Sign inOpen the app
Artwork for Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast
Science

Accidental Gods - The Thrutopian Podcast

Accidental Gods

Another World IS still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose - and now it's collapsing around us. So how do we co-create a Thrutopian future that we'd all be proud to leave as our legacy?

What stories can we weave of possibility? Of transformation? What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that really matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves, between ourselves and each other, between ourselves and the Web of Life - so that we can reclaim our birthright as self-conscious nodes in the web of life?

We can do this. Some of us already are. Every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being, courageous pathfinders who are exploring the emergent edge of inter-becoming.

As a species, we have all the answers, we just haven't yet crafted all the new stories and woven them into a future that works. We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.

Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor

SubscribeListen in podnodRSS feedShow website
  • 388 episodes
  • Updated Wednesday

Episodes388

Newest first
  • May 4, 2023 · 11 min

    Building Tomorrow: Bonus addition: Painting 2050 if we get things right

    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 years, living a double life in which he worked as a finance specialist in London for six months of the year and then used the money to live in remote places, alongside people whose lives were radically different from his own. He has traveled with economic migrants, been taught to fish by the rural people of Mozambique and lived with Hadza hunter-gatherers. He spent two months living with an indigenous tribe in the Ama§on rainforest, then won a Royal Geographical Society Award to spend an entire year being taught by traditional wisdom-keepers from another jungle culture. Since 2015, he has been based in the UK and then Canada, researching how we can redesign our economic system to avert the impending environmental catastrophe. His book is the result and it brought together some ideas we've explored already on the podcast, but knits them with things I had never heard about, and it creates a whole that has the potential to change the way our culture functions - which is genuinely exciting. Paddy's website https://paddyleflufy.com Paddy on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-le-flufy/ Paddy on Substack https://paddyleflufy.substack.com Doughnut Economics https://doughnuteconomics.org/ RiverSimple https://www.riversimple.com/governance/ Sovereign Money https://positivemoney.org/our-proposals/sovereign-money-introduction/ FabLab https://www.fablabs.io/ Curitiba Bus Tokens https://brazilianexperience.com/curitibas-bus-system-2/ Cosmo-Localism https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/5/13/what-is-cosmo-localism-and-why-we-think-its-a-game-changer

  • May 3, 2023 · 1 hr 28 min

    Building Tomorrow: Practical steps to a new economic system with Paddy Le Flufy

    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 individuals, organisations and businesses who are forging new ground at the leading edge of change, weaved into a coherent imagining of a future that runs by different rules. 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 years living something of a double life, earning money as a finance specialist in London then spending it living in remote places, alongside people whose lives were radically different from his own. This period culminated with a year, funded by a Royal Geographical Society Award, being taught by indigenous wisdom-keepers in the Peruvian Amazon. Since 2015, he has been based in the UK and then Canada, researching how we can redesign our economic system to avert the impending environmental catastrophe. His book is the result of this research. It brings together some ideas we've explored already on the podcast, but knits them with things I had never heard about, and it creates a whole that has the potential to change the way our culture functions - which is genuinely exciting. Paddy's website https://paddyleflufy.com Building Tomorrow on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Tomorrow-Averting-Environmental-Economic/dp/1739345207/ Paddy on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-le-flufy/ Paddy on Substack https://paddyleflufy.substack.com Paddy on Twitter www.twitter.com/paddyleflufy Doughnut Economics https://doughnuteconomics.org/ RiverSimple https://www.riversimple.com/governance/ Sovereign Money https://positivemoney.org/our-proposals/sovereign-money-introduction/ Fab Labs https://fabfoundation.org/ Torekes currency https://www.torekes.be/nl/home/ Cosmo-Localism https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/5/13/what-is-cosmo-localism-and-why-we-think-its-a-game-changer The Cosmolocal Reader https://clreader.net/

  • Apr 26, 2023 · 1 hr 14 min

    Building Bridges to the Future with Cat Tully of the School of International Futures

