Podcasters Unite! Thinking about systemic change with Nathalie Nahai, Amit Paul, and Manda Scott

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

I think the other thing has been to realize we don't have to solve the big problem. You don't have to be all things to all people. You know, be true about what you are moved by and then be as honest as possible in your search for the people who have something to say that you might find intriguing, that might open your aperture a bit more.

Hi everyone, and thanks for joining me again for this week's podcast. My name's Tim Logan, and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. What are we learning about systemic change? There are loads of people talking about why we need it, whether it's the climate and nature emergencies, exponential tech, or youth mental health crises. But how much is it actually happening? By definition, it's not something that just happens in the education system. So I was really happy this week to gather together with 3 amazing podcasters and beautiful people who are coming at these same questions from many different lenses: business, thrutopian novel writing, psychology, technology, economics, regenerative farming. Like me, they get to speak to some of the most amazing and insightful people in all of these fields and more. So I thought it would be a great idea to get together to see what we are learning collectively. Amanda Scott is the host of the Accidental Gods podcast. And has appeared on this channel a couple of times previously. Natalie Nahai hosts her eponymous In Conversation podcast, and Amit Paul is the host of the fabulous World of Wisdom podcast. You can find out more about each of them and link to their wonderful work in the show notes. I guess I had this kind of wondering, Amanda, I was watching you on KT, you know, the Katie Teague video you did in the Making series. I was watching you over the weekend. Loved it. So good. But you said in that, it was really interesting to hear you reflect on it. You said something along the lines of like, I know this stuff, or I've been thinking a lot about this stuff because I've been having one conversation every week for the last 6 years with the most amazing people around the world, right? That is exactly my feeling. It's like, it just feels like the most privileged thing to be able to do is to like sit down with the most incredible people. Once a week or once every 2 weeks for me, for the same, for the last 6 years, it's like, what an amazing opportunity, right? And how much learning. And so I just, yeah, I love that you said it. And that's just exactly how I feel. And partly why I just thought, let's do this, right? Like I can imagine maybe some of you feel the same. So yeah, this was like, let's gather the podcasters and see what we're learning. So I'm Tim Logan and I've been running the Future Learning Design Podcast for the last 6 years. We've just had our 6th year anniversary and got to somewhere around 240 episodes. Yeah, and super excited to explore what we're learning.

So I'm Amanda Scott, host of the Accidental Gods podcast. We've been going since the December solstice of 2019, so whatever that is, 6 and a half years weekly. And like Tim Logan said, it's such a privilege to talk to people that I really respect and ask them the questions I wish someone else would ask them.. And I learned so much and I constantly think every—

who—

Terry Pratchett once said that writing is the most fun anyone can have on their own. And I think podcasting is definitely the most fun anyone can have staring at a screen. And I will pass to Amit.

Thank you. Yeah, I've been hosting the World of Wisdom podcast for a bit more than the past 200 episodes or so. My business partner, my work wife, Niels, had the first 90 or so episodes. We're at the 290 episodes. We've been going for quite a few years now as well. And I concur. I think sort of inquiring into, for me, it's like, what the hell is going on? And looking at that in the meeting between people and really looking at that sort of fundamental movement, that it's incredibly generative and there's so much to be learned and explored both in the conversation, but also in the creation of the artifact of the podcast, to actually publish it. Both of those aspects are very important. Pass to you, Natalie.

Thanks. So I'm Natalie Nahai. I've been hosting, it was in two iterations. The first, it was called The Hive Podcast, the idea of bringing different people together that collectively the insights and wisdom might be more than the sum of its parts. And then converted it into just In Conversation with Natalie Nahai because people were like, oh, there's Various different hives. So I need to be able to find you better. So I just stuck my name on it and that's been going since 2018. It was going weekly. And then because I do many other things, realized that was possibly not as sustainable as initially considered. So I now do it in terms of seasons. So 10 episodes per season and each season will have a particular orientation. But broadly it looks at our relationship with technology, with the living world and with one another. So those are the 3 primary lenses. But of course, because everything inter-is, it kind of yields many intersecting questions because that's kind of the nature of things. But it's nice to have those three main lenses. It can be quite a helpful frame at times. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. And I mean, I didn't really say, but I guess the thing I find fascinating personally is that my lens has always been education, primarily kind of K-12 education, but then sometimes higher education universities. But what I've found is I've just strayed so far from, I guess the size of the conversations has got significantly bigger over the last 6 years. I don't know if you feel the same. I started on, you know, relatively small things like curriculum and learning design and pedagogy and all these kind of what I slightly feel, they're not irrelevant things now, but they feel slightly of a time. And it feels like the conversation has just got progressively bigger over the last 6 years and my kind of my own questions and my learning with it as well. So I don't know if you have experienced a similar change over the time as the question did. Have the questions that you have changed over the process?

I think for sure. I'm kind of curious which questions you each find yourselves orienting towards most right now. Whether it's in this moment or in this current season of conversations or the most recent conversation, what questions are you holding at the moment? Manda, go for it.

So I think in the beginning, because it arose out of Accidental Gods membership, which was aiming at how do we connect to the web of life in order to ask, what do you want of me? So it was a very spiritually based, shamanically based But I wanted to bring in the systems thinking. So it was how do I find that intersection between systems thinking and what I consider to be the necessary evolution of our consciousness? And so in the very beginning, I was picking people who were exemplars of that. And then very quickly, I really found that the feedback I was getting, I needed to look at critique of the existing system. People couldn't jump from where we are to where we need to be without understanding. That the existing system didn't work. And Donella Meadows said that you've got to continuously critique the existing system in order to break people's certainties open, in order to give room for something else. What I found more recently is I'm much less interested in critiquing the existing system. We've done that. It is the death cult of predatory capitalism. It is falling over. Basically, we've said that. Now I'm interested in, and what are the next best steps? So how do we give people a sense, not just of the motivation that another system is possible, but the agency and the direction and the empowerment of what can we do, what is already happening so that you can't say that's not possible. You go, okay, it's happening in Hull, therefore it can happen wherever. So I think that is the primary evolution. So I'll pass to Amit. What's shifted for you, Amit?

