Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

Dan Kieran
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  • Philosophy

The archive of episodes from my Do Lectures Radio Series, Where To Next? (55k downloads from this substack so far) dankieran.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Where to Next? Episode twenty-three. Lascaux and the ‘Mind In The Cave’

    As you will know if you have been following the series, ‘caves’ keep coming up in different ways. My journey began with a pilgrimage to a cave on the island of Raasay off the coast of Skye in Scotland, where evidence of our mesolithic ancestors has been found (if you’re curious, you can find the details of exactly where I went here). That trip led me into deeper enquiries around our indigenous ancestors and the ways they might have lived and experienced consciousness. I recalled in my first interview with Martin Shaw the otherworldly encounter I had with a stag when I got to that cave. It was as real as a stag could be (and as loud) but had a strange face I couldn’t make sense of at the time. I also shared my subsequent astonishment when a first edition copy of The Inheritors by William Golding I ordered arrived in the post soon after (the novel tells the story of homo sapiens arriving in a Britain populated by neanderthals) and I found a frighteningly similar image to the stag I encountered in Raasay on the cover. Martin then shared his own childhood reaction to an illustration of Herne The Hunter (a ghost of a man on horseback with stag antlers growing out of his head first mentioned by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor) on the cover of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. Rather enticingly, there are theories that the story of Herne The Hunter has Palaeolithic origins, but I digress. I need to do more research about that before I make any great claims that these human / stag figures are linked. My enquiries then led me to discover that the image Golding used for the cover was based on a drawing by the renown cave art expert Henri Breuil of a painting discovered in a cave within a cave in Chauvet (also in Southern France) that you have to crawl through a passage a kilometre long to find. The image has since become known as ‘The Sorcerer’. All very goose-bumpy I hope you will agree. The mesolithic ancestors I went in search of on Raasay were here after the last ice age between 11,700 years ago and 5,000 years ago but we know from DNA their ancestors would have come from what we now think of as Spain and France. The images discovered in France in Lascaux and Chauvet were much earlier and date to around 21,000 years ago and 37,000 years ago respectively. I hope you can see why I found the idea they were all connected so tantalising. With all this in mind I was excited to visit Lascaux this Summer, where a replica of the cave that was found during WW2 has been created for visitors to experience. This week’s episode is me talking about the way caves have appeared in my journey so far, an interview with Chris Perez, one of Lascaux’s guides, and then ends with my thoughts on The Mind In The Cave by David Lewis Williams, which is the most respected book seeking to make sense of cave art that I’ve found so far. (Spoiler: DLW makes a compelling and studious case that cave art was inspired by shamanic hallucinatory states, but his subsequent dismissal of those hallucinatory states as being nothing more than the chemistry of the brain felt very anticlimactic to me. We will explore the weaknesses of this stance in my next interview. Details to follow.) One last piece of news while I have you. I am excited to say that the world famous computer scientist and biologist Dr. Michael Levin (yes, that Michael Levin) has agreed to be interviewed for the series in November. If you want to blow your mind, check out his latest published paper on what he calls the ‘Platonic’ realm. Much love, Dan Thanks for reading The Weirdo's Journey by Dan Kieran! Feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 6

    Where To Next? Episode twenty-two. Dr Jude Currivan, the cosmologist, author and futurist

    The title of the conference was “The Good, the Beautiful and the True”. There were many wonderful speakers, not least the awesome man himself. Martin Shaw also spoke and brought his impish magic with him and then there was Jude. I had not heard of her before booking my ticket but as soon as she stood on the stage the atmosphere in the room changed. At first I thought it was just her smile, which was dazzling, but no. Where Iain brought awe and Martin his usual magic, Jude brought something else. A slightly other worldly sense of ease and peace. Jude is a cosmologist (a scientist who studies the universe and its origin and development) a planetary healer, futurist, author, filmmaker and co-founder of WholeWorld-View. With a Master’s degree in Physics from Oxford University (specialising in quantum physics and cosmology), and a PhD in Anthropological Archaeology from the University of Reading (researching ancient cosmologies) she has a very impressive CV, but in truth is was something else about her backstory that really stood out for me. For many years Jude was the Finance Director of two different £500m global companies. As you will hear, Jude begins our interview explaining how she has been ‘travelling between different worlds since the age of four’, which is a pretty bold opener. I don’t know about you, but that kind of statement usually puts me in a nervous headspace, but when she then explained how this is what accounted for her long and successful high powered corporate career and her subsequent extraordinary work, you can’t help but take notice. Jude has travelled to nearly eighty countries and worked with wisdom keepers from many traditions and her extensive experience and knowledge of world events, systems and trends, has led her to speak on transformational reforms in the UK, US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australasia. At the event in May people flocked to her afterwards and she took all of them, friends and strangers alike, in a massive hug and that smile was ever present the whole time I saw her. I remember thinking ‘whatever she has, I need some of it’ and so I was thrilled when she agreed to let me come and visit her at her home near Avebury to find out more about her incredible journey and worldview. Jude is another hardcore scientist who has long understood that the rational materialist worldview is not only false, but profoundly damaging for us and the world we call home. And once again the timing of our chat was fortuitous, as I had only a few days earlier left the Realisation Festival where I experienced Constellation therapy. Something Jude has been using for a decade. And at the end of the conversation you will hear why I changed the title of this Substack to The Weirdo’s Journey. You can find out more about Jude and her amazing work here and here I also recommend a youtube conversation I saw with her and others including Bernardo Kastrup about applying the ideas of idealism to economics. Jude is one of the most inspiring, kind and generous people I have ever met and it was a joy to be in her company. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Much love, Dan Thanks for reading The Weirdo's Journey by Dan Kieran! This post is public so please share! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode twenty-two. Dr Jude Currivan, the cosmologist, author and futurist

  3. Aug 30

    Where To Next? Episode twenty-one. Indra Adnan at the Realisation Festival

    At the Realisation Festival last year (2025) I had the pleasure of speaking to Jonathan Rowson, the chess grandmaster, philosopher and CEO of Perspectiva (Episode 5 if you’re curious). In that conversation he urged me to seek out Indra so, when I didn’t manage to speak to her before I left that day, I made a point of seeking her out at the festival this year. My experiences at the RF have been life changing and profound. The RF is the real deal and I urge you to look it up if you relate to any of the episodes in the series. But even by the standards of the wonderful conversations I have had so far this one was exceptional. I think it’s because what I intended to be an interview with Indra about her life and work became an exploration of what I’m doing with these episodes and how they fit in with the changes many of us wish to see in the world as a result of the meta-crisis we all face. Our chat then evolved into a kind of therapy session for me that ended with me having a genuinely life changing realisation about the journey I am on, if you’ll excuse the pun. I was definitely in an ‘open’ place after my experiences that day having had inspiring conversations with Nikki Trott and Sarah Corbett as well as experiencing Constellation Therapy, so perhaps it was an accumulation of the day’s insights that led to it. Indra was so kind and open it just kind of unfolded in that way. Not very journalistic of me but there you are. Maybe that doesn’t matter. I hope you find the episode illuminating and interesting. You can find out more about Indra and her incredible work here and you can buy a copy of her book here. Next week I will share the wonderful conversation I had the week after my visit to the Realisation Festival with the anthropologist, quantum physicist, cosmologist and author Dr Jude Currivan. That is another conversation I will never forget and, in keeping with the series so far, fits in so beautifully with all the things that Indra and I discuss in this episode. Subscribe if you haven’t already to make sure you don’t miss out on that. Thanks for reading. Much love, Dan PS - My co-presenter on the show Mike Warwick and I are hosting a workshop in London on September 25th 2026 for anyone, like us, who is experiencing what Carl Jung called the ‘second adulthood’. Jung explained that we all live two adulthoods. In the first we head out into the world in pursuit of definitions of success, meaning and contentment that we absorbed from the world around us when we were young. From our families, the culture and societies we lived in. Off we went dutifully to achieve those definitions but in the process of attaining them (or not, it doesn’t seem to matter either way) the pursuit teaches you that those definitions were never yours and are wrong. A period of fear and panic then descends as all the assumptions you built your life around begin to fall apart. But then something interesting happens. You start to realise that your Second Adulthood has begun. The one where you finally have to define success, meaning and contentment for yourself. This is the journey you then spend the rest of your life on. The workshop is for anyone whose first adulthood is coming to an end or for those in the early stages of their second adulthood who need help and are looking for a group of like minded people to explore this life stage with. Mike and I will be sharing what we have learned in the conversations we have had in the series so far and in our open journeys to help you find the right path on yours and work out, Where To Next? Full details are here. If you use the code RADIO you will get a HUGE discount. Hope to see you there. x This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode twenty-one. Indra Adnan at the Realisation Festival

  4. Aug 23

    Where To Next? Episode twenty. Sarah Corbett at the Realisation Festival.

