I read it in solitude, in 2024, while retreating in the northern Portuguese countryside to focus on the writing of my first novel. I thought I was retreating to write. I didn’t realize that I was also stepping into another kind of initiation (read essay I wrote about Breaking Together here).

Chapter after chapter of Breaking Together, my mind and heart broke more and more open. I learned about Jem’s story and the money system, about global food supply chains and the latest climate science with no sugar coating. I learned why our modern civilization is structurally bound for collapse, and how unlikely it is that our political institutions will save us. I also learned about the lives of the “doomsters”, those of us who have accepted the inevitability of collapse and are seeking to live our most meaningful, beautiful life not despite our predicament, but because of it.

The permission that Breaking Together gave me was simple: go wild, be free. Don’t pour your energy into chasing the illusion of success inside a crumbling system—whether that is a shiny career, a fancy house and life in the city, or even a huge social media following. Focus on what truly matters: radical social transformation through direct action, community resilience, art, creativity, and real spiritual development.

So, when I heard Jem Bendell was coming to Lisbon for the launch of the Portuguese edition of Breaking Together, I had to try to interview him. What I didn’t expect was to end up co-moderating the book launch itself, alongside researcher & activist Pedro Macedo, and the wonderful team at , the publisher responsible for bringing this book to Portuguese-speaking readers.

Below you can watch the full book launch of Juntos na Rutura, so you can feel into Jem’s vital book and message:

The following day, Jem and I met in a more intimate setting to record the conversation you’re about to hear. My angle, as usual, was personal. Beyond asking Jem about societal collapse—which he’s spoken about widely elsewhere—I wanted to meet the human behind the thesis: Who is Jem Bendell? How did he become who he is? How did he get to do this important work? And what does it mean for him to live with more consciousness and wisdom, now?

Listen to find out :) And let me know what came up for you in the comments section.

With Love,
Carlota

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Guest Bio

Jem Bendell is a world-renowned scholar on the breakdown of modern societies due to environmental change. For decades he worked in Sustainable Development—as a researcher, NGO manager, professor, and consultant to businesses, political parties, and UN agencies.

In 2012, he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and has since become one of the clearest critics of the globalist agenda on sustainable development.

In 2018, after a sabbatical studying the latest climate science, he published Deep Adaptation—an academic paper that went viral and is credited to inspiring the Extinction Rebellion movement.

Since then, Jem has stepped away from the sustainability industry. He published Breaking Together in 2023, moved to Bali, opened an organic farming school, became a singer-songwriter, and, in his own words, a militant mysticist.

Links

• Buy Breaking Together: a Freedom Loving Response to Collapse

• Buy Juntos na Rutura, the Portuguese edition of Breaking Together

• Download Breaking Together for free

• Subscribe to Jem Bendell’s blog

• Join Jem’s monthly Metacrisis meetings

Credits

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

• Producer, Writer & Host: Carlota Guedes

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And while these stereotypes can sometimes hold a grain of truth, they can also fail to capture the multitudes people hold. What if someone could be deeply spiritual and grounded? Sensitive and strategic? Connected to something higher while fully engaged in the messiness of life?

Today, I bring you the story of Elad Kaspin—someone who shatters not only the stereotype of a ‘hippie’, but also that of an ‘Israeli man,’ ‘father,’ and ‘entrepreneur.’

Born in Israel, son of a military man, Elad grew up dreaming of becoming a combat pilot. Due to a health condition—or as Elad calls it, a divine intervention—that path closed, and he became a computer engineer instead.

After that, he began asking deeper questions about the world he’d inherited. He left Israel in search of ways of living that didn’t reduce people or business to profit machines, eventually landing in the south of Portugal, in Alentejo, where we met.

In this conversation, recorded from the cozy caravan extension Elad calls home, we talk about his early life, from his sensitivity to subtle energies to his once-ambitious military dreams.

We explore his experience living in community—both the one he created with friends, and at Tamera, a 30-year-old intentional community in southern Portugal known for its radical explorations around peace, love, and sexuality.

We also talk about Elad’s embodied perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian war, as well as the business he co-founded with a Palestinian friend—Canhamor—a sustainable hemp-block producer revolutionizing the construction industry in Portugal.

Last but not least, we hear what it means for Elad to live a wiser, more conscious life.

Enjoy!
Carlota

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Credits

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

• Producer, Writer & Host: Carlota Guedes

I come to you today with something I’ve been preparing with much care these last weeks. I interviewed one of my favorite writers last year, , and our conversation is finally out.

