Today, co-host Sarah Ichioka speaks with Professor Dan Hill, a global leader working at the intersection of design, technology, and urban innovation. Their conversation was recorded at, and with the support of, the Melbourne School of Design, where Dan serves as Director.

For our latest episode, co-host Michael Pawlyn interviews musician, producer, visual artist and activist Brian Eno. Their conversation was originally recorded at The Regenerative Architecture Index event in London, organised by UK Architects Declare and Architecture Today.

For this episode, co-host Sarah Ichioka interviews Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer Dr Lyla June Johnston, in an extended version of a conversation originally recorded as part of Sarah’s Designing Cities for All Fellowship at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam.

For this episode, co-hosts Michael Pawlyn and Sarah Ichioka dive into some of the conversations they’ve had on other podcasts where they have been invited to discuss Flourish and regenerative thinking and practice.

To round off the first season of the Flourish podcast, we speak to Sagarika Bhatta, an environmental scientist, climate activist and social entrepreneur based in Kathmandu. We explore how cultivating female and youth leadership in climate action is necessary for a just transition; and discuss the disconnect between the realities of “developed” or “developing” economies in how they mitigate, adapt to and are impacted by the climate crisis.

Our guest today is public philosopher Roman Krznaric, who writes about the power of ideas to change society. We speak with Roman today about how rethinking our understanding of time and planning for the long term can achieve regenerative transformation and a better future for generations to come.

Our guests today, Sumi Dhanarajan and Anna Biswas, are leaders at Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainability nonprofit organisation. For over 25 years, they've been working in partnership with business, governments and civil society to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable future. Understanding how to make changes at a fundamental level requires an integrated way of looking at the world - a systems view. But many of us are not taught to think about problems in this way. That's why we wanted to seek out the perspective of an organisation who put systems thinking front and centre.

This episode welcomes scholar Professor James Ogude to speak about the concept of Ubuntu - a Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity" that is often translated to, "I am because we are" or "I am because you are". Together, we discuss how the humanities can complement scientific perspectives, and what modern cultures can learn from "banished knowledges" and Indigenous world views, particularly in relation to community and a rebalanced relationship with the Earth. Professor James Ogude is the Director at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria and Director of the African Observatory for Environmental Humanities. He is currently leading a Mellon funded supra-national project involving the Universities of Ghana, Makerere, Cape Town and Pretoria and is the Principal Investigator of a University of Pretoria research project on the African philosophy of Ubuntu funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

Today, we feature Crystal Chissell, a multidisciplinary climate action leader and senior member at Project Drawdown. In this conversation, she speaks to Flourish Systems Change about co-solutioning for a climate-resilient future through education, collaboration and communities, and how, sometimes, knowing where our motivations lie might just help to scale our efforts for climate action. As Senior Director of new initiative Drawdown Communities, Crystal Chissell leads efforts to produce informational programming and guides to support local, collective climate action. These efforts will focus on scaling adoption of Project Drawdown solutions in a way that values the well-being of all people and nature.

Kate Raworth, renegade economist and author of Doughnut Economics, joins Flourish Systems Change to press the case for rethinking the entire global economic system. Drawing on insights from emergent schools of thought – including complexity, ecological, feminist, behavioural and institutional economics – she argues that today’s economies are divisive and degenerative by default, and must become distributive and regenerative by design. Kate’s book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist is an international bestseller that has been translated into 20 languages, and was long-listed for the 2017 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. She is co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab, working with cities, business, communities, governments and educators to turn Doughnut Economics from a radical idea into transformative action. She teaches at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and is Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

With Sarah, at the Hive in Singapore and Michael at Cast Iron Productions in London, we kick off the Flourish Systems Change Podcast by explaining why sustainability can never go far enough. Sarah Ichioka is an urbanist, curator and writer. She currently leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact organisations and initiatives. Architect and systems thinker Michael Pawlyn established Exploration in 2007 and has built a reputation as a thought leader in regenerative design and the circular economy.