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Lifeworlds

Lifeworlds

Written by: Alexa Firmenich
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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.

www.lifeworld.earth

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Alexa Firmenich Biological Sciences Philosophy Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • 36. Stingless Bees, Ancient Honey & the Amazon's Future – with Dr. Rosa Vasquez Espinosa

    36. Stingless Bees, Ancient Honey & the Amazon's Future – with Dr. Rosa Vasquez Espinosa
    Apr 2 2026

    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/stinglessbeesamazonfuture


    Links:

    • Amazon Research International: Main Site
    • Dr Rosa Vasquez Espinosa
    • Book: The Spirit of the Rainforest
    • Youtube: STINGLESS BEES AND THE BIODIVERSITY OF OUR AMAZON
    • In Peru, a Mission to Save the Stingless Bee
    • Nat Geo: Stingless bees make ‘miracle liquid.’
    • Guardian: Stingless bees from the Amazon granted legal rights in world first

    Look 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.
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • 35. From Stardust To Sentience: Astrobiology & Life in the Cosmos – with Adam Frank

    35. From Stardust To Sentience: Astrobiology & Life in the Cosmos – with Adam Frank
    Mar 6 2026
    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.
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    1 hr
  • 34. Black Mountains College: Rethinking Education for Our Times - with Ben Rawlence

    34. Black Mountains College: Rethinking Education for Our Times - with Ben Rawlence
    Feb 2 2026

    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 systems
    • What the role of a university should be in society
    • Black Mountains College as model of the future of education
    • The role of ecological imagination
    • Youth, eco anxiety and the challenges of parenting in today’s planetary moment

    Episode Website

    Links:

    • Black Mountains College
    • Think Like a Forest by Ben Rawlence
    • Guardian: ‘We create changemakers’: the new UK college dedicated to climate crisis
    • BMC and ecological imagination by Joseph Rowntree Foundation
    • List of alternative schools and earth centered curriculum centers
    • The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution from Below
    • Britt Wray on Climate Grief
    • Future Council
    • Re-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.
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    58 mins
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