    When I arrived at the Realisation Festival this year I had that slight sense of trepidation as I walked down the drive to the festival site. I knew I would be made welcome but the festival is designed to be a journey for speakers and participants over a long weekend so arriving mid way through makes you feel as though you are intruding a little. No-one made me feel that way, I was just worried I would be out of synch with everyone else. I was queuing up for breakfast slightly awkwardly as a result when I saw a friendly face heading towards me in a wetsuit shouting ‘Dan!’ It was Sarah Corbett. She of craftivist fame. Force of nature and force of good in this world. She who possesses the kind of smile that instantly puts you at ease. The Weirdo's Journey by Dan Kieran is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We hugged and caught up. I had not seen Sarah since the implosion of Unbound and I knew she had been caught up in the financial fall out. I winced as we talked about how much of a loss that had been for her but the conversation soon turned into her gratitude that Unbound had enabled her to publish the book she actually wanted to publish in the first place, rather than the one all the other major publishers had been trying to persuade her would ‘sell’. Conversations like the one we then had over breakfast next are helping me realise the value and impact of what Unbound achieved was not wholly erased by what occurred when it went into administration three years after I left. After that I walked her to the sauna and where she could have a dip in the river and we resolved to catch up and do an interview that afternoon. She also nudged me towards a workshop that was happening later called Constellation. I replied that much as I loved her and the strange new ways of seeing my life and this world I have discovered on this journey so far, astrology was not really my thing. She laughed and shook her head ‘it has nothing to do with astrology Dan. You’ll love it.’ I have to be honest. I would never have done it if she hadn’t suggested it but I admire and trust her enough to know when to go with the flow. And of course she was right. I did love it. It is one of the most life changing experiences of my life. And in this interview we discuss all kinds of things and the experience of Constellation we had just been through. This is such a beautiful interview. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so relaxed speaking to anyone and Sarah said afterwards it was unlike any interview she has ever done before. Sarah’s work is changing the world. But it doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people who believe in her support her through her patreon. Find out more about her work and support Sarah at: www.craftivist-collective.com and join me by becoming one of her monthly patrons at www.gentleprotest.com Much love, Dan PS - in the conversation I misname ‘Indra’s net’, which I refer to as ‘Indira’s net’. You can read about this Buddhist concept here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode twenty. Sarah Corbett at the Realisation Festival.

  5. Aug 15

    Where To Next? Episode nineteen. Benedict Pollard and Nikki Trott

    Last year I visited the Realisation Festival (imagine a Do Lectures about philosophy held at a Downton Abbey style stately home) at St Giles House where I interviewed Jonathan Rowson, Ed Haddon, Roc Sandford, Sarah Wilson, Nick Ashley - Cooper and Pippa Evans (see episodes four to six in the archive). I also attended a workshop hosted by Benedict Pollard that I recounted at the end of those episodes to try and make sense of the whole experience. I’m thrilled to say that this year I attended again and went to another workshop with Benedict and this time I asked him to wear a microphone so you could listen in. He tells us about his business Mighty Fine Oaks, training to be a Samurai and gives the most astonishing explanation I have ever heard for why you sometimes find two oak trees seemingly growing from the same place. This has haunted me since hearing about it. I also had the astonishingly good fortune to meet Nikki Trott who I had not come across before the festival. I now feel like I was ‘supposed’ to meet her in the way that will be familiar to regular listeners to the show. Mark Vernon introduced us and we sat down for a conversation that begins with me explaining my journey to make sense of what it means to live before I die. The chemistry that then appears between us as Nikki recounts her own journey was a joy to behold in real time. Nikki had her own introduction into what in the series we have been describing as Carl Jung’s Second Adulthood in her late twenties and has been exploring and luxuriating in it ever since. She is much more confident that I am about the uncertainty of such a profound change and has leant into it in a way I aspire to do and am doing now more as a result of meeting her. She also recommended I read The Surrender Experiment , which we discuss in the episode. I devoured it in two days and am now trying to live according to its philosophy. I’m so grateful to have met her. After the interview ended we chatted for another hour and had so many things in common it began to feel a bit weird. But then that’s not a surprise really. Not now we are embodying the weirdo’s journey. So, inspired by her journey and her book, I’m leaning in. You can find out about her and her work here. I hope you enjoy the episode. Much love, Dan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode nineteen. Benedict Pollard and Nikki Trott

