In Service to Life, with Manda Scott
In these troubling times, how can we offer ourselves in service to Life? In this sparkling and vast conversation with Manda Scott, we discuss what it means to do what needs doing and let go of the outcome, where we are in the human story, and the more-than-human support available to us in this important juncture.
Manda Scott is an award-winning novelist and host of the acclaimed Accidental Gods podcast. Her latest novel Any Human Power is a Mytho-Political thriller which lays out a Thrutopian roadmap to a flourishing future we’d be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. With degrees in veterinary medicine and a Masters in Regenerative Economics, Manda’s life is oriented towards creating radical new narratives that will pave the way to the total systemic change our culture–and our world–needs.
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Megan (00:00.697)
Well, Manda, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited to talk to you.
Manda Scott (00:05.398)
Likewise, thank you. It's an honor to be here. And yeah, I'm already impressed with what I believe your questions are going to be. So thank you.
Megan (00:12.743)
So you have written this book, Any Human Power, and you have said elsewhere that your vision for the book or maybe the first kind of tendrils of ideas came from this unique practice that you undertook of, you say, going to the hill at dusk and watching the crows fly home. Can you tell us where that practice came from and how it led to the ideas in this book?
Manda Scott (00:37.656)
Yes. So my spiritual path is shamanic, which is to say I'm a contemporary shamanic practitioner. I don't think anyone who was born and encultured in our Western culture can be a shaman, but we can still endeavor to connect to the gods and the guides and the spirits of our land in the best way we know how using tools that often indigenous people have given to us really because they think we need to do that too. And I've been doing this since
I was a lot younger than I am now. And I've been teaching it for the last 20 years. And so what arose was during lockdown, second phase of lockdown in 2021, at the summer solstice, I was teaching a particular course and I had a set of visions while I was leading the kind of main bit of it, which is not totally unusual, but what's very unusual is that they were really clear text. Cause normally if you do any kind of this work, people listening will know you get
metaphors and felt senses and nudges and it can take literally years to work out what you're And this was take the 30,000 year old fossilised horse's tooth that holds the south side of the southeast gate that I was teaching at the time, get some ethically sourced horse hide. And this was lockdown, so that took me a month. Go up the hill and I live on a very old farm. When we took up the kitchen floor, we discovered a fire pit in the middle of the floor.
And it goes back, there are people in neighboring villages that go back to the doomsday boot, which was 1066. So there's been a farm here for quite a long time. And there's what was once a laid hedge on the hill that we live on. by now they've been laid for centuries. These hawthorn bows are parallel to the ground, horizontal basically, and very thick. And I was to bind the tooth on at a very particular place and then sit.
with that in the small of my back. And that would mean I was looking southwest down the valley and I had to be in a particular frame of mind and be there for at least an hour as the sun goes down every night until further notice. That was that was the instruction. It was that precise. And I've only maybe three or four times in my entire 40 years of practice had really clear text do this now. So I did basically. I mean, it did take me months to get get horse hide that I thought was ethically sourced.
Manda Scott (03:03.358)
Um, and then, then I just went and did it and, and it was August. So I did that on the 21st of June. By the time I got the horse, I, it was the end of July. I think I went up 30th, 31st July. And then by the 9th of August, I had the first scene of the book and the three void walks through the book that we can perhaps talk about. And the really clear instruction that what I needed to write was a fictional thriller. Partly because there are of what I do and I kind of know this structure, that would walk us through step by step from exactly where we are, or at least a recognisable version of the present, through to a future that we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. And I didn't have a word for that at that point, but what I was also told was that it needed not to be just me, I needed to connect with other writers and give them the data, because I had been running the podcast for a couple of years.
two, three years by then. And I was talking to people every week about how we could make that change. So I knew the basics. What I had never done was knitted them all together into one big narrative. But at least I knew what was possible with different governance systems, different economies, different ways of farming and transport and power generation and organizing people. That was already in there. And what I realized was almost none of my writing colleagues
have access to that. So part of the vision was, at I didn't realize that until after, but part of the vision on the Hill was you need to start teaching people what you know so they can write other stuff that will take the same lines because it's not only going to be one way. When capitalism decided to destroy the planet, it didn't say there's only this way to do it. It just said whoever dies with the most toys wins. And it doesn't matter what you destroy in the meantime, go out there and make it happen people. And guess what? Now we're on the road to extinction.
For us not to be in the road to extinction, we need a lot of people creating a lot of visions that have the same, or at least very similar, would say, value systems underpinning it. If capitalism has a value system that says, take what you like when you can, and everything else doesn't matter, we need a more generative value system that says, offer yourself in service to the web of life, ask what it needs, and then do what you're told. And hope, assume, believe that the web is a much more complex process than a human and it knows what you need to do and provided you unite with it you'll be able to step forward. So that really.
Megan (05:43.495)
Thank you. that's beautiful. Yeah, one of the things I wanted to ask you about was the complexity of all that you hold in your work generally and that's in the book in these experiences that your protagonist is having in the void, all these futures that are possible. And I was curious, so in your podcast and your writing, you're thinking about you know, the history of life on this planet, human history, multiple futures of possibility. It's a lot to hold. And I'm curious if you could help us understand where you kind of see the arc of the human story right now. you, I know it can't be pinned down, but could you tell us sort of your perspective about where we are on this big journey?
Manda Scott (06:35.722)
That's a really interesting question. I lead a visualization sometimes, and I'm talking about the book Any Human Power. We still occasionally do literary festivals, which amazes me. People actually turn up and I've led this a few times and and I led it again at the Real Farming Conference last week. And I've put it out as a meditation now on the podcast and it takes us….walks us back very, very, very carefully to the moment before the Big Bang and then walks us forward through five mass extinctions and 300,000 years of human evolution to the present and then seven generations on down the line to look into the eyes of somebody seven generations later than us and ask them, did we make it? And are you proud of us? And what do need to know? And I've never come back from that without most of the audience being in tears, but in tears in a good way because they've connected with something that matters. And that really informs my perspective. So the last mass extinction was 64 million years ago and that's when we lost the dinosaurs, but it took thousands of years and it's taken 64 million years for the complexity of life to be what it is now. And we're in the sixth mass extinction as we speak and it's not taking thousands of years. There are species dying off in our lifetimes. And that's never happened in the history of humanity before. The background rate of extinction is one every 700 years. And there might be a few megafauna that become extinct as a result of human predation.
I questioned some of the science there, but it's possible, but it's never been at the rate that we're seeing now. We are wiping out entire ecosystems. And I think one of things that I find quite frustrating is the narrowness of our perspective on time. I did a kind of mapping out. So let's say humanity in its modern form is 300,000 years old.
