This week's guest is a friend of the podcast, Dr Gail Bradbrook. Best known for her role in co-founding Extinction Rebellion, Gail is one of our nation's (and our world's) deepest thinkers on radical change: what will it take to shift the juggernaut of predatory capitalism from the orgy of extraction, consumption and destruction that has brought us to the edge of crisis, and instead turn it towards a celebration of life in all its forms?
Gail is also a leading beacon of practical activism - how can we bring the collective conversation to bear on the existential crises of our time?
In our conversation, Gail honours the teachers that have helped her to find balance and insight, and to find practical, clear-eyed hope amidst all the potential for despair. We go on to explore her work in BCAN (see below) and, particularly, to explore the nature of horizontal organising. In a world where half the (western) population is wedded to the old hierarchical, patriarchal structures of top-down dominance, what happens in the other half when we experiment with other, less culturally familiar ways of being? Extinction Rebellion was one of the biggest, and most public expressions of horizontal organising in the modern contemporary world. A great deal of theory was put into practice and the results were often visible in newspaper headlines. Recorded a mere handful of days after the 'We Quit" press release from XR, we look at some of the lessons learned, and how we might do things differently next time.
BIO:
Dr Gail Bradbrook has been researching, planning, and training for mass civil disobedience since 2010 and is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion (XR). Since its launch in October 2018, XR has spread around the world so that now, there are more than 1150 XR groups in 75 countries.
Gail has trained in molecular biophysics, and her talk on the science of the ecological crisis, the psychology of active participation, and the need for civil disobedience has gone viral and been inspired many to join XR. She is from Yorkshire, the mother of two boys, the daughter of a coal miner, and was named by GQ as one of the top 50 influencers in the UK, and honoured in the 2020 Women’s Hour Power list for her part in instigating a rebellion against the British Government.
More recently, she is one of the cofounders of the Be the Change Affinity Network of XR activists exploring ways to shift our cultural rigidity into something regenerative and distributive by design.
Gail is a genuine visionary leader - one of one of the deepest, most enlightened thinkers we know; living at the leading edge of change and exploring radical answers to the questions of our time. She's also deeply spiritual and emotionally thoughtful, and it's always an enormous joy to explore with her the big questions of our time: what are we here for and how can we shift the entire nature of our culture in practical ways?
TED Talk - My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor https://youtu.be/UyyjU8fzEYU
Gail's Telegram link: https://t.me/+i4zNgXH_oDc4YjM0
Amanita Dreamer https://www.amanitadreamer.net/
Seed Sistas - https://seedsistas.co.uk/
3 Horizons model - https://www.boardofinnovation.com/blog/what-is-the-3-horizons-model-how-can-you-use-it/
Netflix How To Change Your Mind - https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80229847
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