I appreciate that. It's funny to see these symmetries, you know, I mean, from a different starting point, but it's a similar pattern where Initially, I was trying to make sense of it all, arrogantly, trying to make sense of it all, trying to sort of figure out like what were the lineages, what are the, you know, and sort of constantly looking for that authority that had the answer or the answers, possibly in plural. But over time, I've kind of found that, you know, I don't know if they're there. I think we're all sort of on one level or another, we're equally confused. And even, you know, you can see things that really work and some tenets and some things where you're like, oh, what, wait, hold on. You know, what is actually, how does this And so I'm also very much more oriented towards the doing aspects of things. And somehow the question at the center of it all is like, which world do we perceive that we live in? So it's like there's some sort of ontological inquiry that's going on at the bottom of it. And I'm very careful to say that, which world do we live in, not worldview, because worldview is not it. Like worldview is something that you hold, right? But the world is just what it is. Like it's the reality, it's the truth. And so I've found for myself that I've found other lineages, other traditions, other there are ideas that resonate more, like they seem to be better explanatory models. And so I want to bring those and make them accessible to people and then see how that would spark action eventually. And that's probably the entirety of the work that I'm doing. But at the same time, the podcast is just sort of that little curiosity project, such a convenient thing to bug people and say like, hey, I have a podcast, you want to have a conversation? Then you talk to people that are like way above my pay grade and are sort of way busier than they would be, you know, to just have an exploratory conversation. So, but it is also towards that action that's really been like, how do we move in this? Like, what is the dance that we're dancing now? What is the choreography that makes sense? You know, which steps can we take and how do we do it together? You know, how do we amplify each other? How do we sort of come together in that sense?

Yeah, no, I would also agree. And the thing that's coming to mind for me is the opportunity I get to platform people like, for example, young people. I've done quite a few episodes recently with young people who are themselves obviously holding like questions, but also participating in some of the ways of maybe doing the educational process differently. And so to hear from them about how they're reflecting on it is so fresh and fascinating to me because sometimes in this world, this part of the internet and all this podcasty stuff, it gets a bit samey, right? You know, we've had quite a few of the same kinds of guests and they say a lot of the same things and they have their talking points and it's all great. Great and important stuff, but then to hear from a young person who's like, 'No, this is how it is for me,' or just using a different tone or a different way of approaching the same thing, but just in a very, very real way from their perspective. And, you know, not to therefore romanticize that, that, you know, that is somehow truer or more real, but there is an authenticity that I find when you, you know, you get to speak to them. And for listeners, I know that it really resonates I hear from teachers and leaders in schools or whoever who are like, you know, those are the ones we want to hear because we, there's something very real there in terms of the way, yeah, how we can, I don't know, hear the messages differently, hear the same kinds of things, but in a way that lands and a way that may kind of give us some motivation to actually make some different decisions in the way we do things. So Amanda.

So I have a question for you and then we'll spread it to Natalie and Amit. You get feedback from educators. And they want to hear from the young people. But I am thinking that for each of us, we started off with an imagined audience and that audience has now morphed because people share podcasts. They're such an accessible way of exploring ideas. And I wonder for each of us, to what extent has the quality of the feedback that we get shifted, if at all, what we're doing? So I'm guessing, Tim Logan, you would have more young people on because you're getting positive feedback from the people that listen to you going, saying that this is what they want. And have we had negative feedback and has that shut stuff down? Speaking for myself, no, I tend to ignore the negative feedback because I'm doing this for me. You know, it's one of these incredibly onanistic things. As Amit said, I get to talk to people many miles above my pay grade, but they're happy to talk and I can ask them the questions that I would've wanted to ask them if we'd happened to meet at a conference and they would not have time to talk to me then. So I have multiple questions. It seems to me that asking questions is a political act. So I would sometimes have people on where I want them to think about the things I'm thinking about. They have something useful to say, but on the whole, it's generally, if we have a distribution curve, it's more to the business as usual end of the distribution curve. But I want to ask them the questions because I want them to think. Then you're having young people on because you want your audience, I guess, to think differently. And somewhere in the middle, you're getting feedback that will tend you towards the kinds of guests you have on? First of all, is that true? And do you want to speak to it and then pass it around the line?

No, it's a good question. I think there is a really selfish aspect to this work in a really interesting way, right? Like, I really struggle when I'm having to interview someone I haven't chosen. I haven't followed my deep curiosity and deep questions about interviewing that person. Then those are some of my favorite Or, you know, that's what I try to do generally. And when I'm not doing that, or for example, sometimes someone will recommend someone or someone might— sometimes people put themselves forward for the podcast, which I always find a bit dubious and I tend to say no. But there is a really important piece for me that I have to be genuinely curious about the person that I'm interacting with for it to feed me and hopefully feed a generative conversation. So there's a little bit of kind of ignoring some of the feedback to your point, Amanda, because I tend to go where my gut takes me, right? In terms of curiosity. And then the other piece for me is trying, I guess it's partly what I was saying about the questions getting bigger. I've also tried to maybe more intentionally bring in voices that are not traditionally in my siloed educational world, you know, and to go looking for education podcasts, they generally, you know, will be a lot of the same kinds of education-y people, right? Maybe some learning sciences, maybe it's different leaders or thought leaders or all of that stuff in an education world. I've quite intentionally, but again, partly because my questions have gone that way, started trying to bring in other voices who are not generally in educational conversations. People like Vanessa Andriotti or Nora Bateson, or, you know, because it's about our young people, you know, ultimately it's not about a technocratic education system, it's about how do we raise young people in this crazy time. And so slightly intentionally trying to invite into the conversation that, you know, the broader, more diverse voices in that regard has been an important kind of conscious choice, I suppose. And hopefully, yeah, I mean, I don't get a ton of feedback about whether that's working, but I do, you know, it does, it definitely sparks conversations that I think are important to be having and that seem to be resonating with people who end up engaging in either LinkedIn exchanges or general kind of conversational feedback after episodes go live. So yeah, Natalie, I'll pass it to you.

