Accidental Gods

What will it take to restore balance in our world? How can we repair our devastated environments, and secure future generations' survival? And what's they key to unlock the mindset shift to enable truly regenerative transformation?   With Sarah Ichioka, co-author of 'Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency'.Sarah Ichioka is co-author with Michael Pawlyn of 'Flourish' a rich, inspiring book that outlines key paradigm shifts for this time of planetary emergency.  Looking deeply into the web of life, Flourish proposes a bold, imaginative - and do-able - set of regenerative principles to transform how we design, make and manage our buildings and our communities. Sarah is an urbanist, curator, writer and podcast host.  Connecting cities, culture and ecology, she has been recognised as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, and one of the Global Public Interest Design 100.  She is founding director of the Singapore-based strategic consultancy 'Desire Lines' and is co-author, with Michael Pawlyn, of the book 'Flourish' and co-host with Michael of the Flourish podcast. In this expansive, incisive conversation, Sarah expands on the five paradigms she and Michael identified that are holding us back in the old 'business as usual' frame and the ways we can shift our world-view to new ways of thinking, being - and designing our lives.  Drawing on the work of foundational thinkers like Freya Matthews, Donella Meadows, Janine Benyus and Ronan Krznaric, plus existing communities such as the Los Angeles Eco Village, Sarah shows us that the ideas and actions are already in place, we just need to build them bigger, proving that, as Willam Gibson has said, the future is here, it's just unevenly distributed. Flourish book: https://www.flourish-book.comFlourish podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/flourish-systems-change/id1602779076Donella Meadows Leverage Points: https://donellameadows.org/a-visual-approach-to-leverage-points/Freya Matthews: http://www.freyamathews.netJay Griffiths 'Pip Pip': http://jaygriffiths.com/books/pip-pip/Ronan Krznaric 'The Good Ancestor' :https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-good-ancestor-how-to-think-long-term-in-a-short-term-world/9780753554517Deep Time Walk App: https://www.deeptimewalk.org/kit/app/Los Angeles Eco-Village: https://laecovillage.orgBuilt Environment Declares: https://builtenvironmentdeclares.comArchitects Climate Action Network: https://www.architectscan.org

We live in a world run by profiteers: the rush to make money destroys people and planet with equal disregard. But how would the world look if all businesses existed to promote wellbeing in all its forms? How could we make this work? Re-imagining our relationship to profit with Dr Jennifer Hinton of Lund University, Sweden.Dr. Jennifer Hinton is a systems researcher and activist in the field of sustainable economy. Her work focuses on how societies relate to profit and how this relationship affects global sustainability challenges. Her relationship-to-profit theory uses systems thinking and institutional economics to explain how key aspects of business and markets drive social and ecological sustainability outcomes. She started developing this theory in the book How on Earth, which outlines a conceptual model of a not-for-profit market economy – the Not-for-Profit World model. She holds a double PhD in Economics and Sustainability Science. As an activist, she collaborates with civil society organizations, businesses, and policy makers to transform the economy so that it can work for everyone within the ecological limits of the planet. She is a researcher at Lund University and a senior research fellow at the Schumacher Institute.In this episode, we explore the natuer of the various Growth vs Degrowth/postgrowth paradigms and how the shift to not-for-profit businesses worldwide could signal a shift to the end of profiteering and a change in the focus of humanity. If we're not simply driving for more profit for shareholders and bigger bonuses for the C-suite, then what can we be for? Can businesses pivot to a world where they actually exist to further the welfare of people and planet?  What would that look like and how would it work? This is one of the keys to a flourishing future. If businesses continue to push for sales growth/profits growth at all costs, then we're finished.  If they can begin to turn the extraordinary creativity that has seen their profits soar, to something worthwhile…then anything is possible.Envisioning a not for profit future: Paper https://nonprofitquarterly.org/envisioning-a-not-for-profit-world-for-a-sustainable-future/Jennifer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-hinton-758a544/Paper: Fit for Purpose: https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/2231/Paper: A Not for Profit Economy for a Regenerative Sustainable World: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359043036_A_Not-For-Profit_Economy_for_a_Regenerative_Sustainable_WorldPaper: Five Key Dimensions of Post Growth Business: Putting the Pieces Together: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351610225_Five_Key_Dimensions_of_Post-Growth_Business_Putting_the_Pieces_TogetherPaper: Relationship to Profit A Theory of Business Markets and Profit for Social Ecological Economics https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348742711_Relationship-to-Profit_A_Theory_of_Business_Markets_and_Profit_for_Social_Ecological_EconomicsGlas Cymru: https://corporate.dwrcymru.com/en/about-us/company-structure/glas-cymruBRAC: http://www.brac.netMyuma: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-myuma-group/about/Book: How on Earth: Flourishing in a Not for Profit World: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.01398Jennifer on Twitter: @HintojenTim Jackson Prosperity without Growth: https://timjackson.org.uk/ecological-economics/pwg/Patagonia going Not For Profit: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/14/patagonias-billionaire-owner-gives-away-company-to-fight-climate-crisis-yvon-chouinard

