Rob Hopkins
558 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 8 ratingsPodcast by Rob Hopkins
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Episodes
2030 Field Recordings of Cornish beavers
February 01, 2023 14:04 - 1 minute - 1.23 MB2030 Field Recordings of Cornish beavers by Rob Hopkins
The Utrecht bicycle rush hour.
October 17, 2022 16:34 - 1 minute - 1.7 MBI was in Utrecht recently, to record, for 'Field Recordings from the Future', the rush hour of bicycles. Here is a taste of that.
A taste of the Vauban
September 09, 2022 12:19 - 4 minutes - 5.78 MBWhat would a car-free, low carbon, delicious future sound like? I visited the Vauban in Freiburg to find out.
Introducing 'Field Recordings from the Future'
June 29, 2022 10:05 - 12 minutes - 17.1 MBHere is a short piece to introduce a new project I'm doing with the amazing Mr Kit: https://kitmusic.bandcamp.com/ Watch this space!
From What If to What Next: Episode 44
February 24, 2022 15:07 - 58 minutes - 97.8 MBWelcome to 2022. We start this year with a fantastic episode and a really important question. What if we were to implement every solution that we already know exists in order to tackle the climate crisis the sense of urgency that an emergency should inspire? After the damp squib of COP26, it's a vitally important question. Can we do it? Is there still time? And most importantly, what would it feel like to live in a time when that was actually happening, when all around us, all hands were appl...
From What If to What Next: Episode 45
February 24, 2022 15:07 - 39 minutes - 64.2 MBHere's Episode 45 for you, I hope you're going to love it. Meet Tim Gill and Alice Ferguson of Playing Out, brilliant guests for a vital discussion. Today we're talking about kids, and play and about the places where we live. Kids have almost entirely vanished from our streets. Retreating indoors in the face of the car’s domination of our city spaces, and a perception of the lack of safety, kids are all too often starved of play. ‘No ball games here’ signs. Horrible noises only audible to te...
From What If to What Next: Episode 43
February 24, 2022 14:58 - 37 minutes - 83.3 MBAlthough not planned as some kind of 'Christmas Special', that's kind of what this episode is, so hopefully it will give you the opportunity to treat your imagination to something very special over the festive season. This episode will introduce you to Flora Collingwood-Norris and to Orsola de Castro, cofounder and Global Creative Director of Fashion Revolution. Flora's book is 'Visible Creative Mending for Knitwear', and Orsola's book is 'Loved Clothes last: How the Joy of Rewearing and Re...
From What If to What Next: Episode 41
February 24, 2022 14:57 - 39 minutes - 88.4 MBWelcome to Episode 41 of 'From What If to What Next'. Powerful psychology is used to convince us, often subliminally, that we want and need things we previously never knew even existed. This is especially dangerous at a time when we need to urgently cut consumption of high carbon-generating products and lifestyle choices. It is estimated that in the UK companies spend over £23bn a year on advertising. Research shows that the more advertising we are exposed to, the more unhappy we feel, the m...
From What If to What Next: Episode 42
February 24, 2022 14:55 - 44 minutes - 72.3 MBThe IPCC report that came out in mid-2021 said “unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 degrees, or even 2 degrees, will be beyond reach”. “Immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions”. Let’s imagine we were able to actually do that in the time available to us. It would mean the complete reimagining of food, travel, housing, the economy. A retooled education system. A new sense of shared and collective purpose...
From What If to What Next: Episode 40
February 24, 2022 14:51 - 39 minutes - 86.3 MBI'm not going to say much about this episode, other than that it's incredible. We are exploring Afrofuturism, which has been variously described as “speculative fiction from the African diaspora”, “a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens” and “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation”. It has so much to teach us about imagination and how to keep What If questions alive over time. You will also hear the story of the Zambian Space Programme...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Nine
January 06, 2022 16:48 - 37 minutes - 82.4 MBUsually our podcasts aren’t that topical, you can hopefully listen to them at any time and they are still relevant. Today’s is not like that. It is being released just 6 days before the beginning of COP26, the vitally important climate summit happening in Glasgow. And usually they are released, initially at least, just to you as a subscriber. But today we are making an exception and releasing it freely to everyone ... because it matters right now. So please, share this link with all your fri...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Seven
January 06, 2022 16:41 - 45 minutes - 74.7 MBThe decline of insect populations around the world has been nothing short of terrifying. Last year I visited a school in an intensive wine-producing region in France, and suggested to the kids that they might build an insect hotel, only to be told by the head teacher "we don't have any insects here". It has stayed with me ever since. So in today's episode, we are exploring how it would feel to live through a time when insect population, and biodiversity in general, bounced back? If we did eve...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Eight
January 06, 2022 16:41 - 45 minutes - 74.7 MBEverywhere, where you live included, has a patchwork of organisations of different sizes who are doing business and making things happen in a way that is not solely about the generation of profit, but about serving a larger social purpose. They might be called social enterprises, or socially-trading organisations, or all sorts of other things. Today’s episode asks what if they got together and designed how better they might join up and work in a more connected way? What if they offered peer...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Eight
January 06, 2022 16:36 - 74.7 MBEverywhere, where you live included, has a patchwork of organisations of different sizes who are doing business and making things happen in a way that is not solely about the generation of profit, but about serving a larger social purpose. They might be called social enterprises, or socially-trading organisations, or all sorts of other things. Today’s episode asks what if they got together and designed how better they might join up and work in a more connected way? What if they offered peer...
From What If to What Next: Episode 36
November 30, 2021 13:25 - 1 hour - 155 MBOh wow, you're in for a treat. Today we bring together Anthea Lawson, author of the fabulous new book 'The Entangled Activist' and Alastair McIntosh, author of 'Soul and Soil' and 'Riders on the Storm'. I usually try to constrain the conversations we have here to around 45 minutes, but this one was so fascinating that we just kept rolling, and just kept chatting, and so this one actually comes in at an hour and a quarter! But you'll love it I promise, and you'll wish we'd kept going. I'm not ...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Five.
November 30, 2021 13:22 - 44 minutes - 93.6 MBToday’s episode of From What If to What Next is about care. Care has been very much on our minds of recent. COVID has highlighted how vitally important care is and yet how undervalued it is. It is so often seen as being the domain of women, and around the world it is often either underpaid, or unpaid work. As the populations of the Global North live longer and longer, and as young people are unable to afford, often, to leave home, it tends to often fall to women to care for both the younger a...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Four
November 30, 2021 13:19 - 32 minutes - 66.5 MBYou are in for such a treat. This is one of the most thought-provoking and inspiring episodes of this podcast yet. It was my huge honour to be joined by Yumna Hussen and Lottie Cooke to discuss what a reimagined education system would be like. Honestly, spending an hour in the company of these two remarkable young people, so articulate and well informed, was just a joy. Lottie and Yumna are part of an organisation called Pupil Power which is "committed to educating, engaging and transforming...
From What If to What Next: Episode Thirty Three
November 30, 2021 13:15 - 34 minutes - 71.2 MBHere is the perfect accompaniment to the long summer days. Or the deluge. Or perhaps a bit of both. Today we are talking about travel. As many cities begin to actively take steps away from the dominance of cars, we are asking what might it be like if that had already happened? What might it be like to live in a city in which more travel now takes place on food or on two wheels? And how are electric vehicles transforming that? It's a brilliant discussion with two amazing guests. As always, do ...
COP26 Day 3 conversations
November 04, 2021 10:07 - 14 minutes - 15.8 MBHere are some people I spoke to on my third day at COP26 in Glasgow. The voices you'll hear here at Dorothy Grace Guerrero, Head of Policy at Global Justice Now, Nick Dearden, Director at Global Justice Now, Rupert Read, former XR spokesperson, Heidi Chow, Executive Director at Jubilee Debt Campaign, and Asad Rehman, Director at War on Want.
COP26 Day One Conversations
November 02, 2021 10:26 - 10 minutes - 8.48 MBHere are a few conversations I had with people while in Glasgow on my first day in the city for COP26. Here I talk to Bill McKibben, to community supported organiser Jacob Johns, to Anthony Diaz of the Newark Water Coalition and to Leila Salazar-López, Executive Director of Amazon Watch. Enjoy. I ask all of them two questions, what could a successful COP26 look like for you, and what should we do if that's not what comes to pass?
Episode Thirty Nine: What if the leadership team for COP26 were 50% women?
October 23, 2021 18:44 - 37 minutes - 82.4 MBUsually our podcasts aren’t that topical, you can hopefully listen to them at any time and they are still relevant. Today’s is not like that. It is being released just 6 days before the beginning of COP26, the vitally important climate summit happening in Glasgow. The world’s governments will be coming together for 2 weeks to, hopefully, reach some kind of binding agreement that might give the world at least a fighting chance of preventing runaway climate change. There’s one problem though. ...
Episode Thirty Two: What if the black imagination were valued as it should be?
October 21, 2021 14:05 - 42 minutes - 63.4 MBThis episode is one of my favourites so far. This week we are exploring the black imagination, with two amazing guests. A little more about your guests: Natasha Marin is an antiracism consultant based in Seattle, specializing in communications, community building, and digital engagement. She is the curator of Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures and a conceptual artist whose people-centered projects have circled the globe since 2012 and have been recognized and widely acknowledg...
Episode Thirty One: What if the future were non-binary?
September 24, 2021 15:32 - 44 minutes - 72.7 MBThis is such an incredible episode. One of those ones I had to go off and sit under a tree afterwards to absorb. Today we talk about gender. I grew up in a society that thought in terms of two genders, you were male or you were female. This was accompanied by expectations that men behaved in ways that were ‘masculine’, and women in ways seen as being ‘feminine’… If you were someone who didn’t identify as either, or someone who challenged society’s expectations of what being masculine or femin...
Episode Thirty: What if the revolution was well facilitated?
July 15, 2021 13:30 - 41 minutes - 66.2 MBEpisode Thirty. Wow. Whoever thought we'd get this far? Thank you so much for your support in making that possible. We have a delicious episode to mark this moment. We are joined today by Farzana Khan and by Looby Macnamara to explore 'What if the revolution was well facilitated?' It's a beautiful exploration of why good facilitation is such an important element of changemaking. We hope you love this, our 30th episode. Bring on the next 30! Farzana Khan is a writer, director, cultural produc...
Episode Twenty Nine: What if we mastered the art of time travel?
June 29, 2021 12:11 - 36 minutes - 61.7 MBIf you had a Time Machine, which year would you set the dial to? This episode is about time travel. More specifically, it is about using imaginary time travel, or futurism, or deep dreaming, or whatever you want to call it, in our activism. Why is it so powerful to invite people to imagine the future? What does it do to us to step into an imaginary future? And what tips of the trade can help us to really bring it alive for people? In this episode we are joined by Anab Jain of Superflux and ...
Episode Twenty Eight: What if we redesigned the operating system of our entire civilization?
June 29, 2021 12:11 - 42 minutes - 70 MBThe time for imagining that change happens in small, incremental steps is now way behind us. As Naomi Klein says, "there are no non-radical solutions left". Today we are thinking big. Really big. With big thinkers. While some of our episodes focus on what if questions that are quite specific and focused, in this episode, Episode Twenty-Eight, we are thinking big, so hang on to your hats. Luckily we have two guests for you who are brilliant at thinking big. Atossa Soltani has been a global c...
Episode Twenty Seven: What if we all stopped flying?
May 28, 2021 11:46 - 39 minutes - 65 MBThis new episode, one of my favourite so far, comes with a challenge. Can you listen to it and not reimagine your own relationship with flying or, as one of our guests puts it, being "twanged around in an aluminium sausage"? I stopped flying in 2006. I travel to the far reaches of Europe on the train, travelling to Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Mallorca, as the extent of my reach. I long one day to take the Trans-Siberian express. Yes, there are now places in the world I probably will nev...
Episode Twenty-Six: What if we could live better in a post-growth economy?
May 10, 2021 07:27 - 46 minutes - 83.9 MBThese days of COVID have shown us that extraordinary profound reimagining of many aspects of society are entirely possible. Might this be the time to forever do away with the idea that the only way to measure our progress, cultural, social, spiritual, economic, is purely by how much bigger our economy is than it was last year? It’s a weird metric… imagine if that was the only way we assessed the growth and evolution of our children? Sure, some growth at the start might be useful, but as they...
Episode Twenty Five: What if we built an imagination infrastructure?
April 26, 2021 11:09 - 36 minutes - 58.6 MBLet’s imagine, and this takes quite a leap in Britain in 2021 I’ll grant you, but stay with me, that we had a government who recognised that we are living through a time of imaginative contraction alongside a climate and ecological emergency, a social justice emergency and so much more. Let’s imagine that they were able to recognise this as the crisis it is, that allowing a population’s imagination to contract is profoundly dangerous. And let us also imagine that they decided that they need...
A 2030 to long for: the best of 2030 from Episodes 10-19.
April 12, 2021 11:54 - 41 minutes - 95.6 MBIn which, with the help of specially-composed music by Ben Addicott and Rosie Issitt, we take a step into the 2030 that could result from our doing everything we could possibly do. Join Kwame Boateng, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Brian Eno, Scilla Elworthy, Robert Philips, Zach Norris, Andrea J. Ritchie Roman Krznaric, Jane Davidson, Hilary Powell, Dan Edelstyn, Sophie Leguil, Ash Perrin, Ben Tawil, Jane Perrone, Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu’ Kwasset), Josina Calliste, Chris Smaje, Tyson Yunkapo...
Episode Twenty Four: What if we read more books?
April 12, 2021 06:36 - 49 minutes - 79.7 MBWhen was the last time you read a book cover to cover? And if you are still able to do this, do you feel you read in the same way you did, say, 20 years ago? How is the decline in our collective attention span affecting our ability to read and, by extension, our collective capacity for knowledge, wisdom and art? What do we lose when we lose our ability to focus? This was such a fascinating conversation, with two people who have given this question a great deal of thought. Maryanne Wolf is ...
TCDS meeting with Patrick and Tracie Gilles 6.4.2021
April 06, 2021 13:46 - 138 MBTCDS meeting with Patrick and Tracie Gilles 6.4.2021 by Rob Hopkins
Episode Twenty-Three: What if street art could transform the world?
March 29, 2021 08:12 - 40 minutes - 66.9 MBWelcome to Episode 23 of our journey together into the imagination and into the powers of What If. Today we are looking at street art. Street art has stood alongside the fight for climate justice, the Black Lives Matter revolution, and pretty much every mass uprising for change through history. But is it just decoration? Or does it have the power to deeply shift a culture? To fire the collective imagination? And what if it was everywhere? I am joined today by two incredible, insightful, pass...
Episode Twenty Two: What if we learned to embrace failure?
March 17, 2021 08:41 - 34 minutes - 55.4 MBWelcome to Episode 22 of 'From What If to What Next'. This week we are exploring failure. More precisely, what if we were able to create a culture in which failure is embraced, celebrated even, rather than feared, avoided or ridiculed? What would society look like if we embraced failure in politics, education, economics and everyday life, indeed if we learned from a young age that failure was just as important as success? There's a great What If question to stretch your imagination... My two...
Episode Twenty: What if we addressed the trauma that lies beneath the world's problems?
March 09, 2021 12:09 - 1 hour - 105 MBWelcome to Episode 20 of From What If to What Next. This feels like a bit of a landmark for us, our twentieth episode! Thank you for joining me on this journey. Do tell your friends to come join us... Any reflections on how you're finding the journey so far are most welcome. Seems like a good moment for that. The good news is that we have saved one of the very finest episodes to mark this moment. Today we are exploring the question of trauma, and I must confess that recording this conversa...
Episode Twenty-One: What if dynasties of private wealth reimagined their relationship to money?
March 01, 2021 12:13 - 31 minutes - 53 MBIt was recently announced that Chuck Feeney, the Irish American former airport duty free shopping entrepreneur who was worth $8bn, had, at the age of 89, succeeded in his goal of giving away all of his money to initiatives working to make the world a better place. Every cent. He suggested that to give away a huge fortune was far more fun than holding onto it. He once wrote “to those wondering about giving while living .. try it, you’ll like it”. In today's podcast we are exploring how it wo...
Episode Nineteen: What if we rewrote the National Curriculum based on permaculture principles?
January 31, 2021 18:58 - 47 minutes - 77.3 MBBy now, in this journey into 'From What If to What Next', it is clear that one of the key things in our world in 2021 that needs reimagining is our education system. In this episode, we explore how it might be if at the heart of that reimagining were permaculture principles. How would the underpinning of the National Curriculum with permaculture principles affect both what is taught, and how it is taught? Imagine a generation leaving school skilled in a diversity of practical sustainability s...
Drucilla Cornell on the power of the public imagination
January 28, 2021 09:03 - 40 minutes - 25.5 MBDrucilla Cornell is a professor of law, women's studies and political science at Rutgers University. After reading a brilliant article she wrote about the public imagination, I got in touch, and here is the conversation we had.
Episode Eighteen: What if a revolution in relation to land unlocked a revolution of the imagination?
January 18, 2021 09:18 - 34 minutes - 58.2 MBWelcome to our first episode of 2021! We are planning an amazing series of podcasts for this year, and love that you are part of this exploration. In today's episode we bring together Josina Calliste, a health professional and community organiser who is one of the co-founders of Land in Our Names (LION), a black-led collective addressing land inequalities affecting black people and people of colour's ability to farm and grow food in Britain, and Chris Smaje, author of the book 'A Small Farm F...
Episode Seventeen: What if indigenous wisdom could save the world?
January 04, 2021 19:31 - 56 minutes - 93.9 MBOf all the 17 episodes of this podcast so far, this is the one that I had to go off somewhere quiet afterwards for a while to digest. It is a very powerful and fascinating discussion. My two guests are extraordinary, and I feel so blessed that they could make the time to join me in this wonderful What If exploration. Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu’ Kwasset (She Who Brings the Light)) is an attorney, an activist, an advisor, a speaker and so so so much more, including author of ‘Sacred Instru...
Episode 16: What if we took play seriously?
January 04, 2021 18:37 - 48 minutes - 80.4 MBIn Episode 16 of 'From What If to What Next' we explore the question of play. Play is a devalued aspect of both childhood and adulthood which has been declining now for decades, and its decline has had many knock-on effects across society. What would it be like if we decided to give it a huge boost, to create the ideal conditions for a re-emergence of play across education, economics, planning, and so much more? What might that look like? I am joined in this episode by two of the most amazi...
Episode 15: What if we learned to love weeds?
December 13, 2020 21:16 - 39 minutes - 63.8 MBDuring the first Coronavirus lockdown in the UK, a strange phenomenon was seen in towns and cities across the country. As councils became unable, or unwilling, to maintain their usual programmes of spraying weeds and cutting grass, pavements began to feature what had previously been dismissed as 'weeds'. In response, and using a hashtag #MoreThanWeeds, people began using chalk to circle them and to write their names, both common and Latin. In this podcast we explore how different the future ...
Episode Fourteen: What if we were to respond to the debt crisis with art and playfulness?
November 23, 2020 09:00 - 47 minutes - 48 MBOne of the things we love most here at 'From What If to What Next' is stories of people bringing imagination to their activism, of impactful, thought-provoking projects that engage our imagination and our playfulness. One of the very best examples of this that we've ever seen is The Bank Job in Walthamstow, London, the work of printmaker Hilary Powell and filmmaker Dan Edelstyn, once described as "an act of generosity rare in the art world". Following the release of the great new book 'The...
Ministry of Imagination Episode 14 introduction
November 16, 2020 08:27 - 1 minute - 2.52 MBHere are the opening couple of minutes from Episode 14 of the bonus Ministry of Imagination podcast. Subscribe now at www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext.
The Best of 2030: from episodes 1-9 of 'From What If to What Next'
November 10, 2020 14:05 - 1 hour - 119 MBEvery episode of 'From What If to What Next' begins with my inviting my guests to close their eyes and to walk us through what they imagine 2030 could be like if it were the result of our having done everything we could possibly have done. What would it feel like, taste like, sound like? It is often the most powerful and beautiful part of the podcast. And so, our producer Ben Addicott has painstakingly pieced together the best bits of those visions, and together with Tamsin Cornish, written...
Episode Thirteen: What if governments factored future generations into law and policy?
November 09, 2020 15:33 - 50 minutes - 84.4 MBAnd so we reach our thirteenth episode. Wow. Thank you so much for being with us on this journey so far. We have an amazing episode for you today. We live in a world where so much political decision-making seems to be based on short-term thinking, the next opinion poll, next quarter, next election, yet so many of the problems we face are the result of our failing to think in the long term. We use the future as a place to dump the problems we can't resolve, to dump our pollution, carbon emissi...
Episode Twelve: What if criminal justice resources were instead invested into communities of colour?
October 26, 2020 14:33 - 38 minutes - 66.8 MBYou are in for such a treat today. It is my honour and privilege to share with you our twelfth episode of 'From What If to What Next'. In the US, as elsewhere, vast amounts of money are poured into mass incarceration and brutal and violent policing. What if instead that money was invested into the communities that bear the burnt of this approach to criminal justice, into healthcare, wellbeing, opportunity, safety? It's a huge question, and such a rich What If question. Luckily we are joined ...
Episode Eleven: What if we had the skills and abilities to talk to decision makers?
October 12, 2020 07:54 - 45 minutes - 75.7 MBWelcome to Episode 11 of From What If to What Next. So many of those who listen to this podcast are trying, in one way or another, to bring about change in the world. Whether it is the more confrontational activism demonstrated by groups like Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, or grassroots organising and working to build the alternative, we are all trying to understand how to be the most effective activists we can possibly be. Which leads us to this episode’s question, one that f...
Episode Ten: What if we decolonised education?
September 27, 2020 16:19 - 44 minutes - 75.7 MBThe uprising of Black Lives Matter and other organisations have led to many calls for the decolonisation of education at every level. But what does it mean to decolonise education? As Boris Johnson dismisses such calls as a "national orgy of self-embarrassment", does decolonising education mean simply changing the curriculum, or does it go much, much deeper than that? And what if we achieved it? What would it be like to live in a world where that had happened? In this deep, rich and fascina...
Episode Nine: What if we lived in a Wellbeing Economy?
September 27, 2020 15:45 - 57 minutes - 95.9 MBOur question this time was slightly adapted from one sent in by subscriber Pamela Barnes. As the world attempts to claw its way back from the COVID19 pandemic, and as opinion polls show an overwhelming support for not ‘going back’ to how things were before, people are increasingly discussing and exploring new models for an economy that better needs the needs of the population as a whole. One of those key ideas is that of a Wellbeing Economy, an economy that delivers both human and ecological ...