The Wisdom & Action Podcast

You might have noticed a recent run of incredible female leaders on the show – well, they keep coming! This episode Berry sits with one of the world’s leading teachers of mindfulness meditation – Sylvia Boorstein. Sylvia is one of the people who literally brought buddhism to the West in the 1970s, and like many of them is Jewish. She is a mother, a grandmother, a psychotherapist, and a founding te...

Gayle is co-founder of Melbourne-based Global Leadership Foundation, and she works with boards and senior leaders all over the world in raising emotional health, building resilience, and transforming leaders and organisations. Gayle is one of our guest facilitators on the Small Giants Academy Mastery of Business and Empathy program, which is currently open for 2023 expressions of interest. Hosted...

Kemi Nekvapil is one of Australia’s leading coaches for female executives and entrepreneurs, as well as an author and a highly sought-after international speaker. Her latest book is Power: a woman’s guide to living and leading without apology, and in this chat with our editor Kirsty, she talks about some of the stories and ideas behind writing it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...

Jamie Wheal is the founder of the Flow Genome Project and an expert in the neurophysiology of human performance. His latest book is "Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death In a World That's Lost Its Mind."In this conversation with Berry, he posits solutions for the crisis of meaning many of us face today, and guides us towards a new (old) frontier that he calls "Meaning 3.0". Hosted...

In celebration of Issue 70 of Dumbo Feather magazine, all about a Meaningful Life, Berry sat down with one of the greatest living thinkers of our time: Professor A C Grayling. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re sharing a conversation we had with waste queen Veena Sahajwalla as part of Vivid Festival 2022. Veena is a trailblazer in the field of recycling science. She heads up the SMaRT Centre at UNSW, and among her epic scientific breakthroughs include perfecting a technique that brings together waste tyres and waste plastic in the production of steel, and waste textiles and waste glass in...

Our much-loved contributor Lydia Fairhall sits down with a hero of hers, the Worimi storyteller, Paul Callaghan. Paul is an author and consultant who specialises in leadership development and wellbeing. In his mid-30s, he encountered a period of depression, after realising the success he had been striving for didn’t match up with his internal measure. Drawing on a variety of tools, including Indig...

Peter Garrett is a member of one of Australia's most successful bands, Midnight Oil. He’s also served as environment minister in the Rudd-Labor government, and been a long-time advocate and campaigner on a range of issues, including human rights and climate change. In this chat with contributor Myke Bartlett, he talked about the role of culture and the arts in enacting change, and how we can infus...

Roman Krznaric is an internationally renowned public philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change society. Born in Sydney, he now lives in Oxford with his kids and wife Kate Raworth, who many of you will know as the designer and thinker behind Donut Economics. Roman is the founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum and Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation, a long-term cultural...

Elizabeth Sawin is unlocking the power of multi-solving for people and planet. A student of biology, she became fascinated with the interconnectedness of all things, in a world that is often ready to simplify and seperate. Climate change sat at the heart of those connections, leading her on a path to activism and the co-founding of Climate Interactive, a group that uses system dynamics — an approa...

We join American biologist and writer David Haskell on a sonic journey, back to the first sounds made on Earth. David's latest book is "Sounds Wild and Broken," a lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet and the perils that sonic diversity now faces. It’s an exquisite lens through which to think about our relationships with the living world, and how we can enter more fully into a co...

This week we’re revisiting some of the spirit and empowered thinking that emerged from the chaos of 2020, with a conversation we had at the time with the deputy lord mayor of Sydney, Jess Scully. Jess is an extraordinary young councillor who is helping bring more voices to the political table, while creating pathways to reclaim public spaces, address housing problems, and enable more resilient and...

This is part two of our conversation with social philosopher and thought leader, Daniel Schmachtenberger. If you haven’t listened to part one, go back and do that, as it lays all the groundwork for what he and Berry explore in this episode. If you like what you hear, then grab a copy of our systems change issue of Dumbo Feather magazine, with Daniel on the cover, over at dumbofeather.com or your l...