What do we do when we feel disempowered, disconnected, alone and afraid?  We can throw ourselves more deeply into social media, drink, drugs and deeper disconnection…or we can build rituals with intention, creativity, gratitude and kindness that re-connect us with the web of life.  With Isla McLeod, ritualist and shamanic healer.Isla McLeod is a creator of ceremonies, ritual designer, transformational healer and companion at the thresholds.  She has dedicated her life to bridging the gap between humanity and the soul of the earth.  In her new book, 'Rituals for Life: A guide to creating meaningful rituals inspired by nature', she brings decades of experience in creating ritual and ceremony to the exploration of what ritual is and how it can enhance our lives, returning our sense of engagement, of being part of something greater, of 'turning up the dial on the beautiful'. In this, our second conversation on the podcast, we explore the origins of the book in Isla's own childhood in Nigeria and Japan, and the sense she had of being surrounded by rituals that held real power to connect.  From there, we explore her sense of devotion to the Earth as a living being as she encountered it in Dartmoor and the sense of ritual as a doorway to the sacred.  We delve deeply into what ritual is and how we can each create our own rituals for the thresholds that matter: what the key ingredients are and what we can play with and make our own.  And finally, we explore a ritual for each season, that touch on different aspects of our lives, different thresholds and doorways. Isla McLeod website: https://islamacleod.com/Isla on Accidental Gods podcast #111 https://accidentalgods.life/earth-alchemy/Martin Prétchel Book 'Long Life, Honey in the Heart' : https://wordery.com/long-life-honey-in-the-heart-martin-prechtel-9781556435386

We are human because for most of our evolutionary history, we have eaten meat whilst treating animals as relations and giving thanks to them. We held these the two sides of this paradox in tension. But in the past decades, we have created hells on earth in our industrialised farming and abattoirs so that eating from them is no longer remotely ethical.  How do we resolve the paradox? Is global veganism the answer or are there other ways to create a generative relationship with our humanity and the food we eat? With Rob Percival, author of The Meat Paradox.For hundreds of thousands of years, we lived as forager-hunters, our lives intimately entwined with the lives - and then deaths - of the animals that we ate.  And then we cut that link and now we eat meat in plastic packages with cute pictures on the front to remove our awareness of the death that has arisen. And yet at our deepest levels, we know that meat is murder.  How do we resolve this paradox?Rob Percival is a writer, campaigner and food policy expert. His commentary on food and farming has featured in the national press and on prime time television, and his writing has been shortlisted for the Guardian's International Development Journalism Prize and the Thomson Reuters Foundation's Food Sustainability Media Award. He works as Head of Food Policy for the Soil Association. The Meat Paradox is his first book and it's one of the best, deepest, and most genuinely engaging that I've read of the many that seek to address the huge cultural divide that surrounds our consumption of meat.   This is a book that delves into neuroscience (denial, cognitive dissonance and the lies we tell ourselves), indigenous spiritual/shamanic practice, ancient ancestral practice as depicted in cave paintings that were created over a span of 30,000 years (that's a long time for an art form) and the actual experience of what it is to stand in an abbatoir and make eye contact with a cow as she walks into the stun cage. Reading this book will change your life.  Talking to Rob on the podcast was a joy and an inspiration and we ranged across all of these subjects and more.  We didn't get to the last-line dedication to Odin, which I had thought would be the core of the podcast, but then I discovered in the pre-recording conversations that Odin is a rescue dog (which is wonderful, but not quite the backbone of a shamanic/spiritual podcast that I'd imagined). Nonetheless, this is a deeply felt, deeply touching podcast that delves deep into the very meat of our identities in the modern world. The Meat Paradox: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-meat-paradox-brilliantly-provocative-original-electrifying-bee-wilson-financial-times/9781408713815Web: rob-percival.com https://rob-percival.com/Twitter: @rob_percival_ https://twitter.com/Rob_Percival_IPES report: The Politics of Protein: http://ipes-food.org/pages/politicsofproteinSustainable Food Trust Report: 'Feeding Britain': https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/our-work/feeding-britain/LRB: A Million Shades of Red by Adam Mars-Jones: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n17/adam-mars-jones/a-million-shades-of-red

In this enlightening conversation, Sharon Blackie, an award-winning writer and mythologist, dives into her latest work, Hagitude. She explores the empowering journey into elderhood, drawing wisdom from powerful female archetypes in folklore. Listeners discover the magic of nature, the cultural narratives surrounding aging, and the role of myths in healing. Blackie emphasizes seeing aging as a transformation rather than decline, encouraging a shift in perspective towards celebrating this significant rite of passage.

