How can sound edge us closer to the centre of ourselves, bring us closer into connection with our own authenticity and with the heart of the earth?  Caro C has produced the Accidental Gods Podcast since its inception.  Here, she talks about the wild magic of sound in all its forms. Caro C has been described as a Soul Enchantress (BBC Radio 3) and a 'One Woman Electronic Avalanche' (BBC Introducing), she's a composer and musician, a sound engineer and a solo performance artist. She's a rock climber and a dreamer, a creator of magic with all things sound.  She created the music that is our signature at the head and foot of the podcast and she's been our engineer and producer for nearly two years, weaving miracles with technology and weaving our conversations in ways that bring them to coherence while always being a balm to the ears.   As she launches her new album, Electric Mountain, we talk about her journey into sound, her experience of earth-connection and conscious evolution and how she weaves all of these into into a deeply connected, dream-woven life.  Links: Caro's Page: https://carosnatch.com/Caro on Bandcamp: https://carosnatch.bandcamp.com/

Ece Temelkuran is an astonishingly astute, great-hearted writer. Joining us from Zagreb, she gave us an hour of wisdom, insight and compassion, based around her book 'TOGETHER: 10 Choices for a Better Now' - with an international audience and some cracking questions, this is our gift to you this weekend. Ece Temelkuran is an international columnist, political analyst, novelist and sharp, brilliant, astute  - and great hearted - writer.  Her books 'HOW TO LOSE A COUNTRY' and 'TOGETHER' have been met with great international acclaim.  (she shared a stage at the Edinburgh Festival with Ed Milliband, of the outstandingly successful 'Reasons to be Cheerful' podcast. He was also something political at one point in the UK, when such things mattered...) She was our guest in podcast 74 -and on the first Sunday of September, she returned with a one hour Zoom-based Bookclub to delve deeper into the compassionate wisdom of her books. 

How can we embed circular thinking in our food, energy, water & waste to benefit people and the planet?  LEAP Micro Anaerobic Digestion is building the systems in the UK, Nigeria, Malaysia and around the world to create local zero waste cultures that provide food and energy to their communities.  Rokiah Yaman is the Project Director for LEAP Micro Anaerobic Digestion. A part of the project from the start, she coordinates the LEAP demonstration sites, oversees fundraising and planning activities, and manages infrastructure and operational logistics, helping to bring micro AD technology and the closed-loop ethos into public spaces where people can see who it works in their own communities.In this episode, Rokia talks us through the technologies involved in Micro Anaerobic Digestion, and introduces us to the projects in London, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Nigeria and Malaysia. We find out how it works, and how we can make it work in urban and rural settings, as part of the power spectrum of the future, where circularity is embedded in the way we live and we generate our own energy closer to home, giving us autonomy and agency and cutting the mega-corporations out of the loop.  As ever, our signature music comes from Caro C, but this week, we have additional music at the head and foot from Billy Surgeoner's album 'Hey Mountain Hey' - the track is The Pollen Path   Leap: https://www.madleap.co.uk/Hey Mountain Hey:  BillySurgeoner.BandCamp.com/track/the-pollen-path/

In a world where the only constant is change, how can we find the best of our wisdom?  How can we find true connection to the spirits of the places we live so that we might learn better how to be in the transition that is coming?  How, above all, can we approach death with equanimity, and even joy?  This week, we explore all of this with author, mythicist - and elder - Sharon Blackie.Dr. Sharon Blackie is an award-winning writer and internationally recognised teacher whose work sits at the interface of psychology, mythology and ecology.Her highly acclaimed books, courses, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of our native myths, fairy tales and folk traditions to the personal, social and environmental problems we face today.As well as writing four books of fiction and nonfiction, including the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted, her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Irish Times, the Scotsman and more, and she has been interviewed by the BBC and other major broadcasters on her areas of expertise. Sharon is one of those rare people who walks her talk in every part of her life.  Through the past decades, she has lived in each one of the Celtic lands: Scotland, then Ireland, then Wales, always in remote areas with few people and a wild, powerful landscape.  Her deep roots to our mythology and to the spirits of place have left her uniquely placed to speak to and of the old ways of our ancestors - and the ways we can avail ourselves of the ancient wisdom of lineage and place to weave new ways of being that will help to guide us through the change that is coming.  This week's podcast is a deep, deep dive into our shamanic past and our future.  Join us and step beyond the veils. Sharon Blackie Website: https://sharonblackie.netBooks:  https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/sharonblackie

