Accidental Gods

Can we separate politics from democracy? Our political system is wholly corrupt and no longer fit for purpose - if it ever was. What if Citizens' Assemblies could bring agency to the whole of our population, helping people to find empathy with each other, to engage in conversations in good faith and work together to solve the wicked problems of the polycrisis: social inequity, climate chaos, the death cult of predatory capitalism.  These are so interlinked, we won't fix one unless we fix them all.
So how do we do it?  This week, I'm talking to someone who spends her life reflecting on, teaching and researching this. Isabella Roberts started off in the Big Four, Private Equity and Investment Banking, then switched from the private markets into politics at the start of 2021 as a candidate for the London Assembly elections. Against the backdrop of the UK's first year out of the EU and in the depths of the COVID pandemic, she was inspired to take a stand and be the change she wanted to see in the governance of the UK's capital.
She then took on a Masters in Digital Politics and Sustainable Development.  Her thesis in 2023 focused on How Collective Intelligence Can Enhance Democracy, which resulted in the initiation of SAAFE which stands for: Space for Silent Contemplation and Reflection, Active Listening and Feeling Heard, Ability to Change One's Mind, Feeling Connected as Part of the Whole, Epistemic Growth and Epistemic Humility - and which uses human-centred design principles for empowering participants in tech-enabled deliberation. This is an inquiry into what it means to be human in a digital age, in line with systems change towards a more deliberative democracy, and it has manifested in a multi-stakeholder project supported by the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton, bringing together democratic practitioners and the developers of deliberative technologies.  Meanwhile, Bella is the independent evaluator of two deliberative processes: the Birmingham Museums Trust Citizens' Jury, and currently the National Gallery's Citizens' Assembly (NG Citizens). 
She also completed her first Vipassana course of 10-day silent meditation and is studying for a PhD with the title: Revolutionising deliberative democracy with immersive technology - a comparison between East and West.
Bella has explored the depth and breadth of what works, so that together, we can create a democracy that empowers ordinary people to help fix their communities and the wider world. Like previous podcast guests, Matt Golding of Antidote and Dylan McGarry of Empatheatre, Bella understands the sense of meaning and purpose and involvement that is so transformative - which was why this conversation was so rich and so deep.  Enjoy!
Links
Bella on LinkedIn
Antiparty
Delibtech
Breathe With Bella Substack
Bella on YouTube
POLIS
Books
Against Elections
Politics without Politicians by Helen Landemore
Bella's Masters Dissertation - How Can Collective Intelligence Enhance Democracy? An Investigation Towards Human Centred Design Principles For Empowering People Engaging With Deliberative Technologies?
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'FALLING IN LOVE WITH LIFE' which will run on Sunday 17th May 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods - 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
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

Contemplatives down the centuries have expressed a sense of unity with the All That Is, the Heart Mind of the Universe, whatever we want to call it. The words may be different, but the sense of non duality, of immanence, awe and inter-being seem universal. Only in our western world do we resolutely decide that the world is made of atoms and nothing really matters. 
Except clearly it does, and if we have one central crisis in our world today, it's one of meaning-making. Even more than our failure to make sense of anything, is our search for a sense of meaning and purpose that must, surely, underlie everything.  Where we fall down is in thinking that what we can see, hear, taste, smell, feel is the sum total of all there is: if we can't sense it - if we can't measure it - then it isn't there - and it doesn't matter.  This is the kind of frame that underlies the entire death cult of predatory capitalism; it's the core of how we have made the world work…and it's falling apart under our feet and in front of our eyes.
Which makes it a really good time indeed to talk to someone who spends their entire life contemplating the nature of reality, in finding ways to be fully present and then being this in a way that ripples out to anyone and everyone nearby, human and more than human. Brother Phap Linh, also known as Brother Spirit, is a Buddhist monk from Plum Village, the Zen monastery founded by the late Thich Nhat Hanh near Bergerac in south west France. Brother Phap Linh is someone who radiates presence, that sense of inter-being or inter-becoming that arise when we are fully present.  As you'll hear, he began life as a musician and mathematician and then, in searching for the nature of reality, found Plum Village and his teacher.  He and Thich Nhat Hanh planned a book: Wonder: Where Zen meets Science. It's being published later next year and we'll have another conversation explicitly about the book, but today, we wanted to explore the routes towards a way of being that all of us can follow. This was a wide, deep conversation and felt absolutely right for the chaos of these times.  Please share the calm with us, and the joy of discovery.

