This podcast is predicated on the belief that if we all work together, we can still lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave as our legacy. And it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is now urgent; that we need to let go of the assumptions we'd made about career paths or future constructs and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the process of making it through. Five years ago when we began, it was possible to imagine that the world might stabilise with a vestige of the old syst...
Jan 08, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Season 22Ep. 2
Is it possible that 2024 might have been the year of 'Peak polarisation' around the world and that from hereon in humanity might grow less divided, not more; that we might use technology and social media wisely to bring the best of ourselves to the table, becoming the best we can be in service to life? Audrey Tang certainly thinks so in this wide-deep, mind-expanding conversation, we explore everything from the dual nature of AGI to the potential for liberational education that gives young peopl...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 43 min•Season 22Ep. 1
Druidry is the indigenous spirituality of the islands of Britain, but how does is live in the contemporary world? What are the values and practices that make it so suited to the inflexion point of the moment? Why - and how - does it mesh so well with other, more spiritual traditions? And how does the practice of Will, the honing of intent, create the magic we need to see in our world? This week's guest, Philip Carr-Gomm, has spent his life studying, and writing about all of these things. Philip ...
Dec 25, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Season 21Ep. 14
Traditionally, we have offered a meditation for the solstice - and these are available in the links below. This meditation aims to offer a long-wide-deep perspective on our place as conscious nodes in the web of life - the journey that brought us here and the places humanity may go. Please give yourself plenty of time both to experience the journey and to reflect afterwards. If it helps to write down your feelings, images, ideas or sensations afterwards, please do. Winter Solstice Meditation htt...
Dec 18, 2024•26 min•Season 21Ep. 13
This is the fifth year of our traditional Winter Solstice podcast gathering in which Nathalie Nahai of 'In Conversation with Nathalie Nahai, Della Duncan of The Upstream Podcast and I sit around our virtual dark-nights fire to reflect on the podcasting year just gone and explore what has changed for us since the last time we three met in one place. By any measure, this year has been pretty turbulent and our capacity to predict anything at all for 2025 is fairly ragged, but that doesn't stop us f...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 21Ep. 13
It's that time of year - when all we really want is to curl up and reflect, go inside, become the potential that will arise in the unfolding spring. If you want things to listen to or watch or read as you head into the long-nights, then these are (some of) the things that have caught my attention this year. Enjoy! Books: Non-Fiction Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machada de Oliviera https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hospicing-modernity-parting-with-harmful-ways-of-living-vanessa-machado-de-oliveir...
Dec 14, 2024•29 min•Season 21Ep. 12
Clearly we're at an inflection point in the history of humanity. Our experiment with a notional democracy is failing and either we find something that actually works, or we sink into autocracy. And given that the current global flavour of autocracy is in deep denial of the climate and ecological catastrophe that's currently underway, then that's a pretty fast road to extinction: you can't deny your way out of biophysical reality. So what can we do, we who care deeply about passing an inhabitable...
Dec 11, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Season 21Ep. 13
How do we become the change we need to see in the world? What are the actual, practical steps to grounding, connecting and resonating with the world? We're on the brink of cataclysmic change. Knowing this, we have choices: we can either fold into despair, terror, rage…whatever rises up in us as we watch the whole biosphere hurtle towards irrevocable tipping points. Or we can become the change we need to see in the world: each of us. This is a cliché by now, but that doesn't stop it being true. H...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 21Ep. 11
We're teetering on the brink of ecosystem and cultural collapse. How do we adapt and transform to the changing realities? This week sees the launch of a new book: Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible. The main editors and contributors are friend of the podcast, author, activist and co-founder of the Climate Majority Project, Rupert Read and - new to the podcast - Morgan Philips who is an educator, currently working for Global Action Plan , an environmental charity that...
Nov 27, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 21Ep. 10
We are not going back. But how do we go forward now in a world where the old norms are under assault by people who move fast and break everything? How do we find a place of balance and compassion - for ourselves, each other and the More than Human world - so that we can move forward in a way that isn’t just a replaying of the old binaries? Our world changed irrevocably with the results of the US election on the 5th of November. On this podcast, we talk a lot about total systemic change and now t...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 21Ep. 9
How do we all respond to the seismic events of the US election? Specifically, how do those of us over 50 respond? (and how would the younger generations like us to respond)? This is the question of now. It would be hard to discuss anything else, but my guest this week is uniquely placed to address these questions. As you'll hear, John Izzo was once an ordained Minister in a Presbyterian Church. Now, he's a bestselling author, speaker, and thought leader focused on social responsibility. He's a B...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 21Ep. 8
It occurs to me that we are now at an inflection point in the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and - notionally - Democratic) culture that has been so successful in destroying the ecosphere. A significant number of us now see what has been obvious to a minority for some time: that the system is not broken - it is doing what it was always designed to do: which is to maintain power in the hands of a few white men. What we know now, is that the system is not fit for purpose - IF that purp...
