Last year I visited the Realisation Festival (imagine a Do Lectures about philosophy held at a Downton Abbey style stately home) at St Giles House where I interviewed Jonathan Rowson, Ed Haddon, Roc Sandford, Sarah Wilson, Nick Ashley - Cooper and Pippa Evans (see episodes four to six in the archive). I also attended a workshop hosted by Benedict Pollard that I recounted at the end of those episodes to try and make sense of the whole experience. I’m thrilled to say that this year I attended again and went to another workshop with Benedict and this time I asked him to wear a microphone so you could listen in. He tells us about his business Mighty Fine Oaks, training to be a Samurai and gives the most astonishing explanation I have ever heard for why you sometimes find two oak trees seemingly growing from the same place. This has haunted me since hearing about it.

I also had the astonishingly good fortune to meet Nikki Trott who I had not come across before the festival. I now feel like I was ‘supposed’ to meet her in the way that will be familiar to regular listeners to the show. Mark Vernon introduced us and we sat down for a conversation that begins with me explaining my journey to make sense of what it means to live before I die. The chemistry that then appears between us as Nikki recounts her own journey was a joy to behold in real time. Nikki had her own introduction into what in the series we have been describing as Carl Jung’s Second Adulthood in her late twenties and has been exploring and luxuriating in it ever since. She is much more confident that I am about the uncertainty of such a profound change and has leant into it in a way I aspire to do and am doing now more as a result of meeting her. She also recommended I read The Surrender Experiment , which we discuss in the episode. I devoured it in two days and am now trying to live according to its philosophy. I’m so grateful to have met her.

After the interview ended we chatted for another hour and had so many things in common it began to feel a bit weird. But then that’s not a surprise really. Not now we are embodying the weirdo’s journey. So, inspired by her journey and her book, I’m leaning in. You can find out about her and her work here.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Much love,

Dan

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There are lots of things I see differently in my life because of Jay. I see her as one of the guides I have been fortunate to know a little bit in my life. Well enough to go and see and chat to, anyway. The longer I go on this journey to try and make sense of what it means to live before I die (the computer keeps autocorrecting ‘live’ to ‘love’ there, which is oddly beautiful), the weirder it becomes and the more easily I find myself leaning into that weirdness.

Jay’s books have always appeared at the precise moment I needed them and so it was with her latest, which I’ll come to at the end.

The first one of hers I read, Pip Pip, altered the way I think about time (time is the initial form of colonisation that ensnares us all). It is from this book that I learned about Chronos and Kairos, which I referenced in my Do Lecture back in the day.

Wild changed the way I saw travel, adventure, the plight of indigenous communities, the horror of the Christian missionary movement and the transformative power of ayahuasca. It is one of the most astonishing books I have ever read and I urge you to buy it immediately. It also completely changed the way I see women. I’m embarrassed to write that but there you are. One of the recurring themes that keeps emerging on this show so far has been the systematic denial of the feminine in the world we live in. If I have had a feminine awakening in my life I can now see that the start of that process was discovering Jay and reading Wild.

Kith speaks to childhood and the comparison between the way children in indigenous communities and those raised in our ‘dominant culture’ in Jay’s words - think, feel and behave.

Nemesis, My Friend is an almanac about the seasons but, as so often with Jay, it really can’t be as easily categorised as that. It contains so many wonders and gems.

Another book of hers that really changed me is Why Rebel - a book of essays on the need to stand up and fight for what you believe in. This contains the astonishing account of her experiences protesting with Extinction Rebellion and her subsequent arrest and court appearance (we discuss this in the episode). This resulted in her reading a prepared statement contained in the book that moved the judge to tears. After finding her and her co-defendants guilty he explained that he would not be presiding over any other XR cases and that they ‘must win’. If you want to be moved and inspired by how words and actions can come together to confront power then grab a copy now. I read and re-read this every time I lose heart. I cry every time I get to the end.

The other book we discuss in our conversation is her latest, How Animals Heal Us. From this I learned that baby spiders dream and that humans may have learned egalitarian behaviour from Wolves. I kid you not. But this is the thing with Jay. Every book she writes recalibrates your brain and leaves you more yourself than you were before you started reading it. In this sense she deals in homecoming and home making. Because she teaches you that while your mind is part of your home the other part lies outside of you. In the form of the many non-human minds that surround every one of us all the time too.

Have a look at Jay’s website for all her latest news.

Much love,

Dan

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Where do you start with Charles Foster? Perhaps my route to meeting him?

Back at the end of last year when I went to visit Iain McGilchrist in Skye, we were discussing indigenous knowledge and what we have lost in the way we see ourselves in the modern world. At this point Iain proclaimed, ‘have you come across Charles Foster’s work?’

