Accidental Gods

My first guest after the summer break is Tim Frenneaux, whom I first met in his role as Source for the Piʌot project which is a thoroughly engaging and inspiring new concept, that he describes as a people-powered movement for regenerative transformation.   As you'll hear, Tim really understands what it is to live - to dance  - at the inter-becoming edge of emergence.  He's a multi-talented, multi-...

Can our national and international legal systems be harnessed in service of life, to put the brakes on the worst excesses of capitalism and slow the annihilation of our eco-sphere?  Stop Ecocide International exists explicitly to make this happen and this week, we talk to Jojo Mehta, co-founder and Executive Director of the movement.  If we're going to stop capitalism's harms to the planet, we hav...

The climate emergency is impacting our entire eco-sphere.  Plants are at the core of every food chain but we have no idea how fast they can adapt to changes that are taking place in decades where once they took Millenia.  Which is where human ingenuity and intervention could be game-changing.  If we put our minds to it, could we help plants to evolve in ways that serve the entire web of life?  In...

'Are we [in our WEIRD culture] intelligent enough to be more generous than we have ever been throughout history?'  So writes Jenny Grettve, in her new book, 'Mothering Economy'.  Jenny is an author, philospher, systems thinker and designer who joined us in Episode #228 , talking about the principles and practice of her generative, systems-led design agency, 'When! When!' At the time, she said she...

We live in a burning world. As we record, there are record wildfires across the Americas, record temperatures around the world, falling oxygen levels in the oceans and however much supposedly renewable energy we produce, Jevons' Paradox means we keep on burning fossil fuels.  This is not a great combination, but even the so called renewables have more under the hood than appears on the surface.  B...

We know that being kind to our gut biome is crucial to our health, but what about the trillion happy helpers (or not) on our skin, in our lungs, our ears, our mouths… the things we slaughter daily with the ‘cleaning products’ we splash around our homes that not only impact our biomes directly, but leach out into our waterways, soil and the air that we breathe so we end up adding to ecosphere annih...

The Western world is in a crisis of democracy - but we learn a lot of our principles from the ways we interact online and the internet is essentially a feudal space that gives absolute power to a few and robs the many of agency.  Nathan Schneidersuggests that if we were able to shape a more liquid democracy online, our experience of generative interactions would spill over into the outer world. Ha...

Cities: most of us live in them and most of them are geared around the old values of the last century.  But what if our core question was: what does it take to have pride in the place I live?  How can we completely rethink the way cities act and are shaped to put a flourishing future at the heart of all they do?  Georgia Cameron of Dark Matter Labs lays out the visions of Net Zero Cities that goes...

Clearly we need urgently to shift the democratic dial towards something that might actually serve the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. But how do we get there? How do we open the doors to possibility so that we can shift from the disconnection of our culture to a path of real heart-mind connection to the web of life? Our guest this week is Leah Rampy, author of the book Earth and...

Humanity is a storied species - everything we do from forming partnerships, to buying stuff, to moving house, to getting a new job… arises from the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves and each other. If we’re going to shift to a new way of being, the route will be led by the stories we can build of how it will look and feel, how we’ll be more alive, more connected, have a deep...

We know by now that the old system is crumbling, that the old paradigms are no longer fit for purpose and we need to take part in the birth of something new: this is what this podcast is for. But what are the tools and how can we begin actually to build something relevant and useful within the strictures of a system that is still trying to cling onto legitimacy and power? Michael Haupt was a key f...

How does our increasing destruction of the earth's biosphere also impact our health?  What diseases are we seeing in almost pandemic proportions and how much younger are the people in whom we're seeing them?  Above all, what can we do to step away from the system that's extracting everything from us - our health, our futures and our potential to be good ancestors? Our guest this week is Jenny Good...

If the current electoral/governance system is not fit for purpose (and who could possibly imagine it was?) how can we lay the foundations for new ways of organising democracy, new ways of voting, new ideas of what governance is for and how it could work in the twenty-first century. How, in short, do we create space for future generations to be able to decide their own futures in ways that are not...

