How dangerous is AI? Are Large Language Models likely to subvert our children? Is Generalised AI going to wipe out all life on the planet? I don't know the answers to these. It may be that nobody knows, but this week's guest was my go-to when I needed someone with total integrity to help unravel one of the most existential crises of our time, to lay it out as simply as we can without losing the essence of complexity, to help us see the worst cases - and their likelihood - and the best cases, and...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 15Ep. 6
Peruvian shaman Oscar Miro-Quesada says that "Consciousness creates matter, Language Creates Reality, Ritual creates relationship.” This week I'm speaking with someone who bring reality into being with words and weaves relational rituals. Abigail Morgan Prout is a poet, life coach, mother and visionary. She and I have been talking to one another for about three and a half years. We connected just before lockdown and then, as life became weirder, Abigail's daily poems were a bright flash in the w...
Jul 26, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 15Ep. 5
Our guest this week is Max Ajl, who is an associate researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for multiple journals and is an associate editor at Agrarian South & Journal of Labor and Society. It was his 2021, his book, 'A People's Green New Deal', published by Pluto Press, that brought Max to my attention. If you've been listening to the podcast for any l...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 15Ep. 4
In this week's episode, we have a return guest to the podcast. Ruth Catlow has taken the amazing work she did in lockdown and held live festivals in the park where people get to become one of the seven core species: a dog, a Canada goose (just visiting!) a tree, grass… and, yes, a stag beetle. What they're not being, are people. So they're looking at the world through new eyes, hearing it with new ears, smelling, tasting, sensing in all ways - and the whole experience of what it is to live in th...
Jul 12, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 15Ep. 3
This is the part of the podcast where we talk about voting systems, specifically the quadratic voting on the blockchain that Ruth has made into an app that's in use in the Park. Then we moved into her work with Government ministries and big corporations, bringing the aliveness and liveliness, and special insight of Live Action Role Play into politics and industry to help people see things from a wider context. This is how we change the world: one new idea at a time...
Jul 12, 2023•38 min•Season 15Ep. 3
What does it take to avoid global collapse? Is there still time? And if so, what are the societal, social, cultural and goal-oriented changes that we need to make to get there? This week's guest is one of the new generation of super-thinkers who have the capacity, individually and collectively, to bring into being that better future our hearts know is possible. Gaya Herrington received her first master’s degree in Econometrics from the Liberal University of Amsterdam and her second master’s in S...
Jul 05, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Season 15Ep. 2
How do we make the case for a fully ecological farming system, that can feed all of us, while restoring the bio-sphere and providing affordable, nutritious food. How can we become a good keystone species - and what does that mean. This second episode with Chris Smaje, explores his new book, 'Saying No to a Farm Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and against Manufactured Foods.' Chris was last a guest on the podcast in the spring of this year (2023), in episode 166, in which we e...
Jun 28, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 15Ep. 1
We are the Accidental Gods. We didn't plan to be the ones to hold the god-like power to destroy most of the life on this planet, but here we are, at a place where one single species - ours - has the capacity to do just this. The routes to Armageddon seem to be increasing all the time, but they all have one thing in common: they're predicated on our absolute disconnection from the web of life. It is a central tenet of this podcast that, for most of our evolutionary history, humanity has existed a...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 14Ep. 16
It's the summer solstice, the longest day and the shortest night. What matters now in our world is that we reconnect with the rhythms of the living web. This meditation is designed to help you connect to the rising sun on this day of longest light. This version of the summer solstice meditation has periods of silence in which you can explore your own feelings and observe the focus of your awareness. As with all meditations, please find a safe, quiet place where you can be completely undisturbed ...
Jun 20, 2023•23 min•Season 14Ep. 15
It's the summer solstice, the longest day and the shortest night. What matters now in our world is that we reconnect with the rhythms of the living web. This meditation is designed to help you connect to the rising sun on this day of longest light. This version of meditation has birdsong overlaid so there is no silence. As with all meditations, please find a safe, quiet place where you can be completely undisturbed for the duration of the meditation - and a short while afterwards.
