Lifeworlds

What if one of the most powerful tools for saving the Amazon rain-forest was a bee most people have never heard of?Enter the stingless bee – a 65 million year old resident of Earth that produces honeys teeming with medicinal molecules and has co-evolved with indigenous Amazonian communities across millennia. Today, these bees are at the keystone species at the heart of a pioneering conservation movement spanning science, law, economics and Indigenous rights: one that recently secured the world's first legal recognition of the rights of an insect.Dr. Rosa Vásquez Espinoza is the National Geographic Explorer and conservation scientist whose NGO Amazon Research Internacional is spearheading these initiatives. In this episode we explore the life world of the bees themselves, the pioneering science and bio-economies emerging around their extraordinary honey, the deep co-evolutionary bond between stingless bees and Amazonian communities, and how bridging indigenous and Western knowledge is proving essential for the forest, for the communities who steward the bees and the legal frameworks being built to protect them.Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/stinglessbeesamazonfutureLinks:Amazon Research International: Main SiteDr Rosa Vasquez EspinosaBook: The Spirit of the RainforestYoutube: STINGLESS BEES AND THE BIODIVERSITY OF OUR AMAZONIn Peru, a Mission to Save the Stingless BeeNat Geo: Stingless bees make ‘miracle liquid.’Guardian: Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world firstLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode explores a simple but urgent question: is our education system still fit for the world we’re entering? Climate disruption, AI, and uncertainty demand new forms of education fit for complexity and change.A rich lineage of alternative and experimental education has been evolving for decades, seeking to make learning more holistic, place-based, creative, and ecologically grounded. The focus of today’s conversation is one of those institutions: Black Mountains College in Wales. BMC is building a university model explicitly designed for a warming world, where nature is often the classroom and curriculum blends ecology and climate science with the arts, systems thinking, and community-rooted practice.I’m joined by its co-founder and CEO, Ben Rawlence, award-winning writer and former human rights researcher, to explore:The historicity of Western educational systemsWhat the role of a university should be in societyBlack Mountains College as model of the future of education The role of ecological imaginationYouth, eco anxiety and the challenges of parenting in today’s planetary momentEpisode Website Links:Black Mountains CollegeThink Like a Forest by Ben RawlenceGuardian: ‘We create changemakers’: the new UK college dedicated to climate crisisBMC and ecological imagination by Joseph Rowntree FoundationList of alternative schools and earth centered curriculum centersThe Solutions are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution from BelowBritt Wray on Climate GriefFuture CouncilRe-imagining education conference Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we explore the role of theatre and empathy in transforming worldviews. Dr. Dylan McGarry is one of the founders of Empatheatre, a South African theatre-making company and methodology that turns research and storytelling into living social sculpture. Their plays create what they call amphitheatres for empathy - spaces where art, ritual, and dialogue help people listen across difference, from mining conflicts to ocean governance to human-wildlife coexistence.Empatheatre’s productions have brought together communities, policymakers, and activists that rarely meet, showing how imagination can transform civic life. The process of creating the plays generates profound potentials for restorative justice. As Dylan says, empathy is not about agreement, but about creating a vessel strong enough to hold our differences while keeping us in relation.We will cover:Empathy as a creative actTheatre and storytelling as Trojan horses that open conversations that traditional politics often can’tHow to design spaces that allow lifeworlds to touch and the practices that help us shift into another’s perspectiveHow empathy, when practiced collectively, becomes a form of governance: a new infrastructure for democracy and careEpisode websiteLinks:Share your input for the whale productionEmpatheatreDylan’s PHD5min Empatheatre docIndlela Yokuphila: The Soul's Journey (ZULU) film & the radio play used in the court caseLalela Ulwandle TrailerUmkhosi Wenala doc about Zulu musical on indigenous traditions & animist relationshipsSteiner’s 12 sensesMOTHProject CETIKaren BakkerUndrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine MammalsOne Ocean Hubdylanmcgarry.orgInstagram: @dylan_mcgarryPhoto Credit: Casey Pratt. It captures a significant moment in a collaborative theatre-making & storytelling project titled "Umkhosi Wenala" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Almost 40% of Earth’s land is degraded, meaning that the natural cycles that sustain biodiversity, water, food, and livelihoods are breaking down. This degradation is an ecological crisis, and, it also lies at the root of massive social breakdown, displacement, and conflict. And it’s accelerating.In this episode, I speak with Dutch ecologist and entrepreneur Willem Ferwerda, founder of Commonland, one of the leading global initiatives tackling land degradation via large-scale holistic landscape restoration. Their work spans over 20 countries, with projects restoring millions of hectares from South Africa to Spain, Australia to the Netherlands. We get into their unique 4 Returns Framework - a powerful, intuitive model that integrates ecological, social, financial, and inspirational/spiritual returns.We talk about:Communities building long-term visions together across sectorsThe importance of meeting different audiences where they areThe role of storytelling, spirituality, and local leadershipHow restoring land helps restore meaning and purposeAnd how, ultimately, all this work is about regenerating lifeEpisode Website LinkShow links:The 4 Returns Framework in Practice4 Returns Framework Publication4 Returns Framework for Landscape Restoration4 Returns Diagnostic ToolThe Meaning of Laudato Si for a Landscape EthicTowards financing large-scale holistic landscape restoration in EuropeThe Trillion-Dollar Promise Of A Landscape Restoration Industry, ForbesWe must tackle global risks in an integrated way – here’s howHow the Ecosystem Approach supports “Cooperation in a Fragmented World"Albania landscape projectLook out for meditations, poems and readings in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie KiddPhoto Credit: Commonland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we’re joined by artist, musician and communal grief ritual facilitator Alexandra “ahlay” Blakey to speak about the cultural forgetting of communal mourning, the sacred role of professional mourners, and the re-emergence of grief ceremonies as necessary spaces of remembrance, healing and repair.Ahlay brings her experience weaving song, body, and ritual into collective spaces where grief is given breath and movement, and we explore the history of grief practices across cultures, the political power of public mourning, and how grief can soften the heart and stitch community back together. We explore what to expect in a communal grief ceremony, and ahlay shares the story behind her 200-voice album WAILS: Songs for Grief, inspired by whales, ancestral sorrow, and Francis Weller’s work. Within the episode are woven tracks of her haunting songs, so tune up your headphones, and sink in.Episode Website LinkShow Links:Healing at the Roots: ahlay’s websiteSong: Carry this AllThe Sacred Role of Eastern European Professional MournersSobonfu SomeWAILS: Songs For GriefOne Body Song Circle LiveFrancis WellerBook: Dangerous VoicesBook: Caliban and the WitchMartin PrechtelMyth of Lindworm: Martin ShawBandcampYoutube ChannelSpotifySoundcloudInstagramLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie KiddPhoto Credit: Cover image (Earth Altering) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we journey into the vibrational worlds of sound, ancestry, and deep listening with Whaia, a Ngāti Kahungunu woman of Māori descent and First Nations sonic weaver and multi-instrumentalist.Raised between the salt of the Pacific and the red dust of the Australian desert, Whaia’s voice carries ancient songlines, blending traditional Māori instruments, crystalline singing bowls, and her original mother tongue, the language of Te Rā, the Sun. We explore her work singing with whales, reclaiming cultural instruments once left silent in museums, and remembering the sacred oceanic highways navigated by her Polynesian ancestors, guided by the stars and whale ancestors.This is a conversation about song as medicine, the voice as ceremony, and reclaiming lineage through sound. We ask: what might the whales be singing to us now? What frequencies are we called to remember in order to heal ourselves and our waters?Stay on after the episode wraps to hear a special feature from Whaia’s debut album WHAIA & WATER — the first of a twelve-part series known as her Sacred Sonic Sessions.Episode Website LinkShow Links:Whaia websiteInstagramWhaia Water Album DownloadWisdom Keepers DelegationOceanic GlobalAustralian SonglinesThe PleiadesMasaru Emoto: Messages in WaterLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie KiddPhoto of Whaia: Chanel Baran Photo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where does your body end and the Earth begin? In this episode, we explore the real and poetic parallels between human health and planetary health, and how nature’s language moves in our bodies. Joining me is Dr. Mackenzie Hall, a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Functional Medicine, who helps us trace the Earth’s vital systems through the lens of humans as ecological systems.We ask:How could one imagine the Earth’s vital organs as reflected in human anatomy?How does the Earth balance and health and detoxify, and how might this mirror how we work with our own bodies? How does the body's energetic system hold, manage and deal with pathology? How do we listen for the Earth’s pulse?How could this affect how we work as earth protectors and regenerators? This brings up a profound point: if we are to ensure the Earth’s aliveness, we have to feel it as our own body. And, if we can sense the Earth’s rhythms as our own, can we also become its white blood cells, human agents of healing embracing and embodying its circulatory wildness?Episode Website Link:  https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/theecologyofhealthShow Links:Aaro WellnessThe Web that has no Weaver"Understanding Chronic Illness"Alexa’s Article: Our Planet’s BloodEarth’s Frequencies: Schumann ResonancesYellow Emperor's Classic (Classical text upon which all Chinese Medicine is based)Biocubes.net: Infographic on living and human biomass on earthMeditation: The Cosmos in Your FoodMusic: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I share some reflections on Season 2, before diving into our first listener-guided Q&A! You’ll be hearing from fellow listeners who enquired on topics like: Earth-centered governance De-extinction Alternative economies Language and stories about nature Which lifeworld I’d inhabit Green