Wild with Sarah Wilson

Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) closes this 12-part series on the life-enhancing “what comes next” that we need (and want) to be creating. Indy is one of the world’s most original voices on redesigning societies and he has a radical thesis that brings together most of the themes we’ve discussed so far. He calls it “civilisational optionality”. Our job is not to save civi...

Sarah Stein Lubrano (neuroscientist, political scientist, former obituary writer!) is an expert in how to change people’s minds most effectively and for the betterment of all beings. In this chat, we talk through why the techniques that dominated the “old world” – debate, reason, bludgeoning people with facts – no longer serve us. We then go through how persuasion and change will need to work goin...

John Seed (Deep Ecology OG, global rainforest steward) says we can’t save the world. And that the planetary crisis is not a failure of information or awareness; it’s a failure of human  identity . We have the story, the mindset, all wrong. And we need to change it (from human chauvinism to deep ecological connection) if we’re to keep spinning in the Earth’s embrace. John is a global...

Jeremy Lent (author, systems thinker) is a leading authority on civilisations and has just created a manifesto on how to shift from the current crumbling one to what he calls an Ecocivilization. He joins me to discuss how we can actually get there, drawing on real-life, tangible examples and a bunch of concepts that tend to get people excited. In this chat, we cover: fractal flourishing, phas...

Francis Weller (psychotherapist, bestselling author + “soul activist”) believes we have entered a “Long Dark”, a multi-decade (century?) period of collapse and psychological pain that will demand we learn to grieve deeply, messily, fully. In this episode, I ask Francis whether grief is the missing piece of the impasse we’re at. If we finally drop into our grief, will we wake up, will we finally le...

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (historian of fascism +NYT bestselling author of Strongmen) is an internationally recognised expert in how psychologically unstable men come to power and use corruption, sexual predation, staged victimhood and violence to rule. She’s recently, however, turned her focus to how societies subjected to such tyranny have survived and fought back…using moral authority. Ruth is an American...

Zak Stein   (Harvard philosopher of education, AI + kids expert) is worried that we are not raising and educating our kids for the kind of wobbly, harsh future they will be inheriting. Zak is a Harvard philosopher of education and co-founder of the Centre for World Philosophy and Religion. He is also the co-founder of the Civilisation Research Institute and the Consilience Proj...

Michael Muthukrishna (behavioural scientist, cultural evolution researcher) has a unified “theory of everyone” that says we evolved as a species, surviving crises and collapses, through cooperative norms that made sure inequality did not blow out, in conditions of energy abundance. Michael is Professor of Economic Psychology at  New York University (NYU)  and the  Lon...

Ece Temelkuran (fascism expert, political exile, journalist) first began reporting on the global slide into fascism as a journalist witnessing it happen in her home country, Turkey. In 2016, she was forced into exile and went on to write the bestselling book  How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Authoritarianism  that warned the rest of the world just how close it wa...

Dr Sheldon Solomon (psychologist, founder of terror management theory) has spent 45 years proving that our fear of death is responsible for the structures of civilisation, such as religion, education, our moral laws, myths, consumerism, distraction technologies etc. Such structures keep us from being (fatally) overwhelmed by the uniquely human awareness that we will die one day. But...

Audrey Tang (“civic hacker", Taiwan’s Cyber Ambassador-at-Large, polymath) is one of the world’s most influential thinkers and she has a vision for pro-social AI that is exciting leaders around the world. Audrey became Taiwan’s former Digital Minister after she hacked the government to turn around a trade deal with China. The result was so ridiculously effective that, instead of arresting her...

Samantha Sweetwater (systems thinker, Gaian futurist, expert facilitator) draws on complexity science, deep ecology, indigenous wisdom, and 30+ years of experience guiding embodied transformation to help humans navigate civilizational transition. She joins me to talk us through how we can best emerge our way out of the current fiasco and toward the world we’d like to create, what it might look lik...

After a long-ish hiatus, we’re returning with a fresh series of Wild. This second series will be taking a slightly new direction and is now “watchable” on YouTube and Substack. There will be no fancy studios, no professional gear…Sarah will be getting straight to the important, “life-generating” conversations that steer us through the coming challenging years and decades of what is now understood...

As many of us move into the holiday season and slower days, I wanted to reshare this conversation with Iain McGilchrist. It’s a spacious, illuminating exploration of how we’ve come to live as we do — and a reminder that meaning and beauty are still available to us, even when solutions feel out of reach. Dr Iain McGilchrist (neuroscientist, psychiatrist, polymath, author of The Master and His...

As many of us head into the holiday season — travelling, slowing down, or looking for something good to listen to — I wanted to reshare this conversation with Martha Beck. It’s a thoughtful, generous discussion about anxiety as a guide rather than a problem, and one I have a feeling will land right now. Dr. Martha Beck (author; “best-known life coach in America”) is about to release a book on anxi...

Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime, I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack . My guest today...

Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime, I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack . My guest today...

Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack . My guest today...

Dr Vanessa Andreotti (Indigenous Knowledge advocate; author) is a Brazilian academic who has developed a radical thesis for how to move through the multi-crises we face. In her book  Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism  she draws on Indigenous wisdoms and entanglement theory to steer humanity through the destruction, grief...

Dr. Martha Beck (author; “best-known life coach in America”) is about to release a book on anxiety. The international best-selling author – who holds three Harvard degrees in social science and was described by Oprah as “one of the smartest women I know” – specialises in helping people find meaning and integrity in their lives. In this episode, Sarah and Martha reconnect after 15 years to discuss...

Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) re-imagines and redesigns systems for a changed world. The architect and Professor of Planetary Civics at Melbourne’s RMIT and the University of Sheffield has worked with and advised organisations worldwide. Including the Scottish Government, the Mayor of London and WikiHouse, solving complex, entangled problems. Using complexity, emergenc...

Lyndsey Stonebridge (Humans rights academic, Hannah Arendt biographer) was worried about the banality of evil she was observing in the world and so dug down into the work of controversial philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt for insights. Her new book,  We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience is a guide on how to live--and think-...

Luke Kemp (historical collapse expert; associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) has studied past civilisations and mapped out a picture of how long they tend to last before they collapse, what tends to tip them and what (if anything) can be done to stall their demise. Luke works alongside Lord Martin Rees and Yuval Noah Harari, is an honorary lecturer in envir...

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of “Ask Me Anything” questions about the minutiae of writing about - and having to live through - collapse. I try to cover most of these kinds of questions as we work through the book Serialisation process, but a few get left behind. And so this week’s Wild episode covers these off. You are welcome to join the 55,000 subscribers who are following the book, chapter...

Prof. Joel Pearson (Neuroscientist; AI and cognition scientist) returns to Wild, this time to discuss whether free will is an illusion. In our last chat (about intuition) the subject was raised and Joel promised to come back to discuss it further, particularly in the context of AI, algorithms, the rise of totalitarianism and our agency in systems collapse.  Joel is th...