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Accidental Gods – The Thrutopian Podcast

Another World IS still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose – and now it’s collapsing around us. So how do we co-create a Thrutopian future that we’d all be proud to leave as our legacy?

What stories can we weave of possibility? Of transformation? What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that really matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil – and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves, between ourselves and each other, between ourselves and the Web of Life – so that we can reclaim our birthright as self-conscious nodes in the web of life?

We can do this. Some of us already are. Every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being, courageous pathfinders who are exploring the emergent edge of inter-becoming.

As a species, we have all the answers, we just haven’t yet crafted all the new stories and woven them into a future that works. We have the choice now – we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.

Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda’s Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
Find Manda on BlueSky @mandascott.bsky.social
On LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/
On FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/MandaScottAuthor

Copyright: ©AccidentalGods 2020

Latest Episodes:

Wellbeing: It’s about wholeness, not happiness - with Dr Mark Fabian, author of Beyond Happy Apr 09, 2025

Show notes

We grow up thinking we want to be happy (or at least, not-sad). But happiness isn't enough. What we need is wellbeing, and as Dr Mark Fabian quotes in the dedication to his book, Beyond Happy, "Wellbeing is about wholeness, not happiness, and wholeness is so much more demanding than happiness.'

So what is wholeness, and what does it demand of us? As the old world crumbles and the new is struggling into being, what steps can each of us take to bring ourselves ever closer to a sense of being complete?

This week's guest, Dr Mark Fabian, is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Warwick, and an affiliate fellow at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. In, Beyond Happy, his first book for a general audience, he explores how evolution has wired us to keep happiness just out of reach, leaving us perpetually stuck on a happiness treadmill. Instead of striving to escape it, he argues that we should focus on making the treadmill a place we want to be. Finding this place of relative equanimity begins with listening to our emotions, discovering intrinsic motivation and pursuing our authentic values. Mark coaches us through this process of self-actualisation and then knits it together into a collective, cooperative way of being, building relationships that matter and that work.

Mark's book will be available in April - here: https://bedfordsquarepublishers.co.uk/book/beyond-happy/

Or order from your favourite local independent bookshop.

Please remember to put a review up on Amazon and GoodReads as well as anywhere else you feel is worthwhile. (this applies to every book you read and like - algorithms matter)

and

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

A Longing for Belonging: Shifting the Cultural Paradigm with Looby Macnamara and Leona Johnson Apr 02, 2025

Show notes

If we are in the midst of the Great Derangement (thank you Amitav Ghosh), what tools do we have to help us shape a system that is actually fit for purpose? Who are our elders and what can they teach us? How do we learn to listen to our heart's (and hearts') desire and shape the communities of place, passion and purpose that will allow us to emerge into a different culture?

Our two guests this week live and work at the heart of a global movement for cultural change. Looby Macnamara is the co-founder of the Cultural Emergence movement. She is an author, designer, gardener, song leader, mother, and artist. She has written four influential books including People & Permaculture and Cultural Emergence - and she has a new one coming out in September: Design Adventures: Discover a Creative Framework for Effective Change. She is also creator of the CEED card deck - Cultural Emergence Empowerment & Design. With her partner, Chris, Looby runs Applewood Permaculture Centre in Herefordshire, UK, where they facilitate courses and demonstrate permaculture of both land and people .

Leona Johnson, host of Connection Matters Podcast, is a transformational life coach, connection facilitator, and guide dedicated to personal growth, cultural emergence, and regenerative ways of being. She has spent decades exploring how we heal the crisis of disconnection, within ourselves, in our relationships, and in the world around us.

Through her work in nature connection, rites of passage, life coaching, and cultural emergence, she supports people to step into Connected Self-Leadership and what she calls ‘Everyday Spirituality’ practical, embodied ways of living with depth, purpose, and alignment.

Leona co-hosts the PEACE course with Looby and online with Jon Young, runs the Connection Matters Leadership Programme, Nature Quests around the world, and Children, Nature & Spirituality courses. At the heart of her work is a simple but powerful message: When we remember our interconnectedness, with ourselves, each other, and the other than human world, we step into our fullest potential and create the conditions for a thriving world.

