Accidental Gods

At the end of a turbulent year that has seen the masks come off the death cult in ways that were probably predictable, but still shocking, we reconvene our December Solstice Traditional conversation. Manda is joined by Della Duncan of the Upstream Podcast and Nathalie Nahai of 'Nathalie Nahai in Conversation' to explore the things that have stood out for each of us in our explorations this year—and to look forward to the year about to begin for what will be our baselines. Della Z Duncan is a Renegade Economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a co-host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, a faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, a founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and the designer and co-facilitator of the Cultivating Regenerative Livelihood Course at Gaia Education.Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.Before we head into the conversation, I want to invite you to our transformative online course,  Dreaming Your Year Awake,  which takes place on Sunday the 4th of January from 16:00 - 20:00 UK time (GMT). This is a time to go inwards, to be kind to ourselves, to explore all that we can be and want to be. It's your chance really to delve deeply into the year just gone, and look ahead at how you want to shape your attention and intention for the year that’s coming, for each of us, individually and together to ask ourselves how we are going to navigate all the coming turbulence with grace and courage?  This, too, is part of our Accidental Gods tradition and we have people who’ve come year after year to give themselves the gift of time and space and the company of people who share the journey. So please do come along, we would love to share this time with you.What we offer in more detail: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf 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

Here's our December Solstice Meditation for 2025 - please find a place and time where you can relax, take space for yourself, and build the connections to the web of life that will carry us forward. Details of 3iATLAS https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/3i-atlas-facts-and-faqs/

How do we create the stories that will bring a whole new generation back to the web of life, that will help people find hope again, and lean into their heart's yearning for connection, relationship, being and belonging? This week's guest, Ally Kingston, is a creative facilitator and strategy lead at Purpose Disruptors, where she co-developed the breakthrough Agency for Nature, a pop-up agency bringing nature into youth culture. A former advertising strategist, she is curious about how creativity intersects with myth, meaning, consumerism and desire, and how we might design new cultural infrastructures that seed fresh possibilities for how to live.Equally committed to holding space for grief and loss in turbulent times, Ally has trained as a death doula and rites of passage holder and recently co-created the Tending to Endings card deck, a garden-inspired tool for engaging more meaningfully with loss. She is based in Somerset in the UK, where she lives with her partner, young son and lurcher. In this wide-ranging episode, we explore the nature of advertising and how an industry that has been so deeply embedded in the death cult of predatory capitalism can turn all the wild, creative magic in service of life; how the skills that push us to buy the pseudo-satisfiers can instead remind us of our original connections, and turn us towards co-creation, connection and belonging.  We talk too, about grief and how learning to compost the old system is a key to the new growth we need and want.  Ally is so multi-talented, it was a joy to explore so many ways we can bring our world back into love with life, into balance, into each of us being part of the solution and letting go of the parts of the problem. Purpose Disruptors https://www.purposedisruptors.org/Agency for Nature https://www.agencyfornature.com/Tending to Endings https://www.tendingtoendings.com/Ally on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/ally-kingston-75922025/Ally on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/allykingstonALLY is co-guiding a deep dark creative winter journey with Dan Burgess and co, Into the Dark, in January: https://www.becomingcrew.com/intothedarkWhat we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member - but if you are, all Gatherings are half price) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf 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

Here's Manda's round up of (some of) the best books, poetry and podcasts she's come across this year.   Most of the links are to Bookshop.org in the UK where you can link to an independent bookshop of your choice.  In some cases, we've linked to the authors' website. FictionRachel Neumeier - Rihasi, Marag, Sekaran, Hedesa - all four are part of the TUYO series. 8 Doors from Dawn to Midnight is a stand alone. Natasha Pulley - The Hymn to DionysusAntonia Hodgson- The Raven Scholar   +Katherine Addison - The Tomb of DragonsAmal El Mohtar  - The River has RootsJacqui Morris and Tamsin Abbott - Wild Folk  Wild Gods Rising - Podcast with the authors Richard Morgan Altered Carbon Becky Chambers A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet Poetry: You better be Lightning by Andrea GibsonA Map to the Next World: Poems and Tales by Joy Harjo (YouTube Interview on the Power of Poetry) Non Fiction  Economic Space Agency (Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez and Akseli Virtanen)  Protocols for Post Capitalist Expression Richard Schwartz and Thomas Hübl - Releasing our Burdens: A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral and Collective TraumaJulie Brams The Nature Embedded Mind: How the Way We Think Can Heal Our Planet and OurselvesTristan Gooley  How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Roots to Leaves Justine Afra Huxley and Anna Kovasna  Co-creating with a Living Intelligent Earth: Pathways towards Kincentric LeadershipEliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies: The case against superintelligent AIPODCASTSNate Hagens The Great Simplification: If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies: How Artificial SuperIntelligence Might Wipe Out our Entire Species w Nate Soares Your Undivided Attention: Feed Drop: “Into the Machine” with Tobias Rose-StockwellUpstream - A World out of Balance: Introducing Doughnut 3.0 w Andrew Fanning Point of Relation with Thomas Hübl: Becoming an Ally of Life Love and Philosophy by Andrea Hiott: Moving Beyond Binaries in Eduction: Andrea Hiott in Conversation with Tim Logan of Future Learning Design Future Learning Design What’s Love Got to Do with Education? A Conversation with Dr Laura Penn, Khadija Shahper Backthiar, Jamie Bristow and Andrea Hiott Step Outside, Stand Still Pauline Leitch MagazinePermaculture Magazine SubscriptionsWhat we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf 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

If we are to build systems that meet our real needs we have to first understand what those needs are and start growing the stuff that will allow us to thrive: good food from healthy soils, safe and supportive homes and communities, space to develop and express our creativity, opportunities to increase our capacity for co-operation and kindness.  As much as these, though, we need to understand what an economy is for - why it does what it does. And while we're all clear that the death cult of Predatory Capitalism exists to enrich the few at the expense of the rest of the living web, it's not always clear what a flourishing economy might look like.  So we're going to explore exactly this with our guest today. Inez Aponte is a self-described 'Dissident of Capitalism', she's an educator, storyteller, and consultant who's spent 15 years bridging mainstream economics with human-scale alternatives. Using the Human Scale Development Approach (Barefoot Economics), she helps professionals see the economic system itself, and imagine what comes next.Barefoot Economics (also known as Human Scale Development) was developed by Manfred Max-Neef and colleagues in Chile as a response to the predations of the colonial capital system. It reframes economic thinking away from endless wants and towards nine fundamental needs: Subsistence, Freedom, Participation, Understanding, Affection, Creation, Idleness, Protection and Identity.We are wealthy when our needs are satisfied, regardless of our income. This means we can also be poor in multiple ways, even when we have a ‘healthy’ bank balance.Inez has built this forward into a framework for the 21st century. Her 'Beautiful Economies Learning Lab' breaks people out of mainstream economic thinking to explore how we can build systems that meet real needs while healing ourselves, communities, and the Earth.So this is our deep dive.  Let's go. https://www.beautifuleconomies.com/https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Money_and_Economics/The_Future_of_Money-Bernard_Lietaer.pdfWhat we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's  'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf 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