#269 Radical Creativity: creating a Global Council of Women with Jenny Grettve of EIT Culture and Creativity
How can we bring wisdom to those with power and power to those with wisdom? If we were to step into elder hood and bring the best of ourselves to the table, could we create governance structures that would help to heal our cultural divides, create equity and guide is wisely through the coming crisis?
Jenny Grettve believes we can and has set up a global council to make this happen.
Jenny is a good friend of the podcast. She joined us in episode #228 to talk about designing and building a school along Doughnut economic lines and then again in episode #249 to talk about the evolution of a Mothering Economy based on the values of compassion and care for future generations. Jenny is an author, philosopher, systems thinker and designer, author of several books, most recently the Mothering Economy that we talked about the last time we met. Then, she was leading WhenWhen, a new feminist design agency that creates system demonstrators to test ideas generated by global researchers working with the climate crisis and sustainable life. She was still working there last November when Donald Trump managed to take the US Presidency again.
Amidst all the shock and horror of that moment, I saw a post Jenny put up on LinkedIn, proposing the creation of a Global Council of Women as a way to bring forward the values that our world needs at this moment of total transformation. I signed up on the spot and then asked Jenny to come and talk to us about it, so that the idea might spread in the Accidental Gods spheres. And then as I was doing the reading for this episode, I found that Jenny had started the year in a new post – that she is now Head of Transformation at a European Council funded organisation called EIT – that’s European Innovation and Technology – Culture and Creativity. Which means Jenny is now taking the wisdom of creativity right into the heart of the bureaucracy that sustains the super organism, at least in the EU.
So here we are, considering the nature of wisdom and elder hood, how we might overcome the gender divides that so assail us in service to life – and how to bring creative ideas deep into the heart of machine. Please know that the Council is not only for women – the first meeting is exploring whole, healthy masculinity and how it can be prioritised in this world. Which feels like such an integral part of our thinking now. So please do join – the link is below.

In Conversation
Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods, which is a membership and a podcast created in the belief that another world is still possible and that if we all work together, there is still time to lay the foundations for a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. We believe that this will take both inner work to heal our relationships to ourselves, each other, and the web of life, which is what the membership exists to help you with. And outer work, connecting to others who are already dancing at the emergent edge of inter-becoming change, already making the changes that we need to be in the world, so that we can talk to each other, make mistakes together, grow and learn together, and be the foundation for a world where humanity thrives as part of a flourishing ecosphere, as integral Conscious nodes in the web of life. So each week here on the podcast, we are talking to the people that we believe are part of this movement. And this week’s guest, Jenny Grettve, is a very good friend of the podcast. She joined us in episode number 228 to talk about designing and building a school along doughnut economic lines.
Manda: And then she came back a few months later in episode 249, to talk about the evolution of a mothering economy, based on the values of compassion and care for future generations. Jenny is an author, a philosopher, a systems thinker, and designer. She has written several books, most recently The Mothering Economy, that we talked about the last time we met. Then she was leading When!When! A new feminist design agency that creates system demonstrators to test ideas generated by global researchers working with the climate crisis and working towards a sustainable life. She was still working there last November, when Donald Trump managed to take the US presidency again. And amidst all the shock and horror of that moment, I saw a post that Jenny put up on LinkedIn, where she proposed the creation of a Global Council of Women, as a way to bring forward the values that our world needs at this moment of total transformation. I signed up on the spot and then asked Jenny to come and talk to us about it, so that we could spread the idea to you and to all the people that you know. And then, as I was doing the reading for this episode, I found that Jenny has a new job.
Manda: She started this year as head of transformation at a European Council funded organisation called EIT. That’s European Innovation and Technology. And this is EIT Culture and creativity. So she is head of transformation, bringing the wisdom of creativity right into the heart of the bureaucracy that sustains the superorganism, at least in the EU. So here we are, she and I, considering the nature of wisdom and elderhood. How we might overcome the gender divides that so assail us, and do so in service to life. How to bring creative ideas deep into the heart of the machine. And please know that the council is not only for women. The first meeting is happening soon and is exploring how to build whole, healthy masculinity and how it can be prioritised in this world here and now. Which feels like such an integral and necessary part of our thinking. So please do join the Women Council (the link is below). And in the meantime, people of the podcast please welcome Jenny Grettve, Head of Transformation at EIT Culture and Creativity.
Manda: Welcome, Jenny, to the Accidental Gods podcast. Happy new year! How are you and where are you this fine January morning?
Jenny: Hi. Yeah. Well Happy New Year as well. I actually love New Years. I think it’s a new start. You can close the book and you open your next chapter or a new book, even if you want to. So very much into New Year’s. But I’m good. I’m as usual in my office in Malmo in Sweden, yeah, feeling energised. I had a great few weeks off, actually.
Manda: Oh that’s good. So you recharged your batteries?
Jenny: I did.
Manda: Grand. And Sweden’s used to it being cold. What temperature is it in Sweden? Just so I don’t feel quite so bad that it’s minus something out here.
Jenny: No, I think we have more or less the same Manda. I think it’s around zero. Foggy, a bit rainy, damp, dark.
Manda: Okay. I’ll stop having strange feelings about…it got to minus eight here at the weekend and I wasn’t here, and realising that if the AMOC switches off, we’ll be at -40 potentially. We’re at the same latitude as Moscow. And we’re not quite set up for that here, whereas I guess in Sweden you’re pipes in and your sewage out don’t freeze solid for the entire winter. So you’re going to be teaching us a lot.
Jenny: No, but I mean, homes and infrastructure has always been made for cold weather. I grew up in much colder weather than what we have right now. Parts of me miss that.
Manda: Yeah, I remember Norwegian friends saying it. We never get to -25 and it was really, really nice.
Jenny: Yeah.
Manda: So let’s stop catastrophizing, because hey, there’s still time to turn the bus from the edge of the cliff. So you’re doing so much at the moment and so much that’s alive and bright and amazing. What is most alive for you as we start 2025?
Jenny: I’m moving into really interesting new spaces. So for many years I’ve been working, you know, with changing systems, transforming societies, but from bottom up, like working hands on, on the ground, with small minor projects. Giving myself the freedom to be quite radical, pushing a lot of thoughts and ideas that have been important to me, but also to people around me or to settings where I’ve been. But now I’ve just started a new role as head of transformation for EIT Culture and Creativity, which is super, super exciting. So I’m moving myself from like the ground up, until the very top of governance and structures. And moving systems, but at a completely different scale, which I think for me personally is going to be a massive learning curve, but also it’s going to be interesting to see how these two worlds meet, because I think we need to work at different scales at the same time.
