Kia ora! I’m Loo Connor and this is my podcast/ blog/ newsletter/ personal journey exploring the invisible economic forces that shape our lives and environment. I wrapped up my formal work on the Good Energy Project in 2025 so I’m not currently publishing, but I’m delighted to share the full catalogue of writing and inspiring conversations here. This project has been an incredible journey to find and connect with people across Aotearoa who want to change our economic system to care for our planet and people. It’s opened my mind and revealed new pathways and possibilities. I hope you can enjoy the journey too. You can still subscribe to receive occasional update or news to let you know how I’m going as I work on the writing project that emerged from this project.
An epic quest to wean off the industrial mother pig!
In October I embarked on a mission to understand how our economic system shapes our lives and depletes the planet.
It struck me that living in our modern society is a bit like suckling an enormous industrial pig. To get the energy, food and shelter we need to survive, we have to suckle at the teats of massive industrial entities like supermarkets, banks and oil companies. Even though we want to put our energy into important things like tackling climate change and healing the wounds of colonisation, we need our money-milk to survive!
Apologies for this grotesque metaphor! It helps to convey our very real dependency on an industrial economic system that fundamentally depletes our communities and environment. To wean ourselves off the industrial mother pig we need to find alternative sources of sustenance and energy. This project is a quest to find these alternatives. There are pockets of energy hiding everywhere and there are people who know how to tap into them! I want to find and connect these people and help to build the movement for change.
It seems to me that in our dependence on money and large industrial systems we’ve lost our fundamental ability to work together and to sustain ourselves from the earth. That feels scary! But I do have hope that by understanding the forces we’re up against and by connecting more with each other we can start to detach ourselves from the teats of the industrial mother pig and reshape the way energy and resources flow.
Through the Good Energy Project I’ve been on a mission to find and connect people who have figured out how to free energy for things that matter. In 2023 I started my podcast as a way of sharing these meetings. Since then I’ve discovered that I love the practice of interviewing - sitting in a space of curiosity with people and discovering together.
My delight is to hold space for deep creative conversation that breaks through polarised thinking and discovers new possibilities for shifting the economic and cosmological foundations of our society.
This search feels both personal and political. I want to understand economics and politics. But I also want to look inside to understand the mental structures and beliefs that deplete my energy and reinforce a feeling of scarcity. I don’t think you can separate the personal from the political.
This work is rooted in Aotearoa New Zealand and in our efforts to heal the wounds of colonisation. I’m inspired by the cosmology of Ranginui and Papatūānuku and hopeful for what we can achieve if we embrace Te Tiriti o Waitangi as our foundation and guide. I know we are up against a lot but I do believe healing and change is possible.
I get the sense there’s a big appetite for these stories. Aotearoa is unique in being a colonised country with a treaty to help us grapple with our history and heal our relationships. I hope these stories of the courageous mahi being done by Māori and other grassroots communities can travel far as part of the international network of support and solidarity.
How the Good Energy Project Began
In October 2022 I was employed for a year by a small charitable trust to explore and communicate the connections between our economic system and climate change. I called my project “The Good Energy Project” after realising that energy is the foundation of all economies.
At the smallest scale I wanted to play with the energy equation of my own life, to figure out how to direct less of my energy towards money and more to the things I really care about - like honouring wild places, nurturing relationships and healing the wounds of colonisation.
It wasn’t long before I realised that our economic system, and in particular its focus on constant growth, is fundamentally damaging both our environment and communities. I spent my first year getting my head around how these economic forces work and talking to some inspiring people about how to create better, more caring systems.
In October 2023 I was very excited to have my contract extended for another year. I decided to focus on the economics of home and kāinga, inspired by feminist economist Marilyn Wearing, Māori academic Paul Tapsell and my own longing to find a home. I learnt how, over the past few hundred years, economic forces have separated people from their homes and ancestral lands and created poverty in the world and people’s souls. I had some beautiful conversations about how we need to reinstate the mana and mauri of our homes and kāinga to face environmental and social crises.
A beautiful surprise was that this exploration helped me to find my own home. I moved from Pōneke up the coast to Paekākāriki where I am now digging my feet into the soil and getting to know the wonderful colourful community of people, plants and animals here.
My formal work on the Good Energy Project finished in 2025. But it has spawned an exciting writing project, which I’m now brewing in relative secrecy in the hope of having it ready to share with you in 2027.
