How can Bioregionalism supplant the nation state as the natural unit of civilisation? Joe Brewer is living, breathing and teaching the ways we can work together with each other and the natural flows of water and life. We know that the current paradigm is breaking apart in real time, but how do we become the light that shines through the cracks? How do we build ways of being that reunite us with the web of life, create new/old ways of letting value flow and become what humanity has been and could...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Season 23Ep. 10
Here is a meditation for the Solstice – the moment when the sun stands still. It is suitable for Summer and Winter solstice. You don't have to do this at the exact moment of stillness: it’s the connection that counts, the marking of the turning point from days lengthening to shortening (or vice versa if you’re in the southern hemisphere). This is a moment of reflection and a re-affirming of our connection to the web of life. You don’t have to limit yourself to one pass through – please feel free...
Jun 21, 2025•23 min•Season 23Ep. 9
As we head into the solstice- that moment when the sun stands still—whether you're in the northern hemisphere where we have the longest day, or the southern, where it's the longest night—this solstice feels like a moment of transformation. The world is turning over, turning a page. The old system is visibly—palpably—breaking apart. A new system will arise from the ashes, because there is always going to be a system. The question is what it looks like, works like, feels like. We are a prosocial, ...
Jun 21, 2025•27 min•Season 23Ep. 9
Our guest this week, Rob Hopkins, is a towering figure in the world of regenerative change. Co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes , he is host of the podcast 'From What if to What Next', stars in the groundbreaking French film 'Demain', speaks at TED Global and TEDx events and most recently, has created a collaborative music project with artist Mr Kit, ‘ Field Recordings from the Future ‘ which will be released on 17th of May 2025, alongside his new book,‘ How to Fall in...
Jun 18, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 23Ep. 9
If you listen to this podcast for any length of time, you'll know that I believe the way forward is predicated on our finding shared values—I'd go for integrity, compassion, courage and generosity of spirit as the baselines—and then a suite of clear asks in the outer world and needs in the inner world. In logistical terms, at an absolute baseline, we need Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Soil. These are non negotiable and the fact that we currently have none of these is a grim indictment of how muc...
Jun 11, 2025•1 hr 34 min•Season 23Ep. 8
How do we let go of the sense of scarcity, separation and powerlessness that defines the ways we live, care and do business together? How can we best equip our young people for the world that is coming - which is so, so different from the future we grew up believing was possible? This week's guest, Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann is an educator, regenerative - and I would say renegade - economist who is Project Lead at the Regenerative Economics for Secondary Schools and Lead Author of the online ...
Jun 04, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Season 23Ep. 7
We are honoured to bring to Accidental Gods, a recording of three of our generation's leading thinkers in conversation at the Festival of Debate in Sheffield, hosted by Opus. This is an unflinching conversation, but it's absolutely at the cutting edge of imagineering: this lays out where we're at and what we need to do, but it also gives us roadmaps to get there: It's genuinely Thrutopian, not only in the ideas as laid out, but the emotional literacy of the approach to the wicked problems of our...
May 31, 2025•1 hr 53 min•Season 23Ep. 6
We all know the future rests upon us building heart-grounded, spirit-led communities that link humanity to the Web of Life. We know that the key to this is building reciprocal relationships with our food and the land from which it comes. Doing this is…harder. So this week, we're speaking with Abel Pearson of Glasbren. Abel is a friend of the podcast - we last spoke in the depths of the pandemic when he was farming 3 acres and beginning to feed the local community in ways that helped the people i...
May 28, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 23Ep. 6
We've known for decades that the 'Yell, Tell and Sell' strategy of belittling people, endeavouring to cajole—or shame—them into some kind of change doesn't work - in fact it can't work. It's not how we're wired. Cognitive neuroscience has been telling us this for decades but it's only recently that people have begun to listen. One of those who has been speaking in the wilderness for a long time—and is now finally being heard—is this week's guest, Renée Lertzman. Dr. Renée Lertzman is a researche...
