New and old podcasts for inspiration and insight

john gieryn

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Apr 20, 2019 · 4 min read

In moving to New Zealand, in part to join my peers and colleagues at Loomio and Enspiral, I had a lot of time for podcast exploration. I stumbled across such a number of excellent episodes from podcasts I hadn’t heard of, that I thought I’d make a little digest. While I was at it, I figured I’d also share my enduring favorites.

New podcasts to me — stand out episodes:

• The Seed — “Collette’s Corner” —friend and ally, Camia Young’s crowdfunding campaign for equitable, democratic, and human-centered development in NZ; he also explores her broader story in this episode
• In Too Deep — “Experimental, multi-disciplinary approaches to systems change and social innovation” —Enspiral’s very own Sam Rye talks about his work, his Masters of Design and more; transcript available. In Too Deep is quite new, by the (system) mapping tool, Kumu.io
• Leadermorphosis — “Aaron Dignan on being complexity conscious and people positive” — This podcast isn’t new nor a recent find, but the delivery and quality has grown exponentially… kudos to Lisa Gill, another Enspiral Contributor. MJ Kaplan—a Loomio board member—works for the company Aaron founded, The Ready. I was really impressed with this episode and took a number of notes (happy to make ’em digital if somebody is highly interested, especially if you want to reflect on it with me). This episode put Aaron’s new book Brave New Work on my reading list. Dovetails nicely with Sam Rye’s just above, and shared some practical tools like the O.S. Canvas & Tension Practice Cards.
• No Ego — “Scott Halford, writer and behavioral science expert” — Really nice compilation of simple ways to treat your brain well and live your day productively and well; many you’ll have heard before, but I found them good reminders. Halford focuses on brain-based behavioral science, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and influence.
• Invisibilia— “The Fifth Vital Sign” —Again not new, but it’s back with another season (w00t)… This episode shares quality discourse around the experience, and culture around, pain. Generally, Invisibilia brings together top-notch science with heartfelt story around the intangibles of the human experience (often psychological). Pairs nicely with their episodes that hugely transformed my understandings of emotion.
• Deconstructed with Mehdi Hasan (part of The Intercept) — “Mayor Pete Buttigieg on Trump, Islamophobia, and His Presidential Bid” — I don’t typically listen to political shows from the US, let alone play in the national US political arena, but this one does spotlight a really awesome candidate whom even I am enjoying amplifying and (minimally) supporting

• Future Thinkers Podcast (also not new) — “Joe Brewer — Rites of Passage For Cultural Evolution” — Two episodes that were really impressive to me. I took some notes. I’m also interested to check out their Jungian archetypes series, and enjoyed their dialogues with Jordan Greenhall
• Steal This Show — “Software will Eat the World, with @Rabble” — Rabble speaks to his theory of change, his venture he’s building on top of Scuttlebutt (and its revenue model), his take on Silicon Valley’s culture and its socio-techno-financial engine produced a number of brainstorms, some of them relating to community currencies. (h/t to Stephen Reid for sharing this in his awesome new digest, In Correspondence). Steal This Show also featured my friend on “Loomio — Rebuilding Our Cultural OS with Richard Bartlett”
• Emerge — “Nora Bateson: Awakening Interdependence and Evolving Systems with Warm Data”—Emerge has been on my radar since my friend Phoebe Tickell passed me this incredibly generative episode and I learned that Daniel Thorson also interviewed Rich. Bridging system change, spirituality, and more, I’m particularly interested to listen to a recent series of episodes Thorson has published, where he interviews Dr. Jem Bendell, then Vinay Gupta, and then does some sense making of these conversations with Bonnita Roy and another former guest.

Haven’t really listened to it yet, but still am excited about…

• All My Relations — “All my relations and indigenous feminisms”
• Playing Well With Others — by Creative Commons, sweet, narrative-driven stories around collaboration; I did listen to one and it was chill and enjoyable.

GOLDEN OLDIES: Selected episodes from podcasts I always return to

‘cuz I couldn’t help myself…

• OnBeing with Krista Tippett — “Maria Popova: Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age” — Maria Popova writes as “BrainPickings” and is awesome
• Under the Skin with Russell Brand — “Meeting A Mentor (with Tony Robbins)” — I was surprised at how much I appreciated Tony Robbins content; he actually gets somewhat vulnerable on this episode and I didn’t expect to experience as much empathy with him as I did
• Radio Open Source — “The Art of Wildness” — “re-imagining the environmental crisis in the wake of the accord in Paris. The economists had their turn. Now we’re asking: What would the artists do?” and relatedly, Walden & the Natural World of Transcendentalism, part two of the Thoreau’s bicentennial, inspired the pictured-quote above. From politics to technology to history, art and music… there’s a number of amazing Radio Open Source episodes from which I found inspiration or insights [1] [2].
• How to Survive the End of the World — “Awww Shucks: How Do We Prepare for Climate Apocalypse?” — is a great introduction to the Brown sisters’ panache and wisdom, but another really great episode I just listened to is, “Disability Justice for the Apocalypse: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha Gets Us Together”

I’d love to hear from you:

• any reactions? connections?
• any podcasts you recently stumbled on?
• any enduring favorites, episodes, that come up for you?