Douglas Rushkoff (author, cyberpunk OG (!) and documentarian) is named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, and studies humans struggling to live in an increasingly unhuman world. Which is to say most of us in 2023. I tracked down this big, excitable mind to continue an earlier WILD chat about billionaire apocalypse preppers (August 2022, with Mark O’Connell). Rushkoff has a wild theory – which he spells out in his latest book, Survival of the Richest: Escape...

Dr Michael E. Mann (super notorious climate scientist; El Niño expert) is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (and more such academic titles). But he is best known for bringing the world the “hockey-stick graph” back in 1999, which showed a sharp “uptick” in global temperatures since the industrial...

Margaret Atwood is best known for her mega-bestselling dystopian fiction, including the Booker Prize-winning novels “The Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments”, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and, most recently, the essay collection “Burning Questions”. The Canadian firebrand imagines future societies, specifically the worst scenarios in these future societies, worlds of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, human-made disasters and theocracies where women’s bodies are controlled...

Helen Lewis (internet famous for her GQ interview with Jordan Peterson, pop culture expert) is a British journalist, BBC broadcaster and currently a staff writer for Atlantic magazine. Her work covers the rise of TikTok tics in teenagers, Harry-and-Meghan, Andrew Tate, the absurdities of US and UK politics…you know, all the chunky bits of life in 2023. She also wrote the best bestseller Difficult Women, A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and just released the BBC podcast series The New Gurus....

Rebecca Giblin (author Chokepoint Capitalism, media academic) joins me to explain how the Big Tech squillionaires are choking creatives – musicians, authors, screenwriters etc – and their customers. And in so doing, killing culture. Hmmm…. Rebecca is a Melbourne Law School professor specialising in creators’ rights and the director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia. Her new book Chokepoint Capitalism (co-written with LA-based bestselling science fiction writer and...

Nick Riggle (Ex-pro skater, philosophy professor at the University of California, YOLO expert) has become known for dissecting contemporary phenomena in a distinctly Socratic manner. In this chat, we delve into the philosophical significance of awesomeness (and its antonym, suckiness), the existential imperative of YOLO (!) and the aetiology of the high five. Nick’s theses on these cliched expressions ultimately lead to a wonderfully wild answer to the quandary of what makes life worth living...

Dr Simon Longstaff (Philosopher, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, The Ethics Centre) is one of Australia’s most ethical thinkers. He mindfully stokes the national debate on cancel culture, corporate conduct, mask-wearing and psychedelic drugs (via his role as chair of Mind Medicine Australia). Simon guides contemporary moral thinking as the ethics commissioner for Cricket Australia, the executive director of The Ethics Centre, which advises corporates on how to make better decisions, and as a...

Yael Stone (Star of Orange is the New Black, Founder of Hi Neighbour, Climate Activist) and I have been IG friends, supporting each other’s climate work, for some years.  In 2021 Yael Stone gave up her Green Card to combat climate change and committed to offsetting future overseas gigs by donating 50% of earnings to climate charities. Now she runs Hi Neighbour, a community platform that assists in the “just transition” for fossil fuel workers into low-carbon jobs. I have admired Yael's...

The Orange Is the New Black star and I have been IG friends, supporting each other’s climate work, for some years. In 2021 Yael Stone gave up her Green Card to combat climate change and committed to offsetting future overseas gigs by donating 50% of earnings to climate charities. Now she runs Hi Neighbour, a community platform that assists in the “just transition” for fossil fuel workers into low-carbon jobs. I have admired Yael's wildness from afar but decided it was time to meet IRL. For...

It’s the time of year when we all need some inspiring, expansive perspectives and I reckon this chat with Tim, which I recorded a little while back, might be a great listen as you go about your summer road trips and making 2023 commitments. Tim trained with the Vedic tradition and has taught meditation to elite athletes, jail inmates, billionaires and kids for more than 20 years. The guy’s been part of my spiritual journey for 12 years and has guided me with my career, love life and various...

This interview got a lot of (shocked!) feedback, so I figured I’d run it again as we start thinking about heading back to work. Again. And contemplating “what it’s all about”. British writer Oliver Burkeman has investigated pretty much every productivity hack, mindfulness trick, list-making system and happiness boost we've ever been fed. He concludes, almost none work. Ha! I followed Oliver's column in The Guardian, which he wrote from his home in Brooklyn, New York, for about 10 years and he...

I discovered Jill's story in her viral TED Talk from 2008 (it became the most-watched TED talk ever!) in which the brain scientist describes watching the left side of her brain deteriorate over the course of four hours on the morning of her stroke and how she used her right brain to stay present and get help.  I was transfixed. Ever since I've wondered, whatever happened to Jill Bolte Taylor? Did she go back to normal? Is she still living in her right brain and able to experience the...

