
Accidental Gods
Accidental Gods



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Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Accidental Gods episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Accidental Gods for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Accidental Gods episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

06/07/23 • 68 min
This week's guest is fast becoming a friend of the Podcast. In the first part of what is now an ongoing series, Dr Simon Michaux outlined for us the nature of the materials crisis - the fact that there is simply not enough stuff, not enough copper or cobalt or lithium to continue to manufacture at the levels we have been - and there's not even enough to make the renewable (or, as Nate Hagens would call them, rebuildable) technology to replace the fossil fuel power we're going to have to stop using.
If you haven't listened to these two, please do, because lot of this conversation is predicated on that one, and on our second podcast where we looked at Michaux's hierarchy of needs and really delved into power generation in more depth.
I had planned that we'd look more at the remaining five of Simon's hierarchy of needs in this conversation, but - like most of these podcasts - the plan went out of the window when I asked how he was doing and it was clear that he'd been having some really interesting conversations. And so we went with this - because it seems to me that if the people who get it are multiplying, then it's useful for us to know this - we can support the narratives that unpick the 'business as usual' dynamics and begin to look forward to what will work. That's the core of this podcast - what can we do, how can we do it - and how can we ensure that enough people get this to create a global movement. We had to cut off faster than we'd like, so there will be (at least) a podcast four!
Simon Michaux Podcast 1 https://accidentalgods.life/transforming-industry-to-create-a-genuine-green-revolution/
Simon Michaux Podcast 2 https://accidentalgods.life/drawing-humanity-out-of-the-cave-with-dr-simon-michaux/
Gail Tverberg 'Our Infinite World: https://ourfiniteworld.com/
William Rees: https://www.postcarbon.org/our-people/william-rees/
GOES REPORT http://goesfoundation.com/news/posts/2021/june/plastic-and-toxic-chemical-induced-ocean-acidification-is-causing-a-plankton-crisis-and-will-devastate-humanity-in-the-next-25-years/

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Be More Hawk! Being the courage to follow what's right with Rachel Musson of ThoughtBox Education
Accidental Gods
03/19/25 • 73 min
The old systems are no longer fit for purpose. What does an education system look like that's fit for the twenty-first century - where we put self care, people care, earth care at the heart of what we do?
This week's guest, Rachel Musson, has made it her life's work to fashion ways of learning for all ages that put this Triple Wellbeing principle into action. In everything she does, from leading ThoughtBox Eduction, to creating the Transforming Leadership Course, to writing her glorious, inspiring children's books, to her podcast, Two Inconvenient Women, with her fellow Thoughtboxer Holly Everett, she is being the change we need in the world. At this time where the old is breaking apart and the worst are full of passionate intensity, Rachel is a living example of the fact that the best of us can also be full of passionate intensity and that this can sow seeds of change that ripen into something close to miraculous transformation.
Rachel is a beacon of inspiration and optimism, of how we can connect to the web of life and build networks of mycelial change in our personal and collective lives.
ThoughtBox Education: https://thoughtboxeducation.com/
Transforming Leadership Course: https://thoughtboxeducation.com/leadership
The next online course after recording starts 4th June 2025
Order Story Books https://thoughtboxeducation.com/storykit
Rachel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-musson/
Rachel and Holly's podcast Two Inconvenient Women https://thoughtboxeducation.com/tiw-podcast
Episode 52 of Accidental Gods https://accidentalgods.life/living-to-learn/
Triple Wellbeing Practitioner Course in London on April 1st 2025 https://thoughtboxeducation.msnd24.com/tracking/lc/a318407c-86a0-4fd3-990e-3614925cc90a/392b9a45-f2f3-44aa-bf90-0afdc15fb732/dfaf176f-fc9c-4809-5698-0c04d852d104/
If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

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07/01/20 • 69 min
Musician, artist, maker-of-ceremony and guardian of the ancestors of the land, Carolyn Hillyer talks - and sings - about the three things that take care of this land: a deep honouring of the ancestors, a fierce guardianship, and the absolute heart-felt connection of tribe.
Carolyn Hillyer lives on a 1,000 year old farm in the heart of Dartmoor. Her fierce, deeply spiritual guardianship of this place involves a heart-commitment to sharing the space with those who have been and those yet to come. As we near the end of (the first) Covid lockdown, she talks - and sings - of her spiritual connection to the ancestors of this land, of the ceremonial spaces she has built, of the Sami women and the bear skull that they brought in honouring - and of the remains of a Bronze Age ancestor-woman found on the hill overlooking the land, and the bear skin she was wrapped in. Carolyn's deep, heartfelt connection to the land shines through her words, her art and her songs: a shining beacon of how life can be lived for those who choose to follow.
Carolyn’s website, Seventh Wave Music: https://www.seventhwavemusic.co.uk

