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Lifeworlds — Nature
Lifeworlds

Lifeworlds is an intimate dialogue with our planet’s ecologies and with those who are translators and bridges between the human and beyond-human.

Our guests are farmers, lawyers, scientists, investors, indigenous scholars, artists, and many more — with them, we explore the mindsets, skills and actions required to forge deep connections with nature and to enter into close relationship with the lifeworlds of other beings.

We begin to change the world when we change our ways of seeing and being. Lifeworlds points us towards a deeper reformulation of core human identities, asking who it is we share the Earth with and what our human role may be at this pivotal moment in time. It is through the doorway of inhabiting and understanding multiple perspectives that we can begin to heal a culture and psyche that is steeped in duality. We have lost our place as humans amongst all life. This is our call for healing, engagement and wonder.

www.lifeworld.earth

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Copyright: © Alexa Firmenich

Latest Episodes:

[Full Interview] The Indigenous View - with Joe Martin (Tutakwisnapšiƛ) Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

[Full Interview] The Indigenous View - with Tyson Yunkaporta Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

5. The Indigenous View: Protocols, Ceremony and Totem Poles Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

[Full Interview] Money: In Service of Nature? - with Eric Smith Aug 30, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

[Full Interview] Money: In Service of Nature? - with Lorenzo de Rosensweig Aug 30, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

4. Money: In Service of Nature? Aug 30, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

Song | Mushroom Dance Aug 27, 2022

Show notes

“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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[Full Interview] The Inner Lives of Fungi - with Sophie Strand Aug 16, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

[Full Interview] The Inner Lives of Fungi - with Giuliana Furci Aug 16, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

3. The Inner Lives of Fungi - Expeditions, Advocacy and Poetics Aug 16, 2022

Show notes

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:

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.

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