'Are we [in our WEIRD culture] intelligent enough to be more generous than we have ever been throughout history?' So writes Jenny Grettve, in her new book, 'Mothering Economy'. Jenny is an author, philospher, systems thinker and designer who joined us in Episode #228, talking about the principles and practice of her generative, systems-led design agency, 'When!When!'

At the time, she said she was writing a new book - and now, ‘Mothering Economy’ is coming out at the end of this month (August), so we’re back in a wide, deep, provocative, generative conversation about what it might takes for us to have the courage to care deeply for ourselves, each other and the more than human world. She writes, ‘The profound mothering among humans that I envision is not a burdensome technological revolution, but rather a simple way of being together. We have a vast number of examples: what we lack is the intention and commitment to raise awareness…’

And so let's do all we can to raise awareness by exploring the ideas deep in Jenny’s book and searching our own beings for ways to show up with stronger, clearer, more open hearts.

In the meantime, please enjoy this wide, deep, thoughtful, caring, connecting conversation with Jenny Grettve, author of Mothering Economy.

Jenny's book https://andthekiosk.com/products/mothering-economy
Jenny's Website https://www.jennygrettve.com/
When!When! https://www.whenwhen.agency/
I, Pencil http://files.libertyfund.org/files/112/Read_0202_EBk_v6.0.pdf

We live in a burning world. As we record, there are record wildfires across the Americas, record temperatures around the world, falling oxygen levels in the oceans and however much supposedly renewable energy we produce, Jevons' Paradox means we keep on burning fossil fuels. This is not a great combination, but even the so called renewables have more under the hood than appears on the surface. Burning wood - or grasses - for 'Green' Energy is both a massive accounting scam and one of the ways that the predatory industrial complex sucks in eye-watering quantities of public money - while selling us the lie that this is somehow net zero. It isn't, but sometimes we need someone who really knows what they're talking about to spell out the details for us and this week, our guest is one of those people.

Dr. Mary Booth is the founder and director of the Partnership for Policy Integrity, a Massachusetts-based think tank that uses science, communications, and strategic advocacy to protect forests and our climate future. Mary worked as Senior Scientist in the Environmental Working Group in the US, working on water quality. Now, she directs the PFPI’s science and advocacy work on greenhouse gas, air pollutant, and forest impacts of biomass energy and has provided science and policy support to hundreds of activists, researchers, and policy makers across the US and EU - and now that the UK is no longer in the EU (sigh) in the UK as well.

I heard Mary on the Economics for Rebels podcast back in February and was blown away by her grasp of the essential science, and also by the sheer mendacity of the companies involved: the lies they tell, the false accounting they use and the extent to which they are destroying the biosphere to give us - or at least, those who set our policies and spend public money - an illusion of somehow being more 'green', more sustainable, more ethical.

I wanted to give listeners to Accidental Gods the chance to hear Mary in action, so here we are: people of the podcast, please welcome Dr Mary Booth of the Partnership for Policy Integrity.

Partnership for Policy Integrity https://www.pfpi.net/
PFPI international work https://www.pfpi.net/international-work/
Guardian article by Greta Thunberg https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2022/sep/05/burning-forests-energy-renewable-eu-wood-climate
Land Climate Blog https://www.landclimate.org/the-problem-of-bioenergy-in-the-eu/
Forest Defenders Alliance (EU) https://forestdefenders.eu/
Forest Litigation Collaborative https://forestlitigation.org/
BBC Panorama: Green Energy Scandal Exposed https://vimeo.com/795555785/c6e9420ff6

We know that being kind to our gut biome is crucial to our health, but what about the trillion happy helpers (or not) on our skin, in our lungs, our ears, our mouths… the things we slaughter daily with the ‘cleaning products’ we splash around our homes that not only impact our biomes directly, but leach out into our waterways, soil and the air that we breathe so we end up adding to ecosphere annihilation.

Human health and the health of our planet are intimately interwoven and while we're all getting to grips with the need to keep our gut biomes (and those of the animals who share our lives) healthy, we're woefully behind on the need to look after the rest of our biome: skin, lungs, teeth, eyes, ears..

I listened to Joe Flanagan months ago on Viki French’s brilliant ‘PupTalk’ podcast and knew we needed to talk here, too.

Joe is a font of information and this was a unique opportunity to explore ideas with someone right at the cutting edge of transformation. We talked everything from canine aural surgery to human behaviour and the corruption endemic in our health systems. Above all, we got to grips with the fact that if each of us changes our behaviour – if we actively choose to stop poisoning the planet that is our home – and stop poisoning ourselves and those we care most about at the same time – we can make radical improvements in the way our system works.

Joe is the Owner of Ingenious Pet Probiotics https://ingenious-probiotics.com/
Joe on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-flanagan/

Ingenious Probiotic products are not a medicine or medical device - if in any doubt, always consult your vet.

Any Human Power Book Club Sunday 15th September 6-8pm UK time (BST) https://accidentalgods.life/any-human-power-discussion/
Pup Talk Podcast with Vicky French https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pup-talk-the-podcast/id1525563393

The Western world is in a crisis of democracy - but we learn a lot of our principles from the ways we interact online and the internet is essentially a feudal space that gives absolute power to a few and robs the many of agency. Nathan Schneidersuggests that if we were able to shape a more liquid democracy online, our experience of generative interactions would spill over into the outer world. Has to be worth a try, right? So how do we do it?

As we spend increasing amounts of our time, energy and emotional bandwidth online, so we are increasingly exposed to what passes for democracy online. And then we internalise the inherent autocracy and are at risk of exporting this to the real world. So what can we do to change things? What's democracy for in the first place and how can we experiment with increasing the scope and scale of agency and accountability so that we can build trust in the processes that define our lives.

Nathan Schneider is a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he directs the Media Economies Design Lab and the Masters program in Media and Public Engagement. The book that drew me here is 'Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for online life', - which you can buy as a paper copy, but you can also download for free. He has also written 'Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition that is Shaping the Next Economy', 'Thank you Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Movement' and God in Proof, the Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet. He's edited other books about crypto and co-ops, writes numerous articles and his blog posts are essential reading. He serves on the boards of Metagov, Start.coop, and Waging Nonviolence. Follow his work on social media at @ntnsndr or at his website

In essence, discovering Nathan has been like discovering the well of life... He's deeply enmeshed in that liminal space where the best of human technologies meet the leading edge of digital technologies and he brings to it the sense of deep wonder, humility and humour that I've only otherwise met in meditators or contemplative mystics. I feel I only scratched the surface of his thinking in this conversation and would dearly like to go back for a second round, but only after I've re-read everything he's written - and dived into some of the online spaces. In the meantime, as a taste of what's possible, please do enjoy this podcast.

Nathan's website https://nathanschneider.info/
Governable Spaces https://nathanschneider.info/books/governable-spaces/
Everything for Everyone https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone/
Thank you, Anarchy https://nathanschneider.info/books/thank-you-anarchy/

University of Colorado Media Economies Design Lab https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/

MetaGov https://metagov.org/

Cities: most of us live in them and most of them are geared around the old values of the last century. But what if our core question was: what does it take to have pride in the place I live? How can we completely rethink the way cities act and are shaped to put a flourishing future at the heart of all they do? Georgia Cameron of Dark Matter Labs lays out the visions of Net Zero Cities that goes way beyond just the carbon.

Of the 8 billion (ish) people on the planet, over half now live in cities. If we're going to create a just, equitable, enduring transition to that more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, how we live, work, play and connect with each other in urban centres is going to be key. Which is why we're talking today to Georgia Cameron, who is a policy strategist and innovator at Dark Matter Labs who is currently working with the 112 cities involved in the EU Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission helping navigate the legal, regulatory, economic and social barriers they face in advancing transition pathways.

For over a decade, Georgia studies, researches and works at the intersection of law, public policy, organisational strategy, and community organisation. She practised as an urban planning and environment lawyer at a top four law firm in New Zealand before completing a Masters in Regenerative Economics (with Distinction) from Schumacher College, UK in 2021, and now, as we said, she's working with the Net Zero Cities Mission which aims to achieve ‘climate neutrality’ in those cities taking part, although, as you'll hear, those at the heart of this are really clear that it's not just about the carbon, and that everything we do must enhance our connections with ourselves, each other and the wider web of human and More than Human life.

This Mission is one of five within the EU - and miraculously, wonderfully, totally encouragingly, the plan is that all of these will be integrated: that each Mission will feed into the others. So this conversation roamed wide and deep through the theory and practice of this relatively new initiative, exploring the changes in political, inter-personal (and intra-personal) and regulatory thinking that will allow a complete phase-shift in how we work, play, live, commute and engage with the world. At heart, the question boils down to, What does it mean to live well in any given city - or indeed, anywhere? What does it take to feel pride in your neighbourhood? How can those in charge removed obstacles as much as putting new ideas in place? How can all of us work from the ground up to make changes - and what are the stories of change, of being and belonging, that will make this feel like a just, equitable - and desirable - transition?

Georgia on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgia-cameron-frsa-8a90668a/
Net Zero Cities https://netzerocities.eu
Net Zero Cities EU 2024 Conference in Valencia https://netzerocities.eu/2024/07/04/thats-a-wrap-key-takeaways-from-the-2024-cities-mission-conference-in-valencia/
Net Zero Cities Circular Economy Paper https://netzerocities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Policy-brief-Circular-Economy-Policy-Lab.pdf
Net Zero Cities Nature Based Solutions Policy Paper https://netzerocities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Policy-brief-Nature-Based-Solutions-Policy-Lab-2024-06-23.pdf
Dark Matter Labs https://darkmatterlabs.org/
Mariana Mazzucato https://marianamazzucato.com/

Clearly we need urgently to shift the democratic dial towards something that might actually serve the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. But how do we get there? How do we open the doors to possibility so that we can shift from the disconnection of our culture to a path of real heart-mind connection to the web of life?

Our guest this week is Leah Rampy, author of the book Earth and Soul, Reconnecting Amid Climate Chaos, a beautiful, many-layered weaving that is a memorial to the world that is dying around us, a paean to the world that is possible and a deeply imagined, deeply practical guide to how we can actually engage with the living web so that we can bring ourselves into a place of understanding, connection and service.

She says, 'We are not made to be separate from Nature. We were formed from Nature by the same cosmic evolution. The vitality of our lives depends on our acceptance of the gift of communion.' This book is full of personal insights, of stories from the islands of Britain, from Australia, from the Americas. It's beautiful and heartfelt and the prose flows with an ease you'll recognise when you hear Leah speak. At this time of utter turbulence in the world, please take this chance to settle into the words of someone who is crafting a path towards a future that works for all.

Leah's website https://leahrampy.com/
Leah's books https://www.leahmoranrampy.com/books.html
The Center for Spirituality in Nature https://www.centerforspiritualityinnature.org/

We know by now that the old system is crumbling, that the old paradigms are no longer fit for purpose and we need to take part in the birth of something new: this is what this podcast is for. But what are the tools and how can we begin actually to build something relevant and useful within the strictures of a system that is still trying to cling onto legitimacy and power?

Michael Haupt was a key figure in the widespread introduction of mobile telephones to South Africa ahead of the first all-race elections in 1994. He was head-hunted soon after and the next decade saw him working around the globe in 16 cities on 6 continents. He was in Thailand, taking a year out when he had a vision - an actual not-expected, not-planned, not-drug-or-meditation-mediated set of visions - that showed him how the world could look and feel like if we manage to craft a route through to what he calls the Transition Phase of our evolution.

This moment was pivotal in his life. Now he's a 'Resilience Strategist' bridging between those businesses that are switched on enough to know that corporate greenwashing is no longer useful, and agile enough to find what is. He's building mycelial links to others who are working in this area and he's thinking deeply - so deeply - about where we could go and the actual logistics of how we might get there. I've been holding a lot of conversations on the back of launching Any Human Power about how we could build a future that is fit for purpose, where the human and More-Than-Human worlds flourish on a thriving planet. Thanks to Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl, I can see some of the routes through to political and technological change. Thanks to the Gaia Foundation, the Sustainable Food Trust, the million and one permaculture organisations around the world, I can see a way to mending our totally broken food and farming system. I can see ways to shift transport and power generation and city design. What I have lacked, until now, is the ideas that might bring the great behemoth that is the corporate world on board in a way that's useful. And this is what Michael is doing. As ever, this was a wide, deep conversation and it pushed the edge of my thinking, but it brought me to a place where I can more clearly see a few more steps forward. I hope it does the same for you.

00:00 Introduction: Reconnecting with Nature
01:19 Welcome to the Podcast
01:40 Michael's Journey to Resilience Strategy
02:14 Load Shedding in South Africa
03:49 Understanding Resilience Strategy
04:52 Michael's Life Journey and Worldview
07:40 The Vision on the Beach
12:15 Potential Futures and Human Coordination
15:22 Cycles of Civilisations
18:12 Class-Based vs. Values-Based Societies
20:19 Emerging Consciousness and Systemic Change
22:01 The Role of Currency and Mutual Credit
27:25 Coordinating for Systemic Change
28:55 South African Elections and Corporate Responsibility
32:10 Legal Personhood for Natural Entities
35:12 The Mycelial Network and Future Coordination
38:28 Encouraging Systemic Change
39:13 Resilience Strategies and City Exclusion
40:12 Rural Experiments and Human Purpose
41:12 Challenges of Implementation
45:27 Local Currencies and Community Commitment
50:50 Ownership vs. Stewardship
53:22 Rediscovering Connectedness
57:26 Emerging Incentive Mechanisms
01:09:35 Forking Governance and Parallel Systems
01:16:25 The Power of Narrative

Michael on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhaupt/
A blog past about the Thai beach experience: https://michaelhaupt.com/the-beach-4b6e60e407e8
Michael - Liminal School liminalschool.org
Cycle of Civilization: https://bit.ly/7-Phases-Glo
Interstructure: https://bit.ly/Int-Struct
Roger Briggs, Emerging World - explains the shifts in consciousness: https://bit.ly/Em-World
Will Ruddick, Commitment Pooling: https://bit.ly/CommPool
Joe Brewer Bioregional Movement: https://bit.ly/JBrewer
Clare Graves' Momentous Leap: https://bit.ly/MoLeap
GaiaNet: https://www.gaianet.earth/
Dark Matter Labs: https://darkmatterlabs.org/