Episodes

  • #88 How Life Works Beyond Genes: the New Biology of Meaning with scientist and author Philip Ball

    #88 How Life Works Beyond Genes: the New Biology of Meaning with scientist and author Philip Ball
    Jun 2 2026
    Send a love messageBeyond Genes, Toward Meaning & Care, But RigorouslyAndrea Hiott hosts British science writer Philip Ball (former Nature editor; trained chemist and physicist) to discuss his book How Life Works and why the popular idea “it’s all in the genes” is untenable. Ball argues biology is shifting beyond mechanistic, bottom-up “blueprint” metaphors toward a view of organisms as open, adaptive informational systems with complex genotype–phenotype relations, constant interaction across levels (genes to ecosystems), and robust behavior emerging from “committee-like” molecular collectives. They discuss why biology has avoided purpose, teleology, and meaning, yet living systems make contextual value judgments and goal-directed decisions, with continuity from cells to human minds and emotions, emphasizing embodiment and symbiosis. Ball links these themes to his prostate cancer diagnosis while finishing the book, reflecting on mortality, persistence of patterns and information through art and writing, and the open-endedness of life and evolution, ending with love as a real evolved capacity.00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro00:35 Why Biology Is Shifting02:09 Cancer, Meaning, and Patterns04:37 Challenging Gene Determinism11:03 Beyond the Machine Metaphor17:52 Purpose and Teleology in Life23:58 Messiness and Higher-Level Causation31:54 Meaning Making in Cells38:10 Embodiment and the Mind-Body Link41:20 Embodied Minds42:23 Nested Bodies and Meaning43:52 Molecular Caring and Committees45:02 Physics of Collectivity47:19 Universality From Traffic to Cells51:11 Leaky Layers in Living Systems53:20 Beyond E. coli to Elephants55:49 Caring as a New Metaphor57:44 Symbiosis Parasites and Affordances01:03:23 Brains Agency and Emotions01:08:10 Mortality and Whirlpools of Meaning01:15:42 Uniqueness Open-Ended Evolution01:18:25 Love as Evolutionary RealityTRANSCRIPTAndrea Hiott: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. This is Andrea Hiott, and I’m glad you’re here. Today is a really special conversation, which I had quite some months ago, back in February, with a writer who is one of my favorites, Philip Ball. He is a British science writer. He used to be the editor at Nature for over 20 years. He’s trained as both a chemist and a physicist, and he’s written a lot of really good books. Critical Mass was a prize-winning book, and there’s also H2O, The Music Instinct, and the one we’re talking about here, How Life Works.Let me tell you a little bit about this book. It comes at a moment when I think biology is really shifting. It’s a shift that’s been going on for a while, but it’s at an important moment now where this mechanistic gene-first story we’ve been telling — the one that says you are your genes, you are your DNA, the selfish gene, that whole idea — is really changing a lot. The idea of the body as a machine assembled from the bottom up, that story is coming apart.But it’s interesting because we don’t want to just flip to the opposite, to reject all that came before. That’s what this book is doing that’s so interesting, and also this conversation. I think you’ll hear it. We’re trying to hold a certain tension because even though that story is coming apart, it’s not that everything is wrong about it. The hope is not to flip into the opposite, but rather to hold the tension and to really open up a new space about how we actually think about what life is and what we are.We have more ways to communicate and more ways to study this that can help us get more rigorous even as we also open up. So that’s what we’re trying to do in this conversation. It gets a little bit messy — that’s a word I’m always using, but in a good way — because we’re trying to talk about a lot of very hard things here, and we’re also trying to talk about them in a way that isn’t the usual way.You’ll hear that Philip is very articulate about this. He’s even better in the book, so I really highly recommend it. He’s also written some very beautiful essays, and one of them, which is in Nautilus, is about how at the end of writing this book he got diagnosed with cancer. We get to that by the end of this conversation because he’s come through well. He had surgery. All is good. It’s all gone. But there was a time when it was very tense for him, and he was writing this book about life, so can you imagine? He was really having these questions pressed on him directly as he had been thinking about life and trying to understand what it was.There’s something very moving about that. What he came to through this was that we are made of this material that’s changing all the time, but what persists are these patterns that come through us, or are in the world with us, or that we create and give to the world that then go on without us. It’s not that they’re floating around in the air. It’s that I can read this book again that he wrote, and there’s an imprint to the ...
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    1 hr and 26 mins
  • #87 the Money Koan: towards a new philosophy of curren(t)cy and care with investor Jenna Nicholas

    #87 the Money Koan: towards a new philosophy of curren(t)cy and care with investor Jenna Nicholas
    May 21 2026

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    Andrea Hiott in conversation with investor Jenna Nicholas.

