Denizen

In this episode we address a foundational topic: governance. Governance refers to how we make decisions and act in groups, whether that be within a nation-state, a corporation, a community group, or a household. Today's challenges require collective action at a global scale. What factors should we keep in mind as we architect governance processes in various contexts? Our guest for this episode is...

Who are the great thinkers of the past and what can we learn from them? In this episode we cover the life and work of Buckminster Fuller, who was an architect, inventor, futurist, and prolific writer. Our guest is Amanda Joy Ravehill, former Executive Director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute. The conversation explores: Who was Buckminster Fuller? [2:38] Buckmister Fuller's archive, The Chronop...

In this episode we do a deep dive on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT stems from an alternative story of money which has significant implications for governments in countries that have sovereignty over the currency it issues. Under MMT, spending does not face financial constraints, taxes and bonds do not fund government budgets, federal deficits and debt are not problematic, and the lines between...

In this episode, Jenny and Jordan Hall discuss their experiences and systemic perspectives as parents in modern society. This conversation covers: Unraveling the meaningfulness of becoming a parent [3:01] Exploring interrelationships between parents, kids, extended family, and community [7:15] "Stewarding the soul of another human being" [9:55] Some historical and cultural contexts of parenting to...

In this episode, Marta Ceroni joins us to discuss systems thinking. The focus of our conversation is the life and work of Donella Meadows, a distinguished systems and environmental thinker in the mid-late 20th century. Ceroni stewards Meadows' archives and furthers her work as co-director at the Academy for Systems Change .  In our conversation, Marta and Jenny discuss Meadow's life, the key attri...

In this episode, we look at the role of art in activism and social change. Our guest, Aaron Huey, has created visuals for many of the most important movements of our time, from climate change to indigenous rights to economic justice. We talk about Huey's background as a National Geographic photojournalist, his 2010 TED Talk about indigenous rights, the role of visual art and activism, why street a...

In this episode we explore and parse apart three distinct elements of atonement: telling the truth, acknowledging and apologizing for harms, and taking direct action to repair.  As this conversation underscores, atonement represents just one element of a more complex set of reforms necessary to address systemic oppression. Absent a broader effort, the very harms reparations seeks to address would...

Partnerism is both a social and economic system. Based on the principles of equitable partnership, it reaches across the spectrum of society — gender studies, family systems, organizations, cultures, and political systems — as a movement towards a more just and caring society. Overall, it shifts paradigms from hierarchies of domination to hierarchies of actualization . This has been the life's wor...

We all know about all the things that are wrong with social media as we know it. It's a model where everything is centralized and the market dynamics foster very few competitors who just get bigger and have more power. Who builds? Who governs? Who owns? Where are the servers? Where do the applications sit? Where does the data live? It's largely in just a few companies that in many cases have walle...

Charles is the author of several books, including The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible and Sacred Economics . His work spans multiple pillars of the Denizen Inquiry, including economics, culture, and consciousness. In this episode, Charles and Jenny discuss gift economics, a very different model of exchange than capitalism. In a gift economy, goods and services are given away as gi...

Universal basic income has gotten a lot of attention in the past five years. What is universal basic income, and why might it be a compelling component of a just society? How did the pandemic accelerate the possibility to adopting cash assistance in various forms? Our guests for this episode are Natalie Foster and Dorian Warren, co-founders of the Economic Security Project which has spearheaded so...

What might a socio-economic system look like that yields human flourishing in harmony with the rest of life on Earth? And, how might we implement strategies to transition from where we are today to such a system? These are the two questions at the center of the Denizen podcast. This introduction gives additional context on the scope of the podcast and the six pillars we explore: economics, politic...