Accidental Gods

Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone- and it's never coming back.

We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, lay the foundations for a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.

What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?

We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just (so far) lack the visions and collective will to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor

Episodes

Mentioned books

Jan 5, 2022 • 1h 13min

Parenting in the Climate Emergency: Building a future we'd be proud to leave to our children - with Eva Bishop

How can we be the best possible stewards of the future for our children? How can we meet their eco-anxiety and teach them resilience, adaptation and give them the skills of systemic thinking that will help them navigate the uncertainties to come? Eva Bishop is mother of two young children, as well as being a long-term a climate activist and current communications director for the Beaver Trust. She is dedicated to finding ways that we can all create emotional and practical resilience in the face of the climate emergency - but in particular, how parents and care-givers can help young people develop the skills they will need to navigate a world that is undergoing total transformation - while at the same time, helping to be part of the change we need to see. In this broad-ranging, deep, challenging conversation, we explore the ways we can all be part of the solution, touching on: emotional resilience strategies; growing food and exploring the whole food system; education: what it is for, how it functions, and what it needs to become. Eva shares her 'Collective Human' strategies and 'MyActionMatters'. If anyone feels moved to help with these, there is room for a team, to bring funding together to expand them. We are all part of the solution. We just need to find what we're best at. Go for it. LinksEpisode 88 - Eva talking about the work of the Beaver TrustThe Beaver Trust Jo McAndrews You Tube: Eco-Anxiety: A Call to Action Restoring Shropshire Verges Project: https://middlemarchescommunitylandtrust.org.uk/guest-blogs/restoring-shropshires-verges-project-rsvp/Guardian article on city allotments

Dec 29, 2021 • 1h 1min

Power to change the world - for good or really, really bad. With Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute

What is Power? How do we use it: both power over each other, and the power that fuels the world? How could we use it better? In this, our ninth season (and third year), we are aiming to look more deeply into the ways we might create a flourishing future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that follow us. With that in mind, our first guest of this new season is Richard Heinberg, author of the magesterial, 'Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival' which came out in September 2021. Richard is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He is the author of fourteen books in all, including some of the seminal works on society’s current energy and environmental sustainability crisis:His books include: Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (September 2021) power.postcarbon.orgOur Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy, co-authored with David Fridley (Island Press, 2016) ourrenewablefuture.orgAlso mentioned in the podcast: Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradoxPeter Turchin: https://peterturchin.com/The Evolution of Beauty by Richard Prum: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Evolution-of-Beauty-by-Richard-O-Prum/9780385537216

Dec 20, 2021 • 1h 8min

Three-Way Solstice PodBoom: The Hive, Upstream and Accidental Gods virtual solstice party

As we head down into the dark nights of the year, the quiet time of introspection, of assessing the year just gone and thinking forward to the one yet to come, Accidental Gods joins with the hosts of Upstream and The Hive podcasts: 3 women engaged in the best of change to bring the world to a flourishing future. This is now official solstice tradition - we three explore the questions we've asked others through the year, look at what moved us in our podcast interviews and what they are pulling us towards for next year. And we offer a solstice meditation at the end, to bring you, too, to the quiet point of looks-withinNathalie Nahai is an international speaker, consultant and author of two books: the recently published Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience, and business best-seller, Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion. Her work explores the intersection between persuasive technology, ethics, and the psychology of online behaviour, and clients include Google, Accenture, Unilever and Harvard Business Review, among others.Through keynotes, workshops and consultancy, she teaches people how to understand the psychological dynamics behind evolving consumer behaviours, and how to ethically apply behavioural science principles to enhance their website, content marketing, product design and customer experience. In 2021 Nathalie launched TheValuesMap.com, a free tool developed in collaboration with Dr Kiki Leutner of Goldsmiths University, to help people within organisations understand, communicate and practically express the values they stand for. A member of the BIMA Human Insights Council, Nathalie also hosts The Hive Podcast, and contributes to national publications, television and radio on the impact of technology in our lives.Della Duncan is a Renegade Economist who hosts the Upstream Podcast inviting you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. She is also a Right Livelihood Coach, a Senior Fellow of Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute in the London School of Economics, the Course Development Manager of Fritjof Capra’s Capra Course on the Systems View of Life, a Senior Lecturer at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Gaia Ed., Co-Founder of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and an Alternative Economics Consultant.Della holds a Master of Arts in Economics for Transition with Distinction from Schumacher College, a graduate certificate in Authentic Leadership from Naropa University, has completed Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects Intensive Program, and is a Gross National Happiness Trainer through the Gross National Happiness Center in Bhutan.The Hive: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-hive-podcast/id1387510537Upstream: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/upstream/id1082594532