Manda Scott (08:41.806)
You know, it keeps extending. Every time we do a bit of work, we discover it's another few hundred thousand, but let's say 300,000. You map that onto 30 years. Then we were in Africa until we were 25. You make it a 30 year old person whose birthday is the 1st of January. We were in Africa until we were 25. A few of our cousins moved off to Australia about then, but most of us still hung around in the fertile crescent. People came to the UK 6,000 years ago, which is six months basically in this span.
The Romans arrived. We now are looking at the final year, 29th year. The Romans arrived in October of our 29th year. The Industrial Revolution happened sometime towards the end of November. And we are currently half an hour before our next birthday. It's a terrifyingly short time span. Money has been around for 5,000 years, which is since August.
And before that, we didn't barter. That's a myth that capitalism has produced. Bartering happens in cultures that previously had access to money, like people in prisons or places where the rate of inflation is so astronomically huge that money is basically not worth anything anymore. Then you begin to barter. In whole, healed and healthy, what I would now call initiation cultures.
Value exchange is a highly complex social technology. And to be honest, there isn't a huge amount you can make most or gather most of what you need. So the things that you share, the things that you want to give, there's a reciprocity and respect and look, I made this amazing thing. I give it to you rather than, God, there's not enough amazing things. I have to keep them to myself and I'm going to kill you because you might take them, which tends to be what our trauma culture engages in because we are the trauma culture, because we don't understand ourselves to be integral parts of the web of life. We are integral parts of the web of life, but we've got a mindset that tells us that we're not, that we're individuals that were cut off from ourselves, each other and the web and who dies with the most toys wins. But that's not been around very long. Even that at the most is ten thousand years. That takes us back on this 30 year time span till we were late, late 28.
Our form of agriculture, where we're basically enslaving the web in service to taking, cannot happen if we know ourselves to be part of the web. You do not take a wild bison or buffalo, breed however many generations still you can attach it to a plough without killing yourself, and then force it to walk in lines ploughing things if you are an integral part of the web of life. You just don't do that. You don't take a pair of crocodiles and put them in a pit and watch them fight.
No indigenous culture does that. And so something split us off. And yet we are still capable of reconnecting. That's the whole purpose of everything that I do is ask the web, what do you need of me? And then endeavor to stay still enough and quiet enough to hear and feel the answers. So I don't think our trajectory is necessarily off a cliff, but it could be.
We're at the point, I don't know how much your listeners are familiar with Ilya Prigogine. He was a nuclear chemist who got a Nobel Prize back in the 1930s. And well, he was a systems thinker. And he said that when any system reaches maximal complexity, it reaches a bifurcation point and it either collapses into chaos and extinction or it emerges into a new system.
I would say we are at that point of maximal complexity and that bifurcation point is here and now. And each of us has a choice as to what energy we put in to our being. And if we are coming from a place of gratitude and compassion and joyful curiosity, I think it is more likely that we might emerge into something new. If we're coming from a point of despair and despite and despondency and violence, inner and outer, then I think chaos and extinction is more likely. But those choices are alive right now. And the point about emergence into new systems is that the new system is not predictable from the old system. If you can predict it, it's not a new system. You just painted the wheels on the bus a different color. And so we don't know what the new system looks like, but we know it's possible. I really believe it's possible. I talked to Chris Bate on my podcast a few weeks ago and he wrote a book called Diamonds in Heaven, LSD in the Mind of the Universe was the subtitle. He was, he's retired now. He was a professor of philosophy of religion. And for 20 years, he took industrial doses of LSD. There was a six year gap in the middle. He took 73 doses. The six year gap was because his wife, who's a clinical psychologist, and was holding the space room just went, you're not doing this anymore. This is too bad. You're not. Just stop.
But he was on a he he recorded it meticulously. He did this as an experiment and he recorded in immense detail. It's on the book. And he was taken on a really obvious training journey and those six year gap. But the one he did after the six year gap was the sequel to the one he'd done before. It was as if he hadn't broken. And by the end, the last three, he was being shown the future human, what we could be if we get our act together. And so
And he said, you know, there's no guarantee that will happen in the reality that you and I inhabit, but it's there as a possibility and it looked like a much more generative place. So that kind of gives me hope.
Megan (14:40.039)
Yeah, yeah, lovely, thank you. Yeah, that's one of the things I wanted to ask you about as well. In your book, there's this theme of the interplay between the web of life and then our own individual choices and agency. And I wanted to ask you about that. How do you navigate when it feels like in your life you're being carried by this larger thing or this force or the intelligence of the web?
And when do you feel like you, it's a matter of exerting your own agency or will, how do those play together? How do you navigate that?
Manda Scott (15:21.112)
I don't actually know how to answer that because I committed a long time ago in service to life. And so I literally spend an hour every morning asking what do want to me and then endeavouring to follow whatever comes. And sometimes there's a long gap. know, the book that we're talking about came out last May. I wrote 15,000 words of what I thought was going to be a sequel before it ever came out. And those are already obsolete because politics is moving too much faster than I had envisioned.
And so I've been kind of wrestling with what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And there was nothing and nothing and nothing. And then the week between Christmas and New Year, I had two separate invitations to apply for grants that would take this utopian thing much bigger. And so.
I could in that gap have decided, right, I'm going to do something. I shall just, I don't know. I will decide. I will write a book or I will decide what I'm doing. And, and that would be my ego acting. And I'm not really interested in that. if my concept that I am a self-aware node in the web of life is right, then my awareness is entirely focused on the engagement with the rest of the web, on creating reciprocal pathways where I can feel and be felt, where I can do what is mine to do and what only I can do and that I can do best in concert with other agencies, whatever they are, that are doing what they can do and what they can do best. But I don't know, I think the concept of what you're asking about is something that doesn't really land on my radar. But it might be that we've just got slightly different semantics. So you want to ask it in a different way, will endeavor to answer it, but I think it's not there.
Megan (17:22.673)
Yeah, I'm thinking of a conversation I listened to on your podcast with Philip Carr Gomm, where at the end you were talking about intention and will, and this, what if instead of trying to manifest our own wealth, we sort of put our human will in the direction of more life? So I think that's kind of what I'm trying to ask is when...
Manda Scott (17:45.429)
Okay.
Megan (17:48.463)
I mean, I guess you're saying there's not so much of a difference that you're sitting and you're listening. And is it like the will of the webs is sort of coming through you? And yeah, I think I'm trying to tease apart if they're even separate things, your own human agency and will versus, you know, the force that's giving life to this planet. And maybe they're not different.
