The Initiation

What if one of the most powerful forces shaping human behaviour is something we rarely talk about - our fear of death?
Sheldon Solomon is a social psychologist and one of the world’s leading researchers on terror management theory - the idea, inspired by Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, that our awareness of mortality quietly shapes much of human behaviour.
For more than four decades, Sheldon and his colleagues have studied what happens when people are reminded of their mortality. Their research suggests that death anxiety can make us cling more tightly to our beliefs, become more hostile towards those who are different, seek money and status, support authoritarian leaders and even become more willing to exploit the natural world.
But there is another possibility.
What happens when, instead of denying death, we actually turn towards it?
In this conversation, we explore:
Why humans are uniquely aware of their own mortality
How terror management theory helps explain seemingly irrational human behaviour
Why fear of death can intensify tribalism, polarisation and hostility
How existential anxiety can increase our attraction to authoritarian leaders
Why money and status can become unconscious attempts to escape mortality
The surprising relationship between death anxiety and environmental destruction
Why modern Western culture may be particularly death-denying
What near-death experiences reveal about our relationship with mortality
How meditation, mindfulness and psychedelics may change the way we respond to death
Why awe, humility, gratitude and nature could help us become more psychologically resilient
Whether today’s converging crises are forcing humanity through a collective initiation
And what Sheldon calls the need for a new kind of existential maturity
Sheldon argues that we may be living in a culture saturated with death anxiety — much of it operating beneath conscious awareness. Yet confronting our mortality may offer something unexpected: a deeper appreciation for being alive.
As Sheldon reflects personally, after decades of studying death intellectually, it was only later in life that he began to experience the importance of practising awe, humility and gratitude — finding meaning in something as simple as walking outside, encountering another person or planting a tree that may outlive him.
Ultimately, this is a conversation about death - but perhaps even more importantly, it is about how to live.
Could the crises gathering around us be part of humanity’s initiation into a more mature relationship with mortality, with each other and with life itself?
If you enjoy The Initiation, please subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube, and share the episode with someone who might resonate with this conversation.

What if the collapse we fear isn’t the end of humanity — but the end of a system that no longer serves us?
Sarah Wilson is a bestselling author, journalist and activist. Her latest book, I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World, explores how facing the reality of the metacrisis can paradoxically bring greater clarity, courage and even joy.
In this conversation, we explore:
 Why the crises around us may be different expressions of one larger metacrisis
 Sarah has moved beyond conventional ideas of hope
What it means to hospice the old world rather than desperately trying to preserve it
Humanity’s passage from adolescence toward collective adulthood
How to become an “island of sanity” in increasingly unstable times
Why uncertainty, nature, community and spirituality may become essential capacities for what comes next
And why humans have repeatedly turned to dance and joy in times of crisis
Ultimately, this is a conversation about what it means to meet a moment of profound change without looking away — and to live fully and beautifully anyway.
If you enjoy The Initiation, please subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube, and share the episode with someone who might resonate with this conversation.

In this episode of The Initiation, I speak with Luke Kemp, researcher at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.
Luke challenges the conventional story of civilization as a steady march of progress. Instead, he traces the rise of what he calls “Goliaths”: societies built upon concentrated power, extractive resources, monopolized violence, and the restriction of people’s freedom to leave.
While the collapse of these systems often benefited ordinary people in the past, Luke argues that collapse today would be profoundly different. Nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, ecological breakdown, and our dependence on global supply chains have raised the height of the fall—potentially to a terminal level.
We discuss:
Why the earliest states resembled organized protection rackets
The three ingredients that allow Goliaths to emerge
Why fear makes societies vulnerable to authoritarian leaders
How inequality and concentrated power make civilizations fragile
Why collapse had a surprisingly bright past—but may have a dark future
The growing risks posed by nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence
Why game theory misunderstands ordinary human behaviour
Humanity’s deeper evolutionary capacity for cooperation
How corporations and states amplify the darker sides of human nature
Citizens’ assemblies, wealth redistribution, and the possibility of open democracy
What meaningful action looks like in the face of systemic risk
This is a sobering but ultimately empowering conversation about the history of power, the risks gathering around us, and how we might build institutions that bring out the best—rather than the worst—of humanity.
And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