I first stumbled upon Pinchbeck’s work about six years ago. I was exploring the mindful streaming platform Gaia, and discovered his show Mindshift, where he sits with different profiles—intellectuals, mystics, cultural superstars—to discuss topics like the future of civilization, technology and spirituality. I haven’t stopped devouring his stuff ever since.

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Perhaps what I most appreciate about Pinchbeck is how masterfully he weaves personal narrative with collective issues. His writing is some of the most honest I’ve come across, as well as fun, relevant, and always provocative.

I loved, for example, how in How Soon Is Now, he describes being at the Burning Man festival, convinced he was about to catalyze a global transformation—literally, in that moment. Tripping, he fantasized about bringing together many brilliant leaders attending the event to draft a planetary constitution, and build a social network and media platform to support the rapid transition to a regenerative, post-capitalist society.

“I saw it all in a flash. One group of Burners – legal experts, software engineers, social scientists, anthropologists, financial analysts, workers at NGOs and more – would gather at the Center Cafe each day, to design and build the prototype for a new social infrastructure through a cooperative, consensus process. This networking platform would include tools for democratic decision-making, sharing resources and alternative instruments for exchanging value, designed to first complement and then supersede the current money system. Another group of Burners – filmmakers, journalists, poets and artists – would document the unfolding process as we wrote the planetary constitution, demanding a world based on ecological and social justice, equality, peace and righteousness. Rather than making incremental and fitful progress, humanity as a whole would make a sudden forward leap.” Excerpt from How Soon is Now

I loved too, the candor with which he described failing at this endeavor, which, in his words, remains one of the proudest and most humiliating events of his life.

Or have you heard of Deep Zero? The play where he tells a darkly comedic tale of apocalypse, skewering technocrats and new agers alike.

Anyway, I tell you more about Pinchbeck and our episode below. I hope you enjoy it. Maybe I’ll return soon, eventually, with more episodes and thoughts that have been alive lately—AI and art, intentional communities as solutions to our polycrisis, to name a few.

In the meantime, let me know what came up for your throughout the interview, if you feel called to listen.

Warmly,
Carlota

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Podcast Episode

If there’s a central inquiry to the Waking Youth podcast it’s this: How might we consciously initiate ourselves—as individuals and as a species–into the next stage of our evolution? Turn our ecological emergency, our polycrisis, into an opportunity for global transformation?

has dedicated his life and career to living this question.

Author of Breaking Open the Head, 2012 The Return of Quetzalcoatl, How Soon Is Now, and more recently, the Substack newsletter Liminal News, Daniel’s work explores consciousness, politics, mysticism, and social change.

He has spent decades not just writing about change, but actively seeking it through projects like the Evolver Network, , and online courses on the ecological emergency.

In this episode, we unpack Daniel’s story of becoming—from his early days as a child of the Beat Generation in New York, to his awakening into a more mystical paradigm.

We talk about writing as a tool for transformation, how to catalyze social and environmental shifts, the war between the genders, and the connection between non-normative relational models and societal healing.

Last but not least, we listen to Daniel’s words of wisdom for the younger generations, coming of age in this pivotal evolutionary moment.

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References

• TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone

• Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism

• Why Materialism is Baloney

• Morphogenetic Fields, Rupert Sheldrake

• Manifesto for the Noosphere

• The Myth of Male Power

• The Red Pill

• The Outrage Machine

• Sexual Personae

• Existential Kink

• Eros Unredeemed

• The Case Against the Sexual Revolution

• Internet for the People

Credits

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

• Producer, Writer & Host: Carlota Guedes

Her words have appeared in publications such as the Dark Mountain Project and Evolve. While her images, since she’s a brilliant photographer too, have been featured in the Guardian, The Telegraph, the Times, among others. 

With a Ma in Engaged Ecology from Schumacher College, where she created the visual philosophy project ARCHIPELAGO: A Cartography of Relation, Hannah is currently making Islandness, a documentary expanding on the theme of islands and what they can teach us about resilience, togetherness, and our connection to the natural world.

Beyond her artistic pursuits, Hannah is curator. In 2018 she founded Experimental Thought Co, a network that convened events on culture change. More recently, she partnered with the transformational learning platform advaya (whose co-founder Ruby Reed I recently interviewed) to curate several courses, among them Contemporary Spirituality: Meaning and Mysticism in the Modern Age.

At the moment, Hannah lives between South West England, where she’s from, and a wild Hebridean island where she occasionally hosts sailing residencies.