    Jenna discusses her book The Enlightened Bottom Line and how spirituality, love, and purpose can inform investing and business rather than oppose them. She traces formative experiences from ages 11–14 in a Swiss “Transformation for Peace” program and speaking at Commonwealth Day in Westminster Abbey, including meeting Desmond Tutu, to the confidence instilled by her mother and grandmother, faith, and a lifelong practice of hosting “Saturdays at Jen’s” discussion groups.

    After moving from London to Stanford, she was inspired by social entrepreneurs, worked on socially responsible investing in China with mentor Wayne Silby (Calvert Funds), and later organized experiences and interviews exploring profit–purpose paradoxes. She describes practices like symbolic objects to bridge divides, dreams-based decision-making in the Amazon, and a HEAL framework (Hope, Empathy, Abundance, Legacy), emphasizing pauses, stewardship, seven-generation thinking, and money as “currency” valuable when in motion.

    Find Jenna’s book The Enlightened Bottom Line here.

    Parker Palmer conversation with Andrea is here

    Jacob Needleman conversation with Andrea is here.

    00:00 Welcome and Book Setup

    00:25 Teen Years and Abbey Speech

    02:25 Tutu High Five and Lasting Joy

    04:01 the Women Who Raised Her

    06:48 Holding Paradox in Community

    08:56 From Stanford to Impact Investing

    11:40 Choosing Stanford by Fate

    14:43 Wayne Silby and Legacy Shift

    17:18 Bhutan and Business of Happiness

    19:24 Enoughness and Inner Compass

    22:52 Saturdays at Jens Conversations

    25:14 Fierce Love in Organizations

    27:25 Creating Listening Spaces

    28:03 Building Impact Experience

    28:40 Coal Meets Solar Values

    30:13 Redefining Money Capital

    34:00 Heal Framework Questions

    35:37 Hope Empathy Abundance

    37:16 Playful Abundance Wand

    40:04 Amazon Dream Circles

    43:03 Death Joy Legacy

    46:31 Stewardship Seven Generations

    49:02 Reflection Questions Pauses

    52:40 Grandmother Loving Kindness

    55:37 Honoring Stories Love

    57:15 Podcast Farewell

    The Enlightened Bottom Line by Jenna Nicholas

    Jenna’s Substack is here.

    Jenna on LinkedIn

    Baha’i Faith

    Books discussed in addition to the Enlightened Bottom Line:

    InnSaei: the Icelandic Art of Intuition by Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir

    The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist

    Full intro and notes here.

    Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.

    Support the show

    Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • #86 A.A. Kostas and his WayMarkers (including Chris McCandless, C.S. Lewis, Robert Pirsig, Thomas Merton, D.T. Suzuki, & Christian mystics)

    #86 A.A. Kostas and his WayMarkers (including Chris McCandless, C.S. Lewis, Robert Pirsig, Thomas Merton, D.T. Suzuki, & Christian mystics)
    May 7 2026

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    What Marks our Movement through life?

    Andrea Hiott interviews A.A. Kostas, a Singapore-based lawyer and writer who runs the Substack Way Markers, blending poetry, fiction, and essays. They discuss how moving through different places shaped his writing and his interest in avoiding simplistic binaries through discernment—first identifying what kind of decision is in front of you—using hiking metaphors of many paths versus a narrow ridge. Alex cites Into the Wild as a cautionary way marker about seeking truth without rejecting human connection, and describes a Cradle Mountain hike where his wife had to find her own route. They explore how technology reinforces binary thinking, why poetry and music hold meanings beneath prose, and the value of humility from engaging Western and Eastern traditions (including Merton and Suzuki). They examine care as uncomfortable attention, the importance of embodied presence, and Alex’s experience of fatherhood as immediate responsibility and obligation where love grows.

    00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
    02:21 Becoming a Writer
    03:51 Growing Up Everywhere
    05:15 What Is Way Markers
    07:12 Pilgrimage and Substack
    10:29 Into the Wild Lessons
    14:29 Beyond Binary Thinking
    18:49 Cradle Mountain Metaphor
    22:36 Discernment and Ridge Lines
    25:20 Tech Shapes Our Minds
    27:00 Why Braid Genres
    31:04 Music and Poetry Under Language
    34:12 Law as Applied Philosophy
    37:41 Zen Meets Catholic Mysticism
    43:00 Humility and Unknowing
    46:48 Craving Oneness Safely
    48:19 Mystical Moments Explained
    50:20 Flow State With Meaning
    51:00 Desire Points to God
    52:25 You Cant Conjure Awe
    56:14 Care In Writing
    58:36 Audience Capture Trap
    59:27 Pamphlets Off The Internet
    01:02:40 Love Is Uncomfortable
    01:17:58 Fellow Travelers And Faith
    01:24:28 Humor Holds Paradox
    01:28:34 Fatherhood And Obligation
    01:32:18 Closing Reflections

    See the Substack for links to the books mentioned.

    Full intro and notes here.

    Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.

    Support the show

    Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

    Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.

    Please rate and review with love.
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    1 hr and 40 mins
  • #85 Punk, Tech & Care: B. Scot Rousse on Being Human in the Age AI and Ambassadors of Possibility (Dreyfus, Flores, Heidegger, Kierkegaard)

    #85 Punk, Tech & Care: B. Scot Rousse on Being Human in the Age AI and Ambassadors of Possibility (Dreyfus, Flores, Heidegger, Kierkegaard)
    Apr 27 2026
    Send a love messageB. Scot Rousse (“B”)'s substack, "Without Why," focuses on what it means to be alive in an age of intelligent machines. He is philosopher in residence at Topos Institute and visiting scholar in Philosophy at Berkeley. He also drums in 3 punk bands.To support us, please sign up for the newsletter or Give any amount.Andrea Hiott has a conversation with philosopher B. Scot Rousse (“B”). B is an Oakland-based, Berkeley-affiliated Heidegger and phenomenology scholar focused on AI’s effects on our capacities to care. He is also a Topos Institute affiliate and a punk drummer. Andrea and B discuss Heidegger’s care as living in “meaningful differences,” embodied affordances, moods, and existential orientation. They explore how AI risks compulsive optimization and an overly narrow picture of the role of language in human life. B argues that technologies design ways of being human, urges users and designers to ask “for the sake of what,” articulates punk’s embodied, communal, joyful “controlled chaos” as an antidote to technological nihilism, and celebrates love and care in their visceral, pluralistic, and risky uncontrollability. Along the way, B traces a path from growing up Hare Krishna in Florida, to an encounter with a philosophy teacher who encouraged his transfer to UC Berkeley where he came under the mentorship of Hubert Dreyfus, whose teaching and critiques of symbolic AI shaped B’s work. B also shares about his work with philosopher-entrepreneur Fernando Flores (thanks to an introduction by Dreyfus), who applies philosophy to organizational “networks of conversations” that coordinate commitments and care for customer concerns, drawing on his experience in Chilean political history and ontological reinterpretation of entrepreneurship. In all of these experiences, B focuses on an abiding and urgent question: How do we protect our capacity to care in an age of optimization? How can you create, in your life, your version of the worldly joy and shared meaning of being in a punk band?B’s substack is Without Why. He currently drums in the bands Realistic, Vexxyl, and Wildfire.Here is the piece on Hubert Drefyus that Andrea mentions.Subscribe to B’s YouTube channel here. Support the Hubert Dreyfus Audio Archive Project here.ShareSubscribe now00:00 Welcome and Care Question00:36 Meet B Scot Rousse04:31 Highlights and Themes07:08 B Introduces Himself08:14 From Krishna Roots to Philosophy10:27 Teacher to Berkeley and Dreyfus12:01 Ambassadors of Possibility13:16 Dreyfus Mentorship Years14:52 Fernando Flores and Careful Organizations18:40 Heideggerian Care Meets AI23:56 Care and Agency in Analytic Ethics30:04 Mattering and Affordances33:13 Dreyfus on Technology and Optimization38:00 Language as Commitments Not Info39:02 Language as Commitment40:54 Why LLMs Aren’t Human Language43:18 Training, Deployment, Disembodiment45:22 Languaging vs Symbol Systems49:44 Care and Ontological Design52:41 Compulsive Chatbot Loops55:30 Disorientation and No Recipes01:02:10 Kierkegaard and Commitment01:11:35 Practicing Conversation with AI01:14:38 Punk as Embodied Community01:17:46 Punk As Belonging01:18:50 Drummer Life And Community01:19:14 Mood Joy And Chaos01:21:10 Entropy And AI Randomness01:23:19 Choosing The Wild Path01:27:01 Teaching At The Edge01:33:01 Meaning Is Out There45:45 Care As Human IntFull intro and notes here.Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.Support the showBuy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea HiottSign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.Please rate and review with love. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.
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    1 hr and 51 mins
  • #84 There is No Average Individual: The Great Psychology Delusion with Marek McGann

