What if the family, as we know it today, was no longer the foundation of society?

In this episode of The Parallel Effect Podcast, we travel to a parallel world where the nuclear family has been transformed, replaced by expansive networks of communal care, shared resources and an entirely different economic structure.

Returning from this alternative reality, our Many Worlds Traveller, writer and organiser M.E. O’Brien, shares insights into a society where care is collectively organised, relationships and kinship take many forms, and the needs of children, older generations and entire communities are met through shared responsibility.

Exploring the concept of family abolition, we look at how the nuclear family became intertwined with capitalism, colonialism and racial inequality, and how this alternative world reveals so much about our own assumptions, as well as the possibilities of living differently.

Episode Credits:
Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: M.E. O'Brien
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Nicole Barakat has responded to this parallel world. To watch a documentary about her thinking and creative practice visit our project hub:
https://theparalleleffect.substack.com/p/a-world-without-the-nuclear-family

This episode takes us into a parallel world where prison abolition has been meaningfully achieved through the leadership, resistance, and vision of First Nations survivors and families.

Conversely, here in our world, the reality for Indigenous people in the colony called ‘Australia’, is one of profound and ongoing injustice. First Nations peoples are disproportionately impacted by the colonial criminal justice system and the ongoing crisis of Aboriginal Deaths in Custody — in which preventable deaths persist due to institutional failure – highlights not just the systemic racism and neglect at play, but the deep lack of culturally appropriate approaches.

There is a long and painful history of mistrust between Indigenous communities and law enforcement, and an immense history of emotional, intellectual, and political labour carried by First Nations families who have long fought to expose the structures of state violence, the legal fictions underpinning our colonial system’s understanding of harm, and institutional betrayal.

In this parallel world, things are different. Justice is no longer defined by the colonial frameworks we know today.

Our Many Worlds Traveller is Dr Latoya Aroha Rule whose work responds to issues of state violence, First Nations justice, and family-led legislative reform.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: Dr Latoya Aroha Rule
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Miream Salameh has created a process based work in response to this parallel world. To engage with this and to watch a documentary about her thinking and creative practice visit:
https://theparalleleffect.substack.com/p/a-world-beyond-prisons

In this episode of The Parallel Effect Podcast, embodiment social designer, Camille Sapara Barton, takes us to a world where the demands of productivity, economic growth and capital accumulation no longer organise society. Instead, life is structured around a different set of priorities, with daily rituals and practices supporting us to sense into ourselves, each other, other beings, the land, ecosystems we inhabit and the cosmos.

Drawing on somatic practices rooted in Indigenous traditions and methodologies, this parallel world understands the body not simply as something to manage aesthetically or optimise for health, but as a site of knowledge, connection and relational awareness.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: Camille Sapara Barton
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Lux Eterna has created a video-work in response to this parallel world. To engage with this and to watch a documentary about her thinking and creative practice visit: https://theparalleleffect.substack.com/p/post-capitalist-world-of-relational-depth

In this episode of The Parallel Effect, we travel to a parallel world where the scientific evidence linking food, climate and planetary health has driven a profound transformation of the global food system.

In order to stay within proposed safe limits for greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use, water pollution and biodiversity loss, plant-rich diets have become the norm, agriculture has been radically reshaped, and governments, farmers, scientists and consumers work together to keep food production within the boundaries of a liveable Earth.

Dr. Kathleen Kevany – an expert in sustainable agriculture and global food systems – takes us inside this parallel world, exploring what becomes possible when we act on science and redesign food systems around the ecological capacity of the planet rather than asking the planet to accommodate the systems we already have.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: Kathleen Kevany
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Sam Wallman has responded to this parallel world. To watch a documentary about their thinking and creative practice, and to read the scientific research from our realm about global food systems, visit https://theparalleleffect.substack.com/p/a-world-with-sustainable-food-systems

*And with that, we reach the end of the first half of the season.
The Parallel Effect Podcast will be back on Friday, October 9, for more adventures through the wardrobe.

What if technology had evolved to serve people and communities, rather than profit and power? Many Worlds Traveller, Dr Alex Hanna, takes us into a parallel world where technology is locally governed, data is collectively stewarded, and AI is developed within ecological limits.

Alex, who is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, imagines what it would take to build technologies that genuinely support human and planetary flourishing and what would need to change in our world for that to become possible.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: Alex Hanna
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Warren Armstrong has responded to this parallel world. To see what they've created and to watch a short documentary about their thinking and creative practice, visit https://theparalleleffect.substack.com/p/world-where-tech-answers-to-community-not-capital

In this episode, psychologist and writer, MJ Barker, takes us into a parallel world without heteronormativity. It's a world where diverse forms of sexuality, intimacy, relationships and family are understood as equally valid, and where consent and ethical relating underpin how people live together.

Along the way, MJ explores what this shift might mean for gender, parenting, education, kinship and our relationship with ourselves, asking what becomes possible when we move beyond the hierarchies of “normal” and “abnormal”.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: MJ Barker
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Audax Mrozik Gawler has responded to this parallel world. To see what they've created and to watch a short documentary about their thinking and creative practice, visit TheParallelEffect.Substack.com

In this episode, rather than travelling to another universe, we’re exploring a parallel world that exists right here as a legal principle. Distinguished International Law scholar and human rights advocate, Richard Falk, joins us to examine the structural forces that have prevented the promise of International Humanitarian Law from ever being realised. It's an invitation to imagine what might become possible when no one stands above the law and when justice is no longer constrained by power.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: Richard Falk
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, Safdar Ahmed, has responded to this parallel world. To see what they've created and to watch a short documentary about his thinking and creative practice, visit TheParallelEffect.Substack.com

In this episode, we’re entering a parallel world where ableist frameworks of care, productivity and temporality are no longer embedded within the systems that shape our lives. Here, access and inclusion are not afterthoughts, nor are they reduced to compliance exercises or boxes to tick. Instead, disabled people’s knowledge, lived experience and leadership are central to how this world is shaped – influencing education, technology, governance, and the ways communities understand life, interdependence and human worth.

So how did this world come to be, and what might it reveal about the one we inhabit today? Our Many Worlds Traveller is blind, human rights lawyer, and disability rights advocate, Elham Youssefian.

Episode Credits:

Producer/Presenter/Editor: Daz Chandler
Many Worlds Traveller: Elham Youssefian
Original Music/Soundmix: Edwin Montgomery
Graphic Design: Ahmed Salama

The artist, fashion designer and researcher, Rachel Shugg, has responded to this parallel world. To check out what she has to say and to explore further episode resources, be sure to visit and subscribe to TheParallelEffect.substack.com