I invited Hannah because, to me, she embodies the pursuit of wisdom and wholeness. Her art—whether in the form of an image, written piece, or Instagram post—emerges from a profound, quiet place. It moves the stuff of the spirit, and invites us to question who we are and what we’re really here for. 

Together we unpack her early life as the daughter of a 17-year old mother in a working class household that revered flatscreen TVs and honest labor. We listen to the waking up moments that let Hannah to eventually commit to her artistic pursuits. We also talk about her reluctance to personal branding, and the subversive role of creativity in a consumerist culture. And, last but not least, how Hannah attempts to live her most waking life.

Enjoy!

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Credits

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

• Producer, Writer & Host: Carlota Guedes

On the other hand, changemakers and activists can become so obsessed about bringing forth their desired futures that they not infrequently neglect self-care, presence and even kindness and compassion towards self and others. 

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One of the projects bridging this divide is Advaya. They are a transformational learning platform that offers courses on ecology, spirituality, mysticism, embodiment and culture facilitated by visionaries like Vandava Shiva, Alnoor Ladha, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and our former guest Chiara Baldini.

In this interview, I talked with Ruby Reed, co-founder of Advaya to learn more about what led her to start this platform with her sister Christabel Reed back in 2015. 

In 2019, Ruby and Christabel also started the EcoResolution campaign, encouraging people to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle in partnerships with several celebrities. This initiative eventually led them to the creation of Earthed, a non-profit that offers courses on nature restoration, covering topics from climate adaptation to permaculture and urban gardening. 

In this episode, we listen to Ruby’s personal history as an introverted girl with a fascination for all things magical. We explore her experience of starting Advaya and Earthed, as well as some of the challenges and lessons along the way. We also discuss Ruby’s views on social media as a network builder, and how she  feels about our collective future, with all its challenges and possibilities. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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Credits

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

• Producer, Writer & Host: Carlota Guedes

We have a couple of new subscribers, so, before anything, welcome. I hope you find some company here at Waking Youth, wherever you find yourself in your journey toward a wiser maturity.

Today, I’m writing to you from a train. It’s noisy and crowded and the woman sitting beside me is eating a rather pungent salad, which is distracting me from the screen.

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Anyway, I intend to return soon with written explorations of the questions I’m sitting with, which are many. Since my stop is approaching, for now, I’ll leave you with a special podcast episode. It’s with Chiara Baldini, former curator of the cultural—aka nerdy—area of the Boom Festival, and it won us an award nomination for the International Women’s Podcast Awards (more on that, and my conflicting thoughts about prizes, later). I hope you enjoy it.

In other news, I’m testing out the podcast feature of Substack with this post. Let me know how you like it in the comments section, particularly if you listen to the episode through Substack. You can also listen on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, as usual.

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Warmly,
Carlota

Episode Description

What does it mean to live from our intuition, beyond the expectations of our communities of origin? This is the question that accompanies this episode. 

Chiara Baldini, the first woman in her family to attend university, was born in rural Florence, in Italy. Throughout her twenties, she took on various jobs  – waitress, translator, tour guide – anything that allowed her the freedom to travel and open herself to life. 

After attending Boom, one of the largest transformative festivals in Europe, Chiara knew she wanted to get involved. By 2010, she had become the program curator of Liminal Village, the cultural area of the festival, which sheds light on topics ranging from psychedelic science to regeneration and social justice. 

It was at Boom too, following a transcendental experience at the dance temple, that Chiara felt called to initiate her independent research on the evolution of ecstatic practices in the West, weaving the threads from primitive culture to present-day electronic music events.

In 2019, Chiara co-edited the ‘Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine’, an anthology on the intersection between the feminine principle and altered states of consciousness.

Currently, Chiara is a PhD candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She lives in Costa Vicentina in Portugal, where she often plays as DJ Clandestina.

Together we talk about Chiara’s early life, growing up as a good catholic girl, and her initiation into alternative culture and transformative festivals. We listen to some of the challenges and learnings of her decade-long career as a curator, including her efforts to re-integrate social justice into new-age culture. And lastly, we explore what it takes to live a wholehearted life, even when it means embracing the inevitable tragedy present in love. 

Let me know what emerged for you throughout the episode in the comments section.

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Credits

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

• Creator, Writer & Host: Carlota Guedes

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Guest Bio

Cristina Bernardo is the co-founder of Open Dreams, a non-profit that assists high-achieving, low-income youth from Cameroon apply for and receive international scholarships to some of the best universities across the world.

