Wild with Sarah Wilson

Berry Liberman, impact investor, filmmaker, and philanthropist who founded Dumbo Feather magazine, discusses sensemaking in troubled times, reflecting on recent trips and the power of words. They explore navigating the Metacrisis, the importance of wisdom and action, and the stages of personal and societal crises. Therapeutic tools, the impact of trauma, and the power of walking in nature are also explored. An uplifting and enlightening conversation about being of service in troubled times.

There are many ways to challenge the AI juggernaut that has been unleashed on the world, but Tracey Spicer (multi-Walkley winning journalist, feminist) tackles it through a gender lens. In her latest book, Man-Made, she shows how the unresolved biases that exist in the world today are being fed into the emerging AI. The implications of this bigotry being embedded into our future are profound and could render any progressive work being done to address consent, pay gaps and so on moot. Tracey has won two prestigious Walkley Awards in recognition of her journalism work, was awarded the NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year, accepted the Sydney Peace Prize with Tarana Burke for the Me Too Movement, and won the national award for Excellence in Women’s Leadership. We talk about sexbot design, the significance of Siri et al being female, how our period tracker apps put us in danger and how she wrote this book with a crippling case of long covid.SHOW NOTESGet hold of Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the futureCatch up on the Wild chat with ChatGPT expert and linguist Emily M. BenderTracey mentions good work being done by Andrew Leigh MPWe also talk about the work of Caroline Criado-Perez who you can follow on her Substack Invisible WomenIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing with this new weekly format, each week I’m answering a hoary question from my Substack community (you can join here and post YOUR hoary - or otherwise - question in the thread). This week I answer Dan: What do you think of marriage?I take the opportunity to pull apart those studies that surface every few years that try to tell us that marriage makes you happier. Turns out it makes MEN happier than it does women, and not for very long (about two years). By implication, I also answer why I never got married. My answer has something to do with the Shaman from Eat Pray Love…If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie Murphy Paul (US science writer and author of The Extended Mind) recently came out with a bold theory about how we think – we don’t think with our brains, instead, we think with our bodies, feelings, physical spaces and other minds. Her work on the topic won awards, was presented as a TED talk viewed by more than 2.6 million people and has been described by New York Times’ Ezra Klein as having “radical implications”. In this conversation we discuss how our bodies can read other people’s minds and solve problems when our brains can't, why schools and workplaces stunt our thinking, how to get our clearest thoughts and why all those productivity hacks are…wrong.I’ll continue the conversation over on my Substack where I’ll share more detail on how I loop.SHOW NOTESAnnie's book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain is available now. I refer to my conversation with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor about right-brain thinking, listen here.And my interview with Tyson Yunkaporta that covers in detail, Indigenous complex thinking. If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

