Coconut Thinking

About Coconut Thinking

The Coconut Thinking podcast brings educational provocateurs and practitioners in the regenerative space together to ask: what would it take to create the conditions for all life to thrive? Conversations are as diverse as the guests, but each one participates in the ecosystem, and each one questions the dominant narrative. This is a show for those who are curious about learning, systems, and contributing to the bio-collective—all life that has an interest in the healthfulness of the planet.

Publisher

Benjamin Freud, Ph.D.

Category

education · science · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Apr 2020

Latest episode

17 Dec 2025

Latest episodes

3 of 134 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   17 Dec 2025

   Dr. Cat Ho: Critical Economic Literacy

   What inherited economic assumptions does education quietly reproduce, even when it claims to be about justice? In this episode, I speak with Dr. Cat Ho. Cat was trained as an economist but left the field early in search of work that could genuinely make the world better. That path first took her into a Christian non-profit, and later back into economics through teaching IB Diploma Programme Economics. Through her work with teachers and Gen Z learners, Cat became interested in how education can help people question inherited economic assumptions and imagine alternative possibilities. She is currently developing Critical Economic Literacy as a key dimension of Global Citizenship Education. She says that the heart of her work is a simple but demanding question: what kind of education might actually help the world become a more just and peaceful place? We discuss: 🥥 Criticality as means of tearing down in order to build up; 🥥 How if we all spoke up, the possibility of change would be greater, though we still need networks and wisdom; 🥥 The creation of the precariat (that class of people afraid to lose the little it has) means we live on fear and don't always want to fight for change. Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com Check out Cat's site WONDER: https://wonder-educationreimagined.org/critical-econ-literacy (https://wonder-educationreimagined.org/critical-econ-literacy)

2. 

   18 Nov 2025

   Mark Ingham, Ph.D.: Critical and nomadic pedagogies

   What might a rhizomatic, nomadic education look like? In this episode, I speak with Mark Ingham, Ph.D. Mark is an artist, scholar, and radical educator whose five-decade career bridges creative practice, critical theory, and experimental pedagogy. Trained at Chelsea School of Art and the Slade, he became known early for bold, site-responsive installations His art has been exhibited at the Whitechapel, Kettle’s Yard, Riverside Studios, and internationally. Alongside his studio practice, Mark has a long history of socially engaged work in schools, galleries, prisons, and community settings, grounding his teaching in real-world questions of culture, power, and place. He is now Reader in Critical and Nomadic Pedagogies at University of the Arts London, Co-Chair of the Professoriate, and founder of the Experimental Pedagogies Research Group, a vibrant network of 500+ educators rethinking creative learning. We discuss: 🥥 Questioning why we follow the rules we’ve inherited, and refusing to keep doing things just because “that’s how it’s always been;" 🥥 Stripping away labels and boundaries so we can re-wild ourselves and the world into something more alive; 🥥 Moving through de-territorialization and re-territorialization: the old pattern loosens, things shift, and a new pattern takes shape. Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com Find out more about Mark and his upcoming book: https://markingham.org/ (https://markingham.org/)

3. 

   26 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Becoming-Through-Loss: The Groundwork of Metabolic Ontology

   What if life doesn’t fight decay, but feeds on it? In this episode, I explore metabolic ontology, a way of seeing being, learning, and ethics as continual re-organization. Entropy, loss, and transformation aren’t problems to fix; they’re the medium through which life keeps composing itself. Drawing from my work in regenerative education, I look at how this shift from stability to metabolism changes everything: how we understand learning&doing, assessment, and the role of institutions. Regeneration isn’t preservation; it’s participation: the willingness to let forms, including our own, decompose when vitality demands it. This episode is an invitation to see education, and life itself, as becoming-through-loss: coherence renewing through change, vitality re-organizing through decay.

Inside a recent episode

Becoming-Through-Loss: The Groundwork of Metabolic Ontology

Published 26 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Without that movement, every structure would congeal into stillness, and life doesn't resist entropy. It composes through it. That's the pulse of metabolism, the exchange through which form undergoes and remakes itself. Most philosophies have tried to build around permanence. Substance ontologies search for what endures underneath change, an essence, a substance, a thing that holds. Relational ontologies took a big step away from that. They began from relation. But even there, relation tends to be imagined as already there, as if it were the scaffolding that holds the world up. Metabolic ontology begins earlier, in exchange. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

1,493

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

12 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 64 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

67

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

85

Contact Coconut Thinking

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.