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Lifeworlds: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Alexa Firmenich
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.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- Aug 17, 202655 min
Soulfire Sessions III: Many Minds – with Kensy Cooperrider
Consciousness is one of the great running threads beneath every episode of this show: a loaded term, tangled up with questions of sentience and intelligence, and carrying the most direct ethical implications for how we live on Earth.This week I'm joined by Kensy Cooperrider, cognitive scientist and host of Many Minds podcast, circling the questions of what mind, intelligence, and experience might be beyond the human. Kensy has had hundreds of conversations with scientists working at the edges of what we know about minds, and also the most creative, concrete apertures into other lifeworlds: names, goosebumps, dreams, fire, taboos, medicine. We also discuss whether, if we're willing to stretch words like sentience across the animal kingdom, what happens when we begin to explore AI - the mineral, the silica, the metallic? Unanswerable questions, maybe, but what fun to explore.Links:Episode website linkMany Minds podcastKensy’s personal websiteMany Minds with Michael LevinBook: Robert Bringhurst Tree of MeaningMany Minds: Mutualisms all the Way DownDiverse Intelligences Summer InstituteLook 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.
- Aug 3, 202655 min
38. Mother Trees And Forest Resilience
This episode is a live interview with Dr. Suzanne Simard at the MOTH Festival of Ideas in London. Suzanne is the forest ecologist whose researched popularised notions of the Wood Wide Web and the Mother Trees, and revealed the living networks that wire a forest together to share carbon, water and resources. We talk about the courage it took to call a tree "mother," the grizzly encounters and burned-down research plots behind the tidy data, and the findings from her Mother Tree Project and luminous new book, When the Forest Breathes - chief among them, that a forest, given half a chance and a few elders left standing, knows exactly how to breathe its way back to life.Episode Website LinkLinks:Suzanne’s main websiteThe Mother Tree Project & ProgramBook: When the Forest BreathesBook: Finding the Mother TreeMOTH Festival of IdeasLook 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.
- Jul 2, 20261h 12m
37. Whale Lexicons: A Language of the Deep — with David Gruber and César Rodríguez-Garavito
What does it actually mean to translate a language that has never been written down or spoken in air, whose holders are ancient ocean denizens, and may not even carry concepts we'd recognize as our own? That's the question sitting at the center of this episode, and those answering it have formed one of the more radical partnerships in science today: Project CETI and MOTH. CETI is a collective of fifty-plus scientists attempting to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales.MOTH is a legal collective working to bring that science before courts, in the hope that whales might be granted something like legal standing and rights. In a barn in the English countryside, David Gruber and César Rodríguez-Garavito walk us through what it takes to listen this closely to another species, and whether this new convergence of human, animal, and machine intelligence could spark a watershed moment for conservation and consciousness.What we'll cover:The sperm whale's anatomy of perception, acoustic vision, and what it's like to navigate a world of inky darkness through soundThe deep evolutionary kinship between humans and whales, and what their convergent vowel-like sounds suggest about the origins of languageHow Project CETI uses machine learning to find phonetic structure and contextual meaning in whale codasThe legal arguments emerging from this research, from the right not to suffer to the right to a cultural lifeA remarkable multi-whale birth event — and what it reveals about coordination, kinship, and social roles among whalesThe ethical guardrails (NACT) proposed for AI-assisted animal communication technology, and the risks of getting this wrongWhether this new convergence of human, animal, and machine intelligence could spark a watershed moment for conservation and consciousness Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/whalelexiconscetiLinks:Project CETIMore-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program at NYUNature: Description of a collaborative sperm whale birth and shifts in coda vocal styles during key eventsWhat if We Understood what Animals are Saying? The Legal Impact of AI-assisted Studies of Animal Communication.”He Whakaputanga Moana: The first Declaration recognizing whales as sentient beings with inherent rightsFrom Orbit to IntimacyThe Crimson: Are Whales Trying to Tell Us Something?Time: Researchers are Using AI to Understand what Animals are SayingLifeworlds Episode: The Sounds of Life: Bioacoustics, A.I. and Ethics – with Karen BakkerLewis Mumford: Tecnics and CivilisationFrom Orbit to IntimacyListening to whales: input requested!!Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Credits: Sperm Whale Sound (Project CETI); Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL. 
