Jon Jandai is a farmer, seed saver, natural builder, eco-educator, speaker and co-founder of the Pun Pun Center for Self-Reliance, an educational organic farm and earth-building school in Northern Thailand where skills of self-reliance are demonstrated and shared. His TED talk, ‘Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?’, has over 15 million views.

In this interview, Jon talks about the links between community self-reliance and deep happiness. He explains how globalization has profoundly undermined this self-reliance, driving masses of people into a kind of urban slavery. It has also undermined the diversity of foods, cultures, and thinking, leaving a physical, mental and spiritual wasteland in its wake. Yet, especially for those people who have experienced both the old world of self-reliant local cultures, as well as industrial-globalized modernity, the pitfalls of the latter have come into sharp focus and sparked a movement to return to the countryside, and to reclaim the deep knowledge and skills of local living.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.