Nov 08, 2024•12 min•Season 21Ep. 7
If you're over 40, the world you grew up believing in no longer exists. The younger generation approaches the polycrisis with open eyes, striving to find and nurture resilience, to listen to the whispers of synchronicity and let it lead them - and us - to a world that works for all life. Today, we're talking to Elliot Riley. Elliot is an educator, permaculture designer and practitioner working to bring wellbeing, reforestation and perennial food production into schools. Elliot graduated during t...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 21Ep. 7
How does an understanding of what makes dogs tick, help us to understand ourselves and our place in the world? What does it take to feel safe - as a human, or as a dog (or cat, or horse, or... anything)? And how can we help ourselves and each other find regulation in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous)? Andrew Hale is a Certified Animal Behaviourist who specialises in working complex behaviour cases, especially those involving 'Reactivity and Aggression.' Look around you at...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Season 21Ep. 6
How can we achieve total systemic change? And are there politicians anywhere who are ready to make it happen (in a way that supports the continuation of complex life on this planet, not the scorched-earth destruction of the right)? The short answer is that yes, there are people deeply embedded in politics who know how dire things are and that we need urgent change. One of these is Natale Bennett, former Green Party leader and now Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, one of two Green Party members o...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 21Ep. 5
We know we need to shift from our Trauma Culture to a resilient, connected Initiation Culture where we can open our heart-minds to the Web of Life, ask 'What do you Want of Me?' and respond to the answers in realtime, with flexibility, authenticity and a grounded awareness of our place in the huge complex system of the More than Human World. Knowing this, and being able to do it are two different things. But it's possible, and our guest this week is someone who walks this path with enormous grac...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 21Ep. 4
Our two guests this week are deeply embedded in the creation of Tiny Homes as a way for us meet the needs of all within the bounds of the living planet. Both are living absolutely at that sharp, bright edge of inter-becoming from which our more flourishing future will emerge. Rachel Butler is the founder of Tiny House Community Bristol, Chair of Bristol Community Land Trust and is a member of Bristol’s One City Homes & Communities board. Her root mission is within systems change/paradigm shi...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 21Ep. 3
How do we move beyond our myopic focus on carbon/CO2 as the index of our harms to the world? What can we do to heal the whole biosphere? And what role is played by water-as-verb, forest-as-verb, ocean-as-verb? This week's guest is an environmental journalist and author who has answers to all of these questions - and more. Judith Schwartz is an author who tells stories to explore and illuminate scientific concepts and cultural nuance. She takes a clear-eyed look at global environmental, economic,...
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 21Ep. 2
How do we build the local futures we all know we need? What does it actually take to become a good enough ancestor? Or even the best ancestor we can be? Our guest this week, Helena Norberg-Hodge, has given her life to exploring the answers, and helping birth them into being. Helena Norberg-Hodge is one of the Elders of our culture. She's a linguist, author and filmmaker, and the founder and director of the international non-profit group Local Futures, in which role, she has initiated localizatio...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Season 20Ep. 2
Here is an Autumn Equinox Meditation to help set you up for the shift from the long days to the long nights. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, there's a Spring Equinox Meditation here.
Sep 20, 2024•17 min•Season 20Ep. 1
This is our regular September bonus episode - a brief look at where we're at - how I (Manda) see things just now as we head deeper into the moment of transformation.
Sep 20, 2024•22 min•Season 20Ep. 1
My first guest after the summer break is Tim Frenneaux, whom I first met in his role as Source for the Piʌot project which is a thoroughly engaging and inspiring new concept, that he describes as a people-powered movement for regenerative transformation. As you'll hear, Tim really understands what it is to live - to dance - at the inter-becoming edge of emergence. He's a multi-talented, multi-hatted entrepreneur, who once established England’s only carbon negative Local Industrial Strategy whils...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 20Ep. 1
Can our national and international legal systems be harnessed in service of life, to put the brakes on the worst excesses of capitalism and slow the annihilation of our eco-sphere? Stop Ecocide International exists explicitly to make this happen and this week, we talk to Jojo Mehta, co-founder and Executive Director of the movement. If we're going to stop capitalism's harms to the planet, we have to build road blocks into the current system that will be recognised by those who make the harms hap...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Season 19Ep. 15
The climate emergency is impacting our entire eco-sphere. Plants are at the core of every food chain but we have no idea how fast they can adapt to changes that are taking place in decades where once they took Millenia. Which is where human ingenuity and intervention could be game-changing. If we put our minds to it, could we help plants to evolve in ways that serve the entire web of life? In this regard, Dr Shane Simonsen is someone who has oriented his entire life to making sure that we have t...
Sep 04, 2024•1 hr 43 min•Season 19Ep. 14
'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), ...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Season 19Ep. 13
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 th...
Aug 21, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 19Ep. 12
We know that being kind to our gut biome is crucial to our health, but what about the trillion happy helpers (or not) on our skin, in our lungs, our ears, our mouths… the things we slaughter daily with the ‘cleaning products’ we splash around our homes that not only impact our biomes directly, but leach out into our waterways, soil and the air that we breathe so we end up adding to ecosphere annihilation. Human health and the health of our planet are intimately interwoven and while we're all get...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 40 min•Season 19Ep. 11
The Western world is in a crisis of democracy - but we learn a lot of our principles from the ways we interact online and the internet is essentially a feudal space that gives absolute power to a few and robs the many of agency. Nathan Schneidersuggests that if we were able to shape a more liquid democracy online, our experience of generative interactions would spill over into the outer world. Has to be worth a try, right? So how do we do it? As we spend increasing amounts of our time, energy an...
Aug 07, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 19Ep. 10
Cities: most of us live in them and most of them are geared around the old values of the last century. But what if our core question was: what does it take to have pride in the place I live? How can we completely rethink the way cities act and are shaped to put a flourishing future at the heart of all they do? Georgia Cameron of Dark Matter Labs lays out the visions of Net Zero Cities that goes way beyond just the carbon. Of the 8 billion (ish) people on the planet, over half now live in cities....
Jul 31, 2024•1 hr 42 min•Season 19Ep. 5
Clearly we need urgently to shift the democratic dial towards something that might actually serve the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. But how do we get there? How do we open the doors to possibility so that we can shift from the disconnection of our culture to a path of real heart-mind connection to the web of life? Our guest this week is Leah Rampy, author of the book Earth and Soul, Reconnecting Amid Climate Chaos , a beautiful, many-layered weaving that is a memorial to the ...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 19Ep. 4