I did have Charles’s then most recent book Being a Human back at home on my ‘to read’ pile but hadn’t got to it yet. And I had heard of Charles. A few years ago his book Being a Beast became a New York Times bestseller. In it Charles set out to try and understand what it is like to be a beast. He lived as a badger, eating worms and as a city fox, picking out pizza from boxes in a bin. But of course it went far beyond this slightly tabloid summary. Charles was trying to access different ways of being and knowing and paying respect to the many minds of the non human world. In Being a Human, which I read as soon as I got home, Charles turns his attention to Homo Sapiens and describes his journey seeking to re-gain the mindset and ways of being and knowing our ancestors took for granted. As he says in our interview, we are all still the hunter gatherers we have evolved and adapted over hundreds of thousands of years to be. At present, we are just wearing strange clothes and have lost touch with where we came from while we experiment with the consequences of being neolithic.

But Charles is not just an internationally respected and best selling author. He is also a practising barrister and an Oxford Don at Exeter College Oxford where he teaches, among other things, ethics.

I set off to meet him slightly nervous to be in the presence of such a high achiever but I needn’t have worried. We got on so well he emailed me while I was driving home to ask if I would interview him for an event at Blackwells in Oxford a few months later. That was great fun too.

Charles is a very modest man and seems genuinely baffled as to why anyone would find his work illuminating, but I have found it to be astonishingly so. And it’s also utterly re-enchanting at the same time. As though the world he describes was always on the tip of your tongue and he summons it out of you while you are in his company.

I hope you enjoy the discussion where, as well as these two books I just mentioned, we also talk about his latest excellent work The Edges of The World.

Much love,

Dan

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This is a continuation of my interview with modern day hunter gatherers Emily and Charlie. In this part of the conversation we get deeper into the implications of living closer to nature. I am such a fan of their work and way of life. I hope you take as much away from the example they set as I have.

This episode also features the launch of a new project I am doing with Ric Stockfis called One Room. Regular listeners to the show will know that since Christmas I have only allowed my phone in one room of my house, the room you reach on coming in the front door, which is my office. I can use my phone whenever I like, but I have to go in that room to use it. As I explained in a LinkedIn post a few months after making this decision, this has been by far the easiest and most transformational thing I have ever done in my life. The obvious result is that I have halved my phone use, which is a huge benefit in and of itself. This amounts to fourteen hours a week. Fourteen hours I was previously spending working for free for the tech bros, which is how I think about phone use now.

All the time we are doom-scrolling we are adding to their billions and tacitly agreeing to the way they use surveillance capitalism to enslave us. That might sound a bit alarmist, but think about it for a moment. How much of your day are you spending dutifully adding to their coffers? The use of surveillance capitalism is a choice. The internet never used to rely on it as a business model.

Anyway, putting my ranting to one side, the real benefit of this new habit is the time I have spent on other things. My kids, for one thing, no longer have to compete for my attention. The fact that they had to before now makes me weep with fury at myself. How desperately awful have we become if we think it’s appropriate to use our phones instead of playing with our kids? We’ve all been there, using our phones when one of our kids comes up and asks for something. We have all got cross with them because they are interrupting our focus on our phones. Shame on all of us for letting this happen!

I’ve also managed to go to the gym three times a week for seven months and the simple answer as to how I have managed to find the time to do this is because I have not been using my phone.

The benefits going beyond this too , as it has changed the things I am attending too in my life and as we have learned from Iain McGilchrist, our attention is a moral act. What we choose to give our attention to changes our reality. It chages our mood and the way we see ourselves and the world.

Ric replied to my LinkedIn post to say he too had started only allowing his phone in one room and he confirmed it is not just me. It really is the ultimate life hack you have been waiting for.

We have both become so evangelical about the benefits we have launched this website together where you can find out how to do it and sign up to the pledge to only keep your phone in one room too. Here’s the link again

Please try it. I promise it will bring huge benefits to your life and all those who love you.

Until next week,

Much love,

Dan

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In early Spring this year I headed down to the edges of Dartmoor near Ashburton to meet Emily and Charlie who run The Old Way. A series of experiences that teach you not just the skills required to live entirely on the land, but also what they have learned about the way hunter gatherers would have lived in their landscape.

We talk about what it really means to connect with nature. How relying on the land for food changes your sense of gratitude and gives you insights that change the way you see your life and the world itself.

As regular listeners to the show will know, I am searching for different ways of being and knowing to help me make sense of my own life. In this episode I discover so many it actually runs into two shows. Emily and Charlie were the healthiest looking people I have ever met and welcomed me into their home with real joy and hospitality. They had lots of the wild food they eat prepared to share with me including a cake. I explained awkwardly that I was gluten free and Emily replied, ‘oh don’t worry. It’s completely gluten free. It’s made from acorns’. Eating acorns was a first for me and it tasted delicious.

Look out for the rest of the conversation next week!

Much love,

Dan

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David Cleevely is a genuine legend. A multi exited entrepreneur, serially successful investor (I was once at an event where he was celebrated for getting a ‘one hundred X’ on an investment. As in he got one hundred times more money back than he put in), a connector and co founder of so many organisations in Cambridge it makes my head hurt but, most memorably the Cambridge Angels and the Cambridge Network. And he has also advised multiple Governments and also found time to be a restauranteur (he owns Bocca di Lupo and Gelupo) in London.

Not content with all that he has now written a book called Serendipity - It doesn’t happen by accident and this was what led me to ask for an interview. Now you might think ‘serendipity’ is a bit fluffy for an engineer and tech guru like David, but in his excellent book he explains how you can create the conditions to make it more likely to occur.

