Why the world feels unpredictable – and what's really going on

The world is starting to feel unpredictable in ways that are difficult to pin down.

Not just because of individual events, but because of how many different pressures are building at the same time. Climate impacts are becoming more visible, geopolitics is fragmenting, technology is moving quickly and economic conditions are being shaped by multiple shocks at once rather than a single, identifiable cause.

It is tempting to treat these as separate issues. Climate as an environmental problem, geopolitics as a political one, technology as something else again. But that separation is becoming harder to sustain. What we’re seeing instead is how these pressures show up together. Changes in one area increasingly show up in others, shaping costs, constraints and the choices available. Assumptions about work, markets or even where it is safe to invest or build are becoming less reliable.

That’s the starting point for this season.

In this opening episode, Felicia and Giulia step back to look at what’s changed in how the world is behaving. Why issues that used to be discussed separately are now overlapping and what that means, whether you’re seeing it through your work or simply trying to make sense of what comes next.

Once these pressures start to show up together, their effects become harder to separate.

Climate risk, for example, is no longer only a question of long-term environmental change. It is increasingly reflected in insurance markets, in the cost of capital and in public finances. Supply chains are being shaped not only by efficiency, but by geopolitical relationships and physical constraints. What might once have been treated as separate risks are now influencing the same outcomes.

At the same time, many of the structures that guide decisions, particularly in finance and policy, are still built around shorter time horizons than the risks they are dealing with.

That is where things become difficult. There is more information available than ever before, but that doesn’t necessarily make choices clearer: different risks point in different directions and the incentives facing companies, investors and governments do not always line up. And so decisions are often delayed until something forces them.

That’s why this season, we’re going to be looking at that reality directly.

By going inside specific industries and areas of the economy, the aim is to understand how these pressures play out in practice, where decisions are actually made, and how different parts of the system influence one another. Not to simplify what is happening, but to make it easier to see what matters and how to respond when the path ahead isn’t always clear.

Each industry or topic we explore will be paired with a conversation like this one, stepping back to break down what’s happening and what it really means. We hope you’ll find it useful.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram – and why not spread the word with your friends and colleagues?

Transcript

Felicia Jackson (00:35)
Welcome to the first episode of season six of Shaken Not Burned. I'm Felicia Jackson.

Giulia (00:40)
I'm Giulia Bottaro. It's so nice to have an episode together this time.

Felicia Jackson (00:44)
I know it makes rather a nice change.

Giulia (00:46)
In the trailer for this season, which hopefully our listeners have had the chance to check out, we talk about change affecting different industries. We mentioned fashion, mining, AI and finance, which are all industry arcs that we will cover in the upcoming episodes. But before we dive into these stories, we wanted to take a moment between us to reflect on really what's going on and what we think is going on. And we have...

bit of a big question. Why is the world suddenly feeling so unpredictable?

Felicia Jackson (01:19)
And I think this is one of the key questions for everybody. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. It doesn't matter if you're thinking about this as an individual rather than as a business. Because it is that all these different things are going on at once. It's not just one thing that's changing. So we know climate change is happening. There are changes in weather patterns, whether that means that a sudden drought or a sudden flood is changing food availability.

We certainly know that geopolitics is becoming more fragmented. There seems to be this shift back towards nationalism and isolationism. New technologies are coming up. We all talk about AI a great deal, but the reality is it's taking over so much of what we do and the institutions that we use to govern the systems within which we live and operate.

They can't adapt fast enough and when those kinds of pressures happen all the time and they interact with each other, then those systems we rely on start behaving in ways that we're not used to.

Giulia (02:17)
I suppose the thing is that we never really stopped and thought, this is a system we rely on. You know what I mean? We give all of these things for granted.

Felicia Jackson (02:26)
the analogy is the fish. It doesn't know what water is. It just lives in it and can't survive without it. And we have that with government and health care and the financial system. It doesn't matter what it is. We're surrounded by systems every day. And as they become more unstable, it becomes more of a problem.

Giulia (02:31)
Exactly.

And you mentioned some crisis there and it seems that a lot of people think that these are individual things that are happening, that are not connected with each other. But they are. And it's important to adopt the system thinking that we speak so much about the shaking or burn. We talk about it all the time, but this is because we think it's so important to adopt.

Felicia Jackson (02:54)
But they really are.

