In Conversation with Nathalie Nahai

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with a dear friend of mine, Carl de Jager. Carl is an extraordinary artist who was born and raised in South Africa, and has since spent many years living in the UK, Spain and Australia, all of which are places he calls home. Having first met Carl at Barcelona Academy of Art, his passion for the creative process has been an ongoing source of inspiration to me, and his captivating paintings communicate a deep interest in our perception of reality. Growing up in South Africa, having lived the ‘doublethink’ indoctrination of politics and religion, Carl carries a profound sense of disillusionment: At a fundamental level he expresses that he cannot trust the reality that is presented to him by his environment. His story is a rich and fascinating one. In 2015, Carl left a successful career in software development in Melbourne to study classical drawing and painting at what was then the nascent Barcelona Academy of Art. After graduating he continued on as a resident artist, and was then invited to stay as a teacher and program coordinator. In early 2020 as the pandemic was unfolding, he returned to Australia to exhibit his works and train in traditional (and some non-traditional) printmaking techniques, before returning to Barcelona where he is now based. Whether in print or paint, Carl’s art deals with his subjective experience of life and draws upon a deep symbolic canon, from existentialism and eastern philosophy to metaphysics and psychology. When words fail, it is this symbolism and abstraction to which Carl turns, to provide a language that can both understand and convey complex feelings and emotions to which, I would say, we can all relate. Recorded on 18th April 2023.

In today’s conversation, I speak with Elena Sinel, a multi-award winning social entrepreneur whose mission is to inspire young people across the world to engage in Artificial Intelligence for Impact. A sought-after AI ethicist, policy adviser and keynote speaker, Elena is trusted by global brands and governments to deliver messages that inspire young people and individuals to build responsible AI. Committed to inspiring young people to make a change in their community, country, and economy through passion, agility, teamwork, and expert support, Teens in AI, an initiative that Elena founded, is designed to give young people early exposure to AI that is being developed and deployed for social good. Launched at the AI for Good Global Summit at the UN in 2018, Teens In AI aims to empower the next generation of ethical AI researchers, entrepreneurs and leaders who will shape the world of tomorrow. Prior to this work, Elena spent over 10 years traveling, volunteering and working in Central Asia (where she grew up), as well as the Balkans, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, where she worked with NGOs and the British Council, developing education, entrepreneurship and mentorship programmes for women and young people. Upon returning to the UK as a single mother of two, Elena was shocked at the state of secondary school education across the UK with its “factory” style learning model and was inspired to launch a pioneering educational social impact enterprise, providing young people across the globe with opportunities to interact with leading experts in technology to create solutions that solve real-life, world problems. Recorded on 17th April 2023.

Today I speak with Matt Celuszak, Founder of Element Human, a customer understanding platform that uses AI to measure and make sense of the drivers of human behaviour. Having spent the last decade working alongside top experts in technology and psychology to build machine learning that recognises body language using webcams, Matt works at the intersection of people and technology, pioneering a new class of Human Data that enables tech, AI and its users to be more emotionally aware and empathetic. With clients including the BBC, Amazon, Whalar and Omnicom, Element Human helps organisations measure the conscious (behavioural) and subconscious (emotions) drivers of human behaviour within their ecosystems, using everyday devices paired with advanced intelligence to better understand key stakeholders, improve their experience, and drive more socially sustainable business. While I am now behavioural science adviser to his company, I first met Matt many years ago when he was starting out, and alongside his desire to transform the media landscape, his interest in applying technology to help create meaningful change across critical issues in education, healthcare, mental health, and children's well-being is something I really appreciate, especially in an industry that is not without its challenges. From exploring human centred design and our understanding of emotions, to unpacking the shortfalls and benefits of machine learning in human data and the impact of regulation and privacy when building artificial intelligence systems, Matt’s areas of expertise touch on many of the themes I’m looking to explore in this season, and I’m excited to share this conversation with you. Recorded on 31st March 2023.