Dec 15, 2021 • 39min

Winter Book Round up with Manda - Best of the Fiction, non-fiction - and podcasts - to share this season

Dec 8, 2021 • 1h 2min

Ministry for the Future: exploring the ways through that work with Kim Stanley Robinson

How can we get from the current edge-of-catastrophe to a world where we have addressed the huge issues of the climate and ecological emergency? Only in fiction can we bring the answers together in a vision of a better world. Author Kim Stanley Robinson talks about his 'The Ministry for the Future' - One of Barack Obama's favourite books of last year. 'If I could get policymakers and citizens everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future' Ezra Klein, Vox'A novel that presents a rousing vision of how we might unite to overcome the greatest challenge of our time' TED.com'A breathtaking look at the challenges that face our planet in all their sprawling magnitude and also in their intimate, individual moments of humanity' Booklist (starred review)'Gutsy, humane . . . a must-read for anyone worried about the future of the planet' Publishers Weekly (starred review)'A sweeping epic about climate change and humanity's efforts to try and turn the tide before it's too late' Polygon (Best of the Year)Kim Stanley Robinson is one of our foremost visionary writers. Author of 19 novels, numerous short stories, blogs and essays, his Ministry for the Future' was one of Barack Obama's 'must-read' books of 2020. This is one of the few genuine 'Thrutopian' novels which aims to take us from squarely where we are, through a clearly defined route (with all its pitfalls, prat-falls and fights back by the Status Quo) to a place where we have a decent chance of survival. In today's podcast, we explore the book, the author's experience of being invited to COP26 in Glasgow, and where we might go next. Buy the book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Ministry-for-the-Future-by-Kim-Stanley-Robinson/9780356508863KSR Website: http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/A view of KSR as one of the few contemporary novelists dealing with 'big ideas' of how we could be: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/kim-stanley-robinson-socialist-novelistKSR TED Talk - 'Letter from the year 2071' https://www.ted.com/talks/kim_stanley_robinson_remembering_climate_change_a_message_from_the_year_2071#t-594961Network for Greening the Financial System: https://www.ngfs.net/en

Dec 1, 2021 • 1h 6min

Your money or our lives: Economics, Green New Deal and a post-COP world with James Meadway

How can we shape our economies in a post-COP, decarbonising world? How can we build a way of exchanging value that actually works in favour of our planet, not against it? Dr James Meadway, former economic advisor to John McDonnell on how redistribution can take place, and how to reshape our political landscape. Dr Meadway's work has focused on developing viable alternatives to neoliberalism, and has published widely on democratic ownership, environmental economics, and automation and the digital economy.He was previously economic advisor to John McDonnell when he was Shadow Chancellor, and was chief economist at the New Economics Foundation. He is currently writing a book on the British economy after the 2008 crisis, and appears regularly on broadcast media as a commentator on UK politics.James holds a PhD in economics from the University of London, masters degrees in economics and economic history, and a BSc in economics and economic history from LSE. He has taught at SOAS, City, Cambridge and Sussex Universities.In this episode, we explore the repercussions of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow and how the world might respond - in particular, how we might respond as individuals, and as communities. LinksJames in the New Statesman: Why a green state is not enough to compensate for bad capitalists: https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/11/is-a-green-state-the-answer-to-the-climate-crisisJames just after the 2019 election: https://novaramedia.com/2019/12/17/labours-economic-plans-what-went-wrong/Aditya Chakrobortty in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/11/green-new-deal-bad-idea-policy-left-joe-biden-john-mcdonnell

