How do we really create systemic change? How do we shift narratives towards a generative future? How do we bring artists, scientists, policy makers, educators, conservationists, journalists, and all the different siloed tribes together in ways that let them genuinely communicate and listen to the web of life? This week's guest is someone who is actively working on so many levels to change all these things.  As you'll hear, Markus Reymann is a Director of a European Arts foundation, which doesn't sound nearly as exciting as it is. Because this is an arts foundation with a difference. TBA21 says of itself that it is a leading international art and advocacy foundation and it stewards the TBA21 Collection and its outreach activities, which include exhibitions, educational offers, and public programming. The TBA21–Academy, which Markus helped set up, is the foundation’s research center, 'fostering a deeper relationship with the Ocean and other bodies of water by working as an incubator for collaborative inquiry, artistic production, and environmental advocacy. For more than a decade, the Academy has catalyzed new forms of knowledge emerging from the exchanges between art, science, policy, and conservation in long-term and collaborative engagement through fellowships and residency programs. All activity at TBA21 is fundamentally driven by artists and the belief in art and culture as a carrier of social and environmental transformation.'  We talk a lot about social and environmental transformation on this podcast: it's what we're here for and what we believe is essential not just to creating that future we'd be proud to leave behind, but to creating any liveable future at all for most of the species on the planet.  We talk a lot, too, about systemic thinking, about paradigm shifts and about our capacity as a species to let go of our dominant narratives, and the need for someone, somewhere to bring together the scientists, the artists, the policy makers, the journalists, the educators…and do it in a way that breaks down the barriers, lets them actually understand each other - and then shows them other cultures that think differently, that have different value systems than ours ,so they can see that there are different ways of doing things that will work. And this, is what Markus is doing. Here is someone who understands systemic thinking and who is applying it with depth and breadth and great heart.  Bio: Markus Reymann is Director of TBA21–Academy, a non-profit cultural organization he co-founded in 2011 that fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange surrounding the most urgent ecological, social, and economic issues facing our oceans today. Markus leads the Academy’s engagement with artists, activists, scientists, and policy-makers worldwide, resulting in the creation of new commissions, new bodies of knowledge, and new policies advancing the conservation and protection of the oceans. In March 2019, the Academy launched Ocean Space, a new global port for ocean literacy, research, and advocacy. Located in the restored Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, Italy, Ocean Space is activated by the itinerant Academy and its network of partners, including universities, NGOs, museums, government agencies, and research institutes from around the world.Reymann also serves as Chair of Alligator Head Foundation, the scientific partner of TBA21–Academy. Alligator Head Foundation established and maintains the East Portland Fish Sanctuary, and oversees a marine wet laboratory in Jamaica.TBA21 https://tba21.org/TBA21–Academy: https://tba21.org/tags/?tag=tba21_academyOcean Space in Venice https://tba21.org/tags/?tag=ocean_spaceWalid Raad https://www.walidraad.com/Anthropocene Observatory https://www.territorialagency.com/anthropoceneWoods Hole Oceanographic Observatory https://www.whoi.edu/

How did one man make the shift from Not wanting to live in this world, to refusing to live in this world?If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you'll know that I did the Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher college in 2016-17.  It was a genuinely life changing experience not least because I met some of the most inspiring people I could imagine - young, motivated and incredibly bright. And of them all, Charlie was the brightest. Even before we met, he'd studied economics at Harvard and SOAS which for those of you not in academia, are both hardcore and supremely activist. And while doing the MA, he was acting as researcher for one of our best known non-fiction journalists and writers. What I didn't know was that he was already an award-winning activist who, over the course of his career has worked for the New Economics Foundation, the Royal Society of Arts, the Good Law Project, the Four Day Week Campaign and the Centre for Progressive Change, as well as the UK Labour Party under three consecutive leaders. Charlie has spoken at the LSE, the UN and the World Economic Forum and written for The Ecologist, The Independent, Novara Media, Open Democracy and The Guardian.I should have guessed most of that. What I perhaps also ought to have understood better was that he was bipolar - he now says of himself that he's proudly mad which I love - and how deeply it influenced who he was and what he did. So when he contacted me a while ago with news that he'd written a book, I wasn't remotely surprised. What was slightly surprising was that he is now a double amputee, and that his book is written about the interface between mental health, the climate emergency and what we now call eco-anxiety but which I think needs a rather stronger name than that implies. But definitely, this is something I wanted to talk about on the podcast - the edges to which our awareness of this time brings us, the frustration that arises out of living in a culture that still, broadly, gaslights all of us and does its best to rob us of the power to bring about change. Note that I don't think it's succeeding, and Charlie's book is a testament to the not-succeeding of the dominant culture, to the resilience of people around the world who are living with the reality of the climate, ecological and societal crisis and are forging paths through the chaos. Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future is an extraordinary book. It approaches head on the things we often turn away from, and we did this too, in the podcast - so this is a potential trigger warning. We do discuss Charlie's suicide attempt and how he ended up with two prosthetic legs, so if this is going to be hard for you, please tap into whatever are your resources before you listen. And then sit back and enjoy, because Charlie's brought his astonishing capacity for humanity, deep thought, and huge emotional intelligence to this and I loved it.Charlie's website https://charliehertzogyoung.cargo.site/Charlie on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-hertzog-young-frsa-40b50b162/?originalSubdomain=ukCharlie's book, Spinning Out  https://footnotepress.com/product/spinning-out/Charlie at Hay on Wye https://www.hayfestival.com/p-20173-charlie-hertzog-young-and-mya-rose-craig-talk-to-areeba-hamid.aspx