Manda Scott (18:15.064)
I honestly don't know. think it's a really interesting question. spend quite a lot of time, I have a therapist, I put quite a lot of of evening time into exploring internal dynamics and where are my trigger points and where are my defenses and where are the bits of me that are frozen in time. Thomas Hubel defines trauma as aspects of ourselves frozen in time and if we can thaw them then we're fluid and it seems to me it's really important to do the healing work for ourselves, each other in the web of life at the moment. And if we could all do that, the world would be a different place. And so
So I am trying to be, I have an image, an internal metaphor of each of us as a prism or a lens and whatever it is that is the heart, of the universe passes through us. And what carries on out the other side is colored or shaped or focused or diffused by the lens that we are. And I want to be the cleanest and clearest lens that I can because that feels to me heart open to whatever it is that's guiding us or whatever it is of which we are a part. I'm not sure that guidance is quite the right word. And so, you know, I think I probably choose what I eat for lunch. But even then I tend to do, you know, kinesiology or something of is this is this a good thing here and now for today? And if it's no, then no. But
Megan (19:40.199)
Yeah.
Manda Scott (19:52.206)
Also, I don't honestly think that matters. I've got a really good friend who who tests really big decisions with is it for the best? Does it matter? You salience. Is this does this really matter? The decision between, you know, a boiled egg or an omelet? Probably not. Or, you know, I have six chickens. Whose egg do I eat today? I don't care. I don't think it really matters. The kids, the grandkids think it's really exciting because some of are different colors. But but, you know, what the heck? I don't think it matters.
Megan (20:22.459)
Yeah.
Manda Scott (20:22.612)
so, so I think on the whole, my aim is to be in service to life. And if I thought my ego was getting in the way, I would do the work to endeavor for that not to be happening. And it doesn't mean it doesn't. I'm sure I have huge bits of ego. have internal parts that are great, big screaming monsters, but I'm endeavoring to do the work so that those parts are not motivating the rest of me.
Megan (20:33.329)
Yeah.
Megan (20:50.011)
I bet it would be lovely for listeners to hear a little bit about how you or who you are asking for guidance from when you say, made a commitment to be in service to life and I spend time every day sort of asking, what do you want from me? And how could you give us a little window into how you do that and how beginners might ask for that.
Manda Scott (21:20.46)
Yeah, it's become a bit fluid recently that the answer to that. I mean, this is one of the things with shamanic practice is that you open a space for a guide to step up and it's not always the same one. So. So when I wake up, I write my dreams down, that's first thing, because I teach a dreaming practice and it's kind of bad if I don't do I tell my students to do. Also, my dreams are quite useful sometimes. I had a dream three mornings ago where.
I was going in for competition and the people running it canceled the competition. And it was because I hadn't read the requirements clearly enough. I'd handed in, like I used to do when I was at school, I'd handed in the answer to the question I wanted you to ask me instead of the one you actually asked me. And I got up and had a look at the grant application we're putting at the moment and totally rewrote it. I'm very, I mean, who knows where it'll go, but if I ask for help and the help arrives then.
It's generally speaking a useful idea to listen to it. so dreams actually before the dreams, I have a practice at the moment where I I'm working with the students in Accentil Gods on building the three pillars of the heart mind, which are gratitude, compassion and joyful curiosity. Kind of try it. And part of building that in the last couple of years has been really working on a timeline where when I wake up.
I send gratitude and compassion back and forward along the timeline. So explicitly back to the me that was last night and the me that was yesterday morning and to the me that will be tonight and the me that will be tomorrow morning and then receive from them because they're each of those was sending back and forth or forth and back and just bask in that for bit which is really nice. Generally speaking with a couple of cats kind of draped all over purring on. Then dreams. Then I do a morning ceremony.
which we probably don't need to go into real detail because it's I work with an eightfold circle and I greet each of the directions in order. I greet the gate guardians that I work with with teaching altar, which is way more complex than anybody ever needs for personal altar and the heart, mind of the universe and the heart of the earth. And I address them directly.
Manda Scott (23:39.468)
I welcome them, I thank them for whatever it is that they've given me, the properties that they embody, and I invite them to share the day. I spend five or 10 minutes working with aspects of my parents, both of whom are dead, and their parents and their parents. What would it be like if my parents were fully realized human beings? How would I feel? How would they feel? What aspects of them would come forward?
And then can they turn around and do the same for their parents? And then can they turn around and do the same for their parents? And then when I've gone all the way around the circle, I spend some time in meditation with whichever of the guides feels most present in that moment. And they are all aspects of the web of life.
They're probably all interplays between my energy and the web, frankly, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that I can connect and that I can ask useful questions and get useful answers. And so I spend however much time I've got. Actually, that's not true. I go out and let chickens out and feed the ponies first, but then I came in and and do meditation of.
what do you want to be? Really just connect heart connection again, gratitude, compassion, joyful curiosity and the joyful curiosity, gratitude and compassion, I'm guessing are obvious. And, evoking them to the point where your heart feels like a furnace of that is a learned skill that I think is useful to learn. And then the joyful curiosity is the words that I have is, wow, that's amazing. I wonder what happens next.
And that allows my head mind, which always thinks it has all the answers, to remember that I have no idea what the answers are. And it kind of stands it down a bit from that sense of having a sense of responsibility for having all the answers. In our enculturation, in our trauma culture, part of the trauma is I can predict whatever is happening. Also, I have to predict whatever is coming. Both of which are bonkers because it never works out the way I think it's going to the world.
Manda Scott (25:57.486)
I have no capacity actually to predict much at all. And I wouldn't want to because what happens is always much more interesting than what I might have thought was going to happen. But we have this continual hope over experience thing where in old I will make tomorrow be like I want it to be. That's bollocks. So but standing our head, down, it's OK, mate, you don't have to do that. It's all right. Look, just be curious. Look at the world with total curiosity. Isn't it wonderful?
Again, it's a learned skill. So practising that and then allowing within that space there to be an invitational opening of what do want of me? And sometimes there feels like a real...
bicameral flow, a real reciprocal flow of connection and energetic exchange. Like when you woke up to a horse or a cow or a dog or a cat or a red cat, there's always there's something there that connects and really engages you or a rock or the hill, whatever. And sometimes there's just there's a teaching quite often. There's a
Here let me teach you this. And they're often teachings of texture and form. In the same way I was shown what frame of mind to be in when I sat up the hill. Here let me tweak the textures of your being a little bit. How does that feel? From whatever guide. And that can go on the same thing day after day after day after day after day because it can take me a long time to anchor that.