She also served as the business developer and executive director of EmzingoU, a firm that designs and facilitates leadership development experiences for university students.

In 2016, Cristina served as a political appointee for the Obama administration to support the growth of small businesses, renewable energy, and community economic development throughout the most impoverished rural and tribal areas of the US.

Currently, in addition to running her non-profit, Cristina is a certified integral coach, supporting women through her She Shines Worldwide initiative.

Credits

• Creator, Writer & Host:

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra

Alongside his partner Maria Pussig, Fausto has spent the last five years transforming his family’s estate, Quinta do Pinheiro, in Guimarães, Portugal, into a pioneering lab of what it looks like to produce food more wisely.

Together we explore Fausto’s story of becoming. What is syntropic farming and how it differs from mainstream agriculture. Some of the challenges and learnings of managing a farm. And, among much more, how Fausto feels about our collective future.

To learn more about, visit or volunteer at the farm PinusSintropico click here.

To book accommodation at the Quinta do Pinheiro click here.

To learn more about the syntropic farming method developed by Ernst Götsch click here.

Credits:

• Creator, Writer & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think might appreciate it. That's the easiest way to support the show :)

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Guest Bio: Tatjana von Steiger is the Head of Global Policy Outreach at Wyss Academy for Nature. Throughout her twenty year career in diplomacy, she has served for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, representing Switzerland in the executive boards of the main UN development agencies and the World Bank, where she developed partnerships and solutions to global challenges ranging from climate change, water, and food security to health and migration.

Credits:

• Creator, Writer & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

• Photo of Tatjana by TAG HOUSE, Kenya.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think might appreciate it. That's the easiest way to support the show :)

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Emzingo.

Together we talk about Maria’s early life and her dreams of becoming first, a football player, then a storyteller, one of them which she rescued as a journalist at Fumaça, an award-winning media organization she co-founded in 2016 during her twenties. 

We listen to Maria’s professional challenges of being taken seriously as a rather short woman in height with a tendency to people please. And the difficulty of making ends meet within a precarious financial reality in Portugal. 

We discuss the state of the media, and Fumaça’s organizational style. And lastly, we listen to the advice Maria would give her younger self, namely to care less about what people think of her, and more about what brings her to life. 

Guest Bio: Maria Almeida is the co-founder and journalist at Fumaça, an independent media based in Lisbon with a focus on thoughtful investigative audio journalism. Learn more about her work here.

Credits:

• Creator, Writer & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think might appreciate it. That's the easiest way to support the show :)

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with ⁠Emzingo⁠.

Guest Bio: Alexia García is a player, coach, director of business development and project manager at Dragones de Lavapiés. Located in the Madrid's most diverse neighborhood, ⁠Dragones de Lavapiés⁠⁠ is a grassroots football club on a mission to promote social integration, equality and respect through sports.

Alexia is also a freelance tech and travel writer, and an occasional DJ.

Credits:

• Creator, Writer & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think might appreciate it. That's the easiest way to support the show :)

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with ⁠Emzingo⁠.

In this episode, she tells us how she came into acceptance of hers as a social justice activist helping, mostly white, people walk their talk as leaders, and become more aware of and accountable to systemic discrimination, racism and inequality.

What is the role of intuition in our lives? How can we discover what is our vocation? How might we cultivate the courage to align our thoughts, feelings and actions? Is the use of psychedelics inherently alienating or can it support our individuation? How might an intimate experience with death open us to the beauty of life? These are some of the questions we contemplate.

Guest Bio: Ashanti Kunene is a social justice activist, a decolonial dialogue facilitator, a poet, the founder of Learning 2 Unlearn, the director of pedagogy at Culture Hack Labs, and an occasional painter. You can check out Ashanti's art on her Instagram.

Learn more about the Boom festival here.

Credits:

• Creator & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠⁠⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think might appreciate it. That's the easiest way to support the show :)

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with ⁠Emzingo⁠.

Are you torn between following your professional bliss and opting for a path of more security? Are you curious about entrepreneurship and business? Are you interested in making the world a better place? If you've ever found yourself pondering some of these questions, this interview might keep you some company.

Together we explore the thought processes guiding Pablo life’s big decisions, the most significant challenges and learnings as a managing partner of Emzingo, why Pablo cherishes his privacy in a social media landscape often obsessed with self-promotion, and what he would like to tell his younger self where he in his twenties today.

Guest Bio: Pablo Esteves is a managing partner and executive director at Emzingo, a learning design firm he joined in 2011 after finishing his MBA at IE Business School. His experience includes designing, managing, and facilitating over 70 innovation and leadership development projects and learning experiences in South Africa, Peru, Spain, the United States and beyond.