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Unlocking Curiosity: Regenerating Business from the packaging up with Jo Chidley of Re and Beauty Kitchen
Accidental Gods
02/01/23 • 60 min
Jo Chidley is one of those forces of nature, unconstrained by the way things are usually done. As the co-founders of Beauty Kitchen, she and her partner refused venture capital, keeping their business free to become a B-Corp and to put people and planet ahead of profit. She's dedicated to producing the best outcome for the people who work for her as well as for the people who buy her products. And in the process of finding the best ways forward, she came across the horror of single use packaging and the devastation it's causing both in terms of the extraction and the post-use pollution. So Jo founded 'Re' to find ways to bring 'reuse' back into the 'reduce, reuse, recycle' triad. Now, she's invited to Davos to speak about the way this could transform the vast global packaging industry.
So in this week's podcast, we talked about why this is essential to transforming our world, and how it could work. Jo has ideas that seem (and are) innovative now, but ten years from now, will be the way things are done. With enthusiasm, integrity and a great deal of humour, she offers solutions to the meta-crisis that rely on each one of us changing behaviour - and she's devoting her life to making it possible - indeed inevitable - that we do.
Bio:
Jo Chidley is a circular economy expert, chemist, herbal botanist, and co-founder of Beauty Kitchen and Re.
Founded in 2014, Beauty Kitchen is the highest scoring B Corp in the UK beauty industry and it's changing the face of the beauty industry with its aim to create the most effective, natural, and sustainable beauty products in the world. Jo went on to found Re, a company devoted to reducing the mountains of waste from our global $1tr annual single use packaging industry. As one of the pioneers of sustainable beauty, Jo and her company have accelerated the transition to Reuse through sustainable innovation by implementing Cradle to Cradle design into Beauty Kitchen’s circular approach. Jo's been instrumental in developing the world’s first closed-loop solution for beauty packaging and powered the service behind the ground-breaking Re programme which is resuable packaging for personal care brands & retailers. Beauty Kitchen is recognised on the UK’s 50 Most Disruptive Companies list and has won numerous industry awards, including ‘Who’s Who in Natural Beauty’.
Jo has won multiple industry awards, including the Natwest Everywoman Award in the Brand of the Future Category and was recognised as one of the 10 most influential people in Natural Beauty in the UK. She’s been featured in the likes of ELLE, Woman & Home magazine and BBC News and is a founding member of the Global Advisory Board for Sustainable & Natural Cosmetics. Jo was voted Nr 2 in the 2018 Who’s Who of Natural Beauty.
The Beauty Kitchen https://beautykitchen.co.uk/
Re https://www.rereworld.com/
Jo on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochidley/
wet uplink https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/
The Ethical Consumer https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/

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Adaptation is Here: Launching the TrAd (Transformative Adaptation) Book with Rupert Read and Morgan Philips
Accidental Gods
11/27/24 • 66 min
We're teetering on the brink of ecosystem and cultural collapse. How do we adapt and transform to the changing realities?
This week sees the launch of a new book: Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible. The main editors and contributors are friend of the podcast, author, activist and co-founder of the Climate Majority Project, Rupert Read and - new to the podcast - Morgan Philips who is an educator, currently working for Global Action Plan, an environmental charity that mobilises people and organisations to take action on the systems that harm us and our planet. Full disclosure, I'm also a contributor - the book is published by Permanent Publications, the book-publishing arm of the Permaculture Magazine, and Maddy Harland, who edits the magazine and has published the book, brought together the five articles I wrote on Thrutopia: what it is, why we need it and how we get there, and fitted them into the mix.
The book launch has been timed to coincide with the end of COP29. At the time of recording, we have no idea how that will go, but if it's like all the previous 28 COPs it will be a triumph of obstructionism and irrelevancy masquerading as action. We might be surprised. We hope we are. But even if the nations who truly understand the magnitude of the meta-crisis somehow manage a worldwide diplomatic miracle and succeed in making it clear that we need total systemic change - we still need guidelines that help us see how this can happen: ideas of what to do at local and national levels, examples of the kinds of deliberate democracies that we'll need to bring everyone on board; templates of how the world can be if we actually bring all our creativity to bear on the single most important issue of our time.
This is exactly what this podcast is for - the whole of it - and this particular episode lays out the detail, from the concept of a 6th Mission for the UK government (and any other national government that wants to take it up) to examples of how we might shift our educational focus, to why building flood defences is really not enough, never going to be enough and how we could shift our communities to stop reacting and start...adapting.
None of this is easy. We do know this. But we can at least start the important conversations. This is what we're doing here - and we hope you find it inspiring enough to buy the book and read it, give it to your friends, family and colleagues - do whatever it takes to help your local community to find creative, flourishing, inspiring ways to meet the chaos of our world.
TrAd book https://www.permanentpublications.co.uk/port/transformative-adaptation/
TrAd Collective https://transformative-adaptation.com/
Climate Majority Project http://www.climatemajorityproject.com/
Climate Majority Complimentary Approach https://climatemajorityproject.com/safer/
The Rojava Project https://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-democracy/rojava-democracy/
Solar farms can be havens of biodiversity https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/solar-farms-biodiversity-pv/
Kikaru Komatsu https://sites.google.com/site/kmthkr/home/publications

