Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

Jaksot

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  Where To Next? Episode twenty-two. Dr Jude Currivan, the cosmologist, author and futurist 06.09.2026 1t 1min

  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, DanThanks 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
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  Where To Next? Episode twenty-one. Indra Adnan at the Realisation Festival 30.08.2026 1t 1min

  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, DanPS - 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
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  Where To Next? Episode twenty. Sarah Corbett at the Realisation Festival. 23.08.2026 59min

  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.comand join me by becoming one of her monthly patrons atwww.gentleprotest.comMuch love, DanPS - 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
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  Where To Next? Episode nineteen. Benedict Pollard and Nikki Trott 15.08.2026 1t

  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
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  Where To Next? Episode eighteen. Author and activist Jay Griffiths 09.08.2026 1t

  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
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  Where To Next? Episode seventeen. Author, Barrister and Oxford Don, Dr. Charles Foster... 02.08.2026 1t

  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
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  Where To Next? Episode sixteen - Emily Fawcett and Charlie Loram (part two) *plus* Ric Stockfis 26.07.2026 1t

  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 againPlease 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
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  Where To Next? Episode fifteen - Emily Fawcett and Charlie Loram (part one of two) 20.07.2026 59min

  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
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  Where To Next? Episode fourteen - David Cleevely CBE 12.07.2026 59min

  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
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  Where To Next? Episode thirteen. Mike and Shuna Dickson 07.06.2026 59min

  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, DanThanks 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
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  The Edges of the World 03.06.2026 16min

  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
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  Where To Next? Extra Episode - Tom Blue Wolf 15.03.2026 59min

  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
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  Where to Next? Belonging in England part four 16.02.2026 59min

  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
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  Where to Next? Belonging in England Part three 12.01.2026 1t 1min

  The hunter gatherer paradise that was Mesolithic in Britain comes to an end as two waves of farmers arrive from 4,000 BC, bringing with them a new technology and way of life. This is the sixteenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on Do Radio on December 22nd.As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.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
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  Where to Next? Belonging in England, part two 31.12.2025 59min

  In this episode we talk about how the ending of the last ice age may have informed mythologies our ancient ancestors used to make sense of themselves and the world as it changed around them. John explains how he can locate myths in time using the movement of stars over millennia. We also talk about how our mesolithic ancestors lived according to the lunar monthly calendar rather than an annual, solar one that became dominant after the emergence of agriculture and how this coincided with the shift away from a more egalitarian way of life to a more patriarchal one. This is the fifteenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on Do Radio on December 15th.As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.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
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  Where to Next? Belonging in England, part one 17.12.2025 1t 1min

  While I’m taking a break from travelling around the country to record my interview episodes, John Grigsby and I got together to have a series of conversations about what it means to be English and to belong in the nation known as Britain. In these sessions we track when people first arrived here after the last ice age nearly twelve thousands years ago, and from when these islands have been continuously populated ever since. We journey through our Hunter gatherer ancestors of the mesolithic to the beginnings of the neolithic when Britain was still connected to Europe by a bridge of land known as Doggerland. Using a mix of archeology, anthropology, myth and our own imaginations we try to make sense of where we, the English, originally came from. This is the fourteenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on Do Radio on December 8th. As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.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
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  Where To Next? Episode twelve - Dr Iain McGilchrist (the full interview) 06.12.2025 2t 2min

  There have been moments in my life when I felt as though I had strayed from my authentic path and there have been other times when I felt certain I was on the correct one after all. This series has given me as much creative fulfilment as any other creative project I have ever embarked on and, in many ways, driving to the distant corner of the Isle of Skye to visit Iain felt like the culmination of that process. I wonder if there is a name for these kinds of moments? Those times in life when we stop and take our bearings from some inner compass and feel the catharsis of knowing we are on track after all. As to where that track might eventually lead, as you will hear in the episode, I get a steer on that as well. I was negotiating the end of a head cold on the journey, which is why my voice sounds strange in the intro but has recovered by the time I’m actually with Iain. It was an honour to be in his company and share a conversation with him. And it gave me the best answer to the meaning of life I have ever encountered and one that has given me much solace ever since. I hope you enjoy it. As I explain in the episode, there are many places you can go to enjoy Iain’s work. He has an illuminating substack and a comprehensive archive on his website, both of which I strongly recommend. And here is the link to the conversation with Iain and Bernardo Kastrup on Youtube I mentioned in the episode where they discuss the meaning of life. A note on the recording, this is the combined episodes 1 and 2 from my Do Lectures Radio show that were spread across two weeks when they were originally aired.I am now taking a break from traveling the country to interview people, but John Grigsby and I will take the show to Christmas discussing what it means to belong in England and beyond. See you for that next week.This is the twelfth and thirteenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. Episode 1 of my conversation with Iain was first broadcast on Do Radio on November 24th 2025 and Episode 2 was first broadcast on December 1st. As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.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
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  Where To Next? Episode eleven - re-cap 20.11.2025 1t 1min

