This is a beautiful conversation about endings, among other things.

Dougald is / was a long term climate campaigner - working alongside scientists, often picking up the story where their work ends. He joins Ben to talk about his new book, the beautifully titled ‘At Work In The Ruins’.

Picking a path through the various crises of our times, the book is equal part invitation and provocation; it is not a source book of solutions to the climate emergency and beyond. Quite the opposite.

It’s an invitation to think and feel and respond into our changing world with a humility, curiosity and hope. It’s an invitation to work to end all that no longer serves us - in modernity and the lives we currently lead. And in all these endings we might find that something new and far more beautiful is born.

Enjoy.

Links

• The Work in the Ruins (May 2023)
• At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies – Dougald’s book
• Dougald’s website
• Dark Mountain manifesto
• Hospicing Modernity: Parting with Harmful Ways of Living, by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
• A World of Many Worlds, edited by Marisol de la Cadena & Mario Blaser
• Vandana Shiva
• Gustavo Esteva
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, by Iain McGilchrist
• Ani.Mystic: Encounters with a Living Cosmos, by Gordon White
• Cynefin Framework
• A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth, by Chris Smaje
• Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
• Tyson Yunkaporta
• Bayo Akomolafe
• Red Hand Files
• Robin Williams’ speech in Good Will Hunting
• A School Called Home
• Dougald’s writing on Substack