I mean, I think similarly to you all, I think there's something which initiates our quest to want to have meaningful conversations with other people. And I think podcasts when conducted with care and a quality of attention where we look for people with whom there is going to be something perhaps a bit deeper that we can speak to. I think that seems to be a common thread for us all, and I certainly resonate with that. And I think unlike you guys who seem to do it, I think every week, for me, this kind of seasonal approach has meant that actually when it comes to the scope, because there are kind of three main lenses, it makes it easier to respond to some of the themes that come up within specific times. So for instance, in the last 2 years, obviously AI is a massive theme and a lot of the questions and narratives that dominate that kind of terrain is around things like, for example, efficiency and optimization. And for me, that's quite a— it's almost a secondary question. I think the primary question always is, what is it to be alive in the world and how can we live in such a way that support the flourishing of life and things that universally we can say seem to be values that most communities through time have held. So the ability to connect with other people in a meaningful way, to be embedded in community and culture, the community of people, of animals, of trees, place, to live in a way that we are able to explore who we might become and that being a more dynamic exploration. And so I think The questions that connect to that on the surface might shift. So you might say, okay, well, how does AI connect with that? Or how do some of the risks and the rewards, or if we're talking about alternative ecological models for farming, let's say, like it doesn't really matter the lens. I think these are different questions that if you go upstream, the primary question has remained the same. And then audiences, I don't really think too much about the audience because I'm in the art world, I'm in the music world, I'm in the business world, I'm in the tech world. If I thought about the audience, I'd be paralyzed. So I just do what I think is interesting. And hopefully bring a quality of spaciousness to the guests so they can follow their curiosity. I think that's really important for me at least, is to kind of ask the questions and get out the way. And then the feedback tends to be in person at conferences and events and saying, "I heard you speak about this and I hadn't heard about this person and now I'm connected with someone that otherwise I wouldn't have encountered." So I think there's something around having a plurality of disciplines present that it's not just one key focus that seems to be enriching for me and then hopefully by extent. And if people aren't interested, they'll go to another podcast that's more aligned. That's fine. And I think the other thing has been to realize we don't have to solve the big problem. You don't have to be all things to all people. Be true about what you are moved by and then be as honest as possible in your search for the people who have something to say that you might find intriguing, that might open your aperture a bit more. And I think that as a guiding principle has been really lovely.

Yeah, I really love that. I think initially I think I had this, I lived in the illusion that I was, I didn't have that much of a perspective and I was trying to be very, very much a generalist and I was trying to sort of whatever. But then as it's progressed, I've, I'm trying to bring more of me into the conversation, kind of finding that it's in that meeting where something happens and very much taking that sort of regenerative business point of view where, I mean, Kara Sanford, she talks about sort of this notion of unfolding the potential of like, can you see the essence of the person and unfolding their potential?, you know, through whichever topic you're looking at. So, so taking a, a view where I, I don't have to push an agenda. I'll, I'll happily go along with discovery that they're on and see what are the threads that I can weave together for them because I have that wider lens. So it, it becomes in a way, I guess it becomes a political project, but it's, it's very much sort of a personal political project of filtering it through my cognition and finding that when we have those sort of mutual discoveries of like, I'll discover something, I get really excited about it., and the guests would be like, oh, I didn't, I hadn't really, you know, those are the conversations that spark something. There's a, there's a transmission there that's happening and it seems to be way beyond the content somehow. And so I think that's also the point. I thought it was about what we were saying, but I think it's more about the type of conversation that we're having and, and the type of meeting that we can create in that space. And there's something that remains of like a residue of that relationality that, you know, becomes really important because it's, it's a willingness to meet someone. So I don't think, like for me as well, I don't index so much on the feedback. The feedback is usually given in person one way or another, but it's become some of the positive sort of the cheers along the way has kind of increased my courage to kind of step in more as a self and like have a point of view, you know, and also own the fact that like actually what I'm oriented towards and what I'm really curious about is business. And so I'm like, how can we create, how can we transform this business this crazy thing that's terraformed our planet and our minds and all of it into something that like creates futures that we want, whatever that may mean, you know? And so filtering through that question and like bringing more of myself, there's a directionality that occurs, but it's been more driven by staying true to that curiosity that I think we're all one way or another speaking to and following that.

So thinking on systemic change then, and I heard earlier someone was saying, I can't remember, I think Amit, it might have been you talking about not necessarily having, like wanting to solve it all. And there's that urgency that can come, that sense of, oh my God, we're royally fucked. How do we do something about it now? Because we don't have any time. And the sense that I remember there's quite a famous quote by Thich Nhat Hanh who says, don't just do something, sit there. And this kind of, that it's such a poignant, such an urgent moment that we need to meet it with rootedness and hopefully compassion, spaciousness, wisdom, and also understand that it is urgent and we can't just sit on our asses not doing anything. So again, this kind of meeting of the paradox and being somehow able to be with that in a way that's not paralyzing. But I'm curious for each of you, what are you noticing in terms of perhaps where you started off, if you had an assumption of, oh, I'm gonna fix it like this, or approach it like this. Amanda, I remember you mentioned in this conversation this idea of we need to get people connected to the web of life so we can ask, what do you want from me? Like more generally, are you seeing each of you a sense of shift from we need to solve the whole thing to something else? And if there is a something else that is making changes that seem to be reducing suffering and increasing health and vitality, or however you might frame it as well, because that's We have different frames. I wonder what those might be. And maybe Tim, I jump to you and then we pass it along.

