Seeing Round Corners: Upgrading Democracy with Suzette Masters and Dr John Izzo

If we ever had a genuine democracy (and I would argue we never have) then it is clearly disintegrating now, along with the entire system with which it was entwined.  Everyone agrees we need something new, what we don't necessarily agree on across the board is the design of this new thing.  This week's guests are two people who spend their lives imagining how things might be different, particularly in the US, where even the pretence of democracy has been abandoned. Dr John Izzo is a friend of the podcast. Once an ordained Minister in a Presbyterian Church, he’s now a bestselling author, speaker, and thought leader focused on social responsibility and intergenerational integration. He’s a a Distinguished Fellow at The Stimson Center in Washington DC, and a Board Member of the Elders Action Network and the Elders Climate Action group. Most notably in terms of what we're talking about here, he's co-host of The Way Forward Regenerative Conversations Podcast on which I heard him speaking to our other guest, Suzette Brooks Masters.  Suzette describes herself as a sometime Cassandra who sees around the corner; a serial social entrepreneur, and a thought leader and strategist in the fields of democracy, governance and futures.She has degrees in Economics from Amherst College and Cambridge University, and a Law degree from Harvard. She has spent much of her working life as a strategist working on immigration, inclusion and democracy. She is currently Senior Fellow and Director of Democracy Innovation at the Democracy Funders Network and Co-Founder of the Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance.  So listen in for a 3-way conversation on the nature of power, community and change as we move into the new year. John on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjohnizzo/John's showreel: https://vimeo.com/248012255?fl=pl&fe=vlJohn's website: www.drjohnizzo.comJohn's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1adiRng-Ab3d3Wos9pFjAA The Way Forward Regenerative Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-way-forward-regenerative-conversations/id1651941803Episode with Suzette: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-way-forward-regenerative-conversations/id1651941803?i=1000704364583The Way Forward on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@RegenerativeConversationsSuzette on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzette-brooks-masters-0614981bDemocracy Funders Network https://www.democracyfundersnetwork.org/Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance  https://www.ffaa-us.org/Suzette's recent report - Becoming Futures Ready: How Philanthropy can leverage strategic foresight for democracy https://www.democracyfundersnetwork.org/resources/2024/10/3/becoming-futures-ready-how-philanthropy-can-leverage-strategic-foresight-for-democracyIf you'd like to support us, there is a Patreon page, but we're not going to link to it, because, honestly, the best way is to come and join the Accidental Gods Membership: that way you can share in the ideas, the programme that will help you connect to the Web of Life in ways that will last—and you can come to the Gatherings half price. Or if that doesn't appeal, come along to one of the Gatherings. Or buy a subscription/Gathering for a friend... do something that feels like a good exchange of energy and minimises our connection with old economic paradigm. Remember that if any of this is difficult, contact us and we'll find something that works for you. Details below: What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme, it's 'Honouring Fear as your Mentor' on Sunday 8th February 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member -but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

Well…2025 was the year the masks came off the old system: nobody is pretending it's there to help us, or that those who have stolen the reins of power have any intention of 'saving the planet', still less resolving the horrors of inequity or anything at all but feeding the ravenously hungry ghost of capitalism. So how do we bring power to those with wisdom and wisdom to those with power?  If we have the destructive capacity of gods, how do we find in ourselves the compassion, prudence and wisdom of gods?  What does it take to lay the foundations for emergence into a new system  - one that we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us? In this solo episode, Manda Scott, host of the Accidental Gods podcast, reflects on the year just gone and looks ahead to the one that's coming and lays out ideas for how we can be the change we need to see in the world.  Join us for New Year's eve and let's find ways we can step into 2026 with grace, courage, bringing the best of ourselves in service to life. If you'd like to support us, there is a Patreon page, but we're not going to link to it, because, honestly, the best way is to come and join the Accidental Gods Membership: that way you can share in the ideas, the programme that will help you connect to the Web of Life in ways that will last—and you can come to the Gatherings half price. Or if that doesn't appeal, come along to one of the Gatherings. Or buy a subscription/Gathering for a friend... do something that feels like a good exchange of energy and minimises our connection with old economic paradigm. Remember that if any of this is difficult, contact us and we'll find something that works for you. Details below: What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake on Sunday 4th January 2025 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here You don't have to be a member -but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

