Accidental Gods

Words have the power to change worlds.  Powerful words, powerfully written can open doors to the future.  Beautiful words, beautifully written, can give us hope . Richard Wain's new collection of poetry is doing all of these, with panache, and heart and soul. We all know by now that we need total systemic change - and a central thesis of this podcast is that we'll get there best by creating narrat...

My guest this week is someone who is both right at the edge of the emerging futures and in a position to exert leverage at some of the highest points of the scale at which change happens.  Sophia Parker is the Emerging Futures Director at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a philanthropic organisation with a long history of progressive work, aiming for social and cultural equity.  It is still committ...

How do we move ourselves – individually and collectively – from the broken Trauma Culture of our times, to the Initiation Culture that will allow us to step forward, healed and whole? Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy have co-authored a book: Post-Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse. Vandana Shiva says of it, “Ladha and Murphy walk us through the deep logics of neoliberalism...

This is an Accidental Gods bonus Episode recorded at the Marches Real Food and Farming Conference held at Linley Estate in Shropshire in September.   Josiah Meldrum is co-founder and Director of Hodmedod's  - which was set up specifically to enable local growers to farm regeneratively - and sell the produce they want to grow (and can grow in ways that help to regenerate the land), to people who wa...

We all know the climate and ecological tipping points are terrifyingly close. What can we do - as individuals and collectively?  Simon Oldridge has ideas that answer both of these.  Simon first joined us back in episode #182 when he joined his colleague Anthea Simmons and they spoke eloquently about the strategies of the South Devon Primary group which are aimed at raising one progressive candidat...

If we're at the moment of choice between flourishing and destruction, what would you choose?  We are at a moment of decision: We either step forward into our own Great Destruction, which could theoretically see us wipe out all of humanity and most of the More than Human World…Or we could step into what Indy Johar calls 'The Great Peace', claiming our birthright as the Interstitial Generation betwe...

How can we, as parents, grandparents and anyone who cares about the fate of future generations, live our lives in such a way that when our children ask us why we didn't do more,  we can say with honesty that we did all that we could? How do we help them to build resilience, to feel safe in a supportive community and in connection with the natural world so that as they grow, they can face the truth...

How much do you know about AI, blockchain and Web 3.0? If you're like us, the answer is probably very little. But these techs are going to change our world out of all recognition and while there is the potential for catastrophe, in the right hands, the same technology has the potential to help us shape the future we'd all be proud to leave behind and this is what this podcast is about. Monty is on...

How does soil health intimately and profoundly impact human health? What's the link between the soil microbiome and the human gut microbiome? How can we begin to restore our health, and the health of the living earth in concert with each other?   These are the questions posed by the outstanding book 'What your Food Ate: How to heal our land and reclaim our health' and the co-authors, Anne Biklé an...

Here at Accidental Gods, we are increasingly of the opinion that our most urgent need as we face the polycrisis is to find a sense of being a belonging that changes our life's purpose. We all know we're not here just to pay bills and die, but knowing what we're not here for is not enough: we need to feel at the deepest level what we are here for, to rebuild the deep heart connections to the web of...

Manda's Equinox meditation focuses on finding our sense of balance as the tilt of the world balances between summer and winter, light and dark, day and night.  And from that, finding a stable place with the three pillars of our heart minds: joyful curiosity, gratitude and compassion. The meditation is available with Birdsong and with Music Birdsong https://media.transistor.fm/66b6845b/79a1c49b.mp3...

As we head into winter in the northern hemisphere, as the tilt of the world hangs in balance, we reached our 200th episode.  So this is a time to look back and look forward: to look at where we've been, where we are and where we might go. From our origins as an adjunct to the Accidental Gods Membership , explaining the neurophysiology and neuropsychology behind what we're doing, and then then the...

In this, our 200th episode of Accidental Gods podcast, I am delighted to be joined by André Tranquilini, estate manager at Waltham Place, a 220 acred biodynamic estate in Berkshire, in the UK.  André is a biodynamic farmer, consultant and teacher. He has been the manager at Waltham Place since 2018. André has worked extensively as a market gardener, Steiner school teacher and farmer, and was a fou...

