We're on the edge of so many tipping points it's hard to know where to start.  But paralysis isn't useful and so we need to talk to the people who are still moving forward - and who have ideas of how we can carry more and more people with us.   With that in mind, this week's guest is a many-time friend of the podcast: someone completely aligned with our aims and ideals and whose energy, activism - and capacity to write and publish books that are right on the nail - leave me awestruck. Professor Rupert Read is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. With a first degree from Oxford and a doctorate from Rutger's, he has a polished academic pedigree and he's certainly written a lot of philosophical texts and papers. But it's as an activist, thought-leader and fearless advocate for truth that he really stands out. Rupert's books 'This Civilisation is Finished', 'Parents For a Future' and, most recently 'Do you want to know the Truth' are all hard-hitting examinations of exactly where we are and how we could move forward in ways that will at least begin to acknowledge the truths of the meta crisis. It's not all writing, though, Rupert, was one of the core founders of Extinction Rebellion and has been arrested for his actions on behalf of our future. He went on to co-found the Moderate Flank and is now one of the key thinkers and figureheads of the Climate Majority Project. He appears almost daily on television and radio in the UK and around the world and I am really grateful that he's made the time to join us here at Accidental GodsRupert's website https://rupertread.net/books/The Climate Majority Project https://climatemajorityproject.com/IF you want to help - the CROWDFUNDER is here:  https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/power-climate-action

In this week's episode I'm talking to someone I met on last year's Thrutopia Masterclass: someone who was there to explore and share ideas about how we might get through to that flourishing future we'd be proud to leave behind. Elisa Rathje is an artist, a filmmaker, a podcaster, a writer, an unschooling parent - and a homesteader whose life is an expression of her philosophy that we need to live closer to, and in harmony with, the land. She and her family farm one and a half acres on Saltspring Island off the west coast of Canada between Vancouver and Vancouver island where she makes her appleturnover TV channel for Youtube, with short films showing the ways she's rediscovering, or in some cases, creating anew, ways to grow and thrive on and with the land. We've had some pretty hardcore conversations recently on the podcast, and I thought it was time for something inspiring, less of how we fix the broken structures at national level, and more how we can each live different lives, tell ourselves different stories of who we are and how we are... get into the detail of composting toilets and community buses and how to keep chickens and geese and sort the water... all the things we're really going to need to learn, or relearn or otherwise bring into being as we shift forward into the small farm future that Chris Smaje was talking about last week. So this is a regenerative episode, about regenerating our souls as we heal the land. appleturnover TV https://appleturnover.tv/The Journal of Small Work https://appleturnover.tv/farm/journal/Miraculous Abundance https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/miraculous-abundance-one-quarter-acre-two-french-farmers-and-enough-food-to-feed-the-world-perrine-herve-gruyer/1935503?ean=9781603586429Feminism and the Mastery of Nature https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/feminism-and-the-mastery-of-nature-val-plumwood/825976?ean=9780415068109Attachment Parenting https://attachmentparenting.co.uk/Hold onto your kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hold-on-to-your-kids-why-parents-need-to-matter-more-than-peers-gabor-mate/739814?ean=9781785042195