    #84 There is No Average Individual: The Great Psychology Delusion with Marek McGann
    Apr 17 2026

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    The Great Psychology Delusion: Why the Mean Misleads and Pluralism Matters

    Read the book here.

    This is an academic psychology-focused episode with lecturer Marek McGann, whose work spans enactive cognitive science, embodiment, politics, feminist philosophy, and STS. Andrea and Marek discuss his co-authored book The Great Psychology Delusion with Craig Speelman. McGann explains why “delusion” fits psychology’s persistence in treating long-critiqued assumptions as valid, especially the aggregation delusion: averaging group data and applying it to individuals despite human non-interchangeability and change over time, linked to the ergodic assumption and ergodic theorem conditions rarely met in human behavior. They discuss how averaging can create misleading “laws” (e.g., power law of learning), the research–practice gap in clinical work, psychology’s history and method-driven identity, and the need for disciplined, pluralistic, scale-aware science that better integrates perspectives and practitioner expertise.

    00:00 Show Intro And Guest
    01:23 Book Thesis And Stakes
    02:24 Aggregation Delusion Explained
    03:54 Research Practice Gap
    04:49 More Detailed Book Summary
    07:47 Averaging Artifacts And Ergodicity
    09:29 Careful Critique Not Anti Psychology
    11:06 Warm Reorientation Sendoff
    11:51 Conversation Begins
    15:17 Why Call It Delusion
    20:11 How Psychology Became Method Led
    31:08 Aggregation Delusion Deep Dive
    33:35 Ergodic Fallacy in Humans
    35:21 Scale Slippage and Delusion
    37:59 Research Practice Gap Explained
    41:01 Clinician Code Switching
    42:46 Many Scales of Mind
    43:57 MRI Averaging Pitfalls
    48:32 Method Silos and Identities
    52:43 Care, Careers, and Canalization
    55:27 GPS Model for Pluralism
    01:00:33 Pluralism Not Relativism
    01:02:58 Why Marek Cares
    01:06:06 Psychology’s Moment of Change
    01:06:56 Closing Thanks and Wrap

    Marek McGann has been a lecturer in the Department of Psychology since 2005. His principal research is theoretical work on the enactive approach to cognitive science, which examines the mind more as something we do rather than something we have. This is also related to ecological approaches to psychology, which explore how behaviour and mental life can be examined by looking at what your head is in, rather than what is in your head. He also has a related interest in critical considerations of theory and scientific practice in psychology more broadly.

    Marek co-convenes the ENSO Seminars, a series of online seminars with researchers from enactive and ecological cognitive science.

    The paper Andrea mentions: Facing Life

    Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

    Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.

    Full intro and notes here.

    Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.

    Support the show

    Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

    Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.

    Please rate and review with love.
    YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • BONUS Performance of your life: Is acting inherent to being human? Sophie Fiennes, Declan Donnellan, Nick Ormerod, Macbeth

    BONUS Performance of your life: Is acting inherent to being human? Sophie Fiennes, Declan Donnellan, Nick Ormerod, Macbeth
    Apr 10 2026

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    This is an impromptu bonus episode previewing the NYC premiere of Sophie Fiennes’s documentary film Acting, which follows the celebrated theatre company Cheek by Jowl through their production of Macbeth. Andrea is speaking with her this week in NYC.