We know that tribalism is destroying us, that the need for 'us' to be right and 'them' to be wrong and to become enraged when we're challenged…is what's destroying us. But how do we change? How do we connect across our differences and hear pain without attributing blame? Exploring all this and more with Sophie Docker of The Restorative Engagement Forum and Open Edge.Sophie Docker is a highly experienced workshop leader, facilitator and mediator working in organisations, education and community. She is Level 3 trained in restorative Justice and CNVC Certified Nonviolent Communication trainer with a number of other decision-making, dialogue communication and conflict engagement tools up her sleeve. She has a degree in Politics and Economics and a Postgraduate diploma in Law but most of her learning came from meditation, and wide and wild experiments in living, being in community, collaborating and organising in economic, social and environmental justice campaigns and movements. Sophie's approach is underpinned by Nonviolent Communication and Restorative Practice, which she has been working with since 2012. She is a Restorative Justice practitioner registered with the Restorative Justice council and a Certified Trainer with the Centre for Nonviolent Communication and brings a systemic lens to these approaches using them personally and professionally to engage with presenting issues.Sophie's work focuses on transforming internal and external domination systems and experiencing ourselves as essential to life, and as part of a complex adaptive living system.  Her work is influenced by relational neuroscience, transactional analysis, meditation, multiple conflict engagement modalities and a deep exploration into the dynamics of personal and structural power, privilege, violence and its impacts. In this episode, we explore the nature of our binary tribalism, our tendency to 'other' that which we don't understand and to become triggered when challenged.  And then, with Sophie's guidance and experience, we talk of the ways we can move beyond that - how she has learned and is learning to step beyond our age-old tools of domination and power-over, into something where we allow our own pain but don't feel the need to project it out - and by being different, allow different outcomes. Links: Restorative Engagement Forum: https://restorativeengagementforum.comOpen Edge: https://www.openedge.org.ukSophie's page on the Nonviolent Communication Training portal: https://nvctraining.com/nvc-trainer/sophie-docker

Zineb Mouhyi is the co-founder of two charitable organizations, YouthxYouth & the Weaving Lab. YouthxYouth is a movement to radically reimagine the future of education with the goal of accelerating the process of young people influencing, designing, and transforming their education. The Weaving Lab is a global community of practice with the mission of advancing the field of weaving, understood as the practice of interconnecting ideas, people, projects, organizations, places, and ecologies to support systems change. Zineb is also a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) where she collaboratively explores the question: How might we facilitate a planetary transition toward systems that serve all life? In this episode, we explore the death of the old system and the birth of the new: how can the older generations become the allies the younger generations need? How can we explore together what it is to live in the wreckage of a dying system and how can we be part of the emergence of something new, generative and flourishing? Because Zineb is deeply involved in education systems and how they might change, we explore how current education is often designed to facilitate control, to deliver workers who follow rules and orders, not lively activists who think for themselves. From here, we delve into the ways young people can reclaim their own education and mould it to serve the world that could be woven into being, not the one that is dying; how they can shift from One Truth thinking to the understanding of many truths; from linear concepts to systemic thinking, to the ways we might create toolkits to untangle ourselves from the depradations of capitalism. We explore ways to leapfrog change, to put people, project and places at the heart of a global community of practice, to move out of the logic of separation into the logic of connection.This is a conversation grounded in living practice of the ideals Accidental Gods endeavours to promote: finding ways to be the change, so that we might birth a new future we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us... but really talking to those younger than us and finding what they need and how we can help them. Links: https://www.youthxyouth.com/https://weavinglab.org/https://www.ciis.edu/https://curriculumforlife.com/