Nov 24, 2021 • 1h 3min

Weaving the Web of Meaning: Building Eco-Civilisation with Jeremy Lent

How do we evolve the radical new sense of community, connectivity, mutual support - and resilience - that we need as we move into a world of climate breakdown? Jeremy Lent's book The Web of Meaning is the 2nd of 3 that build a picture of an eco-civilisation. In this week's episode, we explore the ways we can all be part of the solution. Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future.Born in London, England, he received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day.His new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, offers a coherent and intellectually solid foundation for a worldview based on connectedness that could lead humanity to a sustainable, flourishing future.He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. He lives with his partner in Berkeley, California.He writes topical articles exploring the deeper patterns of political and cultural developments at his website Patterns of Meaning.In this week's podcast, we explore his most recent paper 'The End of Capitalism' and how our entire economic structure needs to change if we're to address the demands of the moment. From there, we move to the pillars of systemic change and how a shift in the world economy to one of reciprocity over extraction/abuse must be an integral part of the transition to a flourishing, interconnected future. Drawing from indigenous wisdom, and the 'Four R's' described by LaDonna Harris as the foundations of indigenous cultures across the globe, to the concept of fractal flourishing, citizens's assemblies and the crisis in sense-making, we move ever towards a model of how our world could be if we got it right. Jeremy's Website: https://www.jeremylent.com/Web of Meaning - book: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Web-of-Meaning-by-Jeremy-Lent/9781788165648End of Capitalism Paper: https://patternsofmeaning.com/2021/10/11/solving-the-climate-crisis-requires-the-end-of-capitalism/Growth mitigation paper (referenced, not by Jeremy) https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/endf2_kuhnhenn_growth_in_mitigation_scenarios.pdfWhat Does an EcoCivilisation Look Like? https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/ecological-civilization/2021/02/16/what-does-ecological-civilization-look-likePodcast 38 with Accidental Gods: https://accidentalgods.life/fractal-flourishing/

Nov 17, 2021 • 1h 8min

Transport for a flourishing Future: Zero deaths, Zero Emissions, Zero Carbon - with John Whitelegg.

As we lurch towards irreversible climate chaos, how can we begin to pull back from the edge? This week, we look specifically at the area of transport: how can we be mobile and yet reach the 3 Zeroes of Death, Emissions and Carbon? What would it mean to live in an area with fair, free, extensive public transport? And how can we make this happen. Our lively, inspiring conversation with Dr John Whitelegg has answers. Dr John Whitelegg, BA PhD LLB, is visiting professor, School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University and was formerly professor of geography and head of department at Lancaster University and a staff member of the global science policy organisation, the Stockholm Environment Institute. He has worked with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Energy and the Environment (Germany) and is an associate of the Kassel Centre for Mobility Culture (Germany) and a board member of the Californian organisation “Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities”.John has edited the journal “World Transport Policy and Practice for 25 years and has written 10 books. In the most recent book Mobility, he presents an evidence-based case for a transformation of the totality of transport and mobility policy to achieve three zeroes (zero carbon, zero deaths and injuries and zero air pollution). He has also worked extensively on practical measures to achieve 100% decarbonisation of land transport.In this episode, we talk at length about what needs to happen in our transport systems to bring about the three zeroes of death, emissions and carbon. John has travelled widely and worked in Germany, Sweden, and the outer Hebrides as well as many locations in the UK. He has a coherent set of ideas of what needs to be done - and we considered some of the ways ordinary people can begin to make these happen. Foundation for Integrated Transport: https://integratedtransport.co.uk/Center for Research into Energy Demand Solutions: https://www.creds.ac.uk/West Oxfordshire Community Transport: https://www.woct.org.uk/South Shropshire Climate Action Group: https://southshropshireclimateaction.org/Trust the People: https://www.trustthepeople.earth/the-courseArticle on Car free cities UK - 1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/26/city-entres-end-of-road-for-cars-brighton-bristol-yorkArticle on Car free cities UK - 2: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/31/york-to-ban-private-cars-from-city-centre-within-three-years