tech and individual agencyWhat is the purpose of humans?Thank you to everyone who sent in these thought-provoking questions.Episode WebsiteLifeworlds resource pageFaith in NatureEarth Law CenterZoopsTreaty of Finsbury ParkAlexa's When We Carved SpiralsIan McGilchristColossalBritt WrayVenemous LumpsuckerMultitudes FoundationPlanetary BoundariesRegeneration.orgDrawdownFlock TogetherGood NatureForest BathingLast Child AliveRegeneratorsBio LeadershipCapital InstituteDanielle Rees: dannivrees@gmail.comSmall GiantsBerksharesKenya Sarafu CreditGrassroot Economics Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is my take on ancient and intuitive sensory experience that taps into the innate intelligence of the human body, a blend of body compass, Zen Beginner's Mind, a shamanic medicine walk and Goethean science. The practice asks you to find a place in the natural landscape where you could walk undisturbed for some time, and have an encounter with an element of nature. A true act of lifeworld-ing! I guide you through a short introduction and the instructions. Attached on the website page is a link to the full instructions in PDF, and listed here in much briefer bullets below. I recommend listening in full, then using either of the instructions when you choose to do the practice itself. Abbreviated instructions ·     Before entering into the natural landscape, you’ll walk to a threshold place, and stop.·     Here you will physically draw a threshold that you will walk across.·     Once you’ve done that, pause, connect with the land, speak your intention, ask for permission.·     Cross the threshold, and start walking towards where you feel a tug. Be conscious of the way your body can intuitively lead the way. Use the senses. ·     At some point, you may come across a being in the land that catches your attention. It could be a spiders web, a stone, a patch of moss, a dead bough of a tree, a stream, a blade of grass, truly anything. Approach, introduce yourself.·     Spend a moment in presence with them, in beginners mind. ·     Use Goethe’s Exact Sense Perception instructions –then imagine it transforming. Then release to receive. Let it communicate back to you. ·     Stay here as long as feels right. ·     When it comes to the time to go, thank this natural being and start walking back to your threshold place. ·     When you cross the threshold, thank the land and when you’re ready, step across back into the other world. ·     Gently wipe out the threshold door and take some time upon returning to digest anything that may have arisen for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Could the destruction of nature become considered as serious a crime as that of genocide? How does the structure of law shape a civilisation’s norms, behaviors and overarching story?Today we’ll be discussing international Ecocide law, a massively growing movement that wants to embed the notion of ‘ecocide’ crime at the highest levels of law - at the International Criminal Court in The Hague - and create a powerful deterrent for the further damage to ecosystems and people globally. Our guest is Pella Thiel, a maverick ecologist, farmer, author and who has co-founded the Swedish hubs of international networks like Transition Sweden, End Ecocide Sweden and is an associate of the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University. Pella was awarded the Swedish Martin Luther King Award in 2023 and the Environmental Hero of the year 2019. We discuss: Why ecocide law is different & a game changer as compared with other environmental laws How it can help create a new moral baseline, shifting global values and mindsets Where the tensions or synergies might lie between the Rights of Nature and Ecocide law The notion of positive tipping points And how an Embassy of the Baltic Sea might play out as a practice center for ecological community building Episode Website Link Show Links:Stop Ecocide International : Breaking News page End Ecocide Sweden Pella Thiel personal website Nate Hagens interview with Pella ThielLifeworlds Resource Page: Ecocentric Law Lifeworlds Episode on Rights of Nature MA Earth Interview with Jojo Mehta (Director of Stop Ecocide) Positive Tipping Points Embassy of the North Sea The Ecopsychology Initiative Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Photo credit: Law Statue  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Today it has grown into Europe’s largest Buddhist monastery, with over 200 resident monks and nuns, and known as one of the most actively engaged Buddhist communities offering insight on the modern world, and on the climate and ecological crises.We’ve spoken on the show about fragmented consciousness, a mind that sees parts and not the whole. Meditation and other Buddhist practices are one of the core ways of how we can heal minds and views. And so we will hear from two Plum Village monks: Sister True Dedication and Brother Spirit. Before entering the monastery, Sister True Dedication studied History & Political Thought at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist for BBC News. In the early years of her monastic training, she assisted Thich Nhat Hanh in their engaged Buddhist actions for human rights, religious freedom, applied ethics, and ecology. Brother Spirit began his monastic training in Plum Village in 2008, and before ordaining he studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer, and as such has since composed many of the community’s beloved chants. They both helped to found the international Wake Up Movement, a community of young meditators finding new ways to combine mindfulness and engaged Buddhism.We talk about:the fragmentation of consciousnesshow to hold the perspective of non duality and