Accidental Gods

Accidental Gods podcast exists to open doors and break down barriers, to bring forward the ideas and the actions of and give voice to the gloriously creative people who give their lives to the idea and realisation of a regenerative future.   In this wide-ranging conversation with Solutionist and film-maker, Nicola Peel, we learned of the horrors of oil spills in the Amazon and the ways fungi could...

Chris Smaje is a social scientist by training and a small-scale farmer by occupation. For the past 19 years, he has co-worked a small farm in Somerset, in southwest England.  Previously, he was a university-based social scientist, working in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surry and the Dept of Anthropology at Goldsmith's College. HIs focus was aspects of social policy, social ide...

Jo Chidley is one of those forces of nature, unconstrained by the way things are usually done.  As the co-founders of Beauty Kitchen, she and her partner refused venture capital, keeping their business free to become a B-Corp and to put people and planet ahead of profit.  She's dedicated to producing the best outcome for the people who work for her as well as for the people who buy her products. ...

Rob Percival is a writer, campaigner and food policy expert with The Soil Association. His commentary on food and farming has featured in the national press and on prime time television, and his writing has been shortlisted for the Guardian’s International Development Journalism Prize and the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Food Sustainability Media Award. He works as Head of Food Policy for the Soil...

This week's conversation ranges over an astonishingly wide range of topics from ways to facilitate interspecies communication through play and ways to play 3-person pacifist chess (and thereby change the world), to the nature of democracy and how the use of quadratic voting on the blockchain to inspire artistic endeavours in north London might be expanded nationally and internationally on the scal...

This week's guest is a friend of the podcast, Dr Gail Bradbrook.  Best known for her role in co-founding Extinction Rebellion, Gail is one of our nation's (and our world's) deepest thinkers on radical change: what will it take to shift the juggernaut of predatory capitalism from the orgy of extraction, consumption and destruction that has brought us to the edge of crisis, and instead turn it towar...

Eva is a climate activist, process designer and facilitator. She has co-convened the Transformative Conflict for Transition Network summit, supports sociocratic system development, decision-making and facilitation in many contexts including Extinction Rebellion Scotland. Justin is an anthropologist and activist from Edinburgh. He is a member of Extinction Rebellion Scotland. Since 2009, has worked...

As we move from our third to our fourth year, it seemed like a good time to look back on the origins of the whole Accidental Gods project - why and how we started and what our original aims were - and then to look forward to the coming year and what we're focussing on both on the podcast and within the membership.   So much has changed even in such a short time. We're all more aware than ever of t...

Satish Kumar is one of the absolute titans of the Regenerative movement in the UK.  In 1962, he and and one of his fellow Jain monks made an 8,000 mile mendicant peace pilgrimage around the world, stopping in the capitals of what the nuclear nations of the earth: Russia, USA, China, France and the UK.  He settled in the latter and soon became known for his work in connecting people and ideas. He f...

As the year stills and tilts afresh, we bring you our annual moment of reflection with two podcast hosts we really admire.  There's a meditation at the end, to bring you into your own space of stillness and reflection, but ahead of this, we delve into where we think the global human psyche is at this moment,  how we feel when we look upstream, and what we see; and what makes our hearts sing, and w...

The average child in the western world attends 10,000 hours of school - and plays 20,000 hours of games.  In the 'adult' world, many of us spend hours devoted to levelling up our characters and exploring imaginary worlds.  If the Tech-bros get their way, we'll soon live entirely in the Metaverse and have minimal contact with the real world beyond the walls of our concrete hutches.   But imagine a...

Professor Julia Steinberger researches and teaches in the interdisciplinary areas of Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology.  She is the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Leadership Award for her research project 'Living Well Within Limits' investigating how universal human well-being might be achieved within planetary boundaries. She is Lead Author for the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report with...

Dr John Collins worked for the UK's Central Electricity Generating Board in the days when such things were nationalised industries. His PhD involved creating a real-time dosimeter for workers in nuclear plants so they didn't have to wait 2 weeks to learn the results of the film-based dosimeters that were in use. In doing so, he saved the CEGB considerable amounts of money - and, mere importantly, ...

