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In the last few years I’ve been recording DJ mixes at particular moments in the Earth cycle and putting them out on the podcast - Earth sessions - they are a way for me to mark the season, the moment in the year and how it makes me feel and how it makes me want to move through electronic and dance music. This is a new one. A live mix to honour this darker time of the year, and the darker times unfolding on Spaceship Earth. Recorded in my kitchen on a Friday night after a long walk in the woods. I wanted to start slow and ambient, to acknowledge the slower liminal space of winter and gradually pick up the pace. This was a mix of vinyl and digital - spanning 30 years of releases. From ambient electronica, early rave inspired house, breakbeat, melodic techno, tech house and some progressive bits. Respect to all the artists and producers for these sonic offerings. I hope the mix moves you in some way Movement, dancing and connection is a way through these unravelling darker times. We must stay together. Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

Right then, this is our final episode of this year. But first up to say a big hearty thank you to all who have listened, shared and supported the podcast this year. To all the guests who’ve joined the rambling - respect for your time, wisdom and open-ness. And to my podcast crew who help make this a reality - Charlie Shread, Seemah Nahome-Burgess and Fin Burgess. And a massive shout out to those who subscribe with a monthly payment to this project. So to Episode 113… My guest, Sam Crosby, is an oral storyteller and myth-informed guide whose work braids together story, psyche, ancestry, eldership and the living Earth. This episode was recorded around the fire at Ghost Wood Down - two men sitting in the half-light, speaking honestly about what it is to search for meaning in a world that feels increasingly senseless. Across two hours we wandered, wondered, and returned again and again to the mythic ground beneath our feet - the place modernity keeps trying to concrete over. But there were core themes and patterns we were carrying throughout: 1. Myth as orientation, not entertainment Myth isn’t a story about long ago - it’s a technology for staying human in ambiguous, unraveling times. We kept returning to myth as a compass when the rational mind fails. 2. Eldership vs.“Oldership” A core wound: we’ve lost the adults who know how to hold the whole. Modernity extends lifespans but not wisdom.Sam goes deep into the distinction between age and elderhood - and the hunger for guidance that can hold complexity without collapsing into certainty. 3. The mythic roots of the AI moment What if the crisis with AI is not technological — it is mythic.Humanity is generating intelligence way faster than it is generating wisdom. Our conversation suggests AI as a kind of mirror, revealing our disconnection from story, meaning and long arcs of time. 4. The crisis beneath the crisis: meaninglessness What makes these times unbearable is not the data - it’s the absence of orientation. Sam repeatedly speaks to the human need for story, ritual and shared containers of meaning. 5. Rites of Passage & thresholds One of our deepest shared passions: Cultures that lack thresholds create perpetual adolescence.This is why the absence of elders is so severe — there is no one to midwife beginnings or endings. 6. Stories as living beings Sam treats stories as alive, with their own agency. This shifts storytelling from performance to participation - a relational act where story chooses the teller and carrier. 7. The danger of speed & the loss of the underworld Modernity has flattened the vertical dimensions of being -no descent, no soul work, no underworld, no mysteries. We point toward slowness, ambiguity, and unknowing as necessary conditions for true wisdom to spread. Sam is a wonderful human who speaks beautifully with great humility, courage, and imagination, and is doing really extraordinary work, especially the project on rekindling cultures of eldership, which we speak to at length here and I link to in the show notes below. LINK Sam’s work Eldership Manifesto Into the Dark from Becomin Crew- Register by 9th January Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

This is a short share about a winter learning journey we are hosting for the 4th year- Into the Dark It begins on the evening of 20th January 2026, registration is open until 9th January. Into the dark invites us to enter a container over five weeks, to co-create our orientation and intentionality for the year ahead in community - human and more-than-human. It's a deep, gentle, experiential  journey.   Creating space for connection, contemplation and creative practice,  exploring parts of ourselves and the Earth, and ways of knowing that modernity doesn't allow us to attend to.  Its an invitation to actively reject the urge to accelerate into productivity and growth as the year begins . To dwell instead with attention and intention in this darker, slower time. Unfolding over 3 consecutive weeks, peaking with a threshold walk, a self paced, powerful ancient ritual on land near you with a follow up incorporation session a week later. A time to plant vital seeds for the year ahead. As the light begins to return. Into the dark is guided by Dan Burgess, Ally Kingston and Mark Sears. Full details and how to register via link  Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

