The Good Apocalypse Podcast

What happens when one of the world’s most important maritime choke points stays closed for months? Alex Evans speaks to former UK resilience tsar Bruce Mann about the real-world consequences of the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and why the biggest impacts may still lie ahead. Bruce draws on decades of experience in civil contingencies, emergency planning, and systemic risk analysis to...

Alex Evans interviews Dr. Scilla Elworthy , renowned peacebuilder and founder of the Oxford Research Group and Peace Direct. They discuss the power of dialogue in defusing nuclear tensions, the critical role of humility and listening in conflict mediation, the impact of trauma on world leaders, and the increasing influence of women in diplomacy. Dr. Elworthy shares lessons from her decades of peac...

Co-hosts Claire Brown and Alex Evans welcome former Green Party leader and MP Caroline Lucas . They discuss the evolution of green politics in Britain, and  can help shape a better future. Key Topics: - Caroline Lucas’s Journey. Her path to becoming the UK Green Party’s first MP. - Green Party Now. The party’s growth under new leader Zack Polanski. - Progressive Alliances & Electoral Reform. P...

Host Alex Evans is joined by David Steven , a senior fellow at the UN Foundation , senior fellow at NYU’s Center on International Cooperation , and Managing Director of River Path Associates . Longtime collaborators, Alex and David reflect on the "Long Crisis Scenarios" they developed during the pandemic and discuss how those ideas have fared five years on. Key Topics:   - David’s path t...

Alex Evans speaks to Miriam Juan-Torres González, a leading expert on polarisation, democracy and belonging. They discuss the evolution of political polarisation since 2016, the rise of authoritarian populism and strategies for building bridges and defending democracy in turbulent times. Miriam shares insights from her research and real-world examples of successful civic campaigns, offering practi...

Alex Evans welcomes Adam Kahane   - renowned facilitator, author, and expert in scenario planning and system transformation. Adam shares insights from his experience of scenario planning as part of peace processes in South Africa and Colombia, discusses the power of stories in shaping the future, and helps us discover practical habits which can create positive change in complex systems. Key moment...

Why do those of us in western societies find it so difficult to face the prospect of our deaths, or to grieve collectively for experiences of shared loss? How does unprocessed collective grief - for instance about the pandemic - show up politically? And might changes in how we think and feel about death make it easier for us to confront existential risks like climate breakdown? Ivor Williams is an...

What happens when an African American befriends members of the Ku Klux Klan? Our guest for this episode is Daryl Davis - a blues musician who's played with greats like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and BB King, and who's also persuaded more than 200 white supremacists to leave groups like the KKK. We talk to Daryl about how his extraordinary journey began, what drives him to do this work,...

What does it mean to be 'fully alive' during turbulent times? Our guest for this episode - who'll also be joining us as one of our rotating cast of co-hosts - is Elizabeth Oldfield , the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times and Chair of Larger Us's board . Liz talks about how connection and belonging are at the heart of what she writes about in her book...

What do you do when you find yourself at the centre of a culture war? Our guest for this episode is Professor Corinne Fowler who became a target for ‘anti-woke’ journalists and politicians due to her work exploring the colonial histories of National Trust properties . Corinne’s approach - to positively engage with her attackers - yielded some surprising results and she shares what she’s learned ab...

Welcome to a new series of the Larger Us Podcast! This time we’re talking to Imran Ahmed , who is founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate . We spoke to him in the immediate aftermath of the wave of far right riots that swept the UK in July after misinformation about the identity of the perpetrator of a mass stabbing targeting children spread rapidly and widely across social media...

How do we achieve social buy-in for the huge, disruptive and sustained transformation entailed in making our societies sustainable? Why is it such a problem that social media has become the 'public square' where we have big conversations about the future - and how have campaigning and activism become embroiled? Hugh Knowles is Co-Executive Director of Friends of the Earth and was formerl...

How does a single chemical in our brains drive love, sex, consumerism and creativity? Why are some people more 'dopmaninergic' than others, why is that such a big deal for politics, and what does it mean for change-makers? Daniel Lieberman is a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at George Washington University, co-author of the international bestseller The Molecule...

How can we build inclusive belonging in conditions of acute polarisation - for example when members of a historically privileged group feel that more power and status for a historically marginalised group means less power and status for them? What do the recent US mid-terms mean for American democratic health, and what lessons do they offer for other countries? Michelle Barsa runs the Omidyar Netw...

How can we raise children in a world that appears to have gone so wrong? How are our children’s minds affected by that world, and how can we as parents and caregivers help them through it in ways that give them agency and the power to make the world better without placing the weight of the world on their shoulders? Louis Weinstock is the author of How the world is making our children mad and what...

A special edition of our podcast to talk about Building a larger us , our new guide to how to change the world in ways that bring people together rather than dividing them - not as a them-and-us, but as a larger us. Alex Evans (founder of Larger Us and our usual host) switches sides to be guest this time, and we're delighted that Elizabeth Oldfield - host of The Sacred podcast and a senior ad...

What does it take to have conversations across deep divides? What's required of us - and what's required of the person we're talking to? What can happen when we have these kinds of curious conversations, and how can change-makers use them? Mónica Guzmán is the author of the new book I Never Thought Of It That Way - How to have fearlessly curious conversations in dangerously divided...

What are we doing to ourselves when we tell ourselves we're Consumers 3,000 times a day? What would it look like to put the same creativity and energy into involving people as Citizens? What would you do in this time, if you truly believed in yourself and those around you? Jon Alexander spent the first decade of his career in the advertising industry, selling some of the world's biggest...

How did progressive campaigners in the US manage to win bipartisan legislation ending the 'lock-em-up and throw away the key' era in criminal justice - and persuade 87 out of 100 Senators to vote for it, and Donald Trump to sign it?  Answer: by building a hugely diverse coalition that brought together everyone from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Koch Brothers and the religious...

We live in the age of the tyranny of the now, driven by 24/7 news, the latest tweet, and the buy-now button. With such frenetic short-termism at the root of contemporary crises – from the threats of climate change to the lack of planning for a global pandemic – the call for long-term thinking grows every day. But what is it, has it ever worked, and can we even do it? In this episode, we talk to Ro...

Jon Yates is the author of "Fractured: Why our societies are coming apart and how to put them back together again". He's uniquely well placed to explore these issues, having both served as a government adviser and co-founded a series of charities that are designed to bring people together. For years, our societies have been becoming more disconnected, so that most of us spend less a...

Dave Fleischer runs the team at the Los Angeles LGBT Center's Leadership Lab that created deep canvassing - a groundbreaking approach to political campaigning that uses doorstep conversations to change people's minds about potentially polarising issues and which helped to win the US equal marriage campaign. Deep canvassing avoids pelting voters with arguments or facts; instead "we f...

Karen Stenner has spent years researching why some people seem to have a psychological predisposition towards authoritarianism in the right conditions. With her co-author Jonathan Haidt, Karen has explored how about a third of people across dozens of liberal democracies share this trait to some degree - a key factor in understanding why, for instance, so many Americans continued to support Donald...

Hadiya Masieh has over two decades' experience in countering violent extremism and understanding how to challenge hate - and a unique perspective given her own experience as a former member of an extremist political organisation. Today, Hadiya runs Groundswell Project, a pioneering initiative that works in communities to map both extremist and pro-peace groups on the ground, build a diverse c...