Common Good Podcast

This is the fourth episode of a ten episode season of The Beacon Project Podcast. In this season, Daniel Yudkin describes this podcast as a public workshop for Potentialism. Daniel is a social psychologist and researcher and his new political philosophy, called Potentialism, is built around a simple but surprisingly radical idea: everyone has something to offer. Potentialism asks what it would look like to build our communities, institutions, and even our politics around the belief that everyone has gifts worth discovering, developing, and sharing and that we all have a part to play in helping one another flourish.

The fourth guest has been on the Common Good Podcast before. His name is Casper ter Kuile.

What if the secret to belonging isn't finding the right community, but helping to create one? Daniel sits down with Casper, author of The Power of Ritual and co-founder of Sacred Design Lab and Nearness, to explore how our deepest connections are formed through participation, shared purpose, and the gifts we offer one another. Drawing on everything from unconventional birthday celebrations to ancient religious traditions, Casper challenges us to rethink what it means to build a community and why being needed can be such a powerful experience. Together, they explore the surprising difference between contracts and covenants, the barriers that keep people from participating, and how familiar rituals might help us imagine a different kind of society. Along the way, they wrestle with a provocative question: What would it take to build a world where everyone feels they have something meaningful to contribute?

Resources:

• How We Gather — Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston — The influential 2015 report that Daniel discusses at the beginning of the episode, exploring how millennials were finding spiritual community outside traditional religious institutions. 
• GatherFor — Brownsville — The neighborhood mutual-support initiative Casper describes, where small groups of Brooklyn residents help one another meet everyday needs and build relationships. 
• Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape — The More in Common report Casper references when discussing political identities, polarization, and the challenge of creating rituals that resonate across differences. 
• Joyful Belonging — Casper's Substack — Casper's ongoing writing about ritual, spiritual life, community, and belonging. He mentions his Substack when describing a recent American anniversary celebration. You can also find a description of his birthday celebration. 
• Burning Man — The annual gathering Daniel describes in his opening story, emphasizing how participation and contribution create a sense of ownership in a community.

This is the third episode of a ten episode season of The Beacon Project Podcast. In this season, Daniel Yudkin describes this podcast as a public workshop for Potentialism. Daniel is a social psychologist and researcher and his new political philosophy, called Potentialism, is built around a simple but surprisingly radical idea: everyone has something to offer. Potentialism asks what it would look like to build our communities, institutions, and even our politics around the belief that everyone has gifts worth discovering, developing, and sharing and that we all have a part to play in helping one another flourish.

The third guest has been on the Common Good Podcast before. His name is Ian Marcus Corbin.

What does it mean to truly belong somewhere, and what happens when we lose that sense of home? Daniel sits down with philosopher Ian Marcus Corbin, author of To Arrive Where We Started, to explore why so many people feel lonely, disconnected, and adrift in the modern world. Their conversation moves from Dostoevsky's surprising ideas about humility and shared responsibility to the search for God, the gifts we inherit from previous generations, and our longing to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Along the way, they wrestle with a central question for potentialism: Does belonging give us the confidence to contribute, or does contributing help us discover where we belong? Together, they explore what it might take to build a society where people feel at home in the world and are invited to help shape its future.

Resources:

• Four Quartets — T. S. Eliot — The poetry collection that inspired the title of Ian's book, particularly the idea of returning home and discovering it anew. 
  Google Books
• The Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky — The novel behind Ian's discussion of humility, interconnectedness, and shared moral responsibility.
• Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation — U.S. Surgeon General — The 2023 advisory Daniel references when discussing America's crisis of loneliness and declining social connection. 
• The Hedgehog Review — The publication where Ian mentions an upcoming essay about Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, sacrifice, and the desire to serve something larger than ourselves.
• Burning Man — The gathering Daniel discusses as an example of people seeking spiritual and transcendent experiences outside traditional religious institutions.
• Václav Havel — The Czech writer and former president whose metaphor of belonging to a river prompts the closing discussion about responsibility.
• Pew Research Center — Research relevant to Daniel and Ian's discussion of religious disaffiliation and renewed spiritual interest.