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Living through the Death of Democracy: Manda's thoughts on love, liberty and the continued existence of complex life on earth
Accidental Gods
01/25/25 • 40 min
We are living through the death of democracy and the onset of Techno-Feudalism. But this is not a time when linear systems can hold and feudalism was nothing if not linear. So how can we be part of a transformative process that will let us lay the foundations for a future we'd be proud to leave behind?
Usually, on Accidental Gods, we talk to guests who seem to exemplify some aspect of the generative edge of interbecoming change that will take us towards the emergent future we need if we're not only to survive, but thrive.
But once in a while it's just Manda, reflecting on the moment and offering pointers to things that might be useful to read or watch or listen to or think about. This is one of those, and it feels timely, in part because the Oxford Real Farming Conference too place recently and was immensely heartening - and partly because of the times we're in.
This was recorded on Sunday 19th of January 2025 and if you're in the English speaking world listening to this podcast, then you'll be aware that basically democracy dies tomorrow. Though, as you'll also be aware, we never had true democracy of the people by and for the people, and certainly nothing that might have created a generative enhancement of the web of life. We had a kleptocracy at best, a kakiocracy at worst and all of it was working against the kind of future we want to leave as our legacy.
So this is a podcast of ideas, most of which boil down to: It's time each of us committed ourselves in service to life. What does that feel like? How does it work and where will it take us? Let's find out.
Oxford Real Farming Trust https://realfarming.org/programmes/land-based-wisdom/
CFOSA https://consciousfoodsystems.org/
Animate Earth Collective https://animate-earth.org
The Wild with Indy Johar - the why
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/wild-with-sarah-wilson/id1548626341?i=1000677521024
Changing our Civilisational Model - Michel Bauens on Substack https://substack.com/inbox/post/155005488
And then at the macro level, Dark Matter Labs on Governance https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/media/v2/D4E1FAQFRu6lmVVqBvw/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/B4EZQsP1m3HAAc-/0/1735909140676?e=1738195200&v=beta&t=8kAX6cLW_kf4Lsvw8dYn2_9FG644-bWKa6SZy1QTXKk
If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