This Episode is a live panel recording. If you’re a regular listener you may know about a bio-regional regeneration project called We Are Avon - in the Avon River Valley in the West of England where I live. EP 98 and EP 102 have both featured the project. In the last few years I’ve been putting more intention, time and energy into projects rooted into the lands around me where I live. A big part of that is a deep knowing that the future is local. It’s how the operating system of life works on Spaceship Earth. I’ve come to learn that nature doesn’t commute. Nor does it scale exponentially. As our global civilisation with its extractive foundations rooted in a living Earth is rapidly find out. Life is inherently local. Local participation is fundamental to weaving a regenerative universe as Bucky Fuller once observed. We Are Avon is a grassroots movement for bio-regional regeneration rooted in the River Avon catchment. Our intention is to regenerate the valley ‘from the river out’, weaving a culture of care that empowers communities, farmers, creatives and wider stakeholders in becoming active stewards of land and water and participating in River Guardianship at a bio-regional scale. We have been convening community gatherings every three months to connect, share and hold space for co-creation - with our current focus on recruiting and establishing River Guardian groups along the river. For our last gathering in November I invited a panel of guests to help us zoom out and explore a wider theme of ‘listening to the river’: Intentionally making space to consider how we might collectively practice de-centering the human, tempering the urge to rush in and ‘fix’ To make time for listening, observing and sensing the more than human as an integral part of regenerative and bio-regional practice. I hosted three amazing women: Scientist, author and Explorer Dr Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, Ph.D. Writer, campaigner and river wife Meg Avon Sound Artist and Anthropologist Louise Romain All three with very different stories and approaches to listening, noticing and sensing the more than human. This is a recording of that panel, where we gathered upstairs at our friends Finisterre Bath store. Anyway I hope you enjoy this one, and receive something, and if you do please let us know, and share with someone else who might appreciate it. If you’d like to get involved with We Are Avon follow the links below LINKS We Are Avon We Are Avon Instagram We Are Avon WhatsApp Community Mrs Meg Avon Dr Rosa Vasquez Espinoza Louise Romain Into the Dark - Becoming Crew Winter Learning Adventure Meander Magazine Tjin Tjoelkler Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What if music isn’t just entertainment, but a remembering? A returning. A way back into the felt sense of being part of nature, not apart from nature. In this intuitive, playful, open and wide-ranging conversation, I sit down with Sophia Shnapp - an impact producer working with organisations like EarthPercent - the Music Industry’s Climate and Nature Foundation alongside the Wisdom Keepers Delegation and Futr Earth. Sophia works at the intersection of culture, music and systemic change but that doesn’t quite capture the essence of how she moves. She’s a pollinator. A bridge-being. A shape-shifter between worlds: From the dancefloor and the woodland, through policy rooms and prayer circles, within the music industry and the more-than-human world. Sophia is a proper Earthling,  culture lover and movement maker  She’s guided by deep purpose, and the power of music to awaken hearts, spark change, and remind us we all belong to this great big living Spaceship we call Earth. This was an insightful, honest, creative conversation that often led to us to riffing imaginatively on what could be and I really respect Sophia’s willingness to dance with complexity, nuance and contradiction. We spoke about music as something that wakes us up again, not just emotionally but somatically, in the body: How a bassline can regulate a room. How a melody can remind us we still have a heart. How a festival, a choir, or a dancefloor becomes a temporary village - teaching us something about belonging we didn’t know we were missing. Together, we explore: 🌬️ Music as a gateway into feeling, intuition and interconnection. 