Accidental Gods – The Thrutopian Podcast
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- Dernier épisode
- 11 Nov 2026
À propos du podcast
Another World IS still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose - and now it's disintegrating in real-time. 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, integrity, generosity-of-spirit? 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, life-filled life-giving 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
Épisodes 404
Power Station: Generating agency with Daniel Edelstyn and Leonie Rousham
How do we empower communities to help them step away from the extractive death cult of capitalism and the fossil fuels that underpin it, while keeping warm, saving money, and expanding their own agency? Our …
Notes de l’épisode
How do we empower communities to help them step away from the extractive death cult of capitalism and the fossil fuels that underpin it, while keeping warm, saving money, and expanding their own agency?
Our guests this week have poured years of time, energy, passion, professional expertise - and a deep understanding of the flaws in the current system and how local people can be empowered to take change into their own hands - into making it happen.
Daniel Edelstyn is a documentary maker who worked with Channel 4 until he realised it wasn't helping him be part of the solution. When he left, the first film he made was BANK JOB, then POWER STATION of which he is co founder and director and which we're talking about in this episode. Now, as you'll hear, he's working on one called 'THIS MOVIE IS A HEDGE FUND'. Beyond this, he's a social entrepreneur focused on the technology of storytelling to provoke people powered change who believes in challenging economic narratives to build creative practices of abundance. Musician and mischief maker.
With Dan, we're speaking to Leonie Rousham who was the Assistant Director and Impact Producer of POWER STATION. She's an artist-filmmaker interested in storytelling for systems change and, in this respect is co-founder of collaborative artist practice Kneed. She is currently a funded PhD candidate on the Living Well With Water award, which promotes coastal heritage and creative practice the UK.
Power Station is one of those rare things - a film that documents change while helping us all understand both why it's necessary and how to make it happen in our own communities. It's a genuinely moving, inspiring film and I thoroughly encourage you to watch it. So, to inspire you to do just that, here we go:
LinksPower Station Films and books
Power Station free online screeningSOLAR FOR SCHOOLS
Kneed
Art PolitikHOWARD JOHNS - People Owned Power
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR YEAR AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 3rd January from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - Details here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Jaguar Dreaming - Walking the Bridge of Perception with John Perkins of the Pachamama Alliance
How can the dream of a jaguar - or any dream - help us to overcome our own fears? This week's guest, John Perkins has written a book about this. Touching the Jaguar is a memoir of an extraordinary life, and …
Notes de l’épisode
How can the dream of a jaguar - or any dream - help us to overcome our own fears?
This week's guest, John Perkins has written a book about this. Touching the Jaguar is a memoir of an extraordinary life, and it's an invitation to walk across what he calls the Bridge of Perception to see the world differently - in his words to remember that we are a part of nature, not apart from nature. Which - with slightly different vocabulary, is exactly what we're about, and what we say every week. But John is not only a shamanic practitioner with many decades of training in Ecuador and elsewhere deep in the Amazon - he's a man of many often divergent parts.
If you're in the shamanic world, then you know him as the animating energy behind the Pachamama Alliance - and he describes its founding in Touching the Jaguar.
Then again, if you're in the world of heterodox - which is to say not-orthodox - economics, or regenerative economics, or renegade economics or any of the various ways we explore how money works in the world, you'll know him as the author of the book, 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman.' It's not an easy read, but if you ever want proof of the utter hypocrisy of the US and the UK - of all the western countries - of the appalling damage and absolutely unacceptable behaviour our governments have promoted around the world... it's an essential read. In the early decades of his professional life, John was exactly what he says - an economic hitman who went into sovereign nations, in his case mostly in central and south America, and he offered the carrot to the nation's leadership: take our bribes, let us develop our commercial and military outposts in your country, sell us your oil, your rare earths, your land at bargain basement prices... and we'll let you live. If they refused…two of the people John worked with closely did refuse. And both are now dead in 'accidents' where their planes crashed, leaving nobody on board alive. He believes they were assassinated by the CIA and when he first decided to write about it, his young daughter was threatened and then he was bribed with a half million dollar 'consultancy' the existence of which was predicated on his not-writing his book.
You can read that book today. Or you can watch the short animation of it, which covers the basics and which I watched when I was reading for the Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher... so John's been a kind of a hero since then. I didn't know he'd been poisoned and half 70% of his bowel resected and nearly died. I didn't know about the death threats or the doors that had closed in his face. I also didn't know that, alongside his work for the US government, he was being trained by a series of indigenous shamans, whose prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor, required them to 'touch the jaguar' by connecting with that which they most feared - white people - and changing their perception.So - I came to this podcast thinking we'd explore Touching the Jaguar and his new book, The Art of the Steal which shows how the Trump administration brought all the old techniques that used to be used against other nations and operated them at home. But actually, this turned into something much more interesting. John spends a lot of time with indigenous peoples and they believe we're in the time between worlds, an inflection point where everything can shift. So we talked more about that. We did have some technical glitches for which I apologise - Caro and Lou have done their best with the audio and the video. In the hope that they succeed, please do enjoy this week's episode.
Links
John's Website
John's blog: Change the Dream
Confessions of an Economic Hitman (short animation version)
John's Latest Book - The Art of the Steal
John's previous book - Touching the Jaguar
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR YEAR AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 3rd January from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - Details here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Crossing the Uncanny Chasm from where we are to where we need to be – Thoughts from the Edge #6 with Manda Scott
What are the actual steps we could take, from our dysfunctional political, economic, media systems and all they support - towards a future that would actually work in service to life?We ask this question all …
Notes de l’épisode
What are the actual steps we could take, from our dysfunctional political, economic, media systems and all they support - towards a future that would actually work in service to life?
We ask this question all the time on the podcast - and then I went away for a weekend's planning with the core team of our Thrutopian Convergence. We played a Solar Punk Futures game (thank you Natalia!) and Every Single One of us crafted a fictional character from a post-collapse semi-dystopian future in which we were all -
- not working a day job
- not paying rent/mortgage/power/water/food bills
- not trapped in the death cult of predatory capitalism
- everyone was working cooperatively for food, health, technology
- the bad guys were out there, but they were losing.It was lovely - if you don't mind the fact that we were basically subsisting and not necessarily meeting our core needs.
and
It was blindingly depressing.
Because if I fall into this easy/lazy/safe way of thinking - if I, too, am unable to see past the fuzzy, hand-waving bits of detail that get us from here to there - the bit I'm calling the Uncanny Chasm - how can I expect anyone else to see them more clearly?
So this podcast is working past this Uncanny Chasm - starting the hard work of figuring out the details.
There will be more. This is just a start. All thoughts welcome.
Links
Democracy in Chains my Nancy MacLean
Hostage Nation by Jamie Driscoll
Richard Murphy's YouTube
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Climate Popularism - Launch of the new report by Rupert Read and Caroline Lucas, interviewed by Jon Alexander
This week sees the launch of the Climate Popularism Report written for the Climate Majority Project by friend of the podcast Professor Rupert Read, co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, and Caroline …
Notes de l’épisode
This week sees the launch of the Climate Popularism Report written for the Climate Majority Project by friend of the podcast Professor Rupert Read, co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, and Caroline Lucas, former Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and for a long time, the sole Green party member of the UK's Parliament.
We were supposed to record a podcast together earlier this week, but I had to cancel and so we are instead bringing you a rather wonderful conversation in which TED speaker, pro-democracy activist and author of the book Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us, Jon Alexander, talked to Rupert and Caroline about their report - what it is, why now is the crucial moment and how they hope it will reshape politics in the UK and beyond.