And the way not to anchor it is to try and grab hold of it and pull it in. The way to anchor it is to be it, but sometimes being it is tricky. So that can take a long time. And then sometimes it's just be patient. Like the whole, what am I, what do you need me to do now? It's just, just be patient. And I'm really bad at patience. So, so that's sometimes frustrating, but then, you know, what else I can't, there's nothing else I can do except, okay, I'm being patient. Answer all my emails again. It to take 15 days. Or go for a walk or go and sit with the ponies or whatever else. There's no shortage of things to do, but they're not, they don't feel like they're, and I will do them in a spirit of being in service to life, but they weren't, they weren't like write another book or set up a podcast or, the big things. And now at least I've got grant applications to fill in.
So, and who knows where it leads? It might, it might, you know, we might get the grants or the connections that we make in them in the putting it all together might be, that's where we need to go. I never know.
Megan (28:50.343)
Thank you. Maybe we could stay on this theme of kind of otherworldly support and connection because there's a really interesting quote from your book that I wanted to share and this is when your protagonist is talking about something that she learned from a teacher and she says quote, Yuri taught me early that all gods in the end are the soul of the earth. Breed is Gaia as much as she is anyone else.
The question, I suppose, is whether the god dies when the biosphere dies or is bound to the rock and dust and magma that is the planet, which will keep going at the very least until the sun melts down." End quote. Can you tell us a little bit about this idea of gods and the earth and that connection and how you see, you know, spirit living in the earth?
Manda Scott (29:44.896)
Yeah, so I make a distinction between the heart, mind of the universe, which is the source of all time and matter and energy and everything. And I'm sure is broad compassion, but is also
It's huge and it's quite hard to wrap your head around.
Gods, I think, arise out of the focus of humanity. They may arise out of the focus of Wales. Wales may have gods too. Crows may have gods. We don't necessarily know those. We know about the gods that humanity evokes. particularly, actually this is one of the teachings from the last few mornings, is the energy that I give to an entity is the energy that grows within it. So if I give to my god
If I turn my goat into a psychopath, so it's basically the Donald Trump of the pantheons, then that is what will be amplified and come back. And it probably will help people who are nice to it and be extremely unpleasant to people who aren't. Whether that's in service to the greater biosphere or not is entirely another question because I don't know that's guaranteed.
On the other hand, if I can connect with an entity that feels to me as if it is part of the web of life, which I would say is intimately linked to the biosphere, I would suspect, but I can't prove that the web of life that was a hyper complex entity when the dinosaurs were here is not the same web of life that is a hyper complex entity now because the nodes that make it up are different.
Manda Scott (31:29.984)
And I am connecting to this one, not the dinosaur one, because time is a thing and I'm here now. And this is the one that I want to engage with and of which I am an integral part. So. I don't want to get too complex here.
Manda Scott (31:51.146)
So does that answer your question, actually? Does that begin to answer your question?
Megan (31:54.503)
Yes, I think that's been, as I learn about this in my own way, think that's what I'm learning as well about, you know, the gods or different entities. I'd love to hear a little bit more about
Maybe.
I feel us both trying to keep this simple and accessible. But I'm curious if you could say a little bit about the kind of support we have. I think many people can feel really isolated in this work or in the place we are in human history. And I myself sometimes talking to other humans about this is the last thing I want to do.
Manda Scott (32:21.922)
Yeah.
Megan (32:47.011)
What is your experience? When I tune in, I feel like we have a lot of support among all communities and the other world. And I think you have a really unique perspective on this and you live this. And I would just love to hear about some of the support you feel like we have as we're trying to give life to a new system.
Manda Scott (32:53.646)
Mmm, really.
Manda Scott (33:12.386)
Yeah, good question. Brilliant question. And my experience is also there is a lot of support and that support, either I am getting better at accessing it and teaching my students to access it or that support is being much more readily given. And it feels almost as if I set an intent. I'm really worried about this whole intent setting thing.
You know, the if I set my intent strongly enough, I can have a private jet is probably the one that I was talking about with Philip Kargon, because that made me so angry. You know, if someone can manifest a private jet, then I'm being very polite in your program because I don't want to swear in public, but they should be manifesting something else. You can manifest a private jet. You can probably manifest peace in Gaza. Please do that. You know, don't know who the expletives deleted needs a private jet, honestly.
Megan (33:42.555)
Yes.
Manda Scott (34:06.762)
And that seems to me that often that I think human intent, cleanly and carefully and powerfully home, there's an extremely powerful force and intent is the focus of intention is the focus of attention. Where I put my attention is where my energy can affect change. And as we all regard, said a long time ago, something along the lines of an act of magic is the willful change of energy in any situation. That's a paraphrase, but it was something like that. So a number of things that came out of what you said. is, think talking to other humans is actually essential now. We need to keep the networks open that are in service to life, are actually in service to the continuation of complex life on this planet just now, because it might be, if we let it all go now and there's another mass extinction, could be another 64 million years before more complex life arises. I would really like this iteration to keep going. And I think it's really important that we connect energetically. There are times when I sit in my meditation and I really feel other nodes in the web. have no idea who they are, but there are people who are maybe they're practicing a metta bhavana or a tonglen practice or some other heart based practice. And it feels alive and bizarrely, even while the outer media are being saturated with stories of horror, ecosphere collapse and political collapse and everything that goes with both of those. There are also a lot of stories that don't make it to the things that people pay attention to that are stories of astonishing wonder and human potential and compassion and generosity of spirit and generosity of heart and somehow we need to amplify those.
If there's a number of ways through to a new system, all wars stop, all industrial lag stops, all the basic media systems cease to exist and we have actual generative media systems, those three things together would give us a new system by the day after tomorrow. So and you're part of this, your podcast is part of it. People listening are part of it. And to be honest, at the moment, I think the old system is dying so fast that the faster we can let go of it, the better.
Manda Scott (36:33.582)
And that's hard because we're in it. We still need to buy food unless we can grow all our own, which is actually really hard. I've tried and it didn't work. I probably didn't try hard enough, but it's hard to grow your own food. You need to keep warm. We need the Internet and Musk now owns all the Starlink. It's not clever. I read a few position papers recently of the EU going, oh, maybe we ought to have some satellites. Yeah, maybe you should. And don't let them be captured by a toddler who throws tantrums. That energetically wasn't good. I'm sorry about that. I felt the energy that sizzle out along the the airways and that was very bad. I take it all back. But still, we want to create energetic connections and we are a storied species. We thrive on the stories we tell ourselves and each other about ourselves and each other. We need to tell those stories. actually connecting to people from a place as much as we can of non-judgment. I'm sorry about what I just said, but
That if we can, gratitude, compassion, joyful curiosity, and clearly we're all not necessarily perfect all the time or even any of the time. think that's really important. However, that wasn't your primary question. Your primary question was about the help that we get from the web. And I think the web is really keen that it survives also. And it needs us and it needs us to step up and it needs us to ask. I think part of it is without going too much into complexity theory.