No, it's— thank you. It's a great question because as Amit, you were talking, the paradox that I often feel and think about is that we are sitting here talking about in these spaces, right? And so Amit, your reflection that the kind of quality of the conversation is actually part of what is being communicated, like a really significant part of what is being communicated. I absolutely love that because I think to kind of maybe segue into your question, Natalie, there is a, I feel like people are feeling the exhaustion of just the talking about, or, you know, the smart expert who comes on and proclaims to have all the answers, right? And, you know, not, not everywhere, but I definitely feel that more people that I interact with are feeling the limits of that approach. It's nothing kind of new or insightful in what I'm saying, but just the noticing that more people are feeling that as a felt sense of it's not about what we say, it's not about what we write, or, you know, it's— there's something else going on that we have to somehow lean into, trust, embody, be, relate with. There is this other thing, and we, we then struggle for how to talk about that. And so, you know, things like, you know, I've been doing loads of episodes on things like embodied ways of knowing, all of the stuff in cognitive science, like 4E cognitive science, because there's a language there that's arriving to talk about learning in a way that is more of these other things that aren't just about the words we say and, you know, the propositional tyranny that John Vervaeke talks about. So there's that, I think is something that people are, and myself included, wrestling with in terms of, yeah, how do we talk about that? But actually more importantly, how do we be that or enact that in a way that actually makes a difference, not just in the conversations we're having, but also in, you know, in the schools and in the playgrounds and in the workplaces and then trusting that that's enough. Something about trusting that that's enough, because I think the old habits die hard in terms of if we haven't articulated it explicitly in a really smart proposition and then written a really smart, you know, briefing paper about it, then it doesn't exist. And it's like, it fucking does exist, right? It really, like, it is there and we just have to really trust that it's happening. I don't know, there's something around that that I definitely feel like I'm noticing.

Yes, because we started with Nathalie's original question and then you just brought up a whole bunch of stuff.

Sorry about that.

No, no, this is good. I think I know with my head that the knowledge deficit model has been exploded for a very long time, which is to say it is not that if people understood what I understand, they would behave differently. It's that we need our value system to shift. And that's not a knowing thing. This is, as Tim's saying, I think there's, I think I am increasingly, and you'd think I've been teaching shamanic work for over two decades and I really ought to know this in the marrow of my bones, but it still arises as a new knowing periodically, or perhaps a new depth of knowing the extent to which, take no harm, don't do something, be. What is it I am being? What is the quality that I am bringing in every moment to every conversation? Am I grounded? Am I connected to the web of life? Because that changes. The quality of the conversation and that, that quality. We could be reciting nursery rhymes and if we did it in a way that was grounded and connected and authentic, the people listening would feel grounded and authentic and connected. We all know, those of us who sit in circle, which I'm guessing is all of us here, you only need one person truly grounded in a circle to ground the circle. You only need one person truly ungrounded in a circle to wobble the circle. But if you've got enough of the grounding, the grounding happens. And I am evolving a belief, which I recognize is a belief, it's also a hope, that there will be a critical mass of humanity that is capable of grounding, of genuinely connecting to all parts of themselves and then to other people and then to the web of life. And I think one of the things that I have understood over the time of the podcast is that that iteration— we need to do the inner work first. We can't connect with other people until we've somehow addressed what Dick Schwartz says. Almost all of us, almost all of the time, are walking around in a state of internal civil war. If we can't at least declare an inner truce, we cannot engage with other people authentically because the parts of us inside that are engaged in the war are busy taking over our system and it just can't happen. And we can't connect to the web of life in the way that I genuinely think is the only way forward if our parts are in rebellion and hijacking our system. And so how do we explore that in other contexts of farming, of business, of education, of technology, of whatever, within a frame of being what we need to be while knowing that we're still swimming in the ocean that is the giant vampire squid with its tentacles wrapped around the face of humanity. That constant paradox of we're in a system that is utterly not fit for function. And yet we need to build something new within it. That feels to me the paradox that we need to embody and make explicit and help people to navigate. So Amit, as I'm passing to you, I have a question of— and this is for all of us, so let's keep this moving around. I had an email recently from someone who said, everything you say is great and I get it, but I am standing to be a Green councillor. I don't know if they got there. And I go door to door with people who can't feed their kids and heat their house. And all of this system stuff is completely not part of their reality. And I, me, now I'm speaking for me. We had people come around the farm who are from a local government body and definitely get it, definitely at some level understand the nature of systems change, understand regenerative farming, understand the need to bring people back to the land. And I was talking about the fact that we're going to have a food crisis by the winter, and I was talking to people whose eyes went suddenly blank. And, you know, the AMOC is switching off and people were looking confused. I think, my goodness, I forget the extent to which I exist in a very rarefied atmosphere. And even people that I think are totally on board are still basically functioning in a world that they think is going to continue the way it always has. They just need to tweak the margins a little bit. So my question, Amit, all of the other questions that we started with in Natalie, but also then adding on to that, how do we ground this for people? In a way that begins to make you feel real and actionable? Over to you.

A small question. Yeah. It's interesting because to me, there's a nice little circle here to your question of like from Natalie, what you said, like, do we need to solve the whole thing at once? And to me, what I'm discovering is that the solving is different. I thought that it was very conceptual and like, oh, you know, we just map the thing, then we know, like there's this constant, all of these practices that we do to take ourselves out of You know, I mean, Robert Keegan talked— I took like an Immunity to Change facilitator course like a million years ago, and he said like, oh, it's really important to have the subject-object shift. And I was like, that's great. You know, it's really useful to be able to look at your emotions as an object, like, oh, this is anger. What does this anger want?

Yada yada yada.