Pablo is also a professor in Leadership, Innovation, and Creativity at IE University, a visiting professor for Trinity College Dublin and Universidad de Valladolid, and an Aspen Institute Fellow in Spain.

Credits:

• Creator & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think might appreciate it. That's the easiest way to help the show :)

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with ⁠Emzingo⁠.

I had the chance—the fortune—to meet Pablo in his professor role at IE University as part of my bachelor's. And I still remember vividly his words to the class on the very first day of his course on Innovation & Creativity: that more than providing us with knowledge and tools, his intention was for us to leave the course as better human beings. What would our world look like if all education was grounded in such clarity of intention?

What I didn’t know back then, was that, not long after, I would take part in one of the programs designed and facilitated by Emzingo which would further open my eyes and heart to the urgency of engaging in work that matters. Work that would place in my path extraordinary human beings behind life-affirming projects like Smergos, whose founders, Nick and Nicole, I have the honor to call friends.

It’s not the first time I interview Pablo. In 2021, as part of another project I was involved in, the Resetting Homo Sapiens Podcast, we talked, mostly, about Pablo’s view of systems thinking. This time, I chose to dive deeper on his journey as an entrepreneur which, though suspect, I think bears plenty of substance to accompany us on our journeys towards maturity.

As you can listen, Pablo grew up in Mexico City where he lived for most of his early life. Despite a talent for the arts and interest in architecture, nudged by his environment, like so many of us, he opted for a “safer” degree in Business Administration and Marketing which he completed in parallel with work at a magazine and golf practices.

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Post-graduation, and throughout the four years that followed, he dared to pursue his dream: play golf professionally. An experience that would eventually lead to a plateau and a recognition that, in this lifetime, his professional path would have to be another.

He then applied to an MBA at IE University, in Spain, which would fatefully place him in South Africa, participating in one of the very first Emzingo programs, led by Ramon and Drew who would soon be, together with Daniel, his business partners for the next thirteen years.

Throughout eight weeks, Pablo applied his business acumen to help the Student Sponsorship Programme, a NGO that placed bright students from marginalized areas in the best schools of South Africa. Witnessing the organization's impact on its community, he tells us, was the catalyst for the mental model shift that would define the rest of his career.

“It was in Johannesburg, in 2011, while working on this project that something fundamentally switched in my brain. My mental model changed as to, yeah, what I was supposed to be doing and how much I enjoyed being at service of others and using my creativity for problem-solving. Problems that are worth solving, I have to say.”

As a professor, as a learning designer, as a leader, his work is dedicated to designing and facilitating educational experiences aimed at transforming participants’ mental models towards one of changemaking, if they are open to beginning to let in both the tremendous pain and beauty of this world.

Together, we talked about the seeds of his love for creativity. The internal processes that led him to where he is now. The most significant learnings throughout his last decade at Emzingo. Why he cherishes his privacy and quietness in the cacophony that our social media landscape has become. And the advice he would offer his younger self, were he now in his twenties, like many of his students, ready to face the world with all its daunting challenges and possibilities.

Warmly,
Carlota

P.S. Special thanks to Pablo for generously providing the photographs featured above.

Listen

Here’s our podcast interview with Pablo Esteves. Listen on:
Spotify | Apple | Youtube

Go Deeper

1. Let My People Go Surfing, written by the founder of Patagonia, a recommendation from Pablo - one of the books that inspired the business philosophy of Emzingo - for anyone interested in a more conscious approach to business.

   

2. Another suggestion from Pablo, Designing Regenerative Cultures, one of the readings that serves as the foundation of his most recent course on Transition Design at IE University. If you are curious about how we might begin to design more resilient ecosystems you might appreciate this one.

   

3. Self-Promotion Without Social Media, a recent-found book in line with Pablo’s confession that Emzingo intentionally shies away from relying on social media as a pivotal marketing tool for their business health. Artists, soloists, creatives, and small business owners who feel overwhelmed by the constant need to be “on” social media for the sake of their business success, this one is for you.

   

If you liked this post, please consider sharing it with someone you think might enjoy it. It’s the easiest way to support the Waking Youth Project 💜

Enjoy and let me know how you find this format!

