Survival of the Kindest

29: Patrick Abrahams - Compassion is More Than Just Empathy "Being who you are has more of an impact than pretending to be who you are not." On this week's episode Julian talks to Patrick Abrahams who started the Men's Shed in Frome. Patrick's aim in moving to the countryside was always to start a Shed, to provide a place where men could gather, and through stories, over coffees and biscuits, wood...

27: Cormac Russell - De-centering the Professional, Re-centering the Citizen "A gift is not a gift until it is given." This week Julian talks with Cormac Russell, student and expert practitioner at the same time of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) and founder of Nurture Development. Cormac grew up in rural Ireland, embedded in the warmth of his community. He studied psychology and philosop...

26: Peter Macfadyen - Wisdom in the Community (Flatpack Democracy 2021) "Because we were respectful of people, they were respectful of us." In the week where we saw town council meetings dissolving into unfettered chaos its seems appropriate that our guest week is Peter Macfadyen, pioneer of Frome's extraordinary town council. Macfayden talks to Julian about how it runs, how to connect councils to...

25: Professor Mari Lloyd-Williams - What Goes On Inside "My grandma was ill, she was disabled she was old, but she was immensely valued and she did contribute and I think that we dismiss our older people, we dismiss people with disabilities." This week I talk to consultant in Palliative care Professor Mari Lloyd-Williams. It seems like Mari's whole life has been about care. From her earliest days...

23: Diane Roberts - Story Generating "There was this line being drawn between their present reality and their ancestral past, a really clear line . " When she talks about the development of the project she lilts fluidly between its development, and the discovery and uncovering of her own past. She sees connections everywhere and through the investigation of lines between us and our relatives, betw...

22: Gary Crooks - You Don't Have to be Alone "Anxiety is the new plague […] I might be having fist fight or robbing a bank, […] but I couldn't get on a bus by my self. My self esteem was so low I couldn't actually have interaction normally." This week Julian talks to Gary Crooks. Gary's life in a mining village in the North East of England was turned upside down by the closure of the mines. From l...

21: Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad - Longing to be With Others Dr Holt-Lunstad is a psychologist at Brigham Young University and a fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and Association for Psychological Science. In this fascinating conversation she discusses her major pieces of research (on how relationships impact health and mortality rates, on how loneliness also affects this,...

20: Charles Secrett - The Sense of Wonder "The sense of wonder, the remarkable nature of creation" Charles's insight in to the state of campaigning today highlights so many areas that are open to and ready for change; from the lack of diversity in the sustainability movement which translates to a lack of diversity in Britains parks and nature reserves, to the pitfalls of campaigns which rely solel...

19: Christmas Special: Ice Cream - Small Things That Make Big Differences "The thing I've missed most is the normal human discourse that happens in the course of life, and covid has got in the way of just being a human being in the fullest sense, in a normal way, with other human beings" This week Julian talks to three other Palliative Care Physicians about end of life care, having conversations a...

18: Bobby Lloyd - The Community Table and Keeping Hope Alive "The idea that we can imagine, enables us to survive better in the world. And to be able to imagine you need to be able to think and sometimes thinking alongside somebody else makes that possible[…]we think those moments of connection can sustain, ourselves and others."   This week Julian talks to art therapist, activist and author Bobby...

17: Adrian Hartrick - A Place In-between "It is amazing what kind of behaviour you can find from people in the worst situations[..]That's what people need to stay human" Adrian has travelled extensively in the Middle East; from his first journey there as a post-school adventurer saw him arrive into Syria on the day they withdrew from Lebanon in 2005. Now a fixture in Beirut he talks about the real...

16: Sheila Gore - Frome: For the Benefit of the Town "You can do something different, something that you haven't done before, and actually that is quite a small choice - you know, you just start, and that is huge" This week Julian talks to Frome town councillor, former mayor, and long-time friend Sheila Gore about making a difference. Sheila originally worked as a teacher, and in education for the...

15: Holly Prince - Dancing in the Field of End of Life Care "I couldn't understand where our knowledge was ." This week Julian talks to PhD student, expert in death and dying, and indigenous scholar Holly Prince. Holly came to know about palliative and end of life care through the sudden loss of her friend aged 24 to cancer. Her experience growing up in an Anishinaabe community of how death happen...

