Della Duncan, a renegade economist and co-host of the Upstream Podcast, joins Nathalie Nahai, author and tech ethics speaker, for a heartfelt winter solstice gathering with Manda Scott. They reflect on a tumultuous year, celebrate Della's news, and discuss the importance of community amidst chaos. Topics include ethical AI implications, anti-capitalism strategies, and the need for emotional balance through mindfulness. They also emphasize nurturing future generations and the vital role of service in creating positive change.
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insights INSIGHT
AI and Human Values
AI's increasing presence requires us to examine its impact on trust, agency, and human values.
We must ask better questions about AI's role and the values embedded within these systems.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Treasure Vases and Feminine Principle
Manda Scott interviewed Cynthia Jures, a Buddhist who buries treasure vases globally, creating energetic connections.
Jures' work emphasizes the feminine principle and challenges male colonial perspectives.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Focus on Imperialism's Role
Consider capitalism's role in imperialism and how it affects global exploitation.
Explore Walter Rodney's and Jason Hickel's work on this topic.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
In 'Feeding Your Demons,' Tsultrim Allione adapts the revolutionary wisdom of Tibet’s greatest female spiritual master, providing a powerful method for coping with inner enemies. The book outlines a five-step practice for recognizing, giving form to, and feeding your 'demons,' which are negative emotions, relationships, fears, illnesses, and self-defeating patterns. This approach aims to transform these challenges into allies, promoting inner peace and applying to both personal and global issues. The book is enriched with detailed examples of how others have transformed their demons, offering insights and tools for achieving inner peace and resolving inner conflict.
Hospicing Modernity
Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti
This book critiques the modernity narrative as a single story of progress, development, and civilization that is expiring. It argues that modernity, driven by expansion, colonialism, and resource extraction, has created significant harm and imbalance. Andreotti calls for 'hospicing' modernity, offering palliative care to its decline while nurturing new, potentially wiser systems. The book includes thought experiments and exercises to help readers reimagine learning, unlearn harmful behaviors, and expand their capacity to handle difficult and painful issues. It emphasizes the need for humility, accountability, and a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of human and natural systems.
LSD and the Mind of the Universe
Diamonds from Heaven
Christopher M. Bache
In this book, Christopher M. Bache chronicles his systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. Following protocols established by Stanislav Grof, Bache conducted 73 high-dose LSD sessions over the course of 20 years, which drew him into a deepening communion with cosmic consciousness. The book makes a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience and discusses the challenges of integrating these experiences into everyday life. It also explores how psychedelic experiences can lead to collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity. Bache's journey reveals a spiral of death and rebirth, taking him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe, and ultimately to a realization of Divine Oneness and the Diamond Luminosity that lies outside cyclic existence[1][3][5].
God, Human, Animal, Machine
Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
Meghan O'Gieblyn
In this book, Meghan O'Gieblyn delves into the complex relationships between technology, human consciousness, and the search for meaning. She examines how the rise of science and technology has transformed our understanding of the world, from the materialism introduced by Descartes to the modern digital age. O'Gieblyn draws on her personal experiences as a former fundamentalist Christian and her studies in philosophy to navigate topics such as artificial intelligence, the hard problem of consciousness, and the blending of scientific and religious thought. The book is a hybrid of history, criticism, philosophy, and memoir, offering a nuanced and thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be human in the face of technological advancements.
Pedagogies of Collapse
Pedagogies of Collapse
Ginie Servant-Miklos
Transformative Adaptation
None
Rupert Read
The Service Berry
The Service Berry
about abundance and gratitude in the natural world
Robin Wall Kimmerer
In "The Service Berry," Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the life cycle of the serviceberry plant as a metaphor for rethinking economic systems. The book explores the plant's generosity in providing abundance beyond its own needs, highlighting the concept of reciprocity in nature. Kimmerer contrasts this natural model with human-made economies characterized by overconsumption and hoarding. She advocates for a shift towards a gift economy, emphasizing the importance of sharing and building relationships for well-being and security. The book offers a blend of scientific knowledge and indigenous wisdom, urging readers to reconsider their relationship with the natural world and the economy.
The Deluge
The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931
Adam Tooze
In 'The Deluge', Adam Tooze provides a panoramic view of the struggle for global mastery from the battles of the Western Front in 1916 to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The book explores how the Great War reshaped the global order, leading to the collapse of empires, the emergence of new nations, and the rise of the United States as a dominant global force. Tooze argues that the war marked the beginning of an American-centered world order, which would be challenged by leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, and those of Imperial Japan in the subsequent decades. The book also delves into the economic and political implications of this new order, including the role of Woodrow Wilson's 'peace without victory' and the global economic instability that followed[2][4][5].
Down the Rabbit Hole
None
Charlie Bennett
This is the fifth year of our traditional Winter Solstice podcast gathering in which Nathalie Nahai of 'In Conversation with Nathalie Nahai, Della Duncan of The Upstream Podcast and I sit around our virtual dark-nights fire to reflect on the podcasting year just gone and explore what has changed for us since the last time we three met in one place. By any measure, this year has been pretty turbulent and our capacity to predict anything at all for 2025 is fairly ragged, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating Della's news, and sharing the ways we find stability and maintain sanity in a world that feels increasingly precarious. Whatever else is happening, friendship is the glue that builds community and all of us - we who make the podcasts and everyone who listens - are building a de facto community of passion and purpose. So thank you for being there. I hope you enjoy what follows.
Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a co-host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, a faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and the designer and co-facilitator of the Cultivating Regenerative Livelihood Course at Gaia Education.
Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.
Accidental Gods 