At the end of a turbulent year that has seen the masks come off the death cult in ways that were probably predictable, but still shocking, we reconvene our December Solstice Traditional conversation. Manda is joined by Della Duncan of the Upstream Podcast and Nathalie Nahai of 'Nathalie Nahai in Conversation' to explore the things that have stood out for each of us in our explorations this year—and to look forward to the year about to begin for what will be our baselines. Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a co-host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, a faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and the designer and co-facilitator of the Cultivating Regenerative Livelihood Course at Gaia Education.Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.Before we head into the conversation, I want to invite you to our transformative online course,  Dreaming Your Year Awake,  which takes place on Sunday the 4th of January from 16:00 - 20:00 UK time (GMT). This is a time to go inwards, to be kind to ourselves, to explore all that we can be and want to be. It's your chance really to delve deeply into the year just gone, and look ahead at how you want to shape your attention and intention for the year that’s coming, for each of us, individually and together to ask ourselves how we are going to navigate all the coming turbulence with grace and courage?  This, too, is part of our Accidental Gods tradition and we have people who’ve come year after year to give themselves the gift of time and space and the company of people who share the journey. So please do come along, we would love to share this time with you.What we offer in more detail: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

Here's our December Solstice Meditation for 2025 - please find a place and time where you can relax, take space for yourself, and build the connections to the web of life that will carry us forward. Details of 3iATLAS https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/3i-atlas-facts-and-faqs/

How do we create the stories that will bring a whole new generation back to the web of life, that will help people find hope again, and lean into their heart's yearning for connection, relationship, being and belonging? This week's guest, Ally Kingston, is a creative facilitator and strategy lead at Purpose Disruptors, where she co-developed the breakthrough Agency for Nature, a pop-up agency bringing nature into youth culture. A former advertising strategist, she is curious about how creativity intersects with myth, meaning, consumerism and desire, and how we might design new cultural infrastructures that seed fresh possibilities for how to live.Equally committed to holding space for grief and loss in turbulent times, Ally has trained as a death doula and rites of passage holder and recently co-created the Tending to Endings card deck, a garden-inspired tool for engaging more meaningfully with loss. She is based in Somerset in the UK, where she lives with her partner, young son and lurcher. In this wide-ranging episode, we explore the nature of advertising and how an industry that has been so deeply embedded in the death cult of predatory capitalism can turn all the wild, creative magic in service of life; how the skills that push us to buy the pseudo-satisfiers can instead remind us of our original connections, and turn us towards co-creation, connection and belonging.  We talk too, about grief and how learning to compost the old system is a key to the new growth we need and want.  Ally is so multi-talented, it was a joy to explore so many ways we can bring our world back into love with life, into balance, into each of us being part of the solution and letting go of the parts of the problem. Purpose Disruptors https://www.purposedisruptors.org/Agency for Nature https://www.agencyfornature.com/Tending to Endings https://www.tendingtoendings.com/Ally on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ally-kingston-75922025/Ally on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/allykingstonALLY is co-guiding a deep dark creative winter journey with Dan Burgess and co, Into the Dark, in January: https://www.becomingcrew.com/intothedarkWhat we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

Here's Manda's round up of (some of) the best books, poetry and podcasts she's come across this year.   Most of the links are to Bookshop.org in the UK where you can link to an independent bookshop of your choice.  In some cases, we've linked to the authors' website. FictionRachel Neumeier - Rihasi, Marag, Sekaran, Hedesa - all four are part of the TUYO series. 8 Doors from Dawn to Midnight is a stand alone. Natasha Pulley - The Hymn to DionysusAntonia Hodgson- The Raven Scholar   +Katherine Addison - The Tomb of DragonsAmal El Mohtar  - The River has RootsJacqui Morris and Tamsin Abbott - Wild Folk  Wild Gods Rising - Podcast with the authors Richard Morgan Altered Carbon Becky Chambers A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet Poetry: You better be Lightning by Andrea GibsonA Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales by Joy Harjo (YouTube Interview on the Power of Poetry) Non Fiction  Economic Space Agency (Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez and Akseli Virtanen)  Protocols for Post Capitalist Expression Richard Schwartz and Thomas Hübl - Releasing our Burdens: A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral and Collective TraumaJulie Brams The Nature Embedded Mind: How the Way We Think Can Heal Our Planet and OurselvesTristan Gooley  How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Roots to Leaves Justine Afra Huxley and Anna Kovasna  Co-creating with a Living Intelligent Earth: Pathways towards Kincentric LeadershipEliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies: The case against superintelligent AIPODCASTSNate Hagens The Great Simplification: If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies: How Artificial SuperIntelligence Might Wipe Out our Entire Species w Nate Soares Your Undivided Attention: Feed Drop: “Into the Machine” with Tobias Rose-StockwellUpstream - A World out of Balance: Introducing Doughnut 3.0 w Andrew Fanning Point of Relation with Thomas Hübl: Becoming an Ally of Life Love and Philosophy by Andrea Hiott: Moving Beyond Binaries in Eduction: Andrea Hiott in Conversation with Tim Logan of Future Learning Design Future Learning Design What’s Love Got to Do with Education? A Conversation with Dr Laura Penn, Khadija Shahper Backthiar, Jamie Bristow and Andrea Hiott Step Outside, Stand Still Pauline Leitch MagazinePermaculture Magazine SubscriptionsWhat we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

