My guest in this episode is the wonderful Laura Storm. Laura is a visionary, a pioneering human in the field of regeneration. Laura first appeared on this podcast in EP 13 in 2019.

Laura is a highly in-demand keynote speaker, advisor and teacher and launched the regenerative leadership learning platform - Regenerators dedicated to reimagine leadership systems and ways of living to align with the wisdom of living systems.

I reached out to Laura recently, not to talk more about the possibilities of regenerative leadership, but really to have a chat about this moment, the moment of stuckness, as I tend to describe it.

I wanted to explore some of what Laura has been tending to following her intentional withdrawal from the limelight in 2024 - to investigate the topics of death and endings and how that's showing up in the world of business and organisational leadership and what was pulling her towards that.

I really appreciate these kinds of moves from leaders like Laura, this integrity, honesty and humility and being true to oneself right now.

So this conversation asks - what if regeneration begins not with new ideas, but with learning how to let go?

It's an open, vulnerable chat on why our current moment calls for more than new strategies or better leadership models.

What does it mean to become life-affirming in a world shaped by extraction and why every genuine transformation seems to require paying real attention to some form of grief, surrender and ending.

The conversation moves from corporate boardrooms to forests and rivers between inner and outer regeneration, exploring how resilience might be found not through hardening ourselves, but through deeper relationships, connection, belonging, listening, and our capacity to stay present with uncertainty and loss.

This is a conversation about endings, but even more, it's a conversation about the kind of presence that allows something genuinely new to emerge.

I hope you receive something through this conversation and please do let us know, comment, and share with someone else who might appreciate this if you do.

Sol-stice

Sun stands still.

The longest day.

The shortest night.

here’s an Earth Sessions mix from me inspired by dancing at sunrise and sunsets.

or as Bucky Fuller put it…

Sun-sight and sun-eclipse

As the sun isn’t moving

But we of course are on Spaceship Earth.

Gratitude to all the artists and producers for creating these tracks.

Full tracklist on https://www.thespaceship.earth/podcast

Listen on Apple Podcasts, substack and Souncloud

Enjoy

This episode was a live panel recording from the We Are Avon community gathering in May.

 If you're a regular listener, you'll know about place-based initiative and bioregional project, We Are Avon, based in the Avon Valley in the West of England, where I live. A movement working to regenerate the landscapes, rivers, and communities of the Avon catchment.

This conversation is an exploration around the power of pilgrimage, the ancient practice of walking land and rivers as a way to connect us back to self, each other, and the landscapes we're part of.

I hosted special guest, Zofia Page, Executive director and Co-founder of Friends of the River Medway, an innovative non-profit restoring the river while reconnecting people to it as a living presence.

Her work weaves together ecological action; the Rights of Nature movement; and a renewed, enchanted relationship with the more-than-human world.

Over six years, she has brought the Medway from background to foreground through conservation, citizen science, advocacy, art, storytelling, and ceremony. Her vision found its fullest expression in the River Medway Pilgrimage, a pioneering source-to-sea journey that led to two councils acknowledging the Rights of the River Medway.

Alongside Zofia was Hamish Evans, Regenerative Farmer of Middle Ground Growers, River Pilgrim, prefigurative activist, and co-director of We Are Avon.

This was a beautiful conversation with two extraordinary young change-makers who carry incredible vision, wisdom, humility and dedication to our home planet.

In a time where mainstream reality is falling apart rapidly, perhaps these ancient practices of walking the land, moving through landscapes together in community might offer us different perspectives, deeper connections, and other ways of seeing this moment and the future that we're being invited into co-creating.

The We Are Avon pilgrimage is this solstice weekend 20-21st June.

The Medway pilgrimage is 18th to the 27th of July.

Everyone is welcome to walk as much or as little as you like, links below, there are river movements rising like springs all over the UK.

Find one near you and find out what's yours to do.

LINKS

We Are Avon pilgrimage

River Medway Pilgrimage

In this solo offering nested with the Hazels on Ghostwood Down - I’m rambling on:

* Relationality, mystery, place and local participation.

* Spaces for sanctuary and falling apart.

* Regeneration through transformation and the deeper shifts required in times of unraveling and overwhelm.

This is not reflections about fixing the world through better ideas, but about changing the way we relate - to ourselves, to one another and to the living, more-than-human world around us.

What if regeneration is not just about solutions but also about consciousness, presence, attention and participation?

