Accidental Gods

12/08/2026

“The ecological movement is the largest movement in human history, yet it is fragmented because it is using the “tools of the master” for coordination, resource sharing, and conflict resolution…While many technologists have created social networking technology, they have not succeeded in creating good coordination because social networking tools do not address enough of the primary coordination mechanics for scalable trust.” Grace Rachmany: Sideways Earth on Github

Friend of the podcast, Grace (Rebecca) Rachmany is a mother, a tech industry trouble shooter, author of over a hundred white papers and co-author of the book, ‘So you’ve got a DAO: Handbook for Distributed and Connected Leadership’. She’s Executive Director of the Decentralized Identity Foundation and it’s this that we’re exploring today.

It’s long been established on this podcast that the old paradigm is not fit for purpose and is, in fact, in the process of disintegrating beneath our feet.
We know we need to create communities of place, purpose and passion – but if we can do this, how do we find other communities to link with so we can:

– Scale from community to region. (based on shared action)
– Keep one another accountable for behaviors that reflect what we say our values are (people are also squishy when they say the word values).
– Scale behaviour change beyond a closed or Dunbar-number community to multiple communities.
– Scale actions and collaborations to regional levels without a hierarchical coordination structure.
– Coordinate actions and behaviors based on the commons we share, whether or not we share “values”.

This is the missing link that is often overlooked as we craft a way forward to a world that works, and I’m so glad someone with Grace’s outstanding intellect and depth of heart is exploring this.
And that she’s willing to come here and talk about it.
So here we go: a wide, deep, full conversation on the missing link of scaleable trust.

https://accidentalgods.life/building-scaleable-trust-of-identity-commons-and-governance-with-grace-rachmany-of-sideways-earth

If we can build communities of place, purpose and passion, how do we find other communities to link with so we can scale from community to region, keep one another accountable, scale behaviour change beyond a closed or Dunbar-number community to multiple communities, scale actions and collaborations...

31/07/2026

Indeed

29/07/2026

How do we make a peaceful transition to a wholly new system when the old one is sustained by those who profit most from the self-terminating zombie of predatory capitalism?
Our guest this week has spent the past decade devising an answer to this most central of our questions. Remzi Bajrami is co-founder of Common Planet Foundation and creator of , which is his answer to our dilemma.

In his words, Creditism is—
– a new economic system designed around life instead of debt. Credit flows to people because existence itself has value — it circulates through life, then clears. It supports living without becoming a permanent claim on the future.
– a non-debt economic system designed to replace extraction with flow, scarcity with access, and coercion with coordination. Where today’s money is largely created through debt and accumulated as power, Creditism reframes money as credit: a shared unit of access created through existence, earned through contribution, and dissolved when used.
– the gateway to a global economy that is cleaner, fairer, and more life-aligned — one that supports human potential, community self-governance, and planetary regeneration.
Creditism is the economic architecture for a species that wants to survive.
There are still some unanswered questions in this, but there are always going to be until we get moving with something, test it out and reinvent it on the fly. What Remzi and his colleagues have done is to set up a system that you can join now – or at least in early August 2026 – and become a part of a network that will test this out. in the meantime, Remzi has written a series of Substacks which lay out in straightforward terms how the current system is predicated on power over, how money works – because we can’t hear that one too often – and how creditism could work instead.

https://accidentalgods.life/creditism-building-the-ledger-of-life-with-remzi-bajrami-of-the-common-planet-foundation/

How do we make a peaceful transition to a wholly new system when the old one is sustained by those who profit most from the self-terminating zombie of predatory capitalism? Our guest this week has spent the past decade devising an answer to this most central of our questions. Remzi Bajrami is co-fou...

22/07/2026

If you listen to this podcast then you care about people and planet and how we make it through this moment of Great Transformation.

But what if you knew you were not alone? What if you knew that almost everyone in our culture cares about this, they just don’t know what to do about it? They don’t have what this week’s guest, Dr Kavanagh, calls the ‘Victory Stories’ to show how we made it through.

Liam is a founding Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, an organisation that has worked since 2022 to extend climate action beyond the vocal minority of activists to the concerned but quiet majority. In 2016, he co-founded Life Itself, a European polycrisis-response network, and has authored two books and numerous reports.

