Coconut Thinking

How might curriculum emerge from specific time and place?In this episode, I speak with Russell John Cailey. Russell is the Managing Director and visionary behind THINK Learning Studio (TLS), which is associated with Think Global School, one of the first traveling high schools. He aims to revolutionize the education industry. Honoured as a Top 100 Global Visionary in Education by GFEL in 2021, Russell is dedicated to positioning TLS as a beacon of innovation and inspiration for educators worldwide, challenging traditional norms. Russell is the Co-founder of the Hakuba Forum, ForesightLab.org and EduVue.ai. We discuss:🥥 The importance of listening to local contexts and not coming in with a pre-made, out of the box solution in education, particularly when it comes to PBL;🥥 The risks and opportunities that come with challenging traditional education;🥥 How collective endeavors might be the next horizon for AI, beyond individual productivity. Check out the Coconut Thinking website: www.coconut-thinking.com

How do we find the courage to move beyond the single story?In this episode, I speak with Sahana Chattopadhyay. Sahana is a Writer, Speaker, Synthesizer, and Transition Catalyst. Through her work, she researches and explores different pathways to civilizational transition towards life-sustaining and decolonial future(s), and counter-hegemonic narratives. She is the Founder and Director of a boutique consulting firm Proteeti, a Sanskrit word meaning "wisdom that transforms." She is also a certified Coach, Facilitator, Learning Designer, and an Organization Development Professional with a focus on Transformational Learning and the Future of Leadership.Sahana is also the author of a series of thought-shifting articles about Wayfinders, which you can find here: https://medium.com/age-of-emergence.We discuss:🥥 How wayfinders are the holding space for organizations that have the courage to listen to voices from the margins and the center, including voices from the more-than-human world, moving so that the centers shift constantly so there is no center;🥥 How we want to go beyond "human-centered" (anthropocentric), which has led us to where we are today and will not get us out;🥥 The problem-solution trap, which is also the "God-trick," and inevitably creates more problems;🥥 Resistance as more than political struggle, as a form of defense and opening up to better futures.Check out the Coconut Thinking website: www.coconut-thinking.com

In this episode, I speak with Fabienne Vailes. Fabienne is the host of the Flourishing Education podcast. She is the author of two books: The Flourishing Student in its 2nd edition (aimed at tutors) and another one co-authored Dr. Dominique Thompson called How to Grow a Grown up (aimed at parents). As an educational expert with over 20 years’ experience in the sector, Fabienne is on a mission to change the face of education—embedding well-being into the curriculum to create an environment where both students and staff flourish and develop the mental agility and resilience to succeed both academically and in the workplace. We discuss:🥥 How maybe we can measure community well-being (qualitatively);🥥 The need to avoid getting stuck with words like "regeneration," which are not silver bullets and represent concepts that go beyond the words;🥥 How change comes one imperfect perfect conversation at a time.Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.com Check out the Flourishing Education podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/flourishing-education-how-to-become-a-humble/id1519086201?i=1000617730193

In this episode, I speak with Paula DiPerna. Paula is a strategic advisor and consultant, who draws upon a diverse leadership background, having served as the president of the Chicago Climate Exchange International, which pioneered global emissions trading, as well as the president of the Joyce Foundation, a leading US private philanthropy. Prior to these positions, she was vice president of the Cousteau Society for nearly 20 years, and worked with governmental organizations across the globe to establish sustainable business and governmental policies. As a noted public policy analyst, she served as a consultant to the World Bank, LEAD International, The Urban Justice Center, and is currently a Special Advisor to the Carbon Disclosure Project. She is also a widely published author of non-fiction books, a novel and is currently working on a memoir addressed to emerging leaders. We discuss: 🥥 How responding to ecological breakdown will require being able to live with and through ambiguity;🥥 How we can work within existing financial systems to incentivize the non-exploitation of Nature;🥥 How we can work with value to understand the interconnectedness of all living things. Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.com for articles, resources, and more.

In this episode, I speak with Alexandra Pimor. Alexandra leads on the Nature On The Board project, a pioneering endeavour to expand the scope of Rights of Nature across legal systems, corporate boards, and any decision-making body to foster a global Nature/Earth-based governance praxis. A published scholar with over 20 years’ experience in pedagogical engineering, Ally started her career as a senior law lecturer in the UK. We discuss:🥥 Nature governance as a way to bring back nature consciousness in our decision-making, our ways of doing things, our lives as a collective;🥥 How understanding that we are relational, that we are Nature, would lead us to make different decisions and connect in ways that lead to thriving;🥥 How Nature governance is the cultivation of happiness.Check out our website: www.coconut-thinking.com. You'll find articles and resources there about Emergent LearningThis work is inspired by Nature on the Board, Faith in Nature and Lawyers For Nature.Nature on the School Board: www.natureontheschoolboard.com where we propose to put a proxy for Nature on schools' boards or senior leadership teams.

