Where To Next? By Dan Kieran – Details, episodes & analysis

This was an unexpected joy. Mike Warwick, who has taken over presenting duties on Where To Next? while I record my second series, asked if I would like to co-interview Tom Blue Wolf, a storyteller, indigenous elder and earthkeeper. Appropriately enough, Tom’s book The Great Remembering is a beautiful reminder of the wisdom that humans seem to understand intuitively in all cultures where their ancestral link is unbroken. Tom lives in a place his ancestors have called home for thirty thousand years. This is the first of two episodes, and I will add the second next week.

You can listen to all of Mike’s episodes of the show in the archive section of the Do Lectures Radio app that you can download here.

Mike and I are enjoying what my wife affectionately refers to as a ‘bro-mance’ so expect more shows from us together in the future. We are beginning to think about doing some live with an audience as well. And we are planning a Where To Next? Workshop (currently titled How To Become a Real Human Being) that will take place in London in May. More details on that soon I hope.

Till next week!

Much love,

Dan

It took four episodes and an exploration of 11,000 years of the continuous habitation of these islands since the end of the last ice-age, but in this recording John Grigsby and I finally reach 430 AD and the arrival of the English.

I love all the conversations I have had with John so far but there are so many wonderful things in this episode. We discuss how language may have created the separation from nature that has left the English so lost in their own land. Tolkien’s determination to create a mythology for these islands after the invasion of William the Conqueror led to the eradication of ours and the hints from Chaucer about what that lost mythology might have been.

If you are enjoying the show, please consider becoming a paid supporter. If you can’t afford that, please leave a review on the page for the show on Apple Podcasts instead. That will really help!

I’m making great progress so far with series two. I will share more updates on that soon.

Much love,

Dan

This week’s episode is a bit different as there is no guest. I recorded it when I was camping in the Summer and the Observer newspaper ran an article - effectively the obituary - of Unbound, the business I co-founded and ran between 2011 and 2022.

The idea of sharing this episode makes me uncomfortable for lots of reasons, but I ended up going ahead because the producers at Do Radio said it was the best one I have done yet. I’m not sure I agree with them (!) but I do think that this is the kind of moment most entrepreneurs fear the most and one that they very rarely share.

For the record, I was not involved in the running of the business in the three years prior to its collapse and so I have nothing to share on how or why it failed, but the sad truth is that many people lost out when it did. People who earned money were not paid what they were owed, and this is the cardinal sin for any business and especially a publisher. In the episode I make it clear that focussing on what I was going through was and is not intended to trivialise the horrible circumstances many authors and suppliers found themselves in after the business collapsed. But the fact I experienced the business failing so publicly while recording a series about focussing on a life of meaning rather than success meant I felt I could not simply ignore it.

This is the seventh episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 13th 2025.

Next week things return to normal and I will share my conversation with the wonderful author and mythologist Dr Sharon Blackie who I visited in Cumbria.

Much love,

Dan

This week’s episode is the final one of three recorded at the Realisation Festival that takes place in, and in the grounds of, St Giles House (pictured). I sat down with Pippa, whose voice will be familiar to anyone who listens to comedy on BBC Radio 4, to discuss her thoughts on the grief that can descend after achieving your ambitions. She also talks about her experiences co-founding the Sunday Assembly - an attempt to celebrate spirituality without religion. After that I spoke to Nick, who became the Earl of Shaftesbury after two desperate family tragedies. He explains how it feels to have your life plan jettisoned by circumstance and the background to the Realisation Festival that has its roots in his long and illustrious ancestry.

The episode ends with a story from me about a bug hunt I caught the end of at the festival led by Benedict Pollard, that taught me how the way we attend to the world determines what we think of as reality.

This is the sixth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 6th 2025.

As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.

Much love,

Dan

This is the fifth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 29th 2025.

In this episode I speak with two of the Directors of the Realisation Festival. Ed Haddon, who works as a coach with entrepreneurs, and Jonathan Rowson who writes The Joyous Struggle here on Substack and runs Perspectiva.

Ed, who I had not heard of before we met, and I had a fascinating conversation about sitting with discomfort after a big life change and how shallow the achievement of goals can feel. After that I went in search of a grotto on the estate and then I sat down beneath a majestic oak tree to chat with Jonathan, whose work I have long admired. I discovered Jonathan after seeing him interview Iain McGilchrist. Jonathan’s organisation Perspectiva are also the publishers of Iain’s two volume masterpiece The Matter With Things. Those who have read my book The Idle Traveller will know how important Iain’s work has been to my life, but more on that in a later episode.

I shared with Jonathan the stage of life I am exploring, and how I was trying to make sense of the encounter I had with a stag in Raasay. He offered some thoughts on his own journey towards the sacred, how unsettling it can be to feel you are leaving rationality behind and why other ways of consciousness are often more appropriate than a purely materialist point of view. Jonathan also shared an idea he was exploring from Freya Matthews called Ontopoetics, the idea that there is a field of meaning entangled with the physical world that accounts for serendipity, synchronicities and coincidences.

This episode is a real cracker and has played a huge part in the evolution of my own thinking. I hope you enjoy it, and please share the episode with anyone you think will find it illuminating.

Much love,

Dan

Where to Next? Episode 5 - Ed Haddon and Jonathan Rowson.

This is the fourth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 22nd 2025.

I recorded this episode (and the next two in the series) at the Realisation Festival in Dorset. This is an incredible event that takes place over three days at St Giles House, the home of the Earl of Shaftesbury. I was thrilled first to meet Roc, who lives off-grid on the island of Gometra off the coast of Mull, and then Sarah Wilson, the former editor of Cosmoplitan and presenter of Masterchef in Australia who writes the extraordinarily successful Substack This is Precious.

I explained to both the journey I am on in search of meaning, rather than success, and they shared insights about their own extraordinary paths through life.

The episode ends with me describing the impact the first event had on my thinking, and how an insight from it has changed the way I inhabit my own consciousness forever. It’s that kind of event.

Much love, and please spread the word about the series to anyone you think might be interested. This week I passed the milestone of 500 downloads, which is humbling and exciting!

Dan

This is the third episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 15th 2025.

James is a wonderful and wise man and his book The Middle Passage - From Misery to Meaning in Midlife was a life raft for me when I began my own journey to prioritise meaning in life rather than success. There is so much wisdom in this conversation with James. He has also written an amazing book on relationships called The Eden Project and a book about the wounding of men called Under Saturn’s Shadow, which I would also recommend.

Please share this episode with anyone you know who is entering midlife or who is going through a period of profound change.

Much love,

Dan

My weekly video about the latest episode of my DO Radio programme. James Hollis on Carl Jung’s theory of two adulthoods. I also reveal two new guests I will be going to visit in the next month or so.

This weekly video is usually for paid supporters only, but I’m sharing it to everyone today in an attempt to entice more people to upgrade into a paid subscription because the series it hotting up (exclusive future guest reveal at the end of this video) … and I need to find a way to get it to start paying for itself!

Much love,

Dan

Following The Stag by Dan Kieran is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and help me fund my Do Radio show, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is the second episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 8th 2025.Thank you so much for your support, which is crucial for me to be able to continue making the show. I have recorded eight episodes so far, with many more exciting guests organised between now and Christmas. I’m also thrilled to say that Iain McGilchrist has agreed to appear on the show and I can’t wait to go and visit him up in Scotland later this year.

Now back to this episode. I went to see Mark Vernon at his home in South London at the end of May and we had a wonderful conversation about William Blake (Mark’s new book on Blake is available here ), Owen Barfield, serendipity and the Realisation Festival that Mark is also involved in. All of Mark’s books and his latest event appearances can be found on his website here

There were so many fascinating takeaways from the conversation. I particularly enjoyed the way Mark explained Blake’s work that has made a huge difference to how I now make sense of him. He also showed me how Blake saw the imagination not as something inside our heads that we have but as something outside of us we can receive, which reflected an idea I spoke about in my Do lecture about ideas a decade ago. We also discussed the continuum of experience we travel back and forth along every day of our lives, with rationality at one end and the more sacred and mystical experiences at the other. Mark encourages us to venture away from rationality alone and live more in the middle, which is something I have been doing ever since.

Mark is a wonderful man and an incredibly smart thinker with a range of perspectives taking in physics, theology and philosophy and he is able to roam within all three at once while talking. You will learn a huge amount from this episode. Enjoy!

Much love,

Dan

Following The Stag by Dan Kieran is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and help me fund my Do Radio show, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

My weekly video about the latest episode of my DO Radio programme. Mark Vernon on Owen Barfield, meaning and William Blake.

This weekly video is usually for paid supporters only, but I’m sharing it to everyone today in an attempt to entice more people to upgrade into a paid subscription because the series it hotting up (exclusive future guest reveal at the end of this video) … and I need to find a way to get it to start paying for itself!

Much love,

Dan