May 21, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 23Ep. 5
Our world is more magical than we know - more than we can know. Increasing numbers of us are realising that the 'citadel theory of mind' where we see ourselves as isolated units within the boundaries of our own skulls is not how the world works. But if it isn't, then how do we make sense of the worlds beyond consensus reality? How do we engage with the web of life and all that's around it in ways that are respect, reciprocal and generative? Robert (Bob) Falconer is a long time IFS practitioner a...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 23Ep. 4
We are living through a time between stories—where the old economic narratives of scarcity, extraction, and separation are crumbling, and a new one is seeking to be born. At the heart of this transition is the question: What do we truly value, and how do we express that value in ways that nourish life? Imagine a society where every act of care, contribution, and kindness is not only appreciated but economically recognised . Schools, councils, and local businesses become part of an ecosystem wher...
May 07, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 23Ep. 3
All flourishing is mutual, that's a given. And yet the schisms in our culture, the tribal divides and limbic hijack seem to grow deeper and more powerful by the day. It doesn't have to be like this. We do have the tools of connection, of genuine listening, of offering trust to gain trust and offering respect to gain respect, we just need to know how - and when - to put them into practice. If we're going to move forward into that future we'd be proud to leave behind, we need to start practicing t...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 36 min•Season 23Ep. 2
Our legacy - or status quo - media is owned and run by billionaires for billionaires and the stories they promote are the ones that will keep us all in line. How do we shift the global narrative towards a future of mutual flourishing? It is axiomatic of this podcast that stories – the good and the bad – are what got us to where we are. We are a storied species. Everything we do arises from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves, each other and our relationship with the comm...
Apr 23, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 23Ep. 1
'If you're not changing the numbers, you're not changing the world.' So says this week's guest, Katie Patrick. Katie Patrick is a Silicon Valley based environmental engineer, climate action designer, and author of How to Save the World: How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We've Ever Played, now taught in Harvard University’s graduate program and top recommended reading material by UNEP. Katie specializes in designing innovative apps, dashboards, and campaigns that drive environmenta...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 22Ep. 16
Suppose we accept that the current system is not broken - it is doing what it was always designed to do - which is to shovel wealth and power from the many to the few at a human scale and from the more-than-human world to the industrial/technical maw of predatory capitalism at an ecological scale. This is a death cult and it is in its death throes, but it will take us all down with it if we let it. Suppose then, we accept that, while the current system may not be broken, it is absolutely not fit...
Apr 12, 2025•35 min•Season 22Ep. 15
We grow up thinking we want to be happy (or at least, not-sad). But happiness isn't enough. What we need is wellbeing, and as Dr Mark Fabian quotes in the dedication to his book, Beyond Happy , "Wellbeing is about wholeness, not happiness, and wholeness is so much more demanding than happiness.' So what is wholeness, and what does it demand of us? As the old world crumbles and the new is struggling into being, what steps can each of us take to bring ourselves ever closer to a sense of being comp...
Apr 09, 2025•1 hr 48 min•Season 22Ep. 15
If we are in the midst of the Great Derangement (thank you Amitav Ghosh), what tools do we have to help us shape a system that is actually fit for purpose? Who are our elders and what can they teach us? How do we learn to listen to our heart's (and hearts') desire and shape the communities of place, passion and purpose that will allow us to emerge into a different culture? Our two guests this week live and work at the heart of a global movement for cultural change. Looby Macnamara is the co-foun...
Apr 02, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 22Ep. 14
We all know the current system of predatory capitalism is not fit for purpose. We don't (yet) all agree on how to fix it, but for sure, no problem is solved from the mindset that created it. So how do we begin to compost the debris of the failing system to grow something constructive, generative, connected communities that can act as a bridge from where we are towards that future we'd be proud to leave behind? James Lock is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Opus Independents Ltd , a not-fo...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 22Ep. 13
The old systems are no longer fit for purpose. What does an education system look like that's fit for the twenty-first century - where we put self care, people care, earth care at the heart of what we do? This week's guest, Rachel Musson, has made it her life's work to fashion ways of learning for all ages that put this Triple Wellbeing principle into action. In everything she does, from leading ThoughtBox Eduction, to creating the Transforming Leadership Course, to writing her glorious, inspiri...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 22Ep. 12
How do we step past the magical thinking of the elites that says we can either use AI to 'Solve for Climate' - or just ignore the entire climate and ecological emergency completely? This week's guest, Paul Hawken, has been at the forefront of intelligent responses to the entire meta-crisis for decades. He has been profiled or written in hundreds of articles in the biggest newspapers across the world and has written nine books, six of which have become bestsellers, including Blessed Unrest , Rege...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Season 22Ep. 11
In these turbulent times, what values most strongly underpin our humanity and how can we nurture our relationships with all parts of ourselves, with ourselves and other people and with ourselves and the web of life? This week's guest is another podcaster. Mark McCartney is host of the 'What is a Good Life' podcast, which is now into well over 100 episodes. Mark is a coach and writer based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. He started his 'What is a Good Life' project in 2021, it became a podcast so...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 22Ep. 10
How do we shed the shackles of modernity and step into a new set of stories that could help us grow into the fullness of our potential? Alexander Beiner is one of a small band of people in our culture who is shaping the cutting edge of possibility, crafting new ideas of who we are, at the deepest levels of our Self and out into the widest view of our place as conscious nodes in the web of life. Ali is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the...
