This is a beautiful conversation about endings, among other things.

Dougald is / was a long term climate campaigner - working alongside scientists, often picking up the story where their work ends. He joins Ben to talk about his new book, the beautifully titled ‘At Work In The Ruins’.

Picking a path through the various crises of our times, the book is equal part invitation and provocation; it is not a source book of solutions to the climate emergency and beyond. Quite the opposite.

It’s an invitation to think and feel and respond into our changing world with a humility, curiosity and hope. It’s an invitation to work to end all that no longer serves us - in modernity and the lives we currently lead. And in all these endings we might find that something new and far more beautiful is born.

Enjoy.

Links

The Work in the Ruins (May 2023)
At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies – Dougald’s book
Dougald’s website
Dark Mountain manifesto
Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living, by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
A World of Many Worlds, edited by Marisol de la Cadena & Mario Blaser
Vandana Shiva
Gustavo Esteva
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, by Iain McGilchrist
Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos, by Gordon White
Cynefin Framework
A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth, by Chris Smaje
Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
Tyson Yunkaporta
Bayo Akomolafe
Red Hand Files
Robin Williams’ speech in Good Will Hunting
A School Called Home
Dougald’s writing on Substack

Confessions of a Paycheck Phantom