Lifeworlds

In this episode we’re joined by the renowned environmentalist, activist and author Paul Hawken to explore the lifeworld of carbon and its role as a vital agent in the story of life.

Paul speaks about the dysfunctions in Western language on how we speak about climate and nature, and why metaphors of war, control, and fixing actually perpetuate the very mindset that created the crises in the first place. We explore common traps we fall into, and how to recarbonize, to bring life back and restore relationality in how we think, feel, and act.

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In this episode, we journey into the vibrational worlds of sound, ancestry, and deep listening with Whaia, a Ngāti Kahungunu woman of Māori descent and First Nations sonic weaver and multi-instrumentalist.

Raised between the salt of the Pacific and the red dust of the Australian desert, Whaia’s voice carries ancient songlines, blending traditional Māori instruments, crystalline singing bowls, and her original mother tongue, the language of Te Rā, the Sun. We explore her work singing with whales, reclaiming cultural instruments once left silent in museums, and remembering the sacred oceanic highways navigated by her Po...

In a remote cabin in Vancouver Island in 2019, far away, I sat by the shore. I listened. I re-read poetry. I swam with jellyfish. I ate bright salmon berries and raw samphire. I gazed around and listened to the songs of the land. This piece of writing is a result of my days there.

Full poem on Lifeworlds Website

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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:

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.

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:

Thank you to everyone who sent in these thought-provoking questions.

Episode Website

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 Link

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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...

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.

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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...

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-f...

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...

Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Today it has grown into Europe’s largest Buddhist monastery, with over 200 resident monks and nuns, and known as one of the most actively engaged Buddhist communities offering insight on the modern world, and on the climate and ecological crises.

We’ve spoken on the show about fragmented consciousness, a mind that sees parts and not the whole. Meditation and ot...

Woven together loosely by my narrative, this special episode traces through a selection of five dazzling poems from the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Mary Oliver; bringing us into giddy relationship with the natural world -- with geese and grasshoppers and miracles and scars and existential queries on what makes life worth living. Mary's sharp and gentle perception of nature, her ability to communicate its messages with such simple and profound language, is at once both balm and flame for the soul.

 “Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the...

Are plants conscious? Do they experience forms of cognition and intelligence that go beyond patterned and hard-wired evolutionary behaviors? Do intelligence and consciousness really require a brain and central nervous system? Or should we consider intelligence on Earth to be less brain-bound, perhaps not even residing in the individual self, but rather in an enmeshment within an ecosystem? A swarm intelligence, a networked mind, distributed, adaptive, like a murmuration of starlings in the setting sun. And how would we even begin to start answering these questions empirically?

Today it is my explicit intention to change the way...

Soulfire Sessions have come to Lifeworlds! These occasional special episodes will be our take on the good old concept of a fireside chat. Intimate, philosophical, challenging, sometimes zany, always insightful, these are discussions with visionaries who don’t often get the airtime to speak about their deeper ways of being and feeling – and what lights their souls on fire.

In this first session I speak with my dear friend Daniel Schmachtenberger, a social philosopher and founding director of the Civilisation Research Institute. Daniel has a particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, artificial intelligence, civil...

Seeds. Memory keepers. Speckled time travellers. Capsules of deep, earth wisdom. To control seeds is to control life. To be a seed is to hold the genetic code of turning starlight into matter, of morphing your body into soft green tips that tremble in the wind and drink fire. There is a deep co-evolutionary relationship that exists in your bones, between humans, land, ecology, and seeds.

And we are losing them. An absence of flourishing seed systems directly correlates with a loss of cultural identity for thousands of communities around the world. Life for rural communities...

This musical journey has been produced for Lifeworlds by the vocal artist Moncaya. It is a sonic ode to the waters of the Earth and the rivers that flow, and a deep and loving conversation between two dear friends.

Moncaya is a singer-songwriter and composer whose namesake derives from the mountain that rises in a vast dry plain in Northern Spain, her homeland; a mecca for the Iberian Celts and generations of healers, witches, and spiritual practioners. In this musical journey, she has woven our words with the sounds of the Rio Magdalena, a powerful estuary...

Audacious, spunky, courageous, defiant, sensitive, compassionate, fierce… These are just some of the words that I feel radiating from the formidable spirit and woman that is Cristina “Mitty” Mittermeier. Hailed as one of the most influential conservation photographers of our time, this Mexican national has dedicated her entire life to protecting the world's oceans - and through her work, has inspired millions of people to do the same. 

Cristina was one of the first pioneers in the concept and field of conservation photography. Once told to sit down and be quiet early on in her career when sh...

How can satellite data and computation fundamentally shift how we understand our place on a changing Earth, and amongst other species? Can we use all that newfound knowledge, transparency, and intelligent data architecture to become better stewards? Allowing the earth to behold itself and its own lifeworld in a whole new way… And what are the ethical implications of having the power of such oversight? In whose hands?

Today our guest is Dan Hammer, Managing Partner at Ode, a data and design agency for the environment, and prior chief data scientist at the World Resources Institute, where he...

A guided meditation to bring you into a state of communion and intimacy with the Earth through the daily, sacred act of eating. 

Many ancient traditions have their ways of giving thanks to our connection with food and the planet’s bounteous harvest. Here, I have been inspired by the Zen Buddhist lineage of Plum Village, and the tenderness and beauty of bringing in all of life through every bite.

I recommend you do it as you are about to enjoy a special meal…

(Audio: New Earth - Beautiful Koshi Wind...

A special three part episode recorded onboard a Climate and Oceans expedition in the Norwegian Arctic. We’ll hear about the dark mysteries of the deepest realms of the ocean from “Her Deepness” herself, Dr. Sylvia Earle (possibly the most admired and loved oceanographer of the last century). Followed by the latest Planetary Boundaries Earth science from Johan Rockstrom, and the role of ocean storytelling and immersive art installations from Taylor Griffith.

Together, their voices weave a tale of the predicament and possibility of the Arctic and high seas; how to sense the lifeworlds of all the creatu...

A necessary and beautiful episode on the emotional terrain of climate grief, loss, sadness, anxiety, and all the ways we can cope either maladaptively or adaptively to this challenging moment in time.

This is an intimate conversation that makes the case for allowing ourselves to ‘feel it all’. Because from the depth of feeling comes the power of action, hope, resilience and community. If we ignore the reality of this mental health crisis, we are turning our backs on the potential that can emerge on the other side of initiation. We discuss different frameworks for processing climate anxi...

An essential part of living into different lifeworlds resides in the mythic realm – the currents of poetry, mysticism and story that stream in the archetypal world below the world. Today I bring you a myth, from Darren Silver, rite of passage and vision quest guide; it is a myth that has laid dormant for many years and is finally here to be told.  

On the surface it’s a story of twins, of a brother and a sister, and of their initiation. There is magical surrealism here, and mythic beings, ancient and enduring laws of reciprocity, of the...

The roads on which we drive are unlikely to strike us as an exciting source of design innovation or interspecies dialogue. And yet, some of the most fascinating experiments and living laboratories are taking place around the world in how humans can build structures of hope and creativity for other species to flourish, despite having their habitats sliced in half by concrete veins. 

Earth is a fluid organism and needs connected landscapes like a canvas upon which to paint its life. Roads, on the other hand, are the single most destructive element in the process of h...

A clarinet plugged into an underwater hydrophone, playing with liquid humpback whale songs below the surface. A huddled group of musicians under a night-time forest in Berlin, singing with nightingales. A 17-year swarm of cicadas alighting upon a sole jazz musician. These are the scenographies that David Rothenberg provokes with his interspecies music compilations, asking us, why should we only play music with other humans and not improvise along with the original musicians of the planet herself? 

For human music and song emerged from a world that sings, hums, beats, chirps, and human translations of these sounds h...

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...

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 s...

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...

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...

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:

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?

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...

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 gift...

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...

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...

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...

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 p...

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...

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...