These two transformational women are part of a growing movement to shift the entire foundation of our culture. What happens if we stop being the hamsters in the wheel of modernity and become the lively, inspiring, inspired - and connected - individuals we could be? In this episode we explore the nature of cultural emergence, the values that could underpin our new culture and the real, grounded, practical ways we can begin the journeys of shift in ourselves and our communities.

Cultural Emergence www.cultural-emrgence.com
Cultural Emergence Courses https://cultural-emergence.com/courses-overview/
PEACE Course (24th - 29th June 2025) https://applewoodcourses.com/uk_courses/peace-empowerment-and-cultural-emergence/
Applewood Courses https://applewoodcourses.com/courses/
Looby's Books https://applewoodcourses.com/sales/books/
Leona's website: https://www.leonajohnson.life/
Leona's podcast Connection Matters https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/connection-matters-podcast/id1515564368
Leona's FREE mini course on Elemental Connection https://pages.leonajohnson.life/elemental-connections-hello

and

If you want to share the journey with Accidental Gods, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Now Then! Building networks of citizen power with James Lock of Opus in Sheffield Mar 26, 2025

Show notes

We all know the current system of predatory capitalism is not fit for purpose. We don't (yet) all agree on how to fix it, but for sure, no problem is solved from the mindset that created it. So how do we begin to compost the debris of the failing system to grow something constructive, generative, connected communities that can act as a bridge from where we are towards that future we'd be proud to leave behind?

James Lock is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Opus Independents Ltd, a not-for-profit social enterprise, working in culture, politics and the arts. Opus works to encourage and support participation, systemic activism and creativity with project strands that include Now Then Magazine & App, Festival of Debate. Opus Distribution, the River Dôn Project and Wordlife.

I met James and other members of Opus in Sheffield last summer when we were all part of the Sheffield Social Enterprise Network summer conference and I was really blown away by their understanding of systemic thinking, by their absolute commitment to total systemic change and by the flexibility of their thinking. Here were people who were taking the concepts that we talk about and making them real, amongst real people in a real place. So we agreed that we'd talk first to James for an overview of what Opus is and does, how the thinking comes together and how we can each take ideas from here and scale them up and out in the places we live. Clearly each city, town, village, street is unique, but some principles are universal and I think we can all learn from the ways James thinks about things as he strives to create the bridges towards a new system.

Links

Opus https://www.weareopus.org/
Festival of Debate https://festivalofdebate.com/
Opus 2024 Report https://www.weareopus.org/opus-annual-report-2024
Opus on LInkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/opusindependents/
Fairness on the 83 https://fairnessonthe83.nowthenmagazine.com/
Citizen Network https://citizen-network.org/
Dark Matter Labs Cornerstone Indicators https://darkmatterlabs.org/initiatives/cornerstone-indicators
Plum Village podcast w Kate Raworth https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mindful-economics-in-conversation-with-kate-raworth/id1579910767?i=1000669364849

James is Co Founder & Director at Opus

Co Founder of Now Then Magazine

Co Founder of the UBI Lab Network

Co Founder of Festival of Debate

Co Founder of Foundations Earth

Co Founder of The River Don Project

Voluntary Roles:

Social Entrepreneur In Residence at Sheffield Hallam University

Advisory Board Member on SYMCA Local Nature Recovery Strategy

General Secretary of the Independent Media Association

South Yorkshire Social Enterprise Place Steering Group Member

Advisory Board Yorkshire & Humber Office for Data Analytics

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Be More Hawk! Being the courage to follow what's right with Rachel Musson of ThoughtBox Education Mar 19, 2025

Show notes

The old systems are no longer fit for purpose. What does an education system look like that's fit for the twenty-first century - where we put self care, people care, earth care at the heart of what we do?

This week's guest, Rachel Musson, has made it her life's work to fashion ways of learning for all ages that put this Triple Wellbeing principle into action. In everything she does, from leading ThoughtBox Eduction, to creating the Transforming Leadership Course, to writing her glorious, inspiring children's books, to her podcast, Two Inconvenient Women, with her fellow Thoughtboxer Holly Everett, she is being the change we need in the world. At this time where the old is breaking apart and the worst are full of passionate intensity, Rachel is a living example of the fact that the best of us can also be full of passionate intensity and that this can sow seeds of change that ripen into something close to miraculous transformation.

Rachel is a beacon of inspiration and optimism, of how we can connect to the web of life and build networks of mycelial change in our personal and collective lives.

ThoughtBox Education: https://thoughtboxeducation.com/
Transforming Leadership Course: https://thoughtboxeducation.com/leadership
The next online course after recording starts 4th June 2025
Order Story Books https://thoughtboxeducation.com/storykit
Rachel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-musson/
Rachel and Holly's podcast Two Inconvenient Women https://thoughtboxeducation.com/tiw-podcast
Episode 52 of Accidental Gods https://accidentalgods.life/living-to-learn/

Triple Wellbeing Practitioner Course in London on April 1st 2025 https://thoughtboxeducation.msnd24.com/tracking/lc/a318407c-86a0-4fd3-990e-3614925cc90a/392b9a45-f2f3-44aa-bf90-0afdc15fb732/dfaf176f-fc9c-4809-5698-0c04d852d104/

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Miraculous Carbon: Celebrating the Book of Life, Death and Potential with author Paul Hawken Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

How do we step past the magical thinking of the elites that says we can either use AI to 'Solve for Climate' - or just ignore the entire climate and ecological emergency completely?

This week's guest, Paul Hawken, has been at the forefront of intelligent responses to the entire meta-crisis for decades. He has been profiled or written in hundreds of articles in the biggest newspapers across the world and has written nine books, six of which have become bestsellers, including Blessed Unrest, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation and Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. He’s the founder of both Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration, which is the world’s largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis, describing by agency, what each level of society can do, starting from the individual. If you're in the UK and waiting for Paul's new book to come out in August, then I'd thoroughly recommend you explore Regeneration as a good place to start.

For those of you in the US, Paul's new book comes out on the 18th of March so you can get your pre-orders in now. This book is 'Carbon: The Book of Life' and truly, it's one of those books you'll read in a single sitting and then pass round to your family and friends so they can know the things you now know.

I learned so much in this book: how supernovas are formed, how some really brilliant people worked out the formation of carbon - and one of them was knocked off the Nobel Prize because he began to believe there must be some kind of organising principle behind the formation of life. I learned the horrors of how we are destroying the ecosphere, but I also learned some of the wonders of humanity - how the Mi'kmaq tribe in Canada name large pine trees by the sound of the wind moving through the branches one hour before sunset in October - and then can return decades later and will know if trees have been damaged by comparing their names to the sound they hear. How other tribes in Alaska can predict the weather two years in advance by listening to the patterns in the web of life around them… Truly, this is a beautiful book, beautifully written and it contains within it, the seeds of hope that we speak of often on this podcast - that human creativity and compassion endure and are our gifts to the world.

“Endlessly endlessly fascinating! Human beings, over the millennia, have come up with a thousand ways to carefully observe the world around us, and Paul Hawken has managed to collect and synthesize these observations—from the sweat lodge to the satellite—in a way that helps us see what now must be done. There’s information, and then there’s wisdom—and this book is a compendium of the latter.” BILL MCKIBBEN

Paul's Website https://paulhawken.com/
Paul's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hawken-0792b
The link to purchase the book is here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316928/carbon-by-paul-hawken/
Project Regeneration https://regeneration.org/

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Authentically human: celebrating the magic of life with Mark McCartney of the 'What is a Good Life' podcast Mar 05, 2025

Show notes

In these turbulent times, what values most strongly underpin our humanity and how can we nurture our relationships with all parts of ourselves, with ourselves and other people and with ourselves and the web of life?

This week's guest is another podcaster. Mark McCartney is host of the 'What is a Good Life' podcast, which is now into well over 100 episodes. Mark is a coach and writer based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. He started his 'What is a Good Life' project in 2021, it became a podcast soon and now, in it's fourth year, he's interviewed over 250 people with humanity and sensitivity - and a glorious, marrow-melting Irish voice - that brings out the best in a suite of truly remarkable people.

