Ece Temelkuran (fascism expert, political exile, journalist) first began reporting on the global slide into fascism as a journalist witnessing it happen in her home country, Turkey. In 2016, she was forced into exile and went on to write the bestselling book How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Authoritarianism that warned the rest of the world just how close it was to the same perilous descent. 

In her new book, Nation of Strangers, Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century, Ece argues we are entering “an age of survival” and that we are all about to become exiles of sorts, “unhomed” from our sense of belonging to the world as authoritarianism rips us from our sense of collective meaning as humans. Pivoting her focus to how we can best move through this moment, she says we need to turn to those who’ve already been exiled (the immigrants, the refugees, the victims of fascism) to learn how to rebuild our “what comes next”.

This is a fascinating thesis and Ece, who lives nomadically between Berlin and Greece, gives us a very raw and vulnerable take on it.

About Ece

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist, political thinker, and public speaker. Her work has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, El País, New Statesman, and Der Spiegel.

Show Notes

Get your copy of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Authoritarianism and Nation of Strangers, Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century

You can connect with Ece on Instagram here and on X here.

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Dr Sheldon Solomon (psychologist, founder of terror management theory) has spent 45 years proving that our fear of death is responsible for the structures of civilisation, such as religion, education, our moral laws, myths, consumerism, distraction technologies etc. Such structures keep us from being (fatally) overwhelmed by the uniquely human awareness that we will die one day. But what happens in a moment like this one, when so much death and annihilation looms? Well, our seductive death-denial efforts can drag us either way – into a tribal, fascist, self-destructive descent, or toward radical compassion and a life-affirming future. 

In this episode, I ask Sheldon to tell me how we (all of us here) can use his terror management theory to urgently steer things to the latter. This chat goes into juicy, philosophical territory but emerges with beautifully tangible answers for everyone in the “collapse aware” space. It’s a fun one!

*Hint: yes, it would appear we can!

About Sheldon

Sheldon Solomon is a professor of psychology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. Solomon is best known for co-developing “terror management theory” and is the co-author of Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Sheldon is also an American Psychological Society Fellow.

Show notes

You can get hold of Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life here

You might also like to listen to this Wild episode with “death walker” Stephen Jenkinson, which also goes into some of the themes in this chat.

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Audrey Tang (“civic hacker", Taiwan’s Cyber Ambassador-at-Large, polymath) is one of the world’s most influential thinkers and she has a vision for pro-social AI that is exciting leaders around the world.

Audrey became Taiwan’s former Digital Minister after she hacked the government to turn around a trade deal with China. The result was so ridiculously effective that, instead of arresting her, they gave her a gig in the government! During her 8-year tenure, she engaged almost half the country in co-creating democratic policies through technology. The upshot? Trust in the government went from 9% to a peak of 91% during the pandemic.

I’ve asked Audrey to join us to answer this wild question that burns for many of us:

Is it still possible to save AI – and ourselves - from technofascist doom?

Which is to ask, can we wrestle AI off the tech bros and turn it all around to make it a force for good? 

And if so, how? And what would it look like?

About Audrey

Audrey Tang is an activist hacker and was the first Digital Minister of Taiwan (and the world’s first transgender government minister), instrumental in shaping Taiwan's internationally acclaimed COVID-19 response and in safeguarding the 2024 presidential and legislative elections from foreign cyber interference. She’s been named one of TIME's "100 Most Influential People in AI" (2023), is now Taiwan’s cyber Ambassador-at-large and has just published a book, Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy

Show Notes

Here’s the link to Audrey’s short film titled Good Enough Ancestor, and you can read about Civic AI — 6-Pack of Care here.

You can get hold of her book Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy here. 

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Samantha Sweetwater (systems thinker, Gaian futurist, expert facilitator) draws on complexity science, deep ecology, indigenous wisdom, and 30+ years of experience guiding embodied transformation to help humans navigate civilizational transition. She joins me to talk us through how we can best emerge our way out of the current fiasco and toward the world we’d like to create, what it might look like and what we might want to start doing – or being – to be part of it all. We cover how to use our dreams, our intuition, psychedelics, “the local news" as well as the place of AI and technology in this emergent transition we’re in.

