Dr. Lyla June Johnston is an indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné Navajo, Cheyenne and European lineages. She blends her study of human ecology, graduate work in indigenous pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her research has focused on the ways in which …

In another life, Manish Jain was educated at Harvard, became an investment banker with Morgan-Stanley, and worked with the UN. Since then, he has been on a journey of unlearning, deschooling and decolonizing, returning home to India to learn from his illiterate village grandmother. Manish is the founder-coordinator of Shikshantar Andolan, which has…

In the fifth episode of The Bristol Conversations, we hear from Iain McGilchrist, the author of the groundbreaking book ‘The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’. Iain is a neuroscientist, psychiatrist and scholar; a man who has shed light not only on some fascinating truths about our minds and our experie…

In the fourth episode of The Bristol Conversations, we hear from Camila Moreno, civil society’s foremost expert on the international COP climate negotiations. Since 2008, Camila has been charting the emergence of what she calls a system of ‘global climate governance’. She describes the ways in which the environmental movement is being coopted and r…

In this episode we hear from Nelson Mudzingwa, a farmer and food sovereignty advocate, working with La Via Campesina. He teaches at the Shashe Agroecology School and is the national coordinator for the Zimbabwe Smallholder Organic Farmer’s Forum (ZIMSOFF). In this conversation with Helena Norberg-Hodge, Nelson extols the benefits of local food syst…

Welcome to the Bristol Conversations, a new podcast and video series by Local Futures featuring Helena Norberg-Hodge in conversation with some of the great minds who joined us in Bristol for the Planet Local Summit. Today, we hear from perhaps the world's leading expert on local finance and local business, Michael Shuman. With roots in the peace mo…

Welcome to the Bristol Conversations, a new podcast and video series by Local Futures. In these longer-format, meandering episodes, our founder Helena Norberg-Hodge speaks with some of the great minds who joined us in Bristol for the Planet Local Summit. We kick the series off with Darcia Narvaez. Darcia is professor emerita of psychology at the Un…

The final episode in the World Localization Extravaganza counters the “bigger, more complex and more violent” logic of the dominant system with a bottom-up approach built on peoplepower, local sovereignty and small-scale economies. The episode stresses how, even and especially in the face of global crises, localization simply makes sense. VISIT OUR…

On World Localization Day, 2025, we celebrate a planet-sized paradox – a GLOBAL movement for LOCALization. VISIT OUR CAMPAIGN PAGE: www.worldlocalizationday.org to get active, and follow @localfutures_ This second episode in the trio offers shining examples of localization-in-action in the USA, Brazil, Bangladesh and Nepal, while also stressing eff…

On World Localization Day, 2025, we come to you with a very big story. It’s a story played out across every continent, told by 15 different voices, over three upbeat super inspiring podcast episodes. It’s the story of a global turning towards all things local and life-affirming. VISIT OUR CAMPAIGN PAGE: www.worldlocalizationday.org to get active, a…

Described as "one of the greatest thinkers of our age," Jeremy Lent is an impassioned researcher and speaker who investigates the underlying causes of our civilizational metacrisis, and explores pathways toward an ecological civilisation. He is the author of The Patterning Instinct and The Web of Meaning, and the founder of the Deep Transformation …

Christian Jochnick, a Swedish entrepreneur, started his career in social projects for urban youth. After experiencing the challenges around finance in the philanthropic world, he decided to go back to university to get an MSc from the London School of Economics. He then worked as an analyst in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs before…

Nathalie Kelley is a Peruvian-Australian actress of Quechua descent who has starred in Hollywood films like ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and Netflix’s ‘Dynasty’. Over the last five years, however, she has switched from acting to activism, speaking out for indigenous peoples, regenerative agriculture and localization. She is a graduate of Kiss The Gro…

Peace-pilgrim, life-long activist, and former monk, Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 60 years. In 1962 he undertook a pilgrimage for peace, walking for two years without money from India to America for the cause of nuclear disarmament. In 1991, he co-founded Schumacher College, a renowned center of ecological education, and is…

How can we make our local communities healthy and resilient, and make sure that the voices and concerns of local people are heard? In this episode of the Planet Local Voices Series, Kate Taylor-Smith, Patricia Patterson Vanegas and Ben Christie, share their experience from Forest Row - a small town of 5000 people in East Sussex in the UK. They talk…

William (Bill) Powers is an author, speaker and teacher whose essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New York Times and the Atlantic and on National Public Radio. Powers has also spent several decades exploring the American culture of speed and its alternatives in some fifty countries around the world. He is the author of fiv…

Ruby Van der Wekken is a member of RIPESS, a network committed to promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, as well as Oma Maa, a Finnish food co-operative based on community-supported agriculture (CSA) as well as ecologically and socially sustainable food production methods. Ruby works both at the cooperative's community farm and with the develo…

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and author of several books including 'The Transition Handbook' and most recently, 'From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want'. He is an Ashoka Fellow, has spoken at TED Global and at several TEDx events. In this interv…

A Stanford-trained lawyer and economist, Michael Shuman is the world’s pre-eminent expert on local finance, sharing practical tools to reclaim wealth from Wall Street for the benefit of communities. He is a prolific speaker and advocate for policy change, and is the author of ten books including Local Dollars, Local Sense, The Small Mart Revolution…

Morag Gamble is an award-winning permaculture teacher and designer and the founder of the Permaculture Education Institute. Over 30 years, she has led permaculture programs in 22 countries across six continents, inspiring countless people to join the practical permaculture revolution. She also curates a blog and practical YouTube channel called Our…