This podcast is focussed on all the ways that we can bring all of ourselves to the project of total systemic change: our minds, bodies, spirits, hearts - and the practicality of what we do.  Given this, we're delighted to welcome to the podcast Maddy Harland, the Co-founder and Editor of Permaculture Magazine . Maddy, and her husband Tim, co-founded a publishing company, Permanent Publications, in 1990 and Permaculture Magazine in 1992 to explore traditional and new ways of living in greater harmony with the Earth. She is the author of Fertile Edges—regenerating land, culture and hope and The Biotime Log. Maddy and Tim, have designed and planted one of the oldest forest gardens in Britain: once a bare field, it is now an edible landscape ,a haven for wildlife, and a reservoir of biodiversity. I met Maddy first back in the early days of this millennium when the whole Permaculture team was in the south east of England. More recently, they moved to Devon in the south west, where they are retrofitting a Devon longhouse to become zero carbon and restoring an old woodland to be a sanctuary for rare species like Dormice and Pied Flyctachers - and to be a place of healing and retreat for people. Maddy has been one of the beacons of the regenerative movement for decades. She's edited one of the world's most vibrantly alive magazines for over thirty years, she's interviewed - and edited - everyone who is anyone in this field from Vandana Shiva to Satish Kumar to Patrick Whitefield hundreds, literally, of the less well known, but absolutely cutting edge, inspiring people in all corners of the world who are living the change that will take us to the future we'd be proud to leave behind. If anyone knows where we're at, and what potential there is for change, she does. So it was a joy to be able to connect and explore ideas with someone who's given their life's energy to exploring the ways that change can happen. COUPON: PERMACULTUREGODS - with this, you'll get a free copy of Maddy's book Fertile Edges, with your subscription. Please use the code at the Checkout.  (NB: this is valid until 23:59 on 6th November 2023 - and works once a subscription and Fertile Edges have been added to the cart, and then the code added)Website link at which to use it:  https://shop.permaculture.co.uk/collections/permaculture-magazinePermaculture Magazine Website: https://www.permaculture.co.uk/Permaculture Books: https://www.permanentpublications.co.uk/Free Permaculture e-books: https://shop.permaculture.co.uk/collections/free-ebooks-1Permaculture Magazine YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PermacultureMagazinePermaculture Magazine Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/PermacultureMagPermaculture Magazine Instagram https://www.instagram.com/permaculturemagazinePermaculture Magazine Twitter https://twitter.com/PermacultureMagPlus a free Intro to Permaculture Course: https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/free-on-demand-intro-to-permaculture-open-online-resourceSetsuden in Japan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SetsudenFilm: In grave danger of falling food: https://www.acmi.net.au/works/80421--in-grave-danger-of-falling-foodbarefoot-economist/

We all know that we need to reconnect to our HeartMinds and to bring our Heart Intelligence up to meet the explosion of left brain intelligence - we just don't know how to do it. This week's guest is one of my living heroes - who does have clear, grounded ideas of how to do this. Dr Scilla Elworthy was thirteen years old when she saw the Soviet Invasion of Hungary on the television and understood the horror of what was happening. Her mother found her packing a case to go to Budapest to help and managed to persuade her to stay home by promising she'd help to train her to be what the world needed. When she was sixteen, she worked in a holiday camp for Auschwitz survivors, and sat peeling potatoes and listening to them talk of their suffering. Since then, she has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. In 2003 Scilla founded Peace Direct, to work closely with locally-led peace building initiatives throughout the world, bringing us daily experience in how to help prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace throughout the world.She has written numerous books, given numerous TED and TEDx talks and now leads The Business Plan for Peace to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of transforming destructive conflict. She was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003 and the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2020. She is one of the clearest, most grounded thinkers I have ever met and she's working tirelessly to create the future we'd be proud to leave behind. I was more than a little star-struck, but this was a genuinely heart-felt conversation and I hope listening to it leaves you feeling as heart-connected as it did me. The Mighty Heart https://mightyheart.co.uk/The Mighty Heart in Business program: 18th October - 6th December 2023 https://thebusinessplanforpeace.org/the-mighty-heart-in-business/TED Talk: Fighting with Non Violence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk3K_Vrve-ETEDx Talk: Dare to Question: Why are we so afraid of getting older https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6zenOjPC1ATEDx Talk: How do I deal with a bully without becoming a thug? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWyolwBGgETEDx Talk: The Future Belongs to those who can see it  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWDl1PqGjqYTEDx Talk: Do something - OK, but how? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlhHkLgBWATEDx Talk: The Business Plan for Peace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH1WgurH5FAConversations in Compassion w Dr Scilla Elworthy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C5BMRDYzc8Book: Pioneering the Possible https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/pioneering-the-possible-awakened-leadership-for-a-world-that-works-scilla-elworthy/3218709?ean=9781583948620Books: The Mighty Heart in Action and The Business Plan for Peace https://mightyheart.co.uk/media/

How dangerous is AI? Are Large Language Models likely to subvert our children?  Is Generalised AI going to wipe out all life on the planet?  I don't know the answers to these. It may be that nobody knows, but this week's guest was my go-to when I needed someone with total integrity to help unravel one of the most existential crises of our time, to lay it out as simply as we can without losing the essence of complexity, to help us see the worst cases - and their likelihood - and the best cases, and then to navigate a route past the first and onto the second. Daniel Thorson is an activist - he was active in the early days of the Occupy movement and in Extinction Rebellion. He is a lot more technologically literate than I am - he was active early in Buddhist Geeks. He is a soulful, thoughtful, heartful person, who lives at and works with the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth in Vermont. And he's host of the Emerge podcast, Making Sense of What's Next. So in all ways, when I wanted to explore the existential risks, and maybe the potential of Artificial Intelligence, and wanted to talk with someone I could trust, and whose views I could bring to you unfiltered, Daniel was my first thought, and I'm genuinely thrilled that he agreed to come back onto the podcast to talk about what's going on right now. My first query was triggered by the interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky on the Bankless podcast - Eliezer talked about the dangers of Generalised AI, or Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, and the reasons why it was so hard - he would say impossible - to align the intentions of a silicon-based intelligence with our human values, even if we knew what they were and could define them clearly. Listening to that, was what prompted me to write to Daniel. Since then, I listened many times to two of Daniels own recent podcasts: one with the educational philosopher Zak Stein on the dangers of AI Tutors and one with Jill Nephew, the founder of Inqwire, Public Benefit Company on a mission to help the world make sense. The Inqwire technology is designed to enhance and accelerate human sensemaking abilities. Jill is also host of the Natural Intelligence podcast and has clearly thought deeply about the nature of intelligence, the human experience and the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of our interactions with Large Language Models. I've linked all three of these podcasts below and absolutely recommend that you listen to them if you want more depth than we have here. What Daniel and I tried to do today was to lay things out in very straightforward terms: it's an area fraught with jargon and belief systems and assumptions, and we wanted to strip those away where we could and acknowledge them where we couldn't, and lay out where we are, what the worst cases are, what the best case is, given that we have to move forward with technology, switching it all off seems not to be an option—and how we might move from worst to best case. With this latter in mind, I've included a link to Daniel's new project, the Church of the Intimate Web which aims to connect people with each other. I've also - because it seems not everyone listens to the very end of the podcasts - included a link to our membership programme in Accidental Gods where we aim to help people connect to the wider web of life. I definitely see these two as interlinked and mutually compatible. So - trigger warning - a lot of this is not yet impinging on public awareness and we're not yet aware of how close we are to some very dangerous edges. This podcast leads us up to the edge so we can look over. We do it as gently as we can, but still, you'll want to be resourced and resilient before you listen. The Emerge Podcast https://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcastEmerge with Zak Stein https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/emerge-making-sense-of-whats-next/id1057220344?i=1000610403148Emerge with Jill Nephew https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/emerge-making-sense-of-whats-next/id1057220344?i=1000613784941Bankless with Eliezer Yudkowsky https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bankless/id1499409058?i=1000600575387The Church of the Intimate Web https://tome.app/the-church-of-the-intimate-web/the-church-of-the-intimate-web-a-response-to-the-global-intimacy-disorder-clhgc8h1l1b2p5k3z9ppbitfyAccidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/The Soul's Code by James Hillman https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-soul-s-code-james-hillman/1563087?ean=9780553506341

Peruvian shaman Oscar Miro-Quesada says that "Consciousness creates matter, Language Creates Reality, Ritual creates relationship.”  This week I'm speaking with someone who bring reality into being with words and weaves relational rituals.  Abigail Morgan Prout is a poet, life coach, mother and visionary. She and I have been talking to one another for about three and a half years. We connected just before lockdown and then, as life became weirder, Abigail's daily poems were a bright flash in the whirling chaos, a doorway into a world halfway across the planet that was different in so many ways, and yet so often the same; a sense of soul connection to someone who gets it; an excoriating and sometimes intensely personal, vulnerable view into someone else's life, shared with great courage - and word-jewels of true beauty that connected me again to the wonder of the web of life, and the wonder of language. As a writer, I am always in absolute awe of the fact that we can make black marks on a white page and evoke the whole multi-dimensional, multi-sensory glory of human and More-Than-Human experience. As a prose writer, I am ever more in awe of the skill poets bring to their word-smithing, and Abigail's is beautiful, moving and inspiring at all levels. It's not just me that thinks so - Walk Deep, the collection that arose from lockdown won the 2021 Homebound Poetry Contest. So when Homebound published Walk Deep, I really wanted to bring Abigail onto the podcast - to talk about the process of writing, which is one of my more major obsessions, but also to talk about everything she brings to this -she's a life coach and a teacher of life coaches. She's a daughter and a mother and she holds ceremony in beautiful ways. We didn't touch much on this last in the main body of the podcast - but, as happens so often, as soon as I'd stopped recording, we talked about exactly this, and it seemed so profoundly important, that I hit record again and we added another ten minutes of what, to me, is not just podcasting gold, but human gold, spiritual gold; the account of someone's experience of a lifelong dream that came to life, but more than that, of the ways the web of life is so ready to connect with us and offer help if we can only open to hear it. So that's tacked on at the end, before the final credits.Abigail's website https://www.abigailprout.com/Spiral Leadership Method https://www.spiral-leadership.com/Accidental Gods Membership (the Intention Intensive is within the Membership)  https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/Abigail on FB https://www.facebook.com/abigail.m.proutInstagram: @Insta: abigail_Morgan_prout

Our guest this week is Max Ajl, who is an associate researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. He has written for multiple journals and is an associate editor at Agrarian South & Journal of Labor and Society. It was his 2021, his book, 'A People's Green New Deal', published by Pluto Press, that brought Max to my attention.  If you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you'll know that one of our regular contributors, Simon Michaux, is adamant that the material flows for the various posited Green New Deals don't exist - that they are logistical impossibilities.  But what Max argues strongly and with brilliant clarity in his book and elsewhere, is why these things should not happen even if they could: why they are better viewed as extensions of the Giant Vampire Squid wrapped around the face of humanity (not his phrase) - and that there's a better, much more deeply green set of ideas and ideals based in actual earth connection, the restoration of what should be fundamental human rights across the world and the widespread implementation of agro-ecological principles.  His book seems to me an eco-socialist manifesto and while its values are closely aligned with the podcast, the nature of this as a political theoretical and practical concept is not something we'd previously explored on the podcast. So now we have.  In the course of our early discussion, we touched on the Cochamamba Peoples' Agreement - and then never came back to it.  So very briefly, I'd like to fill you in, because this agreement is both an internationally agreed document and, in itself, a statement of core ecosocialist principles. The conference from which it arose took place in April 2010, when more than 35,000 people from 140 countries gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and developed a consensus-based document reflecting substantive solutions to the climate crisis. Two things arise immediately. First, thirteen years on, we would call it the climate, ecological and cultural crisis. Second, and more important than the semantics - much though they matter - was the ways this agreement came into being.  There were 17 working groups, and a lot of effort was put into consensus building - working out what mattered and what worked, or could be imagined to work - not the failed COP process of deleting anything that offends a member state until you have a basically meaningless document. I've attached links in the show notes and I really recommend you follow them, because it is profoundly important.  It is, in fact, the framework we need to work towards.  What's distressing is that it's over 13 years old and hardly anyone in the hegemonic nations of what Max Ajl calls the core - as opposed to the periphery - has heard about it and still fewer care. So we need to change that.  If you do one thing after this podcast, as Max says, it'll be to join an organisation. If you do two things, the second will be to tell people about the Cochabamba People's Agreement. And Max's book. The sound quality was not the best. but Alan has woven his production magic and I hope your ears will accept the result as a price worth paying for the ideas we explore here. A People's Green New Deal https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341750/a-peoples-green-new-deal/Cochabamba People's Climate Agreement https://www.climateemergencyinstitute.com/uploads/Peoples_climate_agreement.pdfand https://archive.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-environment/climate-change/49253-need-for-recognition-of-cochabamba-peoples-agreement-in-un-climate-negotiations.htmlLandworkers' Alliance https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/La Via Campesina https://viacampesina.org/en/Colin Duncan The Centrality of Agriculture https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-centrality-of-agriculture-between-humankind-and-the-rest-of-nature-colin-a-m-duncan/3518385?ean=9780773513631Selimah Vaiani Rethinking Unequal Exchange: the global integration of nursing labour markets https://utorontopress.com/us/rethinking-unequal-exchange-4ORGANISATIONS SUGGESTED BY LISTENERSCompass  https://www.compassonline.org.uk/#DemocratizingWork https://democratizingwork.org/Doughnut Economics https://doughnuteconomics.org/ Eco-socialists in Australia https://socialist-alliance.org/New Economy Network Australia https://www.neweconomy.org.au

