Lifeworlds

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.

David McConville is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who explores how technology shapes our perspectives of Earth—from local places to our cosmic context. Our conversation examines how worldviews influence infrastructure, using Los Angeles as a case study. We explore the paradigm of "living infrastructure," discussing how David's studio Spherical collaborates with communities and organizations to develop mapping and co-design tools. Even if you’re not in LA, this episode offers valuable insights into how communities can work together to create resilient infrastructure systems that honor their unique cultural needs and local environments.Links:SphericalSpherical LabsLiving Infrastructure Field KitDawn Danby + David McConville : When Utopia is OblivionBio:David McConville is co-founder and lead cosmographer of Spherical, a strategic design and integrative research studio based in xučyun / Oakland, CA. His PhD in Art and Media from Plymouth University examined how cosmological perspectives shape cultural imaginaries and ecological practices.Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

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

What if you could inhabit the future? In this episode, we dive into the work of Superflux, the visionary design studio turning imagination into tangible worlds. From multispecies banquets and rewilded ecological sanctuaries to mythic friezes that re-enchant cityscapes, co-founder Anab Jain shares how embodied experiences can transform how we see — and shape — the world. Join us as we explore speculative design, active hope, and the power of imagination to move us beyond ecological breakdown and into interspecies thriving. A celebration of wonder, possibility, and the art of asking: "What if?" Episode Website LinkShow Links:Superflux websiteThe Quiet EnchantingCalling for a more than human politicsDesignweek on speculative designAnab Jain’s IXDA Keynote on More-Than-Human Centred DesignNoema Magazine: Radical Design for a World in Crisis9 Dimensions for evaluating how art and creative practice stimulate societal transformationsRecent Interviews: Financial Times, ICON, Wallpaper, Offscreen Magazine, STIRworld, Business Insider, NPR RadioTo send your Q&A to Alexa for the Lifeworlds special episode Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

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.

Calling all Lifeworlds listeners! We're finally doing our first-ever Q&A episode, and we want you to be part of it. Over the past two years, we've been secretly hoarding all the brilliant questions and thoughts you've sent our way, and now it's time to get them out of the inbox and into the limelight. Got something you’re wanting to ask our host, Alexa Firmenich? Now’s your chance to share whatever’s on your mind. Whether it's a burning question, a cheeky comment, or a heartfelt story, we want to hear it all. You can email us at alexa.firmenich@gmail.com or use our online form here. And if you’re feeling extra brave (or just want to make Alexa’s day) send us an audio recording - nothing like hearing your lovely voices! Don’t forget to let us know if you want a shout-out or prefer to stay mysterious. Looking forward to your contributions!

Throughout history, many cultures have observed and interpreted animal behavior to predict events and read the landscapes around them. The multispecies lives of our planet weave an astonishing network of information across the face of the globe, a web of knowledge compromised of thousands of creatures communicating with each other, across species, and with their environments. How we listen in on this collective intelligence? Today’s guest Martin Wikelski is director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS) - a project which has been dubbed as ‘the internet of animals’. Their team has created a global ecological monitoring system, attaching remote sensing chips to thousands of animals in the wild, in effect uncovering and translating, as Martin says, ‘the collective intelligence of life on earth’. By tuning in to the communication and culture of animals, the project his project reveals the planet's hidden workings with enormous implications for conservation, global finance, and human infrastructure. We explore many of these forward-thinking ideas in this episode, adding another layer to Lifeworlds’ ongoing question: How do we sense the planetary and see through the perspectives of other life?Episode Website Link Show Links:Internet of Animals BookArticle: The Internet of Animals: what it is, what it could beBirdcast: Showcasing the spectacle of bird migrationMovebankWhalesafeGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)Lifeworlds: BioacousticsLifeworlds: SatellitesInterspecies InternetEarth Species ProjectWill Hawkes: Insect Migration Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

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 

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to breathe yourself into your own body? To flow with the out-breath of trees into your own fractaling lungs, to dance ribbonlike into an ancient ceiba’s vasculature, to stitch an ecosystem together as a mycelium highways sparkling with energy? In this episode we explore the transformational potential of virtual reality through the work of Marshmallow Laser Feast, an artist collective that has emerged as a leading VR creators in the last decade. They exhibited internationally from London to New York, Melbourne to Seoul, their work included in major exhibitions at institutions including the Barbican Centre, Saatchi Gallery, Sundance Film Festival, and SXSW. 'In The Eyes Of The Animal' was nominated for the Design of the Year by Design Museum Beazley Awards and won the Wired Innovation Award (2016). Most recently, the team at MLF won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and Best VR Film at VR Arles Festival for ‘TreeHugger, Wawona’. Ersin Han Ersin is the director of MLF and describes to us how they use dazzlingly aesthetic real-time VR experiences to explore the invisible perspectives of nature’s lifeworlds – and how they are constantly pushing the bounds of what technology makes possible in expanding our ecological sensitivities. I enquire into:Who they need to speak to in order to create their masterpieces and translate the umwelts of other species? What other scientists, poets, musicians, make this possible?What is it that virtual reality can create that no other medium can?What is the building block of a multisensory story?What are some of the astounding ways that other beings experience the world that are divergent from the human?How could global education be redesigned based on kinesthetic educative tools like VR?Episode Website Link.Show Links:Marshmallow Laser FeastTED talkVimeo of MLFSoulful connection with trees: DartingtonLifeworlds Episode with Karen BakkerObservations on Being by MLFAI piece from Berggruen InstituteAbandon Normal Devices FestivalLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie KiddPhoto credit: MLF exhibition at AMCI in Australia (photo from their website)