The Good Energy Project is also finding expression in my work with Toru Education, which I discovered through local Paekākāriki legend Doris Zuur. We are working to build a hub to support, connect and amplify local regenerative initiatives in the Wellington region.
What you’ll get from The Good Energy Project?
My hope is to offer an epic life-changing journey of discovery! Come with me as I meet inspiring people who can help us figure out what’s got us trapped and how we get free!
I will provide you with:
A catalogue of interviews with inspiring people
Illuminating revelations of the invisible forces and entities that suck our energy.
New pathways and possibilities to reclaim energy and abundance
The alchemy of conversation that breaks through polarised arguments and discovers completely fresh ideas and perspectives.
A science communicator’s view of economics - I’m no expert in economics (my background is physics) but I can explain complex stuff in simple ways.
Excitement! This is an epic journey of discovery - it’s a matter of life and death - we need to find solutions to save ourselves!
Inspiration and encouragement to shift your life into greater alignment with what you really care about.
If this sounds appealing, I would be absolutely delighted to have your company.
Who is Loo Connor anyway!?
Ngā mihi nui ki a koe
Ki te taha o toku pāpā, nō Ingarangi, nō Aerāni, nō Nōwei, nō Tiamani oku tupuna
Ki te taha o toku māmā, nō Repanona, nō Ingarangi, nō Tairāwhiti oku tupuna.
Ko Hikurangi te maunga oku tupuna Māori
Ko Horouta te waka
Ko Ngati Porou te iwi
No Whanganui a Tara ahau
Ko Paekākāriki toku kāinga inaianei
My full name is Elizabeth Joan Connor. Loo for short. I’m a queer science communicator, artist and explorer. I was born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand. I’ve just moved up to the beautiful seaside village of Paekākāriki. My ancestors hail from England, Ireland, Norway, Germany, Lebanon and Tairāwhiti, the East Cape of Aotearoa. The mountain of my tūpuna is Hikurangi, the waka is Horouta. My iwi is Ngāti Porou.
But since my great grandmother moved to the Auckland in the late 19th Century our connections with our Māori whānau began to fade. I grew up in a Pākehā world. There was no Māori taught at my Anglican girls school in the 1990s. It’s part of my journey to reconnect and navigate my sense of identity and belonging from a place of estrangement to meaningful connection.
Although my passion was for art and creativity, I chose to study Physics and Maths at university (I wanted to start a renaissance that reconnected science and the arts!) I struggled with the specialisation and dryness of physics, so luckily I discovered science communication and storytelling. I can thank Sir Paul Callaghan, the inspiring New Zealand physicist and leader for that. He was my mentor and gave me a job travelling around the country meeting scientists and writing their stories. With storytelling I found a pathway back to the magic. I loved it!
Sir Paul supported me to win a scholarship to do my Masters in Science Communication at Imperial College in London. That experience exploded my mind and perspective. I learnt that science is only one way of viewing the world and started to explore many others.
When I returned home I continued to work with Sir Paul. Some of my proudest work was helping him to establish and articulate his vision for a collaborative science sector in Aotearoa. He also helped me to win the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science Communication in 2009, which enabled me to explore and then set up my consultancy, The KinShip.
I’ve spent my career working with scientists and technical specialists, helping them communicate their complex knowledge so it’s easy to understand and useful to everyone else. I’ve worked with quantum physicists, nanotechnologists and climate scientists encouraging them to put the people back into the science.
In science there’s a tendency to obscure topics with complex jargon. It makes experts appear superior and shuts others out. The same thing happens in economics. I don’t like that! It makes it seem like the ‘laws of economics’ are fixed and unquestionable. But they’re not! I’m passionate about demystifying topics to give people the power to question and engage.
I was brought up in a family of philosophers and am fascinated by how ideas shape the world we live in. I’ve always felt that something’s not quite right in the world (hence my dream of starting a renaissance). At first I thought I’d find the answers in science. It’s only recently I’ve realised the powerful ideas shaping our world are contained in our economic systems. Neoliberalism or (Rogernomics) have shaped my entire experience life! This epiphany has affirmed and rekindled my old renaissance dream. It seems that more than ever we need a refresh of the ideas at the foundation of society.
So I’m happy to accept the role of dreamer and to make a space for others to share their dreams.
You can watch my TED talk here if you like. It’s very old now and I don’t agree with my outfit but I think the words are still fine 🙂:
You can also watch my keynote talk at the Museums Aotearoa conference 2018:
Different ways to listen to the podcast