Jun 20, 2023•23 min•Season 14Ep. 15
At the halfway point of the year, Manda looks back on what's been on the podcast, forward at (some of) what's to come, thoughts on where we're at as a world, and explores the books and podcasts that have stood out in the past six months. Non fiction A People’s Green New Deal by Max Ajl https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/a-people-s-green-new-deal-max-ajl/5731783?ean=9780745341750 Building Tomorrow by Paddy Le Fluffy https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Building-Tomorrow-by-Paddy-Le-Flufy/978173...
Jun 20, 2023•51 min•Season 14Ep. 15
Sometimes the synchronicity of this podcast leaves me very happy. About six months ago, I was thinking that I wanted to talk to someone who really lived at the interface between science and spirituality, where I could begin to sand down some of the rough edges of my own thinking. And that afternoon, I discovered that the 2nd edition of Professor Ursula Goodenough's book 'The Sacred Depths of Nature' was due to be published in the first half of this year. So we set up a podcast and then it turned...
Jun 14, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 14Ep. 14
This is the fourth of our ongoing series with Dr Simon Michaux. As ever, we ranged far and wide, but this time within the remit of 'what does the world look like in 2050 if we make good choices now?' Specifically, how do we construct and power our civilisation beyond the emergence of the new system. And yes, that's impossible to predict exactly, but it's not overly hard to make some basic observations - that we'll have phased out fossil fuels; that we'll reduce our inputs and outputs; that we'll...
Jun 11, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 14Ep. 13
This week's guest is fast becoming a friend of the Podcast. In the first part of what is now an ongoing series, Dr Simon Michaux outlined for us the nature of the materials crisis - the fact that there is simply not enough stuff, not enough copper or cobalt or lithium to continue to manufacture at the levels we have been - and there's not even enough to make the renewable (or, as Nate Hagens would call them, rebuildable) technology to replace the fossil fuel power we're going to have to stop usi...
Jun 07, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 14Ep. 12
As you'll know by now, one of our core motivators in creating this podcast was the realisation that the 'democratic' systems of the world are largely broken and are not a useful way to affect change. I used to be a political activist. I thought I'd given all that up, but today's conversation has definitely re-awakened my political instincts because today I'm talking with two of the people who set up South Devon Primary: a group committed to changing the political system in the UK. So the first t...
May 31, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 14Ep. 11
If you've listened to this podcast at all recently, you'll know that I'm in the editing phase of the new book - the phase where we 'carve it into tiny pieces, throw significant chunks of it in the recycling (because words are never wasted and text storage is basically free) and rebuild the rest into something shinier, sharper and generally more succinct.' And I'm telling you this because this week's guest is a fellow writer who knows what it's like to stare at a blank page until your forehead bl...
May 24, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 14Ep. 10
How do we really create systemic change? How do we shift narratives towards a generative future? How do we bring artists, scientists, policy makers, educators, conservationists, journalists, and all the different siloed tribes together in ways that let them genuinely communicate and listen to the web of life? This week's guest is someone who is actively working on so many levels to change all these things. As you'll hear, Markus Reymann is a Director of a European Arts foundation, which doesn't ...
May 17, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 14Ep. 9
How did one man make the shift from Not wanting to live in this world, to refusing to live in this world? If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you'll know that I did the Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher college in 2016-17. It was a genuinely life changing experience not least because I met some of the most inspiring people I could imagine - young, motivated and incredibly bright. And of them all, Charlie was the brightest. Even before we met, he'd studied eco...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 14Ep. 8
Paddy and I recorded a brief 15 minute bonus of how the world could look if we actually employed all the strategies in 'Building Tomorrow' - so sit back, soak it in - and then let's make it happen... BIO: Author, Paddy le Flufy read mathematics at Cambridge, then - as seems to have happened with quite a lot of our recent guests, he took a job in the city and qualified as an accountant with KPMG. And then, as also seems to happen with our guests, he didn't buy into the system, but instead spent y...
May 04, 2023•12 min•Season 14Ep. 7
As you will know by now, this podcast searches long and hard for answers to the over-riding question of 'what do we need to do, to get us from where we are, to where we need to be to set the stage for that generative future our hearts know is possible?' So when I got a book that directly asked and then answered that question, I dived straight in. 'Building Tomorrow: Averting Environmental Crisis With a New Economic System' does exactly what it says on the cover. It's full of concrete examples of...
