Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

Dan Kieran
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The archive of episodes from my Do Radio Series, Where To Next? dankieran.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    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...

  2. 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

  3. Jul 20

    Where To Next? Episode fifteen - Emily Fawcett and Charlie Loram (part one of two)

    In early Spring this year I headed down to the edges of Dartmoor near Ashburton to meet Emily and Charlie who run The Old Way. A series of experiences that teach you not just the skills required to live entirely on the land, but also what they have learned about the way hunter gatherers would have lived in their landscape. We talk about what it really means to connect with nature. How relying on the land for food changes your sense of gratitude and gives you insights that change the way you see your life and the world itself. As regular listeners to the show will know, I am searching for different ways of being and knowing to help me make sense of my own life. In this episode I discover so many it actually runs into two shows. Emily and Charlie were the healthiest looking people I have ever met and welcomed me into their home with real joy and hospitality. They had lots of the wild food they eat prepared to share with me including a cake. I explained awkwardly that I was gluten free and Emily replied, ‘oh don’t worry. It’s completely gluten free. It’s made from acorns’. Eating acorns was a first for me and it tasted delicious. Look out for the rest of the conversation 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 fifteen - Emily Fawcett and Charlie Loram (part one of two)

  4. Jul 12

    Where To Next? Episode fourteen - David Cleevely CBE

    David Cleevely is a genuine legend. A multi exited entrepreneur, serially successful investor (I was once at an event where he was celebrated for getting a ‘one hundred X’ on an investment. As in he got one hundred times more money back than he put in), a connector and co founder of so many organisations in Cambridge it makes my head hurt but, most memorably the Cambridge Angels and the Cambridge Network. And he has also advised multiple Governments and also found time to be a restauranteur (he owns Bocca di Lupo and Gelupo) in London. Not content with all that he has now written a book called Serendipity - It doesn’t happen by accident and this was what led me to ask for an interview. Now you might think ‘serendipity’ is a bit fluffy for an engineer and tech guru like David, but in his excellent book he explains how you can create the conditions to make it more likely to occur. David was one of my investors at Unbound, which is how I met him and this is a fascinating and wide ranging conversation around the realities of entrepreneurship, what bees can tell us about how we organise organisations and we also touch on one of David’s major bugbears - the habit in the UK of over celebrating inventors rather than engineers and the failure of so many UK companies to achieve what Americans seem to manage so reliably. Scale. I strongly recommend David’s book. You can grab a copy here and find more about David 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 fourteen - David Cleevely CBE

  5. Jun 7

    Where To Next? Episode thirteen. Mike and Shuna Dickson

    A few weeks ago I was checking in with Mike Warwick about the show and planning when my new episodes will appear when I began telling him about the project I was working on in Salisbury (where I am trying to deploy the behaviour of entrepreneurship without the motivation of self interest). Towards the end of my explanation I told him about a quote I had recently discovered from Harry Truman I was using as the guiding principle for the project; “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit.” At this point Mike assumed an expression I can only describe as dumbstruck. His eyes opened so wide I thought they might fall out of his head and he began holding onto the table and rocking in his chair as though he was having a seizure. “That quote!” He managed to blurt out. “That quote!” In what has been a regular occurrence in the show so far, coincidence and serendipity had struck again. It turned out this quote was the guiding principle for Mike and Shuna Dickson too – a couple Mike W had just agreed an interview with for Where To Next? We agreed the universe had decided I was supposed to do the interview with him and so, a week later, we both arrived at a picture postcard house on the Portobello Road in West London before a genial man and his wife opened the door and ushered us in offering tea. Mike and Shuna are known as the Kindness Couple and Mike’s new book How To Be A Better Human is a warming radiator of good vibes that explains how to bring more kindness into your life. They are the co-founders of Whizz Kidz, a charity that provides mobility equipment for over 26,000 disabled children (over £150 million has been raised so far) and the book is a memoir / kindness manual that takes you through their journey to realising being kind changes your life just as much as the person who benefits from your kindness. And this is no mere platitude. They have taken this principle further than you can imagine by acting behind the scenes for decades to connect philanthropists with what they call ‘Pied Pipers’ - individuals who are performing miracles in local communities to make their part of the world a better place. We could tell Mike wasn’t entirely comfortable about the microphone finally being focussed on him, but he was generous and, with a bit of coaxing from Shuna, opened up about how they came to learn that kindness is the ultimate superpower. In the show so far Mike and I have been trying to figure out how, in Martin Shaw’s words, to be ‘real human beings’. In this interview you will hear from two people who have figured out how to do just that. It was incredibly inspiring and life affirming to be in their company. For more information about Mike, Shuna and their work visit their website and please do check out the book. Much love, Dan Thanks for reading! This post is public so 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

    Where To Next? Episode thirteen. Mike and Shuna Dickson

  6. Jun 3

    The Edges of the World

    This is a bit of a ramble about my conversation earlier this week at Blackwells in Oxford with the wonderful author and brilliant man, Charles Foster who generously gave me a tour of Exeter College where he is a fellow. I didn’t realise until I asked him but this makes him a ‘Don’. I also interviewed Charles for Where To Next? and that episode will be coming up at some point over the summer along with my conversations with David Cleevely (the entrepreneur and author), Charlie and Emily from The Old Way Immersion, Jay Griffiths (author), Jude Currivan (author, archeologist, physicist and cosmologist) and many more to be recorded at this year’s Realisation Festival in June. Bruce Parry (author, filmmaker and explorer) has also said yes to an interview in the autumn and no doubt lots of other magical people will start to emerge as the flow of serendipity begins when the shows start escaping out into (and onto) the air. 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

    The Edges of the World

  7. Mar 15

    Where To Next? Extra Episode - Tom Blue Wolf

    This was an unexpected joy. Mike Warwick, who has taken over presenting duties on Where To Next? while I record my second series, asked if I would like to co-interview Tom Blue Wolf, a storyteller, indigenous elder and earthkeeper. Appropriately enough, Tom’s book The Great Remembering is a beautiful reminder of the wisdom that humans seem to understand intuitively in all cultures where their ancestral link is unbroken. Tom lives in a place his ancestors have called home for thirty thousand years. This is the first of two episodes, and I will add the second next week. You can listen to all of Mike’s episodes of the show in the archive section of the Do Lectures Radio app that you can download here. Mike and I are enjoying what my wife affectionately refers to as a ‘bro-mance’ so expect more shows from us together in the future. We are beginning to think about doing some live with an audience as well. And we are planning a Where To Next? Workshop (currently titled How To Become a Real Human Being) that will take place in London in May. More details on that soon I hope. Till 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? Extra Episode - Tom Blue Wolf

  8. Feb 16

    Where to Next? Belonging in England part four

    It took four episodes and an exploration of 11,000 years of the continuous habitation of these islands since the end of the last ice-age, but in this recording John Grigsby and I finally reach 430 AD and the arrival of the English. I love all the conversations I have had with John so far but there are so many wonderful things in this episode. We discuss how language may have created the separation from nature that has left the English so lost in their own land. Tolkien’s determination to create a mythology for these islands after the invasion of William the Conqueror led to the eradication of ours and the hints from Chaucer about what that lost mythology might have been. If you are enjoying the show, please consider becoming a paid supporter. If you can’t afford that, please leave a review on the page for the show on Apple Podcasts instead. That will really help! I’m making great progress so far with series two. I will share more updates on that soon. 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? Belonging in England part four
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The archive of episodes from my Do Radio Series, Where To Next? dankieran.substack.com

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