Nov 10, 2021 • 1h 1min

New Myths for Humanity: With Alina Siegfried, author of 'A Future Untold'

If the stories of our culture are of separation, scarcity and powerlessness, how can we build new stories, new myths, new ideas of how we can be different? Alina Siegfried has explored the deep concepts of the stories of our world, and how we can reshape them. We are the stories we tell ourselves - about who we are and where we're going. In our small day to day decisions, we think how our stories of ourselves will be enhanced by the things we do. So when all our stories have been about scarcity, separation and powerlessness, and how we can fight to gain more than those with whom we are in competition - how can we build healing, whole, healthy stories that will bring us forward to a flourishing future? Alina Siegfried is a performance poet, storyteller, and advocate for systems change. She has worked at Enspiral, in the New Zealand Government, and for the Edmund Hillary Foundation. Her book, 'A Future Untold' brings our stories to the heart of our systemic change. Alina's website: https://www.alinasiegfried.com/Aina's TEDx Talk: https://youtu.be/PM_xnvTVyEsIntroduction to Johan Rockstrom: https://youtu.be/yBjB-w5HD_M?list=PLxTt2Nm5dTv3awnK1ren4BtHNctW_v7zYCommon Cause Foundation: https://commoncausefoundation.org/about/The Long Now Foundation: https://longnow.org/Don't Think of an Elephant: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-All-New-Dont-Think-of-an-Elephant-by-George-Lakoff/9781603585941

Nov 3, 2021 • 1h 17min

Untangling the Entanglements of Activism with Anthea Lawson, activist, author and organiser

Anthea Lawson is a campaigner who’s interested in the connections between our inner lives and the world we create together. In a world of such astonishing inequity, where ever fewer people hold ever more power, how do those of us whose lives are given to change, meet the reality that we are embedded in the system? If we are an integral part of the problem, how can we live the solution into being? Is that even what we're here for? Anthea Lawson has thought about this in immense depth and with huge courage. Over two decades, she has campaigned to shut down tax havens and stop banks fuelling corruption and ecological destruction. She launched an award-winning campaign for transparency over who owns companies, which was taken up by many other organisations and has resulted in changes to the law in dozens of countries. She worked on the successful campaigns for an Arms Trade Treaty, and for the international ban on cluster bombs. She has worked for Global Witness, Amnesty International, and many other campaign groups. She's dug up Parliament Square in guerilla gardening efforts, and was arrested with Extinction Rebellion. In her writing she explores what we can learn from how we do campaigning: how our inner lives are entangled in our work to change the world. I’ve been exploring this as an associate at Perspectiva, and in her book The Entangled Activist: Learning to recognise the master's tools, to be published in spring 2021.She is interested, too, in the limits of campaigning in a time of breakdown, which I’ve been exploring through editing at the Dark Mountain Project.Her book is a deep exploration of personal process that then expands so that it becomes relevant to us all - if we're activists (and frankly, if you're listening to this podcast, I imagine you're an activist at some point in your life even if you don't identify as such), then we are also an integral part of the system that is the problem - disentangling ourselves from this is not going to happen. So the question arises of how we can be the change we need to see in the world. Anthea has explored this in depth and it was such a pleasure to engage with her on this question. Anthea's website: https://www.anthealawson.uk/Perspectiva Press: https://systems-souls-society.com/insight/perspectiva-press/Dark Mountain Press: https://dark-mountain.net/

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