This is the second episode of a ten episode season of The Beacon Project Podcast. In this season, Daniel Yudkin describes this podcast as a public workshop for Potentialism. Daniel is a social psychologist and researcher and his new political philosophy, called Potentialism, is built around a simple but surprisingly radical idea: everyone has something to offer. Potentialism asks what it would look like to build our communities, institutions, and even our politics around the belief that everyone has gifts worth discovering, developing, and sharing and that we all have a part to play in helping one another flourish.

The second guest is Matt Shinners. 

Americans are exhausted by politics, frustrated with both parties, and hungry for something different. But what would it actually take to build a political movement that brings people together? Daniel talks to Matt, former chief of staff for Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign and co-founder of the Forward Party, to explore what he learned trying to create an alternative to politics as usual. Matt shares why organizing independents is harder than it sounds, why political reforms alone won't fix what's broken, and why Americans may have more in common than our political divisions suggest. Together, they consider whether a shared commitment to rights, responsibilities, and contribution could offer the foundation for a new kind of politics and what it might take to turn that vision into a movement.

Resources:

• Forward Party — The political party Matt helped found with Andrew Yang, focused on building an alternative to the two-party system.
• Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape — More in Common's landmark research identifying the Exhausted Majority, a central theme of the conversation.
• More in Common Research — Research on Americans' underlying values, political identities, polarization, and shared aspirations, including the work Daniel references.
• Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend — Yang's 2020 universal basic income proposal, which Matt uses to illustrate how political policies can be rooted in shared values.
• Ranked Choice Voting — FairVote — An explanation of the electoral reform Matt discusses as an example of a good idea that can struggle to connect with voters.
• Open Primaries — An organization advocating for primary election reforms that would allow more voters, including independents, to participate.

For years, the Common Good Podcast has explored the significance of place, the structures of belonging, and the gifts that emerge when people are invited to contribute to their communities. Today, we're introducing a new podcast that shares many of those same interests. Daniel Yudkin is a social psychologist and researcher who's developing a new political philosophy called Potentialism, built around a simple but surprisingly radical idea: everyone has something to offer. Potentialism asks what it would look like to build our communities, institutions, and even our politics around the belief that everyone has gifts worth discovering, developing, and sharing and that we all have a part to play in helping one another flourish.

For the remainder of the year, we'll share ten episodes of The Beacon Project Podcast, which he describes as a public workshop for Potentialism. In these episodes, Daniel talks with people who are helping him explore and develop Potentialism. 

Our first guest is someone many of you already know: Sam Pressler. 

What happens when people have something to offer but nowhere to offer it? In this episode, Daniel talks with Sam about his research on friendship, isolation, and purpose among men without college degrees, many of whom feel disconnected from their communities and unsure of where they belong. Together, they explore the relationship between belonging and contribution, the importance of rites of passage and meaningful relationships, and the ways our political divisions can obscure the complexity of people's lives. Along the way, Sam challenges Daniel to think more deeply about potentialism and what it would take to build a society where everyone has the opportunity to discover their gifts, contribute to something bigger than themselves, and know they're needed.

Resources:

• Nobody to Call
• Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life
• Connective Tissue newsletter
• Sam Pressler's projects
• More in Common
• Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape — the research behind the term "Exhausted Majority."
• The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy — Christopher Lasch's critique of the growing separation between educated elites and the rest of society.
• Democracy's Discontent — Michael Sandel's book about citizenship, community, and American democracy.
• Rob Henderson and luxury beliefs — The concept Sam references when discussing family and social class.
• After Virtue — Alasdair MacIntyre — Daniel mentioned MacIntyre in the conversation about life as a narrative quest.

In this final episode of the miniseries, Tristan and Rashid step back to reflect on what seven episodes of storytelling from Cape Town have revealed. They revisit the arc of the series, from grounding ourselves in our bodies with Bongeka and Aphiwe, to the critical hope of Ashley and Helene, the courage of Ncedisa, the radical imagination of Leila, and the belonging found at Charlie and Barry’s dinner table.