In this week's episode, we have a return guest to the podcast. Ruth Catlow has taken the amazing work she did in lockdown and held live festivals in the park where people get to become one of the seven core species: a dog, a Canada goose (just visiting!) a tree, grass… and, yes, a stag beetle. What they're not being, are people. So they're looking at the world through new eyes, hearing it with new ears, smelling, tasting, sensing in all ways - and the whole experience of what it is to live in this place as home, instead of just dropping in…becomes deeper, and more complex and more alive.  And then each of the species can put forward ideas for the Interspecies Treaty of Finsbury Park which will make it a much better place for everyone - including the people. And then - because Ruth's enthusiasm and expertise range widely over the ways things can be made more fair and equitable, as well as work better, she's designed the app that allows a much fairer voting system, so the people-become-MoreThanHumans can vote on the seven ideas put forward for the Treaty in ways that allows more nuance than simply ranking them. This last became a whole other hour of conversation on voting systems and how we can create a decent democracy - so that's the bonus... well worth a listen! The Treaty of Finsbury Park https://treaty.finsburypark.live/CultureStake App https://culturestake.org/Episode #163 https://accidentalgods.life/cultures-of-commoning/Experiences of the Interspecies Festival https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/now-we-know-how-trees-in-the-park-feelNordic LARP https://nordiclarp.org/Quadratic Voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_voting

This is the part of the podcast where we talk about voting systems, specifically the quadratic voting on the blockchain that Ruth has made into an app that's in use in the Park.  Then we moved into her work with Government ministries and big corporations, bringing the aliveness and liveliness, and special insight of Live Action Role Play into politics and industry to help people see things from a wider context.  This is how we change the world: one new idea at a time... 

What does it take to avoid global collapse?  Is there still time?  And if so, what are the societal, social, cultural and goal-oriented changes that we need to make to get there? This week's guest is one of the new generation of super-thinkers who have the capacity, individually and collectively, to bring into being that better future our hearts know is possible. Gaya Herrington received her first master’s degree in Econometrics from the Liberal University of Amsterdam and her second master’s in Sustainability from Harvard University. In between she worked for KPMG, for the Dutch Government as a regulator and then back to KPMG in the US, where she now lives. She is a member of the Transformational Economics Commission of the Club of Rome, a recurring guest lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and works at Schneider Electric as Vice-President of ESG Research. She wrote her thesis for her second Masters on the seminal Limits To Growth work that first came out in 1972. The paper she wrote as a result of this went viral - and she expanded it into a book called Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse. She has made this freely available by download and I have put a link in the show notes - because this is absolutely essential reading for anyone on this path. The take home message though, as you'll hear, is that if we all work together, there is still time. Which should be a fairly familiar idea to those of you who have listened to other guests. But this time, we'll really unpick the data and concepts behind it in the company of someone who has worked hard at the coal face of the old system and has seen how to change it. Gaya's book https://mdpi-res.com/bookfiles/mono/6206/Five_Insights_for_Avoiding_Global_Collapse.pdf?v1682069789Gaya's paper at KPMG https://advisory.kpmg.us/articles/2021/limits-to-growth.htmlManfred Max-Neef https://gaiafoundation.org/the-barefoot-economist-manfred-max-neef/Club of Rome: Earth for All https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-book/