As Manda Scott's BRILLIANT podcast suggests, "another world is possible… we have the power of gods to destroy our home, but we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine." This week's special episode is a joint podcast with Manda on her Accidental Gods podcast (https://accidentalgods.life/ ). In all of her shamanic work, bestselling novel-writing, podcasting and convening, Manda Scott is gathering people around the vital question, how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come?

This week it was a huge pleasure to be able to welcome⁠ Carl Mika, Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies⁠ from Aotearoa, the country now known as New Zealand. As you can probably guess from the title of this episode, this conversation with Carl went pretty deep pretty quickly! That's because underlying the most apparently basic concepts like learning or logic that people use all the time are some pretty fundamental assumptions about the way the world is. And they're certainly not universal to all humans.

This episode is a fantastic conversation with 2 brilliant women who have been whipping up a storm this week with the release of their amazing new book ⁠The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better⁠! Dr Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson chat with me about the disengagement crisis facing our young people and what we, as parents and educators, can do about it.

It's a strange thing that the concept of school has become almost universal over the last few hundred years. If you ask anyone almost anywhere in the world, they will be able to describe something that looks roughly like a shared concept of school. But maybe it didn't have to be this way. Maybe it could have been different. This week the amazing professor of anthropology Susan Blum Joins me to talk about 'schoolishness' which is her latest fantastic book, based on decades of research into the cultural development of the dominant ideas around formal institutional education.

We're ending this final epsiode of 2024 in a beautiful place with Karima Kadaoui sharing in some co-reflections with me about the trustful and humanising society that she is seeing emerge in Morocco and beyond. It became really clear to me during this conversation with Karima, that the way that we talk about the work we are doing is a really important choice. This is because it sets up frames and expectations that really affect how we do the work. So for that reason, I'm not going to say much about the incredible work that is happening across communities, schools and government ministries across Morocco through the Tamkeen process as Karima describes it much more beautifully than I ever could.

The inspiration for this end-of-year impromptu gathering came from a recent flurry of ‘Collapse'-inspired exchanges in my (un)social media feeds! This was prompted largely by Ginie Servant Miklos’ recently published and brilliant book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for The End of The World as We Know It (quoted in the title of the episode) and Will Richardson’s equally provocative and inspiring, Confronting Education In a Time of Complexity, Chaos and Collapse…

Systems change, or in fact any change, in formal education systems is notoriously hard. Research and innovation across the sector has been historically weak. But as the stakes get higher for much-needed change, we have to get better at harnessing the collective intelligence of what we know, from young people to practitioners in classrooms everyday to parents and leaders. This week’s guest has been working at the heart of this issue since the 1990s. Sir Geoff Mulgan is a Professor at University College London (UCL), in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Policy team (STEaPP) in the engineering department.

One of the things that I enjoy doing on the podcast is problematising various ’school subjects’. In previous episodes, with various guests we’ve questioned maths, languages, economics, history, physical education. But we haven’t yet taken a critical look at science itself, which is not only a set of disciplines, but also an approach and methodology that underpins a lot of the logic of how many like to imagine that we direct education, through evidence-based practice and the sciences of learning. Apparently it tells us ‘what works’ in inverted commas… doesn’t it?

Back with another special episode on the status of the AI in education, cutting through the hype (again) with the fantastic Charles Fadel. This is quite a deep dive into the topic, so if you’re early exploring this topic, check out ⁠episodes 107⁠ and ⁠108⁠ with a great selection of reflections on AI in education from young people, teachers, leaders, policy-makers and edtech entrepreneurs.

A more humane education feels very necessary right now. Our planet and its inhabitants all over the world seem to be crying out for it. Humane Educators Zoe Weil and Rae Sikora created IHE In 1996 to do precisely this. And so it is a huge pleasure this week to be able to welcome Zoh While and her colleague Julie Meltzer from the Institute onto the podcast.

“Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” This is a quote from the paediatrician, Rachel Naomi Remen, that my guest this week quotes in her fantastic new book The Impossible Question of Living Well: How do we hold on to what matters, while also knowing how to let go? Dr Helen Street has been banging the drum that living well should be a priority of educational institutions for years, but more importantly, that this is not a question of individual ‘hacks to happiness’ as she talks about in this episode, but a fundamental rethinking of how much context plays a role in enabling or preventing possibilities for living well.

Something we often forget is how powerfully language shapes how we view each other and the world and how we interact as part of it. For that reason, it is a key part of how we help young people to understand their experiences, Both as a means of relating and communicating and as a set of skills that they acquire. This week it is a huge privilege to be able to welcome ⁠Kevin Belin⁠ onto the podcast who is the Director of the Diné Bizaad Institute and Navajo Language teacher at ⁠Navajo Preparatory School⁠, in Navajo Nation in what is now known as the United States.

As you will have heard in previous episodes for example with Ray Ison, Mette Böll and others, there is a lot of interest currently in systems thinking approaches in education as a key competency for our young people. But what systems thinking means once you scratch the surface is a question that we need to ask. And if we’re supporting our young people (as well as teachers and leaders) to navigate complexity, Dave will definitely have something to say about that! 

Keeping educational experiences alive, responsive and moving with our young people is a key piece of what the best educators do, even more impressive as it is often in stark contrast to the rigid, static institutions in which they live, work and learn. This week it’s such a pleasure to be talking with Dr Gholdy Muhammad whose amazing work on Historically Responsive Literacies supports teachers in creating spaces for mutual empowerment, confidence, and self-reliance in students…

Too often simplistic arguments against educational change are that providing more opportunities for increased agency for young people (following their own questions, inquiries, cares etc) means less rigour, depth and intellectual stretch… Michael Strong is one of the most experienced innovative school program designers in the U.S.

This strange thing called ‘knowledge’ has always been a battleground in educational conversations - for example, in lots of loud calls for “knowledge-rich” curricula! Personally I’m very much in favour of knowledge and knowing, part of the buzz of following curiosity and inquiries! It’s just the KIND of knowledge and knowing that we have been conditioned to value over others that I have an issue with! Minna Salami has been deeply challenging this hierarchy of knowing through her extensive work and amazing concept and book of the same title, Sensuous Knowledge. Her work coming from the tradition of African Feminism is to trouble the hierarchies, not simply invert them.

We need to ask ourselves some really tough questions about what our education systems are really doing to support young people to live in a climate changed world of at least 2 degrees of warming. What are the hands-on skills that they will need, but also how are we supporting them to regulate difficult emotions, and build community as we relocalise. This week, Ginie Servant-Miklos is returning to the podcast, this time with her colleague Rutger Engels, to talk about what they are learning through their work implementing critically important ideas in their Bildung Climate School pilots with young people across Rotterdam. 

If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while now, you will know that creating conversational spaces full of possibility as an antidote to polarisation and crisis is something I really value, whether that’s on a podcast, online, or even better, in person! 

So it was such a joy to sit down with Doline Ndorimana to talk about her amazing work doing just that...

For new parents and early years educators, there’s a wealth of guidance and support for how to understand what’s happening for our babies and toddlers, but when it comes to the stories we tell about adolescence, an equally important period of significant change, sometimes it’s more just get your head down and get through it! As millions of young people make the big transition to Middle School, I was very curious to learn from Chris Balme, one of the real experts, not only of the patterns of change and development at this time, but also of how to create educational environments that really take these young people seriously! 

Carol Sanford is one of the most important thinkers of the last few decades. Like no-one else, her work calls out the deeply damaging effects of Behaviourism on all aspects of our lives, especially learning and education, and advocates for a living systems approach to business, education and community.