🌿 Nature as origin story - how childhoods shaped by land root the work we do today. 🎧 Culture as systems change - what happens when artists, activists and elders collaborate. 🔥 Fear, endings and uncertainty - and how feeling is not weakness but medicine. 🌀 Rites of passage & the 4 Ds - dance, drums, deprivation, and the “drug” of altered states ✨ Imagination as infrastructure - how new worlds begin inside conversations like this Sophia asked: What if music is one of the ways the Earth is trying to get our attention back? That question has stayed with me. Sometimes conversations I have on this podcast are like doorways and this one felt like that - a shared stepping-through into a wider field of possibility. It opened up space for imagining what could be and that in my opinion is vital exploration for these times. It’s an episode that wanders beautifully - honest, mischievous, open-hearted. I really enjoyed this one, I hope you do too if you give it a listen. And if you do please let us know what it brings up for you. And please give it a share to someone else who might appreciate it. This is how we grow together, through reciprocity and entanglement. Becoming Crew on Spaceship Earth. LINKS Sophia Shnapp Instagram Earth Percent Wisdom Keepers Delegation Into the Dark - 5 Week Winter Learning Journey from Becoming Crew Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What does it mean to be a man - alive, tender and creative - in these unravelling times? In this meandering, vulnerable and playful conversation, I sit down with Mark De’Lisser - poet, artist, youth mentor, and nature-based guide. Mark is a friend and collaborator, part of the Becoming Crew action learning collective, guiding people through deep connection experiences and rites of passage on the land. Together we explore: 🌳 Masculinity reimagined - strength and vulnerability as inseparable forces. 🌦️ Fear, loss, and love - how grief becomes medicine when we stay with it. 🪶 Creativity as survival - poetry, play and performance as acts of healing. 🔥 Guiding young men - the courage, chaos and beauty of holding space for the next generation. 🌍 Reconnection and Renewal - finding belonging again in community and with the living Earth. The episode also celebrates the launch of Mark’s debut poetry collection, Ashes to the Breeze - a tender, elemental offering that speaks of renewal, grief and the power of blooming again after loss. And Marks shares some of those poems here. This is a conversation about men learning to feel in fearful times, about friendship as ceremony and about listening - really listening - to the living Earth that still holds us. I really hope you receive something through this and if you do, please consider sharing with someone else, posting on your socials, or leaving a reflection on the substack. It is through reciprocity that we grow together. Peace and Out Dan LINKS Buy Ashes to the Breeze via Waterstones Buy Ashes to the Breeze via Bookshop Mark De’Lisser site Into the Dark - 5 week winter adventure -Becoming Crew registration Becoming Fridays - Becoming Crew one day on the land Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

How can we learn to dance with complexity, contradiction, grief, beauty, uncertainty, horror and surprise without abandoning the dance-floor ? Dancing feels like an interesting invitational metaphor to me for these times It invites us into the body and out of our stuck heads. It invites us into presence and relationship with life in the moment, To be present with our bodies, with each other, with other life forms It’s movement, spontaneity, flow, expression, vibe, response, Response-ability. Dancing is aliveness. And we need alive-ness. To break the numbness. So on that, I offer a new Earth Sessions mix: Autumnism For this season of letting go. An hour of tunes, that have been moving me of late and that capture for me the feels of this season - the endings, the abundance, the darkness, the joy, the mystery. I hope they move you in some way. Tracklisting here And if you struggle with dancing, it could well be our deep patriarchal programming - you know the voice - ‘I can’t dance’ I offer some words I heard a wise man once say about letting yourself go on the dancefloor… ‘No one’s looking at you and no one gives a f**k’ So stay awake to what is happening, what is ending, what needs to end and tend to what needs to begin. Look around you, find the thing that speaks to you, find the others and get stuck in. Love and care at the centre. And try to stay curious with the trouble, the discomfort. Do not abandon the dance-floorREPEAT: Do not leave the dance-floor of life. As Nena and WestBam said… ‘We are the future, that’s the past We are the moment built to last We are the up, that’s the down We wear the newschool engine crown’ Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