The question of how we reshape democracy, walking the fine line between stagnation and populist rage - is the defining problem of our time - with a coherent strategy, we can shape anything. In its absence, we’re going to end up spinning in pointless circles, arguing about trivia while the world burns.  We set this podcast up months ago, thinking we’d talk about the example Scotland sets for the UK...

What are we being offered by the incoming Labour Government? What's good in their Manifesto (spoiler alert, not very much)? What's not good? What could be improved upon and how do we go about pushing them to a place where they actually do something useful that isn't simply a repeat of the same-old, same-old we've had for the past decade and a half?   Our third Election Special Guest is Dr Jeremy G...

Today we're blowing open a route towards energy security, reduced carbon footprint and saving money - all in the way we make, distribute and use power.  If each of us could minimise our own power use, we'd be a step on the way to reducing our overall carbon footprint: more, we'd be changing the ways we think of ourselves as separate from the web of life. This week's guest is long time friend of th...

Our guest this week is Richard Smyth, author, crossword designer, cartoonist - and father of two young children Richard writes features, reviews and comment pieces for publications including The Guardian , The Times LiterarySupplement , The New Statesman, and New Scientist. His crosswords – both cryptic and quiz – appear regularly in New Scientist , History Today , and BBC Wildlife . He's part of...

in this second election special, we talk to Natalie Bennett (or Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle if we're going to be forma - but she said we didn't need to be) - one of two Green Party members in the House of Lords.  Natalie is author of the Book 'Change Everything: How we can rethink, repair and rebuild society' - one of the essential books of our time that outlines in detail how we can create t...

Our guest this week is Dr Deborah Benham, Biomimicry Educator, Transition Town Co-Lead Link and Deep Nature Connection facilitator - which puts her in a place to really unpick what it will take for us to depart the crumbling remains of late-stage capitalism and build a world based on connection, coherence and community.  From her early days as a Marine Biologist, through her PhD on sea otters (I a...

Buy Manda's book here Our first Election Special with friend of the podcast, Neal Lawson. Neal is Director of the progressive campaign group, Compass and co-host of the Compass podcast ,called It's Bloody Complicated. Neal is a long-time progressive campaigner and a tireless advocate for Proportional Representation as a vehicle for radical progressive change in the way we do politics.  In this swi...

This week's guest, Jessica Bockler is one of those people who sparks every fire in my being - and i hope in yours, too.  Jessica is an applied theatre practitioner and transpersonal psychologist who co-founded the Alef Trust a globally-conscious non-profit organisation offering online graduate education programmes , and open learning courses for people who want really to step into what Indy Johar...

Once in a while, a book comes along that changes how we see the world, that re-sets something fundamental in who we are and our capacity to engage with the Web of Life.  Braided Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer was one of these: at once poetically beautiful, spiritually inspiring and deeply thought-provoking. And now Osprey Orielle Lake has written ' The Story is in our Bones: How Worldview and C...

This week the tables are turned and Maddy Harland, editor of Permaculture Magazine interviews Manda about her new 'seismic' Mytho-Political thriller, Any Human Power , which will be available from 30th May. " From a bestselling storyteller who brings together myths and speculative futures with a radical compassion, comes the story of a family at the heart of a political crisis and the ensuing upri...

Join us on a deep dive into the transformative world of composting with Nicky Grady Scott, a master composter and educator whose expertise is revolutionizing our approach to waste and regenerative cycles. In this enlightening episode, Nicky shares his journey from a passionate 16-year-old working with compost to the establishment of community-led recycling projects that have evolved into thriving...

Author Stephen Markley opens the doors to The Deluge, his ground-breaking, world-changing Climate/MetaCrisis thriller- 900 pages that absolutely squarely rips into the current system in all its deficiencies - and offers a route through to a future that might work.  This week's guest is someone who has mapped out a possible future in a depth and detail that leaves me awestruck. Stephen Markley's fi...