Wild with Sarah Wilson

Dr Michael E. Mann (super notorious climate scientist; El Niño expert) is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (and more such academic titles). But he is best known for bringing the world the “hockey-stic...

Margaret Atwood is best known for her mega-bestselling dystopian fiction, including the Booker Prize-winning novels “The Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments”, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and, most recently, the essay collection “Burning Questions”. The Canadian firebrand imagines future societies, specifically the worst scenarios in these future societies, worlds of genetic modification, pharmaceutical...

Helen Lewis (internet famous for her GQ interview with Jordan Peterson, pop culture expert) is a British journalist, BBC broadcaster and currently a staff writer for Atlantic magazine. Her work covers the rise of TikTok tics in teenagers, Harry-and-Meghan, Andrew Tate, the absurdities of US and UK politics…you know, all the chunky bits of life in 2023. She also wrote the best bestseller Difficult...

Rebecca Giblin (author Chokepoint Capitalism, media academic) joins me to explain how the Big Tech squillionaires are choking creatives – musicians, authors, screenwriters etc – and their customers. And in so doing, killing culture. Hmmm…. Rebecca is a Melbourne Law School professor specialising in creators’ rights and the director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia. Her...

Nick Riggle (Ex-pro skater, philosophy professor at the University of California, YOLO expert) has become known for dissecting contemporary phenomena in a distinctly Socratic manner. In this chat, we delve into the philosophical significance of awesomeness (and its antonym, suckiness), the existential imperative of YOLO (!) and the aetiology of the high five. Nick’s theses on these cliched express...

Dr Simon Longstaff (Philosopher, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre) is one of Australia’s most ethical thinkers. He mindfully stokes the national debate on cancel culture, corporate conduct, mask-wearing and psychedelic drugs (via his role as chair of Mind Medicine Australia). Simon guides contemporary moral thinking as the ethics commissioner for Cricket Australia, the executive dire...

Yael Stone (Star of Orange is the New Black, Founder of Hi Neighbour, Climate Activist) and I have been IG friends, supporting each other’s climate work, for some years.  In 2021 Yael Stone gave up her Green Card to combat climate change and committed to offsetting future overseas gigs by donating 50% of earnings to climate charities. Now she runs Hi Neighbour, a community platform that assis...

It’s the time of year when we all need some inspiring, expansive perspectives and I reckon this chat with Tim, which I recorded a little while back, might be a great listen as you go about your summer road trips and making 2023 commitments. Tim trained with the Vedic tradition and has taught meditation to elite athletes, jail inmates, billionaires and kids for more than 20 years. The guy’s been pa...

This interview got a lot of (shocked!) feedback, so I figured I’d run it again as we start thinking about heading back to work. Again. And contemplating “what it’s all about”. British writer Oliver Burkeman has investigated pretty much every productivity hack, mindfulness trick, list-making system and happiness boost we've ever been fed. He concludes, almost none work. Ha! I followed Oliver's colu...

I discovered Jill's story in her viral TED Talk from 2008 (it became the most-watched TED talk ever!) in which the brain scientist describes watching the left side of her brain deteriorate over the course of four hours on the morning of her stroke and how she used her right brain to stay present and get help.  I was transfixed. Ever since I've wondered, whatever happened to Jill Bolte Taylor?...

He was the captain of the Wallabies, the only Australian player to be included in World Rugby's team of the decade, but - wildly – retired at the height of his career to devote his life to climate activist projects here in Australia and in Africa.  I recorded this interview shortly after David quit rugby and several months before he decided to run as an independent Senator in the Australian P...

Sia is one of the most gifted and wild creatives on the planet, best known for the hundreds of hit pop songs she's written for herself, Beyonce, Rihanna and Kanye West, and for being notoriously private, rarely doing interviews. This is why I remain so damn chuffed that she agreed to be my FIRST guest here on Wild. I recall being soooo nervous and out of my depth. But also thoroughly enjoying this...