    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 who spends her life helping people to bridge the space between where we are and where we need to get to, in ways that drag as little of the past with us as possible, while opening the widest gates we can to the systems, structures and practices that stand the best chance of a generative future. Cat leads the School of International Futures (SOIF), a not-for-profit international collective of practitioners based in the UK that use futures thinking to inspire change at the local, national and global levels. SOIF has worked with organisations like the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society and national governments across the planet - all with the explicit intention of making the world fairer for current and future generations. SOIF also supports a growing network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners - young people under the age of 35, who can advocate for and engage with change in their communities and the wider world. There is so much that the SOIF is doing - so many people it's bringing together - we could have spent our time together talking about specific instances, and Cat does use specific examples of projects she's involved in to highlight specific areas, but in general, we wanted to explore the ideas, the systems, the ways we might think differently so that you can pick them up and run with them. Because one thing is becoming increasingly clear as our future unfolds - which is that none of us knows what it is, and it's going to take all of us, using the best tools we have, to make it clear. Cat is bringing us those tools, honed and ready for use. SOIF Projects: If you are interested in learning strategic foresight to shape the future of your community or your organisation, SOIF offers an annual in-person Summer Retreat in Strategic Foresight, happening from 24 to 28 July 2023 in the UK and virtual courses throughout the year. The next virtual courses in 2023 are starting in May and September. Futures toolkit for leaders: SOIF and California 100 published "Beyond Strategic Planning: Foresight Toolkit for Decision Makers"—a primer for leaders looking for straightforward, pragmatic ways to apply foresight to their work. The National Strategy for the Next Generation programme engaged 16-30-year-olds, Next Generation Champions, to imagine futures of the UK's international development role in 2045. SOIF developed the Framework for Assessing Intergenerational Fairness with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The tool has been used by All Parliamentary Party Groups for Future Generations (APPG) in their initiative Futures Check, and we have developed a policy brief on Building a Coalition for Intergenerational Fairness in the European Green Deal. Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, an initiative by SOIF, is the largest global network of next-generation future-alert changemakers democratising the futures and foresight field. With 100 fellows and 500 members of a global network, the initiative supports young change agents that use foresight to shape better futures for their community and the world, e.g. NGFP members in Africa imagining Digital Futures of the continent, seeding collaboration with an Impact fund and creating opportunities for members to be visible, BBC Futures article, Youth Climate and Energy Futures Lab at COP26 and contributing to United Nations General Assembly on the SDG Moment Closing Panel. Other links 3 Horizons model https://www.boardofinnovation.com/blog/what-is-the-3-horizons-model-how-can-you-use-it/ Beth Barany https://bethbarany.com/

  • Apr 19, 2023 · 1 hr 13 min

    Bridging from the Necessary to the Possible with Emily Harris of Dark Matter Labs

    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 institutions and inadequate infrastructures incapable of coping with planetary-scale challenges. At Dark Matter, we believe in taking on these challenges via a new, civic economy. An economy that’s community-led, and based on many-to-many relationships. An economy that prioritises mental wellbeing and Nature-based Solutions as platforms for further change. We’re an ambitious not-for-profit designing and building the underlying infrastructure to support this new civic economy, exploring how ownership, legal systems, governance … might begin to change." Which sounds exactly like what we need in our world as we head to the edge of total transition - and exactly what this podcast is about. So I asked if there was someone I could talk to - and connected with Emily Harris. Emily is a Chartered Accountant. She also holds an MA in Regenerative Economics (Distinction) from Schumacher College and a BSc in Medical Sciences from Imperial College. She trained with Deloitte in London and was a manager in their Big Ticket Restructuring Team during the 2008 global financial crisis. Prior to joining DML, Emily spent 11 years running her own consultancy business which took her all over the world and included a number of international CFO positions. In our current meta crisis, Emily has a view from both sides of one of our major divides - and now she's bringing all that experience, and a brilliantly sharp analytical mind to finding answers. Running after the conversations with Simon Michaux and Zahra Davidson, this feels like a further piece in the broader puzzle of how we are going to get from where we are, to where we need to be if we're going to create the future we want to leave behind. We spent a long time exploring Emily's background, so that I - and so you - would understand the depth she brings to this. And then we launched into what she's actually doing and it was really very inspiring. There is hope, and Emily and the teams at DML are at the core of our potential. Be ready to grasp the depth of the problem - and the many possibilities for change. Dark Matter Labs https://darkmatterlabs.org/ DML on Medium https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/ DML Medium on Financing Civic Transition https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/financing-city-transitions-a-public-civic-deep-code-innovation-challenge-9f2ef55b4bda Nora Bateson Aphanipoiesis https://norabateson.medium.com/aphanipoiesis-96d8aed927bc Gillian Tett Warrior Accountants Leading the Green Revolution https://youtu.be/jR0n8mekzro