Manda: Right, yes, absolutely. Bottom up and top down. So tell us a little bit more about EIT and then about what you can and will do within it. First of all, this is based in Brussels I guess? But you’re still in Malmo so you’re distance working or are you travelling a lot?
Jenny: No I will be working from Malmo, but travel. But the EIT is the European Innovation and technology innovation hub more or less. So it’s spread out all over Europe with different hubs. But there are also different EIT sections. So there’s EIT mobility, there’s an EIT for energy. So this new one, culture and creativity, just started a few years ago. It’s also a structure that is being built, organised, designed as we go as well. Like what’s the meaning of this? What are the goals and visions? And I think it also says something about society as well, how we now look at creativity, for example. How that a few years ago or 10 or 20 years ago was not maybe seen as important as so many other sectors. So it gives me a little bit of hope.
Manda: Yes. So you’re a systems thinker and now you’re in the system of EU bureaucracy. And I’m bringing to mind Amitav Ghosh who said we will blame politicians and bureaucrats, but actually we should blame the creatives. Because it’s not the job of politicians and bureaucrats to imagine different futures; that’s the job of creatives. And now you are bringing creativity into the world of politicians and bureaucrats. And I’m interested, from a creative point of view and from a systemic point of view, of are you amongst people who understand, first of all, that the current system is doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is destroy the planet? And it’s not fit for purpose, if that purpose is the continuation of complex life on Earth. Do they understand that? Or are you amongst people who still think that, you know, if we make enough electricity from windmills and recycle our plastic a bit better, then the world will be fine and they can continue to wear suits and Rolex watches. Where do they sit on the understanding that we need total systemic change?
Jenny: It’s a discussion I’ve had with a lot of people. Like, do we place ourselves within our enemies, or people that think differently than us? Or do we stay where we feel, you know, safe or grounded or where we believe we’re making a big impact by also being 100% ourselves? And I don’t see this as black and white. And I think it’s super important for radical people to place themselves within these big machines as well. And then, you know, keep constructing and building from the inside. For me personally, right now, I’m super, super lucky because I have a director who is absolutely brilliant, wonderful. And I also have another colleague, and they’re both Italian women. And I think the three of us, we’re creating a beautiful, interesting group within this larger machine as well. So I think there’s so much work to be done at so many different levels. I see this as a 3D vision. And yeah, I could have stayed doing my own thing in my own design studio with 100% freedom and knowing that I’m standing up to what I believe in, but it’s not that simple.
Manda: Sure. Yes. And if you’re going to affect change, we need to look at the levers of change. And Donella Meadows wrote it out really carefully that tweaking little bits at the bottom, lovely though that might be, what we need to create actual change is to change the paradigm. And I think I would look also at levers of effective change within the existing structure. And that means if you could get creativity to be a thing, for thing for people to actually feel it inside; the people who make the legislation could make a big difference. And I’m thinking of Rob Hopkins, who long ago said that predatory capitalism is a disimagination machine. And so you’re in the heart of Moloch, really, of the superorganism. And you’ve got a good team. How within your team do you see creativity? What does it feel like to you?
Jenny: I mean, I just started last week, so it’s new.
Manda: All right! Well, bring whatever you can to that question.
Jenny: It’s been a week here, so, I mean, we can have another dialogue in maybe, let’s say, a year. I’m sure I can tell you much more. So what I will say now is only what I’m hoping or what what my intentions would be. But it’s just as you’re saying; I believe in creativity and I think creativity for me is not only what we tend to think of, like designers, art, for example. You can be enormously creative as a politician or running a business or a CEO or a bus driver or in so many different areas. And I think for society to transform, we need that creativity everywhere. And also a creativity that is filled with imaginations, visions; creativity filled with hope, creativity filled with the knowledge that whatever you do, it’s important. I mean, there’s so many ways of looking at creativity in this perspective. So that’s what I’m hoping to bring in and see how do we implement that? How do we share it? How do we spread this type of work? Where can we put in levers that actually are really important within the EU?
Manda: Brilliant. Gosh, so many directions we could go. So we exist in a state where it’s easier to imagine the extinction of life on Earth than it is to imagine the end of the capital system. And what will allow us to change that is the creative imagination of the future that we want to get to. I am accepting you’ve only been here for a week, so these are early conversations. Do you feel that they are anticipating that you will be able to open doors, or able to help people around you open doors to a future that feels and works differently? Do you think that’s part of what they see as your remit, and is it part of what you see as your remit? It sounds like it is.
Jenny: Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, as I just said, this brilliant group of people that have already worked on this for a couple of years. I think it’s exactly what they’re trying to do. Creating these platforms where creativity can be much more important for society in general. How are we relating to each other and what can what can creativity do for this transformation? That also needs to happen very, very fast. And how is it linking science, business, economy, life, meaning, existentialism, hope, education? I mean, there’s so many. It’s like this big pot of, possibilities if you add in creativity.
Manda: Yeah. And the EU has vast resources basically of money and people. And if they were to pour everything into envisioning a different future. I have this dream where the entire world, all 8.5 billion of us, wake up tomorrow and decide that we want clean water, clean air, clean soil, clean heart connections. As in clean being open and generous and generative, not necessarily that we’re not getting our hands into the soil. And if we all decided that was our priority, then we would harness all our creativity to make it happen and predatory capitalism would be over by the day after. So we’re in an imaginal crisis, not a scientific or mechanical or even a political crisis, I would suggest. When we set this podcast up, because I seem to have a six month lead time, which is probably not clever. But anyway, it was filling in a gap, because Donald Trump had just been elected. We were all in that strange, energetic shock. I’ve never experienced that with a political result before. I was pretty unhappy when Corbyn didn’t get in in 2017, but nothing like this. This felt existential. And you posted on LinkedIn the concept of a global council of women as being a way forward that wasn’t countering, we weren’t othering. It was just guys we need elderhood, and we need elderhood that knows, understands, heart connection. And it was so inspiring. And it was that little spark of light in the few days where the world felt like basically the sky had fallen on our head. So can you open up that idea and tell us how you came to it and where it’s going, and anything else that you can tell us about it
Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we did talk then, months ago, but then again this week it feels so important still, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing that he believes we need more masculine and aggressive energies. And, yeah, there’s so many things going on in society.
Manda: Capitalism is too feminised. What world do you live in? But obviously they do actually inhabit a different reality than us.
Jenny: But the project, it’s an art project. And it’s something I’ve carried with me for many, many years. It’s the idea of accepting systems or not accepting them. And how do we relate to governance and to our ability to do something about what we feel is wrong. And our political systems, I would say almost globally they’re very old. They’re set up in structures that were constructed by men hundreds, thousands of years ago.