I share a glorious, wild, life-affirming story in this special episode. Some of you might have read my book This One Wild and Precious Life and remember the bit where I wind up in Mammoth in the Sierra Nevada and rant at a young guy sitting in a vegan smoothie café about his single-use plastic cups (he was drinking several vegan beverages). He takes it well and asks to read a few pages of the book...

How to find peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one podcast episode? Ha! You 210% can’t. But if there is someone who can provide a vision for it, it’s Palestinian peace broker Aziz Abu Sarah. Aziz grew up in East Jerusalem and lost a brother to the conflict when he was nine when the Israeli military stormed his home in the middle of the night. At 18, however, he turned his hatred aro...

Seth Godin never does anything the normal way. The prolific marketing guru and disrupter joins us here on Wild for a second time to chat about what he describes as the most important project of his life, a crowd-created Climate Almanac, created by a 300-person army of scientists, artists and teachers from 41 countries who turned around the 97000-word book in 120 days.  The wild idea we wrestl...

This week’s guest will “shock you into noticing the world differently.”  The glorious Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian-born Yoruba poet, author and teacher at universities and institutions across the UK, the US, Canada and India. He has also won the 2021 New Thought Walden Award which honours empowering spiritual ideas and philosophies that change lives and make our planet a better place. Bayo us...

This episode continues the fascinating-slash-frightening journey I’ve been on with you, to understand what we should prioritise as we face potential existential end times. Today’s guest, Harvard researcher and philanthropist Holden Karnofsky, brings the AI, effective altruism, longtermism and anti-growth debates together with the clarion call: “This is our moment, this century is make-or-break, pa...

The fashion industry produces 20% of global wastewater and more carbon emissions than ALL international flights and ALL maritime shipping COMBINED. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. Ex-Vogue journalist and founder of The Wardrobe Crisis (the book, podcast and academy) Clare Press joins me to wrestle the quandaries: Is vegan leather...

There’s a young Australian human rights lawyer and barrister who has been at the centre of the most era-defining legal cases in the world. She has represented Julian Assange since 2010. She led the Amber Heard case. She worked on the case against the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan and a case against the Catholic Church over child sex abuse. She was also a legal adviser to The New York Times in th...

We crave adventure to break up the ho-hum of our everyday lives. But busting ruts doesn’t have to be all about conquering Everest or ticking off bucket list challenges. We can get the same result as a “backyard adventurer”. Beau Miles, a Patagonia and Outward Bound ambassador, author and YouTube star, used to be a mad explorer – he’s indeed conquered Everest base camp, became the first person to r...

Life is hard. And yet so much of contemporary life compels us to fight this fundamental reality. We are meant to be happy! We are meant to live our best, most #blissful, potential-stacked life! But I talk with Kieran Setiya, a professor of philosophy at MIT, who argues we should #NotLiveOurBestLife. It’s better to aspire to a life that is, well, good enough. Kieran has appeared on Sam Harris’ podc...

He is regarded as the greatest science fiction writer alive and his most recent book, set in the climate catastrophe-wracked near future, The Ministry for the Future, is recommended widely by Barack Obama and Ezra Klein and such is the accuracy of his futuristic depictions Kim Stanley Robinson is now called upon to consult on climate solutions by the Pentagon and at COP26.  But Kim is also a...

Do you listen to Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Joe Rogan, Russell Brand or maybe a bit of Lex Freidman? They are the biggest names in podcasting (and beyond) and they started out as progressive voices, robustly questioning the status quo and challenging dominant interests and often bringing alternative spiritual or psychological perspectives to the big debates. But a trend has emerged among this cr...

There is a massive “authority gap” that exists in the world today, where women are taken way less seriously than men and still treated as less competent. They are interrupted four times as often as men and are overlooked for not being as confident as a bloke (while studies show that men’s perceived additional confidence is mostly “bullshitting”). And, yet, as my guest London-based journalist and b...

What if we could bioengineer our bodies to live forever, would we and should we? What if we could avoid all the awkward bits of sex and just neatly copulate with a robot? And what if we never had to go through the bother and pain of pregnancy and could instead use artificial external wombs? Would we? And should we? Transhumanists say these are moot questions because the superhuman or post-human tr...