People are very good at complicated thinking and complicated things tend to be built by people. So Boeing 747 is a complicated thing. It's linear and predictable. And if you had a IKEA kit and a big hanger and a bunch of spanners, you could make a Boeing 747. What you couldn't make is a frog. Because or or anything bigger, a cell. You can't do that because they're complex things. The reason our health service falls apart so badly is that we treat people as if they were complicated and you just take out this dysfunctional part and put in a new one and they'll be fine. And that's not the case. You put in all this rubbish, you put food and they'll just function because, hey, that looked like a carrot. That actually had no nutritional value at all. Doesn't matter. And it does. So we're really good at acute stuff. If you break your leg and I'm basically going to do a bit of carpentry and put the bits together in ways that make sure that they stay still and they can heal. We're really, really good at that.
And very, very, very bad when it comes to more chronic stuff. the web of life. So complexity. Complexity is nonlinear, non predictable. And emergence is a thing. Complicated is linear and predictable. And complicated is easy because it's predictable. If I turn the page on the book, I will get to the next page. What I experience when I read what's there is complex. But this is one of the reasons why
The concept of geoengineering is guaranteed to fail because it's predicated on complicated thinking of, you know, we're having global overheating because we're throwing out too much carbon dioxide. tell you what, we'll just blank out the sun for a bit. That'll work. And then we can carry on spewing out carbon dioxide in business as usual, carry on. We can all gather a lot more. Oh, fancy that we needed sun. The law of unintended consequences will apply. That's the only certainty you can give to anything like that.
But instead, if we relaxed into the fact that it's not our business to be able to predict, it's our business to ask the web, what do you need of me? Because the web is complex. A cell, a single cell is a complex thing. The organs that they build up is complex. A human is massively complex. And the whole of eight and half billion humans connected across the planet is hyper complex beyond anything that we could imagine and totally unpredictable. And so
My trying to predict stuff is guaranteed not to work, but I can relax into the web and ask what do you want of me and endeavour to fulfil the answer and, and check in. this still, you know, is this still what you want? If not, what, what next? And be prepared to be flexible just because I was writing a book last doesn't mean I'm writing a book again. I like writing books, but if it's not what's needed of me and it's not the most useful thing I can be doing then.
We're facing extinction. We do what's most useful and what seems to be what's being asked of us.
Manda Scott (41:15.03)
Is that what you asked?
Megan (41:16.167)
I can't remember but I liked it so...
Manda Scott (41:19.502)
I love that! Yay! Well done! Alrighty, I think it was something along those lines.
Megan (41:24.345)
Yeah, I hearing you talk about being in service to life. I'm curious if you believe that we come into this life with a calling or something that we're invited to live into like a larger arc for one's life. Or if you feel like it's it sounds more emergent. It sounds like or maybe you believe believe that we have a certain set of gifts and then we apply them to multiple callings.
What's your idea? What are your ideas about? Do we make a contract when we come into this life? What is, what's around that for you?
Manda Scott (42:02.392)
I don't know. I try not to get lost in things that I can't prove because I can't prove them. And that could give a lot of bandwidth and energy to wanting them to be true. And that doesn't necessarily mean they are. I. And yet I read a lot of Stevenson and all of the other. It seems to me that reincarnation is pretty much demonstrated to be a thing. And then you have to ask, OK, so so why and what?
Why does one come back? And I genuinely don't know. I read something a couple of weeks ago, which was quite disturbing because this woman suggested that she'd done a lot of Joe Dispenza work. She'd done 10 years of waking up at four in the morning, doing two hours of spectacular breathing that took her into basically the same space that DMT might take you, I think. And she reckoned that she'd...
encountered entities who told her that the whole of the reincarnation cycle was in fact a scam being perpetuated by the things that feed off our suffering. And they want us to keep thinking that we're coming back to learn in order that suffering is perpetuated. And I thought, I thought some bad words actually. Screw that, really? Not playing that game. And yet it feels to me that there's something
Because I did think about that. It really rocked me for a few days because I had internalized the sense that each life was a learning process that we chose to come in and we'd somewhere at some level bank the learning and move on. And the idea that actually it's just basically being harvested for suffering by things that really enjoy human suffering was didn't feel very good. And it also
unveiled for me a lot of my beliefs that I hadn't, they were so deeply internalized I had never really spotted that they were there, it was just the way things were, which is what a frame is and it's really useful to get a handle on our own frames because we know from Neuros, cognitive neuroscience that people become most aggressive when you challenge their belief systems. The things they can't prove because it somehow shakes the foundations of our world.
Manda Scott (44:23.07)
I think that the car outside is blue and actually it turns out that I'm wrong, it's green. And I can look at it go, yeah, you're right, sorry, it was green. I thought it was blue. I'm not going to have the foundations of my world shaken. But people's belief systems are the things they will kill other people most nastily in order, you my God is love and I will torture you to death to prove that is.
It has happened over and over and over again in the trauma culture. It doesn't happen in initiation cultures because they don't behave like that. part of our trauma seems to be I absorb a belief system and then I'm going to be really unpleasant to other people in order to make them believe it too. And I don't want to go down that road. So so the honest answer is I don't know. I am.
choosing at the moment not to believe we're all being harvested for our suffering because actually the more that I commit to life and the more that I really practice heart opening with gratitude, compassion and joyful curiosity, the more that seems to amplify. So one part of my morning ceremony that we didn't get to is that I face the sun or sometimes the moon, but don't confuse my students, please let's call it the sun and hold up a glass of water and
Megan (45:17.169)
Okay.
Manda Scott (45:42.52)
do some work so that the glass of water feels like it's fully energized and I drink it sending the energy to each of my sons and then my shields and then up. And as part of that.
None of my students can listen to this. So don't worry. I have variations on it. I don't teach them because it's too easy to confuse people and it will do it in 20 years if you really want to. I send some of it to every cell in my body and then to every cell of my soul and my spirit. And I've been doing that for 20 years, longer actually, probably 30.
and my body feels more alive. And every time I drink, I am renewing that. And it feels easy to connect to the level of life. And so it seems to me that actually part of my job is just to be as much as I can grateful, compassionate, and joyfully curious. And what happens after that is broadly speaking, not actually my business. I really believe that death is a rite of passage.