This is a beautiful, emotional and real conversation that launches “series 2” of Wild in which we’ll be exploring “the what comes next” - the “new world” - that we will take the place of the “old” self-destructing, tech-addled, carbon-based, linear world order that’s on its way out.

About Samantha

Samantha is a systems thinker, executive coach, wisdom teacher, and founder of One Life Circle. She pioneered the conscious dance movement, built a global community of practice, and has been initiated into indigenous lineages of Africa, Latin America, and Turtle Island. Her recently published book True Human: Reimagining Ourselves at the End of the World tackles exactly what we're speaking of here.

Show notes

In this episode, we mention previous Wild chats with collapsed academic Luke Kemp and Adam Mastroianni

Samantha’s new book is called True Human: Reimagining Ourselves at the End of the World

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After a long-ish hiatus, we’re returning with a fresh series of Wild. This second series will be taking a slightly new direction and is now “watchable” on YouTube and Substack.

There will be no fancy studios, no professional gear…Sarah will be getting straight to the important, “life-generating” conversations that steer us through the coming challenging years and decades of what is now understood of complex systems' collapse. 

Please hit “follow” or “subscribe” on whatever platform you’re now on so you don’t miss an episode and share the link with, say, at least a dozen of your friends and family.

Catch up on the Wild conversation with these previous episodes:

• IAIN MCGILCHRIST: Our “wretchedness” is a left-brain issue
• GAYA HERRINGTON: Complete global collapse by 2040? The prediction is “right on track”
• VANESSA ANDREOTTI: And now we have hospice modernity
• LUKE KEMP: Will our global civilisation go the way of the Roman Empire?

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As many of us move into the holiday season and slower days, I wanted to reshare this conversation with Iain McGilchrist. It’s a spacious, illuminating exploration of how we’ve come to live as we do — and a reminder that meaning and beauty are still available to us, even when solutions feel out of reach.

Dr Iain McGilchrist (neuroscientist, psychiatrist, polymath, author of The Master and His Emissary) devised a thesis that sets out how the two sides of our brains can affect the way we both interact and create the world. The left hemisphere is a narrow, extractive, problem-solving “machine” that divides and conquers things, fails to see our part in the world and to fathom beauty, awe and responsibility. Our civilisation, Iain says, has become ruled by a left-brain mentality, which is killing us and leaving us “wretched”; we need to put the right side back in charge!  

Iain is an associate of Green Templeton College in Oxford and a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Society of Arts. His 2009 book Master and his Emissary became a cult read and the recent follow-up, The Matter with Things took him 12 years to write (and is 600,000 words long!).

In this chat, we cover why societies start out creative, happy and flourishing (right-brained!) but switch left and destructive as they expand; the secret to living a well and happy life and how to find meaning and beauty in a world we possibly can’t “fix” (in the left-brain sense of the word). 

SHOW NOTES

Learn more about Iain's work via his website and watch his videos here.

Buy Master and his Emissary and The Matter with Things here.

Listen to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's Wild episode.

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Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life

Let’s connect on Instagram and WeAre8

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As many of us head into the holiday season — travelling, slowing down, or looking for something good to listen to — I wanted to reshare this conversation with Martha Beck. It’s a thoughtful, generous discussion about anxiety as a guide rather than a problem, and one I have a feeling will land right now.

Dr. Martha Beck (author; “best-known life coach in America”) is about to release a book on anxiety. The international best-selling author – who holds three Harvard degrees in social science and was described by Oprah as “one of the smartest women I know” – specialises in helping people find meaning and integrity in their lives.

In this episode, Sarah and Martha reconnect after 15 years to discuss their takes on the role of anxiety in our lives, and how it can be used to create purpose and direction (tune in to hear about the time Martha “bent a spoon with her mind” for Sarah!). They also share tangible techniques for using creativity to switch out of anxious spirals. Martha’s book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, is available now.

