Lifeworlds

The world around us is constantly vibrating with sounds we cannot hear. This magical soundscape evades our senses, tempts us by its elusive presence and beckons us to look deeper.

Our ability to listen in is rapidly evolving. Over the last decades, scientists have begun installing digital listening devices in nearly every ecosystem. This process of deciphering what nature is saying is called “bioacoustics” and “ecoacoustics”. Massive advances in both hardware and artificial intelligence are permitting us to go where no artificial ear has gone before.

Recent breakthroughs unveil that many more species are speaking in ways we didn’t know were possible, with far richer behaviors than were previously known.

Karen Bakker - Canadian scientist, author, Professor at UBC and Rhodes Scholar - tells us how bioacoustics is poised to alter humanity’s relationship with our planet by expanding our sense of sound. 

We can develop mobile protected areas for animal climate refugees. Simply by singing, a whale can turn aside a container ship. Acoustic enrichment can help corals regenerate.

Acknowledging these forms of communication requires us to confront our entrenched ideas of sentience and intelligence. This seeks to understand non-human communication on its own terms and brings up new ethical and moral dilemmas. Who grants us consent to listen in to the conversation of bats? And as we inhabit such different lifeworlds, might we have enough shared concepts that would enable any kind of translation? 

Episode Website Link

• Smart Earth Project
• Sounds of Life
• Yale article
• Project CETI
• Interspecies Internet
• Earth Species Project
• Sonification
• Elephant listening project
• Wild Dolphin Project
• Sounds of Reef
• Marine mammal communication & cognition
• Biologgers

Photo: Karen’s Book

Music: Electric Ethnicity

Coral sounds Tim Lamont

Bat sound Tomáš Bartonička

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This is a meditation I wrote and recorded to plunge us through epochs of cosmic time, through the tremendous evolutionary processes that preceded us, became us, and are us. It grants us invaluable context on the great tales of life whose memories are held in our bones.

This is our origin and lineage. I hope you find yourself nourished and moved by the experience.

This script is inspired by and takes language from the deep time practices of Joanna Macy and the Deep Time Walk of Stephan Harding and colleagues, along with some of the evolutionary notions explored in Otherlands by John Halliday – to them I am deeply grateful. My script here. Please credit if used or shared.

Music attribution: Take Off and Shoot a Zero. Stunt Island Album. Written, produced, and performed by Chris Zabriskie. Published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP). © 2011 Chris Zabriskie.

Art made with… You guessed it. Midjourney.

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This episode weaves live narrative, interview and descriptions on Romanian bison, wild forest adventures, and the lost ancient art and science of tracking.

Tracking is an ancient sensorial and survival strategy that our nomadic ancestors cultivated as state of profound observation. It led to the development of many innate abilities of the human mind and indeed, tracking is so ingrained in our very cells that it is synonymous with being human.

There is a movement today to revitalise tracking into a new modern profession, into a science that can help to monitor the impact of climate change and biodiversity loss and nature conservation. More on this in the show… 

Here I bring you into my own story of tracking animals and wild bison in the mountains of Romania with We Wilder, a social enterprise and cooperative founded by WWF Romania and local community members. We were engaging in a 4 day experience led by Toni Romani, a certified Cyber Tracker facilitator, and organised as part of building a local circular economy and connecting more people to the practicalities and experience of rewilding.  

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• How the return of the Bison will transform Europe (by Mossy Earth)
• Cyber Tracker 
• The Art of Tracking resources
• We Wilder Romania 
• Toni Romani: Research Gate & CyberTracker Italy
• Movebank technology approach to animal tracking (Max Planck institute)

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

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Carl Safina is an ecologist, author, conservationist, and animal translator whose body of work probes how free-living animals experience life. His books Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel and Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace have won numerous awards. Audubon named Carl Safina among its “100 Notable Conservationists of the 20th Century.” 

Carl uncovers the rich truth that many species and animals have entire cultures, traditions, familial stories, and individual quests, that all are part of this symbiotic tapestry of tales that we call “nature”. He travels alongside the sweeping wingspans of albatrosses, the elephants of East Africa, the wolves of Yellowstone, the Orcas of the Pacific Northwest, sperm whales, seals, turtles, deciphering the role of matriarchs and elders, describing how individual personalities affect all kinds of behaviors, and how these creatures too experience mourning, loss, and grief. 

Here we speak about all these interlocking animal worlds and lives, their highly evolved and complex cultural systems, how the world is awash in waves of communication, the imperfect evolutionary work in progress known as human empathy, and how knowledge of their existence should drastically influence strategies of conservation and regeneration. We end on a profound note speaking to the role of beauty across species and minds.

(Tip: Listen to the end of this episode, the closing is particularly special...)

“Culture is Life itself adjusting and responding and expressing to the corner of this galaxy in which it finds itself” - Carl Safina

Episode Website Link.

Show Links:

• Carl Safina Website with links to books, articles, podcasts
• The Safina Center Non Profit
• Zebra Fish and empathy/oxytocin response
• The Mind of a Bee book
• Guardian: Australian Songbird forgetting love songs

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Photo Credit: Whales, Clark Miller 

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

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My 2023 Reflections and Resolutions from Season One!

I created this podcast to explore how people can learn to inhabit the world from multiple perspectives, with the ultimate goal of being able to feel the Earth’s body as our own body. 

In this episode, I start the year and tie the bow on the closing of Season One, by looking back over our twenty or so conversations and harvesting the rich learnings and patterns that emerged across the show. There are three consistent topics I unearthed:

• The challenge of how we integrate others into our models of the world
• That tending to the lifeworlds of the earth begins to heal ourselves
• A collection of insights from our guests on how to re-sensitise and re-animate ourselves to the aliveness of the world

It’s just me today with you in this episode, so lie back and I hope this harvest brings you inspiration and breadcrumbs to follow into the new year… 

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd The Rising by Tryad CCPL

Photo Source: Imgur

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Ever since I watched Naima Penniman (from the duet Climbing Poetree) recount her poem in this bewitching video, I’ve returned time and time again to these words, to the simplicity, playfulness, and sheer beauty of her message.