May 03, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 14Ep. 7
If you've listened to the podcast at all over the past few years, you'll know that the search for routes to total systemic change has always been the driver of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Even so, it's not often I talk to someone who is singlemindedly exploring the routes to that systemic change and who has the tools to help everyone explore the potential for what might come next. And so this week, I am immensely happy to have had the chance to talk to Cat Tully, a remarkable woman ...
Apr 26, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 14Ep. 6
IF the present system is broken - and is in fact the heart of the meta-crisis - how can we transform peacefully to something that will work to create the future we'd want to leave behind? That's the core question of this podcast and so it was with great joy, that I found Dark Matter Labs. DML says of itself, "We’re working to create institutions, instruments and infrastructures for a more equitable, caring and sustainable future. Around the planet, we’re feeling the consequences of outdated inst...
Apr 19, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 14Ep. 5
This week, we're returning to the second part of the ongoing series with Dr Simon Michaux. If you haven't listened to the first part, I'd recommend you do and I'll put the link in the show notes, but the edited highlight is that Simon is a mining engineer who is dedicated to crunching the numbers that nobody else bothers to crunch - of how much stuff there is: key stuff, like copper and lithium and cobalt and concrete - and where it comes from and how much power it takes to dig it up and move it...
Apr 12, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 14Ep. 4
How can we begin to shift away from the old hierarchical dominance structures of our past 2,000 years, towards something where everyone brings the best of themselves and embraces and celebrates the best in other people? It was in hunting for answers to this, that I came across this week's guest: someone who is opening doors all round the world in the creation of a regenerative, emotionally literate future. Zahra Davidson was Co-founder of and is now the Chief Executive and Design Director at Hud...
Apr 05, 2023•59 min•Season 14Ep. 3
Following our podcast with Grace Rachmany, we stayed online and talked about the banking crash. At the time of recording, we only knew about Silicon Valley Bank - Credit Suisse hadn't gone down yet - but we talked about the nature of finance, of cryptocurrencies, of the totally unsustainable nature of the economy. This is the kind of conversation that I often have with guests after the podcast is over. Usually it happens off-air and I wish we'd captured it. And this time, we did. So if you're in...
Mar 29, 2023•46 min•Season 14Ep. 2
We know that the future is based on Community. What we lack are practical routes to creating communities of community on a worldwide scale - ones that can form and will be resilient enough to survive. In this week's podcast, therefore, I'm genuinely thrilled to introduce you to one of the women who is breaking new ground in the creation of communities at scale and across wide geographic areas. In quite specific order, Grace Rachmany is a mother, a tech industry trouble shooter, author of over a ...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Season 14Ep. 2
How much actual stuff do we have in the world compared to what we need to make the 'Green Revolution' happen? This week's guest is another of those recently elevated to my pantheon of people I Must Listen To whatever they say and however they say it and I am genuinely thrilled to welcome him onto the podcast. Dr Simon Michaux has been a physicist and geologist. His PhD is in mining engineering and he worked for years in the mining industries in Australia. In 2015, he moved to Europe and became i...
Mar 22, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Season 14Ep. 1
Our crisis, our challenge, our opportunity is complex. More than ever, it matters now that we not get caught in separate silos where we focus just on atmospheric carbon, or just on plastic pollution, or just on our cultural addiction to fossil fuels. We need responses that cover all of these fields, new stories that let us move into a future we can barely imagine. So, that's what this podcast is for: to give a platform to people whose perspectives are new or different or challenging or inspiring...
Mar 15, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Season 13Ep. 11
The one big question that this podcast exists to answer is - what does our future look like when it works? When we endeavour to answer this, there seems quite a clear divide between those us born in the twentieth century who grew up in a world before broadband, and those born in the nineties and later who never got to know the strange weeble of the dial up tone, but instead grew in a world where their every move was dissected by their peers on social media. We can look some other time at the emo...
Mar 08, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 13Ep. 10
The Accidental Gods podcast exists to set the conditions for emergence into a new system: to bring a critical mass of us to a place where emergence into a new system is a rewarding reality. To get there, we bring to you some of the many astonishingly creative, compassionate, switched-on people who are working at the leading edge of change. Alan Lane is one of these people. He's the artistic director of the theatre company Slung Low , which in turn is one of the most innovative theatre companies ...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 13Ep. 9