How can neurodiversity (and ADHD in particular) allow us to cultivate and become attuned to the potential for creativity, courage, connection, and compassion—the ecological 4Cs?In this episode of the Coconut Thinking podcast, I speak with Lennart Hennig. This is part II of our conversation a few weeks ago. Lennart is a founder, teacher, and facilitator. He explores the edges of individual and collective development through the angles of consciousness, embodiment, safety, trauma, metaphysics, philosophy, and deep ecology, using an integral framework of the whole, undivided cosmos. This is a conversation where ADHD is an entry point into understanding our individual and collective selves in different ways. We discuss:🥥 How neurodiversity contributes to the whole society like biodiversity contributes to the whole ecology;🥥 How our civilization is showing the signs that are typically associated with ADHD, through its inability to grapple with and respond to ecological issues;🥥 How cultivating effort is a way to embrace life, to affirm it in all its possibilities.Check us out on www.coconut-thinking.comLennart's website is www.theinstitute.one and his course can be found on www.theinstitute.one/attention

How might we create regenerative learning experiences through healthy soils?Founder of Fearless Farmers, Amy Milliron creates online and onsite regenerative farming curricula for kids of all ages. Amy advocates for regenerative agriculture as a path to reverse climate change, heal the soil and improve health. She also works to promote regenerative food sources of all kinds, from the rights of breastfeeding mothers to feed in public to teaching people to grow their own foods, to creating curriculum that opens up communities around teh world to different ways of connecting with the earth and each other. We discuss:🥥 The need to be connected to the land and know where your food comes from;🥥 Opening up spaces so that we can learn from each other, not impose our views—this is regenerative;🥥 Creating networks of that work on shared principles, but adapted to their local contexts. You can find Fearless Farmers here: https://www.fearlessfarmers.org/Check out our website www.coconut-thinking.com for articles, episodes, resources, and lots of other things.

How might we embrace complexity to open more to life?In this episode, I speak with Michelle Holliday. Michelle is a consultant, facilitator, author and researcher. Her work centers around “thrivability” — a set of perspectives and practices based on a view of organizations and communities as dynamic, self-organizing living systems. Her research, perspectives and practical experience are brought together in the highly acclaimed book, The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World, as well as in a popular TEDx talk and an online slideshow with close to 65,000 views. We discuss:🥥 How a life-aligned worldview requires us to be ok to engage with complexity;🥥 How wherever there is life, it is worthy of our reverence, and we can design with life, as life, opening us up to a differnet consciousness;🥥 Culivating a learning ecology, where everyone is changed through the process entangling living and non-living things.Check out our website www.coconut-thinking.com, where you will find articles, resources, links, and more.

What would it take for us to embrace decay as means to creating new life?In this episode of the Coconut Thinking podcast, I speak with Lennart Hennig. Lennart is a founder, teacher, and facilitator. He explores the edges of individual and collective development through the angles of consciousness, embodiment, safety, trauma, metaphysics, philosophy, and deep ecology, using an integral framework of the whole, undivided cosmos. This is a conversation about regeneration, about appreciating that there can be no white without black, no life without death, no change without composting. We discuss:🥥 How spaces are opening up in our collective consciousness to bring forth Western Science and ancient wisdoms;🥥 How life and death are the same and lead to composting for new living systems to emerge;🥥 That success might just be obsolescence because that would signify that something/one has reached their purpose and can become something/one else.Check out the Coconut Thinking website https://coconut-thinking.com where you'll find our articles, podcasts, conference presentations, resources, and more.

What would it take to bring about a world that weaves modernity and ancient wisdoms?In this episode, I speak with Joe Brewer. Joe is the co-founder of the Design School for Regenerating Earth. He has a background in physics, math, philosophy, atmospheric science, complexity research, and cognitive linguistics. Joe was the co-founder and research director of Culture2 Inc., a culture design lab for social good. He is a former fellow of the Rockridge Institute, a think tank founded by George Lakoff. We discuss:🥥 The indigenous notion of Third World, which brings together the best of Western science and indigenous knowledge;🥥 How everything happens somewhere, and that somewhere is connected to somewhere else, creating a fabric of time and space and opening up spaces for bringing about the futures we imagine;🥥 How composting the current dominant system allows for new life and new ways of being to emerge and grow.Check out our website www.coconut-thinking.com, where you'll find our articles, podcasts, presenations, as well as resources.