Giulia (03:05)
this mindset and then really have it as a tool to move forward and try to navigate this world which is changing massively even though some people would really like it to stay the same.

Felicia Jackson (03:17)
Well, I actually think that's part of being human. We all have a tendency to think about things that existed in the past and imagine them as the halcyon days when things were better. They were just different. And sometimes they were better for some people, but not for others. And I think, you mentioned the importance of systems thinking, sometimes I think that term, it can be off-putting to people. But all it is is understanding that...

as individuals we only have the choices put in front of us, that we actually make decisions because of the way systems are set up. if we start looking at the connections between all of these different crises and all of these different systems, we actually see that the world is not experiencing a series of random crises, but actually there are a set of pressures that if we understand them we can navigate

I mean, we probably understand more about what's actually happening in the world than we ever have before. Climate science is clearer, economic risks are well studied and pretty much understood. But there's this sense of unpredictability. And I think because the more we learn, the more we're actually beginning to understand how little we know. For example, the world in which we live is certainly in the global north is very technocratic. While there may be

battles between those who believe in science for everything and those who believe in their own research, even if it's down a Wikipedia wormhole.

There is interconnection. We live within nature. We've got to stop separating the way in which we live from where we live and how we live. There's so much going on. The world feels weird. There's this strange feeling that everything is increasingly out of control. Just think about it. We've got the Ukraine War.

and the war in the Middle East. We have extreme weather events, I've mentioned those, droughts, floods, wildfires, fear that the amok tipping point is actually going to be reached and planetary boundaries are going to be crossed. We've got food and energy prices around the world increasing, cost of living crises wherever you look, there's growing inequality, the haves and the have-nots, the haves increasingly have, and the have-nots increasingly have.

Giulia (05:24)
we

covered in the episode about billionaires from the past season.

Felicia Jackson (05:27)
Absolutely. Yeah,

this is the point. In a sense, that's what this series is all about because we've covered all of these different things separately and what we're trying to do with this season is say, this is what's happening in this industry or even in this topic and talk about how it's connected, why it's connected and what that means to each of us. The other things we have to think about are actually the erosion of international norms.

We all know there's increasing political tension and polarization around specific ideas and specific political ideologies. But actually, the way in which we understood what security meant and what defense meant and international alliances, that's framed our understanding for over 80 years, you know, since the Second World War. And suddenly that all seems to be under attack.

That alongside all of these new technologies and people worrying about being out of work, it just feels like everything is happening at once and everything I'm talking about feels really scary.

Giulia (06:26)
It is really scary and it is probably the unpredictability of it. I think we could talk about how generations have seen the world in different ways, maybe bringing up the example of work. Generations, I think even my generation, probably until the 2008 financial crisis, we thought that if we study, if we go to university, we get a degree, we learn a job, that will be the job that we keep forever and it will be fine.

my parents have had the same job for 30 years. And then it turns out that for increasingly more people, it actually really doesn't work this way anymore. And maybe young people are already starting their careers thinking, this is what I'm going to do now for perhaps two to five years. And so for me, this is a good analogy of

literally everything else. This is the same for everything else. We need to sort out the systems that we have relied on because they're not really working anymore for us. Another really good example is the pension system. Who can say they're going to go, they're going to retire and feel fine and be able to survive on money provided by the government. So all these things are, yes, they're terrifying, but knowledge

is power and knowledge can help and the more we know, the more we shield ourselves and we protect ourselves for the maybe the future is a bit too optimistic but at least the present.

Felicia Jackson (07:49)
love the fact that you brought up pensions because I saw a story I think yesterday where there's a woman who is suing the company pension fund for ignoring climate risk in their investments. That's unheard of. I mean in the last couple of years we've seen all this pushback against ESG ⁓ by attorneys general in the States. But actually suing?

pension fund for not considering climate risk is a real wake-up call because it is going to change the way in which the future appears. It's going to change how we operate. It's going to change where we operate. And I'm fascinated by the fact that you thought, your generation thought everything was going to stay stable up until about 2008 because I remember coming out of college and we were in a recession And I remember thinking back then this is not

gonna look like my parents life did. I'm not gonna get a job and stay there for decades. Because even back then it felt unstable and I think what we're seeing today is that the instability is accelerating and I think it's very difficult to know what the right decision is, almost about anything, know, where you work, where you live, do you try and save up money and buy a house, will you ever be able to? But then the question is,

Is that the right choice? Should that be what we're thinking about? Because sometimes I start thinking about whether or not it's a mindset that is a problem. It's what we're expecting. It's that thing of falling back on what we've always known. another thing we always go on about at Shaker Not Burned is agency, this idea that you have the power to change your own future. And I guess what really matters is understanding

Giulia (09:18)
yeah.

Felicia Jackson (09:29)
that that doesn't happen in isolation either. Yes, you can make your own decisions, but you change things by changing levers, by deciding to act and by doing it together so that you're not actually standing there on the outside feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Giulia (09:44)
I think the concept of community is very important because we live in an increasingly individualistic society. And of course, things are scary when you're dealing with them by yourself. And I think we should really start thinking about how we can team up with other people, whether they're colleagues, friends, or even neighbors, and try to make even our area of action a bit better. And that I think is quite important because if everybody does it, then

it becomes action at scale. And then on the topic of everything being interconnected, I think the fact that everything feels quite unpredictable, and also maybe these crises are isolated, is because traditionally policy has tackled these things individually. So we have policies about food, we have policies about

pension, we hopefully have policies about climate. It would be nice to see more of those, quite frankly. But then once we start treating food security and energy security,

⁓ as a climate issue, well, food security as a climate issue and then energy security as a fossil fuel issue, then we start to see that these things are interconnected and that kind of helps. But I suppose another thing about treating all these things as individual problems is that we are bombarded with information. A lot of people rely on headlines or small video clips for where the

get the news. And so it's probably difficult to put all of these nuanced topics together in one place. And this is why it's so important to address these things as in-depth as possible, mostly for our benefit. And in fact, I think it's more alarming to just read a headline that says something really depressing or really scary. But then if you don't go in-depth, maybe you don't realize that there are some solutions for that.

Felicia Jackson (11:36)
I think it's important that people are able to understand there are solutions to the problem. mean, the famous line is, we've got all the technology we need to solve the climate problem. What we don't have is the political will or the bankability of many of these projects. I think your point about doom-scrolling is really important as well, because we see almost this overwhelming...

barrage of negative headlines and terrible things happening. But what matters here and what's exciting about the use of system thinking as an approach is that it really forces you to take on board the fact that the economy, the environment, technology and politics are not actually separate things. They're all part of the same machine. And that's really the idea behind Shaker Not Burned. It's talking to people in different industries and different disciplines to understand that we're

we're all looking at different entry points into the same system. And if we can actually accept that they're all different entry points, different lenses on the same system, we can actually build a wider understanding of how those systems work and what are the trade-offs we have to be prepared to accept if we're to affect positive change. What are the risks and opportunities and the knock-on effects of the choices we make? Because those choices affect everything. Everything and

everyone in addressing the challenges we face today.

what's also really important to understand is that these real systemic problems and that means They can't just be changed by individual people flying less and eating less meat. It does matter those decisions should be made and together they really do scale change but we do need a lot more. The trouble is people and governments and companies and investors.

They're all just people and people, I think, find decisions hard. How do you choose what to prioritise? Everyone's scared of making mistakes and there are significant issues in the structure of our economy and our financial systems that make companies and countries more likely to delay action. And again, it's this idea that politics and the political economy are the problem. Lobbying and government policy capture by vested interests is a challenge. We've seen this consistently.

in the issue of fossil fuels. You know, the G20 has agreed to cut subsidies for fossil fuels for, how many years. Every time there's a cop, there's a huge row about whether we should phase out fossil fuels altogether. And yet that language never gets through. So, you know, one of the things I think is perhaps worth pulling apart is what are the challenges that make these decisions so hard?

and the sorts of things we're planning on highlighting in our interviews in this series.

Giulia (14:15)
Yeah, there are some examples that perhaps are helpful in illustrating what we want to say. One thing that we have talked a little bit about, but we will cover further, is that climate risk is economic risk. So for example, floods destroy infrastructure, wildfires destroy homes, and they have affected insurance markets. We've seen that in the States. Drought affects food prices because

Agriculture is extremely dependent on weather being compliant to how the crops grow. And so it's starting to become increasingly volatile every year.

So ultimately, we think that climate change is something that happens somewhere else. It's something that affects other people. And it's really tragic when someone's is destroyed. But it goes much deeper than that. And it actually does affect all of us already, because climate stability really does underpin economic stability.