He was the captain of the Wallabies, the only Australian player to be included in World Rugby's team of the decade, but - wildly – retired at the height of his career to devote his life to climate activist projects here in Australia and in Africa.  I recorded this interview shortly after David quit rugby and several months before he decided to run as an independent Senator in the Australian Parliament. He won the ticket and has gone on to become an extremely powerful and highly regarded...

Sia is one of the most gifted and wild creatives on the planet, best known for the hundreds of hit pop songs she's written for herself, Beyonce, Rihanna and Kanye West, and for being notoriously private, rarely doing interviews. This is why I remain so damn chuffed that she agreed to be my FIRST guest here on Wild. I recall being soooo nervous and out of my depth. But also thoroughly enjoying this incredible human’s quirky company. In this chat, Sia gets intimate with me about fostering, why...

I share a glorious, wild, life-affirming story in this special episode. Some of you might have read my book This One Wild and Precious Life and remember the bit where I wind up in Mammoth in the Sierra Nevada and rant at a young guy sitting in a vegan smoothie café about his single-use plastic cups (he was drinking several vegan beverages). He takes it well and asks to read a few pages of the book (I was working on the draft of the climate chapter as we spoke). "Wow! Can you put that...

How to find peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one podcast episode? Ha! You 210% can’t. But if there is someone who can provide a vision for it, it’s Palestinian peace broker Aziz Abu Sarah. Aziz grew up in East Jerusalem and lost a brother to the conflict when he was nine when the Israeli military stormed his home in the middle of the night. At 18, however, he turned his hatred around and today Aziz is one of the world's most powerful and connected peacebuilders and cultural...

Seth Godin never does anything the normal way. The prolific marketing guru and disrupter joins us here on Wild for a second time to chat about what he describes as the most important project of his life, a crowd-created Climate Almanac, created by a 300-person army of scientists, artists and teachers from 41 countries who turned around the 97000-word book in 120 days.  The wild idea we wrestle with in this episode is the very act of not doing climate activism the normal way. We talk about...

This week’s guest will “shock you into noticing the world differently.”  The glorious Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian-born Yoruba poet, author and teacher at universities and institutions across the UK, the US, Canada and India. He has also won the 2021 New Thought Walden Award which honours empowering spiritual ideas and philosophies that change lives and make our planet a better place. Bayo uses “trickster philosophy” and intense metaphors to present truly wild – but intuitively sound - ways...

This episode continues the fascinating-slash-frightening journey I’ve been on with you, to understand what we should prioritise as we face potential existential end times. Today’s guest, Harvard researcher and philanthropist Holden Karnofsky, brings the AI, effective altruism, longtermism and anti-growth debates together with the clarion call: “This is our moment, this century is make-or-break, pay attention people!” It’s not an idle or hysterical call, it’s one that Holden has researched...

The fashion industry produces 20% of global wastewater and more carbon emissions than ALL international flights and ALL maritime shipping COMBINED. If nothing changes, by 2050 the fashion industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget. Ex-Vogue journalist and founder of The Wardrobe Crisis (the book, podcast and academy) Clare Press joins me to wrestle the quandaries: Is vegan leather ethical? Are recycled plastic leggings green? What labels are legit carbon neutral? Does the...

There’s a young Australian human rights lawyer and barrister who has been at the centre of the most era-defining legal cases in the world. She has represented Julian Assange since 2010. She led the Amber Heard case. She worked on the case against the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan and a case against the Catholic Church over child sex abuse. She was also a legal adviser to The New York Times in the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal and regularly fronts up to the International Court of Justice and...

We crave adventure to break up the ho-hum of our everyday lives. But busting ruts doesn’t have to be all about conquering Everest or ticking off bucket list challenges. We can get the same result as a “backyard adventurer”. Beau Miles, a Patagonia and Outward Bound ambassador, author and YouTube star, used to be a mad explorer – he’s indeed conquered Everest base camp, became the first person to run 650kms across the Australian Alps, kayaked Bass Strait and the rest. But a few years back he...

Life is hard. And yet so much of contemporary life compels us to fight this fundamental reality. We are meant to be happy! We are meant to live our best, most #blissful, potential-stacked life! But I talk with Kieran Setiya, a professor of philosophy at MIT, who argues we should #NotLiveOurBestLife. It’s better to aspire to a life that is, well, good enough. Kieran has appeared on Sam Harris’ podcast, written for the New York Times, the London Review of Books etc bringing a philosophical...

He is regarded as the greatest science fiction writer alive and his most recent book, set in the climate catastrophe-wracked near future, The Ministry for the Future, is recommended widely by Barack Obama and Ezra Klein and such is the accuracy of his futuristic depictions Kim Stanley Robinson is now called upon to consult on climate solutions by the Pentagon and at COP26.  But Kim is also a mad hiker and his latest book The High Sierra: A Love Story is a hiking...