In this conversation, I speak with Tugba Kirhan, a breathwork and embodiment practitioner I had the joy of meeting during my time at Embercombe earlier this year. Passionate about nurturing a culture of personal growth and bringing joy into our everyday lives, Tugba is a project manager, facilitator and coach who has worked in the charity and humanitarian sectors in the UK and overseas, dealing with issues such as international development and women & youth empowerment. After experiencing Embercombe’s program, The Journey, first-hand as a participant back in 2018, Tugba’s relationship with the land and Embercombe’s ethos has deepened, and she now facilitates on various different courses. She has also led fundraising campaigns and coordinated events including Mac Macartney’s Kith and Kin residentials. Named after the tree of life, Tugba is a native of rural Anatolia (Turkey), where East meets West, and this quality of bridging is present in the many ways in which she works to weave together a sense of kinship between and within humans, and with all forms of life. Recorded on 23rd March 2023.

In today’s conversation, I speak with Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic – an author and international authority in psychological profiling, talent management, leadership development, and people analytics. The Chief Talent Scientist at Manpower Group and CEO at Hogan Assessment Systems, Tomas is also the co-founder of Deeper Signals and Meta Profiling. Having published 10 books and over 150 scientific papers on the psychology of talent, leadership, innovation and AI, Tomas is a Professor of Business Psychology at both University College London, and Columbia University. His most recent book, I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, explores the impacts of artificial intelligence on how we work, rest and play, and his previous book, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It), examines why it is so easy for incompetent men to become leaders, and why is it so hard for competent people - especially competent women - to advance. He has previously held academic positions at New York University and the London School of Economics, and he has lectured at Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, London Business School, Johns Hopkins, IMD, and INSEAD, among many more. His global academic contributions, paired with his creation of science-based tools to improve performance prediction in organisations, make him one of the most prolific social scientists of his generation. Recorded on 21st March 2023.

Today I have the pleasure of being in conversation with a very special guest. Mac Macartney is many things, but perhaps chief among them, he is a storyteller, a writer and a change-maker. Oriented towards cultivating a more just, peaceful, and regenerative future, and mentored by indigenous people over many years, Mac has acquired profound and original insights into the questions preoccupying many contemporary leaders today. Seeking to inspire the emergence of the leader in each of us, the kind of leader who will take courageous action for a better world, Mac’s work seeks to Champion A New Story of Sustainability and reconnection so that together we may walk a path that supports the flourishing of all life. An international speaker and author of two wonderful books - Finding Earth, Finding Soul: The Invisible Path to Authentic Leadership and The Children's Fire: Heart song of a people , Mac is the founder of Embercombe, a beautiful 50 acre rewilding estate on the edge of Dartmoor, that offers courses, programmes and experiences designed to reconnect us with ourselves, with community and with the wild nature that exists within and beyond each of us. Described as a place to breathe, to reconsider, to regenerate and to relearn, I had the precious opportunity to spend a week at Embercombe on a course they call “The Journey”, at the start of this year, in the crisp, cold month of January. It was a profound, moving and rejuvenating experience incandescent with connection, beauty and the magic of stories told and re-told to help us find our place in a changing world. I can only say that if you’re yearning for a deeper sense of purpose and connection with nature and with the vibrance and preciousness of your life, this course is a real gem, facilitated with skill and soul and compassion, and I heartily recommend it. Recorded on 28th February 2023.

In today’s conversation, I speak with Veronica Stanwell - a multidisciplinary healing and creative arts practitioner who weaves soma, psyche, ceremony and song into intimate gatherings for connection, healing and growth. Driven by a longing for a collective shift towards nature-awe, eco-imagination and rekindled interconnectedness, Veronica is the founder of Rooted Healing, an organization that helps heal and connect inner and outer landscapes through transformational gatherings in nature, cross-cultural wisdom exchange, and somatic and transpersonal workshops. Offering legal and unique ceremonial Psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands, ancestral immersions in her homeland of Wales and many other gatherings that re-indigenise and re-root people back into the land, Veronica’s mission is to cultivate the kind of profound belonging that ends habits and systems of harm and instils an embodied remembrance of what it means to be creative, human and alive. As part of a growing collection of resources and projects, Veronica also hosts the wonderful Rooted Healing podcast, which explores how we can heal, re-imagine and co-create a thriving world. With an MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology with the Alef Trust, Veronica’s animist embrace of life permeates her explorations into expanded states of consciousness, both within indigenous traditions of the Americas, and her own personal enquiries into Europe’s native ways. Drawing upon a background in professional theatre that continues to guide her work, Veronica’s approach is one that carries deep reverence for the power of story, music, expression, catharsis and playfulness. As a movement teacher with roots in dance, yoga and somatics, she is currently developing a modality based on animistic ideas, that invokes playful enquiry into the inspirited interdependent body-mind. Recorded on 22nd February 2023.

