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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:

Plant Spirit Teachers: learning from the Elder Plants with Dr Simon Ruffell Dec 27, 2023

Show notes

For this time around the dark nights of the winter solstice - at least in the northern hemisphere - we've been exploring more of an inner landscape - being reflexive with Nathalie and Della, and before that, exploring the living myths of our land and how we can ground them in our current reality with Angharad Wynne. And this week, we're heading inward and outward, travelling to Peru with Dr Simon Ruffell, psychiatrist, ayahuasca researcher and student of Shipobo curanderismo.

Since 2016, Simon has been working closely with Indigenous communities in the Amazon basin, exploring the effects of ayahuasca and the role of ceremony and spirit in healing. As you'll hear in the conversation that follows, Simon manages to bridge between the world of western science and the older world of indigenous spirit with extraordinary integrity, humour and a grounded. commitment to the traditions he's learning that feels wholly authentic. He's experiencing the depths of ancient teaching and exploring the leading edge of modern science, delving into epigenetics, the microbiome and neuroplasticity. As we rest in the cusp of the dark nights, that time of reflection and renewal, I wanted to bring you something that felt as if it spoke deeply to the ethos of Accidental Gods, and I couldn't imagine anything better. So people of the podcast, please welcome, Dr Simon Ruffell.

Simon's personal website https://www.drsimonruffell.com/
Simon's Onaya website https://Onaya.io
Website for donations https://onaya.science
ICEERS https://www.iceers.org/

Simon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-ruffell-27bba0191/
Simon on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/simon.ruffell
Simon on Twitter https://twitter.com/sgdruffell
OnayaScience on Twitter https://twitter.com/Onaya_Science

Dreaming Awake shamanic training (with Manda and her apprentice) https://dreamingawake.co.uk

Meditation for the Winter solstice of 2023 Dec 20, 2023

Show notes

Here is our winter solstice meditation - please create a space for yourself where you won't be disturbed and where you can feel your way into the dark, regenerative space of the longest night. If you want to draw the curtains, switch off all the power and light a candle, this may help you to connect with the place of rest and renewal.

This version is the shortest and comes with music in the background.

If you'd prefer longer versions with or without music, you can find them below

and if you are in the southern hemisphere and would rather experience a meditation for the height of the sun and the bright time of the longest day, that’s at the foot of the links.

Winter Solstice meditation - 17 minutes Without Music https://media.transistor.fm/a20d6861/492c0725.mp3

Winter Solstice meditation - 22 minutes With Music https://media.transistor.fm/361287b3/6bad5f45.mp3

Winter Solstice Meditation: 22 minutes Without Music https://media.transistor.fm/e11c283a/d522798e.mp3

Winter Solstice Meditation: 27 minutes With Music https://media.transistor.fm/4c1945ed/1ab5c80a.mp3

Winter Solstice Meditation: 27 minutes Without Music https://media.transistor.fm/25cbf6e7/e9f16280.mp3

Solstice Dreaming: 3 podcasters gather round the Dark-Nights fire: Della Duncan, Nathalie Nahai and Manda Scott Dec 20, 2023

Show notes

This is the fourth year of our now-traditional Winter Solstice podcast get-together in which Nathalie Nahai, Della Duncan and I sit around our virtual dark-nights fire to reflect on the podcasting year just gone and explore what has changed for us since the last time the seeds of new beginnings were grounded in the heart of what has passed. This is becoming one of the highlights of my podcasting year - a chance to range far and wide and deep in the company of two women whose podcasts never fail to touch me deeply, and whose opinions on life, the universe and everything are always inspiring and enlightening.

Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a co-host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, a faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and the designer and co-facilitator of the Cultivating Regenerative Livelihood Course at Gaia Education.

Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She's author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resiliencewhich has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She's a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.

Before we head into the conversation, I want to invite you to 'Dreaming Your Year Awake' which takes place on Sunday the 7th of January. This is our chance really to delve deeply into the year just gone, and look ahead at how we want to shape our attention and intention for the year that's coming. After all the outward connection of the holiday season, this is a time to go inwards, to be kind to ourselves, to explore all that we can be and want to be. This, too, is part of our Accidental Gods tradition and we have people who've come year after year to give themselves the gift of time and space and the company of people who share the journey. So please do come along, we would love to share this time with you. I've put a link in the show notes and it's also on the website accidentalgods.life under the 'Gatherings' tab.