  6. Aug 9

    Where To Next? Episode eighteen. Author and activist Jay Griffiths

    There are lots of things I see differently in my life because of Jay. I see her as one of the guides I have been fortunate to know a little bit in my life. Well enough to go and see and chat to, anyway. The longer I go on this journey to try and make sense of what it means to live before I die (the computer keeps autocorrecting ‘live’ to ‘love’ there, which is oddly beautiful), the weirder it becomes and the more easily I find myself leaning into that weirdness. Jay’s books have always appeared at the precise moment I needed them and so it was with her latest, which I’ll come to at the end. The first one of hers I read, Pip Pip, altered the way I think about time (time is the initial form of colonisation that ensnares us all). It is from this book that I learned about Chronos and Kairos, which I referenced in my Do Lecture back in the day. Wild changed the way I saw travel, adventure, the plight of indigenous communities, the horror of the Christian missionary movement and the transformative power of ayahuasca. It is one of the most astonishing books I have ever read and I urge you to buy it immediately. It also completely changed the way I see women. I’m embarrassed to write that but there you are. One of the recurring themes that keeps emerging on this show so far has been the systematic denial of the feminine in the world we live in. If I have had a feminine awakening in my life I can now see that the start of that process was discovering Jay and reading Wild. Kith speaks to childhood and the comparison between the way children in indigenous communities and those raised in our ‘dominant culture’ in Jay’s words - think, feel and behave. Nemesis, My Friend is an almanac about the seasons but, as so often with Jay, it really can’t be as easily categorised as that. It contains so many wonders and gems. Another book of hers that really changed me is Why Rebel - a book of essays on the need to stand up and fight for what you believe in. This contains the astonishing account of her experiences protesting with Extinction Rebellion and her subsequent arrest and court appearance (we discuss this in the episode). This resulted in her reading a prepared statement contained in the book that moved the judge to tears. After finding her and her co-defendants guilty he explained that he would not be presiding over any other XR cases and that they ‘must win’. If you want to be moved and inspired by how words and actions can come together to confront power then grab a copy now. I read and re-read this every time I lose heart. I cry every time I get to the end. The other book we discuss in our conversation is her latest, How Animals Heal Us. From this I learned that baby spiders dream and that humans may have learned egalitarian behaviour from Wolves. I kid you not. But this is the thing with Jay. Every book she writes recalibrates your brain and leaves you more yourself than you were before you started reading it. In this sense she deals in homecoming and home making. Because she teaches you that while your mind is part of your home the other part lies outside of you. In the form of the many non-human minds that surround every one of us all the time too. Have a look at Jay’s website for all her latest news. Much love, Dan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode eighteen. Author and activist Jay Griffiths

  7. Aug 2

    Where To Next? Episode seventeen. Author, Barrister and Oxford Don, Dr. Charles Foster...

