Accidental Gods

• A Longing for Belonging: Shifting the Cultural Paradigm with Looby Macnamara and Leona Johnson

  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.comCultural 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/id1515564368Leona's FREE mini course on Elemental Connection  https://pages.leonajohnson.life/elemental-connections-helloandIf 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/

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  1:23:58
• Now Then! Building networks of citizen power with James Lock of Opus in Sheffield

  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. LinksOpus https://www.weareopus.org/Festival of Debate https://festivalofdebate.com/Opus 2024 Report https://www.weareopus.org/opus-annual-report-2024Opus 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-indicatorsPlum Village podcast w Kate Raworth https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mindful-economics-in-conversation-with-kate-raworth/id1579910767?i=1000669364849James is Co Founder & Director at OpusCo Founder of Now Then MagazineCo Founder of the UBI Lab NetworkCo Founder of Festival of DebateCo Founder of Foundations EarthCo Founder of The River Don ProjectVoluntary Roles: Social Entrepreneur In Residence at Sheffield Hallam UniversityAdvisory Board Member on SYMCA  Local Nature Recovery StrategyGeneral Secretary of the Independent Media AssociationSouth Yorkshire Social Enterprise Place Steering Group MemberAdvisory 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/

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  1:14:32
• Be More Hawk! Being the courage to follow what's right with Rachel Musson of ThoughtBox Education

  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 2025Order Story Books https://thoughtboxeducation.com/storykitRachel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-musson/Rachel and Holly's podcast Two Inconvenient Women https://thoughtboxeducation.com/tiw-podcastEpisode 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/

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  1:13:58
• Miraculous Carbon: Celebrating the Book of Life, Death and Potential with author Paul Hawken

  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 MCKIBBENPaul's Website https://paulhawken.com/Paul's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hawken-0792bThe 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/

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  1:22:37
• Authentically human: celebrating the magic of life with Mark McCartney of the 'What is a Good Life' podcast

  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/id1663668603https://www.whatisagood.life/p/the-silent-conversationsIf 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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  1:19:37

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