Live Free Ride Free with Rupert Isaacson Rupert Isaacson

If you haven't watched the film My Octopus Teacher, then stop reading this right now and go to Netflix. (Trailer here on YouTube)
An extraordinary work, which chronicles the relationship between South African diver and director Craig Foster and, yes, a wild octopus, the film won an Oscar and rightly so. The link between man and nature shown in the movie - or rather the clear reminder that man is nature and not removed from it in some way, as we may erroneously sometimes think, is shown with startling intimacy and  a sense of wonder that brings you straight back to childhood.
Just watching My Octopus Teacher is very healing, but there is much much more to Craig Foster and his work than this one extraordinary movie.
I have been lucky enough to Craig for...well, a long time. When we first met i was campaigning for the San Bushmen of Botswana as a human rights activist - a story that is told in my books The Healing Land and the Long Ride Home - he and his brother Damon had recently completed a film called The Great Dance, following the firtunes of three master hunters of the San people and capturing seemingly impossible footage of, for example, a hunt in which the hunter must 'become' the animal - effectively shape-shifting.
A further film, Cosmic Africa, took us into astronomy through the eyes of a black South African astro-physicist and a journey into the way the universe is interpreted through the African mind.
Other movies included scuba diving into a crocodile's lair in the Okavango Swamps, and swimming with man eating sharks...the list goes on.
Recently, Craig published a book - Amphibious Soul, about his own relationship with the cold water kelp forest - the African Sea forest - where his encounter with his octopus teacher happened, and also about the fact because our species , homo sapiens sapiens, evolved at the margins of land and water where the most food is, we developed an amphibious nature at the dawn of our evolution.
Because of this, water brings out play, joy, exploration, wonder in us and connects us direct to nature, perhaps to the divine, more directly than almost any other means. Then there's tracking, the need for following patterns and signs in nature and beyond, which seems completely linked to happiness and fulfillment... but let's hear this and more from the mouth of the man himself. Listen on, Craig Foster has spent a lifetime doing the impossible and making a living through bringing wonder into the lives of people worldwide.
This conversation is no exception.
Books, Films, Causes & Contact:
Amphibious Soul: https://amzn.to/3WrMJ6LMy Octopus Teacher:Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5ANetflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81045007The Great DanceThe Sea Change Project: https://seachangeproject.com/
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There are people out there in the world who make good things happen. The good things you see on your news feeds - not the doom scrolling.
The good documentaries you might have watched, the projects fighting climate change, AIDS, human rights abuses and the like - its often easy to forget that there are actual individuals behind the scenes making these things happen, then helping them get out to the audiences that need them, and finally leveraging those projects into actual change both at a policy level and for real lives of real people living in those conditions.
Ginny Jordan is one of these behind the scenes individuals - whether it was pioneering alternative education in the USA, helping women and children - first in Africa, and then all over the world living with HIV to form businesses, through Bead for Life and Street Business School,  whether it was bringing Climate Change to cinemas and televisions around the world through the groundbreaking movies Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, and then helping to support the organizations finding the solutions to these pressing issues of our times, or whether...well you'll have to listen to find out what she's up to now. 
It can sound like a grand litany of successes, but in ever self actualized life there is, well, a life. Ginny has battled multiple bouts of cancer, crippling fights with Meuniere's Disease, and has had large parts of herself cut away. She knows what it is to be a mother battling these challenges and at the same time trying to make sure the kids are OK.
Bottom line, Ginny Jordan is one of the most effective people on the planet, while at the same time living daily with the very human realities of frailty and physical limitation. How do people like her do it? Listen on and be inspired.
Books, Films, Causes & Contact:Book: Clear Cut. It's by Ginny Jordan Bead for Life: www.beadforlife.orgginnyjordan53@gmail.comFilms: 
Social DilemmaChasing IceChasing CoralFind our other shows and programs:https://rupertisaacson.com

That the Carradine family is a Hollywood dynasty is common knowledge.
Less known is that one of its scions - Kansas Carradine, daughter of legendary actor David Carradine (Kung Fu, Kill Bill et al) has become possibly one of the most self actualized people of her generation and is going around the world helping others to do the same.
Kansas Carradine is an amazing talent: a professional trick rider and rope since her childhood, a stunt rider and actress, a therapist with the legendary HeartMath Insititute which conducts research into the electromagnetic fields of hearts and how this affects the human nervous system, brain and immune system, a diplomat and peace broker with the G20...as well as a wife and mother.
Kansas Carradine is that rare thing - someone who has come through the maestrom of celebrity life without their ego going supernova, and who has emerged an approachable human being in service to the common good in a level that is frankly breathtaking. Listen on and learn how to look at life through the lens of the heart - it will change your reality.
Contact Kansashttps://www.circuscowgirl.com/https://www.facebook.com/circuscowgirl/ https://www.fyera.org Find our other shows and programs:https://rupertisaacson.com