For me this poem is medicine. It reminds me of all the silly and wondrous things we human get caught inside of, and then we can wonder, how do other beings on Earth live their experiences of doubt, fear, joys, sorrows… What can we learn from them? Does it really have to be all so complicated after all?

Read full poem here: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/poembeinghuman

(Photo source)

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Jon Young brings us into the ancient practice of nature connection mentoring. He describes how mentoring is a virtually extinct craft, and yet occupies critical importance in building the sensory awareness and neurology of young children. We delve into his rich tales of living among the San bushmen of Southern Africa, the role of wildlife tracking and bird language, insights on building ropes with the universe, and a turkey called Pete.

For over 40 years, Jon young has been a deep nature connection mentor, wildlife tracker, peacemaker, author, workshop leader, and storyteller. A pioneer in the Western field of nature-based education, he co-founded the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington and the 8 Shields Institute in California. Jon has authored the seminal books What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (2013), and Coyote's Guide to Connecting to Nature (2007). In 2016, he received the Champion of Environmental Education Award for his life’s work and for fostering the growth of the nature connection movement on a global level.

Episode Website Link

Show Links

• Tom Browne Tracker School
• Fascinating biography of Jon’s life
• Jon’s website
• Coyote’s Guide to connecting with Nature
• What The Robin Knows: Bird Language, Revealing the Secrets of Nature
• Description of 8 Shields
• San bushmen
• Animas Valley Institute
• School of Lost Borders

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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You may not yet know what a “vision quest” or a rite of passage is. But these traditions are as ancient as our bones. No matter whom your ancestors were, I would wager that if you travel the family branchings back far enough, you would discover that they too engaged in these ritual processes that tethered them into deeper connection with the earth’s forces.

Darren Silver is a rite of passage guide, nature-connected coach, ceremonialist, and educator. For two decades he has been working with ritual, wilderness living skills and guiding transformational experiences into land. A gifted storyteller and apprentice to the old myths, Darren weaves the power of the natural world, vision, and community in devotion to the remembrance of all that we are.

We ask:

Why does human culture need rites of passage and initiatory ceremonies?

What is the role of myth in society?

How does the Earth communicate to us, and how can we respond?

What is the role of courage in all this? How can we test our limits?

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Darren Silver
• Sibling Society by Robert Bly
• Arnold Van Gennup - Three Stages
• Myth of the Handless Maiden
• Tom Brown Tracker School
• Fox Walking
• Core Routine - Sit Spot
• Animas Valley Institute
• School of Lost Borders

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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With Darren Silver & Jon Young.

You’ve heard from many voices in previous episodes on how they’ve learned to listen deeply to the world around them. Today, as a fitting closure, we’re going to get into the HOW of all of this, so that you can embark on your own journey.

Our two guests are wildlife trackers, wilderness guides, animal language experts and nature connection mentors. What they’ll share is that lifeworlding starts in the body, with core skills that were central to human cultures across time. These are ways of being that our modern world has rendered practically extinct, or rather exotic and primitive.

There was a time when the land spoke vividly to each one of us - a snapped twig on a trail, an odor on the breeze, every utterance from a bird’s beak would be harboring a message, guiding you through the savannah or a steep canyon, the stakes here being your survival, your family’s meal for the week, your escape from the jaws of a toothed predator. Imagine the heightened electric body of yours that pulsed through that land. This is a world I long to come home to, again and again.

These are the very things that keep me alive. Something visceral and untranslatable happens out there. When I peel away distractions, life becomes crystal clear. There is a sheer simplicity and poetic resonance to everything.

Our first guest Darren Silver explains what quests like these entail, and why our culture so desperately needs them. For two decades he’s been working with teenagers and adults in initiatory practice, rituals and wilderness skills. After Darren, you’ll hear from Jon Yong, a renowned elder, a master storyteller, and a pioneer in nature-based education, wildlife tracking and bird language. Jon’s books, How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World and Coyote's Guide to Connecting to Nature, sit proudly on my bookshelf, tattered and dog-eared, having guided me on many an adventure. He’ll bring us delightful tales from his time with the San bushmen of Southern Africa, his love for bird language, and his friendship with a turkey named Pete.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Tom Browne Tracker School
• Animas Valley Institute
• School of Lost Borders
• Jon’s website
• Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature
• What The Robin Knows
• Darren Silver
• Myth of the Handless Maiden
• Fox Walking
• Core Routine - Sit Spot

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL

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John Thackara is a writer, curator and professor who develops design agendas for ecological restoration, urban-rural reconnection, and multi-species design.

He curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years, first in Amsterdam and later across India; he was commissioner of the UK social innovation biennial Dott 07, and the French design biennial City Eco Lab; and in 2019, he curated the Urban-Rural expo in Shanghai. His last book was How To Thrive In the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today.

Here we discuss...

• Why more information about the climate crisis just won’t cut it anymore
• How designers can experiment with the presence of microbial lives in their cities
• The phenomenon of weed watching and why it’s gone viral
• Celebrity hen and mango farmers in China who have broken down the rural-urban divide
• Placefulness as a doorway into caring
• How a giant consulting firm could better design their employee sustainability programme (hint: it involves having real tasks to do)
• Ecosystem restoration camps and place-based summer schools
• The failings of snazzy car insulation made from mycelium
• And more ;)

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• John’s website 
• Design for Multi Species Cities 
• Regenerative Empathy Paper 
• Sugi Project
• Back to the Land Summer School 
• Urban Rural Connection in China 
• Internet of nature

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Photo Credit: Jason Klassi via Getty Images

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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Where does the city begin? How do animals disrupt our associations of what cities are? What even is urban wilderness?

Gavin Van Horn, Executive Editor of the Center for Humans and Nature, and author of the books The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds and Animal Encounters In The Chicago Wilderness, is here to disrupt long-held notions that cities are just concrete masses devoid of other life.