Paddy and I recorded a brief 15 minute bonus of how the world could look if we actually employed all the strategies in 'Building Tomorrow' - so sit back, soak it in - and then let's make it happen... BIO: Author, Paddy le Flufy read mathematics at Cambridge, then - as seems to have happened with quite a lot of our recent guests, he took a job in the city and qualified as an accountant with KPMG. And then, as also seems to happen with our guests, he didn't buy into the system, but instead spent years, living a double life in which he worked as a finance specialist in London for six months of the year and then used the money to live in remote places, alongside people whose lives were radically different from his own. He has traveled with economic migrants, been taught to fish by the rural people of Mozambique and lived with Hadza hunter-gatherers. He spent two months living with an indigenous tribe in the Ama§on rainforest, then won a Royal Geographical Society Award to spend an entire year being taught by traditional wisdom-keepers from another jungle culture. Since 2015, he has been based in the UK and then Canada, researching how we can redesign our economic system to avert the impending environmental catastrophe. His book is the result and it brought together some ideas we've explored already on the podcast, but knits them with things I had never heard about, and it creates a whole that has the potential to change the way our culture functions - which is genuinely exciting. Paddy's website https://paddyleflufy.com Paddy on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-le-flufy/Paddy on Substack https://paddyleflufy.substack.com Doughnut Economics https://doughnuteconomics.org/RiverSimple  https://www.riversimple.com/governance/Sovereign Money https://positivemoney.org/our-proposals/sovereign-money-introduction/FabLab https://www.fablabs.io/Curitiba Bus Tokens https://brazilianexperience.com/curitibas-bus-system-2/Cosmo-Localism https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/5/13/what-is-cosmo-localism-and-why-we-think-its-a-game-changer

As you will know by now, this podcast searches long and hard for answers to the over-riding question of 'what do we need to do, to get us from where we are, to where we need to be to set the stage for that generative future our hearts know is possible?' So when I got a book that directly asked and then answered that question, I dived straight in. 'Building Tomorrow: Averting Environmental Crisis With a New Economic System' does exactly what it says on the cover. It's full of concrete examples of individuals, organisations and businesses who are forging new ground at the leading edge of change, weaved into a coherent imagining of a future that runs by different rules.Author, Paddy Le Flufy, read mathematics at Cambridge, then - as seems to have happened with quite a lot of our recent guests, he took a job in the city and qualified as an accountant with KPMG. And then, as also seems to happen with our guests, he didn't buy into the system, but instead spent years living something of a double life, earning money as a finance specialist in London then spending it living in remote places, alongside people whose lives were radically different from his own. This period culminated with a year, funded by a Royal Geographical Society Award, being taught by indigenous wisdom-keepers in the Peruvian Amazon. Since 2015, he has been based in the UK and then Canada, researching how we can redesign our economic system to avert the impending environmental catastrophe. His book is the result of this research. It brings together some ideas we've explored already on the podcast, but knits them with things I had never heard about, and it creates a whole that has the potential to change the way our culture functions - which is genuinely exciting. Paddy's website https://paddyleflufy.com  Building Tomorrow on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Tomorrow-Averting-Environmental-Economic/dp/1739345207/ Paddy on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-le-flufy/Paddy on Substack https://paddyleflufy.substack.com Paddy on Twitter www.twitter.com/paddyleflufy Doughnut Economics https://doughnuteconomics.org/RiverSimple  https://www.riversimple.com/governance/Sovereign Money https://positivemoney.org/our-proposals/sovereign-money-introduction/Fab Labs https://fabfoundation.org/  Torekes currency https://www.torekes.be/nl/home/ Cosmo-Localism https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/5/13/what-is-cosmo-localism-and-why-we-think-its-a-game-changerThe Cosmolocal Reader https://clreader.net/