His latest reports: Mobilising Silent Majorities is one of the must-reads of this year. This is a long, detailed, dynamic look at how many people really do care about the polycrisis. As he says, ‘Across society, many people recognise serious risks—climate disruption, inequality, instability—but these concerns often stay private. The report identifies six “silent majorities” whose hidden views could shift what feels politically possible:
– The climate-concerned majority – Most people see climate change as a serious threat but rarely talk about it in daily life.
– The climate-concerned business majority – Business leaders see climate risks but hesitate to speak publicly.
– The reticent scientific majority – Scientists privately worry about worst-case scenarios but communicate cautiously.
– The decline- and collapse-concerned majority – Many fear overlapping crises, yet these concerns are rarely voiced.
– The depolarising majority – Citizens who favour cooperation over conflict are often drowned out by louder, polarising voices.
– The intrinsic-values majority – People prioritise family, community, and wellbeing, but economic pressures often prevent these values from guiding their lives.
When concern remains unspoken, it appears weaker than it is. And when people feel alone in their worries, silence becomes the apparently safest choice.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. What if we were able to speak up in our communities of place, purpose and passion and let other people know they’re not alone? That we are, in fact, a huge, huge majority? What if we were able to seed ideas out into the conversations that are happening on- and off-line so that we all acknowledge the system is not fit for purpose and all have good, workable ideas of how to fix it?

https://accidentalgods.life/we-need-a-victory-story-mobilising-the-silent-majority-with-liam-kavanagh-of-the-climate-majority-project/



Rupert Read

15/07/2026

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson

We need to talk about Big Tech, and particularly AI – it’s ubiquitous, it’s powerful, and currently, it’s unconstrained and this is not an ideal combination if we live in the real world of mass extinction where human and more-than-human communities are being destroyed to serve the death cult of predatory capitalism at its most rapacious.

The question is – how do we shift the dial on the future when so many of those whose fortunes are sunk into Tech, and AI in particular, seem to be steeped in the Dark Triad of psychopathy, sa**sm and narcissism? Is there any sign of hope amidst all the chaos and the frozen despair that narratives of inevitability foster in us?

We turn this week to long-time friend of the podcast, Nathalie Nahai.

Nathalie is a celebrated author, keynote speaker and host of the glorious Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast which enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-seller Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which 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.

https://accidentalgods.life/we-need-to-talk-about-tech-exploring-ai-fresh-hopeand-the-power-of-song-with-nathalie-nahai/

How do we shift the dial on the future when so many of those whose fortunes are sunk into Tech, and AI in particular, seem to be steeped in the Dark Triad of psychopathy, sa**sm and narcissism? Is there any sign of hope amidst all the chaos and the frozen despair that narratives of inevitability fos...

08/07/2026

How do we create healthy people, intimately enmeshed in a healthy biosphere so that, together, we can co-create routes to a healthy future?
Health is such an astonishingly polarised and polarising field: everyone has their triggers and there’s not a whole lot of self-regulation when they’ve been activated. But there are some truly astonishing people out there who are fully on board with the concept that late stage capitalism is at the heart of our ills and that regeneration of our connections is the key to building health in all its senses.
Amanda d’Almeida is one of these – a truly remarkable woman. She’s a family medicine doctor by training, and for most of us, going through a medical degree takes all that we’ve got. For Amanda, not so much. While studying medicine, she also read for a Masters in Public Health – and wrote her thesis on the role of Regenerative Agriculture in community health. At the same time, she and her partner set up Medicine Explained on Instagram and TikTok, with the intent of sharing accessible information as widely as possible – their social media accounts have 1.6 million followers, so by any measure, we could say that’s succeeding. She co-founded and hosts The Nuance: a community health podcast exploring the nuance lost in today’s discourse and centering narratives often not represented in media. The focus is on social and community medicine topics, specifically highlighting the intersection of human and planetary health including environmental and climate justice.
She also co-founded the climate health co-op because she and her partner had been asked during multiple conferences to consult with folks on how to create engaging media, and instead created a community of healthcare professionals, artists, storytellers, professors, organizers, community members, activists, humans on this earth who are dedicated to advance climate justice, environmental justice, and health equity through multimedia content production to shift narratives and create real-world impact from social media and beyond.
All the way through, she has partnered with and followed the leadership of community-based organizations, supporting research and advocacy to work towards a more beautiful, healthy, and just world.
And now, at the age of thirty one, Amanda has completed her Fellowship in Community Medicine. She’s about to take a very well deserved 2 months off, but just ahead of going away, we sat down for this conversation. If you want reasons to hope, Amanda d’Almeida offers them in spades.
Please note that all these views are Amanda’s own and not the view of her employer. This is not medical advice.

