Almost 40% of Earth’s land is degraded, meaning that the natural cycles that sustain biodiversity, water, food, and livelihoods are breaking down. This degradation is an ecological crisis, and, it also lies at the root of massive social breakdown, displacement, and conflict. And it’s accelerating.

In this episode, I speak with Dutch ecologist and entrepreneur Willem Ferwerda, founder of Commonland, one of the leading global initiatives tackling land degradation via large-scale holistic landscape restoration. Their work spans over 20 countries, with projects restoring millions of hectares from South Africa to Spain, Australia to the Netherlands. We get into their unique 4 Returns Framework - a powerful, intuitive model that integrates ecological, social, financial, and inspirational/spiritual returns.

We talk about:

• Communities building long-term visions together across sectors
• The importance of meeting different audiences where they are
• The role of storytelling, spirituality, and local leadership
• How restoring land helps restore meaning and purpose
• And how, ultimately, all this work is about regenerating life

Episode Website Link

Show links:

• The 4 Returns Framework in Practice
• 4 Returns Framework Publication
• 4 Returns Framework for Landscape Restoration
• 4 Returns Diagnostic Tool
• The Meaning of Laudato Si for a Landscape Ethic
• Towards financing large-scale holistic landscape restoration in Europe
• The Trillion-Dollar Promise Of A Landscape Restoration Industry, Forbes
• We must tackle global risks in an integrated way – here’s how
• How the Ecosystem Approach supports “Cooperation in a Fragmented World"
• Albania landscape project

Look out for meditations, poems and readings in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

Photo Credit: Commonland

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What if the next shift in planetary consciousness didn’t come from looking back at Earth from space, but from listening deeply to the voices already here? In this thought piece I propose the “inworlding effect” as the overview effect of our time: one where developments in science, technology, law, and many other disciplines are revealing our entangled presence within a multispecies world.

Medium Article Link

Episode Website Link

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Today we’re joined by artist, musician and communal grief ritual facilitator Alexandra “ahlay” Blakey to speak about the cultural forgetting of communal mourning, the sacred role of professional mourners, and the re-emergence of grief ceremonies as necessary spaces of remembrance, healing and repair.

Ahlay brings her experience weaving song, body, and ritual into collective spaces where grief is given breath and movement, and we explore the history of grief practices across cultures, the political power of public mourning, and how grief can soften the heart and stitch community back together. We explore what to expect in a communal grief ceremony, and ahlay shares the story behind her 200-voice album WAILS: Songs for Grief, inspired by whales, ancestral sorrow, and Francis Weller’s work. Within the episode are woven tracks of her haunting songs, so tune up your headphones, and sink in.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Healing at the Roots: ahlay’s website
• Song: Carry this All
• The Sacred Role of Eastern European Professional Mourners
• Sobonfu Some
• WAILS: Songs For Grief
• One Body Song Circle Live
• Francis Weller
• Book: Dangerous Voices
• Book: Caliban and the Witch
• Martin Prechtel
• Myth of Lindworm: Martin Shaw
• Bandcamp
• Youtube Channel
• Spotify
• Soundcloud
• Instagram

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: Cover image (Earth Altering)

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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.

This is a wide-ranging and intimate conversation on language, grief, science, reverence, and what it means to come home to Earth and to the deeper meanings of life.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Carbon, the Book of life (Paul’s book)
• Drawdown (Website & Paul’s book)
• Regeneration (website resources with projects)
• Regeneration (Paul’s book)
• Francis Weller Course on grief
• Closing Poem: Love in a Time of Climate Change By Craig Santos Perez

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.

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 Polynesian ancestors, guided by the stars and whale ancestors.

This is a conversation about song as medicine, the voice as ceremony, and reclaiming lineage through sound. We ask: what might the whales be singing to us now? What frequencies are we called to remember in order to heal ourselves and our waters?

Stay on after the episode wraps to hear a special feature from Whaia’s debut album WHAIA & WATER — the first of a twelve-part series known as her Sacred Sonic Sessions.

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Whaia website
• Instagram
• Whaia Water Album Download
• Wisdom Keepers Delegation
• Oceanic Global
• Australian Songlines
• The Pleiades
• Masaru Emoto: Messages in Water

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 of Whaia: Chanel Baran Photo

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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:

• 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/theecologyofhealth

Show Links:

• Aaro Wellness
• The Web that has no Weaver
• "Understanding Chronic Illness"
• Alexa’s Article: Our Planet’s Blood
• Earth’s Frequencies: Schumann Resonances
• Yellow Emperor's Classic (Classical text upon which all Chinese Medicine is based)
• Biocubes.net: Infographic on living and human biomass on earth
• Meditation: The Cosmos in Your Food

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.

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:

• Spherical
• Spherical Labs
• Living Infrastructure Field Kit
• Dawn Danby + David McConville : When Utopia is Oblivion

Bio:

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 agency
• What is the purpose of humans?

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

Episode Website

• Lifeworlds resource page
• Faith in Nature
• Earth Law Center
• Zoops
• Treaty of Finsbury Park
• Alexa's When We Carved Spirals
• Ian McGilchrist
• Colossal
• Britt Wray
• Venemous Lumpsucker
• Multitudes Foundation
• Planetary Boundaries
• Regeneration.org
• Drawdown
• Flock Together
• Good Nature
• Forest Bathing
• Last Child Alive
• Regenerators
• Bio Leadership
• Capital Institute
• Danielle Rees: [email protected]
• Small Giants
• Berkshares
• Kenya Sarafu Credit
• Grassroot Economics

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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

Show Links:

• Superflux website
• The Quiet Enchanting
• Calling for a more than human politics
• Designweek on speculative design
• Anab Jain’s IXDA Keynote on More-Than-Human Centred Design
• Noema Magazine: Radical Design for a World in Crisis
• 9 Dimensions for evaluating how art and creative practice stimulate societal transformations
• Recent Interviews: Financial Times, ICON, Wallpaper, Offscreen Magazine, STIRworld, Business Insider, NPR Radio
• To 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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.