Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

This is the second episode of the series so far where it is just me and no guest. I hope this will not come across as self indulgent, but in this episode I wanted to pull together some of the things we have learned from my guests in the series so far, and also to tee-up, as it were, next week’s episode with Iain McGilchrist.

Iain is one of my intellectual heroes and rather than ask him to repeat what he has said about his ideas on so many other programmes, I wanted to dive straight into a conversation with him assuming that the audience listening are already familiar with his work. To that end I have spent some of this week’s episode explaining as best I can his ideas about the way the two hemisphere’s of the brain interpret reality. And his contention that our society has become so left-brain oriented in it’s thoughts and actions that we, in the West, are losing touch with what it means to be human.

Obviously it’s better to go to the source of these ideas rather than listen to me doing my best to explain them, so if you prefer you can head over to Iain’s comprehensive website and hear from the man himself.

This is the eleventh episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on November 17th 2025. As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating!

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

In this, the second episode of my conversation with the astro-archeologist Dr. John Grigsby, we sit down and chat in more detail about the subjects we share an interest in. The movement of our ancestors from equatorial Africa across the world, the ‘lunarchy’ they lived in (time being based on a monthly rather than annual cycle) which tantalisingly perhaps explains why they existed in matrilineal groups where women were said to be ‘married to the moon’, how an Indo-European proto-mythology might have spread and can be seen surfacing thousands of years later with astonishing similarities in cultures as far apart as Britain and Egypt. Why many if not most of the the neolithic monuments we see across the landscape in Britain are not in fact oriented towards the sun but to celestial movements in the heavens that are no longer visible to us today because of the phenomenon of ‘precession’ (so the the stars appear to move above and below the horizon over thousands of years). The Celtic ‘otherworld’, how henges are built with ditches around them, not to keep who and what was inside the henge safe, but to protect the world outside from what was within because of their numinous connection to rebirth and death. Synchronicities, coincidences and the field of meaning that is entangled with the physical world our ancient ancestors seemed to understand far better than we do.

It’s a wonderful romp through so many subjects and I very much hope you enjoy it.

This is the tenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on November 3rd 2025. As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating!

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

Those who have been following my journey in this series so far will know that while researching a new book a few years ago, I set myself the challenge of finding out when we, as a species, began to separate ourselves from nature.

It seems reasonably well accepted that for the vast majority of our existence as a species, homo sapiens were nomadic, lived in matrilineal clans and had no hierarchies or power over others of any kind. Today we obviously live in sedentary, patriarchal and hierarchical societies where power over others is accepted as necessary by most people. I wanted to know what caused us to shift from one way of life to the other and how our disconnection from nature might have contributed to this change.

Pretty quickly I came across one of John’s lectures that he gave to the Radical Anthropology Group at UCL. The lecture took the audience through John’s PhD, about how many neolithic monuments that archeologists have assumed were built in alignment with the movement of the sun were actually built in alignment with the movement of stars in the ancient skies instead. John is also an expert in mythology and his work argues that these monuments could also be linked to Proto-Indo- European myth where women were not only seen as equals with men, but considered closer to nature because of menstruation. This link with the phases of the moon perhaps accounting for the matrilineal nature of our hunter gatherer ancestors ways of life. It’s mesmerising stuff that completely frazzled my mind (in a good way) and after interviewing Sharon Blackie, John seemed to me to be the natural person to go and visit next.

I actually recorded two episodes with John. In this first one we went for a walk to a henge near where he grew up and chatted around the subject of where we came from and what an indigenous knowledge in Britain might mean. In the episode I will share next week we sat down to do a more traditional style interview. I have learned so much from John, and it’s a real pleasure to share his ideas with you all through these two episodes.

This is the ninth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 27th 2025.

As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

At the end of the Summer 2025, I headed North to the Cumbria / North Yorkshire borders to meet Dr Sharon Blackie. I had read her wonderful book If Women Rose Rooted while on holiday and then devoured much of her substack when I got home.

As you will know if you have been joining me on this series in search of meaning, one of the recurrent themes I keep encountering is the denial of the feminine. It feels to me that we have lost sense of who we are and where we came from and in my reading about our ancient ancestors, I discovered that most of our ancient ancestors lived in matrilineal, egalitarian, nomadic groups for hundreds of thousands of years. We, of course, have lived in patriarchal, hierarchical sedentary societies as far back as the written record goes (roughy 5,000 years ago). I’m fascinated to know how and why things changed.

Sharon’s work has much to teach us about the role of women in Celtic culture, which is as close to an indigenous culture as those of us living in Britain can get. She has written many books that celebrate the feminine, particularly celebrating the wisdom and humour of older women, and her work is scholarly, wondrous and life affirming.

Speaking to Sharon was a complete thrill. It turned out that we had a few interesting things in common. A shared flying phobia (Sharon dealt with hers by learning to fly, which is something I am attempting when funds allow) and we both ran publishing businesses.

This is the eighth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 20th 2025.

As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is a bit different as there is no guest. I recorded it when I was camping in the Summer and the Observer newspaper ran an article - effectively the obituary - of Unbound, the business I co-founded and ran between 2011 and 2022.