So this was my chance to turn the microphones the other way around and ask Mark what values underpin his life, that have brought him from Ireland to Peru and back to Germany? How has he navigated the turbulence that is common to our lives, how has he approached those moments that push us to ask the most important questions of who we are, and what we're here for. How has he found that sense of being, belonging, becoming that we all seek?

Authenticity and the capacity for honest self reflection feel really critical now and in this conversation, Mark models both of these with deep humility and humanity as he and I explore integrity, vulnerability, humour courage, the capacity to listen to our body minds and act on instinct when it's right to do so - and how to let go of lifelong terrors and learn to love the objects of our fears.

Nothing is certain any more - it never was, but we were able to seduce ourselves into thinking we could predict the paths our lives would take. Now that we know we can't do this, learning from people who are able and willing to walk in uncertainty seems to me one of the most valuable lessons we can embrace. So this is what we're doing. Enjoy.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-is-a-good-life/id1663668603
https://www.whatisagood.life/p/the-silent-conversations

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Seeing the Bigger Picture: psychedelics and sense-making with Alexander Beiner of Kainos Feb 26, 2025

Show notes

How do we shed the shackles of modernity and step into a new set of stories that could help us grow into the fullness of our potential?

Alexander Beiner is one of a small band of people in our culture who is shaping the cutting edge of possibility, crafting new ideas of who we are, at the deepest levels of our Self and out into the widest view of our place as conscious nodes in the web of life.
Ali is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the margins of culture into the mainstream, through writing, and by creating transformative experiences that invite us to find ways to evolve and thrive in the chaotic times we live in. He's the author of The Bigger Picture: How psychedelics can help us make sense of the world that details his part in a psychedelic clinical trial that took him deep into what it is to be human and he has recently launched Kainos, an alternative media platform and studio on both Substack and YouTube. He says of it, 'in an age of upheaval, we tell stories that help people make sense of the world and imagine new futures. Our films, articles and experiences combine cultural sensemaking with hope, imagination and impact.'

He's an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture and was also one of the founders of Rebel Wisdom, which ran from 2017-2022 and explored the cutting-edge of systems change and cultural sensemaking.

This is where we need to be: the edge place where spirituality meets psychology and mythology, where culture meets politics meets our desperate yearning to grow up and become the good enough ancestors we know we can be. We need path-finders, people who have the courage to stretch out beyond the edges of our being and Alexander is so clearly one of these - his explorations of what makes us human in the psychedelic realm merge with his documentary making and Kainos takes up where Rebel Wisdom left off, delving deeply into the nature of the moment and how we might become more than we are. This was a genuinely inspiring conversation in a series that I hope is helping you to make sense of these times, to accept that the old system is gone and that something truly generative could arise - if we all take part in its making.

Alexander Beiner website https://www.alexanderbeiner.com/
Kainos on Substack https://beiner.substack.com/
Alexander on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-beiner-b9aa8b19/
Kainos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@StudioKainos

Books mentioned
Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Some
The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker

Becoming Spiritual Warriors: exploring a politics of radical Compassion with Jamie Bristow Feb 19, 2025

Show notes

In a world of turmoil where the only certainty is uncertainty, what happens if we who yearn for a future we'd be proud to leave behind began really to speak the quiet part out loud? What happens if we acknowledge the meaning crisis of our culture and state clearly that we need a world based on Love: on the raw, wild, wonder of life itself? And what happens if we shape our politics around this, instead of defensive attempts to make the death cult of predatory capitalism feel less... deathly?

This week's guest, Jamie Bristow is someone who lives in the worlds where policies are made and, for the past sixteen years, he has been consciously committed to being a Spiritual Warrior with all this implies.

Like Jon Alexander, Jamie started off life as an advertising executive before realising he needed to align his inner and outer worlds. Now, he's a writer and policy advisor working at the intersection of inner and outer transformation and sustainability. For eight years, he was clerk to the UK's All Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness and director of the associated policy institute, the Mindfulness Initiative, (where he helped to introduce mindfulness to a number of other parliaments). During this time he worked with legislators around the world to make mindfulness and compassion training serious matters of public policy and catalysts for a healthier political process. In 2023, he joined the Inner Development Goals team to lead on public narrative and policy development, emphasising the inner skills and qualities needed for a sustainable transition. His work includes influential reports such as Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out and The System Within: Addressing the inner dimension of sustainability and systems transformation.He is an associate of Life Itself, The Climate Majority Project, Mind & Life Institute and Bangor University.