So this is a star-studded cast and I hope you enjoy their conversation and head off and read the report. Then do whatever you can to become engaged in the new wave of citizen popularism.
Links
Climate Popularism Report
Climate Majority Website
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
New Earth Dawning: Biological Elegance, the health of humanity and OriginEarth with Zach Bush, MD
What happens when someone who has trained for years in the Cartesian model of science, of medicine in particular - who has been trained to look at bodies the way a mechanic looks at a car, to take them apart …
Notes de l’épisode
What happens when someone who has trained for years in the Cartesian model of science, of medicine in particular - who has been trained to look at bodies the way a mechanic looks at a car, to take them apart and fix one thing and put it back together and get it back on the road… what happens when that person begins to question everything?
This week's guest has done just this. Of all the people we've been asked to invite onto the podcast, Zach Bush, MD, is top of the list. For those of you who know him, he needs no introduction. For the rest, here's the short version of a very long CV.
Zach Bush, MD, trained in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism, as well as Hospice Care. He is an internationally recognised scientist and industry pioneer, innovating solutions at the intersection of human and planetary health. He is Founder and CEO of Waveform Inc, and Board Chair of Project Biome and the Origin global event series. He delights in working with teams around the world to realise the alignment of human nature with the emerging rebirth cycle of the earth.
Today, we're exploring both the Origin event and his new book, Biological Elegance, a conversation with AI that generated what he believes is the clearest articulation of the worldview beneath it all: health is not something we manufacture. It is something we participate in.
And key to all this is that Zach is part of a global unity event taking place on October 17th online and in person in South Africa. It's called Origin and Zach talks about it at the end of the podcast, but if you're listening to this the day it comes out, then you have 3 days to click the link in the show notes and head over and explore what's on offer. If you're in South Africa, you can go in person. If you're online, the core work, the one that the Heart Math Institute will be measuring, is at 21:00 South Africa time. So work out when that is for you and if you can be there, then please do.
We did have some technical issues with the sound and it's not quite as easy on your ears as usual - for which we all apologise, but I think the content is well worth it. So for a wide, deep dive into health at all its fractal levels, please welcome this week's guest, Zach Bush, MD. Enjoy!
Links
Zach's Website - Join the Journey to read his book
Origin Event Trailer
Origin Festival and Live Connection
OurOrigin.earth Substack
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Dignity, Confidence and Care: The Matriarch Effect transforming lives with Dr Robyn Short
We all know we need to wake up, grow up, show up, but how do we actually do the inner work of growing into interdependence and then the outer work of healing our relationships and holding whole, generative …
Notes de l’épisode
We all know we need to wake up, grow up, show up, but how do we actually do the inner work of growing into interdependence and then the outer work of healing our relationships and holding whole, generative spaces for all parts of ourselves, ourselves and each other, ourselves and the web of life?
That's this week's question and our guest on this episode has written a book that absolutely answers this, and more.
Dr. Robyn Short is an organization systems design consultant, peace-building trainer, and mediator who works with individuals, corporations, and nonprofit organizations in discovering the root causes of conflicts, so they may transform their relationships and create new and productive paths forward individually, as teams, and ultimate as an organization. She also works with community leaders and political and governmental leaders to develop initiatives for building sustainable peace in areas of historic conflict. In this capacity, she has been featured in news outlets internationally.
She is founder and CEO of The Workplace Peace Institute, responsible for its mission, vision and values - and those values are explicitly generative: equity, diversity, empathy, courage and curiosity.
She is the author of four books, the latest of which is 'The Matriarch Effect: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Organizations and the New Logic of Power' and it's this we'll be talking about today - what it is, and how it can transform our worlds of work—and life.
Links
Book Link
The Matriarch Effect
The Workplace Peace Institute
Dr Short on LinkedIn—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Hostage Nation Part 2 - Anything we can do, we can afford - with Jamie Driscoll of Majority
From the Hostage Nation paper: " The first and most fundamental duty of a civilised state is the safety of its people. Not just safety from overseas adversaries, or crime in the street. Economic security. A …
Notes de l’épisode
From the Hostage Nation paper:
" The first and most fundamental duty of a civilised state is the safety of its people.
Not just safety from overseas adversaries, or crime in the street. Economic security. A bill you can pay without going overdrawn. A house you can afford before your children have children of their own. A job that lasts long enough to plan around.
Britain guarantees none of these. Not for want of money, or land, or people who know how to build. Our nation has all of that.
For forty years we have outsourced that security to the global marketplace. We locked ourselves in a room and posted the key to a trading desk in New York. British government policy subservient to global winds.
They call it living within our means. We call it Hostage Nation."
This is the second part of our conversation with Jamie Driscoll, former Mayor of Newcastle city region, founder of Majority and now Green Council for his old Monument ward. He's also one of the authors of the Hostage Nation paper quoted above that lays out how we can shift our current economy from one that's in hock to the Vigilante Bond Markets to one that supports people and planet.
Jamie's website
Majority
Hostage Nation—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
How not to be a hostage to the vigilante Bond Markets: with Jamie Driscoll of Majority
What are the actual, practical shifts in our political economy that we could do tomorrow, that would not require extra legislation and could transform our society? This question applies to us all, wherever we …
Notes de l’épisode
What are the actual, practical shifts in our political economy that we could do tomorrow, that would not require extra legislation and could transform our society? This question applies to us all, wherever we are in the world and while there are many economists looking forward to an idealised system some way down the line, very few people - politicians or economists - are exploring what we could do now, today, within the guiderails of the existing system, with the politicians we have and the economy we have and the constraints of a world undergoing rapid geopolitical as well as geophysical change.
Jamie Driscoll grew up in the north east of England, with a dad who drove a tank in the army and a mum who was a youth worker, trade unionist, and set up the first Women’s Refuge from Domestic Violence in Middlesbrough. He left school at 16, and returned to education as a mature student, gaining a degree in Engineering at Northumbria University. He went on to run his own business as a software developer and then, when kids came along, and he was married to a GP, he wound back his business and became the main carer for the children.
He was 48 when he became a politician and he clearly brought the clear thought of an engineer, the empathy of a parent and the basic common sense of his upbringing to his various roles. He was elected Mayor of the Newcastle city region in May 2019, a position he served in until 2024, turning Newcastle into what the Guardian called “the capital of a new radical British politics”. In his five years in office he had to work around four different Prime Ministers, six different Chancellors, a global pandemic, Britain leaving the EU, energy price shocks, a cost of living crisis and the start of a ground war in Europe. He's one of a tiny handful of democratic socialists – as opposed to social democrats – who have experience running an arm of government in Britain. He smashed his job creation target by over 300 percent; built affordable homes to high-eco standards; ran child poverty prevention programmes; delivered skills training to thousands of people to enable them to increase earnings. For every £1 I invested, his team returned over £3 to the Treasury in increased payroll taxes from job creation. He even had a successful venture capital programme that generated profits for the team to spend on other programmes, rather than them being funnelled off into tax havens by private investors.
So, of course, in 2024, the Labour party changed its own internal rules to block him from standing in what was a new Mayoral area: he was too good, too effective - too socialist for them to let him continue when their entire reason for existence was to crush the left in the party. He ran as an independent in that election and came second after the official Labour candidate, polling the second highest independent vote in British political history, and built an organizational infrastructure that has become the progressive movement called Majority.