The idea of sharing this episode makes me uncomfortable for lots of reasons, but I ended up going ahead because the producers at Do Radio said it was the best one I have done yet. I’m not sure I agree with them (!) but I do think that this is the kind of moment most entrepreneurs fear the most and one that they very rarely share.

For the record, I was not involved in the running of the business in the three years prior to its collapse and so I have nothing to share on how or why it failed, but the sad truth is that many people lost out when it did. People who earned money were not paid what they were owed, and this is the cardinal sin for any business and especially a publisher. In the episode I make it clear that focussing on what I was going through was and is not intended to trivialise the horrible circumstances many authors and suppliers found themselves in after the business collapsed. But the fact I experienced the business failing so publicly while recording a series about focussing on a life of meaning rather than success meant I felt I could not simply ignore it.

This is the seventh episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 13th 2025.

Next week things return to normal and I will share my conversation with the wonderful author and mythologist Dr Sharon Blackie who I visited in Cumbria.

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s episode is the final one of three recorded at the Realisation Festival that takes place in, and in the grounds of, St Giles House (pictured). I sat down with Pippa, whose voice will be familiar to anyone who listens to comedy on BBC Radio 4, to discuss her thoughts on the grief that can descend after achieving your ambitions. She also talks about her experiences co-founding the Sunday Assembly - an attempt to celebrate spirituality without religion. After that I spoke to Nick, who became the Earl of Shaftesbury after two desperate family tragedies. He explains how it feels to have your life plan jettisoned by circumstance and the background to the Realisation Festival that has its roots in his long and illustrious ancestry.

The episode ends with a story from me about a bug hunt I caught the end of at the festival led by Benedict Pollard, that taught me how the way we attend to the world determines what we think of as reality.

This is the sixth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 6th 2025.

As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

This is the fifth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 29th 2025.

In this episode I speak with two of the Directors of the Realisation Festival. Ed Haddon, who works as a coach with entrepreneurs, and Jonathan Rowson who writes The Joyous Struggle here on Substack and runs Perspectiva.

Ed, who I had not heard of before we met, and I had a fascinating conversation about sitting with discomfort after a big life change and how shallow the achievement of goals can feel. After that I went in search of a grotto on the estate and then I sat down beneath a majestic oak tree to chat with Jonathan, whose work I have long admired. I discovered Jonathan after seeing him interview Iain McGilchrist. Jonathan’s organisation Perspectiva are also the publishers of Iain’s two volume masterpiece The Matter With Things. Those who have read my book The Idle Traveller will know how important Iain’s work has been to my life, but more on that in a later episode.

I shared with Jonathan the stage of life I am exploring, and how I was trying to make sense of the encounter I had with a stag in Raasay. He offered some thoughts on his own journey towards the sacred, how unsettling it can be to feel you are leaving rationality behind and why other ways of consciousness are often more appropriate than a purely materialist point of view. Jonathan also shared an idea he was exploring from Freya Matthews called Ontopoetics, the idea that there is a field of meaning entangled with the physical world that accounts for serendipity, synchronicities and coincidences.

This episode is a real cracker and has played a huge part in the evolution of my own thinking. I hope you enjoy it, and please share the episode with anyone you think will find it illuminating.

Much love,

Dan

Where to Next? Episode 5 - Ed Haddon and Jonathan Rowson.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

This is the fourth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 22nd 2025.

I recorded this episode (and the next two in the series) at the Realisation Festival in Dorset. This is an incredible event that takes place over three days at St Giles House, the home of the Earl of Shaftesbury. I was thrilled first to meet Roc, who lives off-grid on the island of Gometra off the coast of Mull, and then Sarah Wilson, the former editor of Cosmoplitan and presenter of Masterchef in Australia who writes the extraordinarily successful Substack This is Precious.

I explained to both the journey I am on in search of meaning, rather than success, and they shared insights about their own extraordinary paths through life.

The episode ends with me describing the impact the first event had on my thinking, and how an insight from it has changed the way I inhabit my own consciousness forever. It’s that kind of event.

Much love, and please spread the word about the series to anyone you think might be interested. This week I passed the milestone of 500 downloads, which is humbling and exciting!

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

This is the third episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on September 15th 2025.

James is a wonderful and wise man and his book The Middle Passage - From Misery to Meaning in Midlife was a life raft for me when I began my own journey to prioritise meaning in life rather than success. There is so much wisdom in this conversation with James. He has also written an amazing book on relationships called The Eden Project and a book about the wounding of men called Under Saturn’s Shadow, which I would also recommend.

Please share this episode with anyone you know who is entering midlife or who is going through a period of profound change.

Much love,

Dan

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

My weekly video about the latest episode of my DO Radio programme. James Hollis on Carl Jung’s theory of two adulthoods. I also reveal two new guests I will be going to visit in the next month or so.

This weekly video is usually for paid supporters only, but I’m sharing it to everyone today in an attempt to entice more people to upgrade into a paid subscription because the series it hotting up (exclusive future guest reveal at the end of this video) … and I need to find a way to get it to start paying for itself!

Much love,

Dan

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe