Lifeworlds

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 Link
Links:
Adam’s Website
Adam’s Podcast: The Blind Spot
Adam’s Instagram
Noema Magazine: Why Science Hasn’t Solved Consciousness (Yet)
The Atlantic: The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore
5 Sci FI Aliens article
Beyond Center at ASU on astrobiology and SETI
Sarah Walker’s Assembly Theory in the NYT: A Test for Life Versus Non-Life
Nature paper on Assembly Theory
Schrodinger: What is Life?
Information Theory
Book: Human Cosmos by Jo Marchant
"Semantic information, autonomous agency and non-equilibrium statistical physics" by Artemy Kolchinsky and David Wolpert
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: Hubble Space Telescope
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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.

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.”
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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 act
Theatre and storytelling as Trojan horses that open conversations that traditional politics often can’t
How to design spaces that allow lifeworlds to touch and the practices that help us shift into another’s perspective
How empathy, when practiced collectively, becomes a form of governance: a new infrastructure for democracy and care
Episode website
Links:
Share your input for the whale production
Empatheatre
Dylan’s PHD
5min Empatheatre doc
Indlela Yokuphila: The Soul's Journey (ZULU) film & the radio play used in the court case
Lalela Ulwandle Trailer
Umkhosi Wenala doc about Zulu musical on indigenous traditions & animist relationships
Steiner’s 12 senses
MOTH
Project CETI
Karen Bakker
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
One Ocean Hub
dylanmcgarry.org
Instagram: @dylan_mcgarry
Photo Credit: Casey Pratt. It captures a significant moment in a collaborative theatre-making & storytelling project titled "Umkhosi Wenala"
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In this episode, I sit down with Bill Plotkin, founder of Animas Valley Institute. Over the past 40 years, Bill has developed intricate, nature-based models of human development and education that challenge dominant psychological frameworks and invite us into a maturation process rooted in wholeness, wildness, and the more-than-human world.
We explore their three major maps of a person’s “soul-centric journey” and cover topics including:
Why most modern humans remain developmentally stuck in early adolescence
The 8-stage Soulcentric Developmental Wheel and how it mirrors nature’s rhythms
The four cardinal facets of the psyche, and the inner protectors that distort them
Whether other species undergo their own versions of soul initiation
Why the path to a mature culture will not come from the strategic mind, but from descent, mystery, and imagination
This is a deep-dive into a body of work that’s revolutionizing the lives of thousands of people, and how to think about adulthood, education, and healthy human cultures.
Episode Website Link
Links:
Animas Valley Institute
Animas Valley Offerings
Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche
Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World
Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche
The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries
Parable of the Tribes
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: Midjourney
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.