Biologist, presenter and Triodos customer, Gillian Burke, explores the inexhaustible number of themes of positive change in her podcast ‘If I Ruled the World’.

Each guest is as diverse as they are engaging, and discuss a variety of topics from social justice and environmental sustainability to mental health and community empowerment.

These thinkers, activists, and innovators are asked by Gillian to imagine what they would do if they had the power to change the world. Gillian shares with us that most of the time, her guests respond by sharing that they would never want to have that much power. However, as she delves deeper, ideas and solutions on how they could shape the world for the better appear.

As a proud sponsor of the podcast, we spoke to Gillian to find out what she’s learned from hosting ‘If I Ruled the World’, including the impact it has had on her own personal journey and mindset.

Did you learn about any barriers to positive change that really surprised you?

The biggest surprise is that there seems to be a theme that has emerged way quicker than I thought it would. My feeling going into the podcast was ‘this isn’t working. Something has to change’, and I thought it would be really complicated. What surprised me is that I actually really wasn’t too far off the mark.

There’s surprise in almost every episode as each guest is coming at it from such different perspectives and life experience. For example, Juha Kahila is a Finnish housing activist and campaigner. What really surprised me was the answer to my question of ‘how do we end homelessness?’. He said it’s simple. ‘We give people homes’.

I was taken a back at how surprisingly easy the answer was. I could already feel the kind of resistance that come up in me, and in probably a lot of people, about whether that is fair to people who work really hard to pay their rent. But when he really broke it down it made a lot of sense and I could see the wider benefit to society.

There’s obviously a lot of organisation and consideration involved, but the surprise is that sometimes the solution is actually ridiculously simple. So simple that you could miss it.

What is one of the most impactful lessons you've learnt about systemic change?

The conversation with food, justice, social and racial justice campaigner Leah Penniman of SoulFire Farm really challenged my world view the most. I thought I understood the problems and the nature of the racial justice and food justice fight, but talking to Leah, there were so many penny-dropping moments.

I think the thing that really hit was when we got to the question about what Leah would do if she ruled the world. Her answer was about just how invisible indigenous people are around the world. She gave one really practical example - that indigenous people are not even on the map.

This revelation led me down a rabbit hole of researching organisations and campaigners that are working to decolonise the atlas and world map. I couldn’t believe how indoctrinated I had been into seeing the world a certain way.

There's 370,000,000 indigenous people out of 8 billion people, and those 370,000,000 are in the territories that hold 80% of the world's biodiversity.

When you put indigenous nations on the map and actually mark out their territories, it changes the way the world looks. These are the people that are literally looking after the ark and they don’t even have a seat at the table.

There was a paradigm shift in my head when we started talking about this, and Leah took this blue sky utopian wish for the world to recognise indigenous states, and give indigenous nations voting rights, and then explained that we actually have the infrastructure to do that right now in the shape of the UN General Assembly.

Is there an episode that you are particularly proud of?

I’m really proud of the episode with Grenfell United. It’s a powerful, tough listen, but super important.

I felt very honoured that they agreed to do it and could give space to the survivors and campaigners to tell their story. Unfortunately, they're having to tell it again and again because they haven't had justice.

It's a story that could easily fade from people's minds and there's still so many surprising elements to the story that are unknown. I'm really proud of that episode.

Can you share a particular story or moment from your podcast that left you feeling especially hopeful?

I really hope that all the episodes leave people feeling hopeful.

The episode with Polly Smythe, a correspondent for Novara Media, and also the episode with Luke from Bite Back 2030 (who was only 17 when we recorded), left me genuinely thinking that there are some amazing things going on with the new generation of activists.

People are waking up to these issues at such a young age and they are demanding change.

How do you see the podcast evolving?

I think it’s clear that I don’t think this podcast is going to solve all the world’s problems, right? What I hope is that it loosens up people’s thinking.

We have had a lot of peace and love on the podcast, which is very ‘me’. That is my vibe. But it’s a major blind spot to not look at the realities.

For example, there’s a lot of war and conflict in the world, which looks like it’s only getting worse. So we have got a guest lined up who is a military expert and he’s definitely coming at it from a very different tone to our previous guests. He is not someone who likes war, but he’s not anti-war. He believes it should be the last resort.

While not fully confirmed yet, it’s very much in the pipeline and I think he's going to be a really interesting guest. It’s going to be a challenging listen for some people who really don't like war, and that includes me!

What advice would you give to listeners who are inspired by the podcast and may want to contribute to positive change within their own communities?

I came to the UK as an adult, so I've never had a need to be seen as British because I don't see myself as British. I see myself as quite an international person. I'm Kenyan. I'm a Creole. And I live in Cornwall.

I've lived in this country as a comfortable outsider for 30 years now, and I’ve just never seen the racist mob violence that we recently witnessed in this country before. It really, really, really upsets me.

What I would say is that online activism and social media can be really great tools, but I think they also can be really, really harmful. It’s important to recognise that our brains are not wired to deal with all the work it takes to absorb and process it all. 

Right now, I think the most radical thing we can do, without putting your head in the sand, is to put the phone down, log off social media and go and do things in your community.

There will be groups of people who are not all going to get along, who are not all going to agree for one reason or another, but we all need to pull together for a purpose. Don’t lose faith in the fact that there are good people out there.

I really think that real human to human connection is possibly the one thing that we could all do more of, myself included.