In this special 5‑year anniversary episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast, the host reflects on the podcast’s origins during the early COVID‑19 lockdown, the evolution of its vision, and the recurring themes that have emerged across 193 episodes. The episode weaves together curated clips from past guests, each highlighting a distinct perspective on education and systemic change: Dr. Marie Baptiste introduces "ambidextrous epistemologies" and trans‑systemic Indigenous knowledge; Roland Coopers critiques the Enlightenment’s reductionist, linear thinking; Nora Bateson emphasizes the inadequacy of de‑contextualized information and the living nature of knowledge; Wakani Hoffman asks who we need to become to belong to the community of life; Karl Meeker underscores humor as an anti‑colonial, connective practice in education; Nolitha Bonelo and Matias Lara discuss youth agency, climate‑crisis dissonance, and the mismatch between education and young people’s lived realities. The host then outlines upcoming plans: more group conversations, a lineup of future guests, sharing concrete examples of future learning design in practice, and a call for listener engagement via a survey to strengthen the community of practice. The episode serves both as a celebration of past learning and a roadmap for the next five years of the podcast.
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Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast. Hi, and thanks for joining me. I wanted to do something a bit different this week with a special episode just to mark the 5-year anniversary of the podcast. For the first time in 193 episodes, I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on some of the highlights and the learning some of the themes that have emerged, and then also looking to some of the possibilities of what might come next. I can't quite believe it has been 5 years, honestly. I know that in February, March 2020, when I started the podcast, it was the early days of lockdown, and I guess everybody and their dog was starting a podcast at that point. But it was certainly a strange time for me and for us as a family. I'd recently gone freelance. Very definitely not knowing that there was a pandemic just around the corner. So my wife was often wondering what the hell I was doing with my head lost in these Audacity WAV files for hours and hours on end when we actually weren't quite sure how we were going to pay the rent next month. But for some reason I stuck at it and speaking personally, it was so incredibly worth it. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be able to have these incredible conversations with so many amazing people who often very surprisingly were willing to take time out of their busy schedules to chat with me. And also just grateful to you all for listening and engaging with me about the ideas and sharing the podcast with other people. And I just, I really want to thank everybody for the support and for being part of this growing community. I think for some of the highlights and the learning, I mean, I've certainly said this before in previous episodes, but I really didn't start out with quite the same vision as I have now for what the podcast or what I'd like the podcast to be. The kinds of questions that I was holding around innovations in education, curriculum, pedagogy, you know, cutting through all of the culture wars nonsense that happens in educational discussions. That's where I started. But actually, I think like many people, like certainly my good friend Will Richardson and many others, I think I have come to an awareness over the last few years just of how significant and systemic and complex the challenges are that we're facing and just how important these conversations are for exploring that in terms of the role that education can play. It's, I always find it striking how just when I'm listening to people like Daniel Schmachtenberger or Ian McGilchrist and their analysis of the complex global challenges are amazing. But so often where they get to when they're asked about, so what, what do we do about it? They come to education, schooling and education more broadly without, I would say, much particular awareness of what that really means. And that's where I would love this podcast to be, to offer some space for exploring those things. And as John Alexander, just lovely conversation I had with him in the previous episode to this. As he says so well, all of us are smarter than any of us. And that's just become so clear to me that one of the roles of spaces like this is to leverage the collective intelligence or collective wisdom of the community of amazing people, of you in your schools or in your different organizations, learning organizations that you work in. Leveraging that collective experience of designing and building in place, in local context, different approaches that speak to some of the challenges that we are collectively facing. So those different kinds of questions are really, I think, challenging us all to examine some of the preconceived assumptions and biases that we've had about what schooling means or what it means, you even to be a successful human in the world. So maybe now I'll just share a few clips of some of these provocations that have really helped me think about these big questions about what it means to know and be and do in these times. Dr. Marie Baptiste.