  • Apr 12, 2023 · 1 hr 32 min

    Drawing Humanity out of the Cave with Dr Simon Michaux (Part 2 of a series)

    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 around and where that power might come from. Our original plan for this 2nd part in our conversation was to explore Michaux' hierarchy of needs - the logistical things we'll need as we move to a low entropy, post-carbon, (which is to say, post-fossil-fuel) world. Everything in these conversations is predicated on the understanding that we've got to where we are by burning fossil fuels, which is to say concentrated ancient sunlight, laid down over millions of years - millions of years ago - and that this sudden access to vast quantities of readily transportable energy has changed who we are. Our civilisation is built on this stuff. But we haven't necessarily used it wisely. If I had time, I might write the counter-factual history where we discover oil in a culture that isn't predicated on power hierarchies and the accumulation of resources to the few by the many. But we don't live in that culture. We live in this one and we've burned more oil since 1995 than the whole of the rest of human history before that point. In doing so, we've brought ourselves to the point where the entire ecosystem on which we depend is breaking down and we need urgently to step back and think differently. Which is the entire point of this podcast - what does the thinking differently look like? How can we connect to the web of life in a way that allows us to play a constructive, regenerative part in a flourishing web? What are the spiritual and psychological and conceptual shifts this will take and how best can we make those shifts? In all those questions, I've tended to take for granted, for instance, the idea that we need to shift to renewable sources of power without actually thinking about whether that was a logistical possibility. Which is where Simon comes in because he does think about these things and he has the numbers to back it up. He gave his baseline talk 91 times in 2022 - sharpening it at every iteration - and now he's talking at governmental level to people who are listening, even if they don't yet know quite what to do. Unless you're listening in Scandinavia, he is probably not talking to your government. But he should be. So part of the reason for continuing the conversation is so that we - all of us who care - can get our heads around reality and then we can use that understanding to create governance systems that work. Link to Part 1 with Simon https://accidentalgods.life/transforming-industry-to-create-a-genuine-green-revolution/ Balanced Resource Economy Paper https://www.centrumbalticum.org/files/5598/BSR_Policy_Briefing_2_2023.pdf Simon's Site https://www.simonmichaux.com/ Alice Friedman site https://energyskeptic.com/ Alice Friedman - When the Trucks Stop Running https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27136955 The Venus Project https://www.thevenusproject.com/ Sam Harris TED Talk on AI https://youtu.be/8nt3edWLgIg Biomimicry Institute https://biomimicry.org/what-is-biomimicry/

  • Apr 5, 2023 · 59 min

    The Fine Art of Huddles: multiplying our potential by the power of our peers with Zahra Davidson of Huddlecraft