And I was like, it's really interesting, but what's the object-subject shift? Like, how does the thing shift back then? You know, and there was silence. And so I think it's really interesting, like how we think about that and in relationship to what you were bringing then, there's so many ways that our minds play tricks on us. You know, I'm reading this book right now called How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn, and it's a wonderful book. But he talks about this notion of the people. It's an anthropological study, and he's working with tribes in Ecuador. And he talks about there's this notion of like the always already. You were always already this thing. You were always already. And so I think it's an illusion to say that there is such a thing as people not understanding the system. Like if your positionality in the system puts you in a place where you need to feed your kids, you know, that's, then all of the complexities of the system are shown there. Like that's what I hear when Nora Bateson says like, don't do the 17, you know, colored boxes. Look at the nursing mother. That's where you have the SDGs. Like if you can, and if you can't see all those threads and all those entities, then practice your seeing. You don't necessarily need to do different. Like all of this stuff is always already here. So there's something about that, the sequencing of things that we somehow think that we do so that we can be. And somehow the world that I'm touching and continuously touching more and more, that seems to permeate me is that I am so I can do. The doing is, and so this notion of like, I need to do the inner first. Yeah, maybe, but, but there's also a way that I can orient towards this project as a fundamental project of learning. Like, the project of living is a project of learning. And then I'll just learn wherever I can learn, wherever my attention, wherever I have enough space left in my attention that I can actually learn, like meet the other in a way, like meet that thing which I don't know yet. You know, and that sometimes that is meeting a person that's going through hardship, or sometimes that's like sitting with grief. Sometimes that is like, oh shit, the consultancy client that we had signed up that was going to actually feed my family for this entire spring just went away. And now what do we do? Like we actually need to be strategic about how we, you know, like I've been in all of those situations in parallel to the podcast explorations, you know, and then I'm like, is it irresponsible for me to have these podcasts, like indulge myself in these podcast explorations where I should be creating value in other places that actually pay or that actually like contribute? And at the same time, I come back to no, because that moment, that hour, that whatever of creating that space for me, for me, it looks like a podcast, right? Is different. So there's, there's something about the always already. There's something about sort of in one way, I think we're really responsible to ground it and to focus on the action. I tend to talk more and more to practitioners, but I also think that if we can just guide conversations back to experience, then that quality of, of the doingness, you know, and the doing and the being sort of being intermingled kind of comes through. And then you have that transition and it's not about something else than your life. Like the living happens all of the time. If you orient towards it. And actually, you know, I think a lot of the PPMs in the air and the AMOCs and like the whatever, all of these collapsing cascading things, they're more abstract than, you know, I escape into those. And I think if people only knew that, and then I see practitioners in my local community that lean into the municipal politics or like do the thing at school or like whatever. I mean, even in their unawareness, quote unquote, like using air quotes here, maybe they're more in touch with it than I am. You know, it's like, it's like that nestedness is there. So, so there's some way that I think it's an illusion that we can't not solve the whole thing at once, always. But it's more like, if we're doing something, we're already doing it. And so that notion of like sitting with it and being with it, that seems so incredibly important. And then just shifting that seeing. And then my belief, my faith is that whatever is happening, all of the wrongness that's happening is like it's part of it, you know? And then at the core of that, I think all of it, sometimes, you know, it comes back to that trivial thing. It's like, oh, it's the notion of, it's the illusion of separation. Like that's where we are at. Like it's as if I am a separate individual in this thing, you know? I'm, I'm not, I have a certain vantage point, but I'm part of a whole. And so these things fold into each other. They become very floaty, very subtle, or like abstract or big. But I think that like how I can show up at my wife's father's funeral, which was on Friday, I know, and how I can be with her through that journey. And as she's blaming herself and not blaming herself and has grief and has not grief, and like, that's the most important indication of like where I'm at and how I can, can hold the whole thing. So it's, I don't know, I, I've had this experience of like through the conversations on the podcast discovering my cosmology. And it's so interesting to find out that you act and feel the way that you said you wanted to act and feel. You're like, oh wow, it's like kind of happening right now. And then there are expressions still to be made. Like there's more alignment that I could make that I can articulate or like show up as that in, in different ways. So that's a really, really messy answer, I know, but sometimes it gets like that. So Natalie, can you sort it around for us?

I mean, I thought that was a very beautiful—

Yeah, me too.

And heartfelt an eloquent, constellated answer for something which is at once both very simple and phenomenally complex as life is. And I think one of the things that I drew and heard in what you described is that it's who we are and how we are is a reflection of everything that is and how everything is unfolding all the time already in all directions. And so that this non-separation, the interbeing, the quality of recognition of every moment is a moment almost like with a podcast to practice quality of attention and presence and exploration. And another thing I heard in what you just said was around, and correct me if I've misunderstood, but towards the end, intention. So you discovered as you've gone along that you're becoming the person that you were hoping to become. So there's also this kind of collective discovery. And I think one of the things that I find really very beautiful that actually all of you have touched on is this kind of, this quality of meeting that we have when we engage in these conversations with people. And I've definitely noticed times when I've been frantic between meetings, you know, because real life, real life, the stresses of a biological life that needs to be sustained through an economic model of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It comes in, it's in the mix, right? It's not separate. And yet sometimes it interferes with perhaps that more kind of spacious, juicy kind of— for me, it feels like an energetic vortex and I'm in the other person's world and I'm going into their imaginal space and even just as a ritual of coming back home to oneself through the conversation with another, I think is also very powerful. So cultivating a practice of listening that enables you to kind of dance from these different points of view is really, really a powerful thing. And I think there's one other thing which is around, it was kind of like almost implied in your, in the way that you talked about this, but the capacity to respond to the moment. You talked about your wife's Grief and not grief and the things that these things that we expect often, you've lost someone that you love, it's obviously the next thing is going to be grief, but to be able to respond to the moment as it arises and not have to expect it to take a certain shape. And the same thing with conversation, the same thing with Manda, you're mentioning when these people come and on one level they get it, but then they don't know anything about the Amok because maybe it's just too overwhelming. Maybe they need that grounded circle. Maybe they need something in which to contain the grief so that it can then move and seed ground to something else. And then there's something else and there's something else. Yeah, I think those are, I mean, there's many more reflections, but I don't want to take up too much time, but I found it very touching what you shared. Thank you. Tim, go for it.