If you've listened to the podcast at all over the past few years, you'll know that the search for routes to total systemic change has always been the driver of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Even so, it's not often I talk to someone who is singlemindedly exploring the routes to that systemic change and who has the tools to help everyone explore the potential for what might come next. And so this week, I am immensely happy to have had the chance to talk to Cat Tully, a remarkable woman who spends her life helping people to bridge the space between where we are and where we need to get to, in ways that drag as little of the past with us as possible, while opening the widest gates we can to the systems, structures and practices that stand the best chance of a generative future. Cat leads the School of International Futures (SOIF), a not-for-profit international collective of practitioners based in the UK that use futures thinking to inspire change at the local, national and global levels. SOIF has worked with organisations like the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society and national governments across the planet - all with the explicit intention of making the world fairer for current and future generations.  SOIF also supports a growing network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners - young people under the age of 35, who can advocate for and engage with change in their communities and the wider world. There is so much that the SOIF is doing - so many people it's bringing together - we could have spent our time together talking about specific instances, and Cat does use specific examples of projects she's involved in to highlight specific areas, but in general, we wanted to explore the ideas, the systems, the ways we might think differently so that you can pick them up and run with them. Because one thing is becoming increasingly clear as our future unfolds - which is that none of us knows what it is, and it's going to take all of us, using the best tools we have, to make it clear. Cat is bringing us those tools, honed and ready for use. SOIF Projects:If you are interested in learning strategic foresight to shape the future of your community or your organisation, SOIF offers an annual in-person Summer Retreat in Strategic Foresight, happening from 24 to 28 July 2023 in the UK and virtual courses throughout the year. The next virtual courses in 2023 are starting in May and September.Futures toolkit for leaders: SOIF and California 100 published "Beyond Strategic Planning: Foresight Toolkit for Decision Makers"—a primer for leaders looking for straightforward, pragmatic ways to apply foresight to their work.The National Strategy for the Next Generation programme engaged 16-30-year-olds, Next Generation Champions, to imagine futures of the UK's international development role in 2045.SOIF developed the Framework for Assessing Intergenerational Fairness with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The tool has been used by All Parliamentary Party Groups for Future Generations (APPG) in their initiative Futures Check, and we have developed a policy brief on Building a Coalition for Intergenerational Fairness in the European Green Deal.Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, an initiative by SOIF, is the largest global network of next-generation future-alert changemakers democratising the futures and foresight field. With 100 fellows and 500 members of a global network, the initiative supports young change agents that use foresight to shape better futures for their community and the world, e.g. NGFP members in Africa imagining Digital Futures of the continent, seeding collaboration with an Impact fund and creating opportunities for members to be visible,  BBC Futures article, Youth Climate and Energy Futures Lab at COP26 and contributing to United Nations General Assembly on the SDG Moment Closing Panel.Other links3 Horizons model https://www.boardofinnovation.com/blog/what-is-the-3-horizons-model-how-can-you-use-it/Beth Barany https://bethbarany.com/

IF the present system is broken - and is in fact the heart of the meta-crisis - how can we transform peacefully to something that will work to create the future we'd want to leave behind? That's the core question of this podcast and so it was with great joy, that I found Dark Matter Labs. DML says of itself, "We’re working to create institutions, instruments and infrastructures for a more equitable, caring and sustainable future.Around the planet, we’re feeling the consequences of outdated institutions and inadequate infrastructures incapable of coping with planetary-scale challenges. At Dark Matter, we believe in taking on these challenges via a new, civic economy. An economy that’s community-led, and based on many-to-many relationships. An economy that prioritises mental wellbeing and Nature-based Solutions as platforms for further change. We’re an ambitious not-for-profit designing and building the underlying infrastructure to support this new civic economy, exploring how ownership, legal systems, governance … might begin to change." Which sounds exactly like what we need in our world as we head to the edge of total transition - and exactly what this podcast is about. So I asked if there was someone I could talk to - and connected with Emily Harris. Emily is a Chartered Accountant. She also holds an MA in Regenerative Economics (Distinction) from Schumacher College and a BSc in Medical Sciences from Imperial College. She trained with Deloitte in London and was a manager in their Big Ticket Restructuring Team during the 2008 global financial crisis.Prior to joining DML, Emily spent 11 years running her own consultancy business which took her all over the world and included a number of international CFO positions. In our current meta crisis, Emily has a view from both sides of one of our major divides - and now she's bringing all that experience, and a brilliantly sharp analytical mind to finding answers. Running after the conversations with Simon Michaux and Zahra Davidson, this feels like a further piece in the broader puzzle of how we are going to get from where we are, to where we need to be if we're going to create the future we want to leave behind. We spent a long time exploring Emily's background, so that I - and so you - would understand the depth she brings to this. And then we launched into what she's actually doing and it was really very inspiring.  There is hope, and Emily and the teams at DML are at the core of our potential.  Be ready to grasp the depth of the problem - and the many possibilities for change. Dark Matter Labs https://darkmatterlabs.org/DML on Medium https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/DML Medium on Financing Civic Transition https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/financing-city-transitions-a-public-civic-deep-code-innovation-challenge-9f2ef55b4bdaNora Bateson Aphanipoiesis https://norabateson.medium.com/aphanipoiesis-96d8aed927bcGillian Tett Warrior Accountants Leading the Green Revolution https://youtu.be/jR0n8mekzro

