Accidental Gods

What can you do if you want to be a gentle, careful, strategic activist? The kind who catalyses change in empathic ways, who strives to understand people in power and who uses the magic of hand-crafts to connect at the level where (r)evolution happens?  Sarah Corbett of the Craftivist Collective does exactly this and empowers others to join her. At the age of three years old, Sarah Corbett occupie...

What's our economy for? Does it have to keep growing at the expense of all we hold dear; the things that make life worth living? Or can we re-imagine a new way of doing things that would value what matters most to us, and keep people and planet healthy? Yannick Beaudoin is Director-General for Ontario and Northern Canada with the David Suzuki Foundation and Director for Innovation and forOntario w...

Thrutopia is open to everyone who tells stories in whatever form.  But if you're in the early stages of your writing journey and want some support, these are Manda's Ten Key Pointers to writing well: a basic Writing Apprenticeship in an hour! The Thrutopia Masterclass is designed to help us all generate the ideas, the frames and the stories we'll need to take us through to a future we'd be proud t...

What do we do when the world isn't working for us? When our every fibre rages against the machine and our place in it?   Maggie Ostara talks about her own path from a high-flying academic career, through to a life of clear purpose and contribution that has authenticity, integrity and power.  Maggie Ostara, PhD left her job as the Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Columbia University when s...

How can we use the leading edge of design thinking to create climate activism that really works? Dave Johnson is a lawyer, teacher, writer and design thinker who is bringing his breadth of understanding to bear on the climate and ecological emergency.    Dave Johnson began his career as a trial lawyer in the courtrooms of Miami. After a decade, he came to Stanford to study design, tech and environ...

How can we improve our health, reduce the costs to the NHS by 50%, restore soil biodiversity, reduce flooding, reverse ecosystem decline and draw carbon down from the atmosphere into the earth's crust?  Regenerative Farming does all of these and more - and Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust is at the heart of a movement to spread the word around the world.   After studying biodynamic agr...

How can we shape our culture to be one where everyone thrives?  How can we write our new stories where everyone is heroic?  How can we connect to the world of spirit in ways that include everyone? With Tamsin Omond, climate activist, strategist, organiser and author of DO/Earth.  Since dropping banners against Heathrow Airport's third runway from the roof of the Houses of Parliament, Tamsin has co...

We live on stories. We thrive on visions of futures we want - or terrify ourselves with those we definitely don't.  But when it comes to our own near-term future, we don't have the stories that tell us how we got it right.  So we need to write them - Urgently!  One of the things that sets us apart from other species (as far as we know) is that we are forever building futures in our heads. Whenever...

In a world where governments are failing on all levels, can regenerative business be the change we need to see in the world?  Can the new wave of meaningful work create the sense of coherence and community and connectedness to the earth that we need to take us forward?   Nathalie Nahai is host of The Hive podcast, author of two books, international speaker and consultant with businesses big and sm...

What is the nature of being and belonging in the current world? How can we honour the rite of passage that is happening, and let go of the old ways, let them die to the past, live in the liminal space of unknowing, and step into a future that emerges from the best of who we are?    Isla McLeod is a celebrant, ritualist, walker-between-the-worlds and deep connector to spirit.  She says of herself:...

How do we understand dreams in ways that make sense of 21st Century life?  How can we interpret them in ways that have meaning for us as individuals, in the complexity of our lives?  Rabbi Jill Hammer has explored the depths of dreams and dreaming with her new book - and here talks to us about what she learned, and some of the dreams that touched her most deeply. Rabbi Jill Hammer, PhD, is an auth...

How can we find joy in life again? How can we create beautiful things to wear that allow us to be the best of ourselves - and build community while we do it?  Alice Holloway is co-founder of London Urban Textiles Commons, and she's committed to finding the answers.  Join us for an inspiring, sparky exploration of how our future can be different. Alice Holloway has a degree in jewellery making from...