🎧 Listening Invitation What does it mean to practice democracy not just with people, but with rivers, forests, mountains, and the more-than-human world? In this episode, I’m in conversation with Shrishtee Bajpai—researcher, activist, and writer working on earthy governance, interspecies justice, and radical alternatives to dominant systems. Shrishtee’s work emerges from her deep relationship with the river she grew up alongside in North India—one of the most polluted rivers in the world. That grief and love have shaped her life’s path: exploring how communities can co-create governance with rivers, mountains, and forests, and what it means to truly listen to the more-than-human world. We speak about: * 🌊 Collapse and continuity: why collapse is not just arriving but has long been lived in the Global South. * 🐝 Earthy governance: how communities take decisions in dialogue with forests, deities, bees, and rivers. * 🌳 Radical democracy: power rooted in place, not just parliaments. * 💔 Absurdities of modernity: the schizophrenia of cultures that worship rivers as goddesses while polluting them. * 👂 The invitation: how we might awaken our collective capacity to listen to the more-than-human world. Shrishtee reminds us: democracy is not only about human voices—it’s about rivers, mountains, winds, and creatures who have always spoken, if only we slow down to hear. Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What does it mean to live—and act—when the dominant stories of our time are collapsing? This conversation with Jon Alexander was recorded in July on the land at Ghostwood Down, just before he set out on an overnight solo. It is raw, intimate, unplanned—full of the wild energy of two men wrestling with collapse and possibility in equal measure. Jon, author of Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything Is All of Us, co-founder of the New Citizenship Project, and long-time mischief-maker of beautiful change, has spent years helping communities and movements remember that all of us are smarter than any of us. But in this fire-side exchange, the themes stretch beyond politics or strategy. We talk of: 🌑 The collapse of the “consumer story” and the dangerous rise of authoritarian certainty 🌱 The emergent “citizen story” rooted in participation, connection, and response-ability ⚡ Dancing with panic, grief, and rage without leaving the dance floor 🌳 Ceremony, community, and even oaks as companions in uncertain times 🔥 How to become fully available—to the work, to the world, to each other It’s an honest, vulnerable exploration of how to stay human, relational, and creative amid breakdown. And it feels even more urgent now, as violence, oppression and absurdity intensify around us. Links Jon Alexander Overnight Community Solo Autumn Equinox Weekend Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What happens when we step away from the noise of modernity and sit quietly with the land, with our dreams, with each other? In this intimate conversation, Dan speaks with Betsy Perluss—esteemed elder, Wilderness Guide with the School of Lost Borders, Jungian analyst, and psychotherapist. Betsy has spent decades guiding people into the wild, into themselves, and into the shared spaces where land and psyche weave together. Supporting people into deep relationship with Earth and soul, through solo time on the land and the ancient practice of council. Together we explore how these deceptively simple practices—fasting alone under the sky, listening deeply in circle, paying attention to the more-than-human and tuning into our dreams—can shift our orientation to life in profound ways. This is a conversation about mystery, grief, presence, and the possibility that wisdom is always already available… if we learn how to listen. How do we learn to listen differently — to land, to mystery, to each other? We talk about the practice of solo time on the land—sitting out, fasting, letting Earth be both mirror and teacher. And we talk about council—an ancient, simple, radical practice of listening and being listened into deeper presence. These are quietly revolutionary practices. They offer ways of being that modernity can’t commodify or quantify—ways that remind us we belong. The conversation also opens into dreams, the unseen, and the deep mystery that enfolds every life. Betsy reminds us that paying attention to mystery may offer more than all the technologies and rational maps we’ve been taught to rely on. This episode is not about solutions. It’s about presence. It’s about remembering that the land is always speaking, that our dreams carry wisdom, and that listening together can be its own kind of healing. Themes We Move Through 🌲 Solo time on the land as a mirror and guide 🪶 Council as a way of listening each other into deeper being 🌌 Dreams and the unseen as teachers 🌀 What modernity blinds us to—and what becomes possible when we remember otherwise 💙 Crew questions: what it means to belong, to serve, to stay awake together 🌐 