🎧 Listening Invitation

What does it mean to practice democracy not just with people, but with rivers, forests, mountains, and the more-than-human world?

In this episode, I’m in conversation with Shrishtee Bajpai—researcher, activist, and writer working on earthy governance, interspecies justice, and radical alternatives to dominant systems.

Shrishtee’s work emerges from her deep relationship with the river she grew up alongside in North India—one of the most polluted rivers in the world. That grief and love have shaped her life’s path: exploring how communities can co-create governance with rivers, mountains, and forests, and what it means to truly listen to the more-than-human world.

We speak about:

* 🌊 Collapse and continuity: why collapse is not just arriving but has long been lived in the Global South.

* 🐝 Earthy governance: how communities take decisions in dialogue with forests, deities, bees, and rivers.

* 🌳 Radical democracy: power rooted in place, not just parliaments.

* 💔 Absurdities of modernity: the schizophrenia of cultures that worship rivers as goddesses while polluting them.

* 👂 The invitation: how we might awaken our collective capacity to listen to the more-than-human world.

Shrishtee reminds us: democracy is not only about human voices—it’s about rivers, mountains, winds, and creatures who have always spoken, if only we slow down to hear.

What does it mean to live—and act—when the dominant stories of our time are collapsing?

This conversation with Jon Alexander was recorded in July on the land at Ghostwood Down, just before he set out on an overnight solo.

It is raw, intimate, unplanned—full of the wild energy of two men wrestling with collapse and possibility in equal measure.

Jon, author of Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything Is All of Us, co-founder of the New Citizenship Project, and long-time mischief-maker of beautiful change, has spent years helping communities and movements remember that all of us are smarter than any of us. But in this fire-side exchange, the themes stretch beyond politics or strategy.

We talk of:

🌑 The collapse of the “consumer story” and the dangerous rise of authoritarian certainty

🌱 The emergent “citizen story” rooted in participation, connection, and response-ability

⚡ Dancing with panic, grief, and rage without leaving the dance floor

🌳 Ceremony, community, and even oaks as companions in uncertain times

🔥 How to become fully available—to the work, to the world, to each other

It’s an honest, vulnerable exploration of how to stay human, relational, and creative amid breakdown. And it feels even more urgent now, as violence, oppression and absurdity intensify around us.

Links

Jon Alexander

Overnight Community Solo Autumn Equinox Weekend

What happens when we step away from the noise of modernity and sit quietly with the land, with our dreams, with each other?

In this intimate conversation, Dan speaks with Betsy Perluss—esteemed elder, Wilderness Guide with the School of Lost Borders, Jungian analyst, and psychotherapist.

Betsy has spent decades guiding people into the wild, into themselves, and into the shared spaces where land and psyche weave together.

Supporting people into deep relationship with Earth and soul, through solo time on the land and the ancient practice of council.

Together we explore how these deceptively simple practices—fasting alone under the sky, listening deeply in circle, paying attention to the more-than-human and tuning into our dreams—can shift our orientation to life in profound ways.

This is a conversation about mystery, grief, presence, and the possibility that wisdom is always already available… if we learn how to listen.

How do we learn to listen differently — to land, to mystery, to each other?

We talk about the practice of solo time on the land—sitting out, fasting, letting Earth be both mirror and teacher. And we talk about council—an ancient, simple, radical practice of listening and being listened into deeper presence.

These are quietly revolutionary practices.

They offer ways of being that modernity can’t commodify or quantify—ways that remind us we belong.

The conversation also opens into dreams, the unseen, and the deep mystery that enfolds every life.

Betsy reminds us that paying attention to mystery may offer more than all the technologies and rational maps we’ve been taught to rely on.

This episode is not about solutions. It’s about presence. It’s about remembering that the land is always speaking, that our dreams carry wisdom, and that listening together can be its own kind of healing.

