Fran Korten is former executive director, publisher and contributing editor for YES! Magazine, where she wrote about opportunities to advance a progressive agenda in politics, economics, and the environment. She lives in Bainbridge Island, Washington, with her husband, author David Korten.She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:The encouraging increase in voter turnout, especially amongst younger peopleThe learnings we can take from the “people over profit” Mondragon model in Spain’s Basque regionThe benefits of ranked choice voting in elections, resulting in more collaboration and civil dialogue in the political processThe positive shift in our respect for Indigenous peopleSupport the showComplete Show Notes

Kristin Ohlson is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her newest book is Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World. Her last book was The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet, which the Los Angeles Times calls “a hopeful book and a necessary one…. a fast-paced and entertaining shot across the bow of mainstream thinking about land use.” She appears in the award-winning documentary film, Kiss the Ground, speaking about the connection between soil and climate health. She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:- “Cities and human societies are marvels of cooperation”- “There are a lot of people in journalism… who are looking for the solutions and looking for positive examples to spread around”- That “every living thing has a mutualism, a mutually beneficial relationship with other living things”- That “a big part of it is storytelling… when something brilliant has happened in these small incremental steps of healing relationships or the natural world; to tell the story, multiplies it”Support the showComplete Show Notes

Douglas Rushkoff makes another appearance on our podcast, sharing his latest thoughts on What Could Possibly Go Right?  Listen to his previous interviews in episodes 28, 52, and 83.Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, his twenty books include Team Human, based on his podcast. Others include bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. As 2022 comes to a close, enjoy this casual chat between Douglas and Vicki.The need to “adopt and invent alternative narratives of success that involve mutuality, rather than singularity; that are collective and communal, rather than alienated and isolated”The importance of tolerating ambiguity, having a tender heart and embracing differenceThe “idea of asking the right questions at the right times… to reduce the cognitive harm imposed by propagandists and media people who don't have our best interests at heart.”Support the showComplete Show Notes

Kritee Kanko is a climate scientist, Zen priest, Educator & founding spiritual teacher of Boundless in Motion. She is an ordained teacher in the Rinzai Zen lineage of Cold Mountain, a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center and faculty for many organizations for courses at the intersection of Ecology and spirituality. She has served as a scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund. She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:The sense of belonging that comes from taking time to slow down and share your authentic truthThe need for healing our collective trauma, to allow us to bond and move forwardThe emergence of ancestral resilience that can bring us togetherThe tension between freedom and boundaries in belongingConnect with Kritee KankoWebsite: boundlessinmotion.orgSupport the showComplete Show Notes

Geneen Marie Haugen, PhD, grew up as a free-range wildish kid with a run amok imagination. She is a guide to the experiential, intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche with the Animas Valley Institute, and is on the faculty of the Esalen Institute, Schumacher College, and the Fox Institute for Creation Spirituality. Her writing has appeared in many journals and books, including Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth; Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth; Parabola Journal; Ecopsychology Journal; DailyGood.org; High Country News; and others.She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:The power in our unique creativity and imagination as human beingsThe value of becoming more receptive to the dreams and consciousness of the community, earth and universe around usThe increasing awareness of traditional Indigenous and ecological knowledge in the Western worldviewSupport the showComplete Show Notes

Gwendolyn Hallsmith is the Executive Director of Global Community Initiatives, a non-profit organization she founded in 2002, and has just celebrated their 20th anniversary. She is the author of six books on sustainable community and economic development and has worked with communities all over the world to foster caring communities, vibrant local economies, good governance, efficient services, and healthy ecosystems. She founded Vermonters for a New Economy to work on economic solutions at the state level, and the Headwaters Garden and Learning Center, an ecovillage in Cabot, VT. She answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:Transitioning away from capitalism into new ways of thinking; a “caring economy”Alternative examples for money and ownership, such as timebanking, neighborhood caring models, universal basic income, and sharing economyThe need to make changes in three systems of food, energy and moneyResourcesSong: “The End of Capitalism Rag” by Global Community Initiatives https://youtu.be/BK_MgvD7QAc www.global-community.org www.neweconomyvt.org www.headwatersvermont.org www.facebook.com/TheNewEconomistas Support the showComplete Show Notes

Hear from our host Vicki Robin in another solo episode, as she shares a topical theme for “What Could Possibly Go Right?” including:Ideas for creative solutions and alternative arrangements to address America’s housing issuesRecognizing the intersection of population pressures, the wealth gap, and the climate crisisTransforming the idea of the American dream, that “we can discover the freedom of belonging as we end isolation as a symbol of wealth and privilege.”Support the showComplete Show Notes

Per Espen Stoknes, a psychologist with PhD in economics, is a TED Global speaker, and serves as the director of Centre for Green Growth at the Norwegian Business School. An experienced foresight facilitator and academic, he’s also serial entrepreneur, including co-founding clean-tech company GasPlas. Author of several books, among them Learning from the Future (2004, in Norwegian), Money & Soul (2009) and the “Outstanding Academic Title of 2015” award winning book: What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (2015). Per Espen has also served as member of Norwegian Parliament.He answers the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:The work of Earth4All in encouraging a change to systems thinking to address the multiple threats to our survivalThe need to shift our identity beyond self-interested individuals, to earthlings sharing a commons in need of preservationThe call to let go of American exceptionalism and recognize the innovation taking place across the globeResourcesBook: Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity (2022) https://www.earth4all.life/book Support the showComplete Show Notes

With the mid-term election underway in US this week, we feature a replay of our interview with Heather Cox Richardson, as heard on episode 8 in July 2020. Heather Cox Richardson is Professor of History at Boston College and an expert on American political and economic history. She is the author of six books on American politics and is a national commentator on American political history and the Republican Party. She is also a leading #Twitterstorian, explaining the historical background of modern political issues through Twitter threads, the co-editor of We’re History, a web magazine of popular history, and the author of Letters from an American, a chronicle of the Trump presidency since the Ukraine Scandal broke. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune.Heather addresses the question of What Could Possibly Go Right? with a political focus. Her insights include:- That the current condition is waking people up from autopilot and creating the realization they need to pursue change personally to create the society in which they want to live.- A reminder that the beauty of a democratic system is getting to choose which direction to go.- That the desire for equality of opportunity and access should no longer be pushed to the narrative of special interest in politics.- The potential to innovate and create change through crowdsourcing government and society.- That the American dream needs to be rewritten and move away from the heteronormative nuclear family as its centerpiece, to a more community-centered and diverse view.Support the showComplete Show Notes

Sherri Mitchell is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous land and water rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. Sherri is an author and cohost of the syndicated radio program Love (and revolution) Radio, which focuses on real-life stories of heart-based activism and revolutionary spiritual change. She was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation (Penawahpskek). She speaks and teaches around the world on issues of Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and spiritual change. After her previous appearance on episode 68, Sherri returns to the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?” with thoughts including:“Start thinking about who are we beyond the stories that we tell”, including the narratives carried forward from problematic pasts.Learning to “sit in a space of rootedness and visualize the world that we most want to inhabit, then become a citizen who is able to live there, in a peaceful, just and equitable way”Getting energy from aligning ourselves with “those energies that were creating something new, that were about imagining and building the possibility of a new reality”Being conscious of our use of technology and aiming to “reconnect our bodies to the earth” and its teachingsSupport the showComplete Show Notes