Guest: Betsy Perluss * Wilderness Guide, Jungian Analyst, and Psychotherapist * Long-time teacher with the School of Lost Borders If you’re interested in experiencing these practices, Becoming Crew Collective are hosting a final Community Solo, a weekend on the land including fire circles, council and a fully guided overnight nature solo at Ghostwood Down, Nr Bath - 19-21st September - full info here Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What does it take to reforest a country that’s forgotten its forests? In this grounded and wide-ranging conversation, I sit down with surfer, grower, and land-restorer Matt Smith—co-founder and CEO of the Hometree charity in Ireland. A lifelong wave-rider turned regenerative farmer, and landscape rewilder, Matt has poured his vision and determination into one of the most ambitious rewilding efforts on the island. But this isn’t just a story of saplings and success.It’s a story of tension—between aliveness and economy, vision and system. Together we explore: 🌊 The courage it takes to ride both waves and grief 🌱 How regeneration must be cultural as much as ecological 🪵 The challenge of convincing farmers to plant trees—even now, even here 💸 The heartbreak of realising that money still speaks louder than the land 🎭 The role of artists and storytellers in restoring relationship to place This episode asks: Can we grow forests from love rather than incentives? Can we compost the logics of modernity while still living inside them? It doesn’t offer easy answers. But it does offer soil, surf, and story.Listen for the entanglement, not the solution. Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What if the maps we’ve been using to make sense of the world…are no longer capable of guiding us? What if the future no longer works ? In this immersive audio essay, I’m taking you on a spiralling journey through the unraveling terrain of modernity. Naming the deep violence coded into its dominant logics, and inviting us to compost the spoiled maps that have brought us to this moment of planetary crisis. From Gaza to the dance floor, from ocean devastation to AI-fuelled destruction, this is a raw, heartfelt, and unflinching exploration through grief, complicity, beauty, and the possibility of regeneration. It’s not tidy. It’s not performative. It’s not hopeful in the superficial sense. But it is deeply alive. A sonic rambling. More like a sonic compost heap. One for the headphones. 🌿 Themes We Move Through: 🗺️ Spoiled maps and violent logics of modernity 💣 Silence, complicity, and the normalisation of harm 🌊 Ocean destruction and the illusion of human separation 🎧 Capitalism on the dance floor: from music to militarisation 🔥 Response-ability and composting grief into action 💙 A Rebellion of the Heart, and remembering the operating system of life I hope you receive something here, if you do please do share with a friend and consider subscribing to help support the costs of creating these offerings. Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

What does it mean to act — not out of certainty, but out of grief and relational sensing ? In this quietly powerful episode, Dan sits on the land with Gavin Fernie-Jones, co-founder of the Re-Action Collective, to explore how deep connection to place, the loss of his father, and the visible unraveling of mountain ecologies catalysed a life of collective action. From ski lifts to community sewing tables, this conversation moves across the terrain of: 🌄 Mountains as memory and mirror 🔥 The palpable grief of witnessing climate collapse in beloved places 🧵 How one collective is patching, repairing, and repurposing not just outdoor gear—but the culture of disposability 🌀 Why experimental, humble, decentralised alternatives already exist—quietly flourishing beneath the capitalist noise ❤️‍🩹 Grief as a portal into purpose, and what becomes possible when we stop waiting for permission Gav and the Re-Action Collective (now 70+ organisations strong) aren’t waiting for top-down transformation. They’re making the future by hand, with care, and in kinship. This episode invites you not just to listen—but to feel.Feel the grief. Feel the land. Feel the possibility of living otherwise. 🔗 More about Re-Action: https://re-action-collective.org/ https://www.actionism.space/ Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