Themes We Move Through

🌲 Solo time on the land as a mirror and guide

🪶 Council as a way of listening each other into deeper being

🌌 Dreams and the unseen as teachers

🌀 What modernity blinds us to—and what becomes possible when we remember otherwise

💙 Crew questions: what it means to belong, to serve, to stay awake together

🌐 Guest: Betsy Perluss

* Wilderness Guide, Jungian Analyst, and Psychotherapist

* Long-time teacher with the School of Lost Borders

If you’re interested in experiencing these practices, Becoming Crew Collective are hosting a final Community Solo, a weekend on the land including fire circles, council and a fully guided overnight nature solo at Ghostwood Down, Nr Bath - 19-21st September - full info here

What does it take to reforest a country that’s forgotten its forests?

In this grounded and wide-ranging conversation, I sit down with surfer, grower, and land-restorer Matt Smith—co-founder and CEO of the Hometree charity in Ireland.

A lifelong wave-rider turned regenerative farmer, and landscape rewilder, Matt has poured his vision and determination into one of the most ambitious rewilding efforts on the island.

But this isn’t just a story of saplings and success.It’s a story of tension—between aliveness and economy, vision and system.

Together we explore:

🌊 The courage it takes to ride both waves and grief

🌱 How regeneration must be cultural as much as ecological

🪵 The challenge of convincing farmers to plant trees—even now, even here

💸 The heartbreak of realising that money still speaks louder than the land

🎭 The role of artists and storytellers in restoring relationship to place

This episode asks: Can we grow forests from love rather than incentives? Can we compost the logics of modernity while still living inside them?

It doesn’t offer easy answers. But it does offer soil, surf, and story.Listen for the entanglement, not the solution.

What if the maps we’ve been using to make sense of the world…are no longer capable of guiding us?

What if the future no longer works ?

In this immersive audio essay, I’m taking you on a spiralling journey through the unraveling terrain of modernity.

Naming the deep violence coded into its dominant logics, and inviting us to compost the spoiled maps that have brought us to this moment of planetary crisis.

From Gaza to the dance floor, from ocean devastation to AI-fuelled destruction, this is a raw, heartfelt, and unflinching exploration through grief, complicity, beauty, and the possibility of regeneration.

It’s not tidy.

It’s not performative.

It’s not hopeful in the superficial sense.

But it is deeply alive.

A sonic rambling.

More like a sonic compost heap.

One for the headphones.

🌿 Themes We Move Through:

🗺️ Spoiled maps and violent logics of modernity

💣 Silence, complicity, and the normalisation of harm

🌊 Ocean destruction and the illusion of human separation

🎧 Capitalism on the dance floor: from music to militarisation

🔥 Response-ability and composting grief into action

💙 A Rebellion of the Heart, and remembering the operating system of life

I hope you receive something here, if you do please do share with a friend and consider subscribing to help support the costs of creating these offerings.

What does it mean to act — not out of certainty, but out of grief and relational sensing ?

In this quietly powerful episode, Dan sits on the land with Gavin Fernie-Jones, co-founder of the Re-Action Collective, to explore how deep connection to place, the loss of his father, and the visible unraveling of mountain ecologies catalysed a life of collective action.

From ski lifts to community sewing tables, this conversation moves across the terrain of:

🌄 Mountains as memory and mirror 🔥 The palpable grief of witnessing climate collapse in beloved places 🧵 How one collective is patching, repairing, and repurposing not just outdoor gear—but the culture of disposability 🌀 Why experimental, humble, decentralised alternatives already exist—quietly flourishing beneath the capitalist noise ❤️‍🩹 Grief as a portal into purpose, and what becomes possible when we stop waiting for permission

Gav and the Re-Action Collective (now 70+ organisations strong) aren’t waiting for top-down transformation. They’re making the future by hand, with care, and in kinship.

This episode invites you not just to listen—but to feel.Feel the grief. Feel the land. Feel the possibility of living otherwise.

🔗 More about Re-Action:

https://re-action-collective.org/

https://www.actionism.space/

Greetings to the Summer Solstice

Here in the Northern Hemisphere

The sun is at peak power

These next days are the longest

Until we begin the gentle swing back towards darker times.

This morning my fellow guide Mark Sears sent me this poem from Persian Poet and Mystic - Hafiz which I shared on our call.

The Sun Never Says

Even after all this time

The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with

A love like that,

It lights the Whole Sky.

Hafiz

______________________________

These are words that speak to the generosity of the sun

This extraordinary mysterious being of light and energy.

Because without the sun we do not exist.

No life exists.

And so we are all therefore - Children of the Sun

And that generosity runs deep in our embodied code.

It’s within us.And so I am re-minded again and again.

That perhaps it’s as simple as Re-membering what is already there.

I’ve been contemplating the sun much of this week

Enjoying the warmth on my skin but also aware of the searing heat that I’m experiencing in these days and what that triggers…

Noticing the abundance of plants and insects on the land around me and the vegetables and fruit in my garden which are thriving this year.

Noticing how the wild waters on the lands that I walk are running slower and slower.

I made a new Earth Sessions mix as an offering to honour the Solstice.

I’ve included tracks spanning 35 years, a few that were mainstays in my record box back in the late 90's.

In the company of some more recent beauties.

Big love to the artists, producers and creators of these sonic gifts. Full tracklist on site.

This is a 120/122 bpm groove.

For honouring the Sun, love, life, grief and joy of being alive on Spaceship Earth right now.

And the possibility of dancing our ways into more beautiful and peaceful futures.

A big summer salute to the cuckoos of Dartmoor who also appear in the intro.

How are you tuning into this moment in the Earth cycle?

Solstice blessings to you, hope you are finding some peace

New episode 102 - this is an audio adventure featuring a live panel conversation from the launch of new bio-regional project We Are Avon and musings from a Pilgrimage along the River Avon herself in the last week.

Across the UK more and more communities are engaging with the deteriorating health of their local rivers and wild waters.

From cold water swimmers, fishermen to local food growers, conservationists, nature lovers, artists, storytellers, writers and community activists there is a growing understanding that the health of the rivers reflects the health of our societies.

There is also a growing awareness that the rivers and wild waters of our lands are the arteries that lead to the ocean, the great blue heart of Spaceship Earth.

In the last couple of years I’ve been participating in the birth of a Bio-Regional project called We Are Avon (WAA) here in my hometown of Bath.

We Are Avon is an emergence of a place-based movement for regeneration in the UK.

It aims to act upon the interwoven crises of river pollution, climate change and food insecurity. Led by the people, a diverse web of communities, regenerators, farmers and projects who collaborate to regenerate.

A grassroots movement to provide food resilience for the region whilst also regenerating the communities, landscapes and watersheds of the catchment area beginning from the local level with river and land in this Avon valley.

Centering food, river and land as powerful anchors for reconnecting people to place, this project aims to re-identify humans as 'regenerators’, as active participants in service to the climate and nature crisis we collectively face.

After a year of visioning and development, We Are Avon has launched its first crowd-funder to formalise and activate a number of community engagement projects

This episode conversation was recorded live at the start of April to mark the crowfunder, and a whole range of community engagement invitations over the coming months.

The session was themed around sharing hope and vision for a regenerative future in the Avon bioregion, and this panel represented River, Land, Food and Community movements in the local area with guests - poet and activist Meg Avon from Save Our Avon, Charlotte Sawyer, Director of award winning feature river doc which is blowing up right now Rave on for the Avon, and Hamish Evans, regenerative farmer, prefigurative activist from Middleground Growers who has been the lead instigator for the WAA project and myself as host.

This is a conversation for anyone interested in the health and futures of our land, river and local ecosystems.

For those curious about river and environmental action, community led responses to the climate crisis and different and more creative ways to get involved in bringing life back to the places we call home.

But really it’s a conversation about relationships between humans, communities and the more than human world around us with a focus here on rivers.

The episode also contains ‘messages from the Avon’, daily musings from a River Avon pilgrimage of the last week to mark the crowdfunder launch , as well as some song from Elpha Perkins

If we are to grow true regenerative movements, then engaging communities around rivers and weaving new regenerative cultures from the bottom up will be essential.

Links

Support the Crowdfunder

We Are Avon site

We Are Avon instagram

Rave on for the Avon film

I posted this episode two years ago on this day.

I’m thinking it might have more relevance and be more helpful today to more folks around here.

Context is king and all that.

Maybe as more folks begin to bear witness to this old world imploding, to this civilisational story ending, perhaps we are becoming ready to figure out what work we are being called to do ‘in the ruins’ as Dougald Hine might say.

I would suggest that there is much wisdom to be found in listening to Dougald and he speaks with such honesty, care and humility

I highly recommend reading Dougald’s book - At Work in the Ruins

As I said when I read it in 2023..

“ At Work in the Ruins is a book of wisdom for these times. Times which often feel to me to be full of cleverness that no longer make much sense”

Dougald is co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project.

Co-host of The Great Humbling podcast.

Co-founder of a School called Home in Sweden

And Author of book ‘At Work in the Ruins’ - the focus of this conversation.

Dougald is opening up vital spaces for different types of questions, conversations and invitations to be considered and explored as we face into the unravelling mystery of these times - times of endings.‘

At Work in the Ruins’ is a gift for this moment for those who know intuitively in their heart and gut that many things from 'modernity' need to end.

Now is a time for humility and creative courage, for letting go of stories, ideas, behaviours and systems that no longer serve life and crossing a threshold into imagining what could be and becoming the change.

Introducing the Annual 2024 - and the official Episode 100 of the Spaceship Earth Podcast.

A reflection of the year gone by with a nod to what it might be showing us about the future that is unfolding.

A curation of the highlights of 2024 on the podcast, it features clips, reflections, insights and learnings from many of the episodes.

It’s not exhaustive, not every guest is featured but I’ve included clips that felt to me to be fertile, wise and vital insights for these times we are travelling in.

The Annual features dialogue and clips from:Dan Burgess, David Wendl-Berry, Natasha Lythgoe, Immy Kaur, Bayo Akomolafe, Vanessa Andreotti, Azul Carolina Duque, Dr Rosalind Watts, Dr Stephan Harding, Lily Cole, Adah Parris, Jasmine Qureshi, Hamish Evans, Alnoor Ladha, Lynn Murphy, Sam Lee, Clare Farrell, Paul Powlesland, Dr Wallace J Nichols & Buckminster Fuller ;-)If you’ve never jumped in this could be the one to check out.

So if you are a regular listener I hope this captures some of the highlights for you and you might appreciate the reflections and insights we share.

If you are new to the podcast I hope this gives you a flavour of what we’re doing here and inspires you to dig into these conversations and episodes more deeply and jump into the becoming crew community

We’ve put a lot of time into creating this episode, I recommend putting the headphones on or turning up the speakers.

It's a sonic adventure.

WE have curated these through the following themes which were alive in 2024 and we are carrying into the podcast and the becoming crew offerings for the journey ahead:

1. The importance and possibilities of non-ordinary experiences through nature based rites of passage and rituals

2. Decolonising and growing post-capitalist realities

3. Practice-driven change for ways through the divisiveness and violence of these times

4. Honouring death, grief and composting our s**t as vital regenerative practices

5. Shifting our relationality, seeing the natural world from transactional to sacred

6. Imagining and Re-membering alternative futures

7. The Future is Local - we can network for the rest

8. Centering the young/Intergenerational by Design

9. Now is the Time for Crews

Finally we'd love to hear your thoughts to help us shape the next year of the Spaceship Earth Podcast.

We want to keep crafting the offering to stay useful and relevant in these challenging and emerging times.

Your feedback helps us to understand where folks are at with the podcast in its current form.

It will take about 10 mins of your time and we'd be so grateful for your feedback.

LINKS

Our listener Survey - We’d so value your inputs in helping us shape the next chapter for the Podcast

Into the Dark - Our Winter Community Adventure - Join us