Reimagining the World

If you're depressed, does it help to take antidepressants? Dr Mark Horowitz thought it would when he started taking them at med school, whilst training to be a psychiatrist. He became one of the world's leading experts in antidepressants and how they work. At least he thought he was, until he realised he actually knew nothing useful about them. He didn't understand the side-effects he was experiencing and he couldn't wean himself off them. This is the story of a doctor who gradually realised that everything his scientific training had taught him was not only useless but in fact destructive, when he applied it to his own life. He needed to turn to fellow patients who were taking antidepressants, who had no medical training, to find a way out of the nightmare his life had become.

I'm not claiming that everybody has a negative experience with  antidepressants. Maybe you have experience that differs from Mark. What I suggest is that you take this story as a data point to perhaps add a different perspective to what you already know. Rather than unquestioningly trusting what you are told by doctors or scientists, this story is a warning to do your own research – after all informed consent is the basis of modern medicine.

In this conversation Mark we talk about:

• The unexplained side-effects Mark experienced from his psychiatric medication
• How he managed to find a way to get off them
• His research that led to him questioning everything he'd been taught about antidepressants and the whole research basis that supports them
• The floors in the way we view the causes of depression
• His advice on the best ways to recover from it

After a year and a half of disruption, it's back to school for thousands of young people. But is the education system serving them well? In this episode of the Reimagining the World podcast,  Michael Strong, co-founder of the virtual secondary school, SocraticExperience.com argues that school is cruel,  boring and not fit for purpose.

He is an experienced school creator whose projects include Moreno Valley High School, a charter school in New Mexico ranked the 36th best public school in the U.S. by Newsweek; Winston Academy, a school for highly gifted students in Florida who successfully completed AP exams; and The Academy of Thought and Industry, the high school model for the largest U.S. Montessori network. He is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

We talk about:

• How school prepares people for a world of Dilbert-style misery
• How teenage suicide increases at the start of the school year and that since more people started going to high school, there's been a 300% increase in suicide.
• The misery of school leading to children both being highly medicated and abusing drugs
• Lifelong anxiety and depression being attributed to experiences of school
• How schools is humiliating for people who aren't academic
• How within a few days, a depressed, anxious child recovers once they are engaged in an education context that is more suited to their needs
• How he tries to identify  every child's genius and crank it up
• That school doesn't help you figure out who you are and what you care about
• The key to wellbeing is living in a healthy, purpose-driven community
• How he helps children to identify, 'What do you love, what does the world need, what are you good at and what can you get paid for?'

In this episode I talk to Kenny Mammarella D'Cruz, founder of Menspeak Men's Groups.  For 20 years, his organisation has been offering men an opportunity to connect at a deeper level, to be vulnerable and to feel supported by their fellow man.

Personally I think this is a hugely important topic because I have seen in my own life that we men often struggle with this much more than women. At school, emotional vulnerability was pounced upon and ruthlessly exploited. The result being I and a high proportion of men in general shut down their emotions and find it difficult to really connect with each other.

We also talk about:

• The fact that many men have no close friends at all
  
• What's lacking in the male friendships that do exist
  
• How Kenny survived a death threat from Idi Amin in Uganda
  
• Why men are rarely physically or verbally affectionate with each other
  
• The question brought up by the murder of Sarah Everard - are men dangerous?
  
• Kenny's 12 rules that help men connect
  

Amisha Ghadiali is the author of Intuition: Access Your Inner Wisdom. Trust Your Instincts. Find Your Path, which she wrote during lockdown, in a treehouse. As you do.

Before this conversation I wasn't really clear what intuition is or how important it could be, but according to Amisha, not making use of it is like trying to walk using only one leg.

This conversation completely changed how I think about intuition, as we explored how it can help us to:

• Make day-to-day decisions about how to spend our time
• Know how to tackle our long term health issues
• Connect to our life purpose
• Access our innate creative intelligence
• Feel more feel more powerful and decentralise political power
• Know how to solve complex problems like climate change

Amisha shares practical ways to connect with it more, and there are a further fifty in her book.

She is also the host of The Future is Beautiful Podcast in which she explores the relationship between politics, sustainability, creativity and spirituality.

She runs an online community called the Presence Collective, which supports people to live a creative, connected and courageous life and a six-month Presence Mentoring programme.

In this episode I'm joined by Rob Grundel.

He’s a storytelling consultant, a leadership coach, Christian, hip-hop artist and a proud dad.

I wanted to invite him as my guest because whenever I talk to him I feel so alive!

One of the most provocative things he says is in the interview is that hell is an unbiblical heresy! Here has a very different concept of Christianity to the one I grew up with. One that is based in love and grace rather than judgement and punishment.

We also talk about:

• His optimism about the future
  
• Why how we relate to each other in solving problems is more important than solving the problem
  
• Why are we collectively getting the results that no one wants
  
• How to know what your contribution to the world’s problems should be
  
• The fact that he's ‘full of bullshit’ and used to work for a tobacco company
  
• Dealing with shame
  
• The fact that what need need to reimagine is our relationship with everything
  

In this episode I talk to Andy Paice about reimagining Democracy.

Andy was a Tibetan monk for 10 years. Since then he has become a participatory democracy consultant. He is passionate about transforming democracy so that it is able to solve society’s problems a lot better than it does now, by getting normal citizens more involved in making policy decisions.

One of the most fascinating things about this conversation for me was understanding how he is translating what he learnt through his ‘inner work’ about the need to listen to and respect all aspects of his mind, into the ‘outer work’ of listening to all the different perspectives in society. Neither the mind nor the nation can be harmonious if certain parts are judged, attacked or ignored.

We talk about the fact that there is a desperate need to evolve our democractic systems right now to transcend polarisation and find common ground on urgent issues like Covid, Climate Change and our economic recovery. And looking at recent events in the USA, to avoid all out civil war!

We discuss different models of how to do that, that are already up and running.

When I read the news I often feel frustrated and despairing about politics, but this conversation made me feel really optimistic that with a different system and philosophy, we could have a much more effective democracy that benefits the whole of society.

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Andy lives in London, where he works as a facilitator and consultant advising and supporting local authorities to bring the public into decision making processes. He has been involved in the recent wave of Citizens Assemblies and participatory democracy in the UK. He designs, convenes and facilitates democratic processes based on dialogue and deliberation. His goal is always to help groups find wise and mutually beneficial solutions.