How are we going to create the power that we need in a world where fossil fuel use has to end?  How can we end the central control of power and keep safe our data in a world where data-mining is a pernicious - and lucrative - as coal mining?  Howard Johns has spent all his professional life finding answers. He shares them here. Howard was a climate activist on the front lines until he realised that he needed ways to say 'yes', instead of 'no'.  Accordingly, he set about building solutions, eventually founding Southern Solar a national solar energy company, and Ovesco a locally owned renewable energy cooperative. At the same time he chaired the trade body representing the UK solar industry, finding himself once again a campaigner around energy policy in the process. A believer in solutions, Howard is convinced we have all the technology and money we need to implement the climate and energy solutions we need. It is now time for lots of people to get involved with making it happen.Howard TED talk: https://youtu.be/pkGAMb5sYvgHoward's website: https://www.howardjohns.net

How can we begin to reverse the destruction of our countryside, the pollution of our rivers - and our disconnection from the Natural World?  Beavers, of course.  Eva Bishop of the Beaver Trust tells of the UK introduction of beavers and puts it in a whole-system context.  The Beaver Trust is a small group of committed individuals who understand the deep interconnectedness of life.  By bringing beavers back to the UK where once they flourished, they are seeing whole ecosystems grow back to life.  In their work with farmers and landowners, they are able to open gateways to radical restoration of our landscapes and biodiversity, reversing the catastrophic species loss of the past five decades. Eva Bishop is their Communications Director. In this week's episode, we explore the work of the Trust and it's place in the wider systemic change we need if we're going to make it through the current bottleneck. The Beaver Trust https://beavertrust.orgThe Lodge Cast podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-lodge-cast/id1530950902Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeaverTrust/All We Can Save: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/All-We-Can-Save-by-Ayana-Elizabeth-Johnson-editor-Katharine-K-Wilkinson-editor/9780593237083

When Forrest Landry was 16 years old, he took a vow to meet the Natural World openly, fully, without any projection or expectation on his part - he was not going to take one step and wait for the rest of the world to take 99 steps to him - he was going to go all the way.  His life has been shaped by the experience - and he talks to us this week about where that has taken him.   "Love is that which enables choice. Love is always stronger than Fear. Always choose on the basis of Love."  – Forrest LandryYou might know him as the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a company among the first to introduce the portable vaporizer to the world, but Forrest Landry is really a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher who has been studying and practicing the varied High Arts since the mid 70’s.Before creating Magic Flight, Forrest was a third generation master woodworker who found that he had a unique set of skills in large scale software systems design. This led to work in the production of several federal classified and unclassified systems, including various FBI investigative projects, TSC, IDW, DARPA, the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and many others.This work was a fun diversion, but Forrest’s heart has always been most focused on metaphysics – the study of what is, what is the nature of being, what is the nature of knowing, and why are we all here. And, so, the most challenging system design that Forrest has tacked is his work “The Immanent Metaphysics” a decades long effort to restore legitimacy to the practice of metaphysics and construct a rigorous, coherent and precise statement of, well, everything.  He talks to us this week of his experience in connecting with the world unmasked  - about the considerations of life that it led to: what matters most and how we, too can connect with it. Forrest Landry TED Talk: https://youtu.be/iAmLRLc4ffkSolarPunk questions answered: https://mflb.com/civ_dev_1/solarpunk_questions_out.pdfOverall orientation to What is needed to meet the coming transformation: https://mflb.com/civ_dev_1/overall_recommendations_out.pdfForrest Landry's technical investigations into the meaning of life: https://mflb.com/geek_index_1.html