Warmly,
Carlota

Interview

Rui Quinta, a precocious pine nut seller, came of age as a self-proclaimed typefreak and graphic designer. In more recent years, as he discovered the post-it-world of designing thinking, Rui’s interests seemed to shift towards systems thinking and a more conscious way of doing business. He is the founder of Toyno⁠, a space and experience design studio, and ⁠With Company⁠, an award-winning transformative design consultancy. In 2013, Rui co-founded ⁠Peixaria Centenária⁠, a fish shop that artfully rewrote the narrative of his family business tradition for younger generations that is no longer in business. I conversed with Rui to learn more about his story of becoming and his approach to business.

It seems that your interest in entrepreneurship started early in your life, as you ventured into a street pine-nut-selling business. Where would you trace back the roots of your interest in entrepreneurship?

Ha! Where is that? I think the roots come from the influence of my family. My grandparents had companies. My parents always had their own business. It’s part of the family’s story. I think you get inspiration from that because you see the example and then maybe you want to replicate it, even if it's not something you do consciously.

I remember having a lot of conversations with my cousin when I was really young about how we should open a home appliances store or a restaurant. And yes, I had pine trees where I lived with my parents for a long time and we would catch pine nuts and go to the side of the road and try to sell them, which looking back was a ridiculous idea. I think we didn’t succeed. But it was fun. We were just playing.

In high school, you pursued art studies. And later, you elected Design as a Bachelor at IADE University in Lisbon. Was your interest in the arts and creativity in any way in conversation with your interest in entrepreneurship?

If I had to pick a word, I would probably pick the word play. What I feel today is that some of the most important decisions I took in my life were not that conscious. I was not thinking and evaluating too much. I think it was just a feeling that maybe I should just go this way, you know?

Today, I feel that I lived a lot. I feel that I interacted with the world with feelings, with laughter, with hugs, with closeness and proximity to other people and to my family, to my friends. I just wanted to play, to be honest. I wanted to play, play music, discover new things. And yes, when I had to choose in high school, for example, I probably just said: okay, I think I’m just going to arts because I had the intuition that maybe I would be freer.

And do you think you kept that sense of play throughout your life? It seems to be a theme that is very present in your work.

Yeah, I think I kept it. It's something that I see myself a lot of times saying to my teams: just feel free, explore, don't feel constrained in this particular moment.

I started studying a lot about creativity and reading a lot about how to have ideas. And one of my learnings was that, when you are in a particular process, when you are designing something, when you are thinking about something, there should be moments when you feel at ease to create and explore and make mistakes and to go to unexpected places. I still try to bring that aspect of play to my work.

At the age of twenty-four, you started your first, official, business that evolved from a sort of collective of freelancers. Tell me more about this.

Yeah, I was studying at the time and working for a small design company. I felt I could do things differently. So I rented a space in Santos (Lisbon), and asked some other friends to join me. I’ll share the name with you because it's so ridiculous and fun: Threelancers, since we were three people.

We got together often and started finding some freelance projects designing spaces, designing brands, designing magazines. And we invited other people to join us for some projects too. And that thing actually became a company one or two years after we set it up.

Did you always know you wanted to start your own business?

I had this feeling that I would end up owning a design company. I think I knew that. I just wanted to have experience and learn from others before that happened. So actually it happened at the same time—I was working and designing my own company. 

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I guess I was in denial for some time. At some point, I thought I wanted to work for big design companies. But it simply didn't work. I felt constrained. I didn’t want to just design behind a screen. I wanted to interact with clients. I needed more space to create and to make mistakes. It did work better for me in smaller companies where I had more autonomy. But, yeah, I had this feeling that I was a starter.

On LinkedIn, you confessed to being critical of the promotion of “superheroes” in our society. What do you mean by this?

I really don’t like the idea of a superhero. I really don’t identify myself with that. I’m really critical of unicorns. I’m really critical of monopolies. I’m really critical about always taking the best examples as the examples you should follow. It creates a lot of stress and anxiety in everybody. I don’t think it’s helpful. It just puts pressure on you to be something when only 0.001% of people will get there.

You shared publicly that part of the decision to close Peixaria Centenária, the fish shop, was due to the awareness of its negative impact on the environment. Can you talk a bit more about this?

Yes. That was one of the reasons why we closed. My wife, who was a partner at the fish shop, and I had a lot of conversations about that throughout the years, about participating in that.

Another argument, that I’m still discovering if it’s true, is connected to the idea of degrowth. Having studied and talked about degrowth, I think it’s okay to close things as an entrepreneur. Whether that’s because you are getting tired, or exhausted. It’s okay to go against what people expect from you as a business person. They expect you to sell things. They expect you to make a lot of money. It's in the books. And for me, it's also interesting to look back now, after almost two years of closing the fish shop, and recognize that maybe, maybe there was too much going on. Maybe I was not doing the right thing.