And so what we're trying to do is to create a more trans-systemic awareness of indigenous knowledges. Ambidextrous epistemologies is what I called it. You know, there's many, many ways in which it is understood, but it also involves multiple ways of thinking and methodology. So there's not a singularity of theory that goes with it. It really is talking about having diverse knowledge systems while we also accept it as is and build new vocabularies to think about it, because one is in, in an Indigenous language, the other is in a colonial Western language. One is very much connected and rooted to the land and territory. The other one is very connected to cognitive dissemination through literature and other kinds of written text. So we, we've got different kinds of knowledge systems, and we can only benefit by having all of them accessible to us. The kinds of conflicts in the world today between and among people of different language origins of different place origins that need to speak to each other requires trans-systemic ways of being, thinking, and moving forward.
Roland Coopers.
We've made a choice in the 18th century that proper thinking, the kind of thinking that when it's emancipated from the church, right? That was the idea of the 18th, the Enlightenment in the 18th century. Is a fairly basic reductionist, linear style of thinking because that's what was around in the 18th century. So it was absolutely reasonable, but it's formed the frame of both public narratives that we see often in politics and the way we talk about the world, management, etc., but also of science. And that's been very successful. I mean, you know, there's nothing wrong with reductionism. It's been wildly successful. But it was a great limitation of the kind of systems and the kind of phenomenon you can understand.
Nora Bateson.
The only information that was given any credibility or authority was information that had actually been derived by decontextualizing. And that that information was inherently inadequate. It's useful, but it's inadequate. And there is a lot of other information. And that information, as living organisms, we are constantly engaging with it. It's not like it's not real. It's just that it doesn't sit on the page in the same way because it's living, moving, changing, shifts from perspective to perspective, moves in time differently, creates paradoxes. It doesn't agree. It's right. But it's alive. It's real. It's there. How do you know in an algebra class that you're not supposed to jump on the desk and practice tango guitar? Where's the rule that says that? Well, there is no rule that says that. So how do you know? You see, there's a lot of information that we are paying attention to, that we're sensitized to. There's codes everywhere in our gesture, in our inflections of our voice, in what we say, what we don't say, in the small pacing of blinks of eyes, of the way your breath moves when you speak or when don't speak.
Wakani Hoffman.
The question I would pose is, who do we need to become? Rather than who are we, what does it mean to be human, who do we need to become in order to be members of this community of life that we have thought for a long time we were in charge of? And that's where values come in. And those values are not unique to one culture, they're not unique to Indigenous people or non-Indigenous people.
Another highlight for me, just briefly, has been that I think also sometimes these conversations can get quite earnest and quite serious and heavy. And one of the things I really appreciated was a recent conversation I had with Karl Meeker, the Māori philosopher, who brought in the idea of humor as a really important aspect of how we connect and how we relate in the ways that we just explore and navigate the world. And that brings a lightness and connection to some of the work.
Well, I think if you can joke about the statements you make within your own work, that's a form of obscuring the propositional nature of them. But I do see it being used as a tactic within Māori forums as well, not necessarily a self-conscious one, but yeah, I think it's a very important thing. It's important that we retain those irreverent styles of humor, cuz I think the moment we don't have those, we've been fully colonized. And that's a colonization of part of our emotion.
Yeah.
And our ways of interacting. It is playful at the time. And there's a lot of, you know, um, I've seen it happen where people have been, um, you know, unwittingly, they've basically had the piss taken out of them. Right. And it's kind of relentless and unwatchable at, at one level, but it's, it's also quite enjoyable at another because it, in a particular way, it opens up another way of thinking about what's being talked about. Mostly it's, I think, a way of saying to someone, don't take this too seriously, or don't take yourself too seriously. And most of it's done quite gently, you know.
And then lastly, and this really relates to a lot of the work I've been doing with my good friend and partner at Good Impact Labs, Jennifer, and it's come through a lot in themes on the podcast as well. Is just how ready the young people are to take on these meaningful challenges themselves, either in schools or informal education spaces or outside of them. And so I've heard, I've spoken with young people on the podcast and many other people who are supporting young people to do this kind of work of taking action around the issues that they care about, reflecting and learning as they go and working together collaboratively to respond in that collective way that we're gonna absolutely need to do. So again, here are a few more clips from some of those amazing young people and some of the other people who are doing that vital supporting work. Nolitha Bonelo.