    Where do you start with Charles Foster? Perhaps my route to meeting him? Back at the end of last year when I went to visit Iain McGilchrist in Skye, we were discussing indigenous knowledge and what we have lost in the way we see ourselves in the modern world. At this point Iain proclaimed, ‘have you come across Charles Foster’s work?’ I did have Charles’s then most recent book Being a Human back at home on my ‘to read’ pile but hadn’t got to it yet. And I had heard of Charles. A few years ago his book Being a Beast became a New York Times bestseller. In it Charles set out to try and understand what it is like to be a beast. He lived as a badger, eating worms and as a city fox, picking out pizza from boxes in a bin. But of course it went far beyond this slightly tabloid summary. Charles was trying to access different ways of being and knowing and paying respect to the many minds of the non human world. In Being a Human, which I read as soon as I got home, Charles turns his attention to Homo Sapiens and describes his journey seeking to re-gain the mindset and ways of being and knowing our ancestors took for granted. As he says in our interview, we are all still the hunter gatherers we have evolved and adapted over hundreds of thousands of years to be. At present, we are just wearing strange clothes and have lost touch with where we came from while we experiment with the consequences of being neolithic. But Charles is not just an internationally respected and best selling author. He is also a practising barrister and an Oxford Don at Exeter College Oxford where he teaches, among other things, ethics. I set off to meet him slightly nervous to be in the presence of such a high achiever but I needn’t have worried. We got on so well he emailed me while I was driving home to ask if I would interview him for an event at Blackwells in Oxford a few months later. That was great fun too. Charles is a very modest man and seems genuinely baffled as to why anyone would find his work illuminating, but I have found it to be astonishingly so. And it’s also utterly re-enchanting at the same time. As though the world he describes was always on the tip of your tongue and he summons it out of you while you are in his company. I hope you enjoy the discussion where, as well as these two books I just mentioned, we also talk about his latest excellent work The Edges of The World. Much love, Dan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode seventeen. Author, Barrister and Oxford Don, Dr. Charles Foster...

  8. Jul 26

    Where To Next? Episode sixteen - Emily Fawcett and Charlie Loram (part two) *plus* Ric Stockfis

    This is a continuation of my interview with modern day hunter gatherers Emily and Charlie. In this part of the conversation we get deeper into the implications of living closer to nature. I am such a fan of their work and way of life. I hope you take as much away from the example they set as I have. This episode also features the launch of a new project I am doing with Ric Stockfis called One Room. Regular listeners to the show will know that since Christmas I have only allowed my phone in one room of my house, the room you reach on coming in the front door, which is my office. I can use my phone whenever I like, but I have to go in that room to use it. As I explained in a LinkedIn post a few months after making this decision, this has been by far the easiest and most transformational thing I have ever done in my life. The obvious result is that I have halved my phone use, which is a huge benefit in and of itself. This amounts to fourteen hours a week. Fourteen hours I was previously spending working for free for the tech bros, which is how I think about phone use now. All the time we are doom-scrolling we are adding to their billions and tacitly agreeing to the way they use surveillance capitalism to enslave us. That might sound a bit alarmist, but think about it for a moment. How much of your day are you spending dutifully adding to their coffers? The use of surveillance capitalism is a choice. The internet never used to rely on it as a business model. Anyway, putting my ranting to one side, the real benefit of this new habit is the time I have spent on other things. My kids, for one thing, no longer have to compete for my attention. The fact that they had to before now makes me weep with fury at myself. How desperately awful have we become if we think it’s appropriate to use our phones instead of playing with our kids? We’ve all been there, using our phones when one of our kids comes up and asks for something. We have all got cross with them because they are interrupting our focus on our phones. Shame on all of us for letting this happen! I’ve also managed to go to the gym three times a week for seven months and the simple answer as to how I have managed to find the time to do this is because I have not been using my phone. The benefits going beyond this too , as it has changed the things I am attending too in my life and as we have learned from Iain McGilchrist, our attention is a moral act. What we choose to give our attention to changes our reality. It chages our mood and the way we see ourselves and the world. Ric replied to my LinkedIn post to say he too had started only allowing his phone in one room and he confirmed it is not just me. It really is the ultimate life hack you have been waiting for. We have both become so evangelical about the benefits we have launched this website together where you can find out how to do it and sign up to the pledge to only keep your phone in one room too. Here’s the link again Please try it. I promise it will bring huge benefits to your life and all those who love you. Until next week, Much love, Dan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe

    Where To Next? Episode sixteen - Emily Fawcett and Charlie Loram (part two) *plus* Ric Stockfis
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The archive of episodes from my Do Lectures Radio Series, Where To Next? (55k downloads from this substack so far) dankieran.substack.com

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