Gavin shares his tales from the city of Chicago, stories of brave citizens who transformed their neighbourhoods and rewove a social fabric with pollinator pathways, migratory bird preserves, and a catalytic Greencorps program. We hear about the mutual gaze that is shared between us and other life, and how to dial in to the stories that animals are telling about us among all that urban noise.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Gavin’s website 
• The Way of the Coyote Book
• Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations
• Greencorps of Chicago
• Chicago Wilderness
• Being Salmon, Being Human

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Photo Credit: Jason Klassi via Getty Images

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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With Gavin Van Horn & John Thackara.

How can people living in urban settings engage with a teeming animal world – right on their doorsteps? Can we design cities from the perspective and the lifeworlds of other species? And by the way, where does the city even begin? How can animals disrupt our associations of what cities are?

Gavin Van Horn is the Executive Editor of the Center for Humans and Nature Press, and is the author of City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness and The Way of Coyote. His story teaches a potent medicine for urban alienation, by honing our awareness to species like coyotes, robins, pollinators, and degraded urban forests. We talk about everyday intimacies, wild mutual gazes, the resplendence of pigeon feathers and examples of mutual healing when people repair urban lands and make nature whole.

John Thackara, writer, curator and professor, develops design agendas for ecological restoration, urban-rural reconnection, and multi-species environments. He curated the celebrated Doors of Perception conference for 20 years, and was commissioner of the UK Social Innovation Biennial and the Urban-Rural Expo in Shanghai. John’s expertise lies in the realm of futures design and next economies, and in our chat he shares compelling examples of urban rural reconnection, such as designers experimenting with microbial lives, the viral phenomenon of weed watching, celebrity farmers in china, and placefulness as a doorway into caring.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• John’s website 
• Design for Multi Species Cities 
• Back to the Land Summer School 
• Urban Rural Connection in China
• Gavin’s website 
• The Way of the Coyote Book
• Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations
• Greencorps of Chicago
• Chicago Wilderness
• Being Salmon, Being Human

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Photo Credit: Jason Klassi via Getty Images

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.

Specializing in multi-species entanglements under climate change, Dr Juniper Harrower works at the intersection of ecology, art, activism and policy.

She uses science methods and a multimedia art practice to investigate human influence on ecological systems, while seeking solutions that protect at-risk species and promote environmental justice. A founding member of the international arts collective The Algae Society Bioart Design Lab, she also founded the environmental arts production company SymbioArtlab. Harrower is the director of the art+science initiative at UC Santa Cruz where she also teaches art.

In this episode we discuss the tensions that might exist between the fields of art and science, and how Juniper manages to blend both disciplines in her research. We explore the different ways that each field asks questions, and samples (spoiler: ecology involves a lot of counting), and then move into descriptions of her art exhibitions which reveal the language of leaves, Joshua Trees, mycorrhizal networks, deep plant evolution and settler culture.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Juniper’s website and resources
• Conversations on Botanical Entanglements
• Joshua Trees and Art 
• NYT: Airbnbs in Joshua tree feature
• Center for Biological Diversity 
• Algae Society
• SymbioArtlab environmental arts production company

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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How do bees bridge people with nature? What is it like to be seduced by the sounds and smells of the hive? To be touched by a bee?

In this conversation with two master beekeepers, we delve into the beauty of working with bees and the broken belief systems and malpractices of the beekeeping industry (spoiler: this involves things like sugar feeding, ‘honey production pressure’, prevention of the swarm, and much more…). They also illuminate why we should rephrase the saying of ‘save the bees’ to a much wider and generative narrative of co-creation.

Sandira Belia and Annelieke van der Sluijs are the co-founders of Bee Wisdom, a platform where beekeepers and bee-lovers can learn how to work synergistically with bees, design new forms for natural hives, engage in ethical practices, and join bee grids. They impart a magic and mystery around the inner lives of bees that is a delight to listen to!

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• BeeWisdom website and resources 
• Apis Arborea - the development of tree-based hives
• Sandira’s book “Bee Wisdom: Teachings from the hive

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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With BeeWisdom & Dr June Harrower.

Today on lifeworlds, we’re going to spend some time with the humming, buzzing, delectable nectar of the bees. Sandira Belia and Annelieke van der Sluijs are beekeepers and co-founders of Bee Wisdom, a platform where beekeepers and bee lovers can learn how to work synergistically with bees.

They’re here to unveil the mysterious, inner lives of the bee world. These days, many conversations about bees focus on their collapse, which can obscure and take us further away from the magic and mysteries of the bees. Could we instead learn to ask each other, have you ever been seduced by a bee? By the sounds and smells of the hive? Have you ever been healed by a bee? And how do beekeeping practices change when you start to see the world from the perspective and lifeworlds of the bees?

We then speak with Dr Juniper Harrower, a scientist who uses her multimedia art practice to investigate the human influence on ecological systems. Juniper is a founding member of the international arts collective The Algae Society Bioart Design Lab, founded the environmental arts production company SymbioArtlab and is the director of the art+science initiative at UC Santa Cruz. With Juniper we explore the theme of entanglement through making art and science with other species. She shows us how art and science can be complementary and yet drastically different helping answer research questions, and describes her current art exhibitions which reveal the secret language of leaves, Joshua Trees, mycorrhizal networks, deep plant evolution and settler culture.

Whether it’s through art, beekeeping, scientific study, or whatever else inspires you, ask yourself, how am I entangled in a web of other lives? How can I deepen this relationship so that it becomes a true collaboration? And have some fun with it. Hopefully today’s guests can inspire that creativity.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• BeeWisdom website and resources
• Apis Arborea - the development of tree-based hives
• Sandira’s book “Bee Wisdom: Teachings from the hive
• Juniper’s website and resources
• Conversations on Botanical Entanglements
• Joshua Trees and Art 
• Algae Society
• SymbioArtlab environmental arts production company

Look 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.

I wrote this piece in a 6am flurry of sunrise inspiration, the words pouncing through me, stirred by a combination of books I’d been reading on plant science and deep evolutionary history (thank you, Stephen Harrod Buhner and Thomas Halliday).

All too often we read headlines about extinction or climate change, and it can be difficult to relate. Difficult for emotions to flow and process. I think we need to bring these notions intimately home, into the utterly personal, into the first-person experience of what it’s like to lose something forever. I wrote this piece from the perspective of life itself, relishing and feeling all the parts of its splendorous body.

