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Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, researcher, and leading voice in the emerging field of metamodern spirituality. He serves as Director of Research at the  Institute of Applied Metatheory, where he studies the evolution of worldviews, meaning-making systems, and cultural development. He holds a Master’s degree in Religion and the Arts from Yale University and has been deeply influenced by Integral Theory and the work of Ken Wilber.

Brendan is the author of Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics, the multi-volume Evolution of Meaning series, and Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World. His work explores the meaning crisis, the reconstruction of spirituality after postmodernism, and the emergence of new cultural and spiritual frameworks capable of integrating science, complexity, and transcendence.

He is also founder of the  Sky Meadow Institute in Vermont, host of the Metamodern Spirituality podcast, and a prominent contributor to contemporary discussions on metamodernism, cultural evolution, and the future of meaning in a rapidly changing world.

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Falling in Love with the Future

What can twenty years of the Transition movement teach us about creating a different future from the ground up? Rob Hopkins and I explore community-led change, local economies and why rebuilding our collective imagination may be one of the most important steps towards a Third Attractor.

68 min · 28 Sep 2026 · 121 views

Leadership and Complexity

How do we stay open and creative when complexity makes us want to contract into certainty and simple answers? We explore leadership, human development, relationships, AI and why creating a different future requires us to grow our capacity to meet the unknown.

80 min · 22 Sep 2026 · 83 views

Radical Wholeness

Is an integral approach the Third Attractor? We explore why it has to be taught from the top down and the bottom up, how waking up includes becoming, where AI fits, and five kinds of wholeness a person can practice.

60 min · 19 Sep 2026 · 2.6K views

Rationality needs Wisdom

How can effective altruism and inner work meet? We talk about connecting islands of coherence, holding paradoxes without choosing sides, hopes and fears around AI, and why giving even 1% of your income can matter.

83 min · 17 Sep 2026 · 108 views