    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 Huddlecraft, an organisation that promotes and supports peer to peer learning. With a background spanning social entrepreneurship, service design, system change, sustainability and visual communication. she describes herself now as a purpose-led designer and strategist, working for a post-growth future for our finite planet. As you'll hear, Zahra and Huddlecraft have evolved a system of peer to peer learning that absolutely helps those involved to grow the emotional literacy - to exercise their conceptual and psychological muscles - as a way of shifting our culture's centre of gravity in a more generative direction. As part of this, she is Strategic Advisor to Money Movers (formerly called OwnIt), a movement designed to empower women to take Climate Action by moving their personal finances - and they are aiming to move £1billion by 2030. She and Huddlecraft are also involved in the newly formed Collective Imagination Practice Community - and any of you who have listened to more than a couple of podcasts will know that I'm fairly firmly of the belief that if we're going to get to that flourishing future we'd be proud to leave behind, we'll need a massed act of collective re-imagining of our trajectory. Huddlecraft https://www.huddlecraft.com/ Huddlecraft 'Huddles' (peer learning groups) currently open for sign-up https://www.huddlecraft.com/huddles Huddlecraft 101 training (learn to apply the power of peer-led approach) https://www.huddlecraft.com/101 Money Movers: women moving money for the planet https://www.wearemoneymovers.com/ Collective Imagination Practice Community https://medium.com/imagination-practice/collective-imagination-practice-community-2023-24-1c1405d33662 Joseph Rowntree Emerging Futures https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/emerging-futures-update Doughnut Economics Action Lab https://doughnuteconomics.org/ CIVIC SQUARE https://civicsquare.cc/ Medium post on creating 'microclimates' for learning and change inside organisations https://medium.com/huddlecraft/how-can-we-create-microclimates-for-learning-and-change-inside-organisations-70aae0266d9d Medium post on creating a 'surge' of peer to peer learning over the next decade https://medium.com/huddlecraft/a-surge-of-peer-to-peer-learning-through-multiple-intertwining-movements-55a101b5db5a Zahra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zahra-davidson-84710920/ Huddlecraft on Twitter https://twitter.com/Huddlecraft Huddlecraft on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/huddle.craft/

  • Mar 29, 2023 · 46 min

    Bonus: Exploring the banking crash with Grace Rachmany - in which I ask all the questions I never asked before...

    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 interested in the two of us riffing in a rather less structured way than the usual podcast, this is it.

  • Mar 29, 2023 · 1 hr 20 min

    Meshworks of Being: Building Community on the DAO with Grace Rachmany of Priceless DAO

    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 hundred White Papers, creator of Voice of Humanity, Gangly Sister and - crucial to the trajectory we're taking just now - co-creator of Priceless DAO. If you've heard our podcast with Cory Feco back in episode #170, you'll know we invited Cory to tell us about DAOs specifically because we knew we were going to talk to Grace and wanted you to have at least a grounding in the nature of Disseminated Autonomous Organisations and the nature of the Web 3 revolution so that we could head straight into Grace's ideas and work in this podcast. And here we are: Grace is one of those people who has thought outside the boundaries of our current system, about the nature of the current system, about economics and governance and politics and decision making and the creation of viable communities as we head out of the old paradigm into something new and different. The result is Priceless , which is a cause-based DAO in the form of a networked nation, which says it is dedicated to creating a true alternative economy and alternative citizenship for its members. In pursuit of this, Priceless funds economic experiments that are designed to replace the current monetary system. The holders of PricelessDAO tokens can create whatever they want with the DAO, while the founders of Priceless Economics develop decentralized economic models that support life on earth. At Priceless, we are convinced that the existing financial system is crumbling and at the end of life. While many projects seek to salvage what we’ve got, Priceless is looking forward to creating a completely new system that will be a destination for those trying to escape the collapse of everything. I mean, you know everything’s collapsing, right? What can you do about it? At the very least you can give your sh*tcoins to PricelessDAO. Any funds we have will be used to research, design, prototype, and deploy economic models that respect humans and the planet. Which is just what we're here for. Truly. If you want to know more, or to be part of her thinking, follow the links below - and then stay tuned for the bonus podcast, in which we recorded the follow-up conversation on the nature of cryptocurrency and Ponzi schemes and the global financial crash(es). Grace's website https://gracerachmany.com/ Priceless website https://pricelessdao.io/ Grace's Medium posts https://rebeccarachmany.medium.com/group-currency-what-if-you-could-only-transact-as-a-community-38f4234f72c Grace on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccarachmany/recent-activity/ Drea Burbank and the Savimbo project: https://www.savimbo.com/