Thank you. Yeah, I completely agree. The thing that I wanted to go back to maybe is, was Amanda, in your question, I heard something that sparked a memory of— so in 2022, I was in Chicago for the work that I do outside of the podcast, which is something called Festival of Hope with IB. And we were with John Viveki in person in a meeting room in this hotel with Olli Pekka Heinonen, who's the Director General of IB. Fascinating stuff. I've been listening to John Viveki's stuff for a while before that, all very fascinating. And then I'd organized for 2 amazing young women to come in who were IB students to interview him. So these were people from the South Side of Chicago living in quite challenging circumstances from a background very different to John as a kind of white Canadian coming in talking about wisdom and all of this stuff that, you know, I'd been listening to podcasts and, oh, isn't this interesting? And they were just brilliantly articulate and amazing, but totally nonplussed by what he was saying. They'd done a bit of research prior to the conversation. So we kind of almost set up a little podcast vibe in the room, right? And there was a real mismatch of the tone and the, he was talking about, you know, embodying wisdom practices and the ecology of practices and how this would be good and how this is useful for systems change and how it's useful for the kind of expanding consciousness of the world, you know, whatever language he was choosing to use. And they were just like, you know, this bears zero connection to my lived reality of looking after my parents, you know, my brother with learning difficulties, my life, my challenges, doing the laundry, going to school, you know, all of these just very real, very practical considerations that of course we all are all part of in different ways, but with varying amounts of privilege in that. And it was just a really interesting reminder to me, and I often have it, of how heady some of this kind of language and the conversations even that we're having now can become. And where are the people who are, you know, living a lot of the challenges that perhaps the four of us are somewhat shielded from in our own privilege? You know, there's just a whole bunch of, of tensions there for me in terms of how We, you know, to your point, Amit, are we kind of somehow being self-indulgent sitting around talking about in all these smart ways about systems change? Or is there a real important role for that sensemaking? You know, genuine questions I have that I feel, you know, that are kind of somewhat uncomfortable, but I think important.

Yes, I have big thoughts about this, trying to get it coherent. It seems to me there are two separate things. We can help people to navigate a system that is not fit for purpose in a way that is less damaging and/or we can help to create the tipping point at which the system emerges into a new system. I don't know that I have the capacity to do both. If anyone does have the capacity to do both, that's great. And Amit may be right that everything kind of inter-is and that doing one helps the other. And I'm watching politicians like Zak Polanski. I'm watching over here the former trader who's basically on the tax the rich Gary Stevenson. They are definitely addressing the existing system. Not one of them is suggesting systems change, but they are addressing this existing system in useful ways. And there are ways to make the system less unfit for purpose. But I haven't seen— and they are iterations towards where we need to go. I have no doubt about that. But we could, any of us, I think, and I talked to some people from the UN recently and they are really heartfelt, wonderful people and they are completely drowning in trying to make the system less unequal. But the system is designed to be unequal. It's— you're constantly going to be in this Sisyphean challenge of pushing a very large boulder uphill against a very, very powerful downhill sweep. And my question then, for me, for all of us, is if we put all our energy into that, if I watch people burning out trying to make the system less unequal, is there a way to both make the system less unequal By shifting how people see the system, we end up with these very long arguments online of do we tax the rich, don't we tax the rich? That's a really relatively clean one that doesn't involve kind of toxic tribalism. But people burn huge amounts of time and energy discussing that when the whole monetary system needs to shift. The concept of taxation needs not to be there. I talk to people about, they're talking about we need to guarantee jobs. Actually, no, I think in the system that really works, there are no jobs. Why are you guaranteeing jobs? That's— I mean, yes, if you want to, but that's not the steps that I would be taking. And I think there's a really interesting paradox there, and I would be really interested in how the rest of you navigate it.