It brings me tears and yet such sheer gratitude that we live inside of this kind of world... That we are this. There are still so many possibilities. Please sit back and enjoy this rather different bedtime story.

Find the written piece here. And pair with this song for something delicious.

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Today I’m joined by Abhayraj Naik, a lawyer and activist-academic who teaches interdisciplinary courses on climate, environment, justice, law, policy, and research methods in universities across India.

We discuss the trajectory of the Rights of Nature in India, and how this legal approach differentiates itself from other forms of environmental law. Abhayraj shares why the Rights of Nature can catalyse entirely new world views on the human relationship to nature, and the thrilling, often philosophical, new sets of questions they unleash (who gets to speak on behalf of nature? How might one cross examine nature?).

We engage in a fun thought experiment on who should at the table when creating representation for natural beings, the skills required to implement such laws, the Rights of the River Ganga, and how the RON movement intersects with other religious or indigenous cultural traditions.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/lawabhayraj-naik

Show Links:

• Law’s Nature paper
• Initiative for Climate Action 
• Kalpavriksh and the larger Vikalp Sangam network (great work in the rights of nature space in India, my collaborators Shrishtee Bajpai and Ashish Kothari in particular focus on this there)
• Inner Climate Academy 
• Rights of Rivers South Asia Alliance
• Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature
• People’s science movement from state of Kerala
• Ecocide

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.

The wonderful father-daughter duo of Dr John Borrows and Lindsay Borrows explore questions such as: Is law a noun or a verb? How can we read the archive of the law that is written upon the Earth? What exactly is indigenous law, and how can it serve to revitalise colonial law?

John Borrows has transformed Canada’s understanding of how indigenous and non-indigenous law can co-exist and created the world's first dual Indigenous law program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. His publications include Recovering Canada; The Resurgence of Indigenous Law and Drawing Out Law. He is the 2017 Killam Prize winner in Social Sciences and the 2019 Molson Prize Winner from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2020 Governor General’s Innovation Award. He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2020. John is a members of the Chippewa First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

Lindsay Keegitah Borrows is mixed-rooted Anishinaabe and a citizen of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation. She is a lawyer, writer and teacher, whose work aims to support Indigenous communities to revitalize their traditional laws for application in contemporary contexts. She has worked with many legal traditions including Anishinaabe, Haíɫzaqv, Mi’kmaq, nuučaan̓uł, St’át’imc, Denezhu, Tsilhqot’in and Māori. She has worked as a lawyer at the Indigenous Law Research Unit (University of Victoria Faculty of Law), and at West Coast Environmental Law. She is a new professor at Queen's University Faculty of Law.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/lawjonandlindsay

Show Links:

• University Victoria Joint Degree in Indigenous Law:   
• Dark Matter Labs article 
• Otter’s Journey through Indigenous Language and Law

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.

With Dr John Borrows, Lindsay Borrows & Abhayraj Naik.

This week we’re traveling from British Columbia to Bangalore, exploring two different legal systems that are revolutionizing the very foundations of our global system of law. In transforming how we advocate and litigate on behalf of nature, these approaches require legal professionals to develop a whole new series of skills and sensibilities which revolve around translating the lifeworlds of other beings. 

The wonderful daughter-father duo of Lindsay and John Borrows will talk about indigenous law systems in Canada. They are both lawyers and members of the Chippewas of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario. John created the world's first dual Indigenous law program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and Lindsay’s work supports Indigenous communities in revitalizing their traditional laws for contemporary contexts. What I found so astonishing about this conversation is how indigenous law is written in the land itself, as a verb, a living being. Nature is the professor. Their case laws brim with interspecies stories.

We’ll then jump into the Rights of Nature with Abhayraj Naik. The Rights of Nature is a legal tool, now present in over 15 countries and 50 cities around the world, that confers the rights usually given to human beings over to other forms of life. Why does this matter? Put quite bluntly, under the current system of law in almost every country, nature is our slave. He’ll get into some fascinating components of the RON in India and the thrilling, often philosophical, new sets of questions they open up. Abhayraj is an activist-academic legal practitioner, co-founder of the Initiative for Climate Action, and holds degrees from the National Law School of India University and the Yale Law School.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/ecocentriclaw

Show Links:

• University of Victoria Joint Degree in Indigenous Law
• Dark Matter Labs article 
• Otter’s Journey through Indigenous Language and Law
• Rights of Rivers South Asia Alliance
• Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature
• People’s science movement from state of Kerala
• Ecocide
• Law’s Nature paper
• Initiative for Climate Action

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.

Herb’s career in British Columbia has centered on forestry, land based communities and natural systems. From his work as a conventional forester he went all the way to launching an embodied learning forestry school and The Silva Forest Foundation, which he ran with his wife for 30 years. They developed over 25 nature-based plans across Canada, and around the world, upending ways that large landscape management was done by communities.

In our conversation, we speak about the role of intuition and heart based thinking in developing nature-directed communities, how you get everyone on board, and the differences in indigenous thinking when it comes to forests. We also touch on the absurdity of exporting wood pellets for ‘biofuels’, how decaying wood acts as a natural sponge cleaning precious water, why “sustainable” forestry is not so sustainable, and his experience of getting the skeptical to hug a tree.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/natureplansherbhammond

Show Links:

• Silva Forest Foundation
• Book: David Korten’s Change The Story, Change the Future
• Book: Maintaining Whole Systems on Earth's Crown by Herb Hammond

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.

I had the delightful honor of meeting Tara Martin when I lived on Vancouver Island. We canoed out to a tiny Salish Sea sand island and shared a delicious sunset picnic among old growth forests. I love Tara because she is a rare breed of scientist that can seamlessly blend rigorous data science and ecological analysis with deep intuition and cultural insight.