- Apr 2, 20261h 11m
36. Stingless Bees, Ancient Honey & the Amazon's Future – with Dr. Rosa Vasquez Espinosa
What if one of the most powerful tools for saving the Amazon rain-forest was a bee most people have never heard of?Enter the stingless bee – a 65 million year old resident of Earth that produces honeys teeming with medicinal molecules and has co-evolved with indigenous Amazonian communities across millennia. Today, these bees are at the keystone species at the heart of a pioneering conservation movement spanning science, law, economics and Indigenous rights: one that recently secured the world's first legal recognition of the rights of an insect.Dr. Rosa Vásquez Espinoza is the National Geographic Explorer and conservation scientist whose NGO Amazon Research Internacional is spearheading these initiatives. In this episode we explore the life world of the bees themselves, the pioneering science and bio-economies emerging around their extraordinary honey, the deep co-evolutionary bond between stingless bees and Amazonian communities, and how bridging indigenous and Western knowledge is proving essential for the forest, for the communities who steward the bees and the legal frameworks being built to protect them.Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/stinglessbeesamazonfutureLinks:Amazon Research International: Main SiteDr Rosa Vasquez EspinosaBook: The Spirit of the RainforestYoutube: STINGLESS BEES AND THE BIODIVERSITY OF OUR AMAZONIn Peru, a Mission to Save the Stingless BeeNat Geo: Stingless bees make ‘miracle liquid.’Guardian: Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world firstLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Mar 6, 202659 min
35. From Stardust To Sentience: Astrobiology & Life in the Cosmos – with Adam Frank
What is life, and are we alone in the universe?In this episode I sit down with Adam Frank, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester, prolific science communicator, and author of five books including The Blind Spot and The Little Book of Aliens. Adam is one of the most compelling voices working at the intersection of astrobiology, philosophy, and the human future.We journey from the stunning variety of exoplanets we're only beginning to map, to the deep questions on detecting life in space. Adam argues that the search for extraterrestrial life can't be separated from the question of what life means here on Earth. Astrobiology, it turns out, may be our most useful mirror for understanding our own civilisational moment.We also get into the hard problem of consciousness, the blind spot at the heart of modern science, and how cosmology like art and myth - can be a gateway to awe. A conversation that leaves you more at home in the strangeness of the universe and probably less certain about what “alive” even means.Episode Website LinkLinks:Adam’s WebsiteAdam’s Podcast: The Blind SpotAdam’s InstagramNoema Magazine: Why Science Hasn’t Solved Consciousness (Yet)The Atlantic: The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore5 Sci FI Aliens articleBeyond Center at ASU on astrobiology and SETISarah Walker’s Assembly Theory in the NYT: A Test for Life Versus Non-LifeNature paper on Assembly TheorySchrodinger: What is Life?Information TheoryBook: Human Cosmos by Jo Marchant"Semantic information, autonomous agency and non-equilibrium statistical physics" by Artemy Kolchinsky and David WolpertLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie KiddPhoto Credit: Hubble Space Telescope Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Feb 2, 202658 min
34. Black Mountains College: Rethinking Education for Our Times - with Ben Rawlence
Today’s episode explores a simple but urgent question: is our education system still fit for the world we’re entering? Climate disruption, AI, and uncertainty demand new forms of education fit for complexity and change.A rich lineage of alternative and experimental education has been evolving for decades, seeking to make learning more holistic, place-based, creative, and ecologically grounded. The focus of today’s conversation is one of those institutions: Black Mountains College in Wales. BMC is building a university model explicitly designed for a warming world, where nature is often the classroom and curriculum blends ecology and climate science with the arts, systems thinking, and community-rooted practice.I’m joined by its co-founder and CEO, Ben Rawlence, award-winning writer and former human rights researcher, to explore:The historicity of Western educational systemsWhat the role of a university should be in societyBlack Mountains College as model of the future of education The role of ecological imaginationYouth, eco anxiety and the challenges of parenting in today’s planetary momentEpisode Website Links:Black Mountains CollegeThink Like a Forest by Ben RawlenceGuardian: ‘We create changemakers’: the new UK college dedicated to climate crisisBMC and ecological imagination by Joseph Rowntree FoundationList of alternative schools and earth centered curriculum centersThe Solutions are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution from BelowBritt Wray on Climate GriefFuture CouncilRe-imagining education conference Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Oct 26, 202517 min
Poetry | Fruitful Darkness with Rilke
This Lifeworlds episode is a devotional journey into the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, the lyrical German poet of thresholds and embracing transformations.Through readings of his most luminous poems and writings, we explore how Rilke guides us deliciously in reconciling suffering and turmoil with tremendous beauty. It’s an offering for anyone standing in the in-between, for those moving through sublimation, and longing for those secret, dazzling encounters with primal life forces. Rilke’s words are an invitation in. To move towards. His poems are prayers…. “to go out into our hearts as onto a vast plain, so that life can feel us as it reaches for us.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Oct 16, 20251h 17m
33. Empatheatre: Social Sculpture & Feeling Across Worlds - with Dylan McGarry
In this episode, we explore the role of theatre and empathy in transforming worldviews. Dr. Dylan McGarry is one of the founders of Empatheatre, a South African theatre-making company and methodology that turns research and storytelling into living social sculpture. Their plays create what they call amphitheatres for empathy - spaces where art, ritual, and dialogue help people listen across difference, from mining conflicts to ocean governance to human-wildlife coexistence.Empatheatre’s productions have brought together communities, policymakers, and activists that rarely meet, showing how imagination can transform civic life. The process of creating the plays generates profound potentials for restorative justice. As Dylan says, empathy is not about agreement, but about creating a vessel strong enough to hold our differences while keeping us in relation.We will cover:Empathy as a creative actTheatre and storytelling as Trojan horses that open conversations that traditional politics often can’tHow to design spaces that allow lifeworlds to touch and the practices that help us shift into another’s perspectiveHow empathy, when practiced collectively, becomes a form of governance: a new infrastructure for democracy and careEpisode websiteLinks:Share your input for the whale productionEmpatheatreDylan’s PHD5min Empatheatre docIndlela Yokuphila: The Soul's Journey (ZULU) film & the radio play used in the court caseLalela Ulwandle TrailerUmkhosi Wenala doc about Zulu musical on indigenous traditions & animist relationshipsSteiner’s 12 sensesMOTHProject CETIKaren BakkerUndrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine MammalsOne Ocean Hubdylanmcgarry.orgInstagram: @dylan_mcgarryPhoto Credit: Casey Pratt. It captures a significant moment in a collaborative theatre-making & storytelling project titled "Umkhosi Wenala" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
About 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.
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