Wild with Sarah Wilson

In exclusive pockets around the world rich, white (mostly) men are prepping for end times. They are hoarding resources and building bunkers, putting billions into funding their place on Mars. They could be funding renewable energy projects, or putting their efforts into restoring political stability, you know, finding ways for humanity to survive on our beloved Earth. But no. Irish author and journalist Mark O’Connell conducted something of a perverse pilgrimage of these pockets for his book Notes from an Apocalypse and in this episode I talk with him about how we should feel about such a dividing phenomenon. And, importantly, what we can learn from it…before it becomes our future. Follow Mark on TwitterGrab Mark’s book, Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and BackIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our existential risk – the probability that we could wipe ourselves out due to AI, bio-engineering, nuclear war, climate change, etc. in the next 100 years – currently sits at 1 in 6. Let that sink in! Would you get on a plane if there was a 17% chance it would crash? Would you do everything you could to prevent a calamity if you were presented with those odds? My chat today covers a wild idea that could – and should - better our chances of existing as a species…and lead to a human flourishing I struggle to even imagine. Longtermism argues that prioritising the long-term future of humanity has exponential ethical and existential boons. Flipside, if we don’t choose the longtermism route, the repercussions are well devastating.Will MacAskill is one of the world’s leading moral philosophers and I travel to Oxford UK, where he runs the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Global Priorities Institute and the Forethought Foundation, to talk through these massive moral issues. Will also explains that right now is the most important time in humanity’s history. Our generation singularly has the power and responsibility to determine two diametrically different paths for humanity. This excites me; I hope it does you, too.Learn more about Will MacAskill’s work Purchase his new book What We Owe the Future: A Million year view If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The wealthy elite once signalled their status with expensive handbags and super yachts. Now they do it with what Rob Henderson calls “luxury beliefs” - so-called politically correct pronouncements that, in reality, only the rich can afford to live by and thusly differentiate them from the rest of us. We’re talking about such wokenesses as “defund the police” and calls for drug legalisation, death to marriage and putting “polyamorous” on your dating profile. Of course, defunding the police is all very well if you can afford to live in a gated community with low crime and security guards. It should be said, Rob, now a moral philosopher at the University of Cambridge, comes at this wild idea from a very unique perspective. He grew up poor, a foster kid who was doing drugs at the age of 9 and who had to learn to decode elite signalling as an outsider once he hit the liberal US university scene. This is a super juicy and confronting thesis, evidence of which I can’t stop noticing everywhere and I loved the way Rob applies the wild idea to online dating, cancel culture and conservative politics.Follow Rob on TwitterCheck out Rob's WebsiteAnd you can read the New York Times op-ed we talk about. His book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class will be published in the European fall of 2023.We chat about Joseph Henrich’s WEIRD theory and class myths in Australia from my Lech Blaine chat, both ran a few episodes back. If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversations. Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Breaking things up a bit this episode with an AMA from London where I'm staying with my good friend Melissa Hemsley, cookbook author, sustainable food advocate and humanitarian. Mel kindly reads out a bunch of juicy questions: Do you have botox? How do we stay hopeful in the climate crisis when giving up and just enjoying the few remaining "normal years" is easier? Should 16 year-olds be allowed to vote? What about trying mushrooms for anxiety? How do you make friends as an adult? Much of the chat comes back to pulsing between the either/ors we are confronted with, finding the "sweet spot" and making the struggle artful. You can follow Melissa @melissa.hemsley and melissahemsley.com...she runs cooking courses and tutorials.Some of the other names we mentioned:@susanjanekitchen@thehappypear@clerkenwellboyec1I mentioned the link to the beauty products I use https://www.nourishedlife.com.au/search.html?tag=sarah-wilson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wintering is the process of resting and withdrawing in dark, or fallow, periods, respecting the rhythm of the cycles of nature and the role of winter. A lost art in a summer-based culture. British author Katherine May writes: “There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them to somewhere else..into a sad and lonely and isolated place." These gaps may open from the loss of a loved one, difficult childbirth, illness, the loss of a job, failure in love and so on.In this chat, Katherine and I go deep and gentle, on creating space (as opposed to time) to reflect, “enjoying” sadness and how to carve out a meaningful life when you have a chronic illness (and autism). Katherine’s wild idea is that returning to a cyclical - rather than forever-reaching linear – view of the human experience is how we can bring about the healing and guidance we need in such dark and sad times. Learn more about Katherine here Buy her book WinteringKatherine's next book, Enchantment, will be published in 2023.Find out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We