David was one of my investors at Unbound, which is how I met him and this is a fascinating and wide ranging conversation around the realities of entrepreneurship, what bees can tell us about how we organise organisations and we also touch on one of David’s major bugbears - the habit in the UK of over celebrating inventors rather than engineers and the failure of so many UK companies to achieve what Americans seem to manage so reliably. Scale.

I strongly recommend David’s book. You can grab a copy here and find more about David here.

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Much love,

Dan

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A few weeks ago I was checking in with Mike Warwick about the show and planning when my new episodes will appear when I began telling him about the project I was working on in Salisbury (where I am trying to deploy the behaviour of entrepreneurship without the motivation of self interest). Towards the end of my explanation I told him about a quote I had recently discovered from Harry Truman I was using as the guiding principle for the project; “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit.” At this point Mike assumed an expression I can only describe as dumbstruck. His eyes opened so wide I thought they might fall out of his head and he began holding onto the table and rocking in his chair as though he was having a seizure. “That quote!” He managed to blurt out. “That quote!”

In what has been a regular occurrence in the show so far, coincidence and serendipity had struck again. It turned out this quote was the guiding principle for Mike and Shuna Dickson too – a couple Mike W had just agreed an interview with for Where To Next? We agreed the universe had decided I was supposed to do the interview with him and so, a week later, we both arrived at a picture postcard house on the Portobello Road in West London before a genial man and his wife opened the door and ushered us in offering tea.

Mike and Shuna are known as the Kindness Couple and Mike’s new book How To Be A Better Human is a warming radiator of good vibes that explains how to bring more kindness into your life. They are the co-founders of Whizz Kidz, a charity that provides mobility equipment for over 26,000 disabled children (over £150 million has been raised so far) and the book is a memoir / kindness manual that takes you through their journey to realising being kind changes your life just as much as the person who benefits from your kindness. And this is no mere platitude. They have taken this principle further than you can imagine by acting behind the scenes for decades to connect philanthropists with what they call ‘Pied Pipers’ - individuals who are performing miracles in local communities to make their part of the world a better place. We could tell Mike wasn’t entirely comfortable about the microphone finally being focussed on him, but he was generous and, with a bit of coaxing from Shuna, opened up about how they came to learn that kindness is the ultimate superpower.

In the show so far Mike and I have been trying to figure out how, in Martin Shaw’s words, to be ‘real human beings’. In this interview you will hear from two people who have figured out how to do just that. It was incredibly inspiring and life affirming to be in their company.

For more information about Mike, Shuna and their work visit their website and please do check out the book.

Much love,

Dan

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This is a bit of a ramble about my conversation earlier this week at Blackwells in Oxford with the wonderful author and brilliant man, Charles Foster who generously gave me a tour of Exeter College where he is a fellow. I didn’t realise until I asked him but this makes him a ‘Don’.

I also interviewed Charles for Where To Next? and that episode will be coming up at some point over the summer along with my conversations with David Cleevely (the entrepreneur and author), Charlie and Emily from The Old Way Immersion, Jay Griffiths (author), Jude Currivan (author, archeologist, physicist and cosmologist) and many more to be recorded at this year’s Realisation Festival in June. Bruce Parry (author, filmmaker and explorer) has also said yes to an interview in the autumn and no doubt lots of other magical people will start to emerge as the flow of serendipity begins when the shows start escaping out into (and onto) the air.

Much love, Dan

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This was an unexpected joy. Mike Warwick, who has taken over presenting duties on Where To Next? while I record my second series, asked if I would like to co-interview Tom Blue Wolf, a storyteller, indigenous elder and earthkeeper. Appropriately enough, Tom’s book The Great Remembering is a beautiful reminder of the wisdom that humans seem to understand intuitively in all cultures where their ancestral link is unbroken. Tom lives in a place his ancestors have called home for thirty thousand years. This is the first of two episodes, and I will add the second next week.

You can listen to all of Mike’s episodes of the show in the archive section of the Do Lectures Radio app that you can download here.

Mike and I are enjoying what my wife affectionately refers to as a ‘bro-mance’ so expect more shows from us together in the future. We are beginning to think about doing some live with an audience as well. And we are planning a Where To Next? Workshop (currently titled How To Become a Real Human Being) that will take place in London in May. More details on that soon I hope.

Till next week!

Much love,

Dan

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It took four episodes and an exploration of 11,000 years of the continuous habitation of these islands since the end of the last ice-age, but in this recording John Grigsby and I finally reach 430 AD and the arrival of the English.

I love all the conversations I have had with John so far but there are so many wonderful things in this episode. We discuss how language may have created the separation from nature that has left the English so lost in their own land. Tolkien’s determination to create a mythology for these islands after the invasion of William the Conqueror led to the eradication of ours and the hints from Chaucer about what that lost mythology might have been.

If you are enjoying the show, please consider becoming a paid supporter. If you can’t afford that, please leave a review on the page for the show on Apple Podcasts instead. That will really help!

I’m making great progress so far with series two. I will share more updates on that soon.

Much love,

Dan

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