Feb 26, 2025•59 min•Season 22Ep. 9
In a world of turmoil where the only certainty is uncertainty, what happens if we who yearn for a future we'd be proud to leave behind began really to speak the quiet part out loud? What happens if we acknowledge the meaning crisis of our culture and state clearly that we need a world based on Love: on the raw, wild, wonder of life itself? And what happens if we shape our politics around this, instead of defensive attempts to make the death cult of predatory capitalism feel less... deathly? This...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 38 min•Season 22Ep. 8
Daniel remains one of the few people I know who is originally of the Trauma Culture but is living absolutely integral to his land - and we couldn't keep our conversation confined to 60 minutes. So we broke at an appropriate point and came back. This is the second part - please do listen to the first if you've only just found us - we literally paused the recording, took a breath and continued… As ever, if you're interested in Daniel's work visit his website . And if you have the means, do buy his...
Feb 12, 2025•54 min•Season 22Ep. 7
By now we know that we need to connect to the More than Human world. We know we need to grow into adulthood and elder hood. We know we need to move from a Trauma Culture to an Initiation Culture. But knowing these things is not the same as living them as a reality. To get here , we need waymakers, people of huge heart and raw courage to walk away from the limited, goal-based directions of our culture and step into the ways of being where we meet in open-hearted, full-hearted, strong-hearted rela...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 42 min•Season 22Ep. 7
Democracy is breaking around us in real time and a small percentage of those in power would like us to become - at best - obedient subjects in a world dedicated to the destruction of ecosystems and the annihilation of compassion, empathy and all that makes us thrive. Clearly, we are better than this. So how can we harness the astonishing wonder of human co-creation in service to life and a world where humanity thrives as part of a flourishing web of life? This week's guest, Jon Alexander started...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 22Ep. 6
If what our culture most urgently needs is for a critical mass of us to grow into adults and then elders, how can we help our young people to step beyond the artificial boundaries of our old, rigid system into a world where they are fully connected to all parts of themselves, each other and the web of life. How, in effect, can we create an educational system that is fit for purpose in the emerging century? In this podcast, I joined with Tim Logan, host of the Future Learning Design podcast, educ...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 22Ep. 5
We are living through the death of democracy and the onset of Techno-Feudalism. But this is not a time when linear systems can hold and feudalism was nothing if not linear. So how can we be part of a transformative process that will let us lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave behind? Usually, on Accidental Gods, we talk to guests who seem to exemplify some aspect of the generative edge of interbecoming change that will take us towards the emergent future we need if we're not o...
Jan 25, 2025•40 min•Season 22Ep. 4
What happens when people with chronic, unstable diabetes eat food grown in local, regenerative farms? Erin Martin talks to the Accidental Gods podcast about the dramatic and spectacular improvements in health her group FreshRxOK saw in Oklahoma when they instigated a 'Food as Medicine' programme, offering real food with good nutrient density to diabetic patients in some of the poorest communities. An Oklahoman on track to be a lawyer, Erin’s first job in a retirement community inspired her to pu...
Jan 22, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 22Ep. 4
How can we bring wisdom to those with power and power to those with wisdom? If we were to step into elder hood and bring the best of ourselves to the table, could we create governance structures that would help to heal our cultural divides, create equity and guide is wisely through the coming crisis? Jenny Grettve believes we can and has set up a global council to make this happen. Jenny is a good friend of the podcast. She joined us in episode #228 to talk about designing and building a school ...
Jan 15, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 22Ep. 3