  This is the second episode of the series so far where it is just me and no guest. I hope this will not come across as self indulgent, but in this episode I wanted to pull together some of the things we have learned from my guests in the series so far, and also to tee-up, as it were, next week’s episode with Iain McGilchrist. Iain is one of my intellectual heroes and rather than ask him to repeat what he has said about his ideas on so many other programmes, I wanted to dive straight into a conversation with him assuming that the audience listening are already familiar with his work. To that end I have spent some of this week’s episode explaining as best I can his ideas about the way the two hemisphere’s of the brain interpret reality. And his contention that our society has become so left-brain oriented in it’s thoughts and actions that we, in the West, are losing touch with what it means to be human.Obviously it’s better to go to the source of these ideas rather than listen to me doing my best to explain them, so if you prefer you can head over to Iain’s comprehensive website and hear from the man himself.This is the eleventh episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on November 17th 2025. As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating!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
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  Where to Next? Episode ten - Dr John Grigsby Part 2 08.11.2025 1t

  In this, the second episode of my conversation with the astro-archeologist Dr. John Grigsby, we sit down and chat in more detail about the subjects we share an interest in. The movement of our ancestors from equatorial Africa across the world, the ‘lunarchy’ they lived in (time being based on a monthly rather than annual cycle) which tantalisingly perhaps explains why they existed in matrilineal groups where women were said to be ‘married to the moon’, how an Indo-European proto-mythology might have spread and can be seen surfacing thousands of years later with astonishing similarities in cultures as far apart as Britain and Egypt. Why many if not most of the the neolithic monuments we see across the landscape in Britain are not in fact oriented towards the sun but to celestial movements in the heavens that are no longer visible to us today because of the phenomenon of ‘precession’ (so the the stars appear to move above and below the horizon over thousands of years). The Celtic ‘otherworld’, how henges are built with ditches around them, not to keep who and what was inside the henge safe, but to protect the world outside from what was within because of their numinous connection to rebirth and death. Synchronicities, coincidences and the field of meaning that is entangled with the physical world our ancient ancestors seemed to understand far better than we do. It’s a wonderful romp through so many subjects and I very much hope you enjoy it.This is the tenth episode of my Do Lectures Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on November 3rd 2025. As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating!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
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  Where to Next? Episode nine - Dr John Grigsby 02.11.2025 1t

  Those who have been following my journey in this series so far will know that while researching a new book a few years ago, I set myself the challenge of finding out when we, as a species, began to separate ourselves from nature. It seems reasonably well accepted that for the vast majority of our existence as a species, homo sapiens were nomadic, lived in matrilineal clans and had no hierarchies or power over others of any kind. Today we obviously live in sedentary, patriarchal and hierarchical societies where power over others is accepted as necessary by most people. I wanted to know what caused us to shift from one way of life to the other and how our disconnection from nature might have contributed to this change.Pretty quickly I came across one of John’s lectures that he gave to the Radical Anthropology Group at UCL. The lecture took the audience through John’s PhD, about how many neolithic monuments that archeologists have assumed were built in alignment with the movement of the sun were actually built in alignment with the movement of stars in the ancient skies instead. John is also an expert in mythology and his work argues that these monuments could also be linked to Proto-Indo- European myth where women were not only seen as equals with men, but considered closer to nature because of menstruation. This link with the phases of the moon perhaps accounting for the matrilineal nature of our hunter gatherer ancestors ways of life. It’s mesmerising stuff that completely frazzled my mind (in a good way) and after interviewing Sharon Blackie, John seemed to me to be the natural person to go and visit next. I actually recorded two episodes with John. In this first one we went for a walk to a henge near where he grew up and chatted around the subject of where we came from and what an indigenous knowledge in Britain might mean. In the episode I will share next week we sat down to do a more traditional style interview. I have learned so much from John, and it’s a real pleasure to share his ideas with you all through these two episodes. This is the ninth episode of my Do Radio Series Where To Next? A new episode is released every Monday. The week after each episode is aired I put it up here on my Substack to create a series archive for those who discover it in the future and want to go back to the start, and for those who want to re-listen to the wisdom of my guests that does seems to bloom on a second and third listening. That has been the case for me, anyway. This episode was first broadcast on DO Radio on October 27th 2025.As always, please share it with anyone you think might find it illuminating.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