Grokkist Newsletter #83

Hey friends,

Welcome to 2026. It feels good to be back—stepping into a familiar rhythm, even as the world continues to remake itself in unpredictable ways.

We’re living through a season of creative destruction, where old structures crumble and new patterns are still taking shape. And when those winds blow through the worlds we’ve built—our roles, routines, ways of being—it can feel deeply personal.

If you’ve been holding parts of yourself back, this might be the year to unfold them. To lean into curiosity. To let the tucked-away parts stretch out into the light.

This might be the year for quiet audacity—for stepping beyond fear not in defiance, but with grace.

At Grokkist, we’re envisioning a quietly audacious year. One with polyrhythms and playful harmonies, as we deepen our ecosystem and welcome more voices into the chorus. There’s comfort in returning to the familiar, but also energy in remixing it.

To help support that unfolding, here are a few fresh touchstones we’ve put in place:

We now have a fresh page that brings together how learning happens at Grokkist—some you might recognise, some newly articulated, but together it captures the texture behind everything we do. It speaks to learning as an act of selfhood, and to community as curriculum.

I’ve also updated our events guide for the year ahead. If you’ve ever thought about hosting something for grokkists but weren’t sure where to start, this is for you. We want putting on an event to feel like a low-stakes rite of passage—something more people can feel invited into.

And over on Grokkist Press, we’re welcoming two new voices this week.

Rodney—who some of you will remember from his talk last year—now has a prose version of that story in After the Body Says No. It’s about what happens when survival strategies outlive their usefulness, and the body calls for a different kind of attention. It also sets the tone for a new bi-weekly column he’ll be offering on “living in the absurd.”

Meanwhile, Monish invites us into the breaking and reweaving of consciousness in a piece that holds the tension of rupture and renewal.

I’ve been reading Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach, and it’s been sitting with me in that way certain books do.

Palmer reminds us that good teaching can’t be reduced to tips, tricks, or tidy frameworks. It flows not from method, but from the identity and integrity of the teacher—the courage to bring your whole self into the room, even when it feels risky.

He speaks of the teacher’s heart as a loom where intellect, emotion, and spirit converge — a tapestry of shadows and gifts, doubts and longings, slowly woven over time.

That resonated. Not just for those of us who teach in a formal sense, but for anyone who’s trying to show up as a human being in relational spaces—holding room for ideas, emotions, emergence.

“In the grace of great things, we may meet, know and be known.”

What Palmer means here is that real learning happens not just in personal connection, but in shared devotion. When people gather around something they care about—a question, a craft, a practice—they are joined not just to each other, but to something larger.

It’s that joining that makes the space sacred.

At Grokkist, we’re not trying to be teachers in the traditional sense. But we are trying to be the kind of community where knowing and becoming happen in public. Where care and curiosity hold hands. Where learning is relational, contextual, and full of heart.

When we show up like that, we get to be part of the grace of great things.

So wherever you’re starting from, I’m wishing you the year you need—in whatever form it takes.

Kia kaha (stay strong), and let’s get to it.

With curiosity and care,
Danu

Fresh and Featured Pressings

The Breaking and Making of Consciousness

By Monish Khanderia (8 minute read)

As a door closes on what we once thought certain and settled, what new realities might our eyes open to?

Read the article ↗

After the Body Says No

By Dr Rodney King (12 min read)

What happens when survival skills give way to natural wisdom in an unnatural world. 

Read the article ↗

Upcoming Events

Featured Gatherings

🟢 Why We Stay Stuck (And What Philosophy Has to Do With It)

🗓️ Tue 27 Jan | 7pm–8.30pm Central European time (view in your timezone)
Facilitated by Jessica Böhme

The Emergence of the Institute for Practical EkoPhilosophy

Personally - as someone with an autoimmune disease that requires a very strict diet - I failed. Again and again. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I wanted to do it. And yet, I didn’t.

