The Other Others

Good yarn with lots of laughs with Jon Alexander, British author of CITIZENS, about some of the wrong stories emerging from his island home and the potential of harnessing a bit of that Brexiteer energy towards more distributed sovereignties. And a sober cold-take on succession in the monarchy.

Maren Morgan and Jake Marquez, film makers and hosts of the podcast Death In The Garden share an intimate peek at what it's like to be a millennial in Utah at this moment in history.

Jason Fox and Ishnie Dayara Kavindra Dahanayake having a good yarn/induction into the vibrant space of Regen movements and refi, beautifully balancing the WOW with the WHAT?!

Bro talk with Native Alaskan thinkers Warren Jones and Arlo Davis, considering Indigenous solutions to the global issue of lost boys becoming radicalized into proto-fascist networks of 'brown-shorts' gangs online and in the streets. Warren and Arlo are seeking support to revive their community's tradition of men's houses and believe such traditions could be useful anywhere in the world.

Originally recorded by her for a different project, a sweet yarn with my friend Euvie Ivanova from Future Thinkers, an intentional community/metamodern/heterodox/sensemaking organisation. But I ended up asking most of the questions, and kinda stole the yarn away. Still you can find uninterrupted Euvie on her substack. http://euvieivanova.substack.com/ She has interviewed everyone from Jordan Peterson to me, and shares with us her experience of a largely male complexity science community encountering females being... well, complex... at the Emerge Conference in Austin, Texas (where good ideas go to die).

Yarn with Dennis Foley, veteran Australian Indigenous scholar, iconoclast, thinker. Brother Dennis reminisces about a lifetime of cultural embassy and inquiry with Native Peoples from around the world, from New Zealand to Taiwan and even Korea. He touches on a controversial paper he wrote a few years back about "the McDonaldisation of Indigenous research". McDonaldisation occurs when an institution adopts the characteristics of fast food chains - efficiency, calculability, predictability and standardization, and control. Foley once made the case that a lot of Indigenous research has come to reflect these traits, and revisits this critique. Turns out there's more to Indigenous Standpoint Theory than simply claiming an Indigenous standpoint...

The Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab team in our third yarn about impact investing in land-based systems of bio-cultural integrity. We're still struggling with this, but we know this is far more useful than struggling against it. John Davis sings us in - Chels Marshall, Josh Waters, Jack Manning Bancroft and Tyson Yunkaporta.

Jack and I, fresh from the lab, yarn with renowned evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. We figure out why, if Robyn arrived on a donkey, Jack would of course assist Robyn (as Jack's senior) off the donkey. But then, if the roles were reversed, would Robyn be obliged to help Jack off a donkey? Stick around for all these ancient lessons and more, from why a reputation-based economy might be a bad idea, to how come I cried when Dolph Lundgren passed away, when I hadn't seen the fella since Rocky 4? And of course, the ultimate question of civilisation - can anything ever be good again after being scaled beyond the local? It's all in the numbers.

Fresh yarn with Ferananda Ibarra from The Commons Engine, which sits in the Holochain 'ecosystem'. Is it possible to live by the patterns of creation in land, community and online all at once? Ferananda works in economics, governance and the commons, informed by living systems, the feminine and indigenous wisdom. Can truly distributed wealth and governance stand against imperialism and 'the mother of all DAOs?"

Lucky dip yarn this week where I close my eyes and pick a random stranger from my inbox. Jackpot! We pulled Martin Henke who is working on human marine habitats. We coin together an interesting term - 'The Underview Effect', and wonder about how learning from this project might inform change on the shore.