We’ve got an epic conversation with one of the most sophisticated thinkers on the planet today, the social philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger. Berry spoke with Daniel for our systems change issue of the magazine, a special edition for this crucial moment in history, which comes out March 24. Daniel is co-founder of Civilization Emerging and The Consilience project, and has a particular focus in h...

Maree Lowes is best known as the actress and storyteller behind dirtgirl, from the acclaimed children’s television series dirtgirlworld. She uses video, words and action to advocate for people & planet, moving in the pursuit of reciprocity with each other & our non-human kin. Maree has evolved beyond the screen to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with families, farmers and First Nations communities, cham...

On this episode, we have unlearner, uneducator Manish Jain. Manish is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems and cultural imaginations. He is one of the leading voices on the planet for “de-schooling” our lives and co-founded some of the most innovative educational experiments in the world, including the Swaraj University, India's first university dedicated to regener...

This episode is a lecture from one of the wisest and most masterful storytellers of our time, the Canadian teacher, writer and culture activist, Stephen Jenkinson. Stephen is a former palliative care specialist who has written two internationally acclaimed books, Die Wise: A manifesto for sanity and soul, and Come of Age, the case for elderhood in a time of trouble. He is also a farmer, and co-fou...

Robyn Davidson is best known as ‘the camel lady’—a reference to her journey as a young woman crossing the Australian desert with four camels and her dog in 1977. Today, Robyn feels like a different person, yet there’s one quality that has remained a constant in her life: her ability to adapt to change. In 2017, Robyn sat down in front of a live audience with our publisher, Berry Liberman, to talk...

Spiritual teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee reads one of his writings for Dumbo Feather, titled, “A Letter to My Granddaughter.” Llewellyn is a writer and teacher based in Northern California whose work focuses on spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we get to know Pat McCabe, a Navaho mother, grandmother, artist and ceremonial leader who has been deeply immersed in indigenous, land-based ways of living. Having grown up in a multicultural neighbourhood in California, she is also accustomed to the realities of the industrialised world. It makes her an invaluable bridge-builder and cross-cultural communicator, and a powerful voi...

Hey there! In this episode we share an interview we did back in 2017 with Tim Winton, one of Australia’s most beloved and prolific writers. At the time, Tim was on a publicity tour for his collection of non-fiction essays, The Boy Behind the Curtain, which, among many things, explores class. In this chat with Dumbo Feather interviewer Myke Bartlett, Tim shares some of his insights on Australia’s c...

This week on the podcast we have Dr Tim Dean – author of "How We Became Human, and Why We Need to Change," a book about how our evolved moral minds are out of step with the modern world. Tim has a Doctorate in philosophy from the University of New South Wales on the evolution of morality and has expertise in ethics, philosophy of biology and critical thinking. This chat with Berry spans some of th...

We have just launched issue 68 of Dumbo Feather magazine – themed “Treasured Spaces,” and one of the conversations we had for that was with author and TV presenter Holly Ringland. We came to know Holly through the ABC series, Back to Nature, in which she and actor Aaron Pedersen travel through vast, awe-inspiring Australian landscapes hearing the stories of the land. In this chat, Holly speaks wit...

Welcome to our third and final instalment of the Dumbo Feather music mini-series. Our guest is a very good friend, someone we’ve had in the mag before and worked a lot with over the years, Dr Catherine Crock. Catherine’s a paediatrician at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, and 20 years ago, she founded a remarkable foundation and program called Hush – which brings musicians into hospital...

This episode we’re bringing back an old favourite, a conversation we recorded in 2018 with psychotherapist Esther Perel who has changed the way we think about love, connection and sex. Her books, Ted Talks and podcast “Where Should We Begin” have all become international sensations as she focuses on relational intelligence, and often brings us inside the therapy room to explore intimacy and erotic...