Accidental Gods

Happy New Year.  It feels to me as if this year, the journey is going to be one of continual change and of challenge - that 2024 will be the year when it is impossible for anyone to pretend that the life we knew, the life we grew up believing would go on indefinitely - is going to continue. The old order is dying, but if we're to absolute collapse on a global scale (because clearly it's happening...

Welcome to the second part of our conversation - if you haven't listened to the first part, please do so - it's here [LINK] and  Simon has very kindly agreed to come back to join our Cutting Edge gathering on Sunday 19th March at 7pm UK time. He'll be with us for an hour during which you'll have a chance to ask him the questions that matter to you - all the things I don't think to ask - and then w...

Happy New Year.  My guest this week is a long term friend of the podcast. Dr Simon Michaux has been a physicist and geologist and then became an expert in the reality of the circular economy. He now works in the Geological Survey of Finland and is a regular advisor to the Finnish parliament. The day after we recorded this podcast, he was talking to the British consulate in Helsinki and in the last...

For this time around the dark nights of the winter solstice - at least in the northern hemisphere - we've been exploring more of an inner landscape - being reflexive with Nathalie and Della, and before that, exploring the living myths of our land and how we can ground them in our current reality with Angharad Wynne. And this week, we're heading inward and outward, travelling to Peru with Dr Simon...

Here is our winter solstice meditation - please create a space for yourself where you won't be disturbed and where you can feel your way into the dark, regenerative space of the longest night.  If you want to draw the curtains, switch off all the power and light a candle, this may help you to connect with the place of rest and renewal. This version is the shortest and comes with music in the backg...

This is the fourth year of our now-traditional Winter Solstice podcast get-together in which Nathalie Nahai, Della Duncan and I sit around our virtual dark-nights fire to reflect on the podcasting year just gone and explore what has changed for us since the last time the seeds of new beginnings were grounded in the heart of what has passed.  This is becoming one of the highlights of my podcasting...

This week, as we head down towards what, in the northern hemisphere at least, is the long nights, the dark nights, I wanted to explore our heritage, the way we celebrate the solstice in this land, the land of Britain. I'm aware that quite a lot of you listening are from the southern hemisphere where you're heading up to your long sun and your fires burn differently. I recorded a summer solstice me...

Our guest this week is host of one of my must-listen podcasts - one I've been following since the spring, when Dr Simon Michaux mailed me and said, you need to listen to Rachel - and he was right.  Rachel Donald is host of Planet: Critical one of the world's top-rated podcasts on the poly-crisis and systems change.  She interviews some really big players on the world stage with integrity and panac...

Our guest this week is Hugo Spowers, Company Architect of Riversimple, whose purpose is 'To pursue, systematically, the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport.'  Modernity demands that we have personal transport and the thought of giving it up is one of the many sticking points when people try to imagine a way through to a regenerative future: nobody wants to be limited to t...

Words have the power to change worlds.  Powerful words, powerfully written can open doors to the future.  Beautiful words, beautifully written, can give us hope . Richard Wain's new collection of poetry is doing all of these, with panache, and heart and soul. We all know by now that we need total systemic change - and a central thesis of this podcast is that we'll get there best by creating narrat...

My guest this week is someone who is both right at the edge of the emerging futures and in a position to exert leverage at some of the highest points of the scale at which change happens.  Sophia Parker is the Emerging Futures Director at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a philanthropic organisation with a long history of progressive work, aiming for social and cultural equity.  It is still committ...

How do we move ourselves – individually and collectively – from the broken Trauma Culture of our times, to the Initiation Culture that will allow us to step forward, healed and whole? Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy have co-authored a book: Post-Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse. Vandana Shiva says of it, “Ladha and Murphy walk us through the deep logics of neoliberalism...

This is an Accidental Gods bonus Episode recorded at the Marches Real Food and Farming Conference held at Linley Estate in Shropshire in September.   Josiah Meldrum is co-founder and Director of Hodmedod's  - which was set up specifically to enable local growers to farm regeneratively - and sell the produce they want to grow (and can grow in ways that help to regenerate the land), to people who wa...