In amongst all this, he is one of the sharpest, most deeply thoughtful people I've come across in electoral politics - easily up there with Mamdani, AOC and El-Sayed in the US. And he's here today because he's brought out a new paper - 'Hostage Nation' which does something quite remarkable: it takes the existing system in the UK and with only a few well-placed tweaks - almost all of which require no new legislation - it creates a new system that works for people and planet.
I cannot emphasise too highly how innovative and necessary this is. It's the beginning step to a future that works for everyone - whoever you are, if you're listening to this in the UK, it would make your life measurably better within a year, significantly better in four years and utterly transformed in a decade. If you're outside the UK, bringing the principles of this into your own nation would do the same.
This is common sense politics - worked out in detail and I totally recommend that you read the website, sign up for more details and read as much of the paper as you can. Figure out what you can embrace and then tell people about it. This is how we make change.
Jamie and I were scheduled to have an hour's conversation. At the end of the first hour, it became obvious that there was at least another hour - actually, closer to two. So we split the conversation: the episode is broadly about politics and how we might change it. The second focuses more deeply on the Hostage Nation paper. So here we go - please enjoy Jamie Driscoll of Majority, the Green Party and author of Hostage Nation.
Jamie's website
Majority
Hostage Nation—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Autumn Equinox Meditation
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.—About Accidental …
Notes de l’épisode
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.
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
The Stewardship Freehold Village - an idea whose time has come - with Michael Taite
"When we build, we first remove the soil and replace it with rubble, concrete and tarmac. When we grow, we exclude all life from the land bar the one crop we want. Where we belatedly recognise our ultimate …
Notes de l’épisode
"When we build, we first remove the soil and replace it with rubble, concrete and tarmac. When we grow, we exclude all life from the land bar the one crop we want. Where we belatedly recognise our ultimate dependence on nature, we confine it to intensive ‘nature only’ areas such as rewilding zones, field margins and beetle banks." Michael Taite 2026
How do we reconcile our human need for shelter, autonomy, a sense of safety in our own homes…with the wider need for us to collaborate with the Animate Earth, to become the self conscious nodes in the Web of Life, so that we can each find what's ours to do, that only we can do and that we can do best? How can we create more homes in a Thrutopian process that shifts us from the dysfunction of our current system to something that works for people and planet?
Our guest this week has just completed a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and has written his thesis addressing this very problem and today, he comes to talk to us about his concept of the 'Stewardship Freehold Village', which feels like one of those ideas that is so obvious, it's amazing nobody thought of it before - but nobody did, or at least, if they did, it is lost in the toxic chaos of a trust-less planning system that rewards the most predatory of predatory capitalists.
Michael Taite started his professional life working for a huge London developer - now long gone - and towards the end was responsible for a portfolio of thirteen developments with big residential schemes in Docklands and other sites in London, Manchester and the north east of England. While there, he passed over a dozen professional exams, which, amongst other things, gave him insights into the arcane depths of planning law. Since 1996, he has been self-employed and has split his time between his business, environmental and local community concerns. So, for instance, he served 19 years as the lead operational trustee for the Environmental Law Foundation, a UK national charity which secures free legal help for communities under threat. He has also served as a parish councillor and as a trustee of his local village hall and, with his wife Gail, ran their small brand strategy agency whose signature process was a system for consulting whole organisations to secure genuine, broad stakeholder support when radical change was scary but necessary. The agency’s slogan was BRAVE = SAFE which feels genuinely Thrutopian.
Having attained his Masters from SOAS, Michael is now working on progressing the concepts which emerged from that process, in the hope that they might contribute to averting some of the worst aspects of the intertwined global catastrophes that we address all the time on this podcast.
Links
Michael's Substack on SFV
Michael general SubstackElinor Ostrom’s 8 Rules for Managing the Commons -
Williams, Jeremy. The Earthbound Report, 15 Jan. 2018
Efficient public transport for semi-rural areas
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 1
Foyle, C. and Shepherd, E. (2023). Why have the volume housebuilders been soprofitable? Glasgow: UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 2
Carmona, M., Alwarea, A., Giordano, V., Gusseinova, A. and Olaleye, F. (2021). AHousing Design Audit for England. [online] London WC1: UCL Place Alliance. Available
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 3
Transport for New Homes (2025). In search of the station ... What is being built in 2025?
New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 4Letwin, Rt Hon Sir, O. (2018). Independent Review of Build Out Final Report. London
SW1: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then) - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Making Glorious Trouble with Uffe Elbaek, activist, system builder and author of Doubt, Hope, Action
"I know that a good book can move its reader. Writing a book also moves the author. That is how it was for me anyway, not least when I wrote Doubt, Hope, Action. The writing process not only made me see the …
Notes de l’épisode
"I know that a good book can move its reader. Writing a book also moves the author. That is how it was for me anyway, not least when I wrote Doubt, Hope, Action. The writing process not only made me see the world and my own life with clearer and more realistic eyes. It also set me free." Uffe Elbaek, author of DOUBT, HOPE, ACTION
We talk a lot on this podcast about the need for a new system: politically, culturally, in business, media and art…in everything we do. And yet, we don't often have the opportunity to talk with someone who has set up a new political party - still less one explicitly predicated on the core values of courage, generosity, transparency, humility, humour and empathy. You'd think it would be hard to argue against these, but, as Uffe Elbaek discovered when he entered the Danish Parliament…the system doesn't always want to be courageous, or transparent, or generous, or to embody humility, humour and empathy.
Nonetheless, Uffe brought all of these things and more to his time in politics, and then, with classic clear-sightedness, stepped down and went on to found The Tomorrow Collective - and to write the book, Doubt, Hope, Action, which has recently been translated into English from the original Danish and is available in all good bookshops now.
So what better time to talk to someone who has been in the heart of the old system, while creating a new one? For those of you who don't (yet) know him, Uffe is a Danish social worker, educator, author, entrepreneur, and activist. In 2011 he became member of the Danish Parliament for the Social Liberal Party and was made Minister for Culture. Two years later, he left to found and lead 'The Alternative' which was based on the six values we mentioned. He didn’t run for a seat in the national election November 2022 so he remains an unbeaten politician, which is quite an achievement.
Apart from this, Uffe has been city councillor - in fact, he's the first openly gay man elected to Aarhus city's council, first openly gay man as Minister of Culture and as party leader in the Danish parliament. He's former Principal of the KaosPilots international education programme and he is now part of The Tomorrow Collective, which is a social and democratic innovation lab based in Denmark.
With is sense that he is an outsider with inside experience, the common thread through everything Uffe has worked on is: We can do better. And right after that: How can we strengthen the life force in each individual, organisation and society as whole? Today, he is primarily concerned with how we as a society can support the ones building the new system we all know we need. All those who – across sectors and industries – are laying the foundations of a new post-capitalist society that respects planetary boundaries and leads us to be collaborators with the natural world. He lives with his husband Jens in the family home in Copenhagen, from where he joins us for this podcast.
Links
Uffe's website
Doubt, Hope, Action - buy from the publisher
The Tomorrow Collective
Uffe on LinkedIn—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
"We All Came By Boat!" - exploring Ireland & Britain’s ancient myths and the world’s future mythologies with Clare Murphy
What happens when the Fires in our Hearts become tsunamis of feeling that take us beyond the narrow imaginal cul de sacs our culture has created, and throw our doors wide open to the wonder of the past and the …
Notes de l’épisode
What happens when the Fires in our Hearts become tsunamis of feeling that take us beyond the narrow imaginal cul de sacs our culture has created, and throw our doors wide open to the wonder of the past and the absolutely unknowable, glorious, constantly surprising possibilities of the future we haven't built yet?