Manda: In the 19th century.
Jenny: Absolutely, yeah. And then I’ve been thinking like, why do we seem so inactive in trying to shape new systems and new structures of governance? I mean, we talk about changing systems, but we never really talk about changing how we look at governance at a larger scale. So I wanted to explore that and give myself a really free space of doing so and inviting others to be part of this. And by doing it as an artwork, I believe I give myself complete freedom. No one can tell me things are right or wrong or, you know, this is not scientifically anchored or this is not how it should look upon it, or you’re not a politician or you’re not an economist. I mean, by doing art, you’re free. So I launched this artwork, which is a website and a digital artwork, with a story about how I looked upon this, and then it’s now running during 2025 as a collaborative project, where I’ve invited others to join me and do workshops and write and meet up and have gatherings and, you know, explore together. And then by the end of the year, we’ll do something that could be an exhibition, or we will see where this will lead. And then we will showcase what we came up with. But my main idea is actually to make something quite concrete. Like if we would see a different type of council, this is how you build it, this is how it’s constructed, these are the bricks that you need to make this work.
Manda: Yes and this is how it works. And perhaps we’ve even tested it a little bit.
Jenny: Yeah, yeah.
Manda: Brilliant. So before we go any further, can you tell us the name of the website? I will put it in the show notes, but just so people can begin to hunt for it.
Jenny: Yes. So it’s womencouncil.world.
Manda: Yes. Brilliant.
Jenny: And also I mean the name Women Council, it’s really interesting because I don’t believe that women should take over, that’s not my stance. It’s not that I think like men had it for so many years, now it’s the women’s turn. But I do think that we if we need to go from a very patriarchal structure, maybe we need to talk about the absolute opposite, to then meet in the middle. So it could also be that this whole artwork is not going to be so much about the women council, but about a new council.
Manda: Yes. Okay. Because this is feeling very much a shift towards… So I am living in the frame of the trauma culture versus the initiation culture at the moment. And again, this isn’t binaries, but it’s acknowledging that our culture believes itself to be separate. Vanessa Andrioti’s indigenous grandfather in Brazil, said that the core trauma of colonialism was not the stealing of the land and the genocide. These are very, very traumatic, nobody’s suggesting that they’re not. But they were epiphenomena of the core trauma, which was the belief in separability in our culture. And that’s what’s cut us off for 10,000 years. We couldn’t do our form of agriculture that basically enslaves the land and everything that lives on it, if we knew ourselves to be fully connected to the web of life. So we have cut off. And the cutting off then allows the hierarchies and the dark triad of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism to rise to the top. And we’ve seen that. We are seeing that now around the world. Our existing structures are designed to lift up the worst of us. And what happens if we instead decide to try and design structures that lift up the best of us? And it seems to me that in our culture, that psychopathy, narcissism and power over is labelled patriarchal and is labelled male. And there are so many men that are not that, and there are some women who are that. We’re watching that politically as well.
Manda: We now have a woman who leads the Tory party who is absolutely part of that. And yet, if we were to know ourselves to not be separate from ourselves, each other and the web of life, that would be labelled ‘feminine’. And so it seems to me that we’re in that point of very, very urgently needing to heal our relationships with self other in the web of life. And if we label that feminine, then that’s how we label it, but once we’re less traumatised, we’ll probably call it something else. So again, this is early doors and we don’t know where it’s going. But what’s your feeling of the kind of systemic work that this is going to do? Because we can’t be in patriarchal hierarchies. You know, self-evidently they don’t work. So if we’re going to build a different kind of council, it’s going to work in a different way. Have you any sense already in the early stages of how that might evolve?
Jenny: No, and I think that was also like a core idea for me. It’s not up to me to dictate, and I even don’t want to think about it too much myself. Because who am I to say? I see this structure, I see this could be a way. Of course I have dreams or I mean I have wishes of what I would love to see, but I think the important thing here is what we believe together. How will this unfold and evolve during this year? I mean, as you’re saying, the hierarchy is triangles, for example; there’s always someone at the top. I don’t want to have that top person within this project.
Manda: And you don’t want to be that person at the top.
Jenny: And I don’t want to be that person myself either, no. And I don’t want to be the hidden that person either, because that’s also sometimes what you see in structures, even though you’re not.
Manda: Yes, somebody behind the scenes pulling all the strings.
Jenny: No. Exactly. So I’m more interested in hey, here’s an idea: I’ll throw it up here, let’s talk about it together, let’s work on it together. I’m not leading, I’m not the one holding this space, I’m just sharing it with you.
Manda: What kinds of people are gathering with you on this?
Jenny: It was so interesting. So I posted it on LinkedIn, and I said, do you want to be part of this? Please sign up. And within a couple of days, I had 100 people who had signed up on this, in this type forum that I did. And it was a limit. And I was like, I don’t know how many people I can handle here as well, because supporting a little bit with organising events and workshops and making sure that they’re there communicated to a much larger group as well is a big thing going on. So I’ve actually now had to get some help from others. So now it’s really not only me, we’re a group of people working with this together.
Manda: And bizarrely, the logistics is possibly something that AI could help with.
Jenny: I know, I know.
Manda: And do we want that? That’s a whole separate thing. Yeah, everybody that I know has very conflicted concepts about AI. I’m talking to the people in Sheffield who have the River Don project, where part of it they’ve got an AI from Audrey Tang that allows people to speak with the river in real time. The river is gathering all the data, the AI has access to all that data, and you can talk as if the AI were the river. And I think that’s giving the river personhood, long before we get a law that gives it personhood. But it’s also an AI, and you don’t know what are its underlying concepts and beliefs, and what’s it bringing forward that you don’t understand where it comes from? So yeah, that’s really scary.
Jenny: I’m struggling myself so much with these things, and I think it’s important to just say that you’re confused or, you know, stand up for that confusion. Because there’s so many people around me have stopped flying, have turned vegetarians or vegans, for example, but they’re still using AI. And that doesn’t make sense to me, because I mean if the carbon emissions are just as high as the flight industry, then who chooses? Like, can I say that I’m not going to fly, but I will use AI? I don’t know, it’s very, very confusing, super confusing times. And so I think the best thing we can do is not judge. And then, you know, maybe I won’t use AI, but I will keep flying a lot.