can’t make sense of the world anymore, right? How can we when our leaders lie, the media publishes non-truths, conspiracies spread faster than facts and the algorithms favour bullshit? Recently, I’ve started following a “Sensemaking movement” of philosophers, renegades, sociologists and psychologists who are trying to return the world to truthfulness. And it excites me no end! Sensemaking is a very fun and dynamic set of theories and techniques for sorting truth from lies and also for ensuring we live truthfully ourselves. While I was in London, I sat down with BBC filmmaker David Fuller who founded Rebel Wisdom – THE international hub for this movement - to do something a little different. I got him to run us through a 101 on how to sense-make. We cover lies v bullshitting (and how bullshitting is more dangerous) the Boris/Scott/Donald travesty (all bullshitters), sovereignty and arguing with climate sceptics. Along the way he gives a brilliant overview of what really is the most exciting and wild “wisdom” movement to emerge in decades. I feel this is a really important episode for where I’ll be taking this Wild ride in the coming months.Join the Rebel Wisdom community and look out for their upcoming Sensemaking 101 courseFind out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He famously wrote the New York magazine essay that told us “it is worse, much worse than you think” and painted an apocalyptic picture of an “Uninhabitable Earth” by 2100.The essay, which became the #1 New York Times bestseller 'The Uninhabitable Earth', singlehandedly shook the world into “OK, we’re officially freaked out” mode.But five years on, is the climate emergency as bad as David Wallace-Wells initially portrayed? Will Manhattan be underwater? Will there be half as much food, twice as much war and hundreds of millions of climate refugees? David, now one of the most well-known climate voices in the world, joins me to adjust his initial prognosis. Strap in for this one…it’s an important and confronting (yet hopeful) ride.Read the original The Uninhabitable Earth essay hereOr get The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future on AmazonYou can sign up for David’s New York Times newsletter hereFind out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on InstagramSubscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter: https://sarahwilson.substack.com/Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious Life: https://amzn.to/3vs3tf2Connect on Instagram: www.instagram.com/_sarahwilson_  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She spent two years and three months in a brutal Iranian prison. In solitary confinement for half of it. For a crime that was entirely made up. The Melbourne University lecturer was attending a conference in Iran when she was randomly captured at the airport and charged with “espionage” based on zero evidence.How do you survive such horror? How do you cope with living in a cell with nothing but a scrap of carpet for a year? Not knowing if anyone knows your whereabouts, waiting to be hanged? What is the internal voice that gets you through?Kylie Moore-Gilbert has one of the most incredible stories I’ve heard.In this interview, she is generously open and raw about the mind techniques that can get a human through untold hardship, how she found joy and forgiveness amid it all, how she wrote her book in her head while in prison, and what is left when we lose it all.You can follow Kylie on InstagramFind out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on InstagramI highly recommend buying Kylie’s book The Uncaged SkyThe other book we mention in the chat is Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.Listen to Dr Jud Brewer’s chat about curiosity.Find out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I really love the wild theory we explore in this episode. About 1500 years ago some obscure Catholic pope declared we probably shouldn’t marry our cousin. And from here the “West” was born. A psychologically peculiar subset of humanity then rose to dominate the planet, namely western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic folk. You know, WEIRD people. You and I. Joseph Henrich is a Harvard professor in evolutionary biology who took 10 years to research this truly Zeitgeist-shifting theory. Today he explains how the arrogant assumption that we are the “normal” ones has led to some very bizarre stuff – whether we pay parking tickets, how much testosterone we have and whether we feel shame or guilt when we do wrong.Connect with Dr Henrich’s work here.Get hold of his fun book The Weirdest People In The World Find out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I have been wanting to talk blokedom for a very long time: How and why it defines so much about Australia; how it excludes and masks the existence of class inequalities; and how it holds us back as a nation. The myth of the larrikin bloke is something writer Lech Blaine has been studying for some time. Hailing from a very working class background in Toowoomba, Queensland, he went on to be the first person in his extended family to go to university. He wrote a Quarterly Essay in September last year titled Top Blokes: The larrikin Myth, Class and Power (which I highly recommend reading). And in this month’s Monthly magazine he has written an epic overview of the election, which assesses Scott Morrison's demise as a reflection of the need to move on from the "top bloke" trope. The wild idea on the table this episode: Might it be time to kill off this sexist, racist myth...and move forward to better and fairer and kinder?Find out more about Sarah Wilson Subscribe to Sarah's Substack newsletter Get your copy of Sarah's book, This One Wild and Precious LifeConnect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.