How do you sit with the theme of environmental and social awareness in your other companies?

At my other companies, social and environmental impact is always a point of discussion. There’s this sentence that we use sometimes in our teams: what we care for is everyone's business. And maybe it sounds a bit pedantic. But look at the conversation that we are having now: we’re talking about impact, we’re talking about the climate. And I think all of these things are here. And it seemed that maybe some of these topics were confined to some people in the last years. But now they are everywhere. It's impossible not to be concerned. It's a systemic conversation. It's a never-ending conversation.

So what we do is that we have a lot of incredible people working with us. And this is what I feel every day. People who have personal concerns about these topics. And we give these people the space and the ability to manifest themselves in these projects for these big clients. We tell them: This is what you believe in? Just take it!

It’s like we are in the system, but we are trying to change the system by being there. These clients are also coming to us because they recognize that we are coming from somewhere else. We are not coming from the type of company and the type of consultancy that hires people from the same universities, with the same background, thinking about the same things. We have a good mix of people that think about business, that think about design, that think about ecology, that think about transformation. And I think that’s really beautiful to watch. It’s interesting to see us influencing these big companies to become better companies because they will have no alternative. If you think about it, they don’t have an alternative. They really have to change.

Last question. If you could speak across time now, what words of wisdom or advice would you share with your twenty-year-old self?

If I was in my twenties… I think I explored so many things. I had so much fun. I met so many incredible people. I took risks. And I think that in the end, it’s really interesting that in the middle of all these things, I found a criteria: using the heart as a mechanism of thinking. This is something I identify myself with as an entrepreneur, which is that I have to relate to the things that I do. I cannot start a business for the sole reason of making money. I don’t know how to do that. I’m not an entrepreneur who knows how to do that. To be honest, I would still use my heart as a way of making decisions.

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To learn more about Rui’s work visit his LinkedIn profile.
To listen to our full audio interview with Rui click here.

With each passing month, as I deepen my own journey of living into maturity more intentionally, a question that insists on accompanying me is: what does the Waking Youth project want to become? And how do I want to show up as a creator?

Episode by episode, more clarity seems to be emerging, slowly yet confidently. In a social playground where attention is often scarce, as is nuance and patience, more than offering you decontextualized nuggets of knowledge that please our dopamine receptors instantaneously but might not stick, my hope is that each interview we craft at Waking Youth allows you to meet, as much as possible in one brief hour, the worldviews of our guests. My angle is the personal: how they became who they are, why and what for. And what might we take from their stories as substance to question, broaden, and refine our own journeys towards maturity.

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In line with this emerging clarity, this month’s conversation reels in the story of becoming of Rui Quinta, the co-founder of With Company⁠, a transformative design consultancy, and Toyno, a space experience design studio. As someone curious about both the potential and shadows of entrepreneurship, I was intrigued by Rui’s approach to his ventures, where he seems to marry a vitality and outgoingness typical of the entrepreneurial archetype with more quiet, thoughtful, and humble virtues.

There’s so much that stayed with me from our time together that I’m hesitating which insights and curiosities to share with you. Among them, comes to mind Rui’s precocious venture with his cousin selling pine nuts by the road not far from where he lived as a kid. Also, Rui’s reflection around the decision to close one of his businesses - Peixaria Centenária - the fish shop that stretched out in time and boldness the tradition of his family business, in part due to his concern for its impact on the environment, and, perhaps (he’s still deciding if this story is true), a desire to slow down.

Perhaps the most moving revelation of all was Rui’s timid and refreshing confession that maybe, if there’s something he’d like to tell his younger, twenty-year-old self, it would probably have something to do with using the heart as a mechanism of thinking when making decisions, whether in business or in life.

“I think I explored so many things. I had so much fun. I met so many incredible people. I took risks. And I think that in the end, it’s really interesting that in the middle of all these things, I found a criteria: using the heart as a mechanism of thinking. This is something I identify myself with as an entrepreneur - I have to relate to the things that I do. I cannot start a business for the sole reason of making money. I don’t know how to do that. I’m not an entrepreneur who knows how to do that. To be honest, I would still use my heart as a way of making decisions.”

Enjoy this one and, as usual, let me know what comes up for you in the comments section.