This week, we're returning to the second part of the ongoing series with Dr Simon Michaux. If you haven't listened to the first part, I'd recommend you do and I'll put the link in the show notes, but the edited highlight is that Simon is a mining engineer who is dedicated to crunching the numbers that nobody else bothers to crunch - of how much stuff there is: key stuff, like copper and lithium and cobalt and concrete - and where it comes from and how much power it takes to dig it up and move it around and where that power might come from. Our original plan for this 2nd part in our conversation was to explore Michaux' hierarchy of needs - the logistical things we'll need as we move to a low entropy, post-carbon, (which is to say, post-fossil-fuel) world. Everything in these conversations is predicated on the understanding that we've got to where we are by burning fossil fuels, which is to say concentrated ancient sunlight, laid down over millions of years - millions of years ago - and that this sudden access to vast quantities of readily transportable energy has changed who we are. Our civilisation is built on this stuff. But we haven't necessarily used it wisely. If I had time, I might write the counter-factual history where we discover oil in a culture that isn't predicated on power hierarchies and the accumulation of resources to the few by the many. But we don't live in that culture. We live in this one and we've burned more oil since 1995 than the whole of the rest of human history before that point. In doing so, we've brought ourselves to the point where the entire ecosystem on which we depend is breaking down and we need urgently to step back and think differently. Which is the entire point of this podcast - what does the thinking differently look like? How can we connect to the web of life in a way that allows us to play a constructive, regenerative part in a flourishing web? What are the spiritual and psychological and conceptual shifts this will take and how best can we make those shifts?In all those questions, I've tended to take for granted, for instance, the idea that we need to shift to renewable sources of power without actually thinking about whether that was a logistical possibility. Which is where Simon comes in because he does think about these things and he has the numbers to back it up. He gave his baseline talk 91 times in 2022 - sharpening it at every iteration - and now he's talking at governmental level to people who are listening, even if they don't yet know quite what to do. Unless you're listening in Scandinavia, he is probably not talking to your government. But he should be. So part of the reason for continuing the conversation is so that we - all of us who care - can get our heads around reality and then we can use that understanding to create governance systems that work. Link to Part 1 with Simon https://accidentalgods.life/transforming-industry-to-create-a-genuine-green-revolution/Balanced Resource Economy Paper https://www.centrumbalticum.org/files/5598/BSR_Policy_Briefing_2_2023.pdfSimon's Site https://www.simonmichaux.com/Alice Friedman site https://energyskeptic.com/Alice Friedman - When the Trucks Stop Running https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27136955The Venus Project https://www.thevenusproject.com/Sam Harris TED Talk on AI https://youtu.be/8nt3edWLgIgBiomimicry Institute https://biomimicry.org/what-is-biomimicry/