Manda: Yeah. Yes. Because we need total systemic change and I think as humans we like linear stuff of I’ll stop eating meat and then I’ve done my bit. And I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference last week, which is for people who aren’t in the UK, it’s a big regenerative farming conference. And I sat in on a panel on Micro Dairies, which was so interesting, super interesting. One lad who’d come to it because he said, I’m leasing the land, I don’t have any inherited land, my parents were not farmers and the way to make money is either big numbers or niche, and I couldn’t do the big numbers so I’m going niche. Which is calf and cow pasture fed, and people will pay me £2 per litre for the milk direct, rather than £0.30 that I would get from the supermarkets. And then the person next to him on the panel said I was vegan and I realised it wasn’t actually solving the problems because it’s impossible to be vegan and not be part of industrial farming. And so she set up a calf on cow, exactly the same. So she’s doing the same thing, and she was coming at it from a completely different internal framing, and yet they were getting to the same place. She sells raw milk £3.50 a litre and that way she can make a living with four cows.
Jenny: But I think for me right now, sorry for interrupting here, but for me, the most important thing that we should all do right now is to be honest. That even if I know that I’m not following whatever is asked of me to do, but here is why, or you know, this is my reasoning. Because I think we’re all tired of facades or not exactly being able to trust someone. Or do you sit in this panel to talk about this or what is it behind you? And that’s to me the core at the moment.
Manda: And then we hit up against so much of the ways that we connect with people are social media, and they seem to be designed to amplify bad faith. And if I’m going to be truthful and this is really interesting, I sat with the fire at the solstice and four hours of really being told: authenticity and integrity. And here, let’s look at the places where that might not be how you come to the world. And it was really sobering. And this is the same: be honest. Come from what is true for you now. And I remember decades ago where I first met my wife, Faith, the first thing the person leading this particular workshop said, he was quoting Gandhi, was: ‘God knows the truth. My truth changes from day to day. My commitment is to the truth, not to consistency’. And that became the watchword of our relationship and everything else. This is my truth for now. And sometimes just in speaking it, I can move past that. And so it might not be my truth five minutes from now, but it’s my truth now and here’s the reasoning. And I’m wondering, I saw something float past on blue Sky yesterday, because it and Mastodon are moderately safe, that Audrey Tang and others are really looking into how do we create social media that are not designed to amplify bad faith. Because otherwise the risk of being screamed at by people who genuinely think that their stance is right, because our limbic triggers are right on the surface, and we haven’t done the healing work to heal the traumas that lead to the triggers. I find it energetically very difficult. And I’m wondering, how are you finding it in the world where if you bring your truth to the table, how is it received?
Jenny: I think again, back to the women council and to politics and governance, I think that’s something we see everywhere right now. To be to be truthful and honest it’s hard and it’s painful and it’ll put you in a light that is not very comfortable at times. And the higher up in these hierarchies that we have, the harder it seems to be honest and truthful. But for me, to be honest, it’s not always easy. You’re putting your heart out at times or you’re putting out some thoughts that you might believe are maybe naive. Or that nine out of ten people in this room think different than me. It’s not easy to be honest in situations like that. So, back to systems, it’s of course connected then to personalities and who you are. And I’m a privileged white woman in a safe country. It’s maybe easier for me to be honest, talk my truth, than for someone else in another place. So yeah, it’s very complex. But I think as many of us as possible need to lean into this type of being and talking.
Manda: Right. And so two questions arising from that. First do you feel a moral responsibility to speak your truth because of the privilege? I’m assuming, yes, but also I am aware that I have multiple parts inside and there can be parts of me that have opposing concepts of the truth, and they clash inside. If I sit in a still place and watch them, it’s quite easy to end up with interesting dynamics inside. And the part that speaks, speaks one of those truths and there may be others. And it seems to me, again I’m thinking of Bill Plotkin’s work, of his concept that our culture, the trauma culture, is locked in early adolescence. So he defines four stages of any healed adult person, which is childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and elderhood. And that our entire culture is locked in early adolescence. And we see evidence of this in the politicians who are the ones who throw their toys out of the pram most violently and most effectively. And if that’s the case, then part of the Council of Women, it seems to me, is that we need people who are actually elders. And it’s quite possible for people to get to be 90 years old and still be toddlers, basically.
Manda: How do we help ourselves? We don’t have a culture where the elders support the adolescents through the rites of passage into adulthood, and then into elderhood. How do we self Elder? Or how do we support each other in actually growing into adulthood and elderhood? And it partly seems to me at the moment, and this is my truth for now and it might change by tomorrow; that being able to give voice to the various parts inside in a way that isn’t just a response to external triggers, and have that heard and let there be a good faith balance of those, is part of elderhood. And our entire cultural narrative is designed to not let that happen. So just creating the spaces where that level of ‘I don’t know, but here’s here’s a couple of options that arise inside me’; that feels really important. And I’m wondering, with 100 people that you’ve got and again, it’s only been a couple of months, are we heading towards that kind of conversation or is it going elsewhere?
Jenny: I mean, to start with, yes, I do feel that privileged people have an enormous responsibility. And that’s back to existentialism, too, you know; where you happen to be born, yes, it will give you different roles on this planet during your lifetime. That’s for me an absolute true story. That’s how it is and we need to accept that as well. So, yes, I can lead, I might need to wake up super early and work harder than others because that’s where I sit in this time. But then back to feelings, elders, who we are, how we behave, yeah absolutely. And in, Swedish society where I sit, we’ve lost the connection between generations. We constructed this system where everyone should be able to take care of themselves. So old people we place them in Homes, we have grown ups in their own households by themselves, you have kids in institutions. It’s a society completely disconnected. And if I just look at my own surrounding, the elders that I have around me are not necessarily the elders that I need, if that makes sense. I mean, if I read about indigenous cultures or other types of structures, where elders do have a really important role; that’s not what the old people in my life are contributing with right now. So it’s easy to say let’s just invite the elders. But they’re…
Manda: They’re not necessarily elders. Old doesn’t make you an Elder.
Jenny: Exactly. Many Swedish people grew up in a system where you were just completely capitalist, buying things, living your best life through the 70s, 80s, 90s. They have a mindset that is so, so, so off. So, yeah, it’s interesting thoughts. And I think maybe sometimes you can be 15 and behave like an elder, and you can be 75 and be like a five year old. Maybe it’s the the way of being wise.
Manda: Yes. Totally. Because a 78 year old five year old has just taken power in the States. You can be old and not being older, I think that’s a given. So what does being wise, how does that feel for you? And if people were listening and wanted to be wise, what would be steps to getting there? I think let’s unpick wisdom.
Jenny: Yeah. I just also just really want to go back to what you said before about this feeling of not like saying the right thing all the time, or like 100% true.
