Rutendo Ngara is a holder of indigenous African knowledge systems and a transdisciplinary researcher. She is a practitioner of a number of physical disciplines, including dance and yoga, and has represented South Africa as an international silver medalist in martial arts (Wushu/Kung Fu/Tai Ji). Rutendo serves on the boards of the Credo Mutwa Founda…

A political economist and environmentalist, Andrew Simms is at the forefront of the movement for a new economy in the UK and around the world. His books include Cancel the Apocalypse, Tescopoly: How One Shop Came Out on Top and Why it Matters, and Economics: A Crash Course. He is coordinator of the New Weather Institute, the Rapid Transition Allian…

Eva Henje is a neuroscientist, trauma therapist, and associate professor at Sweden’s Umeå university, specialising in child and adolescent psychiatry. Eva describes herself as mental health activist, because she’s passionate about raising awareness about the systemic reasons behind increasing rates of depression. She has created programs to empower…

Juan del Rio is a pioneer of the Transition movement in Spain, and the Co-Director of ECOLISE, the European network for community-led initiatives on climate change and sustainability. He is the co-founder of the Municipalities in Transition project, and the co-director of an inspiring new film about bottom-up initiatives in Spain called ALTERNATIVA…

Keibo Oiwa is a professor, cultural anthropologist, and a widely respected philosopher and organizer in Japan. He co-authored, with David Suzuki, a book about bottom-up movements for peace, human rights and environmentalism, called 'The Japan We Never Knew'. He is the founder of The Sloth Club – an NGO that promotes slow and sustainable living. The…

Thais Mantovani is a young woman from São Paulo, Brazil, passionate about education reform and eco-cultural regeneration. An alumnus of Schumacher College, she is the co-founder of EcoUniversidade, a Youth Climate Leaders fellow, a member of the Global Regeneration CoLab network, and a long-time collaborator of Local Futures. She studies and promot…

Chris Smaje is an author, small-scale farmer, social scientist, and food system analyst. His work explores the current moment of vast change, as the dynamics of climate, energy, politics and natural ecosystems upend familiar assumptions about how the world is supposed to work. He’s written two books – ‘A Small Farm Future’ and ‘Saying No to a Farm-…

Debra Efroymson (Bangladesh/USA) is a tireless advocate for policies that support public health, wellbeing and happiness. She is the co-founder and Executive Director at Institute of Wellbeing, Bangladesh, and is faculty at the Asian University for Women. While her particular interests lie in urban planning and transportation, her holistic perspect…

Bayo Akomolafe (Nigeria) is a widely celebrated speaker, teacher, public intellectual and writer. In this episode, he “meanders the vortices of a world yet to come”, posing questions, sharing stories, and searching for the cracks in modernity. In his playful and poetic way, he encourages us to gather in these cracks – to participate in the emergenc…

Ele Saltmarsh is a young farmer, scientist and activist. In this episode, she tells her family’s story of pursuing organic farming, and suggests big-picture policy frameworks that could provide avenues for the growing ranks who dream of a life connected to nature and to community. She also makes a powerful case for agroecology and localised economi…

The second episode in the Planet Local Voices series features Manish Jain. A leading advocate for un-learning, de-schooling, and deepening place-based knowledge systems, Manish discusses why and how to rethink conventional education and conventional economic development. He points to a growing movement of 'walk-outs' and 'drop-outs' as a great reas…

Here's the first episode of Planet Local Voices – an interview series by Local Futures. In this wide-ranging episode, economist, author and whistleblower John Perkins calls us to meet the defining challenge of our time – shifting from a "death economy" to a "life economy". He shares his own personal story of how he came to question the neoliberal w…

In this episode, Helena Norberg-Hodge talks to Alnoor Ladha. Raised in Canada, Alnoor comes from a Sufi lineage, and today lives in community in Costa Rica. He is an important and incisive activist whose work brings together political organizing, systems thinking, structural change and narrative transformation. His conviction that the spiritual and…

In this episode, Helena Norberg-Hodge talks to Iain McGilchrist. Iain is a one-of-a-kind thinker, an Oxford literary scholar as well as a doctor in psychiatry and neuroscience. His interdisciplinary achievements reflect his conviction about the importance of holistic thinking – a topic he has explored in-depth in his two ground-breaking works, 'The…

In this episode, Helena Norberg-Hodge speaks with Charles Eisenstein. Charles is a pioneering storyteller of a new world – in his words, “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”. His writings and talks, renowned for their eloquence, deal with civilizational history and mythmaking, new economies, spirituality, pandemics, power, climate…

In this episode, Helena Norberg-Hodge talks to her friend and colleague of 40 years, Vandana Shiva. Vandana trained as a quantum physicist, but turned her attention to campaigning for the rights of small farmers, seed savers and local communities in her home country of India when she witnessed the imposition of industrial agriculture and its tragic…

In this newly published episode of the Local Futures podcast, Helena Norberg-Hodge talks to the renowned Dr. Gabor Maté. The two dispel false ideas about human nature and analyze the ways macro-level economic structures are impacting our personal identities. A remarkable and far-reaching compassion for people from all walks of life imbues their con…

Described by journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” Jeremy Lent is the founder of the Liology Institute and the author of ‘The Patterning Instinct’ and, most recently, ‘The Web of Meaning’. His work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affir…

Brazilian researcher and activist Dr. Camila Moreno has attended almost all the major climate conferences in the last decade. In this conversation with Helena Norberg-Hodge, she offers a rare glimpse into the internal workings of the multilateral negotiations. She explains how the narrow focus on carbon is turning climate itself into a tradable com…

You would struggle to find three individuals more equipped to navigate the big picture of global economic mega-structures and civilizational transformation than Tyson, Alnoor and Helena. Between them, they share a wealth of diverse experiences, radical analysis and bold future-visioning, as well as a healthy dose of banter and laughter. Their far-r…