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#195 Spiritual Activism: Permaculture of land, heart and people with Maddy Harland
Permaculture is so much more than simply a way to connect people to the land and the growing of food: it’s a way we can bring all of ourselves to the project of total systemic change: our minds, bodies, spirits, hearts – and the practicality of what we do.
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#194 This Mighty Heart: exploring the power of Heart Intelligence with Scilla Elworthy
We all know that we need to reconnect to our Heart Minds and to bring our Heart Intelligence up to meet the explosion of left brain intelligence – we just don’t know how to do it. This week’s guest is one of my living heroes – who does have clear, grounded ideas of how to do this.
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#193 Giving Birth to an Alien Intelligence: AI – existential risk or integral part of the solution? With Daniel Thorson
Is AI really an existential risk to humanity (and the biosphere) or can we harness it to be a power for good?
Are Large Language Models likely to subvert our children? Is Generalised AI going to wipe out all life on the planet? I don’t know the answers to these. It may be that nobody knows, but this week’s guest was my go-to when I needed someone with total integrity to help unravel one of the most existential crises of our time, to lay it out as simply as we can without losing the essence of complexity, to help us see the worst cases – and their likelihood – and the best cases, and then to navigate a route past the first and onto the second.
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#192 Walk Deep, Walk true, and Listen to your Dreams: wordsmithing the human spirit with Abigail Morgan Prout
If language creates reality, then those with the skill to balance words on the knife edge of meaning are the leading edge of our new creation. Award-winning poet, Abigail Morgan Prout, shares her work, her relationships and her life in service to the change we need to be in the world.
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#191 A Green New Deal that works for people and planet with Max Ajl
What would a genuinely progressive, regenerative Green New Deal look like if it took into account he well-being of all life on the planet? We discuss the options with Max Ajl, author of A People’s Green New Deal.
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#190 Becoming a Stag Beetle! Living the Interspecies Treaty of Finsbury Park with Ruth Catlow
How does it feel really to step into the feet (or roots, or wings) of other species, to speak on their behalf, to negotiate with humans for a better world?
A shorter bonus episode continues the conversation Manda has with Ruth Catlow this week. You can find the play link for this on the episode page below.
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#189 Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse with Gaya Herrington
What does it take to avoid global collapse? Is there still time? And if so, what are the societal, social, cultural and goal-oriented changes that we need to make to get there? This week’s guest is one of the new generation of super-thinkers who have the capacity, individually and collectively, to bring into being that better future our hearts know is possible.
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#188 Exploding the Myth of a Farm Free Future (and fake meat!) with Chris Smaje
How do we make the case for a fully ecological farming system, that can feed all of us, while restoring the bio-sphere and providing affordable, nutritious food. How can we become a good keystone species – and what does that mean? This second episode with Chris Smaje, explores his new book, Saying No to a Farm Free Future: The Case for an Ecological Food System and against Manufactured Foods.
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#187 Psychedelics: the key to evolution or (yet more) big Pharma hype? With Dr Ros Watts of ACER Integration
Are Medicine Plants a key to our progress as a species? Can they help overcome the mental health crisis in one quick fix? Or is it – as it seems – far more complex than this? With Dr Ros Watts of ACER Integration
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#Bonus: Summer Solstice meditation with Manda Scott
It’s the summer solstice, the longest day and the shortest night. What matters now in our world is that we reconnect with the rhythms of the living web. This meditation is designed to help you connect to the rising sun on this day of longest light. As with all meditations, please find a safe, quiet place where you can be completely undisturbed for the duration of the meditation – and a short while afterwards.
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This version of the summer solstice meditation has periods of silence in which you can explore your own feelings and observe the focus of your awareness.
This version of meditation has birdsong overlaid so there is no silence.
This version of the summer solstice meditation has periods of silence in which you can explore your own feelings and observe the focus of your awareness.
This version of meditation has birdsong overlaid so there is no silence.
#186 Manda’s Summer Solstice roundup of books, podcasts and life
At the halfway point of the year, Manda looks back on what’s been on the podcast, forward at (some of) what’s to come, thoughts on where we’re at as a world, and explores the books and podcasts that have stood out in the past six months.
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#185 The Sacred Depths of Nature: exploring the interface of science, spirituality and religion with Ursula Goodenough
How do we merge the best of science with an earth-based spirituality that focuses our attention on the thriving of the web of life?
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#184 Reality Check: Less Quantity, More Quality – part 4 of our series with Simon Michaux
What does the world look like in 2050 if we make good choices now? We decided to put this episode out now as a bonus because Simon shares some ideas he hasn’t spoken about anywhere else…
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#183 Lifeboats and Volcanoes: part 3 of our series with Simon Michaux
If we’re using too much power, how much do we need? And how much can we reasonably expect to produce in the near term as we phase out fossil fuels? What will our energy infrastructure look like and what are our options?