Manda: Speaking your truth
Jenny: Yeah, exactly. You know, no one is perfect. We all have weird sides and we learn something every single day. I think that’s super, super important to me, because sometimes if you talk about systems or changing societies or transforming, people talk as if they know everything. So I think it’s really important to go ‘I have no clue. This is just how I’m thinking right now.’ So as a reply, I think being wise is very much connected to, and this is a sad part of being human; trauma. I think pain creates wisdom inside of us. And I think a lot of people are afraid of pain. We push that away in society, we don’t want to be part of it, we don’t want to have it. Therefore, we’re also lacking in wisdom. And it’s how the planet is set up, or how life is set up. There is death. We will die. People you love will die. Plants will die. Animals suffer. I mean, there’s death, darkness, it’s part of our existence. But if we don’t want to embrace it and accept it or befriend it maybe even, you’re not going to become wise.
Manda: Right. Beautiful. One of my very, very early shamanic teachers said something to the effect of ‘the problem with your culture is that you will learn through pain until you learn to learn through love’. And I think it might be possible to learn through love, but our culture is not set up for that. And then there’s the kind of pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. But you have to work very hard at the suffering being optional. And even so I watch children in hospital tents being bombed and I think that that’s not optional. I’m sorry. I mean, yes, it’s optional, they shouldn’t be being bombed, but it’s very easy to talk about pain and suffering being optional until it’s really, really bad.
Jenny: I think the pain I’m after here is of course not wars for example. I mean, that to me is like completely off the chart of what I’m talking about here. I think it’s more the planetary pain, of life itself. Everything will die. And I think that’s the suffering and the pain that I’m referring to, rather than really idiotic human constructions of unnecessary pain.
Manda: Yes. Oh, that could take me down a hole. Let me think about it. There’s another avenue that that opens up for me, but I want to stay a little bit with working with pain, with embracing loss. Because we, now, this generation, the people alive now, we’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. And the understanding of the grief of that is huge. I was reading Ginie Servant-Miklos, who’s written an amazing book called Pedagogies of Collapse, and she teaches in the Netherlands. She gets these students who’ve done MBAs and economics, and they come into her class, which is about climate, and she explains where we’re actually at. And some of them can’t speak for several days because they are in such shock. And she then has to find ways to embrace and hold and allow them to process this, because they’ve stepped out of a class that’s telling them that GDP is still an important measure, and this is how you make it go up. And she’s explaining that the AMOC is about to switch off. And it’s as if it were in a different reality.
Manda: And then she helps them to become creative, because you can’t be creative when you’re in the shock of grief. And we started this conversation with the concept of creativity. And I am working in real time, putting creativity and wisdom in a space that can only arise when we are somehow able to soften the part of us that freezes with the shock of understanding where we’re at. Thomas Hubl talks a lot about trauma being a frozen moment in time, and we need to be able somehow to process in an ongoing way, the continuing, desperate grief at what’s happening and not let it freeze us, because wisdom doesn’t come out of frozenness. I’m thinking aloud at the moment, this is an emerging truth for me. And I’m just wondering how that lands and how in your role in the EU, how can you, maybe with the support of the Women’s Council, help both the truth to be a truth and wisdom and creativity to arise? Does that make sense as a question?
Jenny: Yeah. I’ve noticed so many people around me who are working within the same field, like looking at systems. And people around me globally, have been through some kind of mutual collective depression or grief or something over the last few years. And there was a moment, maybe one year ago, where almost every single person I reached out to who I had a meeting with was in a really, really bad space. Like going ‘I don’t know if I can continue. I don’t know how to live. I don’t know how to face my children’. People were in bed, just like sleeping, uh, like really, really bad. But then somehow now when we talk, we’re in a different space, and it’s a space with acceptance, maybe, that everything is really going down. We have no idea of what’s going to happen. We have science kind of giving us hints of this is what we’re about to see, but no one knows exactly. But we’ve landed in a space where at least I feel it myself and I see it within others; acceptance. And then in that acceptance comes a different type of strength or a different type of will to work with these thoughts and questions.
Jenny: I’ve often talked about humble anger. I still feel like I have my humble anger. There is a little bit of melancholy, but I’m also I’m also feeling joy in the work that I do and in what I’m seeing for myself in my own tunnel, maybe, uh, over the next few years and within my structure and where I’m working. And then sometimes I’m opening up to see what’s happening in the world, but it can also be so dark and so depressing that at the moment, I’m just trying to stay in this tunnel, which is quite beautiful. And I will, within the EU, for example, I will do whatever I can to incorporate other ways of being, other ways of looking at things, other ways of looking at transformation, societies, creativity. But somewhere I also know that it might not matter. It might not have the impact that would have been needed for things to shift properly. But I’ll do what I can.
Manda: Right. Which is all any of us can ever do. And I think if we ask the web of life, what do you need of me and stay still long enough to listen, then the answers do come through. I love the idea of humble anger. And it seems to me, there’s all kind of astrological stuff about 2025, but even so, again at the Oxford Real Farming Conference and in the networks that I’m in, there’s an odd sense of absolute horror watching the train wreck in real time in the States and listening to Musk, and then yesterday as we were recording Mark Zuckerman saying that capitalism was too feminised, which is honestly does very bad things to my head. And yet we need total systemic change. We needed the old system to break apart. And if Kamala Harris had been elected, much as I would have been so happy on every level for a not white, not old man to be elected; it probably isn’t the most important role in the world anymore, but it’s pretty important; it would have been amazing but the system would have carried on. But it was still neoliberalism. They were still exporting weapons to Israel. It wasn’t going to change, and it looks to me like they are going to move fast and break everything, and that’s going to be very bad. I spent nine months at Schumacher doing the regenerative economics and we were working every day at how do we get a soft landing from capitalism? And this is going to be the drop off a cliff, which we didn’t want. But the system needs to break. The system is not fit for purpose if that purpose is the continuation of complex life on Earth. And I’m wondering how and if you see it possible in the EU, which is another existing carapace of the Moloch, that there is anyone within the bureaucratic system who also shares this ‘okay, this is a moment where everything changes’. Is there that sense of we could build something out of this .
Jenny: Not as powerful as I would love to see it. But I have been for many years, I’m not going to say a big fan of the EU, but at least I’ve had more hopes for the work that the EU are doing compared to Sweden. For example, the Swedish government, who are completely off the track, and not doing enough work at all. Whereas I think and I hope that EU, I mean, they’re implementing harder regulations than the national governments sometimes want to see or what they’re doing. But that’s, again back to the women council, I mean I would love to see that council, I would love to see that governance structure that is firm, that dare to take these really, really, really hard decisions which will make people upset. Because we don’t see it. Everyone is asking for it, but we don’t see it.