If we are to build systems that meet our real needs we have to first understand what those needs are and start growing the stuff that will allow us to thrive: good food from healthy soils, safe and supportive homes and communities, space to develop and express our creativity, opportunities to increase our capacity for co-operation and kindness.  As much as these, though, we need to understand what an economy is for - why it does what it does. And while we're all clear that the death cult of Predatory Capitalism exists to enrich the few at the expense of the rest of the living web, it's not always clear what a flourishing economy might look like.  So we're going to explore exactly this with our guest today. Inez Aponte is a self-described 'Dissident of Capitalism', she's an educator, storyteller, and consultant who's spent 15 years bridging mainstream economics with human-scale alternatives. Using the Human Scale Development Approach (Barefoot Economics), she helps professionals see the economic system itself, and imagine what comes next.Barefoot Economics (also known as Human Scale Development) was developed by Manfred Max-Neef and colleagues in Chile as a response to the predations of the colonial capital system. It reframes economic thinking away from endless wants and towards nine fundamental needs: Subsistence, Freedom, Participation, Understanding, Affection, Creation, Idleness, Protection and Identity.We are wealthy when our needs are satisfied, regardless of our income. This means we can also be poor in multiple ways, even when we have a ‘healthy’ bank balance.Inez has built this forward into a framework for the 21st century. Her 'Beautiful Economies Learning Lab' breaks people out of mainstream economic thinking to explore how we can build systems that meet real needs while healing ourselves, communities, and the Earth.So this is our deep dive.  Let's go. https://www.beautifuleconomies.com/https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Money_and_Economics/The_Future_of_Money-Bernard_Lietaer.pdfWhat we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

We all know by now that plants grown in living, thriving, life-filled soil, give us living, thriving, life-filled food... but the steps to getting there in the face of a multinational industry devoted to toxic, nutritionally empty, addictive - and highly profitable - ultra-processed 'food-like substances' are harder to see.  This week's guest, Daphne du Cros, spends her life deep in the mycelial networks of food and farming systems, bringing both into genuinely regenerative balance. Daphne is a food policy researcher, educator, and farmer. She holds a PhD in Food Policy at the Centre for Food Policy at City St. George's University of London, and a Master's in Environmental Science and Management from Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada. She is Director and Coordinator at Shropshire Good Food Partnership; Director at Light Foot Enterprises; Project Lead at Food Forward BC (where BC stands for Bishop's Castle, not British Columbia or any of the other potential options) -   and she's co-owner of Little Woodbatch CIC, a farm just outside BC that hosts the Bishop's Castle Community Seed Bank. She is the author of the town's Community Food Resilience Strategy - the only such policy in Shropshire.Daphne and I are relatively near neighbours, we have swapped seeds - her more than me - and share ideas about systems thinking and how we might evolve our world. She's deeply involved at every level from actual growing up to governmental meetings trying to get those in power to find some wisdom when it comes to food resilience, food security and all the other things we say as we try to get them to move away from the corruption innate in our system towards something that actually works in service to life. Daphne on LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/daphne-du-cros-743128332Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlewoodbatch/ Shropshire Good Food Partnership:  https://www.shropshiregoodfood.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shropshiregoodfood/ Soil Ed UK: https://www.instagram.com/soil_ed_uk/  Gaia Foundation Seed Sovereignty Network: https://www.seedsovereignty.info/Serving the Public https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/serving-the-public-the-good-food-revolution-in-schools-hospitals-and-prisons-kevin-morgan/7657661?ean=9781526180469&next=tCivil Food Resilience Report: https://nationalpreparednesscommission.uk/publications/just-in-case-7-steps-to-narrow-the-uk-civil-food-resilience-gap/  Little Woodbatch Farm https://www.littlewoodbatch.co.uk/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

What does it mean to (re)orient our entire culture around the power of love?  To answer this, we have to understand the nature of love and of power and how both of these have many meanings in our culture, some of them essential to moving forward - and some of them so toxic they turn the entire concept into a poisoned cue. This week's guest is friend of the podcast, Jamie Bristow. We spoke to him back in episode #274, recorded at the start of this year, and there, we consider what it was to be a Spiritual Warrior in our times - a concept to which Jamie has given the past 16 years of his life. Jamie is someone who lives and breathes at the intersection between spirituality - specifically Buddhism - and international policy in the realm of what is still called sustainability but which must, now, be shifting towards systemic change. For eight years, he was clerk to the UK’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness and director of the associated policy institute, the Mindfulness Initiative, where he helped to introduce mindfulness to a number of other parliaments around the world. In 2023, he joined the Inner Development Goals team to lead on public narrative and policy development, emphasising the inner skills and qualities needed for a sustainable transition. His work includes influential reports such as Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out and The System Within: Addressing the inner dimension of sustainability and systems transformation. He is an associate of Life Itself, The Climate Majority Project, Mind & Life Institute and Bangor University and now is working with Professor Rebecca Henderson on an initiative which is currently called the ReWeaving Project and it's in this area that we focussed our attention. There are many ways these conversations go. Often, I'm exploring a particular body of work and am asking questions to which, broadly, I have a sense of the answer - 'tell me about [x] that is squarely in your field'.  Sometimes, though, I'm talking with someone I know well enough, and where we share enough of a common grounding, that I can ask questions to which I don't know the answer. Where we can find the places where our Theories of Change meet but perhaps don't overlap, and explore the fertile, liminal spaces of uncertainty.  Jamie is one of these people and this was one of those conversations - where we explored love and power and game theory and how we get from where we are, through a nexus of power that is arrayed firmly around the Dark Triad of Narcissism, Psychopathy and Sadism (and I know that's slightly different to other Dark Triads that have Raw Cunning as the third one and sadism as an afterthought, but I think the cunning is in there with Psychopathy and the Sadism is, as we're seeing around the world, an essential part of the performative power-over that the wounded egos need to tell themselves they're safe). Anyway - we explored all the things that matter - and still only scratched the surface. So Jamie will definitely be coming back for another conversation, but in the meantime, here we are, delving deep into what it is to be human, and to be striving for emergence into a new, generative, kin-centric and flourishing system at this moment of total transformation. LinksRebecca Henderson https://rebeccahenderson.com/Jamie’s website Jamie’s substack Jamie on LinkedIn Mindfulness Initiative Mindfulness initiativeUN IDG Inner Development GoalsLife Guild lifeguild.earthJamie in Episode #274 https://accidentalgods.life/becoming-spiritual-warriors-exploring-a-politics-of-radical-compassion-with-jamie-bristow/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here

Do you love the dark?  Do you yearn for sunset and the amber glow of a fire with the night growing deeper, more inspiring all around you?  Most of us don't - though our ancestors through all of history have lived by firelight, moonlight, starlight... until the modern era of light at the flick of a switch.  But there's a world out there of sheer, unadulterated magic that is only revealed when we put aside the lights and the phones and the torches and step out into the night  - as this week's guest has done. Leigh Ann Henion is the New York Times bestselling author of Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark and Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World. Her writing has appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic, The Washington Post, Backpacker, The American Scholar, and a variety of other publications. She is a former Alicia Patterson Fellow, and her work has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Henion lives in Boone, North Carolina.  Wall Street Journal says of this book. "Lovely…truly inspired…and very clever…An appreciation of nature’s nocturnal organisms can help us reset our relationship with the night…That’s the gift of Night Magic: It may make you think differently about the night."Leigh Ann's Website https://leighannhenion.com/Night Magic book (UK): https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/night-magic-leigh-ann-henion/7832118What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here