    Andrea introduces the ideas of director Declan Donnellan, whose book The Actor in the Space (2024) helps us get some insight into the film.

    Subjects: the philosophy of performance to spatial cognition, presence, and what it means to be truly alive on stage — or anywhere.

    Perhaps this is a good moment to revisit the themes of Macbeth.

    Come Saturday April 11th at 6:45pm for the film and Q &A with Sophie Fiennes (and Andrea): ️tickets at https://quadcinema.com/film/acting/

    Declan Donnellan: "Human beings are actors. It is hardwired into our DNA — from toddlers playing make-believe to old-age pensioners sharing jokes in the pub. We need to perform. It’s an essential part of being human. Acting starts early. We use it to develop our relationship with our mothers. We watch her and wonder, mirror her smiling, repeat the sounds she makes. We learn things by performing for her, and she performs for us. Does that mean we are lying to each other? Of course not. Performance is woven into the fabric of our lives. It’s as natural and important to us as breathing. Performance is not merely a habit that humans keep repeating across millennia, languages and cultures. It is more fundamental than that. Performance is what it is to be human. It is the operating system for life."

    The episode previews a bonus conversation with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes ahead of a screening of her film "Acting," about the London theater company Cheek by Jowl, co-founded by director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod. Andrea introduces Donnellan’s ideas from his books "The Actor and the Target" and "The Actor in the Space," emphasizing that performance is fundamental to being human and that acting depends on creating the conditions—especially the space and context—where a character can exist and feel alive, rather than forcing meaning or emotion. The script contrasts older, space-oriented filmmaking with faster kinetic editing, highlights the importance of giving audiences room for their own cognition, and includes clips from Macbeth rehearsal discussing dread, avoidance, and the challenge of convincing the audience. It ends with details about attending the New York screening and future posting of a longer conversation. All links to books and notes are here.

    00:00 Love and Dread
    00:11 Macbeth in Fragments
    01:00 Creative Risk and Space
    02:59 Audience Cognition and Care
    03:55 Art Beyond Meaning
    04:58 Bonus Episode Intro
    06:39 Performing Everyday Life
    08:11 Who Is Declan Donnellan
    10:25 Performance as Human OS
    12:12 Why Acting Is Hard
    14:20 Alive in Rehearsal
    16:24 Space That Supports Life
    18:30 Care and Plugging In
    21:43 Avoidance and Reacting
    24:44 Philosophy and Presence
    26:34 Macbeth Actor Dialogue
    27:35 Closing Macbeth Beat

    Full intro and notes here.

    Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.

    Support the show

    Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

    Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.

    Please rate and review with love.
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    29 mins
  • #83 Wisdom Gates and Serious Play: Paradox, Care and Discovery with Puzzle-Maker Jasen Robillard

