In this conversation with author and Accidental Gods host Manda Scott, we explore what it might actually take to create a future worth living in. Manda brings together shamanic practice, inner healing, regenerative thinking and the power of storytelling to ask how a genuinely different future could emerge.
We speak about moving beyond the stories of scarcity, separation and powerlessness that shape so much of our present world, and towards connection, agency and sufficiency. Manda argues that we cannot create a new system simply by thinking harder within the old one. We need to heal our inner divisions, reconnect with each other and with the wider web of life, and learn to listen for what wants to emerge.
We also explore regenerative economics, new forms of governance, the commons, the opportunities and dangers of AI, and why stories matter so deeply. If we cannot imagine a different future, how can we possibly create one?
Manda Scott is a novelist, podcaster and teacher working at the intersection of storytelling and systemic change. A former veterinary surgeon, she was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for her debut Hen's Teeth and won the McIlvanney Prize for A Treachery of Spies, though she is best known for the Boudica: Dreaming quartet. After a Masters in Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College she founded Accidental Gods, a podcast and membership programme giving sustained attention to the people building structural alternatives to a failing system. With her wife Faith Tilleray she co-created the Thrutopia Masterclass, based on the premise that dystopia rehearses collapse and utopia is not believable, so what we lack are stories of the transition between them. Her sixteenth novel, Any Human Power, is a political thriller built on exactly that principle. She has taught contemporary shamanic practice for forty years.
https://mandascott.co.uk
https://accidentalgods.life
https://thrutopia.life
Daniela Bomatter is a Swiss-born evolutionary practitioner, facilitator, and former technology executive whose life bridges the worlds of systems transformation, spiritual awakening, and human development. After a successful career in software engineering and leadership, including serving as CEO of SwissEnergy at the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, she left public life in 2016 to dedicate herself fully to the path of spiritual realization and conscious evolution. For seventeen years, she studied and worked closely with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, becoming a senior practitioner and teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment.
Daniela is the co-founder of Manifest Nirvana (https://www.manifest-nirvana.com) and lives in Tiruvannamalai, South India, where she leads retreats, online programs, and global dialogues exploring the intersection of awakening, culture, and collective transformation. She is the creator of the “Co-Creating the Third Attractor” Podcast (https://3da.manifest-nirvana.com ) , a integral inquiry into the future of human civilization, and the author of The Viratya Myth Begins (https://www.viratya.com). Through her writing, teaching, and conversations, Daniela invites people to discover a way of being that embraces both timeless presence and evolutionary becoming, holding the paradoxes of our age with depth, responsibility, and wonder.