14: Maddy Read-Clarke - Human Justice, Nature's Justice, Planetary Justice The feeling of hopelessness when faced with the climate crisis is something that many of us will recognise. For Maddy it felt like despite the world's efforts, her community's efforts, there had been no systemic or radical movement towards tackling climate change. However when she came across Extinction Rebellion, and the c...

13: Dr Libby Sallnow - How to Shift the Power This week Julian talks to palliative care consultant Libby about how we care for our dying, what we should be aiming for and death in the time of Covid. Libby's career has been extraordinary from the start - she cut her teeth on a remarkable project in Kerala run by Dr Suresh Kumar. While in Kerala Libby joined forces with Suresh and friend of the podc...

12: Professor Allan Kellehear - Compassionate Encounters "The dead are also grieving - they miss you" We are back this week with Professor Allan Kellehear to discuss the release of his new book Visitors at the End of Life. Allan's refusal to go into the categorisation of the visions and his focus on what they mean, and what they offer gives a moving look at who they are, what we can learn from the...

11: Jonathon Porritt CBE - Understanding Natural Justice After a two week hiatus we are back with an extraordinary guest, the environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt CBE, whose new book ' Hope in Hell ' works on repairing the cognitive dissonance between our understanding of our role in the climate crisis, and our actions and emotional responses. His stance on the climate crisis is all encompass...

10: Paddy Wivell- The Redemptive Value of Human Relationships Paddy's canon of work speaks for itself, his forays into primary schools, into prisons, to Ethiopia, are all treated with the same compassionate approach. He humanises his subjects, looking for ways to capture how their differences between them and him can be broken open to reveal the deep similarities which make us human. Paddy's succe...

9: Waleed Nesyif - It's Never Too Late for Compassion Waleed's life story, and personality, are nothing short of extraordinary. He speaks candidly and humorously, revealing the truth of what it means to be a child growing up in a war zone, what that is like in day-to-day life, how he learnt to be human against the backdrop of family members in prison, and losing close friends and many members of h...

7: Mary Lou Kelley - Make the Path by Going Mary-Lou and Holly's work addresses the disruption of colonisation on (amongst other things) traditional practices, on parenting, on education, on intergenerational communication, on end of life practices, and colonialism's continuing legacy. Mary-Lou's career led her from an undergraduate degree in English Literature where she learnt to observe people's...

6: Ed Straw - Looking at it in the Round Ed and Julian discuss Ed's career, from advising Thatcher's and Blair's governments on public sector, to Chair of Relate, to his life now and his commitment to making change on the ground. Ed's experience and understanding highlights that party politics does very little and that in order to make change we need to start locally. They visit the new reserach s...

5: Jo Abel - Telling the Story of Ordinary People Julian talks to award winning documentary maker, and his sister, Jo Abel. 'I am proud to be the brother of Jo Abel. Jo is a successful documentary producer and director. Two of her most recent documentaries have been Exodus, telling the stories of refugees coming to Europe, and the just aired Once Upon a Time in Iraq. This documentary tells the sto...

4: Lindsay Clarke - Imagining the World into Being In this episode of Survival of the Kindest Julian talks to Whitbread Prize winning author Lindsay Clarke. Julian and Lindsay have been friends for a number of years, and Lindsay is the co-author of their book The Compassion Project. As his own website explains 'Lindsay's working life has been devoted to his two principal passions, writing and educ...

In this episode, Allan turns interviewer to ask Julian about the background of The Compassion Project. Julian discusses how why he wrote the book and how it draws on themes that have taken 30 years or more to mature. He goes on to talk about why compassion is important and how it can be used throughout our life, whether this be at home, at work, in schools and not to forget politics. Both Julian a...

2: Dr Kerrie Noonan - Death Literacy Dr Kerrie Noonan is a clinical psychologist and social researcher who has spent 25 years creating a more death literate society, where people and communities have the practical know-how needed to live with dying death and grief. She is involved in so many projects: the founding executive director of The Ground Swell Project and national initiatives Dying to Kno...