Manda: Yes, everyone is asking for it, we don’t see it. It seems to me that we need a values shift. That we’re locked in the scarcity, separation and powerlessness that gives us a sense that there isn’t enough stuff, and it’s a zero sum game, and we have to get more and everybody else has to have less and people will be upset if we make the changes. We’ve seen it in France. Oxford Real Farming Conference was lovely, but it’s at the same time as the Oxford Farming Conference, which is industrial. And I walked up the road on, I think, Wednesday morning, and there was a row of about 50 tractors all blaring their horns right in the middle of Oxford, totally destroying the traffic. And you could feel the waves of rage flowing off. It takes quite a lot, I guess. When I drove to Devon the next day, I was behind a tractor for a while that had clearly driven up from Devon to Oxford to take part in this, whatever demonstration they thought they were proving. They’re really angry, and they’re angry because they’re being asked for tiny, tiny, tiny changes towards a more sustainable world. And they’re just going, no, I can’t do that. And we need the values shift first. If everybody woke up tomorrow and their priority was clean water, clean air, clean soil, clean connections, then industrial agriculture and war would need to end instantly. And all of the systemic change that arises out of that would arise. And if everybody wanted that, we wouldn’t have rows of raging tractors. And I wonder how we evolve the value shift. I’m guessing creative endeavour. And it has to be creative endeavour that reaches people’s hearts, that goes in past the limbic trigger and helps them to heal, I guess. Your thoughts on that?
Jenny: Yeah. But it’s again, back to the women council work. It’s also showing like, okay, if this is not working then what options do we have? I mean, in a dream world there would be 10 or 100 projects like the Women Council that are all exploring what different types of councils could look like. Because just taking an example in Sweden, we have so many people want to take the train instead of flying international. But we have really bad train lines and it’s super expensive to take the train. They’re always late and then the flight industry is super cheap to fly. And then they’re supported by the Swedish government, because people are not flying as much as they used to. So the whole flight industry, they’re challenged, and then they’re asking for this economic support, which they get. So there’s this mismatch of what people want and what they’re willing to sacrifice. I mean, people understand. We’re not stupid. Like we know what we want for our kids and for future generations. But it’s so weird the system right now, it’s like politicians are not listening to the humans they should be listening to. No, they’re listening to profits and business. And it’s so basic. I mean, even kids know this. Yet no one is really doing a revolution of, you know, let’s just go into the streets and just change this completely. It’s not happening.
Manda: Our images of revolutions are that they were always violent and actually we just had a different set of people in power. The actual way things were constructed, the principle of extract, consume, destroy, pollute didn’t change. So then it seems to me that the system is designed to perpetuate the system. We elect the people who will keep the system going because that’s what the system does. We need a new system really, really badly. And very likely we’re going to say we come back in a year to ask this question. But if I were to ask you now, how could we within the existing system, peacefully, because I really don’t believe that power over is part of the new paradigm; how would you, Jenny, help to get the people who have the wisdom into power. This is the thesis of Any Human Power. Power to those with wisdom and wisdom to those with power. It’s really hard giving wisdom to those with power, although it seems to me that’s what you’re doing in the EU, is trying to evoke wisdom in those with power. But we need to get power to the people who actually have the wisdom, the Women’s Council. Can you see a route to that? Because if we can’t see the route, we can’t make it happen
Jenny: This is what I’ve been working with within my own studio for many, many years. I was so frustrated by, you know, the talk only and not testing and doing and implementing and because people are so afraid of again, back to what we talked about, looking a little bit stupid, not know what you’re doing. Be a little bit naive. But I mean we need to dare to be in that space. But what I am hoping and which is absolutely possible, it’s to create groups, work with direct democracy, you know, various scales of groups. It can be five people, we can have 100 people, we can do it in a few different cities. But there’s so many projects going on like this. And in Malmo there was one last year, with a group of citizens doing a few different workshops, to work on what they wanted to change in the municipality. And then they wrote a report and they handed it to the municipality. To me, it cannot be more concrete than that. I mean, this is what we came up with. This is what we see. This is what we imagined. Here are the ideas. Do something with it.
Manda: And is the municipality doing something with it? That’s the question. Because that’s the problem. We can have all the ideas we like and they go, no, sorry, can’t do it.
Jenny: Exactly. But I mean, if you were asking what can we do within the system, well, that’s what we can do within the system. And then, of course, maybe there are things you could do outside of the system. But I mean, if we still need to behave and use the structures that we have, then that’s one idea
Manda: Yes. And then the question is how do we persuade the people who have the power to implement the ideas that are coming up from the grassroots. And either you change the people in power or you make it politically essential that they do that. And we’re back to shaping narratives.
Jenny: I’m not sure if we talked about this when we talked about the school, in Tomelilla here in Sweden that I was also creating. But I admire small villages and municipalities right now, because they seem to be the one who are actually leading so much of this work, because it’s, of course easier if you have only a few people within a municipality, to be brave, to listen to the whole community and to test these things. So I’m also hoping to be able to test ideas like the women council…
Manda: Right, at a local level.
Jenny: Exactly. And aim for the small.
Manda: Yes. Let’s hypothesise, let’s imagine a village, say, that’s really thriving, then that ripples out. Then the neighbouring villages look and go, what are you doing? And then you just need to find the mechanisms to share the ideas. There’s a wonderful film called Roots So Deep in the States, it’s regenerative farming. But they did something that’s so obvious once you’ve seen it, which was they filmed the regenerative farm and the fence line and the farm next door that was still industrial. And then they filmed the farmers, and then they brought them on to each other’s farms. And that fence line had been like the Great Wall of China before; they would not cross because they felt uninvited. And simply by seeing, by letting the industrial farmers see there was so much more life, so much more birdsong, so much more things growing on the regenerative farm. And they hadn’t felt able to ask before. And so on a village level, if neighbouring villages can be invited in without somehow triggering defensiveness. I read a really interesting paper the other day, I’m not ever going to remember where it was, Please don’t ask me people listening to the podcast, but if I find it, I’ll put it in the show notes.
Manda: But they were doing functional MRIs in teenagers and they were playing them recordings of their mothers speaking, and they were either saying, hey, you’re amazing, really positive or neutral stuff. Or critical stuff that wasn’t you’re a bad person, it was there’s this one thing; everything else you’re doing is amazing, but there’s this one thing that I’m finding quite troublesome. And their capacity to reason shut down with the last one. As soon as we get triggered, we go into defence mode and we stop being able to engage. And so somehow we need the stories. And I think everything comes back to the stories we tell ourselves and each other, of ourselves and each other, of engagement. Because then that will ripple out. You only need one village that’s really, really, really thriving and the people are really happy and it moves out. I had heard, and this may not be true. I don’t even remember where I heard it, that Stockholm was beginning to assess not just GDP, but also mental health as a unit of thriving ness. Is that a thing that you know of? Or is that maybe a bit hypothetical and hasn’t really come to fruition?