We all know the climate and ecological tipping points are terrifyingly close. What can we do - as individuals and collectively?  Simon Oldridge has ideas that answer both of these.  Simon first joined us back in episode #182 when he joined his colleague Anthea Simmons and they spoke eloquently about the strategies of the South Devon Primary group which are aimed at raising one progressive candidat...

If we're at the moment of choice between flourishing and destruction, what would you choose?  We are at a moment of decision: We either step forward into our own Great Destruction, which could theoretically see us wipe out all of humanity and most of the More than Human World…Or we could step into what Indy Johar calls 'The Great Peace', claiming our birthright as the Interstitial Generation betwe...

How can we, as parents, grandparents and anyone who cares about the fate of future generations, live our lives in such a way that when our children ask us why we didn't do more,  we can say with honesty that we did all that we could? How do we help them to build resilience, to feel safe in a supportive community and in connection with the natural world so that as they grow, they can face the truth...

How much do you know about AI, blockchain and Web 3.0? If you're like us, the answer is probably very little. But these techs are going to change our world out of all recognition and while there is the potential for catastrophe, in the right hands, the same technology has the potential to help us shape the future we'd all be proud to leave behind and this is what this podcast is about. Monty is on...

How does soil health intimately and profoundly impact human health? What's the link between the soil microbiome and the human gut microbiome? How can we begin to restore our health, and the health of the living earth in concert with each other?   These are the questions posed by the outstanding book 'What your Food Ate: How to heal our land and reclaim our health' and the co-authors, Anne Biklé an...

Here at Accidental Gods, we are increasingly of the opinion that our most urgent need as we face the polycrisis is to find a sense of being a belonging that changes our life's purpose. We all know we're not here just to pay bills and die, but knowing what we're not here for is not enough: we need to feel at the deepest level what we are here for, to rebuild the deep heart connections to the web of...

Manda's Equinox meditation focuses on finding our sense of balance as the tilt of the world balances between summer and winter, light and dark, day and night.  And from that, finding a stable place with the three pillars of our heart minds: joyful curiosity, gratitude and compassion. The meditation is available with Birdsong and with Music Birdsong https://media.transistor.fm/66b6845b/79a1c49b.mp3...

As we head into winter in the northern hemisphere, as the tilt of the world hangs in balance, we reached our 200th episode.  So this is a time to look back and look forward: to look at where we've been, where we are and where we might go. From our origins as an adjunct to the Accidental Gods Membership , explaining the neurophysiology and neuropsychology behind what we're doing, and then then the...

In this, our 200th episode of Accidental Gods podcast, I am delighted to be joined by André Tranquilini, estate manager at Waltham Place, a 220 acred biodynamic estate in Berkshire, in the UK.  André is a biodynamic farmer, consultant and teacher. He has been the manager at Waltham Place since 2018. André has worked extensively as a market gardener, Steiner school teacher and farmer, and was a fou...

"Grasping the Nettle' is at the heart of the film. Making a dress this way is a mad act of will and artistry but also devotional, with every nettle thread representing hours of mindful craft. Over seven years Allan is transformed by the process just as the nettles are. It's a kind of alchemy: transforming nettles into cloth, grief into beauty, protection and renewal. A labour of love, in the trues...

How do good people create systems of oppression?  What is Health? What is unHealth? And how do we move from the latter to the former in ways that mean good people create systems of co-creation, inter-being and connection?  This week, we explore all these questions with Sophy Banks, Founder and Lead Facilitator of Healthy Human Culture.  This week's guest is a remarkable woman who was one of the sh...

We're on the edge of so many tipping points it's hard to know where to start.  But paralysis isn't useful and so we need to talk to the people who are still moving forward - and who have ideas of how we can carry more and more people with us.    With that in mind, this week's guest is a many-time friend of the podcast: someone completely aligned with our aims and ideals and whose energy, activism...