This week's guest, Clare Murphy, is an Irish Storyweaver, a storyteller who consults with people like NASA, the National Theatre, Climate activists, water protectors, first responders and limbless veterans. She's a Gatherer of world mythologies who seeks out the untold tales, the ones that were covered up by the hierarchies of blandness that came after them. She finds them and blows off the dust and breathes new life into them so the rest of us can step off the beaten track with her, and find new ways of being that could take us forward.
Clare's a magician with the spoken word, a fire-spinner who understands the age-old magic of our voices, and the ways a few words can shift us into new, expansive ways of seeing and being. At the time we spoke, Clare had just completed the third edit of her book (Edit-envy? Me?!) and was gearing up for her outstanding one-woman show, 'We All Came By Boat' in Bristol later in September.
As you'll hear, she's one of those people who lights up any room and helps people find—and then ignite—the fire in their own heads. So prepare to be ignited - Enjoy!
.Links
https://claremurphy.org/
Clare at The Wardrobe Theatre, Bristol 15th - 19th September - Book Now!
Clare's TEDx Galway talk
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Love, Anger and Betrayal: Stories from the front line of Climate Action with Jonathon Porritt and Daniel Knorr
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel …
Notes de l’épisode
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” Antonio Guterres, UN General Secretary
We know that the current system is not fit for purpose. We know that we're hurtling to the edge of the 6th mass extinction, blowing apart all of the predictions about the speed and scale of ecosystem breakdown. And still we listen to politicians argue about whether GDP has gone up by 0.1% and if so, who is to claim the credit? They plan for war without understanding that there are no armies, no nations, no people - or any complex life - on a dead planet.What good are science and rational persuasion if no one is paying attention? The climate crisis deepens with terrifying predictability. Meanwhile, the courageous young campaigners who seek to wake us up to the truth of this, through peaceful direct action, are silenced and stuck in prison.
Daniel Knorr is one of those young people. He was 22 years old at the time the book was published, and had previously studied biochemistry at Oxford with a view to engineering plants to be more resilient to extreme weather conditions. As you'll hear, he realised this was no longer where he needed to be, and joined Just Stop Oil, whose ethos and grounding question is: what does it make to be a good person in this time of collapse - or perhaps transition? I'll let him tell you his story, but—like the stories of the other 25 young people in the book—it's humbling and inspiring in equal measure.
Jonathon Porritt is well known to anyone in the Green or eco-campaigning community in the UK. He was formerly Co-Chair of the Green Party (1980-83) and Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90). He was a Board Member of The Southwest Regional Development Agency between 1999 and 2008. He stood down as Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in 2009, after nine years providing high-level advice to Government Ministers, and served a ten-year term as Chancellor of Keele University (2012-2022). He was awarded a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.
Together, we discuss Love, Anger and Betrayal, which brings Jonathan's experience as a long time campaigner into juxtaposition with the experiences of young people one third his age who are doing their best to make the world a better place. Theirs is a generation systematically betrayed by politicians. And by all of us who allow this to continue, on our watch, year after year. What comes across in this book, though, is that while Jonathan feels the kind of white hot rage that consumes many of us, Daniel and those around him are focusing on embodying love for each other and the planet.
‘We have a choice. Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands.’
-António GuterresLet's explore what we can do, shall we?
Links
Love, Anger and Betrayal website
Jonathan's website
Jonathan's short film about the book—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Honouring the Web of Life - Thoughts from the Edge #5 with Manda Scott
In the midst of the polycrisis - or the meta crisis, depending on your point of view - what is the key to the inner change each of us can make that will help us shift our perspective so that we can begin to …
Notes de l’épisode
In the midst of the polycrisis - or the meta crisis, depending on your point of view - what is the key to the inner change each of us can make that will help us shift our perspective so that we can begin to create the total systemic change we need?
In this solo podcast, Manda explores the Three Pillars of the Heart Mind laid out in the Accidental Gods modules - Gratitude, Compassion and Joyful Curiosity…and then adds a fourth: Honouring all aspects of the Web of Life. How does it feel to honour everything: the things we take for granted, the things we judge as being bad or wrong, the things that disturb us, as well as the things whose loss we grieve so deeply?
Manda explores the idea that shifting to a place of honouring can transform our entire worldview and help us to find meaning and purpose in a world on fire.
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Building Scaleable Trust - Of Identity, Commons and Governance with Grace Rachmany of Sideways Earth
"The ecological movement is the largest movement in human history, yet it is fragmented because it is using the "tools of the master" for coordination, resource sharing, and conflict resolution...While many …
Notes de l’épisode
"The ecological movement is the largest movement in human history, yet it is fragmented because it is using the "tools of the master" for coordination, resource sharing, and conflict resolution...While many technologists have created social networking technology, they have not succeeded in creating good coordination because social networking tools do not address enough of the primary coordination mechanics for scalable trust." Grace Rachmany: Sideways Earth on Github
Friend of the podcast, Grace Rachmany is a mother, a tech industry trouble shooter, author of over a hundred white papers and co-author of the book, 'So you've got a DAO: Handbook for Distributed and Connected Leadership'. She's Executive Director of the Decentralized Identity Foundation and it's this that we're exploring today.
It's long been established on this podcast that the old paradigm is not fit for purpose and is, in fact, in the process of disintegrating beneath our feet.
We know we need to create communities of place, purpose and passion - but if we can do this, how do we find other communities to link with so we can:
- Scale from community to region. (based on shared action)
- Keep one another accountable for behaviors that reflect what we say our values are (people are also squishy when they say the word values).
- Scale behaviour change beyond a closed or Dunbar-number community to multiple communities.
- Scale actions and collaborations to regional levels without a hierarchical coordination structure.
- Coordinate actions and behaviors based on the commons we share, whether or not we share "values".
This is the missing link that is often overlooked as we craft a way forward to a world that works, and I'm so glad someone with Grace's outstanding intellect and depth of heart is exploring this.
And that she's willing to come here and talk about it.
So here we go: a wide, deep, full conversation on the missing link of scaleable trust. Enjoy!
Links
Grace's website
Grace on LinkedIn
Decentralized Identify Foundation
Grace on YouTube - co-creating the third attractor
Sideways Earth Website
Sideways Earth on Github
Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Governing a Commons—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
The Art of Possibility - A Possitopian approach to the Earth Crisis with Bridget McKenzie of Earth Talk
"The Possitopian approach to future thinking expands the cone of the possible future, draws on geophysical realities and data, and also applies imagination to help you imagine future scenarios which are …
Notes de l’épisode
"The Possitopian approach to future thinking expands the cone of the possible future, draws on geophysical realities and data, and also applies imagination to help you imagine future scenarios which are potentially worse or better than you might allow yourself to think."
So says this week's guest, Bridget McKenzie. Bridget is an artist and regenerative thought leader working to engage people with what she calls the Earth Crisis -which is a new term to me but feels a much better fit than MetaCrisis or Polycrisis. Her career includes being Tate’s Education manager and the British Library’s Head of Learning. In 2006, she founded Flow Associates, a research consultancy in cultural learning. In the past decade, she has focused on the intersection of culture and environment, and has developed training, collectives and campaigns pushing at the radical edges of this field. This includes founding Climate Museum UK, a creative collective putting the Earth Crisis in context, and Earth Talk, a community of practice for Earth Literacy. She co-founded Culture Declares, a movement of cultural workers declaring a planetary emergency. She experiments with creative activism in her city of Norwich.
And creative activism is what we're all about - how do we stretch our imaginations beyond the bounds of what we believe to be true now, to what might be true if we can only lay the foundations for something utterly outside our current capacity to imagine?
This was such an inspiring conversation with someone who thinks deeply about the nature of art, creativity, culture - and the ways we can engage ourselves and each other at the deepest level.
Links
Bridget's Website
Earth Talk
Climate Museum UK
Possitopia on Medium—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 BST - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Creditism: Building the Ledger of Life with Remzi Bajrami of the Common Planet Foundation
How do we make a peaceful transition to a wholly new system when the old one is sustained by those who profit most from the self-terminating zombie of predatory capitalism?Our guest this week has spent the past …
Notes de l’épisode
How do we make a peaceful transition to a wholly new system when the old one is sustained by those who profit most from the self-terminating zombie of predatory capitalism?
Our guest this week has spent the past decade devising an answer to this most central of our questions. Remzi Bajrami is co-founder of Common Planet Foundation and creator of Creditism, which is his answer to our dilemma.
In his words, Creditism is—
- a new economic system designed around life instead of debt. Credit flows to people because existence itself has value — it circulates through life, then clears. It supports living without becoming a permanent claim on the future.
- a non-debt economic system designed to replace extraction with flow, scarcity with access, and coercion with coordination. Where today’s money is largely created through debt and accumulated as power, Creditism reframes money as credit: a shared unit of access created through existence, earned through contribution, and dissolved when used.
- the gateway to a global economy that is cleaner, fairer, and more life-aligned — one that supports human potential, community self-governance, and planetary regeneration.
Creditism is the economic architecture for a species that wants to survive.
There are still some unanswered questions in this, but there are always going to be until we get moving with something, test it out and reinvent it on the fly. What Remzi and his colleagues have done is to set up a system that you can join now - or at least in early August 2026 - and become a part of a network that will test this out. in the meantime, Remzi has written a series of Substacks which lay out in straightforward terms how the current system is predicated on power over, how money works - because we can't hear that one too often - and how creditism could work instead. Enjoy!
Links
Common Planet website
Remzi on LinkedIn
Remzi on Substack
Creditism 1
Creditism 2
Creditism 3—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
We Need a Victory Story: Mobilising the Silent Majority with Liam Kavanagh of the Climate Majority Project
If you listen to this podcast then you care about people and planet and how we make it through this potential crunch point when all our crises mash together. But what if you knew you were not alone? What if you …
Notes de l’épisode
If you listen to this podcast then you care about people and planet and how we make it through this potential crunch point when all our crises mash together.
But what if you knew you were not alone? What if you knew that almost everyone in our culture cares about this, they just don't know what to do about it? They don't have what this week's guest, Dr Liam Kavanagh, calls the 'Victory Stories' to show how we made it through.
Liam is a founding Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, an organisation that has worked since 2022 to extend climate action beyond the vocal minority of activists to the concerned but quiet majority. His social science background informs CMP’s theory of change and strategy. He began his career as an applied economist in New York and Tanzania. Motivated by questions about ideology and cognitive dissonance in political economy, he completed a PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. In 2016, he co-founded Life Itself, a European polycrisis-response network (we spoke to Sylvie Barbier from Life Itself a few weeks ago), and has authored two books and numerous reports.
His latest reports: Mobilising Silent Majorities is one of the must-reads of this year. Please do download and read the pdf - at least the executive summary. This is a long, detailed, dynamic look at how many people really do care about the polycrisis. As he says, 'Across society, many people recognise serious risks—climate disruption, inequality, instability—but these concerns often stay private. The report identifies six “silent majorities” whose hidden views could shift what feels politically possible:
- The climate-concerned majority – Most people see climate change as a serious threat but rarely talk about it in daily life.
- The climate-concerned business majority – Business leaders see climate risks but hesitate to speak publicly.
- The reticent scientific majority – Scientists privately worry about worst-case scenarios but communicate cautiously.
- The decline- and collapse-concerned majority – Many fear overlapping crises, yet these concerns are rarely voiced.
- The depolarising majority – Citizens who favour cooperation over conflict are often drowned out by louder, polarising voices.
- The intrinsic-values majority – People prioritise family, community, and wellbeing, but economic pressures often prevent these values from guiding their lives.
When concern remains unspoken, it appears weaker than it is. And when people feel alone in their worries, silence becomes the apparently safest choice.
But it doesn't have to be like this. What if we were able to speak up in our communities of place, purpose and passion and let other people know they're not alone? That we are, in fact, a huge, huge majority? What if we were able to seed ideas out into the conversations that are happening on- and off-line so that we all acknowledge the system is not fit for purpose and all have good, workable ideas of how to fix it?
What if we embodied the 'Victory Stories' of this time and transformed our future?
It's all to play for now, and here's someone with the ideas at his fingertips. Enjoy!
Liam on LinkedIn
Climate Majority Project
Silent Majorities Sub-stack
Silent Majorities Report pdf—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
We Need to Talk about Tech: Exploring AI, fresh Hope…and the power of Song with Nathalie Nahai
The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. William Gibson We need to talk about Big Tech, and particularly AI - it's ubiquitous, it's powerful, and currently, it's unconstrained and this is …
Notes de l’épisode
The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. William Gibson
We need to talk about Big Tech, and particularly AI - it's ubiquitous, it's powerful, and currently, it's unconstrained and this is not an ideal combination if we live in the real world of mass extinction where human and more-than-human communities are being destroyed to serve the death cult of predatory capitalism at its most rapacious.
The question is - how do we shift the dial on the future when so many of those whose fortunes are sunk into Tech, and AI in particular, seem to be steeped in the Dark Triad of psychopathy, sadism and narcissism? Is there any sign of hope amidst all the chaos and the frozen despair that narratives of inevitability foster in us?We turn this week to long-time friend of the podcast, Nathalie Nahai. Nathalie is a celebrated author, keynote speaker and host of the glorious Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast which enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-seller Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.
LinksNathalie's website
Nathalie's podcastBooks
Business Unusual
Webs of InfluencePapal Encyclical on AI
Nathalie's Resources of wonderful people already in this spacePEOPLE
- Carole Cadwalladr - https://broligarchy.substack.com/
- Timnit Gebru - https://dair-institute.org/team/timnit-gebru/
- Cory Doctorow - https://craphound.com/
- Gary Marcus - https://garymarcus.substack.com/
- Carl Miller - DEMOS - https://demos.co.uk/people/carl-miller/
- Karen Hao - https://karendhao.com/
- Dr Joy Buolamwini - https://www.poetofcode.com/
- Wakanyi Hoffman - https://hoffmanwakanyi.wixsite.com/wakanyihoffman
- Zak Stein - https://www.zakstein.org/
- Tristan Harris & Ezra Raskin - https://www.humanetech.com/
EVENTS
- UN’s AI for Good: Global Summit: https://aiforgood.itu.int/
BOOKS
- Hyperscalers - Paris Marx
- End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World - Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor
- Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines - Sherry Turkle
- Empire of AI - Karen Hao
- Careless People - Sarah Wynn Williams
- Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
- The Future - Naomi Alderman
- Enshittification - Cory Doctorow
ORGANISATIONS
- https://dair-institute.org/
- https://www.thenerve.news/
- https://rslmedia.org/
- https://airesistlist.org/
- https://www.lumiera.ai/
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Grown Up Politics: 2. How can Andy Burnham deliver a future that works? With Rupert Read and Clive Lewis MP
As we (and everyone else) predicted a whole month ago in episode #341, Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election for Labour and is going to be the next Prime Minister. So now the question is one we ask on …
Notes de l’épisode
As we (and everyone else) predicted a whole month ago in episode #341, Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election for Labour and is going to be the next Prime Minister. So now the question is one we ask on this podcast all the time - how can we bring power to those with wisdom and wisdom to those with power? Specifically, how can he deliver a future that repairs the ruptures within our national and international culture in a time frame that works while in the face of biophysical collapse and the onward march of the political wing of predatory capital?In today's bonus episode, we're delighted to joined again by Rupert Read, Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, and newly, by Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South to explore the potential of this pivotal moment. We recorded on one of the hottest days of one of the hottest years in human history with the El Niño effect due to ramp up considerably in the next 12-18 months. We're at a moment of geopolitical instability engineered by the hard-right (although here in the UK we have the summer silly-season comedy interlude of Nigel Farage deciding to charge the taxpayer for an unnecessary by-election and finding himself opposed primarily by man wearing a bin on his head. Link here for non UK listeners who may find this somewhat confusing).
That apart, what do we who care about a future we'd be proud to leave behind really want from our politicians?
At this stage, there's all to hope for, so we talked to two deeply thoughtful, motivated people who spend all of their time working for exactly this future, thinking about how we get from where we are to a place that offers hope to future generations - and who are capable of talking eloquently, in detail - and wisely about the steps we can take to walk us through from where we are, to where we need to be. This is Thrutopian Politics in action. Enjoy!
LinksClive's Website
Climate Majority Project
Compass
Recent Compass report on Progressive Politics—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Healthy People=Healthy Planet=Healthy Future with Dr Amanda d'Almeida of Medicine Explained
How do we create healthy people, intimately enmeshed in a healthy biosphere so that, together, we can co-create routes to a healthy future? Health is such an astonishingly polarised and polarising field …
Notes de l’épisode
How do we create healthy people, intimately enmeshed in a healthy biosphere so that, together, we can co-create routes to a healthy future?
Health is such an astonishingly polarised and polarising field: everyone has their triggers and there's not a whole lot of self-regulation when they've been activated. But there are some truly astonishing people out there who are fully on board with the concept that late stage capitalism is at the heart of our ills and that regeneration of our connections is the key to building health in all its senses.Amanda d'Almeida is one of these - a truly remarkable woman. She's a family medicine doctor by training, and for most of us, going through a medical degree takes all that we've got. For Amanda, not so much. While studying medicine, she also read for a Masters in Public Health - and wrote her thesis on the role of Regenerative Agriculture in community health. At the same time, she and her partner set up Medicine Explained on Instagram and TikTok, with the intent of sharing accessible information as widely as possible - their social media accounts have 1.6 million followers, so by any measure, we could say that's succeeding. She co-founded and hosts The Nuance: a community health podcast exploring the nuance lost in today's discourse and centering narratives often not represented in media. The focus is on social and community medicine topics, specifically highlighting the intersection of human and planetary health including environmental and climate justice.
She also co-founded the climate health co-op because she and her partner had been asked during multiple conferences to consult with folks on how to create engaging media, and instead created a community of healthcare professionals, artists, storytellers, professors, organizers, community members, activists, humans on this earth who are dedicated to advance climate justice, environmental justice, and health equity through multimedia content production to shift narratives and create real-world impact from social media and beyond.
All the way through, she has partnered with and followed the leadership of community-based organizations, supporting research and advocacy to work towards a more beautiful, healthy, and just world.And now, at the age of thirty one, Amanda has completed her Fellowship in Community Medicine. She's about to take a very well deserved 2 months off, but just ahead of going away, we sat down for this conversation. If you want reasons to hope, Amanda d'Almeida offers them in spades.
Please note that all these views are Amanda's own and not the view of her employer. This is not medical advice.
Links
Medicine Explained on TikTok
Medicine Explained on Instagram
Amanda on LinkedIn
The Climate Health Co-op on Instagram
The Nuance: A Healthy Podcast
Creators to Watch
Book: Celebrate your PeriodLyla June's Paper 'Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Regenerative Food and Land Management Systems'
NYC OffTech
The Nap Ministry: Rest is Resistance
Interrupting Criminalization
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Podcasters Unite! Thinking about systemic change with Tim Logan, Nathalie Nahai, Amit Paul, and Manda Scott
How do we think about systemic change? Specifically, how do four podcasters who spend their entire lives thinking about this think about systemic change - what it is and how we get there? Tim Logan of Future …
Notes de l’épisode
How do we think about systemic change? Specifically, how do four podcasters who spend their entire lives thinking about this think about systemic change - what it is and how we get there?
Tim Logan of Future Learning Design podcast convened a conversation with Nathalie Nahai of her eponymous In Conversation podcast, Amit Paul of the World of Wisdom podcast.
So you can know them better,
Amit Paul is a former popstar and CEO of green chemicals company Paxymer AB turned systems dancer. No, he's co-founder of Innrwrks and host of World of Wisdom podcast, exploring how business can create a future we want for our kids. Amit hosts explorative conversations, facilitates group work and advices and supports companies navigating the current ecological, social and technological paradigm shifts.
Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.Tim Logan is an education leader, connector and facilitator. Bringing his extensive learning from a global career in youth work, teaching, school leadership and consultancy, Tim has worked with prominent clients around the world to develop new and innovative approaches to learning, well-being and youth engagement. Most recently, on behalf of International Baccalaureate, Tim co-created Festival of Hope with Jennifer Bahrami, which is growing as part of a broader portfolio of IB youth initiatives. Tim is also host/producer of the Future Learning Design podcast.
And together, we are Podcasters United, at least for this episode - exploring systems change, what it means and how we can bring it about at scale and in time. Enjoy!—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Design for the Ineffable: Crafting a Flourishing world with Dr Jenna Mikus
How do we encourage human flourishing? How, in fact, do we make the thriving of all 8 billion humans and the More than Human World central to all that we are and do? It's a core tenet of this podcast, that if …
Notes de l’épisode
How do we encourage human flourishing? How, in fact, do we make the thriving of all 8 billion humans and the More than Human World central to all that we are and do? It's a core tenet of this podcast, that if each of us were able to discover what's ours to do - and, more importantly, to be - and were supported in the inter-becoming that would arise from bringing the best of ourselves to the table…we'd be well on the way to the transformation we need to get us through the pinch points of the climate, cultural and technological apocalypses that are heading our way.
So in today's episode, we're talking with someone who crosses many disciplines in search of eudaimonia - the concept of human flourishing, of 'finding our best self' proposed by Plato and expanded by Aristotle. Dr Jenna Mikus is an engineer and architect by training, and is now a consultant and strategic advisor who specialises in balancing architectural science with wellbeing science to promote flourishing health and wellbeing by design across a wide range of environments.
As you'll hear, she did her PhD during lockdown in the ways it might be possible to help elderly people find meaning and purpose - in scientific terms, to attain self determination - in their lives. And now she is an academic and consultant who acts as an ideas "alchemist," helping companies curate environments & experiences for eudaimonia to support optimal health and wellbeing, precipitate ineffable emotions like delight & awe, promote meaning, inspire creativity, & catalyse belonging, and innovate. She's founder of the Eauda-Group and helped found the 'Flourishing by Design' (FxD) community of practice affiliated with Harvard's Human Flourishing Network.
In a world where those who accumulate wealth are increasingly leaning towards mass extinction as if it were somehow going to be useful, it's so refreshing to explore the ways we can be differently human. Enjoy!
Jenna on LinkedIn
Jenna on Google Scholar
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'BECOMING A GOOD ANCESTOR' which will run on Sunday 13th September 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
The Art of the Sacred with Sylvie Barbier of Second Renaissance and Life Itself
"We are a collective of artists making art to bring forth the second renaissance.We are alchemists. We create a new world through our work.We are the bridge between the dying past and the future unborn.Art is …
Notes de l’épisode
"We are a collective of artists making art to bring forth the second renaissance.
We are alchemists. We create a new world through our work.
We are the bridge between the dying past and the future unborn.
Art is an expression of our consciousness and humanity, this is our path of transformation.
Life as an art.
…
Our work is to create a space to be with all of it. To be with the joy, the darkness, the hope, the sadness, the unknown.Our work is to inquire about what would a world that works for everyone look like?"
Thus begins the Manifesto on Art in the Second Renaissance, and this week we speak with its author, Sylvie Barbier, a French-Taiwanese performance artist whose work is some of the most powerfully raw, wild and beautiful I have ever seen. As well as being an artist and mother, she's an entrepreneur and educator and one of the two co-founders of Life Itself, which is designed to build a wiser future through culture, space and community.The Life Itself website says, 'We are pragmatic utopians, committed to practical action for a radically wiser, weller world. We create conscious coliving hubs, start businesses, do research and engage in activism to pioneer a wiser culture and plant the seeds of a second renaissance.'
The Second Renaissance is an initiative of Life Itself which acknowledges that we live in a moment of potential crisis and collective rebirth and offers a home to the growing community of people who are working to make this rebirth happen.
Sylvie is an artist of extraordinary scope and depth and so the role of art in that rebirth is the focus of this episode, but we ranged far and deep into the nature of healing our shadows so that we can heal the ancestral and descendant lines, so that we can become the ancestors our descendants are proud of; we explored the nature of ritual in building new beginnings and helping endings; as we did with the Brother from nearby Plum Village, we explored the nature of life and death and how we can meet our own deaths with grace and joy and hope. Above all, we explored how we can fall in love with living - with life itself - so that we might lay strong foundations for real transformation.
And before we leap into our conversation, I want to remind you that there's an Accidental Gods online Gathering 'Walking the Path of the Inner Warrior' on Sunday 28th June - which is this coming Sunday if you're listening on or near launch day - 4pm - 8pm, on Zoom - we'll be exploring many of the ideas that we talk about in this episode, but anchoring them in your own life's experience. This follows on from our Gathering on Falling in Love with life, which, as Sylvie says in the podcast, is the key to working with our shadows. You don't have to have done that - if you're new to our work, we'll make sure you have secure grounding, but if you have been to other Gatherings, we'll build on the work we've already done this year. So - hope to see you there and then, and now, enjoy....
LinksSylvie's website
Life Itself
Second Renaissance
Second Renaissance Manifesto
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Mothering the Future we'd be proud to leave behind - with author and activist Zineb Mouhyi
"I have come to believe something that sounds simple and is anything but: if Mothering were the axis around which we revolved, we would liberate the world. By Mothering I do not mean the biological act of …
Notes de l’épisode
"I have come to believe something that sounds simple and is anything but: if Mothering were the axis around which we revolved, we would liberate the world. By Mothering I do not mean the biological act of giving birth, or the domestic role that has been used to confine us. I mean the practice – available to all people, in all bodies – of tending to life with full presence: protecting it, nourishing it, teaching it to know itself, trusting it."
These are the words of our guest this week, mother, writer, scholar and activist: Zineb Mouhyi in her forthcoming book series, on 'Mothering Liberation'. She defines mothering as the everyday politics - available to all people in all bodies - of tending to life and making every child ours. The book series will be made of three books. The first on mothering ourselves, the second on mothering our children, and the third on mothering the world.
Zineb has been an advocate for social change through education, notably through the charitable organizations she co-founded — YouthxYouth & the Weaving Lab — and through her PhD research on the role of education in the Palestinian liberation struggle. I've been privileged to read the early chapters of her books as she is writing them (a courageous act in its own right) and can safely say that this is one of those life-changing works that could move us all to the collective tipping point we need. At a time when the world feels increasingly unstable, making a commitment to the flourishing of all life is central to the way forward. Enjoy!
Links
Zineb's website
Zineb on LinkedIn
Episode #141 of Accidental Gods—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Grown Up Politics: A Chance for Change - Round Table with Neal Lawson of Compass and Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project
We're at a pivotal moment in world geopolitics. Increasingly the masks and the gloves are both off - but it's not a binary choice any more between two sets of suits in slightly different coloured ties: now we …
Notes de l’épisode
We're at a pivotal moment in world geopolitics. Increasingly the masks and the gloves are both off - but it's not a binary choice any more between two sets of suits in slightly different coloured ties: now we have the right showing its true colours - and a chance for the progressive majority in this country to find its feet and lead us towards a genuinely thoughtful, emotionally literate, high-bandwidth politics that ditches the toxic tribalism and instead lays the ground for a future that could actually work.
We're joined this week by Neal Lawson, co-founder and Executive Director of the progressive pressure group, Compass; and Rupert Read, Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project. Neal is a member of the Labour Party, and Rupert of the Green party and we came together to discuss the forthcoming by-election in Makerfield, where Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester is standing as a candidate, with a view to standing for leadership of the Labour Party if he wins. His main challenger is the Reform party led by Nigel Farage. The Greens are newly invigorated after their recent win in the Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester, so there has been a lot of conversation in progressive circles as to whether the Greens should step away to give Burnham a clear run. This seemed a good moment to have a vigorous conversation - to explore the possibilities and potential and the routes forward should Burnham win.
Compass
The Climate Majority Project
UK Government National Security Assessment on Global Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Collapse
Andy Burnham in the Observer committing to PR
Jamie Driscoll's post in The Canary - There's Nothing Pragmatic About Centrism
The Fraud by Paul Holden—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Breaking open the Story of Bread: How stories of food can change the future with Abby Rose of Farmerama
Good podcasts are part of an ecosystem of ideas that have the potential to change the world - to shift us into the new system we so badly need. For a long time, Farmerama Radio has been at the leading, radical …
Notes de l’épisode
Good podcasts are part of an ecosystem of ideas that have the potential to change the world - to shift us into the new system we so badly need. For a long time, Farmerama Radio has been at the leading, radical edge where food, farming and activism meet. In the early days, it was all about fostering the voices of grassroots, small-scale farming with monthly episodes featuring stories from the field. Then, in 2019, the co-founders, Abby Rose and Jo Barratt worked with Katie Revell to produce their first in-depth series Cereal, which looked at the process of creating bread, from seed to loaf.
It was a huge hit, and building off the success of Cereal – which won two Guild of Food Writers Awards – they went on to produce several more series, including their most downloaded, Landed, a powerful exploration of land ownership and colonial legacy in Scotland.In April of this year, Farmerama launched a new project Cereal Revisited, looking at the real-world impact of their podcast, and how Farmerama's stories helped listeners take action, both big and small. This is a story of Thrutopia in action and we are really delighted to welcome one of the co-founders, Abby Rose to this podcast.
Abby continues to lead the podcast today (the team is all women) and is both a farmer and soil health advocate. She was named one of 50 New Radicals by The Guardian and Nesta in 2018 for her work developing simple apps that help build ecology, profitability and beauty on farms around the world, and then in 2020, she was named in Code Hospitality’s Top 100 Influential Women in Hospitality. Farmerama Radio itself was named Best Investigative Work and Best Food Podcast at the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2020 and won Best Environment and Natural World podcast at the Independent Podcast Awards 2024.
So for a story that really gets to the heart of the power of story, please do listen and enjoy.
Links
Farmerama website
Farmerama Radio podcast on Apple Podcasts
Wakelyns Farm in Suffolk
Nottingham Mill Co-op
Hodmedod's
YQ Grain at Hodmedod's
UK Grain Lab—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Trust like the Web (of Life) trusts - Biomimicry for Social Innovation with Toby Herzlich
Life has been evolving on our planet for the past 3.8 billion years. The ecosystems that thrive now have had a lot of practice at getting things right - particularly the complex web of inter-relations that …
Notes de l’épisode
Life has been evolving on our planet for the past 3.8 billion years. The ecosystems that thrive now have had a lot of practice at getting things right - particularly the complex web of inter-relations that allows us all to flourish. And yet, we're on the edge of the sixth mass extinction largely because we humans have forgotten how to inter-relate and inter-be with the rest of the web of life. At an intellectual level, we know we're integral nodes in the web, but we still behave as if it were other, and out there and not - yet - as if it were a source of wisdom and wonder and wholehearted support: an ancient mentor that has tried and tested enough options to know what works.
So how can we bring the astonishing, creative insights of Biomimicry to the field of human inter-being? How can we shift our sense of self and other, our communities of place, purpose and passion, our businesses, our governance structures…everything that we are and do onto a different trajectory using the web of life as our template? Biomimicry for Social Innovation asks exactly these questions and in this episode, we're talking to its founder, Toby Herzlich.
Toby is a facilitator, trainer, executive coach, and organizational consultant. She is a Certified Biomimicry Specialist and Founder of Biomimicry for Social Innovation, which exists to translate ecosystem intelligence and Life’s Principles into leadership and social change strategies. As you'll hear, she's part of the team that developed The Nature of Trust, and its 8-principle framework for building and maintaining trust, which is so essential in any network of sovereign individuals whether they're bees, or penguins, elks or geese - or people.
Living in northern New Mexico, Toby dedicated 20 years as a Senior Trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute and continues to support leaders and organizations through coaching and consulting inspired by nature. Her clients include Executives at National Geographic Society, The Sierra Club, and The Cultural Conservancy. She is passionate about creating innovative approaches to collaboration, building, and guiding diverse networks including the Biomimicry Professional Certification two-year training cohorts, the Volgeneau Climate Initiative, North Carolina’s statewide progressive voter network, and the Indigenous Mycelium Gathering of 2025 - there's a link in the show notes and you will definitely want to explore that.
Toby is the founding co-facilitator of the Living Systems Leadership Retreats for Women and has supported the capacity-building of women leaders in war-torn countries of the Balkans and the Middle East.
There are so many richly inspiring pathways that Toby has opened as a result of bringing a social change and leadership development branch into Biomimicry - collaborating deeply with that larger movement and, at heart and core, with the Web of Life. This was one of those conversations that could have gone on forever. It didn't, we stopped at a reasonable time and are definitely planning to cycle back with each other. And the cats visited—Toby's and mine—which always makes a podcast flow with extra energy. Enjoy!
The Nature of Trust toolkit (free and online)
Living Systems Leadership Retreat for Women- in NM Aug 31-Sept 5 - open for registration!
Intro to Biomimicry for Social Innovation - virtual 4-week workshop, starts in October
Nature of Trust Co-Lab - virtual 10-week deep dive training, starts in September
Toby on LinkedIn (funny, when I open this, it asks me to join LinkedIn, rather than taking me to the page)
What would Nature Do? Toby's Talk at Festival of Faiths (27 min video)
Indigenous Mycelium Gathering 2025 (8 min video)Other BSI resources:
Life’s Principles Leadership Cards - a deck of 52 cards for learning and Nature Tarot!
Nature Positive Practices - delivering Nature’s genius to your inbox twice a week!
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. The next Foundation Course is in October and currently has spaces.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Thoughts from the Edge: Manda explores Thrutopian narratives, the building of intent and the paths to a future we'd be proud to leave behind
What are Thrutopian stories and why do we need them? How do they work? And most importantly, how can we craft them to land most effectively with ourselves and each other at scale and in time? In this solo …
Notes de l’épisode
What are Thrutopian stories and why do we need them? How do they work? And most importantly, how can we craft them to land most effectively with ourselves and each other at scale and in time?
In this solo episode, Manda walks us through the middle way between the dystopia of now, towards the utopia of a future in which humanity flourishes as an integral part of a thriving planet. What could it and would it be like if each of us woke up every morning feeling safe, feeling confident in our ability to meet the challenges of the day in ways that would leave the world a better place? How would we feel if every moment of life was alive with a sense of meaning and purpose, of connection to all parts of ourselves, each other and the web of life?
We ask these questions regularly of our guests, but once in a while, it's useful to unpick them in detail, to give ourselves the Motivation, Agency, Direction and Empowerment we need, so we can open doors for others in our communities of place, purpose and passion.
Link to the Thrutopia website - what is Thrutopian thinking?
—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'WALKING THE PATH OF THE INNER WARRIOR' which will run on Sunday 28th June 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
Playing the (New) Money Game - how to recreate sustainable money with Stef Kuypers of Happonomy
If the death cult of predatory capitalism is based on money as the commodification of suffering (which it is) - how do we create a monetary system that encourages people to help each other, to create …
Notes de l’épisode
If the death cult of predatory capitalism is based on money as the commodification of suffering (which it is) - how do we create a monetary system that encourages people to help each other, to create communities of place, purpose and passion that are genuinely supportive and to invest where trust and hope lead, rather than simply the hoarding of ever-increasing amounts of value?
Stef Kuypers is an astonishing individual. He taught himself coding at age 14 and moved into a career in IT - but he's a complete polymath and, after working the fields of creative thinking, improvisation, and business interventions, he took a deep dive into economics, monetary systems, complexity theory and human behaviour. Today he researches how monetary systems influence both our individual behavior and how it affects the way we organize our society. He's creator of the Sustainable Money Model and works for Happonomy in Belgium.
He's also aware that we don't just need a system that will work differently, we need to find ways to help people transcend the inner blocks that tell us the existing system is the only one that can work and anything else is unrealistic. So, as an avid gamer online and on tabletops, he's devised board games that help people to experience what it's like to live in worlds that work differently. And if you or anyone listening is associated with any kinds of games companies, please let us know - because regenerative gaming that models regenerative ways of living has to be one of the ways forward.
That apart, we explored many routes to money and how we might handle it differently - enjoy!
Links
Stef on LinkedIn
Stef's Tedx Antwerp Talk
Stef's Tedx Youth Talk
Stef on Economy 2.0Papers on ResearchGate.net
Paper on the Sustainable Money Model
Paper on Computational Analysis of post-keynesian monetary systems
Paper on decoupling economic health from growth—About Accidental Gods—
We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing MasterclassOur next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'FALLING IN LOVE WITH LIFE' which will run on Sunday 17th May 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.
If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life.
If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here.
If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls. Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.
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