In this interview, we cover the basics of conservation decision science and “priority threat management” - a field she is pioneering - and how it can help policymakers prioritise complex conservation decisions. We discuss her lab’s work in the Frasier River Estuary and with First Nations across Canada. Listen to her vivid descriptions of lost eco-cultural landscapes, how she worked to save a preserved island and returned it back to indigenous stewards, how to have a seat at the table for the salmon, the role of art and beauty in conservation and the old-growth herbaceous elders that are hiding just out of sight.

Tara is a Professor in Conservation Decision Science with the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. She is also the Liber Ero Chair in Conservation at UBC and is a pioneer in the field of Conservation Decision Science. Tara was recently awarded The Nature Conservancy Professor in Practice Award and is a member of the IUCN Climate Change Specialist Group and co-leads the Climate Adaptation Theme.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/natureplanstaramartin 

Show Links:

• Tara Martin Decisions Lab
• Research: Frasier River Estuary 
• RELAW: West Coast Environmental Law
• Briony Penn Ecological Art 

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.

With Dr Tara Martin & Herb Hammond.

Today we are joined by Dr. Tara Martin and Herb Hammond, who have pioneered fascinating methods in developing large-scale maps and management plans for biodiverse, high-priority conservation landscapes. What really sets them apart is their ability to integrate both cutting edge Western science and indigenous worldviews, a synthesis called "two-eyed seeing."

In these interviews, they debunk the misguided idea that separating humans from nature is the best way to restore and manage ecosystems, and show instead how human touch is vital in tending to the land. Tara and Herb are bridge builders, between the hard data science and predictive modelling, between governments and policy, along with private investment, and most importantly, the lived realities on the ground.

Dr Tara Martin is a scientist, professor, and the founder of the Martin Conservation Decisions Lab at the University of British Columbia. We cover the basics of conservation decision science and “priority threat management” (a tool she’s pioneered) and discuss her lab’s work with First Nations across Canada, especially in the Fraser River Estuary, along with the role of art and beauty. Peppered throughout the interview are glorious descriptions of the eco-cultural landscapes that she’s worked tirelessly to protect.

Herb Hammond is one of the most respected elders in the space of nature-based planning. Herb started out as a conventional forester but soon became dispirited with the destructive practices of the industry, and went on to found The Silva Forest Foundation which he ran with his wife Susie for 30 years. Over the course of their career they’ve developed over 25 large scale nature-directed plans for Canada and around the world, upending ways that landscape management is conceived and implemented.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/naturebasedplans

Show Links:

• Tara Martin Decisions Lab
• Research: Frasier River Estuary 
• RELAW: West Coast Environmental Law
• Briony Penn Ecological Art 
• Silva Forest Foundation
• Book: David Korten’s Change The Story, Change the Future
• Book: Maintaining Whole Systems on Earth's Crown by Herb Hammond

Look 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.

Without being awake in our bodies

We can’t feel how our bodies belong to this earth

Feel the touch of the world upon you.

This one I will keep brief, and allow the practice to speak for itself. Find a quiet place where you will be undisturbed for half an hour. If you can be outdoors, that’s even better. And settle in, allow yourself to be guided and drift into deep connection with the forces of our home planet.

Recorded in the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica -- thank you to all the birds and creatures who feature in this episode. I hope I have your consent.

Episode Link

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This is a beautiful conversation with Joe Martin, who is also known by his traditional name Tutakwisnapšiƛ.

We speak about his work as a master canoe and totem pole carver, and role as an elder in his community. Joe is a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation living in Tofino, Vancouver Island, and has carved over seventy canoes made from ancient trees. He has sparked a revitalization of this ancient art form in his own community and among neighboring nations in the Pacific Northwest.

In our talk, Joe describes how indigenous totem poles serve as visual living texts of natural laws of the land. He shares outlines of the learnings that are handed down in his tradition, from the land to grandparents to children. We learn about the teachings of the wolf, why bears are related to women’s puberty rituals, and how animals show us to only take what we need, and not for our greed.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/indigenousviewjoemartin

Show Links:

• Film: The Canoe Maker
• Book: Making a Chaputs, The Teachings and Responsibilities of a Canoe Maker
• BC Achievement Award, Joe Martin
• Joe’s Facebook page

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.

A delightful yarn with Tyson Yunkporta, Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk. Tyson is a member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, Australia.

On this episode we discuss:

• How their systems lab aggregates data and knowledge through indigenous sense-making protocols
• “Avatar Depression” syndrome and how the West may begin to remember its own aboriginal knowledge
• How giving names to nature can either kill, or create kinship
• The role of ceremony in maintaining energy flows.. And why ceremony isn’t always such an enjoyable matter!
• Why baramundi is not the correct name for a saltwater fish, and why biomimicry doesn’t work quite as well as we may think
• How land seen as capital becomes a dying land
• And finally, what happens when the dress rehearsal for an epic ceremony actually becomes the real thing!

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/indigenousviewtysonyunkaporta

Show Links:

• Deakin University Indigenous Knowledges Systems Lab
• Sand Talk book
• Indigenous AI Lab
• The Other Others podcast

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.

With Tyson Yunkaporta & Joe Martin (Tutakwisnapšiƛ).

Today we’re joined by two master indigenous scholars and artists, who will be laying down clues from their ancestral cultures on how to interpret and read the laws of the land.

Our first conversation is what he likes to call a yarn, with Tyson Yunkporta, Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and member of the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland, Australia. Tyson is the author of the book Sand Talk which was wildly successful, and I reckon part of its popularity is the way that Tyson is able to pack in such punchy wisdom along with his sharp-witted, trickster humor. We discuss how their lab collects data and knowledge through a very special indigenous sense-making protocol, and then applies it to issues like economic reform, broken landscapes, cyber safety and neuroscience. We delve into the importance of engaging with place, why a real ceremony is not all fun and games, and how the west can quit longing and start acting in rediscovering its own indigeneity.

We’ll then visit wisdom holder and elder Joe Martin, who will be speaking to us from British Columbia. Joe is a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation and is a master canoe and totem pole carver, with over seventy canoes having been whittled and chiselled away by his hands. Just earlier this July, he and his community raised a new totem pole in ceremony at the ancient village of Opitsaht which depicts his family’s teachings of natural law. I’ve uploaded videos of the totem poles in the show notes, where you can see how each pole carries millennia old myths, stories and teachings about the human relationship with forces like the bear, wolf, raven, sun, moon and stars.