interbeing within unlikely contexts, and how doing so grants us agency and transformationdehumanization, de animation, and what Buddhism teaches about our relationship to other life and other intelligencesthe Mayahana Diamond Sutra (the world’s earliest printed text) and its invitation for us to reconsider four key notions of existancehow to find and make peace with one’s activismthe seeds of wisdom that lie dormant in 4000-year-old magnolia treeshow to hold the suffering of the world and call upon our ancestors for supportspiritual bypassing, instrumentalising, and get out of jail free cardsEpisode Website LinkShow Links:Plum VillageAbout Thich Nhat HanhZen and the Art of Saving the PlanetThay's Poetry / Please Call Me by My True Names (song & poem)Lifeworlds Meditation on Food inspired by Plum VillageMahamudra: Dr Dan BrownHope in the Dark: Rebecca SolnitGlobal OptimismLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Photo credit: Plum Village website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are plants conscious? Do they experience forms of cognition and intelligence that go beyond patterned and hard-wired evolutionary behaviors? Do intelligence and consciousness really require a brain and central nervous system? Or should we consider intelligence on Earth to be less brain-bound, perhaps not even residing in the individual self, but rather in an enmeshment within an ecosystem? A swarm intelligence, a networked mind, distributed, adaptive, like a murmuration of starlings in the setting sun. And how would we even begin to start answering these questions empirically?Today it is my explicit intention to change the way that you think about the kingdom of plants and the intelligence that resides within it. This is a controversial topic with scientists on all sides of the spectrum vehemently advocating for or against concepts.It was Darwin who first introduced to the Western world the concept of the "root brain" hypothesis, where the tips of plant roots act in some ways like a brain, a distributed intelligence network. They challenge our very notions of an individual. Plants exhibit qualities that are adaptive, flexible, and goal directed – all hallmarks of an intelligence that goes beyond hard wired impulsive responses. They make decisions, perform predictive modeling, share nutrients and recognize kin. Electrical and chemical signalling systems have been identified in plants very similar to those found in the nervous systems of animals, including neurotransmitters like dopamine and melatonin.Our guest today is Paco Calvo, a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab focusing on the study of minimal cognition in plants. He combines insights from biology, philosophy, and cognitive science to explore plant behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving, challenging conventional perspectives of his field. Paco has said that ‘to ‘know thyself’, one has to think well beyond oneself, or even one’s species. We are only one small part of a kaleidoscopic variety of ways of being alive.Episode Website LinkShow Links:MINT labPlanta Sapiens bookTime Lapse Video of vines and plantsMichael Pollan NYTInternational Laboratory of Plant NeurobiologyENG - intelligent-trees - The DocumentaryMonica Gagliano**TED talk** Stefano Mancuso The roots of plant intelligenceScientific American - "Do Plants Think?Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seeds. Memory keepers. Speckled time travellers. Capsules of deep, earth wisdom. To control seeds is to control life. To be a seed is to hold the genetic code of turning starlight into matter, of morphing your body into soft green tips that tremble in the wind and drink fire. There is a deep co-evolutionary relationship that exists in your bones, between humans, land, ecology, and seeds.And we are losing them. An absence of flourishing seed systems directly correlates with a loss of cultural identity for thousands of communities around the world. Life for rural communities fractures. We’re losing our seed keepers. The freedom of seeds therefore becomes a political act of justice, on food sovereignty, indigenous rights, and restoring power back into the hands of farmers. So how does this rich history weave into the story of today’s guest?Milka Chepkorir Kuto is an anthropologist and climate and human rights activist. She is a member of the Sengwer indigenous community of Kenya’s Rift Valley, and she has become a representative for her people in defending their land rights after violent evictions from their traditional lands. Milka is also a Coordinator of Defending Territories of Life at ICCA Consortium, and has worked the UN Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Her community is now working to revitalize people-land relationships through indigenous knowledge, and Milka works with the women to save and protect their ancestral ways and seed systems. As Milka speaks, you can feel in her spirit this visceral connection to place, story, food, culture, a weaving of seed, hand, heart, human, forest. Milka herself is a seed, a story keeper, a culture holder, an inspirational tie between ancestral knowing and the modern world.Episode Website LinkShow Links:Milka’s Crowdfunding Site for Lifeworlds listeners: “Help the Indigenous Sengwer Peoples of Kenya”Revitalizing Sengwer People-Land RelationshipsSeed savers network KenyaGlobal Alliance for Future of FoodOpen Seed SharingEarthed course: Saving Seeds for a Better FutureWill Bonsall, Scatterseed ProjectMovie: SEED, The Untold StoryGaia Foundation Seed SovereigntySeeds of Freedom TrilogyNavdanya from Vandana ShivaMusic: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie KiddCover Photo by AI Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.