Life Itself Podcast

Rufus Pollock is joined by Dr Jeffery Martin. Jeffery is a founder of the Transformative Technology space, a serial entrepreneur, and a social scientist who researches personal transformation and the states of greatest human well-being.  

In this episode, Jeffery discusses Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience, more commonly referred to as Fundamental Wellbeing. He discusses his research and key findings, and the protocols he has developed and tested to help people obtain "fundamental wellbeing" in a rapid, secular, and safe way. For notes, further resources, and to listen as a podcast, head to our website: 

About Dr Jeffery Martin:  

For over 15 years Jeffery has conducted the largest international study on persistent non-symbolic experience (PNSE), which includes the types of consciousness commonly known as: enlightenment, nonduality, the peace that passeth understanding, unitive experience, and hundreds of other terms. This resulted in the first reliable, cross-cultural and pan-tradition classification system for these types experience. It also led to the fundamental discovery that these were psychological states that had been identified and adopted for thousands of years by many cultures and belief systems. They were not inherently spiritual or religious, or limited to any given culture or population, and could be molded in many ways to shape the experience. More recently, he has used this research to make systems available to help people obtain profound psychological benefits in a rapid, secular, reliable, and safe way. Find out more about his work on his website: drjefferymartin.com

About Rufus Pollock: 

Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author as well as a long-term zen practitioner. He is passionate about finding wiser, weller ways to live together. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: rufuspollock.com.

In this episode, Rufus Pollock sits down with philosopher, practitioner, and spiritual mentor, Dr. Thomas Steininger. Dr Steininger offers insights and reflections from over 30 years of spiritual practice and cultivation of emergent, co-conscious "We" spaces and practices. Rufus and Thomas explore emergent dialogue, the victories and shadow sides of individuation, and the integral and metamodern movements.

Watch on YouTube and view the episode transcript here: https://lifeitself.org/2022/12/08/thomas-steininger-on-emergent-dialogue-and-transcending-individualism/ 

Dr. Thomas Steininger has been cultivating transformative “We Space” practices for nearly 30 years. He is a philosopher, practitioner, and spiritual mentor and has dived deeply into the practice of meditation and into an exploration of the evolution of human consciousness, particularly the current transition from a hyperindividual “I” culture to a co-conscious “We.”  As an authority on cultural evolution and the different spiritual and religious currents that have formed our postmodern world, he brings this perspective into his work as publisher of evolve-magazin, the leading German magazine on consciousness and culture and as faculty at Meridian U. in California. He also co-founded and developed a process of emergent dialogue, an advanced practice in conscious communication.  

Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author as well as a long-term zen practitioner. He is passionate about finding wiser, weller ways to live together. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: rufuspollock.com.

Rufus Pollock sits down with Professor Joseph Henrich to discuss the study of cultural evolution. Joe gives an insight into how the discipline has emerged and the interdisciplinary nature of the field. He discusses some examples of areas of interest within the field, such as understanding innovation and  institutional evolution, scaling and cooperation. Rufus and Joe finish with a brief consideration of where on the "cultural evolutionary tree" we are today, laying the ground for a potential future follow up.

This conversation forms part of the Cultural Evolution: A New Discipline is Born Series.

You can learn more here: https://lifeitself.org/learn/culturology

Joseph Henrich is a Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is author of several books, most recently 'The Weirdest People in the World' and 'The Secret of Our Success'. His research focuses on evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making and culture, and includes topics related to cultural learning, cultural evolution, culture-gene coevolution, human sociality, prestige, leadership, large-scale cooperation, religion and the emergence of complex human institutions.

Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. 

On November 11th 2022, crypto giant FTX collapsed into bankruptcy. In this episode, Stephen Diehl and Rufus Pollock explore what happened, what went wrong, and what we can learn. They look back on the past 6 months in the crypto industry, examining other prominent crashes, namely Terra Luna, Celsius and Voyager, and Three Arrows Capital, and their contagion effects.   

Stephen and Rufus then look at what remains of the crypto industry. What’s next to fall?   

