the change we need to see. As we head into Thrutopia, we are delighted to be able to bring you this as an introduction to thinking - and being - the transition. Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/sacred-economics-money-gift-and-society-in-the-age-of-transition/9781623175764 Jimi's You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6IIFtrrKH_J3555XGJkl1A Charles Eisenstein's website: https://charleseisenstein.org Thrutopia Masterclass: https://thrutopia.life | |||
| Waking Up: Power, possibility and politics in a Fractal Age with Indra Adnan | 27 Apr 2022 | 01:00:44 | |
We all know the current system of politics and governance is utterly dysfunctional. But what will it look like - what will it feel like - to organise ourselves so that everyone has a voice, so that we come together as co-creators and build networks and movements based on our common visions and values? With Indra Adnan of The Alternative Global, author of The Politics of Waking Up. In this conversation, we delve deep into the ways we might do things differently - how does a different kind of politics and governance work? How does it feel? What are the logistics and how might we bring it about? On the way, we consider the creation of an alternative media system - one that brings people together instead of splitting them apart - and the ways that local citizens action networks (CANs) can join together to create a movement of movements with unstoppable momentum.
Thrutopia: https://thrutopia.life | |||
| Beautiful Methane: Powering the transformation with Will Llewellyn | 20 Apr 2022 | 00:56:55 | |
We all know that methane is a far more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2. But what if we could harness it and put it to good use? What if it we could power our cars and heat our homes on waste food? Will Llewellyn of Red Kite Management explains the potential and how to apply it. Will Llewellyn has worked in the renewables industry for decades. Now a co-director of Red Kite Management, he advises individuals and firms on the use of food waste, animal slurry and human effluent as feedstocks for biodigesters which can both reduce the leakage of fugitive methane into the atmosphere where it acts as a greenhouse gas and provide a power source for vehicles, a heating source for buildings and a potential baseline load filler in power generation. Will on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-llewellyn-31aa0420/ | |||