I hope that both of these conversations will entice you to uncover and excavate your own family lineage, all the brimming folk tales and myths and lifeworlds held by your people and the land where your blood and cosmologies sprouted from.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/indigenousview 

Show Links:

• Deakin University Indigenous Knowledges Systems Lab
• Sand Talk book
• Indigenous AI Lab
• The Other Others podcast
• Film: The Canoe Maker
• Book: Making a Chaputs, The Teachings and Responsibilities of a Canoe Maker
• BC Achievement Award, Joe Martin
• Joe’s Facebook page

Look 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.

Eric Smith has spent his career working at the intersection of economics and nature.

Most recently he was the director of the venture capital vehicle Neglected Climate Opportunities (NCO) at the Grantham Environmental Trust, where he co-led over 40 direct investments in start-ups across all stages that can remove carbon and GHG at scale.

He was previously with SJF Ventures and worked for BlackRock on climate finance, and currently is Founder/CEO of Edacious, a company working to differentiate food quality and connect the dots between soil and human health.

Eric is also a dear friend and someone with whom I often converse on our shared focus of investing on behalf of nature.

We were both in Mexico for a climate investing conference and caught up, beachside sand rolling in, on everything from:

• His personal background in forestry and building certification frameworks around natural resource operations;
• Working in Costa Rica on their Payment for Ecosystem Services model;
• The tensions in regenerative agriculture and nature conservation;
• Why he supports EO Wilson’s Half Earth theory;
• If narrow metrics can ever be proxy enough for the complexity of a system;
• The intrinsic vs economic values of nature;
• Examples of start-ups and nature-serving businesses, and which ones are not suited for a venture capital model;
• And more…

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/financeericsmith

Show Links:

• Finance for Nature: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• Regenerative Economics: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• Grantham Trust: Neglected Climate Opportunities
• Edacious
• Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures
• Payments for Environmental Services Program | Costa Rica
• Steward
• Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
• SPUN fungi
• EO Wilson Foundation
• Ground Effect

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.

Lorenzo de Rosenzweig is what you might call an “OG” (original gangster) of the conservation finance world.

An engineer and marine biologist by training, for 25 years he was president of a $170 million endowment conservation trust fund - the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature - and for over 17 years he was chairman of the Mesoamerican Reef Fund. During his tenure in both institutions he led resource mobilization efforts that raised close to $410 million. He’s a member of the board of the Conservation Finance Alliance Executive Committee, the World Environment Center, The Healthy Reefs Initiative, and several other global trust funds.

Now “retired” he has started up a new enterprise, Terra Habitus A.C. — a regional environmental fund for Northern Mexico, focused on private lands conservation, borderlands cooperation, regenerative ranching, resource mobilization and environmental journalism.

Lorenzo is also a nature photographer and a watercolor artist, and is working on his first fiction book, a collection of illustrated essays on human nature and biodiversity called “Impossible animals in improbable environments”.

With this long list of accolades, and a long-time friendship and mentorship between us, who better to dig into the tricky questions surrounding finance’s relationship to the living world?

Join us as we talk about deep time and becoming a good ancestor; how to activate our senses and capacities to see the world for what it is; how to reconcile nature’s timelines with financial timelines; and some vivid tales on one lucky whale that saved a pelagic ecosystem from destruction.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/financelorenzoderosenzweig

Show Links:

• Finance for Nature: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• Regenerative Economics: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• Terra Habitus
• MAR Fund
• Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature
• Conservation Finance Alliance
• The Good Ancestor Book

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.

With Lorenzo de Rosensweig & Eric Smith.

This week we’re asking whether it’s possible to support the lifeworlds of nature with the very same tools that have caused them harm. We’ll be joined by Lorenzo de Rosenzweig, who has headed Latin America’s largest nature conservation trusts for over three decades. And Eric Smith, from the Grantham Neglected Climate Opportunities Fund and Edacious, will talk about venture capital investing in nature based solutions.

I’m interested in this topic because I invest capital in projects that regenerate nature through my vehicle Ground Effect. In that work I constantly encounter philosophical and practical tensions – namely that complex natural systems and the trillions of processes that enable life to exist can never be fully translated and priced by markets. Numbers and metrics can’t tell us about the touch of rough bark or the flutter of a beetle’s wing against our skin. And because money is fungible, it can often efface all distinctions and trigger the further commodification and abstraction of a living ecology. 

And yet finance can be used beneficially on behalf of nature. We can look at the maturing industry of biodiversity markets which attempt to move beyond single metrics like carbon, or debt for nature swaps, blue bonds, true cost accounting, payments for ecosystem services, and even more radical ideas like DAOs where nature owns itself. I’ve uploaded resources on the Lifeworlds library for those who want to go deeper on these innovations. Perhaps then, the conversation of “finance for nature” is about finding the right balance of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and acknowledging where the role of markets begins and ends in the wider spectrum of systems change.

Show Links:

• Finance for Nature: Lifeworlds Resource
• Regenerative Economics: Lifeworlds Resource
• Terra Habitus
• Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature
• Conservation Finance Alliance
• Grantham Trust: Neglected Climate Opportunities
• Edacious
• Payments for Environmental Services Program | Costa Rica
• Steward
• SPUN fungi
• Ground Effect

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.

“An improvisation with the natural vibrations of a certain place and time – via plant bioelectricity, latent electromagnetic radiation, and even the earth’s resonant hum…” Tarun Nayar, musician and biologist, captures the song of a mushroom’s bioelectricity, using the movement of water inside fungi and plants as electrical resistance. Like human skin, a mushroom skin possesses electrical properties which can be transposed into sound.

For more plant music, check out his page and full album.

let’s protect wild places ✨

listen to plant ragas 🌱🎶

Lifeworlds Page

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Woodchucks and bald eagles. Fungal fermentation. Compost heaps. Animism. Deviant animal sex. Disability. Jesus and Dionysus. Fungi, microbes, and the divine feminine critique.