COP26 takes place in Scotland in November. How can ordinary people persuade our elected Overlords that they need to change the system?  Across the UK, Climate Actions are being prepared. We speak to two people involved in Pilgrimages to Glasgow about what drives them and what they hope will change.  COP26 takes place in Glasgow, Scotland in November of this year.  This is our best  - possibly our last - chance to persuade those who govern the world that the climate and ecological emergency needs swift and radical action.  So how can we get the message through to those who are driving our collective bus that they need to turn the wheel before we all hurtle over a cliff?  How can we persuade them that 'business as usual' is no longer an option, or that alternatives do exist if we only had the creativity, imagination, courage and empathy to make them work? This week, we speak to two people involved in two separate Pilgrimages to Glasgow to find out what they're planning and why. Benjamin Christie is driven by the deeply held belief in the possibility of a more equitable, sustainable and harmonious world. He works to support NGOs and ethical businesses develop and achieve their goals. With a career spanning events, media and business development, Benjamin has been fortunate enough to gain experience of many different countries, environments and partnerships at first hand.  He's speaking on behalf of the SPINE OF ALBION Pilgrimage which is walking from the southernmost tip of England to the northernmost tip of Scotland - through Glasgow at the time of COP26. Links to his work and activities include: http://www.listeningtotheland.com/https://medicinefestival.com/https://www.wisdomkeepers.earth/Bamber Hawes says of himself that he is 'a Thing Maker'. He trained as an Industrial Designer in Sussex, then moved to London and had various companies making furniture, building sets and film props, art directing and modelmaking.In 2005, after 22 years living in Hackney just off the Murder Mile he 'ran away from his annoying media clients' to Bishop's Castle in South Shropshire, where he now is a picture framer, furniture maker, artist and Art Co ordinator for an Art Trail and is a Town Councillor.Now, he has created CLARION, a 10 foot Polar Bear made to be portable. He and Clarion will be walking from his home in Bishop's Castle to Glasgow in time for COP.  Instagram:   @clarion_the_bearFacebook:   Clarion_the_BearTwitter:       @BearClarion     His call to those who might want to join him is this: Calling anyone who would like to be part of a commitment to our living, breathing Earth and the future of all life. I am organising a Climate Crisis Pilgrimage from South Shropshire to the COP26 climate talks that starts on 1st November in Glasgow. Would you be interested in joining me for a day of walking as I progress northward?I will be doing the whole 306 mile walk which will take 22 days.  Each day I will be joined by local people from the area that I have reached. The unusual thing is that I will be accompanied by a ten foot high sculpture of a polar bear, that I have made.  The bear, called Clarion, is made from thin bamboo poles, willow withies and many layers of heavy duty tissue paper bonded together with waterproof PVA.  He is carried on a palanquin.              He ain't heavy! I am looking for people to join me for a day walking along footpaths, bridle paths, canal towpaths and B roads.  The intention for this pilgrimage is to come together to walk, to talk, to connect with each other, to connect with the landscape by moving through it slowly, admiring its beauty and grandeur.  To be positive and kind, and to build active hope. To smile and laugh while being serious.Walking to the climate talks will not change the world ~ but I can think of nothing better to do to show the earnestness of my belief that we must learn to talk together and build community, only in Oneness will we make a better more just world.   Clarion and I will be coming through your area on these dates:DAY ONE 10th October    Bishop's Castle to LongdenDAY TWO 11th October    Longden to Platt LaneDAY THREE 12th October    Platt Lane to BulkeleyDAY FOUR 13th October    Bulkeley to KingsleyDAY FIVE 14th October    Kingsley to RainhillDAY SIX 15th October    Rainhill to Appleby BridgeDAY SEVEN 16th October    Appleby Bridge to MiddleforthDAY EIGHT 17th October    Middleforth to GarstangDAY NINE  18th October    Garstang to LancasterDAY TEN  19th October    Lancaster to HincasterDAY ELEVEN 20th October    Hincaster to SadgillDAY TWELVE 21st October    Sadgill to AskhamDAY THIRTEEN 22nd October    Askham to CalthwaiteDAY FOURTEEN 23rd October    Calthwaite to CargoDAY FIFTEEN  24th October    Carge to Stapleton GrangeDAY SIXTEEN  25th October    Stapleton Grange to LockerbieDAY SEVENTEEN  26th October    Lockerbie to MosslandsDAY EIGHTEEN  27th October    Mosslands to ElvanfootDAY NINETEEN  28th October    Elvanfoot to DouglasDAY TWENTY  29th October    Douglas to StrathavenDAY TWENTY ONE 30th  October    Strathaven to BusbyDAY TWENTY TWO  31st October    Day offDAY TWENTY THREE  1st November    Busby to COP26 The complete itinerary will be on Facebook soon : Clarion the Bear So, please consider coming along as a treasured, intrepid pilgrim.I assure you this will not be a shouty, banner waving demonstrating rabble.This pilgrimage will be in the media, and I am sure it will be praised and vilified. If you are not a walker perhaps you would like to still be part of this by being a driver, delivering walkers at the start of the day and/or collecting them at the end. Contact me on Social media or on 07957 667 847 No small children, no dogs, no alcohol. Thank you Bamber the Human and Clarion the Bear