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#182 Primary Strategy: Growing a new voting paradigm in the South Devon Primary
How do we introduce genuine democracy to our broken voting system? South Devon Primary group have an idea that could change everything.
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#181 No More Fairy Stories: Writing the way through, one tale at a time with Denise Baden
We know we have most of the answers to the poly crisis. Our challenge is getting them into the mainstream. And that means we need to understand what works when we craft our new narratives of how the world could look and feel.
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EPISODES 166-180
#180 Meeting the Ocean: Rekindling our deepest connections through art and science with Markus Reymann
How do we bring artists, scientists, policy makers, educators, conservationists, journalists, and all the different siloed tribes together in ways that let them genuinely communicate and listen to the web of life?
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#179 Proudly Mad: exploring mental health and the climate emergency with Charlie Herztog Young
How did one man make the shift from Not wanting to live in this world, to refusing to live in this world? Manda and Charlie discuss the interface between mental health, the climate emergency and what we now call eco-anxiety (but which needs a rather stronger name than that implies).
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Bonus: Building Tomorrow – Painting 2050 if we get things right, with Patrick Le Flufy
What does our world look and feel like in 2050 if we make all the good choices now? Paddy and I recorded a brief 15 minute bonus of how the world could look if we actually employed all the strategies in Building Tomorrow – so sit back, soak it in – and then let’s make it happen…
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#178 Building Tomorrow: Practical steps to a new economic system with Paddy Le Flufy
At last! Six economic, business and structural technologies which, if we put them all together, would completely restructure our culture towards a regenerative future.
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#177 Building Bridges to the Future with Cat Tully of the School of International Futures
How can we bridge the space between where we are now and the systems, structures and practices we need to give us the best chance of a generative future?
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#176 Bridging from the Necessary to the Possible with Emily Harris of Dark Matter Labs
If the present system is broken – and is in fact the heart of the meta-crisis – how can we transform peacefully to something that will work to create the future we’d want to leave behind?
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#175 Drawing Humanity out of the Cave with Dr Simon Michaux (part 2 of a series)
Exploring the first of Michaux’ hierarchy of post-Carbon needs: Power – how are we going to power our civilisation as we ramp down fossil fuels?
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#174 The Fine Art of Huddles: multiplying our potential by the power of our peers with Zahra Davidson of Huddlecraft
How can we begin to shift away from the old hierarchical dominance structures of our past 2,000 years, towards something where everyone brings the best of themselves and embraces and celebrates the best in other people?
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#Bonus – Exploring the banking crash with Grace Rachmany, in which I ask all the questions I never asked before…
All you ever wanted to know about banks, crashes, the weaknesses in the predatory capital system and quite how completely we’re being lied to.
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#173 Meshworks of Being: Building Community on the DAO with Grace Rachmany of Priceless DAO
We know that the future is based on Community. What we lack are practical routes to creating communities of community on a worldwide scale – ones that can form and will be resilient enough to survive.
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#172 Dancing with the Muppets of Cutthroat Island: Transforming Industry to create a genuine Green Revolution – part 1 of a series with Dr Simon Michaux
How much actual stuff do we have in the world compared to what we need to make the ‘Green Revolution’ happen? And how do we adjust our lives so that we can create the infrastructure we’ll need to take us to a post-carbon future?
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#171 Reasons to be Sheepful: from wedding shawls to burial shrouds with Yuli Somme of Bellacouche
Sheep have had a bad press recently, With Yuli Somme, we bring them back to centre stage, celebrating their place in our living biosphere.
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#170 Technology for a future that works with Cory Feco of the DOI Foundation
What does our future look like when it works? How can we harness the power of the Web 3.0 in service to a flourishing future? With Cory Feco of the DOI Foundation, who is embedded in just these questions.
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#169 Be Kind, Be Useful, Create Giants in the Sky: transforming community with Alan Lane of Slung Low
How can we bring hope and agency and a sense of awe and wonder back into a world that feels perpetually on the verge of breakdown? Alan Lane and the team at the Slung Low theatre company are embedded in the culture and creativity of one of the most deprived areas in the nation – and are utterly committed to bringing magic into their world.
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#168 One Planet Living: Mapping Minds to create a new emergent Consciousness, with Pooran Desai, OBE.
Linear thinking got us into this mess – how can we engage all the tools of modern technology to help us think more freely, creatively and systemically in service to a more flexible future.
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#167 Saving Chocolate! and finding solutions to the meta crisis with Nicola Peel
We are in a global meta-crisis and need global solutions – but how do we find them in a world where everyone exists in political, economic or business silos? Nicola Peel is a ‘Solutionist’, dedicated to finding answers to exactly these questions – and then creating change in the world.
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#166 Living in a Post-Carbon, Post-Capital, Post Urban world – with Chris Smaje, author of A Small Farm Future
What does our post-carbon, post urban, post-industrial future look like and how do we get there in ways that allow the current and future generations of life on this planet to flourish?
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