Rupert Read is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, but he is also a Green party activist, and a prolific speaker, media spokesperson and author advocating for a wholehearted, whole-culture response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency. A long-term friend of the podcast, Rupert joins us today to talk about his new book: 'Do You Want to Know the Truth: The Surprisi...

As we do each year, we've curated a list of the Accidental Gods' favourite podcast and books of 2022.  Enjoy! Podcasts Nate Hagens The Great Simplification - fourth of four (so far) with Daniel Schmachtenberger https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-great-simplification-with-nate-hagens/id1604218333?i=1000583952697 The Sustainable Food Trust episode with Dr Michael Antoniou https://podcasts.app...

In a world that feels as if all the certainties are breaking down, how can we build the communities of place and of purpose that will give us the resilience to bridge from the old structures to the new? Exploring deeply practical ways to build community with Charlie Fisher.    Charlie Fisher is a co-founder and director of the Co-operative Architecture Practice, Transition by Design . He's a resea...

We know our climate is in crisis and that time is running out. But we also know that screaming at people to wake up is not working.  What if we gave ourselves permission to tell the truth - and the skills to do it with humour and compassion so that we didn't trigger the resistances of fear?  This Episode, we explore stand-up and improv in sustainable communications with Belina Raffy. Belina Raffy,...

In a world where our 'democracy' is manifestly not fit for purpose, how can we turn the brief, bright fireworks of political sanity into floodlights of progressive values, of liquid democracy that leads to an equitable, regenerative culture?  With Neal Lawson of the progressive campaign group, Compass.  Neal Lawson was brought up in an activist household and joined the Labour party at sixteen.  Af...

What happens when we realise we're trying to be something we're not?  For Roz Savage, this led to a transformation that took her from Management Consultant to the first woman to row solo across the world's 3 big oceans. Now she devotes her life to the healing of the planet. Dr Roz Savage MBE is an Ocean Rower, Author, Speaker, Lecturer, Sustainability Advocate. Her feats have been described by Sir...

What if businesses existed not to price-gouge consumers and destroy the planet, but to be part of a pathway to a flourishing future?  What if the end-of-year reports were not expensive exercises in greenwash, but were actually truthful - and useful.  With B.Lorraine Smith, creator of Matereality. B. Lorraine Smith is a writer, speaker, corporate mischievist, and generally curious student of life....

What will it take to restore balance in our world? How can we repair our devastated environments, and secure future generations' survival? And what's they key to unlock the mindset shift to enable truly regenerative transformation?   With Sarah Ichioka, co-author of 'Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency'. Sarah Ichioka is co-author with Michael Pawlyn of 'Flourish' a rich, inspir...

We live in a world run by profiteers: the rush to make money destroys people and planet with equal disregard. But how would the world look if all businesses existed to promote wellbeing in all its forms? How could we make this work? Re-imagining our relationship to profit with Dr Jennifer Hinton of Lund University, Sweden. Dr. Jennifer Hinton is a systems researcher and activist in the field of su...

What do we do when we feel disempowered, disconnected, alone and afraid?  We can throw ourselves more deeply into social media, drink, drugs and deeper disconnection…or we can build rituals with intention, creativity, gratitude and kindness that re-connect us with the web of life.  With Isla McLeod, ritualist and shamanic healer. Isla McLeod is a creator of ceremonies, ritual designer, transformat...

We are human because for most of our evolutionary history, we have eaten meat whilst treating animals as relations and giving thanks to them. We held these the two sides of this paradox in tension. But in the past decades, we have created hells on earth in our industrialised farming and abattoirs so that eating from them is no longer remotely ethical.  How do we resolve the paradox? Is global vega...

"As elders, our job is to die, as eventually we come to live —always in service to life."  How do we do this? How can we pass into our elder years with grace and rage and depth and honouring of who we are, and emerge wiser, and more attuned to our soul's calling.  With Dr Sharon Blackie, author of Hagitude. Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist. Her highly acc...