Jenny: I don’t know. I mean, I know there are these, but that’s international the indexes of happiness. I know that exists. I also know that the Stockholm School of Economics have the world’s first professor in well-being.
Manda: Okay, so it might be linked to that.
Jenny: Well, happiness maybe. So, yeah, it might be true. I don’t know.
Manda: Right. Because it’s terribly sad to hear you say that the Swedish government is hardcore neoliberal. Because I have this idea that Scandinavia is this amazing place of thriving regeneration and socialism.
Jenny: It used to be. And it’s still living on the reputation, I think.
Manda: Right. Okay. So transforming it back would be a good thing.
Jenny: Yeah. I don’t know if we have talked about that before as well, but it was manufactured this way of being within our society, you know, the single units and how we look at economy. So if you can construct it that way, you can probably deconstruct it and go back to something different. Or not go back, but like take inspiration from that and then evolve into something else. Yeah.
Manda: Yes. And the interesting thing is that the manufacturing was very consciously and very deliberately done by the Chicago school and everybody that moved forward with Hayek’s ideas and had a lot of money behind it. And a lot of money that very carefully set up a whole ecosystem of think tanks, so that the BBC, for instance, could talk to three different think tanks and amazingly they’d all be saying the same thing. Because actually they’re all talking to each other behind the scenes, but either the BBC is deliberately or incredibly stupidly not realising that they are essentially talking to one superorganism. And we don’t have the time or frankly, the money to do that. So, you know, part of this podcast is to try and be part of an ecosystem of alternative ideas. But we need the momentum. And I wonder if the EIT and similar setups within the EU, and I’m going to keep mentioning the Oxford Real Farming Conference because it made a huge impact. And I was at a day where the UN Conscious Food Systems Alliance was part of it; a Conscious Food Systems, which was all about really connecting with the land and was part of the UN.
Manda: So these things exist and the people there who spoke, that I heard of, who were deeply embedded in the UN political stuff, but had been aware that it wasn’t all about the data points, but all they were being asked was data points. So their jobs depended on moving data points, but they knew it wasn’t what the world was really at. And now they’ve been given the freedom to talk about the things that really matter. And it sounds like in the EIT, you are being given the freedom to talk about what really matters. And I remember last time you were on, you talked about, I think, Norwegian hedge funders who were saying that we need to come from a place of love. And it seems that there are increasing numbers of people, exactly as you’re saying, who don’t know how to look their children in the eye, but we just need to give them the legitimacy of you won’t lose your job by working on what really matters. In 2025, this year of new visions and planets aligning and everything changing, are you seeing green shoots of people being given permission to care
Jenny: I think I am. I mean, and even if it’s at small scales, I think it’s super, super inspiring. I mean, I know who I am, and to be completely honest, I’m a little bit confused that others see me as valuable or that they want my knowledge. I’m a little bit out there, you know? Are you sure? But I think we’re seeing more and more people that have important roles or that have power or responsibilities, seeing this as something super, super important. And then, you know, if we have one, then suddenly we have three, and then we’re growing this huge network of people with different mindsets within powerful positions. And that’s super, super important.
Manda: Yeah and there have to be tipping points. We won’t know what they are until we reach them, but when we reach them, it’ll be really obvious.
Jenny: Yeah. And also economy. We see a new generation of economists that are so into degrowth, that are so into different systems. And I’m really intrigued to see these now kids or, you know, teenagers, for example, when they are 30, 35, 40, 45, what impact will they have? What are they going to be able to do and how how do they relate to this world? I think we will see a shift.
Manda: Do you think we have that long? Because I was reading a transcript of a podcast and it was beautiful, it was people I really respect, but they were basically discussing how to restabilize the British economy to make sure that GDP carried on going up. And I wrote a comment, you know, we’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction and how how do you exist in a world where the stuff that you learned at university in the ’80’s still applies. I’m not sure we have time for the the youth who are the young people in their 20s to get to be this age.
Jenny: I mean, if we are to allow ourselves to be super, super dark and maybe even realistic, yeah, of course everything is going to break apart completely. So many people will die. Animals will die, plants will die. But I’m thinking, and I’m not an expert on this, but the planet will still be there. It will be hanging in the universe. And of course, some people will survive because you happen to have a lot of money, or you happen to be able to stay in a little pod somewhere or, I don’t know, I’m just thinking..
Manda: Oh that’s really interesting.
Jenny: If you look at. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m wondering and then those few people will maybe rebuild something very different.
Manda: Okay. This is taking the podcast into a whole new area. This might be a whole new podcast. Because I’ve been having this conversation. There are some philanthropic organisations that are really interested in progressive stuff. And we have this exactly, the 90% die off but some humans. And I look at three things. One is the fifth mass extinction. First of all, it took thousands of years for the dinosaurs to die out, and it took 64 million years to get to here. And all of the mass extinctions we’ve seen 93 to 95% die off of whole ecosystems. That’s the definition of a mass extinction. And it wasn’t the cute hairless bipeds that survived. It wasn’t complex life that survived. It was single celled organisms and a few species of shark at the bottom of the Marianas Trench that made it through. So that’s point one. I think total ecosystem collapse is total ecosystem collapse. I think we’ve all watched a lot of slightly dystopic, survivalist TV, and we think that a few plucky humans are going to survive. And I read the GOES report, which is the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey, and they are predicting total oceanic die off by 2045 if we carry on as we are. And it’s a combination of industrial agriculture runoff, acidification of the oceans and microplastics largely from tires, but from a lot of other sources. And the plankton are all dead.
Manda: At which point they cease to be producing oxygen, which is quite a lot of the oxygen that we breathe. And I’m not sure how we survive at 9% oxygen, which is equivalent to standing at the top of Kilimanjaro. It doesn’t matter how good your pod is and how many cans of beans you have managed to stash, that’s not great. However, the third thing that arises is I was talking to a lady on an Australian podcast, and she’d been at a conference where everyone was doomerising exactly as I am, and it is a secular rapture cult and I’m aware of that, but still. And someone in the audience who was Indigenous Australian stood up and said, you all live in your world and we have lived on this land for 100,000 years, and it talks to us and we will be different. And maybe that’s true, and maybe who will survive are the unreached tribes in the Amazon, if the evangelical Christians let them still be unreached tribes in the Amazon, and the indigenous peoples, maybe. But I’m thinking 95% die off and that’s not going to be complex life. All of which said, in the shamanic world, when we ask for help, the help is more readily given, more obviously given than it has been at any point in my experience now.
