People-Powered Planet Podcast

Vanessa Hope, award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and director of the acclaimed documentary Invisible Nation, for a timely and thought-provoking conversation about democracy, authoritarianism, Taiwan, China, and the future of freedom around the world.

Vanessa recently published a powerful and deeply personal essay:  "Four Generations, Three Chinas, One Taiwan: My Family's War Story and the Boomerang of Authoritarianism"

In it, she traces an extraordinary journey spanning four generations—from her grandfather's secret World War II rescue missions in China, to her own work documenting Taiwan's democratic transformation, to the growing global challenge posed by authoritarianism in the 21st century.

Our discussion explores:

• Taiwan's remarkable democratic journey

Vanessa's documentary Invisible Nation has helped bring international attention to Taiwan's vibrant democracy and the challenges it faces today. She recently screened the film at the U.S. Capitol with bi-partisan impact!  She continues to be a leading voice in global conversations about democracy, human rights, and citizen empowerment. 

Among others in her film she interviews Audrey Tang, Taiwan's former digital minister who has proven that we can, with the right interactive tools, bring people together across the seemingly impossible divisions. See the interview with Audrey Tang at TheWorldIsMyCountry.com/club

Roger Abbiss is the founder of Occupy Earth, a global grassroots movement to establish a World Federation.   He discovered The World Federalist Movement (WFM) while researching a political-thriller screenplay and is now a board member of WFM-Canada.  

Alarmed by the multiple existential risks that we face and the inability of our current systems and institutions to adequately address them, he is working urgently to develop a better way to run our world -- and ways to give the wider public a vision of the kind of world we humans can create! 

Roger says that the majority of people across the planet agree that something needs to be done -- the problem is with the architecture of the global political system. Even leaders who would want to address the issues can’t do so without a global system change. We need to drive that change. "When the people lead, the leaders will follow."

A lifelong entrepreneur, he has created enterprises ranging from telecom to food service. Believing that business could, and should be a force for good, Roger increasingly focused his business enterprises on social and environmental concerns. He is co-founder of MRKTBOX, a business that connects consumers to small organic farms via grocery, produce, and coffee delivery. The company is a certified B Corp. and was named one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies by the Globe & Mail in 2023.

A special podcast in collaboration with Mega-Meeting and 2,700 other Podcasts promoting nonprofit causes around the world -- in a giant @Podcasthon

David is the creator of The Rotary Peace Game, Peace on Earth by 2030 and the Empowerment Institute -- Center for Reinventing the Planet.

He has dedicated his life to empowering humanity to believe we can create the world of our dreams and is designing the strategies and tools to help us make this a reality.

Social Protest, Information Campaigns, Passing laws, and Financial Incentives (what David calls First Order Social Change 1.0) have not been sufficient. The world is plunging dangerously close to the precipice.

Hear David explain how Second Order Social Change 2.0 can empower us, the people of the world, to achieve the magnitude and speed essential to stop the wars and ecocide. ​

Check out Garry's exciting memoir - Chapters 1 and 2! (Chapters 3-9 covered as well on our @FutureWAVEFilms YouTube channel.) Buy the book at: worldcitizengov.org

As the nation-state system implodes and the old win/lose political system fails to stop politicians from plunging us toward environmental ecocide, how can we create People-Powered law above the nations that divide us?

Lets take a look at an example of People Power working.  American consumption of healthy Avocados was causing “thousands of acres of forest [to be] razed at a breakneck pace. Stolen water and drained aquifers. Abductions and killings.”(NYT) until the Forest Guardians stepped in.  

Find out how these guardians turned it around!

As the nation-state system implodes and the old win/lose political system fails to stop politicians from plunging us toward environmental ecocide, how can we create People-Powered law above the nations that divide us?

Lets take a look at an example of People Power working.

American consumption of healthy Avocados was causing “thousands of acres of forest [to be] razed at a breakneck pace. Stolen water and drained aquifers. Abductions and killings.”(NYT) until the Forest Guardians stepped in.

Find out how these guardians turned it around!

• See the video and ask questions of future guests at:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠theworldismycountry.com/club⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Music by: „World Citizen“ Jahcoustix feat. Shaggy, courtesy of Dominik Haas, Telefonica and EoM
• Check out the film on World Citizen #1 Garry Davis: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠theworldismycountry.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• Endorse the ban on Nuclear Weapons: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠theworldismycountry.com/endorse⁠

Scarlett Lewis founded the nonprofit Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement in honor of her son, Jesse, who was murdered during the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in December 2012.

Shortly after his death, Scarlett decided to be part of the solution to the issues that we’re seeing in our society — that also caused the tragedy — and turned it into an opportunity to build a culture of love, resilience, forgiveness, and connection in our communities at a time when it is needed the most.

Scarlett became a Character Social-Emotional Development Advocate to help children manage their emotions, feel connected, and have healthy, meaningful relationships.

She created the Choose Love For Schools program, a no cost, comprehensive, lifespan, next generation character and social emotional development (CSED) program that teaches children how to thoughtfully respond with love in any situation by using the Choose Love Formula (Courage + Gratitude + Forgiveness + Compassion-in-Action), and offer ways for children to handle adversity, have courageous conversations, and to respond with love.

Because the world needs so much healing, Choose Love also offers programs beyond the classroom through additional free programs, programs for the home, communities, athletics, and the workplace, as well as multiple extension programs.

The Choose Love programs have been accessed in all 50 states and in 120 countries, reaching 3 million children.

theworldismycountry.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Catherine Cooley is a communication coach, trainer, conflict mediator, facilitator, speaker,

founder of Peaceabl, and a Certified Trainer through the Center for Nonviolent Communication. 

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She gives business teams and leaders who dread their workplace a reliable way to resolve differences, restore trust and build an empathic culture. Her programs are based on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a model used by organizations worldwide for elevating Emotional Intelligence, conflict resolution, team building, values alignment, and productive, psychologically safe cultures.

As a facilitator for the Alternative to Violence Project in a federal prison, she supported inmates in recognizing the importance of their feelings and their ability to express them.  She co-created trust and psychological safety that allowed them to share meaningful experiences with inmates they normally would not ever interact with. They developed their capacities for active listening, empathy, nonviolent communication, collaborative problem solving, authentic self-expression, conflict transformation, leadership and community building.

Her Active Peace Circles (APC) Restorative Justice circle process helps communities repair conflicts with a needs-based, non-punitive approach that repairs relationships and addresses systemic issues. 

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Catherine is a member of Rotary International E-Club of World Peace, and Mediators Beyond Borders International.

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Peaceabl.com

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania broke free from Soviet occupation and repelled invading Soviet tanks -- with a Singing Revolution!  

Barbara Leger with her Resilience in a Rucksack and other programs helps students and teachers in Ukraine harness their Love Power to build resilience and courage to persevere despite Russian bombing.  

In this short clip, she discusses her experiences in Estonia and brainstorms with Arthur about whether a Singing Revolution might be a way to empower people to occupy back US cities from military occupation.  

Barbara founded GoldenPathOfPeace.org, Temenos and We Stand for the Future – organized to cultivate a possibility mindset in Ukraine.

Eight Billionaires possess as much wealth as half the world’s population. Dr. Shann Turnbull, who was selected by Garry Davis as his World Economics Commissioner, has a plan to cure the world's gross inequality.

Shann has proved how tax incentives can radically reduce inequality, so all voters obtain locally controlled eternal well-being dividends. Twice he has used tax incentives to raise millions of dollars from hundreds of investors in 15-year leases that funded publicly traded corporations.

Twice he has also created corporations with locally elected boards to introduce “Polycentric” self-governance described by Elinor Ostrom in her 2009 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Both innovations could win voter support from both sides of politics.

In 1976, the ultra-right stockbrokers’ journal in Australia published a review by Socialist Deputy Prime Minister of Australia of Shann’s 1975 book Democratising the Wealth of Nations. The United Nations published a summary of his book. This led to Shann being invited to explain stakeholder privatization in Prague in 1991/2 and Beijing in 1992.

He authored Australian Parliamentary reports on Aboriginal self-determination in 1977/8.

His 2001 PhD from Macquarie University created a methodology to establish the science of governance of any specie and introduced to social scientists the self-governing concept of Tensegrity.

He is a prolific author on using the self-governing practices of biota to purify, share and sustain localized capitalism.