"Grasping the Nettle' is at the heart of the film. Making a dress this way is a mad act of will and artistry but also devotional, with every nettle thread representing hours of mindful craft. Over seven years Allan is transformed by the process just as the nettles are. It's a kind of alchemy: transforming nettles into cloth, grief into beauty, protection and renewal. A labour of love, in the trues...

How do good people create systems of oppression?  What is Health? What is unHealth? And how do we move from the latter to the former in ways that mean good people create systems of co-creation, inter-being and connection?  This week, we explore all these questions with Sophy Banks, Founder and Lead Facilitator of Healthy Human Culture.  This week's guest is a remarkable woman who was one of the sh...

We're on the edge of so many tipping points it's hard to know where to start.  But paralysis isn't useful and so we need to talk to the people who are still moving forward - and who have ideas of how we can carry more and more people with us.    With that in mind, this week's guest is a many-time friend of the podcast: someone completely aligned with our aims and ideals and whose energy, activism...

In this week's episode I'm talking to someone I met on last year's Thrutopia Masterclass: someone who was there to explore and share ideas about how we might get through to that flourishing future we'd be proud to leave behind. Elisa Rathje is an artist, a filmmaker, a podcaster, a writer, an unschooling parent - and a homesteader whose life is an expression of her philosophy that we need to live...

This podcast is focussed on all the ways that we can bring all of ourselves to the project of total systemic change: our minds, bodies, spirits, hearts - and the practicality of what we do.  Given this, we're delighted to welcome to the podcast Maddy Harland, the Co-founder and Editor of Permaculture Magazine .  Maddy, and her husband Tim, co-founded a publishing company, Permanent Publications ,...

We all know that we need to reconnect to our HeartMinds and to bring our Heart Intelligence up to meet the explosion of left brain intelligence - we just don't know how to do it. This week's guest is one of my living heroes - who does have clear, grounded ideas of how to do this.  Dr Scilla Elworthy was thirteen years old when she saw the Soviet Invasion of Hungary on the television and understood...

How dangerous is AI? Are Large Language Models likely to subvert our children?  Is Generalised AI going to wipe out all life on the planet?  I don't know the answers to these. It may be that nobody knows, but this week's guest was my go-to when I needed someone with total integrity to help unravel one of the most existential crises of our time, to lay it out as simply as we can without losing the...

Peruvian shaman Oscar Miro-Quesada says that "Consciousness creates matter, Language Creates Reality, Ritual creates relationship.”  This week I'm speaking with someone who bring reality into being with words and weaves relational rituals.   Abigail Morgan Prout is a poet, life coach, mother and visionary. She and I have been talking to one another for about three and a half years. We connected ju...

Our guest this week is Max Ajl, who is an associate researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for multiple journals and is an associate editor at Agrarian South & Journal of Labor and Society.  It was his 2021, his book, 'A People's Green New Deal', publishe...

In this week's episode, we have a return guest to the podcast. Ruth Catlow has taken the amazing work she did in lockdown and held live festivals in the park where people get to become one of the seven core species: a dog, a Canada goose (just visiting!) a tree, grass… and, yes, a stag beetle. What they're not being, are people. So they're looking at the world through new eyes, hearing it with new...

This is the part of the podcast where we talk about voting systems, specifically the quadratic voting on the blockchain that Ruth has made into an app that's in use in the Park.  Then we moved into her work with Government ministries and big corporations, bringing the aliveness and liveliness, and special insight of Live Action Role Play into politics and industry to help people see things from a...

What does it take to avoid global collapse?  Is there still time?  And if so, what are the societal, social, cultural and goal-oriented changes that we need to make to get there?  This week's guest is one of the new generation of super-thinkers who have the capacity, individually and collectively, to bring into being that better future our hearts know is possible.  Gaya Herrington received her fir...