News Series of Adventures in Nutopia Launches!
The wonderful Adventures in Nutopia is back with a fourth series with six new documentaries exploring the big themes of anarchism, biomimicry, animal medicine, panpsychism, The Internet of Animals and magic. Yes, big topics, but approached with a lightness of touch.
Guests include Chumbawamba’s Dunstan Bruce, neuroscientist Anil Seth, lecturer Carissa Honeywell, natural navigator Tristan Gooley; authors Sally Goldsmith, Susan Greenwood and Jay Griffiths; philosophers Philip Goff, Peter Sjoestedt Hughes and Hedda Hassel Mørch; Internet of Animals author Martin Wikelski, chosen chief druid Eimear Burke, chaos magician Dave Lee, comedian Andrew O’Neill and author Efa Lois.
Adventures in Nutopia is a documentary series in search of new stories, radical movements, new systems, myths and ideas that just might steer us into a more inclusive, networked and ecological future. In Nutopia all are welcome. We’re just as excited to share the ideas of pagans, panpsychists and psychedelic pioneers as we are of scientists, economists and cognitive historians. Don’t worry about poe-faced beard-stroking, there’s plenty of mischief and weirdness to be had.
The presenter, David Bramwell, is a Sony-Award winning presenter for BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4, having made programmes on subjects ranging from Ivor Cutler and public speaking to time travel. He has won awards for ‘outstanding theatre’ and ‘best comedy’ for his one-man shows and is the author of The Haunted Moustache, The No9 Bus to Utopia, The Cult of Water and The Odditorium. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and has appeared as guest on Radio 4’s Museum of Curiosity and Saturday Live.
You can listen to the first episode here.
EPISODES
1. Viva Anarchism! Part One: Seeds Beneath the Snow
‘I am an anarchist! I am an antichrist!’ sang the Sex Pistols’ butter-loving John Lydon in 1976. But, as we’ll discover in the first of this two-parter, anarchism has far more to do with allotments, lifeboats, mutual aid, self-organising and inclusivity than it does with nihilism and destruction. Thanks to our guests we will explode some of the misconceptions around anarchism, learn its key principles, consider whether it needs a rebrand and discover that most of us, at heart, adhere to many of its principles.
With Robin Gray and Katherine Hallewell from the theatre show Three Acres and a Cow, Chumbawamba’s Dunstan Bruce, Warren Draper and Cath Muller from A Commune in the North and Anarchism author Carissa Honeywell.
2. Viva Anarchism! Part Two: Anarchy in Action
In this episode we meet those who are putting anarchism into action through community building, including the founders of Doncaster’s A Commune in the North and Bristol’s Rockaway Park. We’ll learn about Three Acres and a Cow, a theatre show which teaches audiences about land rights and we’ll go on a special adventure with Chumbawamba’s Dunstan Bruce. We begin however, on the outskirts of Sheffield to visit Edward Carpenter’s century-old queer, anarchist, socialist, feminist, vegetarian, nudist, sandal-wearing utopian retreat known as Milthorpe and which scandalised the local vicar.
With Robin Gray and Katherine Hallewell from theatre show Three Acres and a Cow, Chumbawamba’s Dunstan Bruce, Warren Draper and Cath Muller from A Commune in the North, author Sally Goldsmith and Mark Wilson and Marta Jachimowicz from Rockaway Park.
3. Animal Medicine
For the Greeks and other ancient cultures, animals played a key role in the diagnosis and healing of humans. In this episode we’ll learn just how much animals are medicine to us, psychologically and physically, and explore the idea that certain things what we think of as being quintessentially human – morality, ethics, game-playing etc – may even have been taught to us by animals. We’ll also take a deep dive into the behaviour of animals in our own woodland environments and what they can teach us, and learn that some of our two, four, six and eight-legged friends are capable of undertaking palliative care of dying humans, recognising diseases like cancer and appear to have their own rituals of bereavement and awe.
With Jay Griffiths, David Hadrill and Tristan Gooley
4. Panpsychism: The Quiet Dreaming of Atoms
Science has long wrestled with what is known as ‘the hard problem’ – how did consciousness arise out of matter? But what if we’ve been approaching the problem wrong, all this time? Thanks to some of the world’s leading philosophers, neuroscientists and psychedelic researchers, this consciousness-expanding episode delves into panpsychism, the theory that mind is a fundamental property of the universe.
Along the way we’ll discuss psychedelic experiences, why we won’t be downloading our minds onto a floppy disc any time soon and how panpsychism could even be good for our mental health.
With Anil Seth, Philip Goff, Peter Sjoestedt-Hughes, Mark Vernon and Hedda Hassel Mørch.
5. Biomimicry & the Internet of Animals
Biomimicry, the science of learning from nature’s genius, is helping us in areas as diverse as architecture, pollution, air conditioning, clothing, robotics, fire-resistant materials, flooding and leadership. The internet of animals is a vast, ever-growing network of data provided by mini-transmitters on everything from bees and birds to rodents and bats. It is providing us with a better understand the natural world. Through biomimicry and the internet of animals we’ll discover how trees, limpets, pine cones, bats, sharks, spider webs, birds, beavers and termites – to name but a few – are helping us re-shape our world for the better.
With Nicola Peel and Martin Wikelski
6. The Magic Hour
The word ‘magic’ derives from the Old Persian ‘magush’ – to have power and wisdom. Nowadays the word has multiple meanings including stage illusions, awe and wonder, and the kind of fictional sorcery found in Harry Potter, Buffy and Shakespeare. And then there is magical practise (also known to some as witchcraft).
A somewhat ambitious final episode, in sixty minutes The Magic Hour attempts to cover the history of magical practise in the west – from Ancient Greece to present day – offer advice on how to start a magical practise and demonstrate that magic isn’t fanciful nonsense or mere superstition as some might believe but a dance between our imaginations and the material world, and something that lies at the heart of every culture.
With Dave Lee, Eimear Burke, Susan Greenwood, Mark Wagner, Andrew O’Neill and Efa Lois.