It’s never a dull conversation with the brilliant and freewheeling articulate writer, poet and philosopher Sophie Strand.

Kick back and enjoy the ride.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/fungisophiestrand

Show Links:

• Fungi: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• Sophie Strand Website
• Sophie’s Substack 
• Article: The Animate Everything
• Article: Mentorship with the More than Human World
• Article: Melt Divine Feminine into Divine Animacy

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.

Introducing Giuliana Furci. The woman who has been chosen by the fungi. The mother who is in love with the mould that grows on lemons. The founder and CEO of the Fungi Foundation, a Harvard University Associate, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy (!), and Co-Chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee.

We travel through the day in the life of a fungi; how moving beyond plant and animal-centric language transforms our perception of the world; what it’s like to be on a bone-chilling fungal expedition in Patagonia; what the fungi can teach us about loneliness and rot; the perils around fungal IP, and why you should always go pee behind trees.

#thefutureisfungi

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/fungigiulianafurci

Show Links:

• Fungi: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• The Fungi Foundation 
• Giuliana Furci personal website 
• Video: Let Things Rot 
• Fungi Foundation: What you see matters 
• NYT: Unearthing the Secret Superpowers of Fungus

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.

With Giuliana Furci & Sophie Strand.

Oh, the fungi! Without them we’d have no plants, no trees, no chocolate, no beer, yogurt, baked bread – all the good things! Yet despite their burgeoning popularity, science has barely scratched the surface of mapping and understanding the hidden world of fungi.

The more we learn, the more these ecosystem architects warp our minds of what we think is possible. They digest toxic radiochemical waste. Their mycelium networks with plant roots are the planet’s ecological stock exchanges. They stitch together ecosystems, sequester carbon, drive global nutrient cycles and underpin the world’s biodiversity. The entire way this kingdom of life sees and lives, its experienced lifeworld, is so entirely different to anything else on this planet.

Today we hear from two very distinct voices who speak on behalf of fungi. Giuliana Furci is the founder of the Fungi Foundation, the world’s first association that works on behalf of fungi, and Chile’s first female mycologist. Giuliana is a Harvard University Associate, Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, and Co-Chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation Committee.

Sophie Strand is one of the most brilliant rising writers on everything ranging from ecology, myth, mycelium and animism. With Sophie we traverse the terrain of fungal fermentation, compost heaps, deviant animal sex (yes you read that correctly), living with disability, Jesus, and fungal gods. It’s a good one.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/the-inner-lives-of-fungi

Show Links:

• Fungi: Lifeworlds Resource Page
• The Fungi Foundation 
• Giuliana Furci personal website 
• Video: Let Things Rot
• NYT: Unearthing the Secret Superpowers of Fungus
• Sophie Strand Website
• Sophie’s Substack 
• Article: The Animate Everything

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Photo Credit: Steven Axford

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.

Following the episodes on rewilding, I wanted to drive the message of wildness home with this spellbinding poem by Tom Hirons. It gives me chills every time I listen to it, remembering all the animals, all the chthonic forces, that we refuse to let in, the wild madness we long and thirst for, the shuddering pact we’ve made with this world before we were born.

Read the poem on: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes/poemwildgod

Photo credit: Francesco Sambo

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Kristine Tompkins is an American conservationist who is the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, and former CEO of Patagonia.

For nearly thirty years, along with her late husband Doug Tompkins, she has been protecting and restoring wild beauty and biodiversity by creating national parks, restoring wildlife, inspiring activism and economic vitality across 14.7 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina.

Kris is Chair of National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places campaign, the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and the United Nations’ Global Patron for Protected Areas.

Kris shares with us just what "wild" means to her, how she transitioned from being a high-rolling businesswoman to living in the Chilean bush, the role of beauty in her life and why macaws need to befriend robots.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/rewildingkristompkins

Show Links:

• Lifeworlds Resource Page: Rewilding
• Tompkins Conservation
• Rewilding Argentina
• 1990 - 2010 Twenty Year Retrospective of Kris and Doug’s work - 
• Kristine Tompkins: Let's make the world wild again | TED Talk 
• An Ark For Vanished Wildlife: Derek Gow in the New Yorker 
• Derek’s Books ‘Bringing Back the Beaver’ & ‘Birds, Beasts and Bedlam’ 

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.

With his hilariously sharp-witted, no-nonsense approach and radiating descriptions of nature’s landscapes, Derek Gow is a force to contend with.

He’s been one of the most vocal actors in the reintroduction of missing keystone species in England such as the beaver, the water vole and the white stork, butting heads with obnoxious lobbyists and government officials. He is currently rewilding his 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border where the Eurasian lynx, wild boar and harvest mice make home.

Our conversation ranges from the obstacles that prevent society in re-introducing critical species, all the way to Elizabethan fat bishops and voles that Gorgonzola river banks for other species to thrive. What is the mindset that sees all of land as "mine"? When were wolves seen as Gods, and what would it have been like to be a medieval traveller coming across one of these creatures “sodden like a Michelin man on a country path”? What barbarities have we committed against other species, and why should you think twice when buying herds of prehistoric Heck cattle?

Yep, this is a fun and brilliant one. (Listener tip: Derek packs more into a sentence that I could hope to do in a lifetime. Play at 1.5x at your own peril!)

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/rewildingderekgow

Show Links:

• Lifeworlds Resource Page: Rewilding
• An Ark For Vanished Wildlife: Derek Gow in the New Yorker 
• Derek’s Books ‘Bringing Back the Beaver’ & ‘Birds, Beasts and Bedlam’ 
• Derek’s Twitter
• Beavers Given Legal Protection in England
• Beaver just doesn’t quit (must watch!) 

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.

With Derek Gow & Kris Tompkins.

The rewilding movement is currently sweeping across the world’s landscapes, restoring ecologies and species, re-naturalising rivers and forests.

Our two guests are trailblazers in this space – first we hear from Kristine Tompkins, ex-CEO of Patagonia who, together with her late husband Doug Tompkins, have protected over 14 million acres of wildlands and national parks across Latin America, along with over 30 million acres of marine areas. Kristine is Chair of the National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places campaign and was the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

Then we speak with Derek Gow, who is infamous amongst insider rewilding circles for his leadership in the re-introduction of the beaver back into European landscapes. Through Derek, and his delightfully funny and informative book 'Bringing back the Beaver', I’ve become somewhat obsessed with beavers. He’s been one of the most vocal actors in the reintroduction of missing keystone species in England such as the beaver, the water vole and the white stork, butting heads with obnoxious lobbyists and government officials. He is currently rewilding his 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border where the Eurasian lynx, wild boar and harvest mice make home.

This episode covers the basics of rewilding and goes into different models of restoring ecosystems into their rightful states, all the while discussing the mental impediments and frustrations that can occur in the attempt to rewild the most stubborn species of all — the human being.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/rewilding

Show Links:

• Lifeworlds Resource Page: Rewilding
• Tompkins Conservation
• Kristine Tompkins: Let's make the world wild again | TED Talk 
• An Ark For Vanished Wildlife: Derek Gow in the New Yorker 
• Derek’s Books ‘Bringing Back the Beaver’ & ‘Birds, Beasts and Bedlam’ 

Look 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

Photo of flower: Maewenn Bourcelot @maochan.talamoni

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first of the Lifeworlds ‘bonus’ episodes, designed to help us tune in somatically to the living world. We need to be grounding our connection to other lifeworlds into our very bodies for them to become lasting and real. Here we discover how to access these states through things like mindfulness, art, wilderness practices and poetry.

Today's exercise is about understanding the ground we stand on. The place that we call home. After a brief introduction, I present a series of prompts for you to do in your own time, over several weeks and months. It involves mapping out ecosystems, following trails of water, making a calendar of minute shifts in nature's ebbs and flows, and tuning in to the humming frequencies of what's around you.

Download the list and practice on: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes/practicesensingplace

A useful tool for identifying species: https://www.inaturalist.org/

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Michael Ableman is a farmer, author, photographer and urban food systems activist. Michael has been farming organically since the early 1970s and is considered one of the pioneers of the organic farming and urban agriculture movements.

He founded North America’s largest urban farm in downtown Vancouver, that employs people who are experiencing long term addiction and mental illness. Michael lives on his farm on Salt Spring Island, which I can only describe as the most glorious farm I have ever visited.

His story will inspire you to get dirt under your nails, to communicate and walk with the land in a whole new way, and to gain a greater understanding of how the act of farming can heal a divided society. Michael is exceptionally rare in his ability to blend the most pragmatic and captivating elements of farming with profound reflections on philosophy and life.

Enjoy this soulful and illuminating interview.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/unexpectedagriculturesmichael

Show Links:

• Lifeworlds Resource Page: Agriculture 
• Michael Ableman
• Sole Food Street Farms
• Foxglove Farm

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.

Lyla June Johnston is an Indigenous public speaker, artist, poet, scholar and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. She blends her studies in human ecology at Stanford University, graduate work in Native American Pedagogy at the University of New Mexico, and the indigenous worldview she grew up with.

Lyla and I got together to discuss her brilliant PhD research on Indigenous Food Systems Revitalization. In this interview we discuss what 6000-year-old clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest, buffalo prairies, kelp forests, hemlock boughs, and herring eggs all have in common; the role of reciprocity in food systems; human beings as a keystone species; the reclamation of our own food production; land fragmentation, and thinking like a watershed.

Guided by indigenous values and understandings, this conversation charts the path to how we can restore our relationship to farming and food, and how these ancient ingenious systems can help us rethink our broken food systems.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/unexpectedagricultureslylajune

Show Links:

• Lifeworlds Resource Page: Agriculture
• Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Food Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History
• Cultivating Food Forests with Indigenous Wisdom
• Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness - M. Kat Anderson
• Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Lyla’s podcast and website
• Seeing Like a State - James C. Scott
• Agrarian Trust
• Pacific Sea Gardens

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.

With Lyla June Johnston & Michael Ableman.

We’re going to kick off the season by getting our feet down in the soil to talk about agriculture! Our two guests present a compelling vision of how agricultural systems offer humans a deeper sense of purpose that goes beyond the provisioning of food.

This is because farmers and producers often spend their days immersed in the lifeworlds of the land — in the delicate stalks of green, the humming of pollinators, the beating of bird feathers and the pungent smells of sprouting crops. Their survival depends on them paying very close attention, seeing and interpreting the world through other eyes, and by doing so a whole other human psychology unfolds.

Lyla June Johnston is an indigenous scholar, public speaker, artist, and poet of Diné, Tsétsêhéstâhese and European lineages. Lyla studied human ecology at Stanford and is writing her PhD on Indigenous Food Systems Revitalization. She describes millennia-old methods of agriculture that were ingeniously designed to harness nature’s flows, ranging from expansive clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest to the American grasslands. You’ll hear about governance systems and worldviews required to cultivate such abundant landscapes and how we can restore our relationship to farming and food.

Michael Ableman has been an organic farmer for over 50 years and is considered one of the pioneers of the organic farming and urban agriculture movements. He founded North America’s largest urban farm located in Vancouver, that employs people who have been impacted by long term addiction and mental illness. This experience has proven to Michael how farming can support profound healing, and with us he shares his intimate approach to farming, dropping hints as to how you can also listen to the land.

Episode Website Link: lifeworld.earth/episodes/unexpectedagricultures

Show Links:

• Lifeworlds Resource Page: Agriculture
• Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Food Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History
• Cultivating Food Forests with Indigenous Wisdom
• Lyla’s website
• Michael’s website
• Sole Food Street Farms

Look 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

Photo Credit: Rob Kesseler

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Welcome to Lifeworlds - a podcast series that explores how to orient your life around nature.

Join me on this intimate journey into the eyes and minds of other species; learn from our guests how they’re living deeply in relationship with ecologies; be electrified by the possibilities of partnering with nature and the beauty it can bring to your life. 

Episodes launch fortnightly from 19th July, with meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between.

There's also a website brimming with resources at lifeworld.earth.

Music: The Rising by Tryad CCPL & Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd

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