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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 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 and has served as an adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University in the Master of Conflict Management and Dispute Resolution program, the Master of Leadership and Negotiation at Bay Path University, and the College of Innovation and Design at Texas A&M Commerce. 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 LinkThe Matriarch EffectThe Workplace Peace InstituteDr 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

"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 SFVMichael general Substack Michael on LinkedIn Michael on YouTube Environmental Law Foundation  Elinor 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 - 1Foyle, C. and Shepherd, E. (2023). Why have the volume housebuilders been so profitable? Glasgow: UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 2Carmona, M., Alwarea, A., Giordano, V., Gusseinova, A. and Olaleye, F. (2021). A Housing Design Audit for England. [online] London WC1: UCL Place Alliance. Available New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 3Transport for New Homes (2025). In search of the station ... What is being built in 2025?New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 4 Letwin, 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

"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 websiteDoubt, Hope, Action - buy from the publisherThe Tomorrow CollectiveUffe 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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!. Linkshttps://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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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 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?  LinksLove, Anger and Betrayal websiteJonathan's website Jonathan's short film about the book Better Coalition —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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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 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 websiteGrace on LinkedInDecentralized Identify FoundationGrace 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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 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 WebsiteEarth Talk Climate Museum UKPossitopia 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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 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 LinkedInRemzi on SubstackCreditism 1Creditism 2Creditism 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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 ProjectSilent Majorities Sub-stackSilent 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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 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. Links Nathalie's website Nathalie's podcast BooksBusiness UnusualWebs of Influence Papal Encyclical on AINathalie's Resources of wonderful people already in this space PEOPLE 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/wakanyihoffmanZak 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 TaylorArtificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines - Sherry TurkleEmpire of AI - Karen HaoCareless People - Sarah Wynn WilliamsStories of Your Life and Others - Ted ChiangThe Future - Naomi AldermanEnshittification - 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.

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! Links Clive's WebsiteClimate Majority Project CompassRecent 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 Masterclass Our 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 here Manda 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.