Greetings to the Summer Solstice Here in the Northern Hemisphere The sun is at peak power These next days are the longest Until we begin the gentle swing back towards darker times. This morning my fellow guide Mark Sears sent me this poem from Persian Poet and Mystic - Hafiz which I shared on our call. The Sun Never Says Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.” Look what happens with A love like that, It lights the Whole Sky. Hafiz ______________________________ These are words that speak to the generosity of the sun This extraordinary mysterious being of light and energy. Because without the sun we do not exist. No life exists. And so we are all therefore - Children of the Sun And that generosity runs deep in our embodied code. It’s within us.And so I am re-minded again and again. That perhaps it’s as simple as Re-membering what is already there. I’ve been contemplating the sun much of this week Enjoying the warmth on my skin but also aware of the searing heat that I’m experiencing in these days and what that triggers… Noticing the abundance of plants and insects on the land around me and the vegetables and fruit in my garden which are thriving this year. Noticing how the wild waters on the lands that I walk are running slower and slower. I made a new Earth Sessions mix as an offering to honour the Solstice. I’ve included tracks spanning 35 years, a few that were mainstays in my record box back in the late 90's. In the company of some more recent beauties. Big love to the artists, producers and creators of these sonic gifts. Full tracklist on site. This is a 120/122 bpm groove. For honouring the Sun, love, life, grief and joy of being alive on Spaceship Earth right now. And the possibility of dancing our ways into more beautiful and peaceful futures. A big summer salute to the cuckoos of Dartmoor who also appear in the intro. How are you tuning into this moment in the Earth cycle? Solstice blessings to you, hope you are finding some peace Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

New episode 102 - this is an audio adventure featuring a live panel conversation from the launch of new bio-regional project We Are Avon and musings from a Pilgrimage along the River Avon herself in the last week. Across the UK more and more communities are engaging with the deteriorating health of their local rivers and wild waters. From cold water swimmers, fishermen to local food growers, conservationists, nature lovers, artists, storytellers, writers and community activists there is a growing understanding that the health of the rivers reflects the health of our societies. There is also a growing awareness that the rivers and wild waters of our lands are the arteries that lead to the ocean, the great blue heart of Spaceship Earth. In the last couple of years I’ve been participating in the birth of a Bio-Regional project called We Are Avon (WAA) here in my hometown of Bath. We Are Avon is an emergence of a place-based movement for regeneration in the UK. It aims to act upon the interwoven crises of river pollution, climate change and food insecurity. Led by the people, a diverse web of communities, regenerators, farmers and projects who collaborate to regenerate. A grassroots movement to provide food resilience for the region whilst also regenerating the communities, landscapes and watersheds of the catchment area beginning from the local level with river and land in this Avon valley. Centering food, river and land as powerful anchors for reconnecting people to place, this project aims to re-identify humans as 'regenerators’, as active participants in service to the climate and nature crisis we collectively face. After a year of visioning and development, We Are Avon has launched its first crowd-funder to formalise and activate a number of community engagement projects This episode conversation was recorded live at the start of April to mark the crowfunder, and a whole range of community engagement invitations over the coming months. The session was themed around sharing hope and vision for a regenerative future in the Avon bioregion, and this panel represented River, Land, Food and Community movements in the local area with guests - poet and activist Meg Avon from Save Our Avon, Charlotte Sawyer, Director of award winning feature river doc which is blowing up right now Rave on for the Avon, and Hamish Evans, regenerative farmer, prefigurative activist from Middleground Growers who has been the lead instigator for the WAA project and myself as host. This is a conversation for anyone interested in the health and futures of our land, river and local ecosystems. For those curious about river and environmental action, community led responses to the climate crisis and different and more creative ways to get involved in bringing life back to the places we call home. But really it’s a conversation about relationships between humans, communities and the more than human world around us with a focus here on rivers. The episode also contains ‘messages from the Avon’, daily musings from a River Avon pilgrimage of the last week to mark the crowdfunder launch , as well as some song from Elpha Perkins If we are to grow true regenerative movements, then engaging communities around rivers and weaving new regenerative cultures from the bottom up will be essential. Links Support the Crowdfunder We Are Avon site We Are Avon instagram Rave on for the Avon film Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe