How can we bring wisdom to those with power and power to those with wisdom?  If we were to step into elder hood and bring the best of ourselves to the table, could we create governance structures that would help to heal our cultural divides, create equity and guide is wisely through the coming crisis?

Jenny Grettve believes we can and has set up a global council to make this happen. 

Jenny is a good friend of the podcast. She joined us in episode #228 to talk about designing and building a school along Doughnut economic lines and then again in episode #249 to talk about the evolution of a Mothering Economy based on the values of compassion and care for future generations.  Jenny is an author, philosopher, systems thinker and designer, author of several books, most recently the Mothering Economy that we talked about the last time we met. Then, she was leading WhenWhen, a new feminist design agency that creates system demonstrators to test ideas generated by global researchers working with the climate crisis and sustainable life.  She was still working there last November when Donald Trump managed to take the US Presidency again. Amidst all the shock and horror of that moment, I saw a post Jenny put up on LinkedIn, proposing the creation of a Global Council of Women as a way to bring forward the values that our world needs at this moment of total transformation.  I signed up on the spot and then asked Jenny to come and talk to us about it, so that the idea might spread in the Accidental Gods spheres.  And then as I was doing the reading for this episode, I found that Jenny had started the year in a new post - that she is now Head of Transformation at a European Council funded organisation called EIT - that's European Innovation and Technology - Culture and Creativity.  Which means Jenny is now taking the wisdom of creativity right into the heart of the bureaucracy that sustains the super organism, at least in the EU.  So here we are, considering the nature of wisdom and elder hood, how we might overcome the gender divides that so assail us in service to life - and how to bring creative ideas deep into the heart of machine.  Please know that the Council is not only for women - the first meeting is exploring whole, healthy masculinity and how it can be prioritised in this world. Which feels like such an integral part of our thinking now.  So please do join - the link is below. 

Women Council https://www.womencouncil.world/
Jenny Grettve https://www.jennygrettve.com/
EIT Culture and Creativity https://eit-culture-creativity.eu/
Jenny on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennygrettve/
EIT Culture and Creativity on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/eit-culture-creativity/
Jenny in Episode 228 https://accidentalgods.life/evolving-education-building-a-doughnut-school-with-jenny-grettve-of-whenwhen/
Jenny in Episode 249 https://accidentalgods.life/finding-the-courage-to-care-ways-to-build-a-mothering-economy-with-author-jenny-grettve/

This podcast is predicated on the belief that if we all work together, we can still lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave as our legacy.  And it's becoming increasingly obvious that this is now urgent; that we need to let go of the assumptions we'd made about career paths or future constructs and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the process of making it through. Five years ago when we began, it was possible to imagine that the world might stabilise with a vestige of the old system as a scaffold for the new.  That assumption is growing increasingly ragged. At the same time, it's becoming increasingly obvious, at least to me, that the shifts we need to be in the world are primarily inner; that the truly urgent work is in healing both our own and the global human psyches, that we need urgently to remember how to connect with the web of life so that we can ask it 'What do you want of me?' and respond to the answers in real time. That we need, in short. to evolve.

But we need mentors and guides along the way. It is possible that we could perhaps each carve out our own route, but part of being human is sharing best practice, is having elders and mentors who open the doors of possibility for those who strive to walk the ways of healing. And this week's guest is one of those elders and mentors; he's a trailblazer of the most incandescent kind.

Professor Christopher Bache is professor emeritus in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and on the Advisory Council of Grof Legacy Training.  He grew up in a Catholic household in the southern US and spent 4 years at a seminary training to be a priest before deciding this wasn't the path for him.  Moving into academia, he took degrees in the US and at Cambridge and finally a PhD by the end of which he had concluded that, 'using language derived from finite existence to describe an infinite God was like shining flashlights at the stars.'  He duly finished graduate school as 'a deeply convinced agnostic with a strong atheistic bent' and went on to teach the philosophy of religion as an academic study.