Links
Plum Village
Being Peace (Monastery in the UK)
Books by Thich Nhat Hanh
Books by Mae-Wan Ho
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'FALLING IN LOVE WITH LIFE' which will run on Sunday 17th May 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods - 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
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

Imagine a world where every one of us finds meaning in living a good life - and where 'good' means conducive to the flourishing of all beings. Imagine that this frames our every thought, sensing and action, allowing us to explore and question our triggered responses to the world we are enmeshed with in a way that is resilient and self-regulating, so that we can bring the best of ourselves to the table, with outcomes as information, ready to engage with what is, for what matters, and not to force how we think things ought to be.  Imagine us working to govern this way of being so our our actions are shaped, moment by moment, day by day, year by year, decade by decade as we turn the bus that is humanity - the entire ecosphere, really - from the edge of the cliff that is mass extinction to collective enduring flourishing. 
This is the vision of this week's guest, Dr Victoria Hurth.  Victoria was with us back in Episode #308 and I have put a link in the show notes so you can listen as she describes her new book, Beyond Profit; Purpose-Driven Leadership for a Wellbeing Economy and the ISO 37011 Standard which she is helping lead - and which is framed exactly around these philosophical concepts. Near the end of that podcast, Victoria mentioned that she is a practicing Stoic, and that she finds within its teachings, a moral philosophy compatible with our navigating the pinch point of the poly crisis. 
And so clearly, we had to have another conversation.  This is it.  As we did last time, we ranged far and wide touching on what it means to be in service to the world; how we might choose to live a purpose-driven life and what that purpose might be; what does it mean, anyway, to live a good life, and can everyone access it?  We explored the difference between religion, spirituality and philosophy and ethics, how we can expand to whole systems, or see ourselves as a system and how we might live a life that is wise, just, courageous and temperate. 
As a bit of background, Dr Victoria Hurth is an Independent Pracademic who works in service to the world clarifying its consensus on what matters, before we lose it. She firmly believes that we need to dedicate ourselves to the long-term wellbeing of all as the ultimate shared purpose, and then co-create the outer-most governance system to frame the strategies/behaviours/outcomes that will take us there.  We don’t need everyone to sign up, but we do need a critical mass of people at all levels of our organisations from government, to NGOs to industry and beyond. 
 
To this end, Victoria co-led the five-year development of the global ISO standard in Governance of Organizations (ISO37000), was Technical Author for the first national standard in Purpose-Driven Organizations and is currently Project Leader of the development of an equivalent ISO (ISO37011). Victoria is a Fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Director at the Soil Association Certification Ltd and advises Planet Mark, and UnaTerra Venture Capital. She has over 25 years’ global experience in business transformation and is a full time Associate Professor of Marketing and Sustainable Business.  Alongside all this, she is also a practicing Stoic. 
Links
Episode #308
Beyond Profit book 
Victoria’s website
Victoria on LinkedIn
Purpose-Driven Organisations– community 
Books
Stoicism and Emotion by Margaret Graver
The Enchiridion by Epictetus
Beyond the Individual: Stoic Philosophy on Community and Connection by  Will Johncock

Podcasts
Practical Stoicism with Tanner Campbell

AI Generated overview of Stoic practice created by Victoria (Claude)
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'FALLING IN LOVE WITH LIFE' which will run on Sunday 17th May 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods - 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
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

“I think empathy is a creative act. It’s imaginal, it’s an art-making practice, where even just listening is creating a picture and a lifeworld of the other inside yourself in order to get closer to each other.” - Dylan McGarry
Empathy is a magical thing.  It lets us do more than just step into another's shoes, it opens the doors for us to step into their heart and soul with the vast generosity of spirit we'd like others to bring to us, wide as the sky, deep as the oceans, so that we can see through their eyes as the best of who they are. Obviously, we can do this with other people, but we can do it too, with whales, with elephants, with horses, and red kites and moles and spiders - and mountains and trees and landscapes… empathy is the spark that connects us to the More than Human world.  There are not many people who truly understand this and fewer still who make it their life's work to open the doors in our souls with such subtlety that we only know afterwards that we've stepped beyond the boundaries of who we think we are.
Our guest this week, Dr Dylan McGarry, is one of these people. Dyl works across the fields of Education, Sociology, Ecology, and the Arts. An Educational Sociologist, Cultural Ecologist, multimedia artist, artivist, curator, theatre and filmmaker, Dyl's work spans disciplines with many tentacles touching the world. Dyl holds a PhD in Environmental Education and Art, as well as degrees in Marine Science, Environmental Science, and Sustainable Rural Development.
As co-founder of Empatheatre, their praxis draws from the power of public storytelling, theatre, film, and animation, as a tool for regenerative community building, proactive justice, active empathy and meaning making.  Their artwork and creative practice are particularly focused on empathy, working with imagination, listening and empathy as actual sculptural materials. They are developing pedagogies for empathy, in the context of ecological citizenship, and exploring the sculptural potential of empathy, attentiveness, intuition and learning.
Dyl is an astonishingly prolific, and inspiring pracademic, with a host of published papers in topics that I could easily dive into for years - like hydro-feminism... but it's the work of Empatheatre that we're really looking at today.  This is a theatre-based approach to transgressive social learning, and an extra-legal alternative to democratising policy change. This in itself is mind-blowing - the plays are developed over months or years in collaboration with the communities affected by the concepts - and then when the play tours, the cast and crew facilitate conversations after each event that turn into tribunals or citizen's assemblies and the mere fact of having experienced the deep emotions of the play, had a sense of how things land with other people, can open doors that were previously closed.  I've been searching for longer than this podcast has been live for people who are crafting paradigm shift in ways that are sticky, that will land and last - and this is it. 
Dylan says that empathy has three components: Imagination, attentiveness, and intuition. And just hearing this opens whole new ways of being for me, and I hope for you.  This was such a heart-filling, generative conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. People of the podcast, please welcome Dylan McGarry from Empatheatre, and so much more.
​
"His sensitivity and integrity regarding valuing the knowledge, perspectives and values of others is amazing – a role model for others." 
    Professor Charlie Shackleton, Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University

