Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

A few weeks ago I was checking in with Mike Warwick about the show and planning when my new episodes will appear when I began telling him about the project I was working on in Salisbury (where I am trying to deploy the behaviour of entrepreneurship without the motivation of self interest). Towards the end of my explanation I told him about a quote I had recently discovered from Harry Truman I was...

This is a bit of a ramble about my conversation earlier this week at Blackwells in Oxford with the wonderful author and brilliant man, Charles Foster who generously gave me a tour of Exeter College where he is a fellow. I didn’t realise until I asked him but this makes him a ‘Don’. I also interviewed Charles for Where To Next? and that episode will be coming up at some point over the summer along...

This was an unexpected joy. Mike Warwick , who has taken over presenting duties on Where To Next? while I record my second series, asked if I would like to co-interview Tom Blue Wolf, a storyteller, indigenous elder and earthkeeper. Appropriately enough, Tom’s book The Great Remembering is a beautiful reminder of the wisdom that humans seem to understand intuitively in all cultures where their anc...

It took four episodes and an exploration of 11,000 years of the continuous habitation of these islands since the end of the last ice-age, but in this recording John Grigsby and I finally reach 430 AD and the arrival of the English. I love all the conversations I have had with John so far but there are so many wonderful things in this episode. We discuss how language may have created the separation...

The hunter gatherer paradise that was Mesolithic in Britain comes to an end as two waves of farmers arrive from 4,000 BC, bringing with them a new technology and way of life. This is the sixteenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who...

In this episode we talk about how the ending of the last ice age may have informed mythologies our ancient ancestors used to make sense of themselves and the world as it changed around them. John explains how he can locate myths in time using the movement of stars over millennia. We also talk about how our mesolithic ancestors lived according to the lunar monthly calendar rather than an annual, so...

While I’m taking a break from travelling around the country to record my interview episodes, John Grigsby and I got together to have a series of conversations about what it means to be English and to belong in the nation known as Britain. In these sessions we track when people first arrived here after the last ice age nearly twelve thousands years ago, and from when these islands have been continu...

There have been moments in my life when I felt as though I had strayed from my authentic path and there have been other times when I felt certain I was on the correct one after all. This series has given me as much creative fulfilment as any other creative project I have ever embarked on and, in many ways, driving to the distant corner of the Isle of Skye to visit Iain felt like the culmination of...

This is the second episode of the series so far where it is just me and no guest. I hope this will not come across as self indulgent, but in this episode I wanted to pull together some of the things we have learned from my guests in the series so far, and also to tee-up, as it were, next week’s episode with Iain McGilchrist . Iain is one of my intellectual heroes and rather than ask him to repeat...

In this, the second episode of my conversation with the astro-archeologist Dr. John Grigsby, we sit down and chat in more detail about the subjects we share an interest in. The movement of our ancestors from equatorial Africa across the world, the ‘lunarchy’ they lived in (time being based on a monthly rather than annual cycle) which tantalisingly perhaps explains why they existed in matrilineal g...

Those who have been following my journey in this series so far will know that while researching a new book a few years ago, I set myself the challenge of finding out when we, as a species, began to separate ourselves from nature. It seems reasonably well accepted that for the vast majority of our existence as a species, homo sapiens were nomadic, lived in matrilineal clans and had no hierarchies o...

At the end of the Summer 2025, I headed North to the Cumbria / North Yorkshire borders to meet Dr Sharon Blackie. I had read her wonderful book If Women Rose Rooted while on holiday and then devoured much of her substack when I got home. As you will know if you have been joining me on this series in search of meaning, one of the recurrent themes I keep encountering is the denial of the feminine. I...

This week’s episode is a bit different as there is no guest. I recorded it when I was camping in the Summer and the Observer newspaper ran an article - effectively the obituary - of Unbound, the business I co-founded and ran between 2011 and 2022. The idea of sharing this episode makes me uncomfortable for lots of reasons, but I ended up going ahead because the producers at Do Radio said it was th...

This week’s episode is the final one of three recorded at the Realisation Festival that takes place in, and in the grounds of, St Giles House (pictured). I sat down with Pippa, whose voice will be familiar to anyone who listens to comedy on BBC Radio 4, to discuss her thoughts on the grief that can descend after achieving your ambitions. She also talks about her experiences co-founding the Sunday...

This is the fifth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That h...

This is the fourth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That...

This is the third episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That h...

My weekly video about the latest episode of my DO Radio programme. James Hollis on Carl Jung’s theory of two adulthoods. I also reveal two new guests I will be going to visit in the next month or so. This weekly video is usually for paid supporters only, but I’m sharing it to everyone today in an attempt to entice more people to upgrade into a paid subscription because the series it hotting up (ex...

This is the second episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That...

My weekly video about the latest episode of my DO Radio programme. Mark Vernon on Owen Barfield, meaning and William Blake. This weekly video is usually for paid supporters only, but I’m sharing it to everyone today in an attempt to entice more people to upgrade into a paid subscription because the series it hotting up (exclusive future guest reveal at the end of this video) … and I need to find a...

This is the first episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That h...

Wow. My mind is still re-structuring itself in lots of ways after an amazing day at the Realisation Festival I went to so I could record more interviews for my Do Radio programme. I spoke to Roc Sandford (author, activist and one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion), Ed Haddon (coach and co-director of the festival), Jonathan Rowson (author, Grandmaster of Chess and philosopher) Sarah Wilson (...

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks writing a comic novella (!) and editing my first three programmes for Do Radio, that I now think will be aired in September. I will let you know the TX date as soon as I do. I’ve also been reading Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination by Mark Vernon (it’s fantastically good and I would recommend both to Blake aficionados and those who are just curiou...

I just got back from three days walking along the South Coast Path with my wonderful wife and some of my closest friends. Then on the last day more friends and family came to spend the evening with us. It was such a rich and nourishing experience and it felt more ‘real’ than the ‘real life’ I live in most of the time. It was one of those experiences where time slowed down. It feels as though I’ve...

This week I’m heading up to London to record my third interview for the Do Radio programme I’m recording to speak to Mark Vernon. Mark is a fascinating author and speaker on all kinds of subjects as a result of his wide ranging adventures in the academic disciplines of Physics, Theology and Philosophy. He’s also got a new book coming out about William Blake that I can’t wait to read. This week’s v...