So far, so academically straight.  He took a post teaching at Youngstown University in Ohio - and then he read Ian Stevenson on reincarnation and Stanislav Grof's work on LSD.  And 45 years later, I read his book, 'Diamonds from Heaven: LSD and the Mind of the Universe' and realised that here was someone who had walked with the Heart Mind of the Universe.  Here is someone who has taken himself to the edge of being, in order to understand the process.  As you'll hear, over the course of 20 years, he took 73 truly heroic doses of LSD in very carefully controlled conditions and then, over the past 20 years, he has reflected deeply on the results.  I'll let him tell his story: it's truly remarkable.  And what he brings to us is visions of how humanity could be: it's not guaranteed - but it's the opening to a door of possibility where every one of us can play a part, where, as he says, if we can align ourselves with the needs of the living planet, find out what's ours to do and devote ourselves to doing it, we have no idea what might arise.
 
For many of us, this feels like a true dark night of the soul. So I offer this conversation as a ray of potential, that out of this immense pressure, might arise the conscious evolution of humanity: if we can all find ways to be the change. 

Chris Bache website https://chrisbache.com/ABOUT
Chris Books https://chrisbache.com/BOOKS-1
New Extended Edition of The Living Classroom https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Living-Classroom-Second-Edition
Stanislav Grof (a website devoted to him and his works) https://www.stangrof.com/
Bill Barnard Liquid Light Book https://liquidlightbook.com/
Soul Centered Healing https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/soul-centered-healing-a-psychologist-s-extraordinary-journey-into-the-realms-of-sub-personalities-spirits-and-past-lives-ed-d-thomas-zinser/310221?ean=9780983429401

Is it possible that 2024 might have been the year of 'Peak polarisation' around the world and that from hereon in humanity might grow less divided, not more; that we might use technology and social media wisely to bring the best of ourselves to the table, becoming the best we can be in service to life?  Audrey Tang certainly thinks so in this wide-deep, mind-expanding conversation, we explore everything from the dual nature of AGI to the potential for liberational  education that gives young people a sense of agency, interaction and the common good, to ways to rescue democracy to recipes for sound sleep. 

Until recently, Audrey Tang was Digital Minister of Taiwan: the country's first transgender, post-gender, and youngest ever Minister of state. In this role, Tang helped bring the .g0v movement into the mainstream and brought with it the concept that democracy could be a social technology with a focus for good.  In 2014, at the time of the Sunflower Revolution in which Tang took part, confidence in the government was measured at 9%.  Six years later, it was up to 73%. In that time, there had been shifts in everything from the concept of education, to healthcare, to the provision of broadband, to the online submission of taxes.  Then the pandemic hit and, by any measure, Taiwan's response was one of the most flexible, emotionally and politically literate in the world. With no need for lockdown, they  kept public confidence high and the death rate low.  More recently, the Government began 'pre-bunking' the possibility of foreign interference in the General Election of 2024 and the end result saw all three parties agree that it had been a free and fair election, with a population who felt heard and engaged.  How different is this to the western experience of maximal polarisation.

Since the end of May 2024, Audrey Tang has been Taiwan's Ambassador at Large in charge of Cyberspace Governance, instrumental in bringing ideas of a post-polarised world to those who dance amongst the levers of power - and doing so with charm, grace and a fierce, sharp intellect that makes the balance between polarities feel like the only possible way forward. 

Audrey is probably not entirely alone in swimming both deep in the world of code and stretching wide across the understanding of what it takes to bring humanity to a place of agency, connection and sufficiency, but I don't know of anyone else who has this as a life's goal.  This was the most mind-expanding, heart-firing conversation imaginable, and it was an astonishing joy and an honour. I hope it inspires you to be part of a growing, evolving, re-connected world.

Audrey has been the subject of a documentary: 'Good Enough Ancestor' - at the time of this podcast, the trailer is available, but the full video will be released in early January 2025

Plurality.net https://www.plurality.net
Download and donate here https://www.plurality.net/chapters/
Good Enough Ancestor Trailer https://youtu.be/L_AAhYk6I3M
Good Enough Ancestor  https://vimeo.com/1010351047/07c278e0d0
TimeShifter App https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/timeshifter/id1380684374
Vivid App https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/vivid-double-your-brightness/id6443470555?mt=12
Tenet movie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6723592/

Druidry is the indigenous spirituality of the islands of Britain, but how does is live in the contemporary world? What are the values and practices that make it so suited to the inflexion point of the moment? Why - and how - does it mesh so well with other, more spiritual traditions? And how does the practice of Will, the honing of intent, create the magic we need to see in our world?

This week's guest, Philip Carr-Gomm, has spent his life studying, and writing about all of these things. Philip began studying Druidry as a spiritual path with Ross Nichols, the founder of The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. Later, he took a degree in psychology from University College London, and trained in psychotherapy for adults at The Institute of Psychosynthesis, in play therapy for children with Dr Rachel Pinney, and in Sophrology – a system of mind-body training for deep relaxation and personal development. He has also trained in Montessori education and founded the Lewes Montessori School. In 1988, he was asked to lead The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids. For thirty two years, he was the Chief Druid of Britain until, in June 2020, he handed on this role to his successor, Eimear Burke. He is now involved in the work of the ACER Integration programme and the Sophrology Institute.
He's a prolific author, having written or contributed to over two dozen books, mostly exploring Druidry, but more recently he has written The Gift of Night: A six step programme for better sleep, and Seek Teachings Everywhere: Combining Druid Spirituality with Other Traditions.  He is co-creator of two sets of Celtic Oracle cards and has written the text for two tarot sets.
He is host of the magnificent 'Tea with a Druid' which is part of his active, pro-active YouTube channel.
On his website, he says, "Something magical happens when the worlds of psychology and spirituality are brought together. Every discipline in psychology helps to reveal the extraordinary nature of the human being, but add the insights of the Perennial Wisdom Tradition – the ancient knowledge and esoteric teachings passed down through the ages – and we enter awe-inspiring territory that has the power to transform us."
And this feels perfectly aligned with this podcast, and with the times. So as we head down into the long-nights of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and up into the long-days in the south, we offer the wisdom of the grove and the mountain and the river.

Philip's website https://philipcarr-gomm.com/
The Art of Living Well https://artoflivingwell.org.uk/
The Sophrology Institute https://sophrology.institute/
The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids  http://www.druidry.org/
Tea with a Druid https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnjpTLSK6D733dGegH7n2wLlg-y2NiYF-&feature=shared
Philip\s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@PhilipCarrGomm/videos
The Gift of Night https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-gift-of-the-night-a-six-step-program-for-better-sleep-philip-carr-gomm/7408262?ean=9781644119297
Seek Teachings Everywhere https://philipcarr-gomm.com/book/seek-teachings-everywhere/
The Druidcraft Tarot https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/druidcraft-tarot-use-the-magic-of-wicca-and-druidry-to-guide-your-life-philip-carr-gomm/5068090?ean=9781800691179
The Druid Plant Oracle https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-druid-plant-oracle-working-with-the-magical-flora-of-the-druid-tradition-philip-carr-gomm/6048210?ean=9781800691599
The Druid Animal Oracle https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-druid-animal-oracle-philip-carr-gomm/5777280?ean=9781800691247

Traditionally, we have offered a meditation for the solstice - and these are available in the links below.

This meditation aims to offer a long-wide-deep perspective on our place as conscious nodes in the web of life - the journey that brought us here and the places humanity may go.  Please give yourself plenty of time both to experience the journey and to reflect afterwards. If it helps to write down your feelings, images, ideas or sensations afterwards, please do.

Winter Solstice Meditation  https://media.transistor.fm/25cbf6e7/e9f16280.mp3

Summer Solstice Meditation https://media.transistor.fm/4dbb7991/ddc721bc.mp3

This is the fifth year of our traditional Winter Solstice podcast gathering in which Nathalie Nahai of 'In Conversation with Nathalie Nahai, Della Duncan of The Upstream Podcast and I sit around our virtual dark-nights fire to reflect on the podcasting year just gone and explore what has changed for us since the last time we three met in one place.  By any measure, this year has been pretty turbulent and our capacity to predict anything at all for 2025 is fairly ragged, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating Della's news, and sharing the ways we find stability and maintain sanity in a world that feels increasingly precarious. Whatever else is happening, friendship is the glue that builds community and all of us - we who make the podcasts and everyone who listens - are building a de facto community of passion and purpose.  So thank you for being there. I hope you enjoy what follows. 

Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a co-host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, a faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and the designer and co-facilitator of the Cultivating Regenerative Livelihood Course at Gaia Education.

Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

Links
Down the Rabbit Hole - https://charliebennettauthor.co.uk/shop
Transformative Adaptation - https://shop.permaculture.co.uk/products/transformative-adaptation
How to Be an An Anticapitalist in the Twenty-first Century - book  https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/933-how-to-be-an-anticapitalist-in-the-twenty-first-century?srsltid=AfmBOoq4Q9LtVqpS7BkvtrBsQwBW3eHwnbD9SKoDXxt-rT9_2BL1DdEG
How to be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century - article in Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/
God, Human, Animal, Machine https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/god-human-animal-machine-technology-metaphor-and-the-search-for-meaning-meghan-o-gieblyn/5885978?ean=9780525562719
The Psychological Drivers of the MetaCrisis
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-psychological-drivers-of-the-metacrisis/id1680606350?i=1000639851812

Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/feeding-your-demons-ancient-wisdom-for-resolving-inner-conflict-tsultrim-allione/1740345?ean=9781848501737
Feeding your Demons online https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-feeding-your-demons

It's that time of year - when all we really want is to curl up and reflect, go inside, become the potential that will arise in the unfolding spring.  If you want things to listen to or watch or read as you head into the long-nights, then these are (some of) the things that have caught my attention this year. Enjoy!

Books:

Non-Fiction
Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machada de Oliviera https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hospicing-modernity-parting-with-harmful-ways-of-living-vanessa-machado-de-oliveira/6401710?ean=9781623176242
Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as we Know It by Ginie Servant-Miklos  https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pedagogies-of-collapse-9781350400498/  NB - you can download the pdf for FREE!
Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Foundations for Collective Wellbeing by Yuria Celidwen https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/flourishing-kin-indigenous-wisdom-for-collective-well-being-ph-d-celidwen-yuria/7727216?ean=9781649632043
Right Story, Wrong Story Tyson Yunkaporta https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/right-story-wrong-story-adventures-in-indigenous-thinking-tyson-yunkaporta/7645728?ean=9781922790439
Down the Rabbit Hole by Charlie Bennett   CharlieBennettauthor.co.uk

Fiction:
Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-ministry-of-time-kaliane-bradley/7445878?ean=9781399726344
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/venomous-lumpsucker-ned-beauman/2764635?ean=9781473613577

Denise Baden 'Murder in the Climate Assembly'  You can get a feel for the book here: https://www.dabaden.com/murder-in-the-climate-assembly/
Kickstarter here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dabaden/murder-in-the-climate-assembly    

Katherine Addison 'Throne of Dragons' - due March 11th US and a few days later UK https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-tomb-of-dragons-the-cemeteries-of-amalo-book-3-katherine-addison/7764905?ean=9781837864393

Films
Richard Wain: The Oath of the Hopeful  https://youtu.be/JFNEPx9NYVk
Roots so Deep https://rootssodeep.org/
The Shopping Conspiracy  Trailer:  https://youtu.be/OVfZw_eqJW8    Full film: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81554996
Future Council - not yet released: https://theregenerators.org/future-council/see-the-film/

Podcasts

Farm Gate 1 'What is Bill Gates doing to Africa's Food?' https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788?i=1000675185519
Farm Gate 2 'Down the Rabbit Hole with Charlie Bennett' https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/farm-gate/id1490590788?i=1000678521906
The Great Simplification: Future Council: How Children are responding to our Planetary Crisis  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-great-simplification-with-nate-hagens/id1604218333?i=1000678061953 
What is a Good Life with Mark McCartney - Rekindling our Wild Nature with Diarmuid Lyng https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-is-a-good-life/id1663668603?i=1000677421697
Wild w Sarah Wilson  Indy Johar: the Starkest Collapse Prognosis I've heard  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/wild-with-sarah-wilson/id1548626341?i=1000677521024

Clearly we're at an inflection point in the history of humanity.  Our experiment with a notional democracy is failing and either we find something that actually works, or we sink into autocracy. And given that the current global flavour of autocracy is in deep denial of the climate and ecological catastrophe that's currently underway, then that's a pretty fast road to extinction: you can't deny your way out of biophysical reality.

So what can we do, we who care deeply about passing an inhabitable - thriving - world to the generations not yet born?  We need to go back to basics. We all need clean water, clean air, safe shelter and good nutritious food - and we are rapidly heading for a space where just accessing these will become more of a priority than our recent experiment with unleashing ancient sunlight has led us to believe. But more than this, the community that grows around these, particularly the growing and sharing of food - is the glue that keeps us together. We are a prosocial species. We are astonishingly creative when we put our minds to it. So what happens when we put our minds to creative ways of growing and sharing food that are founded in solid values of cohesion and connectivity?  One of the things that happens is the Open Food Network which is a global community of farmers, growers, community food enterprises and software geeks with a common belief that world food systems are broken - and that better, more connected, open, resilient systems can arise in their place.  They are building alternative food systems from the bottom up: this is their theory of change and this is a recent podcast about a new OFN project called the Power of Food.

So this week, I've been talking to Nick Weir who helped to set up the Open Food Network UK. Nick has a background in IT account management, but, as you'll hear, he is also a long-term grower who co-founded the Stroudco Food Hub and Stroud Community Agriculture and is deeply passionate about the role of innovative food systems in creating a kinder, more interconnected society, and the ways in which the Network can model a new way of working which empowers people to bring more of themselves to their work.  If you're feeling crushed by the global political chaos, I hope this conversation cheers you as it did me, with living examples of change happening on the ground, and the ripple effects it can have. 

Open Food Network Global https://openfoodnetwork.org/
Open Food Network uk https://about.openfoodnetwork.org.uk/
Power of Food podcast  https://www.wearecarbon.earth/power-of-food-collaboration/
Open Food Network resources https://about.openfoodnetwork.org.uk/resources/
Landworkers' Alliance https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/our_vision/
Sustain https://www.sustainweb.org/about/
Social Farms and Gardens https://www.farmgarden.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do

The Power of Food theory of change https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oSn8g-b-GlVku9g9TOKoVO0GvxSRSuCy/
Living Justice https://livingjustice.earth/projects/

How do we become the change we need to see in the world?  What are the actual, practical steps to grounding, connecting and resonating with the world?

We're on the brink of cataclysmic change.  Knowing this, we have choices: we can either fold into despair, terror, rage…whatever rises up in us as we watch the whole biosphere hurtle towards irrevocable tipping points. Or we can become the change we need to see in the world: each of us.  This is a cliché by now, but that doesn't stop it being true.  Here are others: we are the people we have been waiting for and if not us, now then who and when?  We've been saying these for a long time and if you're listening to this podcast, then you're already on board, at least intellectually.   You know there is no going back, that ideology cannot win out over biophysical reality and avoiding ecosystem collapse doesn't just mean moving to regenerative farming or buying second hand clothes or even changing all the narratives of all the world's media systems - good though each of these things would be.

But there's been a gap between what we know and how we behave, between where our better selves might push us and the behaviours that are locked into the core of our being, our firmware, if you like. But now - this minute now - we're hitting the buffers where the old paradigm is so obviously not fit for purpose that we need something new. The core questions are what? And how?

And this is where we're going with the podcast just now - After Dr John Izzo of the Elders Action Network reminded us of our purpose on the earth, and Andrea Hiott of Waymaking helped us embrace paradox - now we're talking to someone who can help guide us into the embodied reality of a different way of being. 

Dan McTiernan is a certified Transpersonal Psychology Coach, embodied meditation teacher and breathwork instructor. With is wife Johanna, he's the co-founder of embodied coaching organisation, Earthbound. He hosts the Being Earthbound podcast which is absolutely on my must-listen list, as is the Substack blog from which it arises. He's a facilitator on Alef Trust’s Nurturing the Fields of Change programme and is the project leader for the Embodied Permaculture Project - an international 2-year action research project exploring the impacts of holistic wellbeing on outer ecological change work. The first 9 weeks of this programme are about to be released as a self-study course - and by the time this podcast ends, you will want to join up with that - I'll put a link in the show notes as soon as I have one - hopefully before this goes live. 

 He is currently working with Alef Trust and the A Team Foundation to deliver an innovative project supporting farmers and growers in the UK with a programme of embodied wellbeing known as Calmer Farmer which will be launched in January 2025.

As you'll hear, Dan is working at the leading edge of the change we need to embody. He has straightforward practices that any of us can do to help us with grounding, attunement, opening and integration so that we can be the nodes in the web of life.  This is key people: we need to stop trying to think our way out of this with our head minds. It doesn't work. It's not going to work.  We need to come into our physical bodies, find that truly calming place of peace - and then find connections we can trust with the wider web.  This is what we're here for.  And Dan has routes to get there.  

For more information about this coaching approach, to book a 1-1 appointment or to find out more about Earthbound’s courses and practice group: www.earthbound.fi

For more information about Calmer Farmer: www.calmerfarmer.org

To read more about Dan’s work and to listen to the Being Earthbound podcast: www.beingearthbound.substack.com
The Embodied Permaculture Course is here https://earthbound.fi/embodied-permaculture-course

We're teetering on the brink of ecosystem and cultural collapse.  How do we adapt and transform to the changing realities?

This week sees the launch of a new book: Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible. The main editors and contributors are friend of the podcast, author, activist and co-founder of the Climate Majority Project, Rupert Read and -  new to the podcast - Morgan Philips who is an educator, currently working for Global Action Plan, an environmental charity that mobilises people and organisations to take action on the systems that harm us and our planet.  Full disclosure, I'm also a contributor - the book is published by Permanent Publications, the book-publishing arm of the Permaculture Magazine, and Maddy Harland, who edits the magazine and has published the book, brought together the five articles I wrote on Thrutopia: what it is, why we need it and how we get there, and fitted them into the mix. 

The book launch has been timed to coincide with the end of COP29.  At the time of recording, we have no idea how that will go, but if it's like all the previous 28 COPs it will be a triumph of obstructionism and irrelevancy masquerading as action. We might be surprised. We hope we are. But even if the nations who truly understand the magnitude of the meta-crisis somehow manage a worldwide diplomatic miracle and succeed in making it clear that we need total systemic change - we still need guidelines that help us see how this can happen: ideas of what to do at local and national levels, examples of the kinds of deliberate democracies that we'll need to bring everyone on board; templates of how the world can be if we actually bring all our creativity to bear on the single most important issue of our time.

This is exactly what this podcast is for - the whole of it - and this particular episode lays out the detail, from the concept of a 6th Mission for the UK government (and any other national government that wants to take it up) to examples of how we might shift our educational focus, to why building flood defences is really not enough, never going to be enough and how we could shift our communities to stop reacting and start…adapting.

None of this is easy. We do know this.  But we can at least start the important conversations. This is what we're doing here - and we hope you find it inspiring enough to buy the book and read it, give it to your friends, family and colleagues - do whatever it takes to help your local community to find creative, flourishing, inspiring ways to meet the chaos of our world.

TrAd book https://www.permanentpublications.co.uk/port/transformative-adaptation/
TrAd Collective https://transformative-adaptation.com/
Climate Majority Project http://www.climatemajorityproject.com/
Climate Majority Complimentary Approach https://climatemajorityproject.com/safer/
The Rojava Project https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-democracy/rojava-democracy/
Solar farms can be havens of biodiversity https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/solar-farms-biodiversity-pv/
Kikaru Komatsu https://sites.google.com/site/kmthkr/home/publications