This is a WILD WITH SARAH WILSON conversation, investigating ideas and practices that can help build our new, life-generating future. We are in a liminal time, between an old world that is no longer holding and a new world - “the what comes next” - that’s yet to emerge. Now is the time to be imagining this future together. If this episode inspires you, please share it with loved ones.
Our final guest for this season of Wild is Indy Johar a systems designer and the founder of Dark Matter Labs. Our chat closes this 12-part series on the life-enhancing “what comes next” that we need (and want) to be creating in this moment together.
Indy is one of the world’s most original voices on redesigning societies and he has a radical thesis that brings together most of the themes we’ve discussed so far. He calls it “civilisational optionality”. Our job is not to save civilisation or to know what comes next…it’s to preserve or expand the capacity for life (that is, humanity and the living world) to adapt to whatever comes next.
In this very wild conversation, Indy returns to Wild to loop together many of the themes of this series – emergence, fascism, steering AI to a pro-human future and, importantly, wrestling with what it means to be human.
You might recall Indy joined me at the end of the last “series” of Wild. It’s an episode a lot of you say has stayed with you; I think it left many of you in a shock , a shock you felt was painful but necessary. As I introduced him back then:
This conversation goes to a level I’ve not been to before publicly. On his modelling, we don’t have any choice but to start building the world that comes next, for the current one has no viable pathway. He gives a vision for this this. And he gives a timeframe, too.
Our second conversation effectively goes into the meat of that vision. I felt it was an apt note to finish on. And I am very interested to hear your thoughts on this one!
Indy will be joining in the comments
Post your questions and reflections below…Indy and I will chime in.
About Indy
Indy is a systems designer and architect and co-founded Dark Matter Labs, a globally influential research and design lab that works with governments, cities, and institutions to rethink everything from housing and finance to democracy and the legal systems that underpin modern life.
Indy has advised organisations including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, governments across Europe and the UK, helping them solve all kinds of complex, entangled problems. Indy’s not simply a theorist. His ideas have been tested with real-world experiments—from developing new models of affordable housing and community ownership to creating legal and financial frameworks that allow places, ecosystems and future generations to become active participants in economic decision-making.
Shownotes
You can listen to our previous conversation: The Starkest Collapse Prognosis I’ve Heard. We discuss game theory, and I point to a former Wild interview that explains this, specifically “Moloch”. Catch up here. I reference Indy’s Substack essay on The Collapse of Self which is a stellar read.
Where to now?
Frankly, I don’t know. I’m a bit (as we like to say in Australia) buggered.
We ran this latest series ad-free because I got some philanthropic money to explore the particular themes I covered in the the 12-part series. I’ll have to switch back to the ad model to continue, which grosses me out a bit. Substack Lives are a simpler, cheaper way to do things, but with less reach. Do you guys like the Lives? Prefer the formal podcast format? What if I uploaded the Lives onto the podcast platforms? I’m thinking of doing another “mini series” on the most awesome activists out there - people in the public eye speaking out. Thoughts?
In the meantime, please could you make sure you have “added” or “followed” Wild to your podcast feeds (on Spotify, also press the little alarm icon to get alerts) - that way you’ll know when I land more episodes. And while you’re there please do rate the show and then share it with, say, three people you know!
OK, enough asks. I look forward to your comments on my chat with Indy!
Sarah x
