Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

About Where To Next? By Dan Kieran

The archive of episodes from my Do Lectures Radio Series, Where To Next? (55k downloads from this substack so far) dankieran.substack.com (https://dankieran.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Dan Kieran

Category

business · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Dec 2024

Latest episode

24 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

45 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Oct 2026

   Where To Next? Extra episode with Mike Warwick and Nic Askew

   Mike Warwick, my co-presenter on the show, has been recording episodes when I’m taking a break and then he hands back to me and so on and on we go. We also do some episodes together like the one I will share next week. Today I’m thrilled to share Mike’s conversation with the Founder of Soul Biographies Nic Askew. Nic Askew is a filmmaker, educator and explorer whose work asks what becomes possible when a camera is used not to capture a performance, but to witness someone as they truly are. Before he picked up a camera he spent years as an itinerant explorer and a Managing Director in business, leading expeditions into the Congo, the Amazon and the Sahara - an unlikely apprenticeship that taught him as much about stillness under pressure as anything that followed. In 2005, a lucid daydream told him, with the force of certainty rather than desire, to pick up a film camera and use it “in a profound fashion.” That moment set him on the path to developing the Inner View Method - a way of filming built on patient, agenda-less attention rather than the usual choreography of question and answer - and, from it, the acclaimed Soul Biographies film series, now viewed by millions worldwide. His work has taken him into rooms with Georgetown University, Harvard Business School, Apple, the MacArthur Foundation and MIT, and he now leads Inner View immersions and expeditions that teach others to see - and be seen - in the same way. Nic’s conviction, arrived at over two decades behind the lens, is that unconditional attention is a revolutionary act capable of changing the world. Two decades ago he set out to capture the Soul of the Human Race on film, so that we might see ourselves reflected in each other, remember that we belong to each other, and act accordingly - so that, in his words, we might wake up. It’s a mission he now shares as a demonstrable, lived experience among people as much as through film that will outlast the moment it was made. In conversation with Mike, Nic walks him through his process live - the radio version of one of his own soul biographies - in a conversation about what happens when we stop, become still, and let what’s already there come through. https://nicaskew.com (https://nicaskew.com) I hope you enjoy the episode. Much love, Dan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe (https://dankieran.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   17 Oct 2026

   Where to Next? Episode twenty-four. Ewa Franus on Iboga, the ‘Queen’ of psychedelics

   There are certain things I am wary of talking about and psychedelics are one of them. I had a negative experience using magic mushrooms when I was eighteen (although I’m in the process of reframing that experience thanks to a guest I will be speaking to soon) and I don’t want to do anything that could be seen to be promoting them. Psychedelics are astonishingly powerful and not to be messed around with. But then I met Ewa. I have known Ewa for many years now. She is my brother Richard’s partner and she has been a balm for our family. I trust her with my life. So if I was going to venture into the subject of psychedelics I know of no-one better to talk to about them than her. She has personally used plant medicines nearly a hundred times. After exploring cave art at Lascaux in the previous episode and coming up against the slightly trivialising tone of the most widely regarded book on the subject (The Mind in The Cave by David Lewis Williams) where the author seems to dismiss cave art as the result of little more than brain chemistry thanks to Shamanic inspired, hallucinogenic states, I wanted to talk to Ewa about her experiences. Ewa has a fascinating background. From Poland originally she is a trained pharmacist (this training takes longer and is more encompassing in Poland than in the UK). She then trained in naturopathy before learning how to use plant medicines. In this way her medicinal world view encompasses the Western, natural and ancestral approaches, which is why I find her perspective so compelling. I went to visit Ewa to talk about her latest experience with Iboga, which is described as the ‘Queen’ or ‘Mount Everest’ of psychedelics. Ewa works as a healer combining the western, natural and ancestral traditions. For more information about Ewa and her work you can visit her website (https://www.pinkgriffin.co.uk/). If you are curious about this kind of thing but don’t know where to start I strongly recommend talking to her. (Please note, my dog Winnie was with us and you can hear her squeaking every now and then in the background because she was on a lead and I would not let her run off to chase squirrels and cats!) Much love, Dan This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe (https://dankieran.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   18 Sept 2026

   Where to Next? Episode twenty-three. Lascaux and the ‘Mind In The Cave’

   As you will know if you have been following the series, ‘caves’ keep coming up in different ways. My journey began with a pilgrimage to a cave on the island of Raasay off the coast of Skye in Scotland, where evidence of our mesolithic ancestors has been found (if you’re curious, you can find the details of exactly where I went here (https://registry.gsg.org.uk/sr/sitedetails.php?id=2521)). That trip led me into deeper enquiries around our indigenous ancestors and the ways they might have lived and experienced consciousness. I recalled in my first interview with Martin Shaw (https://dankieran.substack.com/p/where-to-next-episode-one-martin) the otherworldly encounter I had with a stag when I got to that cave. It was as real as a stag could be (and as loud) but had a strange face I couldn’t make sense of at the time. I also shared my subsequent astonishment when a first edition copy of The Inheritors by William Golding I ordered arrived in the post soon after (the novel tells the story of homo sapiens arriving in a Britain populated by neanderthals) and I found a frighteningly similar image to the stag I encountered in Raasay on the cover. Martin then shared his own childhood reaction to an illustration of Herne The Hunter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herne_the_Hunter) (a ghost of a man on horseback with stag antlers growing out of his head first mentioned by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor) on the cover of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. Rather enticingly, there are theories that the story of Herne The Hunter has Palaeolithic origins, but I digress. I need to do more research about that before I make any great claims that these human / stag figures are linked. My enquiries then led me to discover that the image Golding used for the cover was based on a drawing by the renown cave art expert Henri Breuil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Breuil) of a painting discovered in a cave within a cave in Chauvet (also in Southern France) that you have to crawl through a passage a kilometre long to find. The image has since become known as ‘The Sorcerer’. All very goose-bumpy I hope you will agree. The mesolithic ancestors I went in search of on Raasay were here after the last ice age between 11,700 years ago and 5,000 years ago but we know from DNA their ancestors would have come from what we now think of as Spain and France. The images discovered in France in Lascaux and Chauvet were much earlier and date to around 21,000 years ago and 37,000 years ago respectively. I hope you can see why I found the idea they were all connected so tantalising. With all this in mind I was excited to visit Lascaux this Summer, where a replica of the cave that was found during WW2 has been created for visitors to experience. This week’s episode is me talking about the way caves have appeared in my journey so far, an interview with Chris Perez, one of Lascaux’s guides, and then ends with my thoughts on The Mind In The Cave by David Lewis Williams, which is the most respected book seeking to make sense of cave art that I’ve found so far. (Spoiler: DLW makes a compelling and studious case that cave art was inspired by shamanic hallucinatory states, but his subsequent dismissal of those hallucinatory states as being nothing more than the chemistry of the brain felt very anticlimactic to me. We will explore the weaknesses of this stance in my next interview. Details to follow.) One last piece of news while I have you. I am excited to say that the world famous computer scientist and biologist Dr. Michael Levin (yes, that Michael Levin (https://drmichaellevin.org/)) has agreed to be interviewed for the series in November. If you want to blow your mind, check out his latest published paper on what he calls the ‘Platonic’ (https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/11/5/161) realm. Much love, Dan Thanks for reading The Weirdo's Journey by Dan Kieran! Feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dankieran.substack.com/subscribe (https://dankieran.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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