Douglas Rushkoff makes another appearance on our podcast, sharing his latest thoughts on What Could Possibly Go Right?  Listen to his previous interviews in episodes 28, 52, and 83.

Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, his twenty books include Team Human, based on his podcast. Others include bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. 

As 2022 comes to a close, enjoy this casual chat between Douglas and Vicki.

• The need to “adopt and invent alternative narratives of success that involve mutuality, rather than singularity; that are collective and communal, rather than alienated and isolated”
• The importance of tolerating ambiguity, having a tender heart and embracing difference
• The “idea of asking the right questions at the right times… to reduce the cognitive harm imposed by propagandists and media people who don't have our best interests at heart.”

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Kritee Kanko is a climate scientist, Zen priest, Educator & founding spiritual teacher of Boundless in Motion. She is an ordained teacher in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain, a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center and faculty for many organizations for courses at the intersection of Ecology and spirituality. She has served as a scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund. 

She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• The sense of belonging that comes from taking time to slow down and share your authentic truth
• The need for healing our collective trauma, to allow us to bond and move forward
• The emergence of ancestral resilience that can bring us together
• The tension between freedom and boundaries in belonging

Connect with Kritee Kanko
Website: boundlessinmotion.org

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Geneen Marie Haugen, PhD, grew up as a free-range wildish kid with a run amok imagination. She is a guide to the experiential, intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche with the Animas Valley Institute, and is on the faculty of the Esalen Institute, Schumacher College, and the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality. Her writing has appeared in many journals and books, including Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth; Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth; Parabola Journal; Ecopsychology Journal; DailyGood.org; High Country News; and others.

She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• The power in our unique creativity and imagination as human beings
• The value of becoming more receptive to the dreams and consciousness of the community, earth and universe around us
• The increasing awareness of traditional Indigenous and ecological knowledge in the Western worldview

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Gwendolyn Hallsmith is the Executive Director of Global Community Initiatives, a non-profit organization she founded in 2002, and has just celebrated their 20th anniversary. She is the author of six books on sustainable community and economic development and has worked with communities all over the world to foster caring communities, vibrant local economies, good governance, efficient services, and healthy ecosystems. She founded Vermonters for a New Economy to work on economic solutions at the state level, and the Headwaters Garden and Learning Center, an ecovillage in Cabot, VT. 

She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• Transitioning away from capitalism into new ways of thinking; a “caring economy”
• Alternative examples for money and ownership, such as timebanking, neighborhood caring models, universal basic income, and sharing economy
• The need to make changes in three systems of food, energy and money

Resources

• Song: “The End of Capitalism Rag” by Global Community Initiatives https://youtu.be/BK_MgvD7QAc 
• www.global-community.org 
• www.neweconomyvt.org 
• www.headwatersvermont.org 
• www.facebook.com/TheNewEconomistas 

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Hear from our host Vicki Robin in another solo episode, as she shares a topical theme for “What Could Possibly Go Right?” including:

• Ideas for creative solutions and alternative arrangements to address America’s housing issues
• Recognizing the intersection of population pressures, the wealth gap, and the climate crisis
• Transforming the idea of the American dream, that “we can discover the freedom of belonging as we end isolation as a symbol of wealth and privilege.”

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Per Espen Stoknes, a psychologist with PhD in economics, is a TED Global speaker, and serves as the director of Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. An experienced foresight facilitator and academic, he’s also serial entrepreneur, including co-founding clean-tech company GasPlas. Author of several books, among them Learning from the Future (2004, in Norwegian), Money & Soul (2009) and the “Outstanding Academic Title of 2015” award winning book: What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (2015). Per Espen has also served as member of Norwegian Parliament.

He answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• The work of Earth4All in encouraging a change to systems thinking to address the multiple threats to our survival
• The need to shift our identity beyond self-interested individuals, to earthlings sharing a commons in need of preservation
• The call to let go of American exceptionalism and recognize the innovation taking place across the globe

Resources

• Book: Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (2022) https://www.earth4all.life/book 

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With the mid-term election underway in US this week, we feature a replay of our interview with Heather Cox Richardson, as heard on episode 8 in July 2020. 

Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College and an expert on American political and economic history. She is the author of six books on American politics and is a national commentator on American political history and the Republican Party. She is also a leading #Twitterstorian, explaining the historical background of modern political issues through Twitter threads, the co-editor of We’re History, a web magazine of popular history, and the author of Letters from an American, a chronicle of the Trump presidency since the Ukraine Scandal broke. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune.

Heather addresses the question of What Could Possibly Go Right? with a political focus. Her insights include:

- That the current condition is waking people up from autopilot and creating the realization they need to pursue change personally to create the society in which they want to live.

- A reminder that the beauty of a democratic system is getting to choose which direction to go.

- That the desire for equality of opportunity and access should no longer be pushed to the narrative of special interest in politics.

- The potential to innovate and create change through crowdsourcing government and society.

- That the American dream needs to be rewritten and move away from the heteronormative nuclear family as its centerpiece, to a more community-centered and diverse view.

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Sherri Mitchell is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. Sherri is an author and cohost of the syndicated radio program Love (and revolution) Radio, which focuses on real-life stories of heart-based activism and revolutionary spiritual change. She was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation (Penawahpskek). She speaks and teaches around the world on issues of Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and spiritual change. 

After her previous appearance on episode 68, Sherri returns to the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• “Start thinking about who are we beyond the stories that we tell”, including the narratives carried forward from problematic pasts.
• Learning to “sit in a space of rootedness and visualize the world that we most want to inhabit, then become a citizen who is able to live there, in a peaceful, just and equitable way”
• Getting energy from aligning ourselves with “those energies that were creating something new, that were about imagining and building the possibility of a new reality”
• Being conscious of our use of technology and aiming to “reconnect our bodies to the earth” and its teachings

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Joanna Macy, Ph.D, author & teacher, is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and postmodern science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her thirteen books, which include three volumes of poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.

She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• Choosing “to be starkly present in this moment and now” is a radical act
• “Don't be afraid of your sorrow or grief or rage. Treasure them. They come from your caring.”
• These emotions “will nurture in you a fierce clarity for what can be done”
• “There's so much joy and courage… in finding a purpose”

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Janine Benyus is the co-founder of Biomimicry 3.8 and Biomimicry Institute. She is a biologist, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Since the book’s 1997 release, Janine’s work as a global thought leader has evolved the practice of biomimicry from a meme to a movement, inspiring clients and innovators around the world to learn from the genius of nature.

She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:

• The inspiration we can take from systems in nature for ourselves and communities
• The value of a biomimetic approach to infrastructure development and business operations
• The difference in designing systems for positive output, beyond simply net zero

Resources

• Biomimicry 3.8 www.biomimicry.net
• Biomimicry Institute www.biomimicry.org

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