Jamie's website https://www.jamiebristow.com/
Jamie's substack https://jamiebristow.substack.com/
Jamie on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiebristow/
Mindfulness Initiative Mindfulness initiative
UN IDG Inner Development Goals
Life Guild lifeguild.earth
Transformative Skills Guide Transformative Skills Guide: Expanding the Definition of Climate Literacy (co-authored with US gov climate literacy experts)
Jamie's Wiki psycho-social dimensions of societal resilience
Desmog https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/06/between-optimism-and-despair-the-messy-middle-paths-through-climate-breakdown/
Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/reconnection
The System Within: addressing the inner dimensions of sustainability and systems transformation https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-bristow-bell/
The Mindfulness Initiative Report on the result of 10 years of mindfulness in Westminster https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/mindfulness-in-westminster-reflections-from-uk-politicians
Soulmaking Dharma with Catherine McGee https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/courses/immersive-online-programs/soulmaking-dharma/
SoulMaking Dharma teachings https://hermesamara.org/teachings/soulmaking-dharma

SoulMaking Dharma Course https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/classes/2025-introduction-to-a-soulmaking-dharma/

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Kin-centric Rewilding 2 - Bonus - continuation of the conversation with Daniel Firth Griffith Feb 12, 2025

Show notes

Daniel remains one of the few people I know who is originally of the Trauma Culture but is living absolutely integral to his land - and we couldn't keep our conversation confined to 60 minutes. So we broke at an appropriate point and came back. This is the second part - please do listen to the first if you've only just found us - we literally paused the recording, took a breath and continued…

As ever, if you're interested in Daniel's work visit his website. And if you have the means, do buy his books, they are genuinely beautiful. Stagtine, Wild Like Flowers and Dark Country are all out now and Plain of Pillars will be released in May of 2025.

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

Kin-centric Rewilding - restoring relationship to the land and ourselves with Daniel Firth Griffith, author of StagTine Feb 12, 2025

Show notes

By now we know that we need to connect to the More than Human world. We know we need to grow into adulthood and elder hood. We know we need to move from a Trauma Culture to an Initiation Culture. But knowing these things is not the same as living them as a reality. To get here, we need waymakers, people of huge heart and raw courage to walk away from the limited, goal-based directions of our culture and step into the ways of being where we meet in open-hearted, full-hearted, strong-hearted relationship with the land and all that lives there.

Daniel Firth Griffith is one of these people. With his wife, Morgan, and their three children, Daniel lives on 400 acres on the eastern side of the Appalachian mountains where he is steadily building relationship with the land. He lives amongst cattle, sheep, goats and horses - the latter used for logging, on land that was scheduled to be clear-cut when Daniel and Morgan first moved there. With a growing understanding that even the forms of agriculture we term 'regenerative' are still part of what I would call the Trauma Culture, Daniel and Morgan have been on a steady journey of transition through to something that feels to me entirely different. This is what we need to be. It's not clear cut. There isn't a hard and fast recipe because every bit of land is different and each of us is different and the routes to connection are unique... up to a point. But there are baselines we can learn: be human. Find what that means for you when 'human' is not simply being a wheel in an extractive system.

We had a really long conversation and we stopped at about 90 minutes in and restarted so you can listen to it in two parts. We go down rabbit holes. We tell stories, or at least, Daniel does, big, deep, tear-flowing, heart-searing stories that made both of us weep...because stories are how we learn. This conversation, or these conversations, felt like sitting at the feet of an indigenous elder and the fact that this can happen in 2025, talking to someone of white ancestry who lives on lands stolen by colonialists... this is what gives me hope. We can't undo our past, but we can grow into what the future needs of us, and Daniel, Morgan and those who visit them are doing this.

Daniel's an astonishing author as well as everything else, so please do visit his website and buy his books: as with everything else he does, they are filled with layers upon layers of meaning.

Daniel's website https://danielfirthgriffith.com/

If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

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