In this episode of The Initiation, I speak with Corey Bradshaw, ecologist, modeler, and global change scientist, about the uncomfortable realities of the ecological crisis — and what it means to face them honestly.
Corey’s path began far from academia: growing up in the Canadian wilderness with a trapper father, learning the intelligence of animals, the harshness of wild places, and the power humans have to alter the living world. Today, he uses mathematical models to understand ecosystems, extinction, population dynamics, climate trajectories, and the future of human civilization.
Together we explore why the sixth mass extinction is not just a distant scientific abstraction, how overpopulation and overconsumption are inseparably linked, why efficiency often leads to more exploitation rather than less, and why denial is such a deeply human response to ecological breakdown.
This is not an easy conversation — but it is a deeply clarifying one. Corey offers a form of grounded realism: not the fantasy that everything will be fine, and not the despair that nothing matters, but the possibility of making the future “less shitty” through honest seeing, better choices, and a renewed sense of responsibility for the living systems that sustain us.
A conversation about extinction, denial, resilience, collapse, and what it means to stay useful in a world that is already changing.
And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

In this episode, I’m joined by Jeff Booth — entrepreneur, investor, author, and co-founder of Ego Death Capital — for a wide-ranging conversation on Bitcoin, money, AI, and the civilizational threshold we find ourselves in.
Jeff argues that Bitcoin is not merely an asset, but a protocol for a fundamentally different kind of world: one beyond the zero-sum logic of manipulated money, extraction, and centralized control. In his view, Bitcoin opens the possibility of a true free market — one where technological progress, AI, and productivity gains can flow back to people through falling prices, rather than being captured by states, banks, or technocratic monopolies.
We explore why Jeff sees Bitcoin as essential to the transition into a post-labor economy, how broken money distorts reality and fuels fear, why most of crypto misses the point, and what it means to reclaim agency in a time of accelerating breakdown and breakthrough.
We discuss:– Bitcoin as a civilizational phase shift– Why the natural state of a free market is deflation– AI, robotics, and the future of labor– Why broken money concentrates power– The spiritual and psychological dimension of Bitcoin– Ego Death Capital and investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem– Why Jeff believes most other blockchains go to zero– MicroStrategy, ETFs, and the risk of Bitcoin capture– Agency, fear, and building the world that comes next
This is a conversation about Bitcoin — but also about consciousness, courage, decentralization, and the possibility of an infinite game for humanity.
And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

Jeremy Lent is an author, philosopher, and systems thinker whose work explores the deep roots of our civilizational crisis - and the possibility of a life-affirming future. His books include The Patterning Instinct, The Web of Meaning, and his latest book, Eco-Civilization, which asks what it would take to build a world system designed for the flourishing of all life.
In this conversation, Sebastian and Jeremy explore why our current system is not simply broken, but functioning exactly as designed: extracting wealth, exploiting life, and concentrating power. From there, they move into the deeper question at the heart of Jeremy’s work: whether another path is still possible - one rooted in mutual flourishing, ecological regeneration, and what he calls “mutually beneficial symbiosis.”
Together they unpack:
why “there is no alternative” is one of the most powerful myths of our time
the Windigo as a metaphor for endless extraction and insatiable growth
what hunter-gatherer societies reveal about human cooperation and dignity
the rise of inequality, domination, and alpha-male power structures
collapse, authoritarian fortress-earth scenarios, and the third possibility
the adaptive cycle, unraveling systems, and islands of coherence
AI, the singularity, and the danger of confusing technology with transcendence
why evolution is not only competition, but cooperation and symbiosis
how to orient your life toward the possibility of an eco-civilization
At its heart, this is a conversation about remembering who we are beneath the conditioning of a system that has taught us to crave, compete, and consume.
And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

Richard Heinberg joins The Initiation. Richard is a human ecologist, journalist, and Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and the author of fourteen books on energy, ecology, and the future of industrial civilization. His work traces the deep entanglement between energy systems, social evolution, and the ecological limits now confronting humanity.
In this conversation, we explore the polycrisis through the lens of human ecology - examining how fossil fuels enabled the modern world, why the energy transition faces hard material limits, and what a graceful descent from industrial civilization could actually look like. What begins as a discussion about energy quickly reveals itself as something deeper: a reckoning with the assumptions, incentives, and stories that have brought us to this threshold moment.
Together they unpack:
why energy is the foundation beneath everything humans do - and why fossil fuels created an unrepeatable historical anomaly 
the hard material limits of the renewable energy transition, from minerals to recycling
why perpetual economic growth on a finite planet was always a temporal illusion
how the debt bomb, demographic decline, and energy descent are converging into a single systemic reset
the case for bioregionalism as the organizing principle of a post-industrial future 
why AI may be the worst idea at the worst possible time - and the bubble likely to pop within months
what indigenous societies understand about ecological limits that modern civilization has forgotten
the phase shift already underway between 2025 and 2030 - and what it asks of us psychologically
why the path forward isn't found in blame or technological rescue, but in rebuilding sustainable households and communities
This episode is a sobering yet grounding look at the ecological foundations of our predicament - and an invitation to meet this moment with clear eyes, open hearts, and a willingness to imagine human life on radically different terms.
If you're new to The Initiation, I recommend starting with Season 1 - it lays the foundation for understanding the broader arc we're tracing, from breakdown to breakthrough, and the deeper initiation this moment is asking of us.