Warmly,
Carlota

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In this episode, we listen deeply to the story of Rui Quinta, a precocious pine nut seller who came of age as a self-proclaimed typefreak and graphic designer. In recent years, as he discovered the post-it-world of design thinking, Rui has transformed into a more systemic designer and conscious entrepreneur. He’s the co-founder of With Company⁠ and Toyno, a frequent lecturer at several universities, and the program director of ⁠Systems Thinking for Innovation⁠ at the Porto Business School.

Should we start our own business now or learn with others first? What does it mean to lead a business with consciousness? And how might the awareness of our inevitable mortality inspire us to participate more fully in the life-affirming story of our times? – are just some of the questions we sit with.

Listen on: Spotify | Apple | Youtube

Go Deeper

1. A suggestion from Rui - Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. A short book about how the awareness of our inevitable mortality, personal and collective, might liberate us to engage more fully in the life-affirming narrative of our times.

2. A voluntary highlight of With Company, one of the companies Rui co-founded, a transformative design consultancy engaging in projects ranging from land mapping to labor integration for refugee communities. In the last years, they’ve become, for me, a reference of what a more conscious approach to business can look like, in Portugal and beyond.

3. Also within the context of our interview, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World is an insightful and accessible summary of how capitalism came to be the dominant economic system, its flaws, and what more environmental and socially conscious alternatives might look like.

P.S. If you liked this post, please consider sharing it with someone you think might enjoy it. It’s the easiest way to support the Waking Youth project. 😌

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Should we start our own business now or learn with others first? What does it mean to lead a business with consciousness? And how might the awareness of our inevitable mortality inspire us to participate more fully in the life-affirming story of our times? – are just some of the questions we sit with.

Guest Bio: Rui is the co-founder of Toyno, a space experience design studio, and With Company, a transformative design consultancy that does a bunch of cool multidisciplinary projects in Portugal and beyond. In 2013, Rui co-founded Peixaria Centenária, a fish shop that artfully rewrote the narrative of his family business tradition for younger generations that is no longer in business. He’s also a frequent lecturer at several universities, and the program director of Systems Thinking for Innovation at the Porto Business School.

Credits:

• Creator & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you think would appreciate it. That's the easiest way to help the show :)

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠here⁠.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with ⁠⁠Emzingo⁠⁠.

Additional Links:

• Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the end of Civilization

In this episode, we converse with filmmaker Caveh Zahedi to listen deeply to his experience of living the questions above mentioned.

Caveh is a film director, actor and professor at the New School, in New Work. Some of his movies include In the Bathtub of the World and I Am a Sex Addict. More recently, he created ⁠The Show About the Show⁠, a meta-TV series in which each episode is about the making of the previous one, as well as the podcast Recording Myself And Everyone Around Me All Day for 365 Days Was Destroying All My Relationships So Now I'm Doing a Daily Audio Journal Instead.

Credits:

• Creator & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media here.

In this episode, we sat with Amanda Huits to explore the roots of her decision to venture into a humanitarian career, in part influenced by the experience she had when visiting her mom's original home in a favela in Brazil.

Amanda holds a bachelor's degree in Internal Relations and a master’s in Political Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Since 2020, she's been working in the Learning and Operations Team at GPPAC⁠, the world’s largest member-led network of civil society organizations working to prevent conflicts and build peace.

Credits:

• Creator & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠here⁠.

In this month's episode, we converse with Rebecca Seal, best-selling author of the book "Solo: How to Work Alone and Not Lose Your Mind" and host of the Solo Collective Podcast.

Rebecca is also the author of over ⁠a dozen cookbooks⁠, including "Lisbon: Recipes from the Heart of Portugal" and "Leon Happy One-Pot Cooking." As a freelance writer, she has written articles on food, drink, and lifestyle for numerous prestigious publications including The Guardian, TheObserver, The Financial Times, and National Geographic. Before venturing into solo work, Rebecca was a contributing editor for the Observer in London.

We invited Rebecca to learn more about her story of becoming. How does a grad in International Relations from the LSE and a post-grad in International Peace and Security from Kings College ends up pursuing a career in writing and journalism with a focus on food, drink, lifestyle, and working alone? Listen to find out :)

Themes:

• The roots of Rebecca's interest in writing and food;

• Rebecca's early academic and professional background;

• Rebecca's initiation into journalism;

• Rebecca's transition to freelance writing;

• Rebecca's advice across time to her younger self.

Credits:

• Creator & Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Carlota Guedes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⁠

• Music Audio Producer & Editor: ⁠Carlos Sierra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Subscribe to our newsletter and contribute to the Waking Youth Project ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on social media ⁠here⁠.