    #83 Wisdom Gates and Serious Play: Paradox, Care and Discovery with Puzzle-Maker Jasen Robillard
    Apr 7 2026
    Send a love message Holding Paradox Through Serious Play: Can serious play be a portal to wisdom? This is an episode about puzzles and care. Andrea has a conversation with puzzle maker Jason Robillard (StumpCraft) about how puzzles cultivate new ways of being and seeing, holding paradox by repeatedly joining opposites only to realize they were never quite opposites but mirror-like pieces of a coherent whole. Robillard describes his wooden, laser-cut puzzles built from Canadian fine art, with uniquely drawn organic pieces, symbolic elements, sensory “shock,” and sometimes multiple valid placements that challenge assumptions of a single solution. He connects puzzling to embodied experience, attention, OODA loops, cognitive biases, and navigating complexity through “alternating base camps” and Goldilocks destabilization, the metamodern idea of 'serious play', relating this to career upheavals and identity change. The conversation emphasizes care as community glue and highlights values embedded in his work—curiosity, creativity, integrity, and generosity—plus a resonance with David Whyte’s poem “Start Close In.”00:00 Paradox Through Play02:36 Podcast Intro Puzzles Theme07:54 Meet Jason And His Work09:20 Puzzles Holding Paradox11:38 Designing Artful Wooden Puzzles14:47 Embodied Senses And Touch16:58 Career Shift Into Puzzles23:24 Serious Play And Homo Ludens25:50 Moving Childhood And Safety31:57 Base Camps And Destabilization34:30 Polarity Recipes Beyond Flatland38:47 Designing Paradox Puzzles39:48 Many Solutions Mindset42:54 Puzzles as Conversation47:53 Liminal Times Need Puzzles56:00 Sensemaking and OODA Loops01:00:22 Home Gifts and Community01:03:17 Four Values in Design01:11:29 Start Closer In Practice01:13:39 Care Belonging and Vulnerability01:18:52 Where to Find Jason01:19:57 Closing Poem ReadingStumpCraft Amazing Instagram Photos and Videos of GamesJasen’s writings: Releasing the MuseJasen on LinkedInMetamodern influences: Serious PlayOODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act)Homo LudensJasen Robillard was always a closet creative who long denied the creative muses, focusing instead on a “secure” engineering career until it dried up in 2017. As is often the case, necessity proved to be the mother of invention… In 2016, Jasen started designing and prototyping his whimsical puzzles which were inspired by other wooden laser-cut puzzles he had enjoyed years earlier. He noted a lack of wooden puzzle availability in Canada, as well as a severe lack of deliberate focus on Canadian fine art. After a year of playful prototyping and a clear end to his engineering-focused career, Jasen decided to launch StumpCraft formally in 2017. Since the formal launch, StumpCraft has experienced growth and praise as more and more fans share their love of puzzles with friends and family members. StumpCraft was also the recipient of the 2021 Made in Alberta Award in Games & Leisure, exposing us to an ever more rapidly expanding fanbase. Full intro and notes here.Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.Support the showBuy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea HiottSign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.Please rate and review with love. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.
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    1 hr and 23 mins
  • #82 Philosophy of the Heart with Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Scilla Elworthy

    #82 Philosophy of the Heart with Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Scilla Elworthy
    Mar 27 2026

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    Facing Reality with Clear Eyes but without Desperation: Scilla Elworthy on Listening with the Heart to Transform Conflict

    Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Scilla Elworthy reflects on 70 years of work with conflict and war, beginning at age 12 after seeing tanks in Budapest and being sent to help concentration camp survivors. She describes how others’ suffering “hit” her heart and led her to action in Algeria, the Congo, and South Africa, where she worked on starvation relief, shipped milk powder, and supported education, noting the central role of women in community resilience. Elworthy emphasizes “listening with the heart” to discern what people truly need beyond narratives, and explains how turning to the heart helps release harsh self-criticism. She also shares practical self-nourishment through nature and gardening, and recounts using humanizing, vulnerable moments—like discussing children—to soften high-stakes meetings, including military dialogues in China, as a way to build connection and “power with” others.

    "Triple nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics from 1983-2003. Founded Peace Direct in 2002, awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003, the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2020, the GOI Peace Award in 2023. Founded The Business Plan for Peace based on her latest books - The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (2017), The Mighty Heart: how to transform conflict (2020), and The Mighty Heart in Action (2022)."

    Find all Scilla's work here.

    Kyla Scanlon's post mentioned here

    00:00 Why We Still Kill
    00:55 Action Over Apathy
    01:07 Heart As Guide
    01:39 Inner Critic Quieted
    03:23 Podcast Introduction
    07:03 Meet Scilla Elworthy
    08:17 Tanks In Budapest
    11:32 Early War Witnessing
    14:33 Africa Conflict Journeys
    17:47 Women Leading Change
    19:52 Listening With Heart
    22:29 Defining The Heart
    25:31 Nature As Nourishment
    29:35 Self Inspection To Embodiment
    32:41 Taming The Inner Critic
    34:04 Heart Led Self Compassion
    35:54 Daring Diplomacy With Generals
    36:49 Breaking The Ice With Humanness
    42:48 Power With Vulnerability
    47:24 Courage In The Moment
    51:07 Love In The Garden
    53:03 Closing Thanks And Future Fears
    53:55 Listener Note And NYC Event

    Full intro and notes here.

    Care is not the opposite of love. It is the very urge of life. 'Caring for what?' is the primary question. That we have a choice about what we care for and how is what makes us human, but it's quite the challenge and responsibility. Let's help one another handle it.

    Support the show

    Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

    Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.

    Please rate and review with love.
    YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.
    Show More Show Less
    57 mins