Future Learning Design Podcast

What are we learning about systemic change? There are lots of people talking about why we need it, climate and nature emergencies, exponential tech youth mental health crises etc. but how much is it actually happening? By definition, it’s not something that just happens in the education system, so I was really happy to gather together this week with three amazing podcasters and beautiful people who are coming at these same questions from many lenses, business, Thrutopian novel-writing, psychology, technology, economics, regenerative farming, political changemaking, architecture. Like me, they get to speak to some of the most amazing and insightful people in all of these fields and more, so I thought it would be a great idea to get together to see what we are learning collectively. Manda Scott is the host of the Accidental Gods podcast and has appeared on this channel a couple of times previously, Nathalie Nahai hosts her eponymous In Conversation podcast, and Amit Paul hosts the fabulous World of Wisdom podcast.                                                 
Amit Paul is a former popstar and CEO of green chemicals company Paxymer AB turned systems dancer. No, he's co-founder of Innrwrks and host of World of Wisdom podcast, exploring how business can create a future we want for our kids. Amit hosts explorative conversations, facilitates group work and advices and supports companies navigating the current ecological, social and technological paradigm shifts. 
Nathalie Nahai is an author, keynote speaker and host of the Nathalie Nahai in Conversation podcast enquires into our relationship with one another, with technology and with the living world. She’s author of the international best-sellers Webs Of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion and, more recently, Business Unusual: Values, Uncertainty and the Psychology of Brand Resilience which has been described as “One of the defining business books of our times”. She’s a consultant, artist and the founder of Flourishing Futures Salon, a project that offers curated gastronomical gatherings that explore how we can thrive in times of turbulence and change.
Manda Scott - https://mandascott.co.uk/ ; https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandascottauthor/ 
Born in Scotland at 318ppm CO2, Manda was once a veterinary surgeon and is now a novelist, smallholder, contemporary shamanic trainer and podcaster. Her debut novel, Hen’s Teeth, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Subsequent works were shortlisted for the Edgar and Saltire Awards and won the McIlvanney Prize, but it is for her Boudica: Dreaming series that she is best known. More recently, Manda read for a Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College, the experience of which led her to set up Accidental Gods podcast (https://accidentalgods.life) and Membership Programme. In 2024 she published her sixteenth novel, Any Human Power, a ‘visionary’ contemporary political thriller that maps fictional – but plausible and workable – routes toward a future we’d all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us: human and more-than-human.
And together, we are Podcasters United, at least for this episode - exploring systems change, what it means and how we can bring it about at scale and in time. Enjoy!

We often overlook sports as a site of learning, but it’s a massive part of so many people’s lives, whether playing, supporting, watching or teaching. And simultaneously, all of life happens in and around the sports arena. It is humanity in our most beautiful and, sometimes, ugliest manifestations. With all of the global sporting events happening right now, I wanted to bring this into our podcast conversations and there are few people better to do that with than player, coach, friend, and also pre-eminent scholar of the history and political economy of sports around the world, Professor Frank Andre Guridy. Frank is the Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies. He is also Professor of History and the Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia. He is an award-winning historian whose recent research has focused on sport history, urban history, and the history of American social movements. His most recent book, ‘The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play’ tells the story of the American stadium as an institution that has played a central role in American civic and political life and in the struggles for social justice from the 19th century until the present. 
His previous book, ‘The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics’ explored how Texas-based sports entrepreneurs and athletes from marginalized backgrounds transformed American sporting culture during the 1960s and 1970s, the highpoint of the Black Freedom and Second-Wave feminist movements. 
Frank is also a leading scholar of the Black Freedom Movement in the United States and the Caribbean. His first book, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), won the Elsa Goveia Book Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians and the Wesley-Logan Book Prize, conferred by the American Historical Association. He is also the co-editor of Beyond el Barrio: Everyday Life in Latino/a America (NYU Press, 2010), with Gina Pérez and Adrian Burgos, Jr. 
He has also won awards for his teaching and service at multiple institutions, receiving the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching at Columbia in 2019, and the Faculty Service Award at Columbia in 2023.
Frank’s books
The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play (Basic Books, 2024)
The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2021)
Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America (NYU Press, 2010)
Other links
https://history.columbia.edu/person/guridy-frank/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-guridy-401b87230/

There is a lot of discussions happening these days about the future of university and higher education in general. How does it keep pace with rapidly changing and disruptive technologies? How does it meet the needs of young people and become responsive and flexible enough to generate much needed transformations in research and development, knowledge creation, and capability building? And how does it adapt to the increasing volatility in all aspects of social, political, economic and ecological life that we are seeing everywhere?
In October last year Monash University published a report called 'Advancing University Living Labs' (https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/4137481/Monash-University-Advancing-University-Living-Labs-Report-October-2025.pdf) on a fascinating new approach that universities and other communities and multi-stakeholder environments are taking in response to some of these fundamental questions. As I learned more about Living Labs I was introduced to more of the inspiring community of practitioners around the world who are using it.
So this week it's my great pleasure to bring together a number of these Living Labs experts. If you're new to this approach, hopefully this episode will give you an overview, as well as some examples and use cases. And if you want to go deeper there are loads of links below. A big thank you to Lars Fuhrmann (https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsthimof/) for coordinating and bringing everyone together!
Anja Overdiek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/overdiek12345/www.lulu.com/search?sortBy=RELEVANCE&page=1&q=Anja+overdiek&pageSize=10&adult_audience_rating=00
Sam Rye: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrye/
Advancing University Living Labs (Report)
ENoLL Origins, Developments & Future Perspectives 
Landscape Typology of Living Labs (fieldnote article)
Dinda Ciptaviana: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasia-dinda-ciptaviana/
Kampung Kollektief: https://www.instagram.com/kampung_kollektief/ 
Linktree of projects from Kampung Kollektief including the 'What if Lab' and Living Lab:  https://linktr.ee/kampung_kollektief 
Lotte Troost: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lottetroost/
NL Knowledge House Living Lab with Kampung Kollektief 
NL Knowledge House Living Labs 
Heleen Geerts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heleen-geerts-911b354/
www.lulu.com/search?sortBy=RELEVANCE&page=1&q=Anja+overdiek&pageSize=10&adult_audience_rating=00
European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL): https://enoll.org/
OpenLivingLab Days 2026 coming up in September: https://enoll.org/events/openlivinglab-days-2026/

A big part of where I see shifts happening in education systems is encouraging young people to get out into the world, into their communities and make a difference to issues that they care about. There is so much learning that can happen in this process. I have shared a few episodes in the past with fantastic people like Cathrine Berger-Kaye, Daniela Papi-Thornton and Zoe Weil, supporting young people and educators in this kind of work. But there are also some fascinating and important considerations to be aware of when we step into this work, so that we really have the impact that we are hoping to, and don’t replicate past harms and unhelpful patterns. My guest this week, Anthea Lawson, has been working on the front line of this kind of work for decades and has learned through her own experience just how complex and entangled these issues are that we care about doing something about. And she has been sharing her gathered wisdom on it in her previous book The Entangled Activist, and very excitingly her new book, out this week, ‘How Not to Save the World: Doing good without annoying everyone’. George Monbiot has described it as a wise, rich and crucial book! And I can certainly recommend it myself. 
As a journalist, campaigner and writer, Anthea Lawson has fought for many issues over three decades including controls on the arms trade and an end to the financial secrecy offered by tax havens. She helped launch a campaign for transparency over company ownership which resulted in changes to the law in dozens of countries. After training as a journalist at The Times, she worked for campaign groups including Global Witness and Amnesty International.
Her writing helps people who want to change the world think about the psychological, spiritual and philosophical foundations of what they’re doing, what’s getting in the way, and how they can be more effective.
Links
Anthea's website: https://www.anthealawson.uk/
'How Not to Save the World' Book: https://www.anthealawson.uk/how-not-to-save-the-world
'The Entangled Activist' Book: https://www.anthealawson.uk/the-entangled-activist
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthea-lawson/
Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds by Sarah Stein Lubrano: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/dont-talk-about-politics-9781399413916/
More info about the Antidebate: https://systems-souls-society.com/praxis/antidebate/

This week is a huge privilege to have my good friends Emily Poel and Guy Claxton returning to the podcast in celebration of the release this week of their fabulous new book, Bodies of Learning: How Embodiment Science Transforms Education. It's a really significant book! that lays out, unlike any other, the deep implications of 4E cognitive science that support and strengthen the case for a more healthy, more human(e), moregenerative educational experience for our young people; which is everything this channel is about.
Link to the book: https://www.bodiesoflearning.org/
Prof. Guy Claxton is a cognitive scientist, education thought leader, and author of The Future of Teaching and Intelligencein the Flesh among many other books, with decades of research on expanding human intelligence and applying learning science in real-world contexts.
He has spent most of his working life based in a variety of UK universities including Oxford, Bristol, King’s College London and Winchester. Increasingly his work has taken a more practical turn, and he has been involved with a wide range of organisations where a better understanding of human intelligence is needed. For example, he has been:
Consultant on education to the Royal Albert Hall; workshop leader for Premier League Youth Football Coaches; lecturer at the Siobhan Davies Dance School and the London College of Fashion; Inaugural lecturer at Her Majesty's Treasury Learning Centre; meditation teacher at Atsitsa holiday centre on the Greek island of Skyros (where I met my wife Judith); consultant to the Centre for Contemplative Education research project on mindfulness in European schools (under the auspices of HH The Dalai Lama); guest lecturer at the Harvard Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA); consultant to the South Australian Department of Education and Child Development among many others.
Links: https://www.guyclaxton.net/
Recent Deans Lecture Series, University of Melbourne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGFEswKBnMw
Emily Poel is a Berlin-based embodiment practitioner who has taught internationally for over fifteen years, developing practical methods that show how movement and physical awareness shape creativity, thinking, and learning.Originally from Michigan and with a degree in contemporary dance performance and history, she's worked internationally as a performer, choreographer and creative advisor. In 2004 she shifted her focus to embodiment training and hasn’t stopped since. Over the last ten years she's developed a large collection of activities using physical awareness tools and movement training to better understand how creativity,learning and thinking actually work.
Links: https://embodimentatwork.co/
Move4Schools - https://move4schools.com/
Previous episodes featuring Guy and Emily:
We Need More Embodied Education! A Conversation with Arawana Hayashi, Prof. Guy Claxton, Dr. Akhil K. Singh, Emily Poel and Caroline Williams: https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/embodied-education
Finding 'Aliveness' in Schools - A Conversation with Prof. Guy Claxton: https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/guy-claxton