Manda: And I don’t think that we are being given that help in order to go off the edge of the cliff. It may be that we’re being given the help to evolve spiritually, and that’s the point. I’m not seeing that when I do the dreaming forward, I’m seeing us turning the bus from the edge of the cliff. And I think it’s still possible. But it’s only possible if we can bring a critical mass of 8.5 billion people with us, and that’s a creative problem. We’ve looped back to where we started! We’re back to where we started. We haven’t asked about toxic masculinity and sacred masculinity, which was maybe a whole new podcast and maybe I need to talk to Sophie Strand. But creativity. So having just depressed everyone with 9% oxygen and total die off, I still think it’s possible. We just need to change the value system. So give us, as we’re closing, because we’re way over time, your imagining. You’re looking forward a year; if you in the EU were able to do as much as you possibly could and people really listened, would you like to paint us a picture of how you think it could be? And then we’ll come back in a year and see how it went.
Jenny: Yeah. No, but just to go back, I mean, to compare it to the extinction of the dinosaurs, there were no dinosaur billionaires. And for me, that’s a big difference. So I mean, there are people with enormous muscles here who will be able to survive, no matter what happens on different types of biospheres here. I mean, I don’t know. And that’s where I also see that imagination and creativity can be used in the wrong way, to just save a few. But if I can just dream of what I would love to see. I think, if we just talk about Europe now to make that clear; a few more disasters, a few more painful traumas that can actually kick off our understanding of how bad the situation is. Because so many of us are still not seeing it properly or are still not understanding it or do not get the information, it’s also important to say. So unfortunately, I wish for that to happen. And then in that a much more like warm, collective effort, where we can be honest, where we see leaders go ‘I’m confused. I don’t know what to do, but let’s try this’. I mean, that’s not something you would hear today, but…
Manda: No but we need to elect those leaders who would say that because the current lot won’t.
Jenny: No, because we live in a time where no one knows where we’re going. You need to be super, super flexible. And to be a leader and say, this is going to happen, therefore we’re doing A, B and C, that to me is stupid. Because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what’s going to happen next month or within a year when it comes to the climate and disasters. There are things you can predict, but also everything is turning so fast. So in a dream world, that’s what I would see. And within that warm, flexible new way of relating, working together, creativity will be core in coming up with solutions, experiments, answers, ways of testing being. Also creating hope or, you know, downscaling, simplifying. I mean, creativity is also not about always adding things. Like what do we need to remove? How do we how do we make less out of everything that we have? And how, through culture and creativity, can we still find meaning? What is going to become the things that I truly need, in a world that is crashing or in a world where I don’t recognise anything or where everything that made me, me is gone.
Manda: Yes. So we’re in a meaning crisis as much as anything else. But we’ve been in a meaning crisis, I would suggest, for the last 10,000 years. Our meaning arises out of our sense of connection to self, other and the more than human world. And if we’ve lost that… But if we were to regain it, we would have a sense of meaning that is way beyond anything. Musk is apparently and openly, he says, on ketamine every other week for his depression. If you can be the richest man in the world and send rockets to Mars and you’re still depressed, we have a meaning crisis. And there is no amount of boxes from Amazon that are going to make it any better. So yes. I’m watching the wildfires in California and the disinformation that started instantly to stop anybody thinking that this might have anything to do with the climate crisis. And the dinosaurs also didn’t have billionaire disinformants actively promoting the destruction of all life on Earth, which is bad. But I also think when ideology meets biophysics, biophysics is going to win. You know, you can’t deny the climate crisis out of existence, you can just change the politics of what you do sometime.
Manda: Another time, because we are way over time, I want to talk to you about billionaires surviving. Because I’m just not sure that they will. And equally, I don’t want them to be the genetic material for whatever survives if they do. So how do we change that? However, we’re way over time and this is amazing and I definitely want to talk to you in a year’s time. We’ll book that when we’re done, so that we can come back and see how creativity in the EU is going. 2025 feels to me like a year when everything is going to change. And it might change in really, truly terrible ways or we might watch the system crumble and people’s better selves step forward. So anything else that you wanted to say? I’ll put womenscouncil.world onto the website.
Jenny: Exactly. And to reach out if you want to be part of it. Like everyone is welcome to be part of this and do things. Even if it’s a small reading group of three people or at a much larger scale, or university. Please join.
Manda: And men and women, it’s for everybody who wants to be an elder really.
Jenny: The the very first event that we’re doing is actually men, organising an event about what it means to be a man.
Manda: Glorious. Brilliant. Yes. Gosh, we need to talk about that at some point, too. Right. Thank you Jenny, it’s been such a pleasure to talk to you. And I am so inspired by all that you’re doing. Thank you so much for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast.
Jenny: Wonderful. Have a nice day.
Manda: Well, there we go. That’s it for another week. Enormous thanks to Jenny for all that she is and does. For daring to have the humble anger that moves us forward. For daring to be radically creative. For daring to be vulnerable. For daring to say she doesn’t know, and yet to step deep into the heart of the machine, with humour and compassion and great joy. And to help people find creative ways forward. We are not in a crisis of science. We’re in a crisis of imagination, a crisis of creativity, a crisis of the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves and each other. So if you can listen to this and start evolving stories of change, start doing the inner work to help heal yourself, your communities, and our connection to the web of life, this is the work of this moment. And anything you can do to share stories of possibility, stories of a different way of doing things, these will matter. So if you know anybody else who wants to know the other stories, please do share this link. And then all of you, please do go and join the council. It’s absolutely there for any of us who wants to see a different way forward. And for the whole of this year, it will be running. And after we’d finished, we booked Jenny to come along and be our final podcast of this year; 31st December 2025. With any luck at all, we will be talking to Jenny about what she has gathered from the Council, what each of us has brought to it.
Manda: So if you want to be part of it, please do join up. And in the meantime, we will be back next week with another conversation. Enormous thanks to Caro C for the music at the head and foot and for some absolutely emergency production. We had a cancellation; we’re recording this on Tuesday to go out on Wednesday, and you never know, we might make it. And then I will get a buffer back in place so that we aren’t doing this again. Thanks to Anne Thomas for the transcripts, to Lou Mayor for the video, to Faith Tilleray for holding the fort while I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference and it was minus eight, and the buckets had to be replaced outside every hour because all of the water systems had frozen solid. Thank you for that and for all of the conversations that keep us moving forward. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. If you have the time to go on to the podcast app of your choice and subscribe, rate us and give us a review, it really does make a difference to the algorithms. And please, as ever, share us with your friends. Word of mouth is what helps us spread. And that’s it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.
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