Roberto Rios returns to The Initiation. Formerly known as Peruvian Bull, Roberto is a macro analyst and author of The Dollar Endgame, known for his deep work on global liquidity, sovereign debt dynamics, and the long arc of monetary transitions.
 
In this conversation, we explore the unfolding Iran war as a potential catalyst in a much larger systemic shift - from geopolitics and energy markets to the fragility of the global financial system. What begins as a military conflict quickly reveals itself as something deeper: a stress test of the petrodollar, the stability of sovereign debt, and the future of global order.
 
Together they unpack:
 
- the current state and likely trajectory of the Iran war- why the Strait of Hormuz is a critical pressure point for the global economy- how rising energy prices cascade into food, goods, and systemic inflation- the hidden fragility of the yen carry trade and its implications for global markets- the accelerating fiscal crisis in the United States- the slow erosion of the petrodollar system and the rise of alternative settlement rails- how geopolitical shocks reshape trust in the global financial architecture- the stages of the “dollar endgame” and where we are today- why monetary transitions unfold slowly - until they don’t
 
This episode is a sobering look at how interconnected our world has become - and how quickly localized conflict can ripple into systemic transformation.
 
If you’re new to The Initiation, I recommend starting with Season 1 - it lays the foundation for understanding the broader arc we’re tracing, from breakdown to breakthrough, and the deeper initiation this moment is asking of us.

In this episode of The Initiation, Sebastian speaks with Bill E. Rees, ecologist, systems thinker, and co-originator of the ecological footprint - one of the most influential frameworks for understanding humanity’s material relationship to the Earth.
Bill reflects on the early experiences that shaped his worldview, from childhood on his grandparents’ farm to a lifelong inquiry into ecology, overshoot, and the dangerous myths underpinning modern civilization. From there, the conversation opens into Bill’s more recent thinking on human exceptionalism, ecological denial, fossil fuel dependency, maladaptation, and why the crises we face are symptoms of a deeper civilizational rupture.
Together they unpack:
the origins of the ecological footprint and what it reveals about humanity’s overshoot
why climate change is not the root crisis, but a symptom of a much larger breakdown
human exceptionalism, social constructs, and the illusion that we are separate from nature
how modern civilization displaces other species by expanding the human niche
why fossil fuels enabled the explosive growth of population, complexity, and consumption
the collapse of cooperation at scale - and the rise of competition, hierarchy, and dark triad leadership
why green growth, decoupling, and techno-optimism may be forms of denial rather than real solutions
why humanity may be heading toward a painful but unavoidable correction
A sobering and unsparing conversation about ecological reality, civilizational overshoot, and the possibility that breakdown may be the necessary threshold for a different way of being on Earth.
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If you’re new to The Initiation, you may also want to explore Season 1, where I lay the foundations for the entire series. Across the first nine episodes, we dive into the core themes shaping our moment in history - from the rise of artificial intelligence and the breakdown of our monetary system to the climate crisis, geopolitics, and the breakthrough forces pointing toward transformation. Season 1 offers the wider context for everything we explore in this podcast.

In this episode of The Initiation, Sebastian speaks with Brian Stafford, a former psychiatrist who left a successful career after an unmistakable inner call - and went on to train with Animas Valley Institute, founded by Bill Plotkin.
Brian shares the story of how a single book - Soulcraft - cracked his world open, and how wilderness rites like the Vision Fast can catalyze profound, grounded transformation without any entheogens: through ceremony, fasting, solitude, soulcraft practices, and direct relationship with the more-than-human world.
Together they unpack:
the five phases of soul initiation (preparation, dissolution, soul encounter, metamorphosis, enactment)
why “find your purpose” often stays abstract - and how “soul image” makes vocation real
soul-centric dreamwork, imaginal intelligence, and the role of grief and awe in a time of planetary unraveling
Brian’s upcoming book, Pathways to Ecological Awakening, and why ecological belonging may be the prerequisite shift for everything else
A conversation about remembering our place on Earth - and discovering what you’re here to serve, specifically, in the middle of civilizational transition.
If you’re new to The Initiation, you may also want to explore Season 1, where I lay the foundations for the entire series. Across the first nine episodes, we dive into the core themes shaping our moment in history - from the rise of artificial intelligence and the breakdown of our monetary system to the climate crisis, geopolitics, and the breakthrough forces pointing toward transformation. Season 1 offers the wider context for everything we’ll explore this year.