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The Sacred Depths of Nature: exploring the interface of science, spirituality and religion with Ursula Goodenough
Accidental Gods
06/14/23 • 88 min
Sometimes the synchronicity of this podcast leaves me very happy. About six months ago, I was thinking that I wanted to talk to someone who really lived at the interface between science and spirituality, where I could begin to sand down some of the rough edges of my own thinking.
And that afternoon, I discovered that the 2nd edition of Professor Ursula Goodenough's book 'The Sacred Depths of Nature' was due to be published in the first half of this year. So we set up a podcast and then it turned out that my calendar management was haywire and I'd booked it for the day after teaching one of the most challenging of the shamanic dreaming courses. Normally I'd give myself several days to come back to something approaching consensus reality. You may think I don't spend a lot of time in CR as it is, and you'd be right, but there are degrees of my untethering and the day after a dreaming course is not my most tethered.
But in the end, it was magical - really good to re-read Ursula's book in the evening and then have a quiet day reflecting and exploring things that snagged my attention. And so here we are: Ursula is a Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University. She has discussed religious naturalism in essays, college classes, and as part of blogs and television and radio productions. She participated in conversations with the Dalai Lama sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute.
She is author of the book, “The Sacred Depths of Nature” which, examines cosmology, evolution, and cell biology, celebrates the mystery and wonder of being alive, and suggests that this orientation might serve as the basis for “planetary ethic” that draws from both science and religion. And on the basis of this concept, in 2014, Ursula was part of the founding of the Religious Naturalists Association. And now comes the second, updated, edition, that looks into epigenetics and pandemics and generally updates both the science and the moving reflections that each scientific section evokes.
It's beautiful, thoughtful, and inspiring. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass said of it, “At once expansive and intimate, empirical and immanent, analytical and intuitive, material and spiritual, science and poetry get to dance joyfully together in these pages.” What better encouragement would we need to explore more deeply with the author? So People of the Podcast, please welcome Professor Ursula Goodenough, author of The Sacred Depths of Nature
In 2023, Ursula was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Sacred Depths of Nature http://sacreddepthsofnature.com/
Order Ursula's book here http://sacreddepthsofnature.com/order-book/
Religious Naturalist Association https://religious-naturalist-association.org/welcome/
National Academy of Sciences https://source.wustl.edu/2023/05/goodenough-mckinnon-elected-to-national-academy-of-sciences/
Terence Deacon - The Symbolic Species https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/733691.The_Symbolic_Species
Bitch by Lucy Cooke https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/bitch-a-revolutionary-guide-to-sex-evolution-and-the-female-animal-lucy-cooke/6532317?ean=9781804990919
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05/31/23 • 70 min
As you'll know by now, one of our core motivators in creating this podcast was the realisation that the 'democratic' systems of the world are largely broken and are not a useful way to affect change. I used to be a political activist. I thought I'd given all that up, but today's conversation has definitely re-awakened my political instincts because today I'm talking with two of the people who set up South Devon Primary: a group committed to changing the political system in the UK.
So the first thing to say for those of you who live elsewhere is that this episode is focused on the need for change in the Westminster Parliament. But the issues are worldwide and whatever your political system, it could probably do with being shaken up. We need to share best practice across the globe and what Simon Oldridge, Anthea Simmons and Ben Long have created feels like a template that could be replicated not just throughout the UK but across the world. The principles are basic and while it's not going to take us to full democracy in one giant leap, it's definitely a step in the right direction. If adopted around the nation (and the world) it could see us move away from the politics of hatred, fear and resentment to something a great deal more generative.
To look at these three in more depth and so understand where they're coming from: Simon Oldridge was an accountant with Ernst and Young and then CEO of a manufacturing company. More recently, his awareness of the climate and ecological crisis has led him to engage with a group endeavouring to put forward a Climate and Ecology Bill to the UK parliament (he talks about this in the podcast) and to set up the South Devon Primary campaign which you'll hear about in much more depth.
Anthea Simmons is Editor in Chief of the progressive online paper, West Country Voices, speaker for Devon for Europe and author of a number of books, including one for young climate activists. Before that, rather like Simon, she worked in financial asset management. She's a passionate advocate for the South Devon Primary and invented the Democracy Meter, which you're also hear about in the conversation.
Ben Long is an author and educator and currently helps his partner run her ceramics business in Devon. He didn't join us on the podcast - partly because I think two extra voices is enough to contend with - but he's a core part of the work of South Devon Primary.
And that work is practical, active, really intelligently targeted and if it were taken up around the country, could do more, I think, to shape the outcome of the next general election than anything else I've found. Listen, enjoy - and then make this happen as near to wherever you live as you can.
South Devon Primary Website https://www.southdevonprimary.org/
Zero Hour https://www.zerohour.uk
Anthea Simmons on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/antheasimmons/
West Country Voices on Twitter https://twitter.com/WCountryVoices
Simon Oldridge on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-oldridge-17207a206/
Simon on Twitter https://twitter.com/SiOldridge
South Devon Primary on Twitter https://twitter.com/SDevonPrimary
Ben Long on Twitter: https://twitter.com/benwhlong
Simon - Twitter thread w Local MP https://twitter.com/SiOldridge/status/1641713280967213056