Many of us dream about - or at the very least wonder about - the phenomen of becoming a YouTuber. Actually making a living out of content creation. Many of us also dream of being able to positively influence the lives of others this way and spread knowledge of healing and well being for the common good while, well being successful. Sukie Baxter, whose work on explaining the autonomic nervous system and how it can be harnessed to work more efficiently for health and happiness, has done just that. Her views on YouTube have gone into the millions without having to resort to gossip, trolling celebrities, car crashes or even cute dogs riding bicycles. Sukie's work is just flat out good - helpful, easy to understand and implement and actually helping one feel and do better.
It wasn't always this way - Sukie's path to Self Actualization was, like everyone's - hard earned. Becoming a Rolfer (a lesser known but highly effective form of bodywork) in her early 20s she built a practice over almost two decades that while successful, became stressful, over scheduled, and eventually drained her of energy. Then Covid hit and in one instant her whole business evaporated.That's when,  born from a desire to do something productive in that time of universal suffering, Sukie began to put out informative YouTube videos on how to make your body and nervous system your friend not your foe. Now, four years later, Sukie has achieved an enviable level of freedom by doing good.
But that isn't all. In this fascinating podcast she shares with us not just her personal and professional journey but also how the autonomic nervous system actually works, what the nuts and bolts of human happiness are, and even how to make YouTube videos that  actually get seen. Listen on people, Sukie has much to teach us.
YouTube Tools mentioned:Keywords everywhereTubeBuddy
Contact Sukie Baxterhttps://wholebodyrevolution.comhttps://youtube.com/sukiebaxterhello@wholebodyrevolution.com 
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Have you ever dreamed of being a filmmaker, a producer? A storyteller of the screen? We all have at some point -anyone who consumes screen entertainment hankers at some point to be the one making the content. Yet how to even get started? Even in these days of YouTubers and independent film making platforms where movies made on cell phones get sold to TV, we know its hard. How do you get the finances, the actors, the costumes, the scripts? How do you put it all together and make a go of it, a successful career of it?
Diana Elbaum knows how. Starting as a confused young Belgian girl with a naive desire to tell stories, her two companies, Entre Chien et Loup (between wolf and dog) and Beluga Tree have produced well over ninety films of all genres. She’s done the Hollywood thing – her groundbreaking movie The Congress featured Robin Wright, Danny Huston and Harvey Keitel. But Diana has also explored a side of film that many of us in the English speaking world are largely unaware of – the thriving French, Belgian and European cinematic and television world which produces billions of dollars a year and many works of great quality – a goodly number of which then get bought by Hollywood and put into English language versions.
Diana has won a string of awards, started the EP2C Workshop which helps young film makers from around the world – or even older ones – get started. Maybe she can help you.
So listen on, if there was ever a woman who has self actualized, and at the same time helped dozens of others do the same, it's Diana Elbaum.
Contact Dianahello@belugatree.be
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Have you ever heard of the Grand Tour? If you haven’t, you’ve certainly benefited from it – in the 18th and 19th centuries young artists, composers and  aristocrats from northern Europe, most especially England and Germany, used to tour the great cities of Renaissance Italy, adventuring in all sorts of dissolute ways but also learning the Classics along the way, not to mention witnessing the great art of Venice, Florence and Rome, and bringing this Enlightenment firmly into our modern consciousness. Byron, the Shelleys, Goethe – all found their muse on the Grand Tour. We would have no Frankenstein, no Childe Harold, no Faust if their authors had not had their artistic world view split wide open in the Uffizi, the Vatican and The Grand Canal  Even Mark Twain, that great alderman of American letters, was by his own admission greatly affected in his writing by having made this rite of passage.
Today, a small British outfit with the succinctly appropriate name of Art History Abroad is helping people self-actualize by making the Grand Tour in our post-modern age. Can this old aristocratic tradition be democratized? Could deep immersion into the realm of art and beauty still be part of making a young (or indeed any age) person, a more rounded, more effective, indeed more empathetic individual, better able to tackle the vicissitudes of our own times?
Nick Ross, our guest on this edition of Live Free Ride Free, has demonstrated that yes, art, beauty, the Grand Tour can indeed set us free, Despite battling an early paralysis, endless setbacks and the perhaps inevitable -  you cant make a living doing something so old fashioned – nay-sayers, has spent the past thirty five years dramatically opening up the world view of countless Brits, Americans and others, helping them find themselves through art – and its timeless, peerless wonder. Nick Ross has, one could say, self-actualized through helping others do the same. The arts, it seems, can connect us with the divine with ourselves. Listen on, for in many ways Nick has, frankly, pulled off the impossible.
Contact Nickhttps://www.arthistoryabroad.com/nick@arthistoryabroad.com
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