How can we begin to shift away from the old hierarchical dominance structures of our past 2,000 years, towards something where everyone brings the best of themselves and embraces and celebrates the best in other people?It was in hunting for answers to this, that I came across this week's guest: someone who is opening doors all round the world in the creation of a regenerative, emotionally literate future.  Zahra Davidson was Co-founder of and is now the Chief Executive and Design Director at Huddlecraft, an organisation that promotes and supports peer to peer learning. With a background spanning social entrepreneurship, service design, system change, sustainability and visual communication. she describes herself now as a purpose-led designer and strategist, working for a post-growth future for our finite planet.  As you'll hear, Zahra and Huddlecraft have evolved a system of peer to peer learning that absolutely helps those involved to grow the emotional literacy - to exercise their conceptual and psychological muscles - as a way of shifting our culture's centre of gravity in a more generative direction. As part of this, she is Strategic Advisor to Money Movers (formerly called OwnIt), a movement designed to empower women to take Climate Action by moving their personal finances - and they are aiming to move £1billion by 2030. She and Huddlecraft are also involved in the newly formed Collective Imagination Practice Community - and any of you who have listened to more than a couple of podcasts will know that I'm fairly firmly of the belief that if we're going to get to that flourishing future we'd be proud to leave behind, we'll need a massed act of collective re-imagining of our trajectory. Huddlecraft https://www.huddlecraft.com/Huddlecraft 'Huddles' (peer learning groups) currently open for sign-up https://www.huddlecraft.com/huddlesHuddlecraft 101 training (learn to apply the power of peer-led approach) https://www.huddlecraft.com/101 Money Movers: women moving money for the planet https://www.wearemoneymovers.com/Collective Imagination Practice Community https://medium.com/imagination-practice/collective-imagination-practice-community-2023-24-1c1405d33662Joseph Rowntree Emerging Futures https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/emerging-futures-updateDoughnut Economics Action Lab https://doughnuteconomics.org/CIVIC SQUARE https://civicsquare.cc/Medium post on creating 'microclimates' for learning and change inside organisations https://medium.com/huddlecraft/how-can-we-create-microclimates-for-learning-and-change-inside-organisations-70aae0266d9dMedium post on creating a 'surge' of peer to peer learning over the next decade https://medium.com/huddlecraft/a-surge-of-peer-to-peer-learning-through-multiple-intertwining-movements-55a101b5db5aZahra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/zahra-davidson-84710920/Huddlecraft on Twitter https://twitter.com/HuddlecraftHuddlecraft on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/huddle.craft/

Following our podcast with Grace Rachmany, we stayed online and talked about the banking crash. At the time of recording, we only knew about Silicon Valley Bank - Credit Suisse hadn't gone down yet - but we talked about the nature of finance, of cryptocurrencies, of the totally unsustainable nature of the economy.  This is the kind of conversation that I often have with guests after the podcast is over. Usually it happens off-air and I wish we'd captured it. And this time, we did.  So if you're interested in the two of us riffing in a rather less structured way than the usual podcast, this is it. 

We know that the future is based on Community. What we lack are practical routes to creating communities of community on a worldwide scale - ones that can form and will be resilient enough to survive.  In this week's podcast, therefore, I'm genuinely thrilled to introduce you to one of the women who is breaking new ground in the creation of communities at scale and across wide geographic areas.  In quite specific order, Grace Rachmany is a mother, a tech industry trouble shooter, author of over a hundred White Papers, creator of Voice of Humanity, Gangly Sister and - crucial to the trajectory we're taking just now - co-creator of Priceless DAO.  If you've heard our podcast with Cory Feco back in episode #170, you'll know we invited Cory to tell us about DAOs specifically because we knew we were going to talk to Grace and wanted you to have at least a grounding in the nature of Disseminated Autonomous Organisations and the nature of the Web 3 revolution so that we could head straight into Grace's ideas and work in this podcast.  And here we are: Grace is one of those people who has thought outside the boundaries of our current system, about the nature of the current system, about economics and governance and politics and decision making and the creation of viable communities as we head out of the old paradigm into something new and different.  The result is Priceless , which is a cause-based DAO in the form of a networked nation, which says it is dedicated to creating a true alternative economy and alternative citizenship for its members.In pursuit of this, Priceless funds economic experiments that are designed to replace the current monetary system. The holders of PricelessDAO tokens can create whatever they want with the DAO, while the founders of Priceless Economics develop decentralized economic models that support life on earth.At Priceless, we are convinced that the existing financial system is crumbling and at the end of life. While many projects seek to salvage what we’ve got, Priceless is looking forward to creating a completely new system that will be a destination for those trying to escape the collapse of everything.I mean, you know everything’s collapsing, right? What can you do about it? At the very least you can give your sh*tcoins to PricelessDAO. Any funds we have will be used to research, design, prototype, and deploy economic models that respect humans and the planet.Which is just what we're here for.  Truly.   If you want to know more, or to be part of her thinking, follow the links below - and then stay tuned for the bonus podcast, in which we recorded the follow-up conversation on the nature of cryptocurrency and Ponzi schemes and the global financial crash(es). Grace's website https://gracerachmany.com/Priceless website https://pricelessdao.io/Grace's Medium posts https://rebeccarachmany.medium.com/group-currency-what-if-you-could-only-transact-as-a-community-38f4234f72cGrace on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccarachmany/recent-activity/Drea Burbank and the Savimbo project: https://www.savimbo.com/