News! Sarah is now answering your questions.No fanfare here…I’m just launching into this by announcing I’ll publish an extra 10-15 minute episode here each week where You Ask Me Anything and I Answer it. Questions are posted via my Substack newsletter which you can subscribe to here. To kick off: SARAH, WHY DID YOU MOVE AWAY FROM AUSTRALIA?I’ll keep things raw, frank, and short in these episodes. I won’t apologise for the background noises and stumbles. Nor for being contentious. I’m doing these extra episodes to be provocative because that’s what the world demands of us now. I answer this first question by referencing the larrikin myth, the reckoning of the Voice referendum, the way Australia’s land forces its people to “endure”.You have the option to WATCH these bonus episodes over on Substack where you can also join a conversation afterwards in the thread. When you become a paid subscriber, you get access to bonus, intimate conversations with me as well as access to my one-on-one online coffee (or wine) sessions. This is how I’m doing things from now on – real, raw, intimate… and provocative. SHOW NOTESYou can watch this in full over on my SubstackBecome a paid subscriber to join the thread conversation and submit an Ask Me Anything question for an upcoming ep.You can book a One-on-One virtual coffee chat with me hereI reference the Larrikin myth episode, a conversation I had with Lech BlaineHere are my thoughts on the Voice from a recent SubstackHere’s the Nate Hagens episode if you missed itIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Missy Sims (TikToker, Republican, lawyer taking down Fossil Fuel companies) could be described as the modern-day Erin Brockovich. Late last year she filed a world-first lawsuit on behalf of Puerto Rican municipalities against Exxon, Chevron and Shell. Claiming the atmosphere-destroying emissions they produced were directly responsible for the deaths and horrific damage caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017. And - wait for it - she’s doing it via the laws she uses to take down mobsters.I started reading about the case, then about Missy, with her 2.2 million TikTok followers and her belief that God steers her vigilante work, and I had to know more. I also wanted to get her inside take on whether this wild approach to the climate emergency might just work.SHOW NOTESHere's the Shell TINA document Missy referencesYou can follow Missy on TikTok hereIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nate Hagens (mindblowing energy futurist) was working on Wall Street when he realised…we don’t have enough energy to fund the world’s economy! Massive pivot ensued and he is now the global leader in energy systems, director of the Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future, on the board of the Post Carbon Institute, teaches an honours course, aptly titled Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota, oh and he also advises governments and institutes around the world on the future of energy!Nate and I met recently at a conference in Stockholm to address these very (meta)modern issues. In this chat we talk about how green growth is not possible, EVs are not the answer, and he makes a numbers-crunched case for how to live once collapse occurs, what he calls the “Great Simplification”. This is a big one. It changes (mostly) everything, including my own ideas about the climate crisis.SHOW NOTES Here’s the link to vote for Wild in the Podcast Awards. I promise it only takes a few secondsYou can learn more about Nate's work here and listen to his podcast hereI also mention previous episodes with Tyson Yunkaporta, Douglas Rushkoff and Gaya HerringtonIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Mastroianni (experimental psychologist, Substacker) recently published a study in Nature that hit headlines. The paper, co-published with happiness expert Daniel Gilbert, demonstrated that everyone (literally) thinks the world is in moral decline, that we are less honest, and less kind, and that we need to return to the golden days of yore. The controversial bit? Everyone has ALWAYS thought this. And ALL of us are wrong.Adam and I talk through the mad cognitive biases that steer us to this error and cover a bunch more that explain why being smart doesn’t make you happy, why we forget what we've learned and why we all (again) think the general public is stupider than us (we can’t all be right!?). I was overdue for a confrontation on my biases and my moral despair…you?SHOW NOTES Follow Adam's Substack - Experimental HistoryRead The illusion of moral declineIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily M. Bender (ChatGPT expert) is a linguist, a scholar of the societal impact of language AI and a professor at the University of Washington where she’s director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory. She recently became internet-famous for her no-nonsense, almost comical, papers that criticise the hype around large language models (LLMs) and ChatGPT. Her message is: Don’t believe the tech bro’ hype; it’s spin!In this chat we cover whether AI can take over the world; the real motives behind Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s excited calls for an “AI pause”; where longtermism, the singularity, effective altruism, pro-natalism and transhumanism (I’ve covered these in previous eps and on my Substack) all fit into the palaver; plus what we really should be terrified about. This is a thoroughly important and correcting conversation.SHOW NOTESI flag this explainer that I wrote on my Substack: Say it isn’t so: Human EugenicsYou can read Emily’s papers “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” and the “Octopus Paper” Here’s the Statement from the listed authors of Stochastic Parrots on the “AI pause” letterEmily also wanted to point everyone to this paper on AI Safety vs. AI EthicsAnd if you want to do more of a deep dive into all this, check out her podcastIf you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" pageFor more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious LifeLet’s connect on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ian Leslie, a British journalist and curiosity expert, discusses the importance of cultivating curiosity in a world obsessed with predictability. He explores why some people lack curiosity and the barriers preventing us from being more curious. Emphasizing the need to engage in mysteries rather than puzzles, he shares insights on surviving the future by reclaiming curiosity. This conversation highlights the value of asking clever questions, the evolving nature of work in the age of AI, and the paradox of happiness and mental health.