Professionally - as someone who cared deeply about animals and the more-than-human world - I lacked agency that seemed to make a difference. I watched us collectively march toward ecological collapse with the same bewildering inertia I experienced in my own life.

For a long time, I treated these two themes as separate. One was about my failing willpower. The other was about failing political systems. But eventually, they converged into what is today the Institute for Practical ekoPhilosophy (IPeP).

Come hear the story of how life became a lab, how love became method, and how all of this became a research institute working with organizations across Europe.

Event Details and RSVP ↗

Other Upcoming Gatherings

• 2 Feb | 🟢 Grokkist Writing Salon
• 3 Feb | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge [Timezone B]
• 10 Feb | 🟢 "Shoes-On" Studio – a space for finding your voice in public
• 15 Feb | 🟢 Coddiwomple Cafe: Estrangement
• 17 Feb | 🟣 Members Lab & Lounge [Timezone A]
• 19 Feb | 🟢 PhilosophyGym @ Grokkist

#1 - Thinking fast, slow, and super slow

Thinking fast, slow, and super slow

How mathematicians train their intuition

David BessisDavid Bessis

Daniel Kahneman’s theory of two cognitive systems—fast and intuitive vs. slow and rational—has shaped how we talk about bias and decision-making. But mathematician David Bessis gently rebels, inviting us to notice what’s missing: System 3, the inner bridge where intuition and logic actually learn to talk to each other. “When my intuition tells me A and my reason tells me B, I tell myself there’s something going on and I’m not ready to make the decision. That’s the moment to resort to what I call System 3.” It's a practice of re-educating our intuition through introspection, imagery, and slow-growing insight. It’s what grokkists do by nature: play at the edge of what we don’t yet know, until it starts to know us back.

#2 - Starling – a spirit's last birthday journey

In Starling (9 min), an ethereal star‑spirit journeys back to Istanbul for one final celebration: her birthday with her grieving family. Tender and imaginative, the animated short follows her through winding streets and unexpected detours, capturing a liminal moment between worlds in a reflection on what it means to be present with both sorrow and love.

#3 - Snail farms, shell companies, and mafia favours

The snail farmer of London, his mafia friends, and a £20m vendetta against the taxman

Terry Ball runs elaborate mollusc-based tax avoidance schemes that are costing London councils millions of pounds. Yet when London Centric tracks him down, an even stranger story emerges.

London CentricJim Waterson

A disgruntled 79-year-old tax evader is gaming UK business rate exemptions by breeding snails in vacant office blocks. His logic is that snails are molluscs, molluscs count as aquaculture, and farms don’t pay rates. But that’s just the start. There’s also a mafia connection: he claims to have hidden a Camorra hitman in rural Lancashire and employed an ex-con as his mollusc wrangler. Councils keep trying to shut him down. He just phoenixes the companies and starts again.

The old man is proudly committed to spending his remaining years on this earth finding innovative ways to get revenge on the “bastard” authorities who he feels screwed him over in the past: “I just do it for devilment. I do it just to get away with it.”

#4 - Documenting a megacity remade by speed

In his photographs of Chongqing, Ximeng Tu captures both a rapidly changing skyline and the emotional terrain of transformation. Grand infrastructure looms over street vendors and stray stairways. Green space yields to grey space. In the gaps, Tu finds people improvising daily life in the midst of structural overwhelm.

#5 - Learning to leave the shell

An anxious little octopus watches the colourful world from the safety of her shell. She wants to explore—but fear holds her back. It’s only through small moments of safety and spark that she finds the courage to step into the current. For those of us who hesitate to fully swim, the journey is often about learning to trust the colours (6 mins).

Grokkist is a living ecosystem — 🟢 free to enter, powered by members 🟣.

If you’d like to go deeper, you can join as a member, explore Signature Projects, or work with Danu.

Become a Grokkist Member ($99/yr or $27/qtr)

Parting thoughts...

"In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors." – William Blake

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?" – Vivek Murthy