And every time we complain that the food at the supermarket is getting higher, well, climate probably has a big contribution to that.

Felicia Jackson (15:23)
Yeah, and I think it's worth noting on this one, there's an increasing body of research showing the connection between climate risk and economic stability and showing the impact of climate change on the cost of sovereign debt, on fiscal policies. You know, it's the underlying stuff that we don't normally think about every day that fundamentally underpins the way the economy works. And that means how much things cost to eat, to buy, to live within.

We talk a lot about how climate change can affect supply chains, but geopolitics is also a problem with supply chains. We've seen that with the Straits of Hormuz and the impact that's having on the oil price. But if you think about the impact of the Ukraine War on grain markets, on fertilizer supply, on energy prices, the huge increase in electricity prices in the UK was due to the increase in gas prices because of the gas not coming out of Ukraine.

So we need to think about the fact that climate is connected to supply chains, which is connected to geopolitics, which is connected to the food system and the energy system. And the point we really have to get to is that food and energy and geopolitics, they're all deeply interconnected and climate is a risk multiplier for all of them.

Giulia (16:35)
You also mentioned earlier COP and the fact that countries every year they come together and they talk endlessly about these issues and they never seem to come to a solution. What's happening in parallel is that countries are becoming increasingly isolated.

Nationalism and isolationism are becoming very popular among policymakers and really becoming what's driving elections. We're seeing since Donald Trump became US president again, huge amount of trade restrictions, not only tariffs, but also loads of incentives for industry to make America great again. you know, whether that is

a good long-term bet, whether it's realistic to do that or not. It's

Felicia Jackson (17:19)
it is that thing that we're talking about problems that are problems that need to be addressed collaboratively. it's climate or migration or pandemics, the pandemics show that working together is the best way to achieve a solution, not to separate off.

Giulia (17:33)
Yeah, but actually we will explore it in the episode on geopolitics and critical minerals. There is a huge China versus West narrative underpinning the whole critical mineral space ⁓ that shows that really it's us against them. And this is kind of where we are.

Felicia Jackson (17:46)
There absolutely is

Yeah,

but it's a narrative. It's not necessarily the truth because if you think about it, China's enormous commitment to renewable energy is a huge part of the reason that renewable energy is so much cheaper. And I'm not an apologist for China. But what I do know is that this this political need to blame somebody else for whatever the problem is, is part of the problem with isolationism and

political polarization. I mean, it is this thing that people like simple solutions and when politicians are worried about not getting into power, they like to blame somebody. Because if you've got a bogeyman in the corner, you don't have to think about the consequences of your own choices.

Giulia (18:28)
think it's also about the fear of change that we mentioned earlier. the world order is shifting. The West is no longer the most important driver of trend. Increasingly, we've got China, we've got other countries that are coming to the fore, and people are scared. And I think that drives that China versus West narrative. If we're not careful, all our industries will become...

Felicia Jackson (18:44)
Think about the dem-

Giulia (18:53)
in the hands of China. All the products that we will use will be from China, to be fair. It kind of already is because of the offshoring. But ultimately, it is something that people seem to be so concerned about. They say, oh, we'll have to learn Chinese. Chinese will be, dominating the world. again, isolating ourselves doesn't help. Collective action, trying to find ways to collaborate that can benefit

Felicia Jackson (19:00)
was about to say.

Giulia (19:19)
All people, not just us in in the global north.

Felicia Jackson (19:22)
But I also think we have to think about demographics because that's something we haven't touched on. The fact that I think is, is it by 2030 that half the population of Africa is going to be under the age of 30? But the reality is these changes are happening in terms of who's got power, who's got access, who's got energy, who's got youth. What are things going to look like in the next generation? And I think

We need to talk about power because it's a really important part of how decisions are made and who decides who gets what. Because I think technology and technology disruption has a lot to do with who gets power. we're talking about the fact that AI is going to transform information systems, but we're also talking about how it's going to transform labor markets and geopolitical competition.

And it's who is going to end up in charge. We've about the billionaires, as you said, but a lot of the technology companies that are in control of how we communicate, they don't seem to be in it for anybody's good except their own. We've seen the reality of algorithms driving the sorts of information that increases polarization. We've seen the fact that

Giulia (20:26)
Yeah.