And that was part of the book was the realisation of this primary character, that death is a rite of passage and all indigenous cultures that I have studied at any level see death as a rite of passage. Even way back when Hitler, Hitler, sorry, Caesar was writing about that was I do conflate this to quite a lot. Julius Caesar was writing about the Britons when he first came and assaulted Britain and tried to colonise. And he said that
It's really hard fighting these people because they see death like they see taking off a shirt. It's completely meaningless because they know that they'll come back. It's not a problem. And it's really hard fighting people who have no fear of dying. And as far as I can tell, that's replicated in the initiation cultures across space and time. And yet I was listening to Nate Hagan's podcast the other day and
Megan (47:37.572)
Mm-hmm.
Manda Scott (47:42.018)
He said he'd been at a conference and the guy speaking after him stood on the platform and said, just stay healthy and alive for the next five years because after that we'll have conquered death.
Megan (47:51.833)
great.
Manda Scott (47:53.228)
You what? You want to lock yourselves in primary school forever? Are you serious?
Megan (48:00.677)
Yeah, maybe if you can.
Manda Scott (48:01.167)
It's not rushing to death, but I think it's gonna be quite an exciting adventure. And you're doing what?
Megan (48:06.437)
Yeah. Yeah, it sounds exciting from your book. And I wanted to hear a little bit more about where some of those ideas about what happens after death came from. And yeah, could you tell us a little bit about the void or the between or whatever you want to say about what
Manda Scott (48:10.284)
And why?
Manda Scott (48:28.63)
Yeah, it's probably worth telling listeners who might otherwise be really confused that the scene that I came down off the hill with, I came down with a scene and then three variations on a different scene. So the first scene was of a 60 year old woman lying on a bed and her 15 year old grandson is sitting at her side and he says, when you come home, can we go up the hill and watch the crows go to bed, which is what I'd been doing. And she says, no, I'm not coming home. I'm dying. You know this. We've had this conversation.
And they have had this conversation endlessly, but he's still broken because it's happening now. And he says, you're the only one who gets me. I don't want to live in a world with you not in it. And she realizes he's serious. And she says, I don't know what comes next, which she should do because she's been an anthropologist for 40 years studying other cultures views on death and dying. But when you actually get there, I guess the certainty falls away. So she says, I don't know what's happening next, but.
If you really need me and you call, if it's at all possible, I promise you I will come. And he and she and we all feel the gods pause in their labours and look down and okay, you made a promise and you are held to that promise. Promises count for a lot in the world that I live in. In the Shammat, you don't make a promise to a god or a guide or a spirit and then not keep it. You just don't do that. And so she's made this promise in the presence of death, really.
I haven't personified death, but she's in that liminal space where spirit is really important. And then she dies and then she has to keep that promise. So killing off your main character at the end of the second chapter is not generally recommended for the writing success. But but in the shamanic world, any shamanic practitioner, any any shaman in a tribe and to a lesser extent, shamanic practitioners have a number of jobs to do.
And one of them is psychopomping, which is escorting the newly dead to where they need to go. Because hanging around is generally speaking, not a good idea for anybody. And and Lan knows this, and yet she ends up hanging around because she's caught in the between place between the lands of life and the lands of death by this promise. She cannot move on unless either Finn, her grandson releases her or the promise is somehow completed.
Manda Scott (50:48.59)
The other thing that I saw, so that land, sorry, you asked about that specifically. So I'm not a great psychic pump. It's not a really fun thing. I don't enjoy doing it partly because you have to commit to doing working with this person and checking in on them every day for a week, every week for a month, every month for a year. And then once a year thereafter, and by the time you've done a dozen of those, that's a lot of work for you for the rest of your life. However, I have mapped the between place.
as it represents to me, partly because I kind of like to know where I'm going. And maybe it's not going to be that, but it doesn't hurt me to do that. And if it turns out not to be that, I've not really lost anything because it's a lovely place and I quite enjoy going there. And then the next thing that I was shown. So there is also another place in the shamanic worlds called the Void and the Void is a place of no space and no time.
in which I once got lost and thought I was so frightened. thought I was going to die of fright. It's not a fun thing. and really clearly, is as terrified of it as I was, and she's already dead because this is the place where annihilation could happen. Where ceasing to be could become a thing. So you don't go there unless you have a guide who is really, really familiar with that place and who, you know, if you're alive, you trust with your sanity and your life. And
She's dead, but she still has a guide that she trusts. And the guide takes her to the void the first time and shows her how to hone her intent and then use that to split the timelines so that she is then shown timelines in which Finn does succeed in killing himself. Many of these. But the implication is if you can do that, you can get to this place and you can do this. If you can take agency.
and that's a big if, then you may be able to create a timeline that doesn't exist yet. And so she's then, she's shown all the ways Finn could die and she loves this boy and she's made her promise. And then the crowd kicks her back into consensus reality as a newly dead individual and says, okay, see what you can do. I don't know what you can do. If I knew it, it would have already happened. You'd have seen the timeline and you haven't. So see what you can do. And I read a lot of books when I was writing this about near-death experiences and then...
Manda Scott (53:14.804)
about people who felt they'd been connected by the newly dead in order to understand it. It does seem certainly in our culture that the newly dead have a bit more agency than in the first bit than they do later on. So she has that. then this what I was shown also is that this happens twice more once for the global movement that is arising around her granddaughter.
And her granddaughter was conceived on the night of her funeral. I wanted as, as broader intergenerational spread as I could get. So we've got the grandmother who's actually dead and the granddaughter who didn't even exist until after she died. and so there's a movement that grows around something that Caitlin does and says, and Lan goes into the void to see the ways it.
could crash and burn and then if she can take agency perhaps she can help that. And then she does it a third time to see the future of all humanity and watch the way the bus really does go over the edge of the cliff. And then again, if she can take agency, perhaps then she can influence the entire movement and help the bus turn from the edge of the cliff.
Megan (54:28.487)
Hmm, thank you. Yeah, these were not really ideas that I had explored very deeply until reading your book and it was a really helpful and different perspective. so, yeah, I really appreciate that you followed those threads and included them. Hmm, thank you.
Manda Scott (54:51.19)
You're welcome. Thank you for reading it. Thank you. Because it wasn't necessarily an easy book. I hope it's written in a way that flows, but it definitely does ask questions that are not often asked.
Megan (54:53.478)
Of course. I enjoyed it.
Megan (55:04.611)
Yes, I remember the third trip to the void where sort of all hell opens up. I remember kind of like pushing the book away, like hoping you weren't going to show us all the horror. Yeah.
Manda Scott (55:14.626)
Yeah, no, it's yeah, it gives exactly that. You don't need to see it all. You just need to know that this is what's happening and your brain fills it in. That's one of the joys of writing is if you know roughly where people are at, you don't have to show every detail. You just need to show that this is what you would see. Yeah.
