Wild with Sarah Wilson

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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Watch on YouTube or Substack
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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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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Watch on YouTube or Substack
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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Watch on YouTube or Substack
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
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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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Watch on YouTube or Substack
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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.