They explore the power and danger of stories, drawing on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “the danger of a single story” and James Cone’s call for a global analysis of liberation. They ask what it means to tell stories from the Global South without claiming to speak for it, and challenge the ways resources and power are still gate-kept by those claiming to want change. The episode opens and closes with collectively written poems on the role of stories in making a new world.

THEMES

Reflection. The danger of a single story. Global South and Global North. Collective liberation. Interrogating our own narratives. Stories as world-making. Power and resources. Invitation to the listener.

FEATURED VOICES

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

CREDITS

| Produced by | Rashid Epstein Adams
| Music by | Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit
| A collaboration between | The Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod

What if the most radical thing you could do is invite someone to sit at a table with no queue, no power dynamic, and a really good meal? In this episode, Tristan and Rashid introduce two unlikely friends: Charlton Alexander, a tour guide and facilitator who invites people to connect with the city and its stories, and Barry Lewis, an architect from the UK who has spent decades building sandbag homes alongside communities in Cape Town’s townships.

Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, Charlie and Barry speak about a community dinner in Muizenberg where there is no queue, where people keep coming back not for the food but for the contact time, and where the questions being asked go far beyond “how do we feed hungry people?” Barry challenges us to throw out the lazy questions that aren’t generating anything new, and Charlie reframes homelessness by pointing out that people living on the streets do have a home, they just don’t have a house. Tristan and Rashid then reflect on what it means to create spaces of belonging and how that might change a neighborhood, a city, and eventually a world.

THEMES

Community dinners. No queue, no power dynamic. Belonging through a meal. Lazy questions. Houselessness vs homelessness. Contact time. Friendship across difference. Creating spaces of belonging.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 1, Episode 5: Kinship, Assimilation and Making Home in the Colonial City with Charlton Alexander and Barry Lewis. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

FEATURED VOICES

Charlton Alexander is a tour guide and facilitator based in Cape Town. He invites guests to the city to connect with the people and land in experiences that are life altering.

Barry Lewis is the director of UBU (Ubuhle Bakha Ubuhle / Beauty Builds Beauty), a company focused on developing the technology of sandbag housing in low-income communities in South Africa.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

CREDITS

| Produced by | Rashid Epstein Adams
| Music by | Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit
| A collaboration between | The Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod

What would it look like if any two people could sit at a table and have a conversation? In this episode, Tristan and Rashid begin with a wide-ranging exploration of shared consciousness, Ubuntu, and the Hebrew concept of tzedakah, before introducing Leila Kidson, a social systems researcher, facilitator, and designer who co-founded the social design studio OCTOPI.

Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, Leila paints a picture of radical imagination that is refreshingly honest. Not a world where everyone is happy, but one where we have the capacity to sit across from someone we disagree with and recognise their humanity. She asks what happens when survival needs are met, when communities are modular rather than insular, when walls become picket fences. Tristan and Rashid then reflect on the impediments to even simple human connection, from visa hierarchies to the way wealth privatises our lives, and close with questions about neighbours, kindness, and bridging the distance from your front door to theirs.

THEMES

Ubuntu. Radical imagination. Communal vs individual living. Any two people at a table. Shared consciousness. Picket fences, not walls. Future generations. Tzedakah and right standing.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 13: Reorienting Ourselves Toward Community and Building Bridges with Leila Kidson. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

FEATURED VOICES

Leila Kidson is a social systems researcher, facilitator, and designer focused on better integrating grassroots voices into systems design, advocacy and action. She is co-founder of OCTOPI, a South African social design studio.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

CREDITS

| Produced by | Rashid Epstein Adams
| Music by | Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit
| A collaboration between | The Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod

What does it take to stop colluding with systems that dehumanise us? In this episode, Tristan and Rashid explore the role music plays in grounding us, reminding us of our humanity, and giving us the courage to resist. They introduce us to Ncedisa Nkonyeni, an African-centred systems change and field learning partner who teaches organisations to apply systems change to their strategies and partners with collectives committed to organisational well-being.