Megan (55:25.211)
Yes.
Megan (55:36.133)
Yeah, right. Cool. Thank you. I kind of want to circle back and ask a question that might seem kind of lame, but I know that people are going to wonder because I don't know how it feels for you in the UK, but here in the US, things feel pretty dire or just a lot of people are really struggling.
Manda Scott (55:47.968)
I doubt it, Megan. You haven't asked a lame question yet.
Megan (56:04.305)
to just make it right now. And my heart is so full hearing you talk about being in service to life and asking the web what it needs, what I can do. And I know a lot of people right now are wondering how that fits in with just earning enough to survive and like buying food. And that's really up for people right now. And I was wondering if you could talk about just your experience, like does the web
Manda Scott (56:24.536)
Mm. Mm.
Megan (56:34.065)
care if we can pay rent or does like how does our material life fit into this? Not needing to manifest a jet, also wanting. Yeah. Yeah.
Manda Scott (56:46.104)
just actually be able to eat and have a roof over your head. Yeah, that's really hard because if the web really, really cared, Gaza would not happen. You know, if, or the Holocaust wouldn't happen in the first place or any of the genocides that Britain enacted or the genocide that happened to the indigenous peoples on your lands. If, if it were the case that the web of life intervened to stop suffering, none of these things would have happened. And I do find there are times when I just lose it completely and get really angry with the, are you letting this happen?
And the honest answer is I don't know. And we can't, I don't think that's a knowable question. So I would come in at this from another angle, which is we're in a moment of total transformation. A death cult has just enacted a peaceful coup in your country. One in five people voted for that. I think it's, you know, people say half the population voted, it didn't. 71 million people out of 350 something million voted, that's one in five, means the other four and five of you, plus the ones who are realizing it was a terrible mistake, don't have to let them do what they're doing. I don't know how you stop them, but I think.
I think envisioning another system becomes absolutely critical. Now we can't go back to the old system, much as I would have been much, much happier if Kamala Harris had won.
That was the old system. They would still be sending missiles to Israel. would still be, know, dollar-a-jam near on the world would still be a thing. They would still be doing whatever they did to the Nord Stream pipeline. These things are, capitalism is a death cult in itself. And because it sometimes has a nicer face, doesn't stop it being a death cult. And if we are going to make it to the other system instead of crashing into chaos and extinction, capitalism has to stop. It's not.
It isn't compatible with the continuation of complex life on earth. This is something that I probably said on the interview with Philip Cargall and I certainly said a lot, which is the system is not broken. The system is designed to perpetuate the system. is doing it very, very well. But the system is not fit for purpose if that purpose is the continuation of complex life on earth. And if
Let's have a bit of wild theory. Bernie Sanders had gotten in the US and Jeremy Corbyn had gotten in the UK and they both got in the day after they got into Paragon. OK, we're going to change the system. There would have been a military coup by the end of that day. just the system would not have let that happen.
Instead, we've got people who are going to move fast and break everything because that's what they think is useful. And I don't think the military will stop them because the military thinks they're on their side. And we do need the system to end. I spent a year doing a master's in regenerative economics at Schumacher and we spent the entire year trying to work out how we get a soft landing from capitalism so that nobody gets hurt. And it's not hard to work out how to do it, but it's hard to get the political will to do it because
Manda Scott (59:58.006)
Again, system, the people who are elected are the people who will maintain the system.
So what we have now is a group of people who whose stated intention is to break the system. And the one good thing about complex systems is you cannot predict where they're going. So they may think they can predict where they're going, but it won't actually work. And when you put up a cultural ideology against biophysical reality, biophysical reality is going to win. You cannot deny your way out of the climate crisis. Telling people it's not happening doesn't stop it happening.
And so what happens if those of us who are committed in service to life, who want the continuation of complex life on earth, which is not a really high bar to set, could unite. And then the question is, how do we do it? And what does the future look like if we all got together and went, OK, capitalism is not working. We need water, its foundations and its foundations are endless growth, extraction without consequences, pollution without consequences. What happens if we actually build a world where we care? We acknowledge that we are integral parts of the web of life. If each of us committed right now that what matters most to us is clean water, clean air, clean soil and clean connections with self other in the web of life and by clean I mean clear-hearted, open-hearted, strong-hearted, full-hearted.
Manda Scott (01:01:36.298)
If 8.5 billion people made that commitment, we'd be there by the day after tomorrow. But what we could do is that those of us who do care make that commitment. What can I do in my life to make change now? And if I have the means, I can make sure I do not source any food from the industrial agriculture system at all. don't think people get fixated on where we are on the food chain. And I think that's a very deliberate skew by the system because what actually matters is how far away was it grown and in what circumstances. Is it regeneratively grown within cycling distance? Then eat it. How is your water? What quality is the water that comes out of your tap? And if it's full of things that you actually would rather not be drinking, like all of our water has polyfluorinated alkanate substances now, forever chemicals, it's in the rain. But what could we do to stop that. And you can, everyone has got something they can do, clean water, clean air, clean soil, clean connections. Build on them. Where do you bank your money? Okay, change it to something that isn't investing in fossil fuels. If you have a pension, where's your pension invested? Make sure it's not invested in something that's perpetuating the death cult. There are, it's not that we're short of answers. We have all of the answers that we need. We're just not making them happen.
So find out what are the generative communities in your locality that you can reach by bicycle and support them in whatever way you can. And is there a potential for building actual community in the area that you live, where you support each other? And this is hard because we've we've bought into the individuality stuff. Living in community is really challenging for most of us, but it's not impossible. there are people working very hard on working at ways where modern 21st century people can live in community without having to kill each other by the second day. social technologies are there, make the most of them, and we all have to grow up. We have to do the healing work and that's free.
I heal myself, I heal my connections with other people, I heal my connections with the web of life. doesn't cost anything, it just takes some time. Coming off social media so that you've got the time and you're not being constantly bombarded by messages of destruction is probably also useful. Did that help? I have no answers really for the horror. Okay.
Megan (01:04:14.087)
Yes, it does help. Thank you. No, I really appreciate how committed you seem to this. it's very feels very natural just showing up with what you have and who you are and really letting go of the what, you know, trying to make sense of it or knowing where it will go. And it's yeah, I just really appreciate that.
We just work with what we have and what's here and the rest really isn't up to us. And that frees up a lot of energy actually.
Manda Scott (01:04:48.93)
Yeah, it really does. Yeah, it's not my job to predict everything. It's my job to do what is mine to do. And that may change. And I did a, I had a workshop a few months ago and what I realized was people were waiting. This was a quote, what is my life? What is my calling workshop? But people are invested in, I need to get the right job and the right partner and I need to live in the right place. And no, you just need to commit in service to life here and now and whatever you do is in service to life and then see what unfolds. It's a different way round, but it really matters that.