When I think about that, like about what our responsibilities might be given the privilege that we have, the capacities that we have, the skills that we have that might not be apparent to us as skills because they might come naturally. Until someone else says, actually, this is something that you're really good at, maybe focus there. I think this is also like looking at our own psychological blind spots for good and bad. I think that there is something about accepting that even the things that we think are going to work may yield results that are counterproductive. It's kind of like that Buddhist story of, you know, the couple have a child, the neighbor comes over and says, oh, how exciting, you had a child, that's great. Then there's a winter, they find it really hard to feed the child. They managed to get through the winter. The child then grows up a little, breaks his leg. The neighbor comes over and says, "Oh, it's terrible that you broke your leg. I'm so sorry," says the parents, "My condolences." They says, "Maybe, maybe not, we'll see." And then years later, he's 18, the army come to conscript all the young men. The child, now an adult with a broken leg, isn't conscripted because he's got a broken leg that never healed properly. The neighbor comes over and says, "Isn't that so lucky? Maybe, maybe not." So I think there's something about the fact that we cannot know, and it's really difficult having been trained in a culture where you are rewarded for knowing the correct answer with specific exam grades and punishments trained on negative outcomes or what have you, it's really hard emotionally to be okay with that. And it's something that I notice elicits a lot of discomfort in me. So there's one aspect which is I may not know, even if I think that this is gonna work, it might result in something that doesn't work. Okay, so what then? Okay, well, what then? I have to be able to be flexible enough to be tuned in to acknowledge if this is causing suffering in ways that I hadn't foreseen, to be open to other people's compassionate but robust critiques. And then there's something else around knowing that actually maybe it's a constellation of things that may work, that may cause something else to happen. So for instance, with the taxing wealth, not work, maybe that's a powerful, useful domino in ways we might not imagine that give people a sense of agency to be able to intervene in an economic and political system that they had no contact with before. And look, it's one of us, quote unquote, up there who does have a voice and has achieved and is now saying. So there's all of these elements that I think can be quite complex to tease apart. And I think again, back to this kind of paradox of being and doing, there is something in the doing locally and making visible different nodes on the network like this conversation, which is Four Ways, which is really important because then the burden of solving everything or even our little thing is held by a wider net and fabric of people with good intentions, committed to learn, committed to reducing harm, committed to finding pathways through that will need to be adapted, will need to be dynamic like life is, like an ecology is, and that some rhythm will find itself and remake itself as we go along. And so I think there are certain qualities that underpin the ways that we approach change-making that are perhaps more important as the grounding conditions from which solutions might emerge, knowing that the solutions aren't in themselves going to be static and then that's it, it's done, it's forever. So I don't know, that's where I land on that. And so I think there are certain things to be practical that make a huge difference. So for instance, one is how do you create conditions within which people can somehow accept and be with paradox? It could be grief and longing and beauty all at the same time. How do we enlarge ourselves in a way that doesn't collapse us because it's so overwhelming to our entire system, spiritual, emotional, physiological system. And sometimes it can be done in really unexpected places. Like I tried this last year and I really didn't know if it would work. I mean, I hoped and trusted that it would work, but it could have been an absolute shit show. And I don't know, Amanda, if I told you this one already, but I was in a big event for business people. It was the World Business Forum in Madrid, and there were 1,300 business people there that paid a lot of money to be there. And there was, Adam Grant and there was Brené Brown and, you know, these titans of psycho— and I was like, okay. And I'd had several people that I'm familiar with who'd said, look, you know, you do creative things, maybe integrate them a little bit. I was like, okay, we'll try it. So I thought, go big or go home because otherwise you just don't jump off the cliff. And if you don't jump, you don't realize you have wings, you never fly, and then what's the point? So anyway, and I'd done quite a lot of shamanic practice on this and I realized this was the moment. This is the view I get if I don't try it and this is the view I get if I do. And I was like, I have to try. 'Cause you never know what happens, right? Even if it's just one person in the 1,300. So I give this talk on AI and technology and meaning and agency and business and society. And then I talk about what it means to dare to be present, that that's the biggest risk in some ways that we can take when we are constantly abstracting ourselves and trying to solve for efficiency and productivity and optimization. So I get this room of people to sing this round. It's just 4 notes repeated underneath. For this song that I wrote, which is a ceremonial song that's called The People's Song that is about calling to all the different beings in the world, like plants and trees and rocks and stuff. So they're singing under this in this fucking massive business conference. And I start singing completely unaccompanied with my little tuning fork on stage. I kid you not, the pause after this talk was richer than anything I could have said in the whole of those 45 minutes. And it wasn't because I was singing at them, It's because 1,300 people were engaged in this moment of feeling, daring in an arid context that was just trying to keep them cerebral. So we can do— so like, there was that. And then the number of emails I got, in-person conversations, mostly with women, and then emails from men. And the thing that came out was not, "Oh, it was nice to hear you sing," or, "Oh, it was nice." It was, "I felt so alone and hearing all of these voices around me singing at the same time in this context." made me feel a quality of hope that I haven't had in years. And so it's each other. It's like, how do we kind of get yourself out the way? Do your— it doesn't have to be perfect singing. It wasn't my perfect singing, but things like this.

I love it. It's so amazing. And what a— the stuff that sparks for me that really pops is like Amanda, you said, trying to make the the people that are burning out trying to make that, and, and just comparing that through the energy of, I've decided I'm going to do it, let's sing it, and then invite the participation, and then have the courage to also stand on top of that, right? And like offer more, right? You're also taking space, you're offering participation but also directing that energetic flow towards something else. So that, I mean, that's, that's just amazing. Other things that popped out, I think it's like in this life, in this systemic change, like, I mean, there are, when we podcast, I think we deal in the, in language, right? Like we're kind of stuck in a sort of a logocentric hell, you know, there's a way for us to be that, but unless we make it about something more, unless we allow the something more to communicate through what we're saying. And so, I mean, the singing is a perfect example because it's super tangible, right? But I think it's there. That's the thing we talk about when we talk about the quality of the conversation and like the actual meeting and the actual leaning into someone. Else, and like with a willingness and a longing to really understand or like to unfold them or to, in some cases, when you speak to people that are not as used to speaking, maybe help them articulate something, you know, or contextualize it in a different way than they were able to see themselves. And then it opens up. And that was another thing that you said, Natalie, like the opening up, like the being with, like the staying with points back to the Thich Nhat Hanh thing of like, just sit, you know, like times are urgent, slow down. But being with is very different than trying, you know, and also like meeting a moment where it's at. Like I do the one practice that helps me the most. I go, I've been doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu for like a couple of, you know, it's very tech bro-y of me in a way. But for me, Brazilian jiu-jitsu has this like quality where if I walk in with a predetermined idea of what I need to do, I'm lost, you know.. And so many times, because I still kind of suck, you know, I find myself in positions where I really don't want to be. And there's a way that I can kind of fold then and be like, I don't want to be here, so I stop. And then for sure I get choked out. Or I can do moves that seem inconsequential. So like to that point of like things scaffold, things aggregate, I can make like micro movements. And instead of like orienting towards winning, I can just be really annoying for a while. But then I can also tell myself, if I tell myself I can't win, then for sure I can't win. But if I say, you know, I'll just do this and see, and then we'll see. So that notion of like, oh, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. You know, it like all of a sudden, this string of movements, nobody could tell how that really kind of came together. But all of a sudden I'm like, I'm on his back or like her back. And I'm like, I'm trying to choke them out, you know? And so, but there is something that happens when you lean into that unexpectedness and see like, and start orienting towards like what's possible. And then I think the doing is really important because what's possible in a mind realm that doesn't touch matter, anything's possible. So you can spend your time up in the mind realm spinning, but if you don't really meet someone, if you're not really willing to take that consequence, you know, then what? And yeah, I really, really agree. We should, we should start wrapping up probably. In that spirit, I'll say something like, I somehow think that if I, I mean, a lot of people in our, like a lot of people, but around our spaces, they've talked about, Vivek is one of those, but like we've talked about this notion of a new church. And I've been thinking about like, why, how come, why, what's that? You know? And, and what I've kind of deduced from it, so it's like my projection interpretation of it, it's like there's, there is sort of a longing for devotion or faith or like something that, like a legibility to be irrational for a moment or something like that. That, that's sort of what, what church, like it becomes about something that you don't have to fully explain all the way out. Like you don't have to fulfill the, the logical conclusions and like put all your ducks in a row and kind of get to that. And I perceive for myself that one of the biggest shifts that have come from all this, like, talking to people that are supposed to know what they're doing is that, like, actually nobody really knows. And since nobody really knows, if I take the perspective that I have faith that somehow all of this stuff that I am able to see and perceive is gonna move me, and part of that is gonna be sort of the anger and the, like, all of that stuff. And part of that is also going to be like the really subtle that I disregard, like how I'm able to meet my kid or like how, you know, all those things that are like, oh, they're not about like how we talk to each other at the parental council at the school, like those things. If all of that feeds into this loop of something shifting, because it's inevitably shifting because life is like shifts, like it's constantly shifting. If I have faith that it's all part of it, it just gives me so much more capacity to quote unquote, do the work, or like the stuff that I perceive to be really important. So I might stop there. Like, that'd be my final note, and I'll hand to you, Amanda.