Find the episode notes here: https://web3.lifeitself.org/notes/post-ftx-collapse

Stephen Diehl is a software engineer, writer and Web3 expert. He has written many articles about the topic on his blog at stephendiehl.com and has been featured in several podcasts on the topic. 

Over the past few months we have been sharing episodes centered around the theme of 'social transformation'. In this final episode of the mini-series, co-hosts Eilidh Ross, Theo Cox and Nathen Fitchen reflect on the series, sharing why we embarked on this project, stand out moments, and key takeaways.   

We will be continuing with our exploration of this emerging ecosystem of radical change makers in the near future, so make sure to sign up to our mailing list to be kept up to date with new episodes, event announcements and more: https://lifeitself.org/contact/

In April 2022, Life Itself co-founder, Rufus Pollock, was invited by the New School at Commonweal onto their podcast to discuss his recent work mapping an emerging “metamodern” ecosystem centered on a radical, alternative approach to social change–one that is simultaneously paradigmatic, integrated, and engaged. Thank you to Commonweal for allowing us to share the conversation, and to Michael Lerner for hosting the conversation.

Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author as well as a long-term zen practitioner. He is passionate about finding wiser, weller ways to live together. He wants his child (and all children) to live in a world of love, abundance and wisdom. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age and has been translated into multiple languages. His next book, Wiser Societies, is about the cultural dark matter that enables societies be wiser (and weller). Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: rufuspollock.com.  

Michael Lerner is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles, Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).

This week in our Exploring Social Transformation series, we are sharing a conversation we had back in September 2021 with acclaimed author of 'The Patterning Instinct' and 'The Web of Meaning', Jeremy Lent. This conversation was originally published as part of the Imaginary Society Forum, a forum curated by Life Itself in association with Untitled for the exercising of social imagination through practice and theory.

In this episode, Jeremy and Rufus dig into the myth of man's innate selfishness, how shifts in cultural consciousness have historically come about, what's coming next, and why we have reason to feel hopeful.

To view the episode notes and learn more about the Imaginary Society Forum head over to: https://lifeitself.us/2022/08/09/jeremy-lent-on-interconnection-shifting-worldviews/ 

Welcome to another episode of our Making Sense of #Crypto & #Web3 series. This week, Rufus Pollock and Theo Cox sit down with co-founders of Hypha DAO Alex Prate, Joachim Stroh, and Franz Joseph Allmayer to discuss how DAOs are aiming to revolutionize systems of governance and whether blockchain technology is indeed necessary to this effort.   

Explore our guide to crypto and web3 here: https://web3.lifeitself.us/

In episode 6 of our Exploring Social Transformation series, Theo Cox is joined by author, professor, former director of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and former Head of Policy at Downing Street, Geoff Mulgan.  

In this episode Geoff and Theo explore why social and political imagination is important, why there is a deficit in social imagination in today's society, and what we can do about this.

Geoff Mulgan is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. He’s the former chief executive of Nesta, and within the UK government has acted both as the director of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and Head of Policy at Downing Street. Geoff has also founded and co-founded a large number of organizations, from the think-tank Demos to the charity Action for Happiness. His latest book, 'Another world is possible: how to reignite social and political imagination', has just been released.

In the latest episode of our Making Sense of Crypto & Web3 series, we talk with blockchain researcher and expert Samer Hassan. Samer is an academic at Harvard and Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain focused on decentralized collaboration. In this episode we talk about decentralization both pre and post blockchain, why platform monopolies like Facebook and Google are so ubiquitous and whether Web3 could help replace them with something fairer, freer and more participatory.  

Learn more about our Making Sense of Crypto & Web3 project here: https://web3.lifeitself.us/ 

Samer Hassan is an activist, researcher and teacher, Faculty Associate at Harvard University‘s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and Associate Professor (“Profesor Titular“) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain. His focus is on decentralized collaboration and how to build free/open source privacy-aware decentralized systems (e.g. blockchain) that facilitate the sustainability of collaborative communities and social movements (from the Commons paradigm). He was awarded the EU’s largest individual research grant, an ERC Grant of 1.5M€, to work on Blockchain-based Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) for bootstrapping a new type of Collaborative Economy. You can find out more at http://p2pmodels.eu