What is it that makes us human? How can we bring the best of ourselves to the current crises – individually, and as a civilisation? In this episode, we talk to Matthew Taylor, CBE FAcSS, and explore his ideas around ‘co-ordination theory’ and how we can use them to create new politics and new ways of organising our society to give more people a better, more equitable say in how we make things happen. Matthew Taylor, CBE FAcSS, is the Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, but before that, he was Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Arts (or more properly, for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) - and before that, he was head of the Number 10 Policy Unit for Tony Blair's Labour Government.  He is a regular panelist on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze, presents 'Agree to Differ' and occasionally, Analysis on the same channel. He's also deeply interested in the intersection between neurophysiology, psychology and human behaviour  - and how we can bring these to bear on the current transformative moment in our history.  In this episode, we explore his ideas around 'co-ordination theory' and how we can use them to create new politics and new ways of organising our society to give more people a better, more equitable say in how we make things happen. Matthew Taylor blog: https://www.thersa.org/blog/matthew-taylorMinimate: Co-ordination theory:  https://youtu.be/-54DxHlOMncThe Podcast with Daniel Schmachtenberger and Tristan Harris: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/your-undivided-attention/id1460030305?i=1000526825665

As our world hurtles towards tipping points, how can we be part of the solution? How can we find resilience, in ourselves, our lives and our communities? Above all, how can we bring Active Hope to the world?  Dr Chris Johnstone and Madeleine Young have set up an online training course based in Joanna Macy's work that reconnects and we talk about it in this week's podcast. With a background in medicine and psychology, Chris Johnstone's work over the last thirty years has focused on exploring what helps us face disturbing situations (whether in our own lives or the world) and respond in ways that nourish resilience and well-being. His books include Active Hope (co-authored with Joanna Macy and translated into more than eleven languages) and Seven Ways to Build Resilience. His online resilience courses have attracted students from more than sixty countries. He lives in the north of Scotland where he teaches online at CollegeOfWellbeing.com, ResilienceTraining.net and ActiveHope.TrainingMadeleine Young is a permaculturist, homeopath and XR activist.  She's a trained facilitator in The Work that Reconnects and has helped to co-create the Active Hope online training. Find their free video-based online course in Active Hope at https://activehope.trainingOnline resilience courses at https://resiliencetraining.nethttps://www.activehope.infohttp://collegeofwellbeing.comhttps://chrisjohnstone.info