Felicia Jackson (20:35)
It's technology that underpins almost the fragmentation of the way in which we see the world. We're looking at things and experiencing it differently. You just have to look at the videos that came out after the shooting of Alex Preti. And in the US, people were like, you can clearly see that it was dangerous. And some people are going, you can clearly see the man was shot while lying down. People take completely different things away from the same piece of visual information.

let alone written information and if we can't find a way of sharing the information environment in which we all live, how are we going to know what to believe? How are we going to know how to communicate? That sort of control changes who has power, who has access and I think that's something that really runs through everything we're discussing.

Giulia (21:23)
And in all of this, AI can be a great equalizer because it gives great power to people. We can all use tools that we would have never imagined using before, but also AI is driving misinformation and disinformation. So again, the concept of literacy in our case, sustainability literacy, trying to understand what's true.

Felicia Jackson (21:37)
Absolutely.

Giulia (21:45)
multiple things can be true but some of are blatantly fake

Felicia Jackson (21:48)
Yeah, so,

it's really important we discuss the lack of nuance that we seem to be at this point where everything is yes or no, it's binary. One thing is right, one thing is wrong. Trade-offs are the fundamental thing in every decision we make. So yes, it may cost a bit more money to address climate change. There was a report that came out last year where I think it was declared that the cost of

net zero was going to be trillions more than the cost of running the economy on fossil fuels. But actually, that report, as far as I'm aware, didn't factor in the cost of buying the fossil fuels. And there was a report that came out, very recently, which actually said that with the increase in the price of oil, due to what's happening with Iran,

Giulia (22:19)
yeah.

Felicia Jackson (22:35)
it's going to now be cheaper to achieve net zero. And once again, you're going, well, if we'd invested in renewable energy sufficiently in the first place, we wouldn't be reliant on the supply of international fuels. So that thing about nuance and about everything being black or white is one of those things we've got to beware of because no solution is going to be perfect. There are always going to be problems and challenges, but we have to have an honest conversation about it. We can't just sit there and expect people

to understand complexity when that literally goes against everything we try and do as human beings. We just want simple solutions and things that make sense and to understand what's going to happen to us.

Giulia (23:17)
Absolutely. And in all of this, it's also important to remember that inequity actually amplifies instability because the food shocks or the energy shocks that we mentioned actually affect the affect the poorer households first because

Felicia Jackson (23:25)
Absolutely.

Giulia (23:32)
They're the ones living hand to mouth. So actually even a slightly small increase in price can have a huge impact on their daily lives. And then as was mentioned earlier, this technological change, these companies that hold so much of our data and there are basically monopolies of the systems, of the software that we use every day.

All these race to the technology has concentrated power in the hands of a small amount of people. And then on top of that, another thing when we talk about global north versus global south, the global south has been disproportionately impacted by climate change because actually the bulk of the emissions, and then we can go into the, yes, but India uses coal, sure, all of that stories as much as we like, but historically.

the bulk of emissions has come from the global north. And so it's important when we talk about a just transition that we've spoken quite a bit, a shaking or burned, this takes into account all of these things. We're not just carrying out a transition from an energetic perspective and environmental perspective, but we're really bringing everybody along, providing equitable opportunities.

Felicia Jackson (24:44)
that matters so much, not just because it's the right thing to do, but also it's just reality. Sustainability is in part about still being here, still functioning. And the reality is that the kind of social stress that actually arises from inequality, that arises from the unfair pressures on the poor, can actually result in social unrest.

And that puts further stress on the system. That can lead to increases in authoritarian approaches, that increase in blaming the other. And it links, quite frankly, to this whole idea of the free rider problem and the challenges to collective action, which is that...

Everyone sits there and goes, well, I don't want to do that because it's going to cost me loads of money and that will put me at a disadvantage commercially. Well, if everyone does that, nothing ever changes. And I think in context, we have to be aware that there are environmental limits to what we can do. We actually only have a certain amount of fresh water on the planet. Yes, we've got a lot of different energy sources, but if we don't actually pay attention to nature.

to the way in which nature operates, what are we going to do? We talk about water scarcity not nearly as much as we talk about energy but think about it, it affects agriculture, it affects semiconductor production which we actually talk about in one of the future episodes. That is a fundamental underpinning of our entire technological system. So whether you like it or not, if you're in technology, water scarcity really matters. And energy systems, know, half of them

In fact, they all rely on water. If you're going to make solar cells, you need water. the point is that water is fundamental to everything. And I think we do forget that nature underpins the economy because the economy exists within it. We forget that at our peril. there's a really important

point here, I remember there was a phrase in the 70s in the feminist movement which is the personal is political. The reality is that everything is politics except it's always so much more. when we talk about systems it's in my head it's all curvy lines and interconnecting circles but in many ways it's almost like a prickly pear. There's one thing but there's all these pointy bits sticking out.

You know, politics is one of them, but it's only one. And we have to think about how system pressures actually interconnect. As I'm thinking about, you mentioned migration earlier, and that's a really powerful real world example of system pressure, because it connects all sorts of different issues and challenges. So it's conflict, it's climate stress, and it's economic disruption. And it may start in one place, but it doesn't stay in one place.

when environmental stress, conflict, and economic pressure all combine, people are going to move. Then migration becomes a signal of our system being under stress, not just a political issue. So we can't separate it out.

And one of the things that we're also going to be talking about in a number of different ways is the misalignment of incentives. Because if you think about it, climate, Climate is a long-term horizon problem. It may actually be affecting everyone today, but it feels like it's affecting people separately. It's not really been embedded within decision-making.

day-to-day as a fundamental thing to be addressed. So we have political cycles that are short-term. We've got companies that do quarterly reporting or whose investors want to know how much money have they made them in the last three months. Investment horizons haven't actually been aligned and there's a huge disconnect between the sorts of projects and investments we need to do to build resilience over the long term.

and the way in which investors want return. want bankability. That is what gets investment. But so much of the benefits of the actions we need to take are about mitigating social stress, are about health improvements and clean water and clean air. All of these different things are interconnected and no single decision maker seems to be looking at the system as a whole.

This is where it becomes a problem with systems thinking, I think, because it can seem so overwhelming and it's too much for our current systems to actually engage with. But in the end, that's what we're to have to do if we're going to be successful in addressing climate and the multiplicity of challenges facing us. So that's really why we started Shaken Not Burned in the first place.

Giulia (29:03)
It's not that we want to lecture people, but we want to help people understand how the systems actually work. Because once you start, once you do that, then you can understand where the decisions are made, where incentives sit, and also where change becomes possible. And this is why we're really talking about

all sorts of people, investors, engineers, policymakers, entrepreneurs, but also those professionals who are still figuring out how they can contribute because everybody sees a different part of the system and everybody can contribute in the same way. And when they start collaborating, that is where the magic happens and multiple things come together at the same time and multiple solutions can be

implemented to achieve something that is good for everybody. And ultimately highlight which are the trade-offs and incentives.

Felicia Jackson (29:56)
the things that we need to address. it's also important that we talk about the human side of things because we know that many of the decisions that need to be made are decisions about finance, about policy. But actually, it's human beings that make those decisions. So we need to understand how people make decisions, why they make the decisions they do, and work out where we can affect change.

And there are different approaches, there's obviously all sorts of movements about how you become your best self or five steps to being better at X, Y, Z. There's a thing called the Inner Development Goals that was set up alongside the Sustainable Development Goals, all about building people's capacities. And that is about helping people understand how connected they are to everything that exists, that we are part of nature, not separate from it.

that long-term thinking is actually something we really need to practice, that we do need to collaborate, that we need to listen to different perspectives and actually just be a little bit humble about knowing that we don't know everything and actually we really have a lot to learn from each other. And probably one of the most important things is learning how to deal with uncertainty because I think most people want clarity, they want certainty, but there aren't simple answers.

You know, and I think we do have to think about how we deal with that. The world we live in is increasingly complex. It's highly interconnected and changes are constant. And, you know, as individuals, we're facing these existential threats that we don't know what to do about, but we know are reinforcing each other, whether that's climate change or biodiversity loss or the global mental health crisis.

poverty, polarization, war and political instability. these things, they're not external. They are all part of the same thing. And the individual attempts to address the individual problems, I don't think they're going to be enough. we need to understand the difference it makes depending on how we define a problem. You know, we need to start talking about this kind of stuff.

And we need to move away perhaps from the isms, you know? I'm just seeing an increase in racism and sexism It's mental paradigm that we seem to have seems to be based on extraction and exploitation. And we know that's not a positive way to be. So we've got to find a way of...

coming to terms with who we are as humans and how we use that to change the way in which our systems operate,

Giulia (32:24)
Absolutely. And when you said earlier about we can't just rely on individual solutions, I think when solutions operate as part of a system, then you're holding each other accountable. My solution depends on your solution being implemented. And I think this creates a positive feedback loop that collaboration is all about.

Felicia Jackson (32:43)
what you're talking about is really interesting and you are seeing that kind of change. You're seeing cities adapting new approaches to building infrastructure. You're seeing farmers adopting new practices, massive increase in regenerative agriculture, that recognition that healthy soil is not just good for nutritious food and for farmers.

economics but also for carbon sequestration, for biodiversity, for water protection. We've got companies thinking about supply chains, we've got insurance markets actually pricing climate risk. So systems change because people change their decisions.

Giulia (33:20)
I think these are all excellent examples that show that we have agency. We have agency as professionals, as individuals, as citizens, and there is so much that we can do.

If only we understand how things actually work. So we go back to system thinking, recognizing patterns and stop seeing the individual events. And yes, maybe when we see that the whole system is under pressure, then it's perhaps more stressful and more scary than seeing them as individual events. But really, once we see that, we have understood how things really work. And when we have done that,

we can actually find solutions that can really work and not just be a plaster.

Felicia Jackson (34:03)
Absolutely. That is actually everything that we're trying to be about here, which is that if you can start identifying the patterns within systems, you can see the opportunities for change. Whether that's new technologies or new economic models or even new ways of organising. Actually understanding the system doesn't necessarily solve the problem, but it helps us understand where change can happen.

If we understand where change can happen and we understand our role in making that happen, we're actually given back that agency which is so important in actually being able to address a problem because if you believe you can do something, you might well be able to do it. I'm not saying if I believed I was a brain surgeon, I could be a brain surgeon. That would be very, very strange. But it's about where the comes from, not just externally and the power differentials between countries, but actually as individuals.

as people living our lives and wanting to build a better life.

Giulia (34:57)
And I think the choice here is being scared and sad and depressed and just moved by external events or at least try to do something.

Either way, we need to choose to do something. And in fact, perhaps one of them is choosing not to do anything. But we hope that with our podcast, we can show that there are so many opportunities out there. they ultimately rely on people's skills, contexts, abilities, and the willingness to take action.

Felicia Jackson (35:28)
And that is such a critical part of what we're trying to do. Because you mentioned the fact that people can decide to do nothing. That's a valid choice. It may not be one I'm hugely a fan of, but it's completely valid. But the point is, make your decisions based on facts, on what you know and what you can do. And I actually think that so much of the problem we face is that these problems all feel so overwhelming. But when you understand how they work,

you can begin to see something really important which is they're not fixed. They feel fixed, they feel like they've been there forever but these systems change, they do change, they have changed and they will change but they change when people make different decisions.

Giulia (36:11)
we might as well try to help these systems change in a way that we like.

that is what the season of Shaken Not Burned really is about.

Felicia Jackson (36:19)
understanding the systems shaping the world and the decisions that influence what comes next.

Giulia (36:24)
really what we're trying to do with the season six is to slow things down a little, because when everything feels chaotic, perhaps the instinct, the easiest thing to do is to choose a headline and say this is where we are.

Felicia Jackson (36:39)
if you step back and look at the systems underneath those headlines, whether that's about a crisis in the energy system or the financial system or the food system or in infrastructure, you see something different.

Giulia (36:51)
This is where you see the pressures building, the trade-offs, the decisions that shape what happens next.

Felicia Jackson (36:57)
Once you can see those things, the world stops looking like a series of random crises and starts looking like something we can actually navigate successfully.

Giulia (37:07)
as we said this is what the season of Shaken Not Burned will be about.

Felicia Jackson (37:12)
understanding how the world really works so we can make better decisions about the future.

Giulia (37:16)
we hope that you can join us on this journey. If you liked what we said, well, we have five seasons of content already out there, but we are very excited about the upcoming one. we are on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Blue Sky and TikTok and YouTube and all the podcast platforms that are available out there. And we also have a newsletter so you can receive the new episodes straight into your inbox every Thursday.

Felicia Jackson (37:43)
as ever, thank you for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the conversation and we'll be back soon.