More than just making an impact, it is about creating a better future on multiple fronts. So material, ecological, social, but it also seems like nothing seems to improve for young people. But weirdly enough, at the same time, this generation is probably the most educated generation ever in history. And so we started trying to deal with the complexity of that, of like, why is it that young people know so much? And also now we have like Copilot and ChatGPT in our back pocket, but things seem to be getting worse. So then we went on with the mission of how do we work with young people to create a better future?
Matias Lara.
Education is not giving you the tools if you want to be involved, let's say, in politics or in business. You just see the whole picture and say, oh, this is broken so badly, and school just says absolutely nothing about this, nothing at all.
And at some point I'm, I kind of had this moment of stepping out and being like, I'm being taught how to be successful and how to be at the top of a pyramid that just steps on everyone below me if I get to be successful. And also like I'm contributing to the creation of a future that I don't want. And I think for young people in particular, they've been taught about climate change and about the polycrisis very young. So there's a sense of, What am I learning this for? Because you're telling me my future is in danger, but you're also telling me I need to be successful within this model that is destroying my future. It just makes no sense, you know.
So while from the Institute of Humane Education, what was so fascinating was how quickly these young people learned about what was happening to animals and immediately wanted to make a difference. One boy went home one night during the week, he made his own homemade leaflets. That was in 1987. He did not have a computer. He handwrote his leaflets. He came back the next day. He wanted to hand them out on the street to passersby because he wanted to be a changemaker. He wanted to make a difference. And I realized the power of education that feels deeply relevant to young people, that touches their hearts, that awakens their desire to do something, and that leads them in a direction of research and investigation and critical thinking Action.
So 5 years done, 193 episodes. Where might this go in the next 5 years? Well, I just wanted to share a few thoughts and also a request. So one of the things that I've been wanting to do more of is have more group conversations like I did in December with the Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It episode with Mando and Ginny and Riza and Will. I'd really like to engage with a few more group discussions. I've got one coming up about embodiment science in education, which is— I'm really looking forward to. And then some others on what it means to advise young people about careers in an era of systemic change and collapse. And maybe even a couple of out-there conversations about the role of love and the role of religion in education. I've also got some amazing guests coming up. We've got Olli-Pekka Heinonen coming back for a second appearance on the podcast connected with the launch of his amazing new book coming out this summer. I've got Morgan Phillips talking about transformative adaptation in education, as well as James Mannion, Naomi Fisher, Vivian Clay on a different approach to artificial intelligence. Got Phoebe Tikell coming on to talk about her work with imagination activism and the amazing Indi Johar and Adam Purvis from Dark Matter Labs. So loads of amazing episodes coming up in the next few months. And before I make my final request, one of the other things I've been feeling strongly is that while the high-level conversations are great and obviously full of learning for me and hopefully of interest to you, I've also been thinking about what role the podcast can play in highlighting some of the amazing work that's already going on all around the world that I'm so lucky to be able to be exposed to. That is the building, the putting into practice of the ideas that often we talk about on the podcast. So I will be sharing in the next weeks and months some examples of future learning design in practice. I'm not totally sure on how I'll be sharing those yet, but it's definitely something I'm feeling that it's important that we respond to somehow. And lastly, just a request. One of the things that I've so appreciated about about doing the podcast is interacting with you in various places, virtually, physically, and the community of listeners that's been built up around it. I'd really like to think about ways that we can strengthen that, leverage that to do more and to, to support more amazing educators doing amazing work. So I'm gonna share a link in the show notes to just a short survey that if you have any thoughts about kinds of things you'd like to see more of or hear more of on the podcast, or ways that you would like to engage more in a community of practice around some of the ideas. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of that. So for now, just the hugest thank you to all of you for listening. If you do find value in the podcast, please do share it with other people if you think it would bring interest and value to them. And thank you so much for staying with me on the journey, sharing feedback, and yeah, here's to the next 5 years. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please feel free to continue the dialogues with our guests, with us at Good Impact Labs, on our blog or on social media, or within your own networks.