How can we be the best possible stewards of the future for our children?  How can we meet their eco-anxiety and teach them resilience, adaptation and give them the skills of systemic thinking that will help them navigate the uncertainties to come?    Eva Bishop is mother of two young children, as well as being a long-term a climate activist and current communications director for the Beaver Trust....

What is Power?  How do we use it: both power over each other, and the power that fuels the world?  How could we use it better? In this, our ninth season (and third year), we are aiming to look more deeply into the ways we might create a flourishing future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that follow us. With that in mind, our first guest of this new season is Richard Heinberg, au...

As we head down into the dark nights of the year, the quiet time of introspection, of assessing the year just gone and thinking forward to the one yet to come, Accidental Gods joins with the hosts of Upstream and The Hive podcasts: 3 women engaged in the best of change to bring the world to a flourishing future.  This is now official solstice tradition - we three explore the questions we've asked...

 What are the best, most readable, most inspiring and most give-able books this season?  Manda's solstice list of her favourite Fiction and non-Fiction books read in 2021. Plus a bonus handful of must-listen podcasts.  Here we go, people of the podcast - the books and their links. I've linked through Blackwells, because I used to love Heffers (part of the same chain) when I was in Cambridge.  Do o...

How can we get from the current edge-of-catastrophe to a world where we have addressed the huge issues of the climate and ecological emergency?  Only in fiction can we bring the answers together in a vision of a better world.  Author Kim Stanley Robinson talks about his 'The Ministry for the Future' - One of Barack Obama's favourite books of last year. 'If I could get policymakers and citizens eve...

How can we shape our economies in a post-COP, decarbonising world?   How can we build a way of exchanging value that actually works in favour of our planet, not against it?  Dr James Meadway, former economic advisor to John McDonnell on how redistribution can take place, and how to reshape our political landscape.    Dr Meadway's work has focused on developing viable alternatives to neoliberalism,...

How do we evolve the radical new sense of community, connectivity, mutual support - and resilience - that we need as we move into a world of climate breakdown?  Jeremy Lent's book The Web of Meaning is the 2nd of 3 that build a picture of an eco-civilisation.  In this week's episode, we explore the ways we can all be part of the solution. Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbio...

As we lurch towards irreversible climate chaos, how can we begin to pull back from the edge?  This week, we look specifically at the area of transport: how can we be mobile and yet reach the 3 Zeroes of Death, Emissions and Carbon?  What would it mean to live in an area with fair, free, extensive public transport? And how can we make this happen. Our lively, inspiring conversation with Dr John Whi...

If the stories of our culture are of separation, scarcity and powerlessness, how can we build new stories, new myths, new ideas of how we can be different?  Alina Siegfried has explored the deep concepts of the stories of our world, and how we can reshape them.  We are the stories we tell ourselves - about who we are and where we're going. In our small day to day decisions, we think how our storie...

Anthea Lawson is a campaigner who’s interested in the connections between our inner lives and the world we create together.    In a world of such astonishing inequity, where ever fewer people hold ever more power, how do those of us whose lives are given to change, meet the reality that we are embedded in the system? If we are an integral part of the problem, how can we live the solution into bein...

What is the bare minimum we need world leaders to agree at COP26 and what can we do if they fail?  Rupert Read, academic philosopher, author and climate activist discusses the urgency of the moment - and how a 'moderate flank' of climate activists can grow out of the COP.  Dr Rupert Read is a long term climate activist.  On the day after this podcast goes out, he'll be in court on charges of Crimi...

If we are going to meet the challenges of the climate, ecological and cultural crisis, we're going to have to change the systems that surround us: Education systems, health care systems, food systems, economic systems... ultimately systems of government.  How can we do so peacefully and kindly without leaving vast numbers of people in freefall?   The systems around us have grown up in a world that...

As we understand more of the climate and ecological emergency, it becomes increasingly clear that Regenerative Agriculture needs to be one of the mainstays of our plans for systemic change.  Part 2 of 2 with Ffinlo Costain of Farmwel and the Farm Gate podcast. We live in an era of empty food, vast food miles and a burgeoning ecosystem emergency that is largely pushed by a chemical-based agricultur...