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Miraculous Carbon: Celebrating the Book of Life, Death and Potential with author Paul Hawken
Accidental Gods
03/12/25 • 82 min
How do we step past the magical thinking of the elites that says we can either use AI to 'Solve for Climate' - or just ignore the entire climate and ecological emergency completely?
This week's guest, Paul Hawken, has been at the forefront of intelligent responses to the entire meta-crisis for decades. He has been profiled or written in hundreds of articles in the biggest newspapers across the world and has written nine books, six of which have become bestsellers, including Blessed Unrest, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation and Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. He’s the founder of both Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration, which is the world’s largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis, describing by agency, what each level of society can do, starting from the individual. If you're in the UK and waiting for Paul's new book to come out in August, then I'd thoroughly recommend you explore Regeneration as a good place to start.
For those of you in the US, Paul's new book comes out on the 18th of March so you can get your pre-orders in now. This book is 'Carbon: The Book of Life' and truly, it's one of those books you'll read in a single sitting and then pass round to your family and friends so they can know the things you now know.
I learned so much in this book: how supernovas are formed, how some really brilliant people worked out the formation of carbon - and one of them was knocked off the Nobel Prize because he began to believe there must be some kind of organising principle behind the formation of life. I learned the horrors of how we are destroying the ecosphere, but I also learned some of the wonders of humanity - how the Mi'kmaq tribe in Canada name large pine trees by the sound of the wind moving through the branches one hour before sunset in October - and then can return decades later and will know if trees have been damaged by comparing their names to the sound they hear. How other tribes in Alaska can predict the weather two years in advance by listening to the patterns in the web of life around them... Truly, this is a beautiful book, beautifully written and it contains within it, the seeds of hope that we speak of often on this podcast - that human creativity and compassion endure and are our gifts to the world.
“Endlessly endlessly fascinating! Human beings, over the millennia, have come up with a thousand ways to carefully observe the world around us, and Paul Hawken has managed to collect and synthesize these observations—from the sweat lodge to the satellite—in a way that helps us see what now must be done. There’s information, and then there’s wisdom—and this book is a compendium of the latter.” BILL MCKIBBEN
Paul's Website https://paulhawken.com/
Paul's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-hawken-0792b
The link to purchase the book is here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316928/carbon-by-paul-hawken/
Project Regeneration https://regeneration.org/
If you want to share the journey with us, we're here:
Accidental Gods Gatherings https://accidentalgods.life/gatherings-2025/
Accidental Gods Membership https://accidentalgods.life/join-us/

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Bonus: The System is Dead. Long Live the (new) System! Thoughts on the US election and the self-terminating algorithm
Accidental Gods
11/08/24 • 11 min
It occurs to me that we are now at an inflection point in the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and - notionally - Democratic) culture that has been so successful in destroying the ecosphere.
A significant number of us now see what has been obvious to a minority for some time: that the system is not broken - it is doing what it was always designed to do: which is to maintain power in the hands of a few white men.
What we know now, is that the system is not fit for purpose - IF that purpose is the survival of complex life on this planet, if it is the flourishing of the human and More-than-Human worlds in an indivisible web of life.
We need a new system - and this realisation has landed not with the people who solve their problems with violent insurrection (see Jan 6th 2021) but with people whose primary driving aim is to find ways to connect and consiliate, to create coherence with compassion, to find courage and confidence and creative curiosity.
And so this is our goal now - there is no point waiting for the side we favour to win in a broken system.
We need a whole new system predicated on new and better values.
We need to find our connectedness.
At a bone-deep level, in the core of our tissues and the vast expanses of our individual and collective awareness, we need to remember our place in the Web of Life and work only from this.
We need to start building something entirely different that does not rely on the structures of the broken system, even as it crumbles (or is dismantled) around us.
This is our challenge. Facing it will require everything we've got, but the old system is a self-terminating algorithm and we can all see the route to chaos and extinction now.
If we're going to pull through and find that flourishing world we can bequeath with pride to future generations, nothing else matters now.
Nothing.
Find what's yours to do and do with all your heart. Build imaginal islands with friends, colleagues and co-evolutionaries of the human and More than Human world. Build narratives based on the heart-focused values that are our birth-right.
Above all else, do whatever you can to connect to the More than Human world - to the Web of Life in all its awe-inspiring wonder, its majesty and beauty - and ask 'What do you want of me?'
Listen to the answer, however it comes.
And then do it.

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FAQ
How many episodes does Accidental Gods have?
Accidental Gods currently has 311 episodes available.
What topics does Accidental Gods cover?
The podcast is about Evolution, Society & Culture, Spirituality, Collapse, Activism, Climate Change, Shamanism, Nature, Podcasts, Economics, Education, Science, Philosophy, Agriculture, Farming, Spiritual, Politics and Creative Writing.
What is the most popular episode on Accidental Gods?
The episode title 'Lifeboats and Volcanoes: part 3 of our series with Simon Michaux' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Accidental Gods?
The average episode length on Accidental Gods is 64 minutes.
How often are episodes of Accidental Gods released?
Episodes of Accidental Gods are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Accidental Gods?
The first episode of Accidental Gods was released on Dec 24, 2019.
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