SHOW NOTES

Order your copy of Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose

Here’s the newspaper column I wrote about my first meeting with Martha in 2010

I refer to previous podcasts with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor and Iain McGilchrist, and another on the role of creativity with Ian Leslie

You can read more about Martha's work here and connect on IG here

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Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime, I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack.

My guest today is Dr Sharon Blackie a psychologist, mythologist, and author whose work lives at the meeting point of story, psyche, and ecology. In this conversation, we explore the role of fairytales and myths in hard and disorienting times, and what these old stories can teach us about the deeply human act of hospitality, how we welcome others, and ourselves, in moments of fear, change, and uncertainty. You can also watch the chat here.

We anchor the discussion around a beautiful essay of Sharon’s, The Meaning of Hospitality, which she has generously made available for free.

A bit about Dr Sharon Blackie: An award-winning writer and teacher working at the intersection of psychology, mythology, and ecology. She’s the author of the bestselling If Women Rose Rooted, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Irish Times, and The Scotsman. She lives on a smallholding in the mountains of Wales, where she continues to explore how myth and story can guide us through modern life.

PS: My new book, I Eat the Stars, will be out worldwide in May/June 2026. If you’re curious, you can read the serialised version over on Substack. Today’s chat touches on a few of the themes I explore in that work.

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Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime, I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack.

My guest today is Rich from Ohh That’s RICH, who dissects the intersections of culture, politics, and privilege - and pretty much everything that’s unfolding in real time across the progressive landscape. A former MTV News political correspondent, he now writes the Substack Ohh That’s RICH, where his rapid-fire commentary has built a loyal, quietly fired-up following.

In this chat, we dive into a concept he unpacked that has given him a whole new lens on our current moment: the “extinction burst.” It describes that temporary spike in behaviour right before it finally collapses…or, as Rich puts it, “the last frantic gasp of a system losing its grip.” Here’s the post we reference in the conversation, and you can watch our chat here.

A bit about Ohh That’s RICH: Rich describes himself as a Liberal member of the silent majority. He covers culture, politics and power structures with sharpness, humour, and a kind of grounded clarity. You’ll also find him over on Instagram and TikTok.

PS: My new book, I Eat the Stars, will be out worldwide in May/June 2026. If you’re curious, you can read the serialised version over on Substack. Today’s chat touches on a few of the themes I explore in that work.

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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!

Let’s connect on Instagram

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Wild has been on hiatus while I finish my most recent book. We’ll be back with a fresh direction and new guests in the coming months, but in the meantime I’m dropping in a small handful of interviews I’ve been doing on Substack that you might find interesting. They’re far more rustic and casual than my usual offerings. You can, of course, watch the video versions over on Substack.

My guest today is Grace Blakeley, who explores the intersections of capitalism, politics, and economics… and pretty much everything that’s happening right now — from tariffs to collapsing stock markets on her Substack, Grace Blakeley. She is the author of Stolen, The Corona Crash, and Vulture Capitalism, and edited Futures of Socialism.

In this chat, we cover specifically her commentary about what the Left can do to respond to the rise of the oligarchs. You can read her original call-to-arms essay here.

PS: My new book, I Eat the Stars, will be out worldwide in May/June 2026. If you’re curious, you can read the serialised version over on Substack. Today’s chat touches on a few of the themes I explore in that work.

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If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page

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Dr Vanessa Andreotti (Indigenous Knowledge advocate; author) is a Brazilian academic who has developed a radical thesis for how to move through the multi-crises we face. In her book Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism she draws on Indigenous wisdoms and entanglement theory to steer humanity through the destruction, grief and uncertainty as democracy, the growth model, “the West” crumbles around us. 

Dr Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, Canada where she is also one of the designers of the Facing Human Wrongs: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability course. She has written 100-plus papers on climate education, global justice and race.

In this chat – the last in the current Wild series – she talks through how modernity is the most “adolescent” civilisation in history, how Indigenous cultures have the knowledge to assist us, how the West won’t act until “the water is up to their bum” and the value of “black belt aunties”.

Get your copy of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism.

Find out more about Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures

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For more such conversations subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!

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