  • Mar 22, 2023 · 1 hr 15 min

    Dancing with the Muppets of Cutthroat Island: Transforming Industry to create a genuine Green Revolution with Dr Simon Michaux

    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 involved in urban mining, or reverse metallurgy, which is to say the recovery of essential minerals from existing waste - what we would call the beginnings of the circular economy - and from there, he moved to Scandinavia where he now works in the Geological Survey of Finland and is a regular advisor to the Finnish parliament. From all of which you will gather that Simon is deeply embedded in the actual physicality of the world we inhabit - and, because he's also committed to creating the future we want and need, he is growing ideas of the future we could inhabit. Of all the people I've encountered as I roam the digital web for ways we can shift our relationship with the living web, Simon is the one who has his finger on the actual logistics of what's going on - he can list the reasons why most of the targets for our transition away from fossil fuels are simply logistically impossible. It's not until you hear his crunching of the numbers that you begin to realise how much arm waving is going on in the corridors of power. How much raw self-delusion is being practice by the people who we still, at some deep subconscious level, trust to keep the show on the road. And I think we need to know this. It's hard. It's sobering. It's shocking, on many levels, but if we aren't grounded in reality then we're not going to build forward So hold onto your seats - this isn't easy, but we do need to know it. And then we need to plan our responses. Fast. (NB - the accompanying image is of a copper mine and the pollution from it is destroying an entire water system) Simon's website: https://www.simonmichaux.com/ Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf Answers to Hot Topics around the above report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdJH3tKjvzM What are the Raw Material Supply Bottlenecks to the Green Transition? The Need for a New Plan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o0xzCa2fLQ Interview with Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute https://www.manhattan-institute.org/presidents-update-2021/interview-mark-mills

  • Mar 15, 2023 · 1 hr 18 min

    Reasons to be Sheepful: from wedding shawls to burial shrouds with Yuli Somme of Bellacouche

    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 in ways that will help us all to weave new stories of how we could do things differently - and this week, we're talking to Yuli Summe of Bellacouche, whose work has taken her from weaving to felt making to the creation of burial shrouds. Yuli is a maker, someone deeply grounded in our connection to the ancestry of the land and the ways we have sustained ourselves from it. She's been working with wool since childhood and is embedded in the rich lore of shepherd, farm and land, of the fullers and spinners and weavers that were so much a core of our history - and will be again as we move to a more localised, simpler economy and way of living. This conversation moved from the courage of one man in the second world war, to the courage of his daughter in laying to rest her fear of death, through fields and high tors and the rhythms of feltmaking. It felt to me like a song to our future and I hope it leads you forward in the same way. Bio Yuli was born in Norway and although she has lived most of her life in Devon, the traditional weaving and knitting heritage of Norway has deeply influenced her since she was old enough to hold needles to knit with. She is a member of Make SouthWest and through this organisation, has been an active teacher of felt making and textile understanding in schools, and is part of the Green Maker Initiative. At the turn of the millennium, an Arts Council grant allowed Yuli to travel to Turkey to work with traditional master feltmakers, and it was there that she started thinking about a “lifetime” garment made of felt, inspired by witnessing the making of a ‘kepenek’, a felt cloak traditional to Kurdish shepherds. Yuli is a member of the South West FibreShed – a growing community of fibre and dye growers, processors, makers and manufacturers across the South West whose aim is to produce home-grown textiles and garments in a more healthy, resilient and regenerative textile ecosystem. This group is affiliated to the international FibreShed group. Another Man's Shoes https://www.waterstones.com/book/another-mans-shoes/sven-somme/9780954913731 Yuli Somme Bellacouche https://www.bellacouche.com/yuli-somme/ Human Composting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LJSEZ_pl3Y Good Funeral Guide https://goodfuneralguild.co.uk/ Natural Death Centre http://naturaldeath.org.uk/