LINKS
https://www.dylanmcgarry.org/
https://www.empatheatre.com/
Empatheatre on YouTube
https://youtu.be/p_W3QBz9cPY?si=mFH4W2V7_AnObM61  Lalela uLwandle (illustrated short film)
https://youtu.be/DnuZa7r0vPc?si=RX3Is2k4eN0ROO9e  CWF24 TA1 Empatheatre Dylan McGarry
https://youtu.be/sfAGXCiki8U?si=fXaqm66WlKCqO2j6 FORGE x MOTH Festival of Ideas 2025 | Dylan McGarry & Elisa Morgera
https://youtu.be/lNm-Yf8Dt10?si=CkJW0aqePYEQAX3h  Indlela Yokuphila: The Soul's Journey (ZULU)
https://youtu.be/e3tUrfUXgsw?si=tQRxPTSLHgkDwckG Isitha Sabantu Teaser
https://youtu.be/4UBubIpCWuk?si=CyVzPA7suMnmbrrr The Blue Blanket
South African Puppet Company: The Herds
The play: Isitha Sabantu - review

—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'FALLING IN LOVE WITH LIFE' which will run on Sunday 17th May 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods - 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
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

Jeremy Lent is a long time friend of the podcast.  His new book, 'Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All'  is coming out at the end of April 2026 and so we got together to discuss what an Ecocivilisation is, why we so badly need to become one, and how we might get there.
These questions have animated all of Jeremy Lent's writing, from The Patterning Instinct, through The Web of Meaning and now to his latest in this seminal trifecta: Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works For All.  We spoke to Jeremy back in Episode #301 to lay the foundations of the book, to explore the ways the current system is not fit for purpose and then to leave the door open for this episode, which is timed so that you can pre-order the book in plenty of time - it's out on the 26th of May in the US and the 28th in the UK.
This is a genuinely Thrutopian book in that it lays out pathways - route maps - towards a future we'd be proud to leave behind. Nobody is pretending these are the only routes, but I think we are all agreed that the values and beliefs underpinning the new system will have to be coherent in the same way the values of power-over and beliefs in separation, scarcity and powerlessness are core to what Jeremy called Wendigo Inc. and we tend to call the Death Cult of Predatory Capitalism.
I'm sure Jeremy needs no introduction to anyone in this field, but there's always someone for whom this is the first podcast - you're so welcome here, thank you - and so for those to whom some of the people and ideas are new, Jeremy Lent was born in London, has a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO. Now, he is an author, speaker and founder of the  Deep Transformation Network, a global community exploring pathways to an ecological civilization. He is the author of the three books we mentioned, and is helping to co-create an EcoCivilisation Visioning Forum and various other umbrella seed-banks to help bring his ideas into being. He is one of those people who has given his life to the emerging of a system that will work for all life.
Jeremy's Website: https://www.jeremylent.com
Jeremy's Blog https://patternsofmeaning.com
Jeremy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-lent-ba153017/
Jeremy's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyLent
Deep Transformation Network https://deeptransformation.network/feed
TOUR DATES: []
Guardian article on global tipping point https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/13/coral-reefs-ice-sheets-amazon-rainforest-tipping-point-global-heating-scientists-report

Books
The Patterning Instinct https://www.jeremylent.com/the-patterning-instinct.html
The Web of Meaning https://www.jeremylent.com/the-web-of-meaning.html
EcoCivilization - pre-order here: https://www.jeremylent.com/

Previous Episodes
#102 - Weaving the Web of Meaning  https://accidentalgods.life/weaving-the-web-of-meaning/
#38 - Fractal Flourishing https://accidentalgods.life/fractal-flourishing/
#310 - Eco-civilisation - Part 1   https://accidentalgods.life/eco-civilisation-the-future-we-deserve-and-how-we-will-get-there-with-jeremy-lent/
—About Accidental Gods—

We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass
Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'FALLING IN LOVE WITH LIFE' which will run on Sunday 17th May 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods - 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
Manda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is fully booked just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.