How does our increasing destruction of the earth's biosphere also impact our health? What diseases are we seeing in almost pandemic proportions and how much younger are the people in whom we're seeing them? Above all, what can we do to step away from the system that's extracting everything from us - our health, our futures and our potential to be good ancestors?

Our guest this week is Jenny Goodman who is a doctor - and also an author. Her first book, Staying Alive in Toxic TimesL A seasonal guide to lifelong health is a fascinating look at how we can stay well, but it's her second that we're going to explore today, partly because at the time of recording, it's just about to be launched. 'Getting Healthy in Toxic Times: an ecological doctor's prescription for healing your body and the planet' is a mind-bending read. I really did think I knew this stuff, but there are large parts of this book that have blown all my fuses, not just for the health impacts - particularly on children and young people (did you know we're seeing Alzheimer's now in teenagers?) but for the cold-blooded way it's been allowed to happen. Every part of this book is essential reading - not just because it shows us how we're being poisoned by our food, our water, the air that we breath, the things around us that we can't even see - but more importantly because it details how we can get healthy again and help restore the integrity of our soils, our water, our air…the whole world we live in.

As you'll hear, Dr Jenny Goodman is a medical doctor, lecturer and broadcaster. She qualified in Ecological Medicine with British Society for Ecological Medicine and practiced this for over two decades, giving rise to many of the case studies in her books. Jenny has appeared with Terry Pratchett in ITV’s documentary What’s in Your Mouth? and has been featured on the Victoria Derbyshire show, BBC One’s Inside Out and numerous other TV and radio shows.

00:00 Introduction to Microplastics in Clothing
01:10 Welcome to the Accidental Gods Podcast
01:44 The Journey of Dr. Jenny Goodman
03:12 From Conventional Medicine to Ecological Medicine
10:07 The Impact of Industrialised Agriculture
13:17 The Dangers of Glyphosate and Pesticides
23:10 The Epidemic of Chronic Diseases
26:55 The Importance of Organic and Regenerative Farming
35:57 Filtering Water and Avoiding Toxins
36:42 The Hidden Dangers in Our Water
46:01 The Problem with Synthetic Clothing
52:23 The Impact of Fossil Fuels on Air Quality
54:21 Heavy Metals and Air Pollution
55:19 Political and Personal Actions Against Air Pollution
57:01 The Clash of Freedoms: Clean Air vs. Car Ownership
57:25 The Need for Efficient Public Transport
59:27 AI and the Future of Public Transport
01:02:49 Electric Vehicles and Ethical Concerns
01:06:43 Nuclear Power: Risks and Realities
01:07:39 Protecting Yourself from Nuclear Radiation
01:19:33 Electromagnetic Radiation: Hidden Dangers
01:31:08 Making Your Home a Safe Haven
01:40:29 Final Thoughts and Resources

Pre-Order Jenny's book here:

Waterstones

Bookshop.org

Amazon

Jenny's website
Jenny on Facebook
Jenny on LinkedIn
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny on Instagram

The British Society for Ecological Medicine

If the current electoral/governance system is not fit for purpose (and who could possibly imagine it was?) how can we lay the foundations for new ways of organising democracy, new ways of voting, new ideas of what governance is for and how it could work in the twenty-first century. How, in short, do we create space for future generations to be able to decide their own futures in ways that are not constrained by material or political strictures they've inherited from us?

In this fourth election special, I have a profound conversation with Glen Weyl - economist, philosopher, film producer and visionary thought-leader for our time. We explore how we can break away from traditional governance structures and how spiritually acknowledging the complexity within each individual can pave the way for more inclusive, fluid, and efficient democratic systems.

Glen is co-author with Audrey Tang of the ground-breaking book Plurality, which emerged partly Audrey's experiences in re-shaping the democracy in Taiwan towards connection, collaboration and - above all - peaceful resolutions of the many internal contradictions of that state.

He introduces the concept of quadratic voting (of which he is the creator) as a significant innovation in this field. The conversation expands to the potential of technology in aiding governance reforms, and Glen shares insights from his work with the Plurality Institute and Radical Exchange. We also touch on the success of Taiwan’s innovative governance, influenced by Audrey Tang.

Join us as we discuss creating experimental, adaptable governance systems aimed at ensuring peace and human flourishing in an ever-complex world.

Glen currently works at Microsoft where he is the founder and research lead of the Microsoft Research Special Project the Plural Technology Collaboratory, though he was previously GeoPolitical advisor to the CTO. He also founded and serves on the board of the RadicalxChange Foundation the leading thing tank in the web 3 space, and is founder and chair of the Plurality Institute which coordinates an academic research network developing technology for cooperation across different disciplines.

He's also senior advisor to the Getting-Plurality Research Network at the Harvard Edmond and Lily Saffra Centre for Ethics. He previously lead Web 3 technical strategy at Microsoft's Office of the CTO and taught economics at the Universities of Chicago, Yale, Princeton and Harvard.

00:00 Introduction to Polarisation and Complexity
01:04 Welcome to the Accidental Gods Podcast
01:31 The State of Global Democracy
02:15 Quadratic Voting and Governance
02:51 Defining Governance in the 21st Century
03:13 The Role of Peace in Governance
04:36 Harnessing Human Diversity for Progress
08:42 Challenges to Current Democratic Systems
11:11 Expanding the Polity and Legal Innovations
11:58 Lessons from Historical Societies
13:42 Imagining Future Governance Systems
19:42 Locality and Pluri-locality in Governance
26:39 Metaphors and Toolkits for Governance
27:33 Concrete Voting Designs
28:55 Dynamic Voting Systems
30:48 Quadratic Voting Explained
35:06 Liquid Democracy and Emotional Literacy
37:24 Taiwan's Unique Political Landscape
41:27 Audrey Tang's Impact and Philosophy
47:06 Glenn's Diverse Background and Vision
54:43 Concluding Thoughts and Future Directions

Glen's website
The Plurality Institute
RadicalxChange Foundation
Quadratic voting explained

PLURALITY - the book

Audrey Tang on Twitter
Trailer for film biopic about Audrey Tang: The Good Enough Ancestor
Project Liberty

Quadratic Voting - with Ruth Catlow in Episode #193

The question of how we reshape democracy, walking the fine line between stagnation and populist rage - is the defining problem of our time - with a coherent strategy, we can shape anything. In its absence, we’re going to end up spinning in pointless circles, arguing about trivia while the world burns.

We set this podcast up months ago, thinking we’d talk about the example Scotland sets for the UK and the rest of the world as a way *maybe) to shape democracy. And then Nicola Sturgeon stepped down and Scotland fell into the kind of turmoil I thought only impacted England. And then the turmoil in England sparked a general election. So now we’re talking about how we can use this moment to affect the digital, distributed democracy that we need with two of the smartest people in our eco-system - people who give their entire lives to thinking about this question: Indra Adnan and Pat Kane of The Alternative.

This week's guests are Indra Adnan and Pat Kane. Indra is the author of The Politics of Waking up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Age and Pat is a musician, writer, curator, consultant, activist and futurist and his substack is absolutely essential reading for anyone who wants to keep up to date with the ideas in our eco-system. The reason we're here, they're, Co-Initiators of The Alternative, which is a socio-political platform hosting #PlanetA: new ground to stand on for a flourishing future - and a daily blog and a forum, or perhaps a melting pot - for new ideas and new ways being. Acknowledging that the systems we are embedded in - media, economic, political - take our power away. The Alternative and Planet A ask us how we achieve the world we know deep down is possible.
You have to experience The Alternative really to understand what it is to explore ideas at the leading edge of our emergent inter-becoming, to think through the lens of cosmo-localism, to hold new truths of who and how we are and to frame radical new political options in this age of cardboard cut-out politicians spouting ever more stale lines that were out of date in the 80s and are certainly not fit for purpose in the third decade of the twenty first century.
So this conversation takes us deep into this territory. Recorded on the day after the EU elections, as France heads to the polls and the UK's general election descends ever further into infantile name-calling and political posturing that no longer even pretends to be the adults in the room, it was - and is - really refreshing to explore ideas of what's possible with people whose entire lives revolve around the concepts of emergent change.

The Alternative
Indra's book
Indra in episode #124
Pat's music
Pat on Substack and at The National
Pat's Blog - The Play Ethic www.theplayethic.com
Ecological Civilisation

Manda's novel Any Human Power