What if the future asks us not just to think differently, but to be differently?

Becoming-with-life.

This offering was created among ancient Hazel trees on Ghostwood Down.

There’s Hazel wisdom in ere.

Guest conversations returning soon.

But until then I hope you enjoy my ramblings.

Links

Famous for Five Miles

Community Solo June 26th/28th

We Are Avon

Join the Avon Pilgrimage 20/21 June

A new Earth Sessions mix from me: Springing

To mark the light returning, the sun rising, warmth, blossoms popping, life coming back, possibility… love.

A mix of vinyl and digital spanning 30 years - deep, housey, organic, trippy, vibey, and lively.

I hope it makes you move wherever you are.

With gratitude to the wonderful artists, producers and labels for these creations

Tracklist via the Spaceship Earth

Listen on Soundcloud, Apple Podcast and Substack

Let’s stay together

Let’s dance.

Peace and Out

Dan

We are kicking the podcast off this year with a warm spring

offering from Dan and a few Willow trees up at Ghostwood Down.

‘Ghostwood Down?’ You may be wondering - where is that… what is that?

Well, we welcome you friend

Up into the hills surrounding Bath.

There rests a magical Ghostwood - a land which was once the place of a great forest

A land riddled with scars, gold dust, earnest joy and deep sorrow.

On this land we are slowly nurturing a return to woodland, while honouring the place as it is now.

The ghost of a wood. Hence Ghostwood.

And as it is downland , well… you guessed it... Ghostwood Down.

Anyway enough of my attempts to ramble lets get into the real ramble.

Today’s episode is a little unusual.

Unusual you may ask? Thank god I hear you say - ‘that’s why I am bloody subscribed to this podcast.

Because the world… Well, the world is a little more than unusual, it’s quite frankly insane.

Insanity is kind of why Dan has chosen to make this episode.

The rigidness and immediacy that feels expected of us to make sense of the world around us and in us is so ludicrous that often we feel like we don’t have the words to express them.

And that’s where Rambling comes in.

Rambling almost has a negative connection…

To ramble is to be indecisive.

To ramble is to not know what you’re talking about.

To ramble is not know.

But, what if that’s what we need in these times?

To not know?

So, if you’ve read this far, go give Dan a listen - you may be surprised by how infectious the ramble can be.

Rambling on:

Rambling as social technology

Ghostwood Down  - place of intergenerational regeneration

Exhaustion of life within collapsing modernity

Psychopathic war mongering leaders

Tuning into Hedge Media

‘Unhoming’ - hat tip @Ece Temelkuran

A politics of care and community

Belonging

Liminal spaces for creativity and connection

Willow trees

Enjoy

I originally recorded this episode with Chris Hines, EP 17, seven years ago in 2019.

I’ve decided to repost it now.

This week in the UK we had the launch of the Channel 4 real life drama series - Dirty Business

A three part doc-drama based on a decade-long investigation into England’s water companies, it follows the story of two unlikely citizen detectives who notice that the fish in their local river are dying and are determined to find out why.

Telling the real stories of whistleblowers and victims who believe their lives have been destroyed after encountering sewage polluted water, Dirty Business is a factual drama investigating one of the biggest corporate scandals in British history.

And it is well worth a watch.

It also features Chris Hines (through an actor) - surfer, environmentalist, sustainability innovator who over 35 years ago co-founded environmental surf charity Surfers Against Sewage in Cornwall UK.

Their work has been pivotal over the years in connecting the s**t and pollution in the British seas and rivers to the gross negligence of the privatised water companies, extractive economics and short term politics.

This conversation I hosted with Chris in Dublin back in 2019 explores that journey, what was happening at that time in the early 90’s and what drove Chris and fellow founders to build out this movement despite having no real idea what they were up against and with absolutely no resources.

But this is a story to inspire all of us, that if you care enough about something then go and make stuff happen.

It’s worth a listen in my view because it’s more relevant today for those who are feeling outrage and fury about all manner of things around them and want to do something about it.

How with no resources and getting creative and working with your community extraordinary things can and do happen.

Chris is wise, humble, a true elder.

Let me know what you receive if you listen and do share with others that might appreciate it

LINKS

A Grain of Sand

Surfers Against Sewage

In the last few years I’ve been recording DJ mixes at particular moments in the Earth cycle and putting them out on the podcast - Earth sessions - they are a way for me to mark the season, the moment in the year and how it makes me feel and how it makes me want to move through electronic and dance music.

This is a new one. A live mix to honour this darker time of the year, and the darker times unfolding on Spaceship Earth.

Recorded in my kitchen on a Friday night after a long walk in the woods.

I wanted to start slow and ambient, to acknowledge the slower liminal space of winter and gradually pick up the pace.

This was a mix of vinyl and digital - spanning 30 years of releases.

From ambient electronica, early rave inspired house, breakbeat, melodic techno, tech house and some progressive bits.

Respect to all the artists and producers for these sonic offerings.

I hope the mix moves you in some way

Movement, dancing and connection is a way through these unravelling darker times.

We must stay together.

Right then, this is our final episode of this year.

But first up to say a big hearty thank you to all who have listened, shared and supported the podcast this year.

To all the guests who’ve joined the rambling - respect for your time, wisdom and open-ness.

And to my podcast crew who help make this a reality - Charlie Shread, Seemah Nahome-Burgess and Fin Burgess.

And a massive shout out to those who subscribe with a monthly payment to this project.

So to Episode 113…

My guest, Sam Crosby, is an oral storyteller and myth-informed guide whose work braids together story, psyche, ancestry, eldership and the living Earth.

This episode was recorded around the fire at Ghost Wood Down - two men sitting in the half-light, speaking honestly about what it is to search for meaning in a world that feels increasingly senseless.

Across two hours we wandered, wondered, and returned again and again to the mythic ground beneath our feet - the place modernity keeps trying to concrete over.

But there were core themes and patterns we were carrying throughout:

1. Myth as orientation, not entertainment

Myth isn’t a story about long ago - it’s a technology for staying human in ambiguous, unraveling times. We kept returning to myth as a compass when the rational mind fails.

2. Eldership vs.“Oldership”

A core wound: we’ve lost the adults who know how to hold the whole. Modernity extends lifespans but not wisdom.Sam goes deep into the distinction between age and elderhood - and the hunger for guidance that can hold complexity without collapsing into certainty.

3. The mythic roots of the AI moment

What if the crisis with AI is not technological — it is mythic.Humanity is generating intelligence way faster than it is generating wisdom. Our conversation suggests AI as a kind of mirror, revealing our disconnection from story, meaning and long arcs of time.

4. The crisis beneath the crisis: meaninglessness

What makes these times unbearable is not the data - it’s the absence of orientation. Sam repeatedly speaks to the human need for story, ritual and shared containers of meaning.

5. Rites of Passage & thresholds

One of our deepest shared passions: Cultures that lack thresholds create perpetual adolescence.This is why the absence of elders is so severe — there is no one to midwife beginnings or endings.

6. Stories as living beings

Sam treats stories as alive, with their own agency. This shifts storytelling from performance to participation - a relational act where story chooses the teller and carrier.

7. The danger of speed & the loss of the underworld

Modernity has flattened the vertical dimensions of being -no descent, no soul work, no underworld, no mysteries. We point toward slowness, ambiguity, and unknowing as necessary conditions for true wisdom to spread.

Sam is a wonderful human who speaks beautifully with great humility, courage, and imagination, and is doing really extraordinary work, especially the project on rekindling cultures of eldership, which we speak to at length here and I link to in the show notes below.

LINK

Sam’s work

Eldership Manifesto

Into the Dark from Becomin Crew- Register by 9th January

This is a short share about a winter learning journey we are hosting for the 4th year- Into the Dark

It begins on the evening of 20th January 2026, registration is open until 9th January.

Into the dark invites us to enter a container over five weeks, to co-create our orientation and intentionality for the year ahead in community - human and more-than-human.

It's a deep, gentle, experiential  journey.  

Creating space for connection, contemplation and creative practice,  exploring parts of ourselves and the Earth, and ways of knowing that modernity doesn't allow us to attend to. 

Its an invitation to actively reject the urge to accelerate into productivity and growth as the year begins .

To dwell instead with attention and intention in this darker, slower time.

Unfolding over 3 consecutive weeks, peaking with a threshold walk, a self paced, powerful ancient ritual on land near you with a follow up incorporation session a week later.

A time to plant vital seeds for the year ahead.

As the light begins to return.

Into the dark is guided by Dan Burgess, Ally Kingston and Mark Sears.

Full details and how to register via link