In a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, Ncedisa shares a story about a Tori Amos lyric that gave her the courage to walk away from a scholarship when she realised the research she was being asked to do was fundamentally afrophobic. From there, Tristan and Rashid reflect on what it means to negotiate our own complicity within unjust systems, and whether giving, in all its forms, could become an act of laying down power rather than exercising it.

THEMES

Music as resistance. Non-collusion. Ethical courage. Complicity and the status quo. Giving as laying down power. Joy as humanizing. Systems change.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 10: Systems Thinking and Rehumanising Narratives with Ncedisa Nkonyeni. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

FEATURED VOICES

Ncedisa Nkonyeni is an African-centred systems change and field learning partner. She teaches systems change, helps organisations apply it to their strategies, and partners with collectives committed to discovering organisational well-being.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

CREDITS

| Produced by | Rashid Epstein Adams
| Music by | Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit
| A collaboration between | The Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod

What kind of hope is worth holding onto? In this episode, Tristan and Rashid unpack the idea of critical hope, drawing on the work of Jeff Duncan-Andrade and a powerful quote from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Hope. They introduce us to Ashley and Helene Visagie, founders of Bottom Up, a Cape Town youth organisation that equips teenagers with tools of critical thought to question the systems around them rather than simply plugging gaps.

In clips from the original Liminal Space episode, Ashley describes the shift from fixing broken toilets to asking why they’re broken in the first place, and how capitalism alienates us from our work, each other, and the environment. Helene speaks about telling kids the truth without leaving them stranded in despair, and what it takes to move forward together. Tristan and Rashid reflect on when they first encountered critical thinking, and why imagining a new world requires us to question the imagination behind the current one. The episode closes with a guided imagination exercise inviting listeners to picture their neighbourhood 20 years from now.

THEMES

Critical hope. Democratizing critical thought. Stop plugging gaps. Alienation under capitalism. Education as liberation. Imagination as action. Youth as co-constructors of change.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 1, Episode 3: Critical Hope and Being Human with Ashley Visagie. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

FEATURED VOICES

Ashley & Helene Visagie are the founders of Bottom Up, a Cape Town-based youth organisation that develops socially engaged leaders who can critically analyse how political, economic, and cultural systems produce inequality, and then organise to change them.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

CREDITS

 | Produced by | Rashid Epstein Adams
 | Music by | Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit
 | A collaboration between | The Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod

In this episode, Tristan and Rashid take us to Khayelitsha, one of South Africa’s largest townships, about 20 miles southeast of central Cape Town. Built during apartheid-era forced removals, Khayelitsha continues to bear the scars of spatial inequality. But in the heart of its informal settlements, two young founders, Bongeka and Aphiwe (Qhama), have created something remarkable: Thembisa Ratanga, a community space they describe as “a safe space in a not-so-safe place.”

Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, we hear Bongeka and Aphiwe reflect on the deep connection between nature, spirituality, and the body. Yoga poses that imitate trees and birds. Sunsets you don’t plan but can’t avoid. The quiet gift of a wetland on the edge of a township. Tristan and Rashid then unpack what it means to “just be” in a world that demands we constantly produce or consume, and ask whether rest itself might be a revolutionary act.

THEMES

Coming home to our bodies. Being vs doing. Nature as teacher. Rest as resistance. Spatial apartheid and its legacy. Yoga in the township. Eliminating economic isolation.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

This episode features a clip from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 11: What happens when we reclaim our stories and find home in our bodies? With Bongeka and Aphiwe. The full conversation runs about an hour and is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

FEATURED VOICES

Bongeka & Aphiwe (Qhama) are the founders of Thembisa Ratanga, a Khayelitsha-based NPO that uses education, art, and sport as tools for community development and self-empowerment. Their space has been dubbed “a waterfront in the township.”

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

SUPPORT THEMBISA RATANGA

Bongeka and Aphiwe are currently running a BackaBuddy campaign to support day-to-day logistics and building improvements for the kids in their community. If you’d like to contribute, visit the link below.

CREDITS

 | Produced by | Rashid Adams
 | Music by | Arkenstone
 | A collaboration between | Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| BackaBuddy | backabuddy.co.za/campaign/tembisa-ratanga
| Full Episode | Listen on Apple Podcasts
| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod