Anthea Lawson - Should we be trying to save the world?

What does it mean to try to change the world — without losing yourself, or everyone else, in the process?

This week I'm joined by Anthea Lawson: activist, writer, former journalist, and campaigner who has spent three decades working on issues from the arms trade to financial secrecy. Her new book, How Not to Save the World: Doing Good Without Annoying Everyone (Oneworld, 2026), is a candid and hopeful look at the traps that well-meaning people fall into — and how to find a better way through.

We explore the hidden "save the world" script that pushes so many of us toward either frantic overwork or numb despair, and why both tend to backfire. Anthea maps out a third path — grounded in humility, relationship, and local people power — that turns out to be more effective, and more sustaining, than heroic effort alone.

We talk about:

• The two default responses when the world feels overwhelming: compulsion and shutdown
• What "script messages" are, and how unconscious patterns quietly drive activism culture
• How a genuine commitment to good can tip into righteousness that pushes people away
• Why the protest voice often fails in everyday relationships — and what listening can do instead
• How purity tests and perfectionism raise the barrier to entry and shrink movements
• Overwhelm as a structural tactic that keeps communities divided and reactive
• "I know better" dynamics, lived experience, and the legacy of class and white saviour thinking
• Why meaningful change now requires people power over individual heroics
• Antidotes: service, bridge-building, showing up without ego, and the value of genuine relationship
• Regulating the nervous system through embodiment and co-regulation
• Making space for grief — not as defeat, but as something shared that creates breathing room

How Not to Save the World is available from independent bookshops — you can order it through Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers directly.

Follow Anthea's writing and thinking on Substack at anthealawson.substack.com.

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