For our first CTM Video Special (Watch on YouTube!) , I interview Györgyi and Ryan about “Governing Together,” arguing that well-intentioned policies and technologies often fail when they ignore lived experience and jump to solutions (“plunging in bias”), meeting targets while missing outcomes.

They trace their motivations through Hungary’s democratic backsliding and the shocks of Brexit and Trump, linking these to systemic failures such as new public management and extractive logics. Using a soil metaphor, they describe societies as living systems whose health depends on psychosocial “nutrients” (integrity, competence, benevolence, reciprocity, psychological safety) and relational capacity; trust is an emergent outcome, not a given.

They emphasize slowing down to design for micro–meso–macro change, highlight West Oakland’s “Owning Our Air” plan as relational governance in practice, discuss formalizing relationality through intentional convening and facilitation, and note the publication’s unexpectedly broad global resonance.

This was recorded in February 2024 at Publix Studios in Berlin