Peripheral Thinking

As an accountant and a “performance measurement guy”, Mark Anielski understands global economics and GDP, but is interested in how we measure happiness and wellbeing as opposed to measuring output in financial terms.

In his conversation with Ben, he discusses

• The difficulty we all have in understanding where money actually comes from
• How money is created ex nihilo (”out of nothing”), and why this is a problem
• The history of our relationship with money
• A question around the translation of the Lord’s Prayer that relates to debt

• An Economy of Well-Being, Mark’s book
• Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index
• Herman Daly
• 30 Lies About Money, by Peter Koenig
• Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein
• the Great Reset
• GameStop Crash Wipes Out $5 Billion in Market Value
• And Forgive Them Their Debts, by Michael Hudson
• Hungry ghost
• The Big Short (2015)
• Paul Moore (the HBOS whistleblower)

Jeremy Lent has been rightly described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age”. His recent book, “The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom To Find Our Place In The Universe” is a richly researched and inspiring guide / call to arms, charting a route through and beyond the myriad ecological, social, environmental crises defining our times. The book is part inspiration for this podcast.

In this conversation, Jeremy explains some of the context and causes of our current crises whilst pointing to simultaneously new and ancient ways to organise, make sense of the world, live and thrive.

• The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, by Iain McGilchrist
• At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, by Stuart Kauffman
• Hedonic treadmill
• Mark Anielski