https://accidentalgods.life/healthy-people-healthy-planet-healthy-future-with-dr-amanda-dalmeida-of-medicine-explained/

How do we create healthy people, intimately enmeshed in a healthy biosphere so that, together, we can co-create routes to a healthy future? Health is such an astonishingly polarised and polarising field, but there are some truly astonishing people out there who are fully on board with the concept th...

01/07/2026

How do we encourage human flourishing? How, in fact, do we make the thriving of all 8 billion humans and the More than Human World central to all that we are and do? It’s a core tenet of this podcast, that if each of us were able to discover what’s ours to do – and, more importantly, to be – and were supported in the inter-becoming that would arise from bringing the best of ourselves to the table…we’d be well on the way to the transformation we need to get us through the pinch points of the climate, cultural and technological apocalypses that are heading our way.

So in today’s episode, we’re talking with someone who crosses many disciplines in search of eudaimonia – the concept of human flourishing, of ‘finding our best self’ proposed by Plato and expanded by Aristotle. is an engineer and architect by training, and is now a consultant and strategic advisor who specialises in balancing architectural science with wellbeing science to promote flourishing health and wellbeing by design across a wide range of environments.

As you’ll hear, she did her PhD during lockdown in the ways it might be possible to help elderly people find meaning and purpose – in scientific terms, to attain self determination – in their lives. And now she is an academic and consultant who acts as an ideas “alchemist,” helping companies curate environments & experiences for eudaimonia to support optimal health and wellbeing, precipitate ineffable emotions like delight & awe, promote meaning, inspire creativity, & catalyse belonging, and innovate. She’s founder of the Eauda-Group and helped found the ‘Flourishing by Design’ (FxD) community of practice affiliated with Harvard’s Human Flourishing Network.

In a world where those who accumulate wealth are increasingly leaning towards mass extinction as if it were somehow going to be useful, it’s so refreshing to explore the ways we can be differently human.

https://accidentalgods.life/design-for-the-ineffable-crafting-a-flourishing-world-with-dr-jenna-mikus/

If each of us were able to discover what's ours to do, we'd be well on the way to the transformation we need to get us through the pinch points of the climate, cultural and technological apocalypses that are heading our way. So today we're talking with someone who crosses many disciplines in search....

24/06/2026

“We are a collective of artists making art to bring forth the second renaissance.
We are alchemists. We create a new world through our work.
We are the bridge between the dying past and the future unborn.
Art is an expression of our consciousness and humanity, this is our path of transformation.
Life as an art…”

Thus begins the Manifesto on Art in the Second Renaissance, and this week we speak with its author, Sylvie Barbier, a French-Taiwanese performance artist whose work is some of the most powerfully raw, wild and beautiful I have ever seen. As well as being an artist and mother, she’s an entrepreneur and educator and one of the two co-founders of Life Itself, which is designed to build a wiser future through culture, space and community.

The Life Itself website says, ‘We are pragmatic utopians, committed to practical action for a radically wiser, weller world. We create conscious coliving hubs, start businesses, do research and engage in activism to pioneer a wiser culture and plant the seeds of a second renaissance.’

The Second Renaissance is an initiative of Life Itself which acknowledges that we live in a moment of potential crisis and collective rebirth and offers a home to the growing community of people who are working to make this rebirth happen.

Sylvie is an artist of extraordinary scope and depth and so the role of art in that rebirth is the focus of this episode, but we ranged far and deep into the nature of healing our shadows so that we can heal the ancestral and descendant lines, so that we can become the ancestors our descendants are proud of; we explored the nature of ritual in building new beginnings and helping endings; as we did with the Brother from nearby Plum Village, we explored the nature of life and death and how we can meet our own deaths with grace and joy and hope. Above all, we explored how we can fall in love with living – with life itself – so that we might lay strong foundations for real transformation.

https://accidentalgods.life/the-art-of-the-sacred-with-sylvie-barbier-of-second-renaissance-and-life-itself/

"We are a collective of artists making art to bring forth the second renaissance. We are alchemists. We create a new world through our work. We are the bridge between the dying past and the future unborn. Art is an expression of our consciousness and humanity, this is our path of transformation. Lif...

10/06/2026

As we head into the Makerfield by-election, we explore the nature of Progressive Politics, the letter sent by senior Greens, the candidacy of Andy Burnham - and the roads to a future we'd be proud to leave behind with Neal Lawson of Compass and Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project

We’re at a pivotal moment in world geopolitics. Increasingly the masks and the gloves are both off – but it’s not a binary choice any more between two sets of suits in slightly different coloured ties: now we have the right showing its true colours – and a chance for the progressive majority in this country to find its feet and lead us towards a genuinely thoughtful, emotionally literate, high-bandwidth politics that ditches the toxic tribalism and instead lays the ground for a future that could actually work.

We’re joined this week by Neal Lawson, co-founder and Executive Director of the progressive pressure group, Compass; and Rupert Read, Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project. Neal is a member of the Labour Party, and Rupert of the Green party and we came together to discuss the forthcoming by-election in Makerfield, where Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester is standing as a candidate, with a view to standing for leadership of the Labour Party if he wins. His main challenger is the Reform party led by Nigel Farage. The Greens are newly invigorated after their recent win in the Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester, so there has been a lot of conversation in progressive circles as to whether the Greens should step away to give Burnham a clear run. This seemed a good moment to have a vigorous conversation – to explore the possibilities and potential and the routes forward should Burnham win.

https://accidentalgods.life/grown-up-politics-a-chance-for-change-round-table-with-neal-lawson-of-compass-and-rupert-read-of-the-climate-majority-project/

We're at a pivotal moment in world geopolitics. Increasingly the masks and the gloves are both off - but it's not a binary choice any more between two sets of suits in slightly different coloured ties: now we have the right showing its true colours - and a chance for the progressive majority in this...

27/05/2026

Life has been evolving on our planet for the past 3.8 billion years. The ecosystems that thrive now have had a lot of practice at getting things right – particularly the complex web of inter-relations that allows us all to flourish. And yet, we’re on the edge of the sixth mass extinction largely because we humans have forgotten how to inter-relate and inter-be with the rest of the web of life. At an intellectual level, we know we’re integral nodes in the web, but we still behave as if it were other, and out there and not – yet – as if it were a source of wisdom and wonder and wholehearted support: an ancient mentor that has tried and tested enough options to know what works.

So how can we bring the astonishing, creative insights of Biomimicry to the field of human inter-being? How can we shift our sense of self and other, our communities of place, purpose and passion, our businesses, our governance structures…everything that we are and do onto a different trajectory using the web of life as our template? Biomimicry for Social Innovation asks exactly these questions and in this episode, we’re talking to its founder, Toby Herzlich.

Toby is a facilitator, trainer, executive coach, and organizational consultant. She is a Certified Biomimicry Specialist and Founder of Biomimicry for Social Innovation, which exists to translate ecosystem intelligence and Life’s Principles into leadership and social change strategies. As you’ll hear, she’s part of the team that developed The Nature of Trust, and its 8-principle framework for building and maintaining trust, which is so essential in any network of sovereign individuals whether they’re bees, or penguins, elks or geese – or people.

Toby is the founding co-facilitator of the Living Systems Leadership Retreats for Women and has supported the capacity-building of women leaders in war-torn countries of the Balkans and the Middle East.

There are so many richly inspiring pathways that Toby has opened as a result of bringing a social change and leadership development branch into Biomimicry – collaborating deeply with that larger movement and, at heart and core, with the Web of Life. This was one of those conversations that could have gone on forever. It didn’t, we stopped at a reasonable time and are definitely planning to cycle back with each other. And the cats visited—Toby’s and mine—which always makes a podcast flow with extra energy.

https://accidentalgods.life/trust-like-the-web-of-life-trusts-biomimicry-for-social-innovation-with-toby-herzlich/

How can we bring the insights of Biomimicry to the field of human inter-being? How can we shift our sense of self and other, our communities of place, purpose and passion, our businesses, our governance structures…everything that we are and do onto a different trajectory using the web of life as o...