And now, People of the Podcast, please welcome Della Duncan, co-host of the Upstream podcast and Nathalie Nahai, host of the Nathalie Nahai podcast, and me.

Links

Summer Solstice Meditation - Essence https://chrt.fm/track/8F5463/media.transistor.fm/6f621f9a/7a43d63f.mp3
Summer Solstice Meditation with Birdsong With Birdsonghttps://chrt.fm/track/8F5463/media.transistor.fm/6f621f9a/7a43d63f.mp3
Poem: The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Theory: Two Loop Theory by Meg Wheatley and Deborah Frieze
Conversation: Marxism & Buddhism with Breht O'Shea on the Upstream Podcast
Conversation: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz on the Upstream Podcast
Conversation: Beyond the Clock with Jenny Odell on the Upstream Podcast
Organization: California Doughnut Economics Coalition
Riversimple: Future Guardian Governance https://www.riversimple.com/governance/
Planet Local Summit https://planet-local-summit.localfutures.org/about/
Podcast: The way out is in: Grief and Joy on a Planet in Crisis: Joanna Macy on the Best Time To Be Alive (Episode #12)(https://plumvillage.org/podcast/grief-and-joy-on-a-planet-in-crisis-joanna-macy-on-the-best-time-to-be-alive-episode-12)
Flourishing Futures Salon: https://www.ffsalons.com
Pre-order Any Human Power https://linktr.ee/anyhumanpower

Bright Fires, Dark Nights: Connecting deeply and building tribe as we head to the Solstice with Angharad Wynne Dec 13, 2023

Show notes

This week, as we head down towards what, in the northern hemisphere at least, is the long nights, the dark nights, I wanted to explore our heritage, the way we celebrate the solstice in this land, the land of Britain. I'm aware that quite a lot of you listening are from the southern hemisphere where you're heading up to your long sun and your fires burn differently. I recorded a summer solstice meditation at our long days in June and when we get to the meditation - after the podcast with Della Duncan and Nathalie Nahai, I'll put that up. In the meantime, I hope this conversation with Angharad Wynne helps open doors to reconnection wherever you are in the world. Angharad is a story-teller, a placemaker, a myth-creator holder of tribe and of the land. A native of Wales, she is deeply connected to the land there, and holds retreats and workshops designed to help people connect with the living spirits of the land. In the podcast you're about to hear, she describes her 3 year "Dadeni" training which helps to create the deep tribe-connections, community-connections we speak about in the podcast. If you're interested in this, applications are open until 21st January and the link is in the show notes.

I'd also like to remind you that if you have ideas of previous podcast guests - including Angharad, or anyone you've heard over the years - that you'd like us to invite for one of our Sunday evening 'Cutting Edge' events please click the link in the show notes, or go to the podcast section of the website and find the button there and let us know. this is your chance to talk to people, to ask the questions I didn't get around to asking, but you wish I had. And then afterwards, there'll be a chance to connect with other people in breakout rooms, to share your thoughts and ideas and ways of grounding what you've heard in everyday life.

So, it's the dark month, the time when we rest, and regather and recoup. The time when we light the fire and invite our tribe to join us. In the spirit of connection, people of the podcast, please welcome, Angharad Wynne, a bard of Wales.

Angharad's site https://www.angharadwynne.com/
Dadeni Programme https://www.dadeni.org/
Dreaming the Land https://www.dreamingtheland.com/about
Three Degrees of Influence - https://exploringyourmind.com/impact-the-three-degrees-of-influence-theory/

Braced for Impact: Cutting through the Greenwash and Lies with Rachel Donald of Planet: Critical podcast Dec 06, 2023

Show notes

Our guest this week is host of one of my must-listen podcasts - one I've been following since the spring, when Dr Simon Michaux mailed me and said, you need to listen to Rachel - and he was right.

Rachel Donald is host of Planet: Critical one of the world's top-rated podcasts on the poly-crisis and systems change. She interviews some really big players on the world stage with integrity and panache - her conversation with Alastair Campbell where she never lets him off the hook is an absolute exemplar of how to hold power to account and I think we're seeing the change in real time on his podcast with Rory Stewart.

When she's not podcasting, Rachel is a climate corruption journalist who investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. With world exclusives in major papers, Rachel investigates the gaslighting which props up our broken systems. She travels the world talking on - and off - the record to heads of government and oil industry executives, to the people who make our current system tick and who are often just as afraid as we are about the direction and speed of travel towards the edge of the extinction cliff.

Rachel has an almost unique insight into the nature of the systemic catastrophe we've built for ourselves and therefore of the ways we might address it. This was a bracing conversation. There are no easy answers and I had some of my rosier tinted lenses broken along the way. But in the end we came to the place we often get to with this podcast - that building communities of place, purpose and passion where we value each other, and our capacity to love bravely is what might - perhaps - bring us to the emergent edge of inter-becoming that Indy Johar spoke of a few weeks ago.

So brace yourselves, this is not an easy podcast, but we need to know where we're at so we can let go - again - ever more completely - of our assumptions about business as usual and do whatever we can, wherever we are, to be that emergent edge.

Planet: Critical podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/planet-critical/id1545009586
Planet: Critical website https://www.planetcritical.com/
Rachel on Twitter https://twitter.com/CrisisReports
Rachel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-donald/
Diem25 - Democracy in Europe Movement https://diem25.org/en/

Cars of the future (NOT EVs!) - Transforming transport and business with Hugo Spowers of Riversimple Movement Nov 29, 2023

Show notes

Our guest this week is Hugo Spowers, Company Architect of Riversimple, whose purpose is 'To pursue, systematically, the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport.'

Modernity demands that we have personal transport and the thought of giving it up is one of the many sticking points when people try to imagine a way through to a regenerative future: nobody wants to be limited to their immediate vicinity for work, leisure or social connection.

At the same time, we're becoming increasingly aware of the limitations of electric vehicles - Simon Michaux has explained in detail the logistical limitations to rare earth batteries, and the environmental catastrophe created by their mining

Which is what makes the Riversimple's hydrogen fuel cell car so transformative. They've gone right back to the basics of what makes a car in the first place and then how could it be made better - not just lighter and more efficient and fuelled by something that doesn't create greenhouse gases - but how could it be made so that the aims of the manufacturer and the customer are aligned - and both are aiming for a habitable planet.

On its own, this would be inspiring - but Riversimple doesn't stop there. The company is structured with the innovative - and I genuinely believe transformative - 'Future Guardian Governance model' - Hugo describes this in near the end of the podcast so I won't go into it here, but it seems to me that if every company in the world shifted to this model tomorrow, by the day after, we'd be on our way to healing many aspects of the meta-crisis.

So with this in mind, sit back and prepared for a fundamental shift in how we see our role in the world and how we could move towards the future we need, with Hugo Spowers of Riversimple.

Riversimple https://www.riversimple.com/
RIversimple Subscription model https://www.riversimple.com/subscription/
Riversimple Future Guardian governance model https://www.riversimple.com/governance/
Invest in Riversimple here https://www.riversimple.com/investment/
Paul Hawken 'The Ecology of Commerce' https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-ecology-of-commerce-revised-edition-a-declaration-of-sustainability-paul-hawken/883510?ean=9780061252792

Beyond the Brink is the Beginning with Richard Wain - Launching 27th November 2023 Nov 25, 2023

Show notes

Words have the power to change worlds. Powerful words, powerfully written can open doors to the future. Beautiful words, beautifully written, can give us hope . Richard Wain's new collection of poetry is doing all of these, with panache, and heart and soul.

We all know by now that we need total systemic change - and a central thesis of this podcast is that we'll get there best by creating narratives that build this - both highlighting the need for it and exploring possible paths through. What's becoming clear is that this is an emotional and spiritual journey long before it's a logistical one. So we need to find ways to reach beyond people's head-minds into their heart-minds and spirit-minds.
With this in mind, our guest this week is a poet, an entrepreneur and an artist. Richard Wain is founder and director of the digital marketing agency Vu Online, and of the Positive Nature Network, both committed to creating networks of businesses that can support each other in the move towards a regenerative, flourishing future. He is also a poet with a commitment to celebrating openness and vulnerability and he has now written a beautiful, generative book of poetry called Beyond the Brink is the Beginning.

I met Richard when he came to our 6 month Thrutopia Masterclass back in May of 2022 - and was struck by his capacity to grasp the big ideas. Then I began to read the poems that arose out of our classes and was really in awe of his capacity to take these big, complex ideas, find the emotional spark at their core and weave it into something that could open hearts and help others to understand what really matters. We've been planning this podcast for ages, but his book is coming out soon, so now is the time - though in the end, as always happens, we roamed far and wide beyond the book, to the positive nature network and how small businesses and their owners, who are often their founders and may well be the sole employee, can begin to be part of the solution. As ever, we approached our own edges, which, a bit like poetry, is what this kind of medium is all about.

Richard's book will launch on 27th November 2023 at The Barrel House in Totnes. Go along if you can!
Here's the event link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/beyond-the-brink-is-the-beginning-book-launch-tickets-74349440076

Buy the Book here: https://www.beyondthebrinkbook.com/

Positive Nature Network https://www.positivenaturenetwork.co.uk/
Vu Online https://vuonline.co.uk/
Richard on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@richardwainpoet

Building Lifeboats to the Emerging Futures with Sophia Parker of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

My guest this week is someone who is both right at the edge of the emerging futures and in a position to exert leverage at some of the highest points of the scale at which change happens.

Sophia Parker is the Emerging Futures Director at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a philanthropic organisation with a long history of progressive work, aiming for social and cultural equity. It is still committed to the research that sheds new light onto the nature and scale of poverty and injustice in the UK. It is still advocating for change and supporting the people who are making it happen - but newly it is supporting those who are at the leading edge of paradigm shift, exploring all the myriad ways we could break out of late stage capitalism and towards that more flourishing future our hearts know is possible.

And there are so many ways - one of the many things I took on board from this conversation was the number of people and organisations around the world who are working in and expanding the radical spaces we've touched on recently with Indy Johar and then Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy.

In her role as the Director of the Emerging Futures Programme, Sophia is working at the heart of the change, connecting ideas, exploring how best to support them in ways that will grow us forward and not just keep propping up the old system and the old narratives. She's delving deeply into ways to change the narrative, the levels at which that happens, where are the tipping points in our culture and how do we support and entire ecosystem of transformation. Near the top of the hour, we talked about hope and truly, I came away from this conversation a lot more hopeful than when we started.

Bio:
Sophia Parker was CEO of Little Village, the London-based charity she founded in 2016 that works to tackle child poverty. Now, she is the Emerging Futures Director at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a philanthropic organisation with a long history of progressive work, aiming for social equity. The Emerging Futures programme was set up to imagine and grow radical new approaches to tackling poverty, in collaboration with partners and people with lived experience of poverty.
Previously she has held senior leadership positions in think tanks and charities, as well as working in government locally and nationally, and was a Research Associate at Harvard's Kennedy School).

Share your ideas for future Gatherings: https://accidentalgods.life/ideas-for-gatherings/

Sophia's Blog Emerging Futures at JRF - two years in, the story so far | JRF
Joseph Rowntree Foundation https://www.jrf.org.uk/
JRF Emerging Futures https://www.jrf.org.uk/society/emerging-futures/
Little Village https://littlevillagehq.org/
Geoff Mulgan Another World is Possible https://www.geoffmulgan.com/another-world-is-possible
Meg Wheatley - Two Loop theory https://transformationallearningopportunities.com/two-loop-theory
EF/JRF Imagination Infrastructure Event https://www.imaginationinfrastructuring.com/imagination-infrastructure-initiatves/iievent-pw8gj
The Onion Collective: https://www.onioncollective.co.uk/
The Onion Collective: Liminal economics paper - https://medium.com/onioncollective/liminal-economics-swimming-at-the-edge-of-the-economy-f16fb476daa4
Centre for Public Impact https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/europe
Canopy https://www.canopy.si/
Center for Economic Democracy https://www.economicdemocracy.us/
York: New Constellations https://newconstellations.co/journey/york/
Opus in Sheffield https://weareopus.org/
CoLab Dudley https://dudleyhighstreet.uk/colab-dudley/
SuperFlux https://superflux.in/
Cassie Robinson Emerging Futures, Patterning the Emerging Horizon https://videos.theconference.se/cassie-robinson-emerging-futures
Lankelly Chase https://lankellychase.org.uk
ThirtyPercy https://thirtypercy.org/
Dimple Abichandani https://www.ncfp.org/people/dimple-abichandi/
Nkem Ndefo https://lumostransforms.com/team/nkem-ndefo/

The Animate Earth Responds: Initiation in a time of Crisis with Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy Nov 15, 2023

Show notes

How do we move ourselves – individually and collectively – from the broken Trauma Culture of our times, to the Initiation Culture that will allow us to step forward, healed and whole?

Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy have co-authored a book: Post-Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse.

Vandana Shiva says of it, “Ladha and Murphy walk us through the deep logics of neoliberalism, the foundations of globalisation and the ideology of corporate free trade … the authors dissect philanthrocapitalism. And they indicate the possibilities of reclaiming the true economies of the gift, of solidarity, of caring and sharing. For now, I invite you to please read on as if Life depends on it.”

On every level, this is a remarkable work, grounded in the understanding that we hold our realities in our bodies, that we have been born into a trauma culture, even as we yearn for the our birthright and our legacy as inheritors of initiation cultures. This is one of several genuinely transformative concepts that Lynn and Alnoor bring to the table: the intellectual capacity to explore the crisis of the moment – coupled with absolute grounded, experiential knowing that we are spiritual beings first, that we are mystical beings, and that if we can find the humility and the willingness to change, if we can bring ourselves to the web of life full open, asking for help, the Animate Earth responds.

Biographies:
Lynn Murphy is a strategic advisor for foundations and NGOs working in the geopolitical South. She was a senior fellow and program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where she focused on international education and global development. She resigned as a”‘conscientious objector” to neocolonial philanthropy. She holds an MA and PhD in international comparative education from Stanford University. She is also a certified Laban/Bartenieff movement analyst.

Alnoor Ladha is an activist, journalist, political strategist and community organiser. From 2012 to 2019 he was the co-founder and executive director of the global activist collective The Rules. He is currently the Council Chair for Culture Hack Labs. He holds an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.

Post Capitalist Philanthropy https://www.postcapitalistphilanthropy.org/
Transition Resource Circle: https://www.transitionresourcecircle.org/
Alnoor on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/alnoor-ladha-85a1882/
Alnoor on Twitter https://twitter.com/alnoorladha
Episode 56 'Four Arrows Flying' https://accidentalgods.life/four-arrows-flying/

Bringing Indigenous food back to the people: a conversation with Josiah Meldrum of Hodmedod's Nov 08, 2023

Show notes

This is an Accidental Gods bonus Episode recorded at the Marches Real Food and Farming Conference held at Linley Estate in Shropshire in September. Josiah Meldrum is co-founder and Director of Hodmedod's - which was set up specifically to enable local growers to farm regeneratively - and sell the produce they want to grow (and can grow in ways that help to regenerate the land), to people who want to buy their produce.

This sounds obvious - but in our hyper-industrialised world, where industrial farming meets the industrial food industry (ultra-processed foods, we're looking at you), with their overt and covert advertising - it's radical. Truly, spectacularly radicle.

This is localism in action. It's the deliberate enactment of the values and principles that need to expand far, far beyond the shores of Britain if we're to create the future we'd be proud to leave behind.

In the understanding that this was actually recorded in a barn, please enjoy the conversation - and if you're interested in getting in touch locally to help with next year's event, please contact the Shropshire Good Food Partnership. Similarly, if people in other areas interested in sharing on bioregional food and farming futures work then the organiser, Jenny Roquett, is keen to setup a learning space on this.

Hodmedod's https://hodmedods.co.uk/
Josiah on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/josiahmeldrum/
Hodmedod's on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hodmedods
Hodmedod's on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hodmedods

Marches Real Food and Farming Conference Marches Real Food and Farming Conference

Shropshire Good Food Partnership Shropshire Good Food Partnership

Stockholm Resilience Centre Report on Planetary Boundaries: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2023-09-13-all-planetary-boundaries-mapped-out-for-the-first-time-six-of-nine-crossed.html

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