There is so much. What I just wrote in the chat that our listeners can't hear is I want to do this again because there's so much. It feels like we're just scratching the surfaces of the potential of where we could be going with the unpicking of this. And it blends what I'm hearing from Amit, what I'm hearing from everybody, and Natalie, that you have told me that before, but it so moving, is that if we give people a chance to be authentic, and if we give them a chance to connect at an energetic level that is embodied and heartfelt and out of our heads, that connection can and will happen, and people will recognize that it's what they're yearning for. And how do we offer that at scale and in time is my big question, because up to a point, if hadn't done the head-mind talking stuff first, they might not have been as receptive. You just walked on stage and said, okay, kids, we're going to sing. I suspect their heads would have gotten in the way. But you fed their heads and then you fed their body-mind and their heart-mind. And our culture, exactly as you said, we're domesticated into head-mind and ignore body-mind and heart-mind until they're actually failing. And I want— how do we— part of, I think, what Amit was saying, we need a new spiritual reality. And for me, that spiritual reality is an actual felt sense connection to the web of life that is real, so that we can lean into that and know that we are part of this hyper-complex system that has agency and has an interbeingness that what we know is such a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of it that we kind of recognize our own inner Dunning-Kruger effect of the unknown unknowns are so big that I may as well give up trying to know stuff. And if we can get to that and just ask, "What do you need of me?" and respond, then the world is a different place. And it feels to me that in our own ways, that's what we're doing. And that's what we offer people is the understanding that that place exists. And our concept of religion is highly toxic and not really what we need, but that is a way that we can connect. So passing to Tim and then I guess to Natalie as we're heading towards the top of the hour. Thank you, Tim, for making this happen.

No, no, thank you all. This is just absolutely amazing. And I just, I mean, specifically Natalie, I wanted to thank you for bringing that in because for me personally, I'm not so big on the choking and the jiu-jitsu stuff, Amit. I'm much bigger on the singing. I mean, that's the thing, that is the thing I do to get out of my own head, actually, with a bit of beer on the side, but just some music every week. And I was actually just listening yesterday to a few different speakers from different traditions, Christian, Indigenous, Buddhist, and a big part of what was happening there was also singing. And I've, Manda, I've heard you say you don't like music, which I just don't fundamentally understand, but it's just like such a deep language for me. So thank you for saying that, Natalie. I wish I would've been in the room and I think absolutely we should do more of that because I think it does that thing that I was talking about earlier about the paradox of just talking like we are and actually being able to have a space where we are connecting, as you said, Amanda, energetically in a way that is, yeah, different to the way that we normally do. But also, sorry, making loads of connections now, Amit, to your point, there are so many traditions where that stuff does happen and have ancient practices around exactly those things. And that's a big question for me now. It's like, How do we remember some of those? Because I don't, I don't think creating new ones makes sense. It's a strange, I don't know, that this is like for part 2, because there's something deep in the ancient traditions that I think there's a wisdom there that, and singing was a big part of that as an example. So yeah, bookmarking for part 2, Amanda, on creating new or going back to the ancient. But, but thank you. This has just been so fun and, and beautiful. But Natalie, to take it home.

Well, first of all, thank you for this beautiful conversation. It's been really enriching. I think some of the things that we wish we could do at scale are some of the simplest and the most portable. So for instance, I've noticed— I'll give an example. I don't think he was doing it for this reason, but before, when I was living just up the road in Gràcia in Barcelona, at 4 or 5 in the morning, there would be a guy who would come collect the rubbish in his electric vehicle and the roads would be completely empty. And my window would be open and I would hear him singing flamenco just like that on his rounds once a week or twice a week. I would hear him singing at the top of his lungs flamenco, and it was actually very beautiful and it would wake me up. And I've since moved, and now at 4 or 5 in the morning, I hear this resident blackbird who sits at the top of one of the buildings. And because of all of the different walls, his voice— it's a male blackbird— bounces off. And there is something about that of just waking up into music of something which is so portable that if you are able to make sound with your voice or make sound with your body, if your voice isn't something that you can make sound of, these moments of connection, they're available to us in every moment. And I think it doesn't have to be massive. I've noticed that often the power to really deeply connect into a much deeper, bigger sensation of belonging comes in the very intimate. So I don't think we necessarily have to solve at scale. We have to solve with richness. And then that can be at scale and it can be local. And I'm very curious about what happens when we find ways to do that. And thinking about kind of, there's the aspect of the religious, but also the sacred. There are very simple things like, you know, you get anyone around a fire, under the stars, with or without whiskey and marshmallows. I mean, I personally quite like a whiskey and a guitar and magic happens. It doesn't need to be complex. The recipe is in many instances, really fucking simple. Get people around the fire under a night sky and be together and someone sing, tell a story, share a moment. So I think there are many things that we don't need to look far afield or necessarily borrow from far-flung traditions because we share so much of these same seeds that grow into different plants. But the root and the seeds often are very similar in character. So yeah, back to you. Thank you for this gorgeous—

Amazing.

Conversation.

That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. 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.