  • Mar 8, 2023 · 1 hr 17 min

    Technology for a future that works with Cory Feco of the DOI Foundation

    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 emotional and spiritual impact of that but today I wanted to look at the people who are determined to use the rapidly evolving technology for good. I'm going to interview someone called Grace Rachmany in a couple of weeks time. She's setting up a DAO, a disseminated autonomous organisation, to create not just a community, but a network of communities that - she says - could be free of the need to use dollars, or pounds or the currency of their nation, in 10 years. Which sounds pretty exciting. But I to understand how it works and what it is she's planning to do, we needed to know what a DAO actually is. And to get to that, we have to unpick Blockchain a bit, because the one thing I learned when we invited Reiki Cordon to speak on blockchain last summer, was that it went over a lot of people's heads. So this is the first time I've actually sought out someone on the basis that they could tell me what I wanted to hear. I wanted an idiot's guide to blockchain, to DAOs, to web 3.0 and the web 3 revolution because that seemed like something this podcast ought to know about. All of which leads me to introduce this week's guest. Cory Feco is a member of the DOI foundation which describes itself as 'an international community of communities bound by a common interest in persistent infrastructure.' Cory himself is a podcaster at the DOICast - which is one of my must-listen podcasts - I've put a link in the show notes. Beyond that, he describes himself as a web 3 impactivist, and a recovering workaholic. He started as an entrepreneur at 9 selling products from catalogs door to door and ever since have been the most satisfied when walking the path less tread. He has founded and failed, founded and sold, trained hundreds, consulted dozens, lead teams of many, lead only himself, won some awards, and made countless mistakes - and through this the one constant has been growth. He is completely plugged in to a world about which I only have a transient and shallow understanding, but I know enough to know that it could make or break our chances of a flourishing future. Advaya https://advaya.co (soon to be advaya.life) Advaya course with Nathali Nahai https://www.digitalage-course.com/ DOI Foundation https://www.doi.org/ DOICast podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-doicast/id1618462106 CryptoWorld https://shopcryptoworld.com/ DOA HQ https://www.daohq.co/ EarthSong Seeds https://earthsongseeds.co.uk/

  • Feb 22, 2023 · 1 hr 6 min

    One Planet Living: Mapping Minds to create a new Consciousness, with Pooran Desai, OBE.