For the first episode of the season, I have the pleasure of interviewing Alexa Firmenich - an investor, consultant and facilitator on the climate crisis, whose life’s work centres on dissolving the boundaries that divide human beings from other forms of life, and enabling nature to express its fullest creativity. Focused on developing strategies that repair our planet’s ecologies, Alexa’s work experience spans from political science and leadership development to corporate sustainability analysis, journalism, eco-cultural projects in emerging markets, land-based conservation initiatives and climate communication. She is currently co-director of SEED, a new initiative housed inside the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, that is creating the world’s first biodiversity measure that accounts for all scales of life’s complexity at a genetic, species and ecosystem level. Having co-founded the animist investment studio, Ground Effect, to direct capital on behalf of other species and back ventures that maximize planetary generativity, her current areas of investment and research include regenerative agriculture, soil health, food systems, earth jurisprudence, ecosystem restoration, ecological pedagogy, new ownership models, biodiversity, and scientific research that illuminates life’s relational processes. As an author, poet, photographer and wilderness guide, she brings people into direct contact with the living world. In her role as an Associate at Leaders’ Quest and through the company she founded, Atlas Unbound, she develops and leads multi-day immersive learning journeys for global corporations and decision-makers, principally into “nature”. These journeys embody her thesis that we learn most rapidly and durably through direct experience, and that visceral connection is a remedy to our systemic alienation from the living world. As a means to inspire a greater number of people in their climate/restoration trajectory, she started the podcast Lifeworlds. The show is an intimate dialogue with our planet’s ecologies where she explores the mindsets, skills and actions needed to partner with other forms of life. Her guests are farmers, lawyers, scientists, investors, indigenous scholars, artists, and many others, who have all learned to be in close relationship with the lifeworlds of other species. Recorded on 9th February 2023.

In 2015, sisters Ruby and Christabel Reed started organising events to explore the interconnections between ecology, community, spirituality and wellbeing. They understood the ecological emergency and mental health crisis to be inherently connected and wanted to learn about ways of being that could create happier, healthier and more just cultures. This unfolding project became Advaya, a systems change initiative that organises around the principles of radical regeneration and joyful revolution. Since its inception, it has become a global platform for transformative education, which has organised over 200 events that promote everything from regenerative narratives, embodiment, daily practice, small scale agriculture and degrowth, to local economies, ecosystem restoration, public awakening and embedded ecological awareness. In 2020 Christabel, Ruby and Cara Delevingne founded EcoResolution, an educational platform that aims to empower and inspire meaningful action in the face of ecological breakdown through education and a big-picture approach to change by platforming the inspiring and imaginative ways we can create cultures of liberation and ecological harmony. In 2021 Ruby and Christabel created Initiative Earth, a charity that empowers and enables individuals and communities to take action to support environmental restoration and regeneration. They will be launching earthed.co later this year. I first met Ruby and Christabel at a one-week introductory course in regenerative agriculture run by the wonderful folks at La Junquera in Murcia, Southern Spain, and I had the pleasure of curating a panel for their stage at the Medicine Festival earlier this year. They’re a powerful duo, and I’ve really been looking forward to sharing this conversation with you. Recorded on 28th October 2022.

Today I speak with award-winning author and speaker, Jeremy Lent. Described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” Jeremy’s work investigates the underlying causes of our civilisation’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. A former internet company CEO, with a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University and an MBA from the University of Chicago, Jeremy’s life has followed an unexpected path, as we’ll come to hear, and he has gone on to write two highly acclaimed books. The first, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. His new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, draws upon science and philosophies to lay out a solid foundation for a worldview of deep interconnectedness. Jeremy is the founder of the Deep Transformation Network, a global community exploring pathways to an ecological civilisation, and the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. Recorded on 20th Oct 2022.