Wild with Sarah Wilson
Sarah Wilson
Recent Episodes
Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) re-imagines and redesigns systems for a changed world. The architect and Professor of Planetary Civics at Melbourne’s RMIT and the University of Sheffield has worked with and advised organisations worldwide. Including the Scottish Government, the Mayor of London and WikiHouse, solving complex, entangled problems. Using complexity, emergence and entanglement theories he is a rare expert in this space to provide the (only) path to fixing the world, which is to say fixing our relationship with the world.
This conversation goes to a level I’ve not been to before publicly. On his modelling, we don’t have any choice but to start building the world that comes next, for the current one has no viable pathway. He gives a vision for this this. And he gives a timeframe, too.
For this episode, I’m providing a forum where you can talk through how you feel about the ideas and your feelings with others. Indy has offered to chime in too: Join the chat on Substack HERE.
SHOW NOTES
If you are new to this collapse topic you might want to catch up via this conversation with Luke Kemp, the one with Meg Wheatley and this one with Corey Bradshaw.
There are some previous guests and topics that are referenced in this chat:
- Nate Hagens on the future of fossil fuels
- Kate Raworth on Doughnut Economics
- We talk about zero-sum theory. I talked about this with Liv Boeree, former world poker champion.
- We also cover the Blue Zones concept. I interviewed the man behind this, Dan Buettner, here.
- Indy also references the work of Iain McGilchrist, a guest a few weeks back.
You can learn more about Indy's work via DarkMatterLabs
Connect with Indy on socials @DarkMatter_Labs and @indy_johar
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Lyndsey Stonebridge (Humans rights academic, Hannah Arendt biographer) was worried about the banality of evil she was observing in the world and so dug down into the work of controversial philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt for insights. Her new book, We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience is a guide on how to live--and think--through a moment like the one we’re in now in the wake of the US election. It draws on Arendt’s ideas about totalitarianism, loneliness, the dulling of the mind, capitalism, as well as the imperative to love the world. Lyndsey is a Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and writes and broadcasts about a range of topical subjects: refugees, feminism and the moral mind. In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
SHOW NOTES
I mention the Wild episode with BBC Washington correspondent Nick Bryant
Get your copy of Lyndsey's new book, We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience
Read more about Lyndsey's work here and follow her on IG here
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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life
Let’s connect on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Luke Kemp (historical collapse expert; associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) has studied past civilisations and mapped out a picture of how long they tend to last before they collapse, what tends to tip them and what (if anything) can be done to stall their demise. Luke works alongside Lord Martin Rees and Yuval Noah Harari, is an honorary lecturer in environmental policy at the Australian National University and his collapse insights have been covered by the BBC, the New York Times and the New Yorker. His first book, 'Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse' will be published in June 2025.
In this episode I get Luke to provide a bit of a 101 on how civilisations do indeed decline and perish and to update us on the latest theories on how and whether ours might make it through. The answer is surprising.
SHOW NOTES
Here’s Luke’s original report on complex civilisation’s lifespans.
Keep up to date with Luke's work here
A few past Wild guests are referenced by Luke. You can catch the episode on Moloch with Liv Boeree here, the interview with Adam Mastroianni here and my chat with Nate Hagens here
The first chapter of my book serialisation – about hope – is available to everyone here
And here are the two chapters that I reference at the end
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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life
Let’s connect on Instagram
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life
Let’s connect on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of “Ask Me Anything” questions about the minutiae of writing about - and having to live through - collapse. I try to cover most of these kinds of questions as we work through the book Serialisation process, but a few get left behind. And so this week’s Wild episode covers these off.
You are welcome to join the 55,000 subscribers who are following the book, chapter by chapter, week by week, here. You’ll be invited to upgrade (sorry to have to use such commercial language) to a paid subscription…this helps me to be able to dedicate most of my working week to writing said book. But don’t feel obligated. You can stay a free subscriber and read these first few chapters here and a preview of every other one!
SHOW NOTES
Here’s where you can start reading the first chapter of the Book Serialisation
And here’s the link to subscribe to my Substack newsletter
Want to ask me your own question…post it here
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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life
Let’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Prof. Joel Pearson (Neuroscientist; AI and cognition scientist) returns to Wild, this time to discuss whether free will is an illusion. In our last chat (about intuition) the subject was raised and Joel promised to come back to discuss it further, particularly in the context of AI, algorithms, the rise of totalitarianism and our agency in systems collapse.
Joel is the founder and Director of Future Minds Lab which applies neuroscience findings to art, AI, media, advertising and various philosophical quandaries. He’s also a National Health and Medical Research Council fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He developed the first scientific test to measure intuition and wrote The Intuition Toolkit. In this conversation, we also cover the science of manifesting!
SHOW NOTES
I mention the chapter on Blame and the very robust discussion the Substack community had around it. You can join this here
Here’s the previous episode where Joel talks about the scientific proof of intuition
Get Joel’s book The Intuition Toolkit: The New Science of Knowing What without Knowing Why
Follow Joel on his Future Minds Lab Substack
I previously had willpower expert Roy Baumeister on Wild to talk about how the female orgasm shapes the world!
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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life
Let’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.