    It is our mission on this podcast - and the wider membership community from which it arose - to open doors and break down barriers, to bring forward the ideas and the actions of, and give voice to, the absolutely amazingly creative people who get that business is not usual, that the reality we have created for ourselves is misguided at best - and dangerously toxic at worst - and are doing their best to bring about change in a timescale that matters. This week, we spoke with Pooran Desai, whose scope and scale and grasp of the nature of the problem is unmatched. Pooran is a serial environmental entrepreneur and it felt like a breath of fresh air, to connect with someone who sees the bigger picture and is working to affect change at all levels. We explored topics that ranged from the building of Britain's first sustainable community at BedZED in London, to the nature of the meta-crisis and why measurement of single indices is one of the key factors in the emergency. On the way, we discusses the different natures of left and right brain thinking and how they apply to databases (and why databases are so critical to the way that business and so politics works in the world), the evolution of sustainable development goals (and why those started out well but have become yet another way of greenwashing business in its endless drive for profit), the nature of reality and how Daoist meditation can give us insights into our own delusions…and ways we could save the NHS 80% of its costs. This was a hard-hitting conversation. We didn't mince words or step around ideas. I found it exhilarating, enlightening and inspiring and hope you do to. Bio: Pooran Desai has been a neuroscientist, a property developer, and a technology entrepreneur, but all of it has been in service to a regenerative future. In 1994, he co-founded one of the world’s first sustainability organisations, Bioregional which is responsible for setting-up enterprises in sustainable forestry, organic farming, recycling and real estate development. He assembled a wealth of environmental and sustainable talent to create the UK’s first zero-carbon urban eco-village, BedZED, which was completed in 2002. In 2004, he was awarded an OBE for services to sustainability - in the days when the word still meant something seriously worthwhile. Pooran led Bioregional’s One Planet Living® initiative for 18 years, leading teams that created sustainability strategies in 30 countries creating a set of principles that served as inspiration for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). Pooran is author of OnePlanet Communities: A Real-Life Guide for Sustainable Living, and is a trustee of the Design Council, supporting their 'Design for Planet' mission. In 2019, Pooran founded OnePlanet, to create a software suite that helps people, companies, policy makers shift to networked thinking - to let go of the constraints of consensus reality and the linear thinking that got us into this mess, and move towards systemic thinking that might get us out of it. Links Alan Watts recordings https://alanwatts.org/audio/ Sharon Blackie Post-Heroic Journey https://open.substack.com/pub/sharonblackie/p/the-post-heroic-journey Knepp https://knepp.co.uk/

  • Feb 15, 2023 · 1 hr 14 min

    Saving Chocolate! and finding solutions to the meta crisis with Nicola Peel

    Accidental Gods podcast exists to open doors and break down barriers, to bring forward the ideas and the actions of and give voice to the gloriously creative people who give their lives to the idea and realisation of a regenerative future. In this wide-ranging conversation with Solutionist and film-maker, Nicola Peel, we learned of the horrors of oil spills in the Amazon and the ways fungi could clear them if only the oil companies would let the work begin. We explored the nature of regenerative farming in the global north and - particularly - in Ecuador where agro-forestry is rebuilding soil on land that had previously been devastated by beef farming - and how the polycultures might save the cacao industry. We contemplated death and burial, whether carbon offsetting can be useful, the concept of air as a global commons and how to integrate localism into the map of a flourishing future. At the end - as often happens - I stopped recording but we carried on speaking and it seemed that Nicola was saying things that definitely should have been in the podcast. So I hit record again. Twice. We've stitched those bits on at the end for you. Bio Nicola Peel is a Solutionist, environmentalist, film maker and host of the Solutions podcast. For over 20 years her work has been focussed on environmental solutions. As a filmmaker, she has made documentaries to raise awareness, built rainwater systems for those drinking contaminated water and brought together scientists to use fungi to clean up oil spills. She has built buildings made of thousands of plastic bottles filled with rubbish and taught agroforestry to regenerate the soil and prevent further deforestation of the Amazon. She believes that around the world, people are waking up to the climate and ecological breakdown we are facing. For many they think it is up to governments or big business or someone else to fix the problems and feel disempowered to be a part of the change themselves. Believing, too, that every one of us have different strengths and different areas of expertise, Nicola's focus is to identify the issues we face and see what opportunities and solutions there are to address these issues. Nicola's website https://www.nicolapeel.com/ Nicola's Solutions podcast https://www.patreon.com/solutionist Nicola's annual newsletter https://mailchi.mp/3bb712bfc940/a-year-in-the-life-of-a-solutionist-nicolas-news-and-views-2022 Film 'Blood of the Amazon' https://youtu.be/Y5b--eRsX9o Film 'A Solution to Pollution' https://youtu.be/KO1WjFRL_XA Research into Taro and its impacts https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5610413/taro-market-analysis-report-industry-size

  • Jan 11, 2023 · 1 hr 3 min

    Being the Change: Journeys in Service to Life with Gail Bradbrook

    How can we shift our mindsets away from service to a destructive and extractive culture and offer ourselves fully in service to life. With Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of XR and now of the 'Being the Change Affinity Network', we delve deeply into the natur