Lynn Cassells and Sandra Baer met while working as rangers for the National Trust and soon realised that they shared a dream to live closer to the land.  They bought Lynbreck Croft at the edge of the Cairngorms National Park in the Highlands of Scotland in March 2016  - 150 acres of pure Scottishness - with no experience farming but a huge passion for nature and the outdoors.  Now, they raise their own animals and sell the produce, grow their own fruit and vegetables, and are as self-sufficient as they can be, alongside producing food for their local community and hosting educational tours and running courses. Hailed as Best Crofting Newcomers in 2018, they were given the Food and Farming Award by the RSPB in Nature of Scotland Awards in 2019 and were nominated for Nature Champions of the Decade as part of teh Nature of Scotland 10th anniversary. They have appeared in the series This Farming Life on BBC2 and have written the book, 'Our Wild Farming Life', linked below. Lynn and Sandra were newcomers to farming and to regenerative concepts, but in the past 6 years, as they have faced success and (some) failures and learned from both, they have seen regenerative farming becoming a far more widely held concept.  In this heart-felt episode, we begin by exploring the writing process, and how Lynn, a new writer, came to write such a fluent book.  From there, we delve deeply into the practicalities of farming in a relatively inhospitable landscape, but also explore the spiritual nature of land-connection, the ways we can give the animals with which we share our lives the fullest capacity to be all that they can be, so that we can become all that we can be: so that we can feel safe, and held in connection to the land and the tribes of the more than human world that surround us. Lynbreck Croft: https://www.lynbreckcroft.co.ukLynbreck on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lynbreckcroft/Our Wild Farming Life: book: https://chelseagreen.co.uk/book/our-wild-farming-life/

Holding a Ph.D. in (Ecological) Economics and having studied international development, political science, and management, Thomas Legrand works in the field of sustainability for UN agencies, private companies, and NGOs. His focus is on forest conservation, climate change, sustainable finance, and organizational transformation.His spiritual journey began at the age of 23 with an encounter with native spirituality in Mexico, before embracing the wisdom of a wide range of traditions and practices, including meditation, energetic healing and Tai-chi-chuan. He lives with his wife and their two young daughters near Plum Village, the monastery of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the South West of France, his country.His spiritual search, his thought as a social scientist and his professional experience have gradually converged on the importance of spiritual wisdom in humanity’s ongoing transition. Searching for a way to mainstream this understanding in the political and sustainability conversation, he has dedicated much of the last 10 years to researching and reflecting how we can radically rethink our model of development. The result is his book, 'The Politics of Being: Wisdom and Science for a new Development Paradigm' which synthesises so many of the foundations of Accidental Gods - the merging of a universal spirituality, grounded in connection with the web of life, and a political and social framework for a new way of organising ourselves and each other. In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how Thomas first encountered shamanic spirituality and then explore the ideas that are the backbone of his book: how do we shape our new reality and, crucially, who is already doing so? LinksPolitics of Being website: https://politicsofbeing.comThe Politics of Being: book https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Politics-of-Being-by-Legrand-Thomas/9782957758302Video intro to the book: https://politicsofbeing.comPolitics of Being Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/politicsofbeingThomas on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-legrand-b8406215/Politics of Being on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/politics-of-being/

By now it's obvious that our current system is destroying all life on the planet - and our food/farming system is key both to the current levels of destruction: industrial farming is eroding soil, poisoning the biosphere on land and sea, gobbling up fossil fuels and harming our health. Conversely, local community agriculture projects that link together viable enterprises in a network of circular economies is one part of the key to a viable, flourishing future.  Liberty Nimmo is part of a three-person team (The Three Turnips CSA) at Lower Hampen Farm in the English Cotswolds that is working towards a viable future. Their work aims to provide an environment where nature is allowed to flourish and thereby help to support a sustainable, diverse system of agriculture.  In this holistic, regenerative approach they wish to benefit all life, building soil health, contributing to cleaner air and improving water quality.  They operate a low input, low output farming system and constantly strive to reduce our energy requirements and aim to become carbon negative.Liberty herself is a Regenerative Horticultural Grower, and the Founder of Nimmo Skincare which uses Pasture Fed Tallow as a key ingredient, along with home grown oil infused herbs.  Liberty has a lifelong interest in herbal medicine and using local plants on people and livestock and combines her work at the farm with part time Italian Travel Consultancy.In this episode, we explore the practicalities of starting from scratch in the evolution of a new regenerative project: what are the aims and values that underpin it, and how can a network of enterprises grow up, each sustaining the others, so that the end result is a community supported agriculture project that feeds and nurtures the local community. Links: Hampen FarmNimmo SkinCareFiberShedZero DigCharles Dowding No Dig GrowingHuw Richards YouTube Channel (Growing)Elinor Ostrom: Governing the Commons Outrage and Optimism w Jacqueline Novogratz: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/outrage-optimism/id1459416461?i=1000570653731Nicole Masters: For the Love of Soil: https://www.farmingsecrets.com/mentor/nicole-masters/