Megan (01:05:29.733)
Yes, I believe you. What are some areas of possibility or emergence that are really enlivening you right now? Like what's sustaining you in this work? Are there certain connections or things you're learning or trying that are really feeding you?
Manda Scott (01:05:51.47)
So many, Megan, honestly, literally that's what the podcast is for. There's one a week of really inspiring people doing really inspiring things. So off the top of my head, was last week at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in the UK. There were 3000 people there. It's a two day conference on regenerative farming. And the whole of the day before it, we were able to hold a day called Listening to the Land where the UN...Conscious Food Systems Alliance. This is a UN body that is all about spiritual connection with the land, joined with the Anima to Earth Collective, which does what it says in the ten. And we held a day of celebrating, honoring and connecting to the land. And indigenous elders from six different places around the world came and blessed our altar. And we worked with each other and the land. And then a few of the people from that also did workshops in main conference proper and the fact that that could happen actually gives me great joy and BBC Radio 4 was there recording and and the guy who was the presenter really got it and then the next day I spoke to the BBC farming program and again they got it so that wouldn't happen a few years ago another a friend of mine is a she's a Danish architect and she's just started working for the EU.
The Council of Europe as leader of transformation in the EIT culture and creativity section. That exists, which it didn't used to. So she's there to help narratives grow in the EU. And the last time I spoke to her, she said she'd recently been at a conference where three separate people had said from the platform that we need to be coming from a place of heart. Well, that's really nice. It was this some kind of green, conference. And she said, no, no, they were Norwegian hedge funders.
Really? Wow. And I don't know what a Norwegian hedge funder means when they say they're coming from a place of heart, but they stood on a platform and said it in public and didn't expect to have lost their jobs by the time they went in the next morning. Things are changing. And then I spoke recently on the podcast with Audrey Tang, who was digital affairs minister in Taiwan. Completely amazing person. Totally is as a god in my pantheon without question. And
They are working with billionaires in the US to create social media that are not toxic. Having created exactly that in Taiwan amongst a whole bunch, part of the application I'm putting in at the moment is to try and set up in Wales where I live or next door, equivalence to a set of what one of the things that Audrey did was in Taiwan has 10 million people, I think, and they polled as many of them as wanted and they created groups of 10 and the AI made sure that everyone in that group had differing political opinions across a broad spectrum. And then they asked two sets of questions. What matters most to you as a collective? Here is another thing that matters most to another group. What would your solutions be? It's called, Audrey says you get trust by giving trust. took their government approval rating was 7 % when she started and it was over 80% by the time she finished, I think seven years later. I might have got the numbers a little tiny bit wrong, but it was of that order. Most countries would give their eye teeth for government approval, even above parity. And they had done amazing things in the country by actually listening to what people said and then implementing them. The creativity of humanity is astonishing if we give it room. So the fact that that's happening gives me great, great joy. The whole degrowth movement.
That we can have an economy that is not predicated on growth. Look, here's how it works. Donut economics. we go. Regenerative farming is really taking off. Let's not keep throwing fossil fuels at the land and basically strip mine the soil and poison people in the process. have a little side bit of that. I'm trying to rename ultra processed foods as mechanically produced semi edible toxins. And the belief that if people actually said that, they would stop eating them. I'm not sure it works because they're highly addictive.
But it's worth a try. There's so much, there is so much going on. And I think the bastions of the old media are crumbling, which is one of the reasons why they're becoming so frantic, because they are completely aligned with the old system and the old system is on its way out. And I don't know a single person who thinks the old system is working.
But what we don't all agree on is how to fix it. And I think that's because we haven't yet agreed on the foundational value system. Because there isn't just one path, but we do need common values, reciprocity and caring connection, coming together in good faith, which is being destroyed all around us. And critical thinking skills and sense-making skills, it's not hard. It just requires we take a step back and figure out what really matters and how we get there.
Megan (01:11:06.695)
Thank you. Just hearing you talk about all those things, I feel lighter and maybe things are headed in a great direction. Thank you. Is there anything that we haven't covered today that feels really present for you or like it wants to come through?
Manda Scott (01:11:15.894)
Yay. You're very welcome.
Manda Scott (01:11:41.708)
No, don't so. I just had an image of a whale swimming in a circle, but I didn't understand what it meant. So unless a whale swimming in a circle means something to you, then I think... I don't know what I think. That was my ego thinking. I don't know. But no, I don't think so. I think we've covered an awful lot of really good stuff. And I'd be really interested to know how it lands with your audience.
Megan (01:12:01.457)
Yeah, thank you.
Megan (01:12:05.615)
Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to share it. And this has been so enjoyable for me. I've appreciated your work so much. can just, your book, the podcast, everything just oozes heart and intellect. So everything you're doing is working. So I really appreciate it. It's such a blessing. I love that.
Manda Scott (01:12:19.278)
Thank you. Thank you. Well, let's keep in touch, Because it's the connections that matter. It's the heart to heart connections and the capacity to grow something different.
Megan (01:12:31.687)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Where can people find you? Do you mind just sharing verbally and I'll put everything in the show notes?
Manda Scott (01:12:37.902)
Sure. Yeah. So probably Accidental Gods, plural, all one word, dot life gets you to the membership, which is endeavouring to help people work out how to connect to the web of life and the podcast. And then the books at my name, manda scott dot co dot UK, or any good book shop that isn't the giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. Although if you happen to buy it and like it, please put a
review on the giant vampire squid around the face of humanity because that seems to be the only thing people actually look at. And then I might do it. There's a I did a through topia masterclass, is that through topia dot life and through topias thru. Topia as in getting us through instead of dystopia and utopia. I am planning another iteration of that, but I want it. I want it to be big enough that Taylor Swift wants to come.
And the, and the commissioners at Netflix, cause there's no point otherwise. Now we've got to have the people who really are out there in the world really need to get this. So I don't think it'll happen this year. So at the moment, the one that exists, you can, you can download it and go through all the videos and the teaching and the training in your own time. So that's it. Podcast though. Podcast is the main thing. Accidental gods podcast. If you're into podcasts, listen to Megan first and then come and listen to Accidental Gods.
And we'd be very happy and then share them all with your friends because I genuinely think those connections, if everybody shared with three people, shared with three people, we would reach the whole world in however many iterations that is, but it doesn't take long.
Megan (01:14:18.971)
Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much, Manda. This has been really rich. Thank you.
Manda Scott (01:14:25.774)
Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Really, really good questions. Thank you.