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Healing after Trauma, UFOs and Woke Wakes with Emergency Planner, Lucy Easthope - S3E6

9 June 2023

From the darkest of times shine the brightest of lights - truly putting the ‘hope’ in

Hope & Anchor, Lucy Easthope is an Author, Emergency Planner, and this week’s amazing guest on the podcast!

She’s advised on nearly every major disaster in the last 20 years, and she thinks beyond the unthinkable to bring healing after chaos.

Join us for an uplifting outlook on disaster, the effect of art on dementia, Phillip Schofield starting a conversation on workplace culture, the ‘Death Cafe’ movement, and so much more!

This episode covers:

How Hillsborough inspired Lucy to help those in need
Living with a job centred around disaster
The complicated role of rituals & religion in disaster response
Whether we’re truly prepared for aliens or zombie
How absorbing art can help those with dementia

Episode highlights

“The big turning point for me was the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster. I was very certain, very young, of two things. These terrible things would happen and people needed proper help. Then the second thing that I was absolutely determined and livid about was that sometimes the state would blame the communities themselves. So this very passionate, slightly intense little activist was born. ” - 6:40 - Lucy Eastpope

“I think a lot of colleagues simply do not have a lens on the world that is shared by a lot of fellow humans. There’s a lot of privilege in the corridors of power.” - 11:55 - Lucy Eastpope

“One of the hardest things to live with is being ignored at the time, and being proved right. There’s no sweetness in that. You don’t get to go around the room, high-fiving and saying ‘Remember when I told you that was gonna happen’ because the outcomes are so desperately awful.” - 13:50 - Lucy Eastpope

“We want concepts, rites and rituals in disaster work; We borrow bits of religion, but don’t give them the respect they deserve.” - 21:15 - Lucy Eastpope

“We’ll never know whether there really was a risk that the world would fall apart as the world tipped over from 1999 to 2000. We did loads of work to prepare for it, so we’ll never know if it was the work or it was never really a risk.” - 24:50 - Lucy Eastpope

“If you’ve been through it yourself, there’s a culture that the newbies should go through it too. ‘Whatever was done to you as a PhD student, once you become a professor, you should do that to your PhD students’. Bullying actually is a form of training, which a lot of professions have really struggled to get rid of.” - 32:20 - Lucy Eastpope

“We get asked about plans for alien invasions and zombies. The thing that worries me with any new threat is how we communicate if you’ve lost people’s trust.” - 39:55 - Lucy Eastpope