On the 17th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast I am joined by Bayo Akomolafe, who is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, professor, public intellectual, essayist, and author.
Bayo is the Founder of The Emergence Network, he currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, and the University of Vermont, and was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of the University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany.
In this episode, Bayo shares with us his journey of moving beyond the confines of final statements, final destinations, and boundaries, to an ongoing emergence, or flow. This conversation delves into the abstract, the philosophical, and the practical, as well as Bayo’s personal experiences of what his son with Autism is teaching him about wisdom.
We discuss the importance of cultivating bewilderment, wonder and inquiry, and disrupting the logic of continuity, for new ideas and solutions to emerge - to break the cycle of problems and solutions feeding each other. This episode will challenge your thinking and perhaps inspire you to new ways of problem solving and understanding, while it may also require you to listen with more than your ears and your mind.
Subscribe for weekly episodes, every Tuesday, and check out my YouTube channel (link below) for daily clips and reflections.
Running Order:
01:44 Podcast begins
02:42 Is there pain in Heaven?
05:12 Is there another colour?
08:02 A problem with a "perfect" city
12:44 Creating the space for observing the emergent
17:13 The role of the monster / questioning stability
21:36 Holding fixed views when everything is in flux
23:29 There isn’t an originary point to return to
31:44 His son becomes his teacher and coach
40:14 Shifting perspectives to navigate the world
42:59 Communicating from a different dimension of thought
49:17 What’s more than a solution?
55:04 What’s required beyond information?
59:09 What is a good life for Bayo?
For further content and information check out the following:
- For the podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos
- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/
- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/
- Bayo's Website: https://www.emergencenetwork.org/
- Bayo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bayoakomolafe/
What is What is a Good Life??
This isn’t a podcast about fixing you. It’s about living life more fully.
What Is a Good Life? is a long-form conversation project exploring how people actually live, feel, and make meaning of their lives.
Over the past four years, I’ve sat with more than 300 people — artists, parents, executives, wanderers, therapists, and strangers — and invited them into a simple but profound inquiry: What is a good life for you?
These conversations aren’t about advice, formulas, or self-improvement. They explore presence, paradox, uncertainty, and the moments that quietly shape a life — love and loss, trust and fear, clarity and not knowing. It’s an invitations to slow down, to listen deeply, and to bring you into conversation with your own life.
New episodes weekly.