Life Itself Podcast

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/ Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

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). Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

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/  Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

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/ Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

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. Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

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 Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

In episode 5 of our Exploring Social Transformation series, Theo Cox is joined by Hannah Close, a writer and photographer and curator for Advaya. Hannah engages in an insightful conversation on kinship, her experience of the social change ecosystem, in particular being a woman within this space, animism and Schumacher College.Learn more: https://hannahlclose.com/ https://advaya.co/ https://campus.dartington.org/schumacher-college/ Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

Regenerative Finance (ReFi) is about combining web3 finance tools with regenerative purposes like tackling climate change or cleaning up the oceans. In this episode of our Making Sense of #Crypto and #Web3 series, Rufus Pollock and Jeff Emmett discuss the promises and pitfalls of ReFi for providing public goods and nourishing the commons.  Find out more about the project here: https://web3.lifeitself.us/  Find the notes for this episode here: https://web3.lifeitself.us/notes/jeff-emmett-on-regenerative-financeJeff Emmett is a Token Engineering researcher and Communications Lead at BlockScience, and co-founder of the Commons Stack.  Drawing inspiration from mycelial networks and biomimetic processes, his goal is a toolkit for customizable regenerative economies that support purpose-driven communities. Author of Rewriting the Story of Human Collaboration and Challenges & Approaches to Scaling the Global Commons. Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

In episode 13 of our Making Sense of #Crypto & #Web3 series, Life Itself's Rufus Pollock sits down with Stephen Reid to discuss worker cooperatives, DAOs and the potential of blockchain technology to facilitate institutional innovation.Stephen Reid is a teacher, technologist and coach devoted to the flourishing of Life on Earth. He has trained in the fields of complexity science, physics, software development, transformational coaching, meditation and plant medicine. He is currently teacher of the How to DAO, Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance, The Promise of Decentralisation and Introduction to web3 courses, and a member of the not-for-profit worker co-operative Dandelion Collective.  Find out more about the Making Sense of Crypto & Web3 project: https://web3.lifeitself.us/Learn more about Stephen: https://stephenreid.net/  Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe

In this fourth episode of our Exploring Social Transformation series, Nathen Fitchen and Brendan Graham Dempsey discuss the rise of the meaning crisis, how it has perpetuated throughout the world and its symbiotic nature to the environmental crisis and other crises we face today.   In addition, they unpack a potential antidote to the meaning crisis, metamodern spirituality. Through identifying the core characteristics of metamodern thinking and how one might engage in metamodern spirituality, this conversation is a perfect place to orient oneself with the metamodern ideology and to be inspired to find greater meaning individually and as a collective.Brendan Graham Dempsey is the author of several books, his work focusing on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He also hosts a podcast called metamodern spirituality, is a public speaker, course facilitator and has released a series of insightful videos titled after postmodernism.Learn more:Brendans website - https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/ Metamodern spirituality podcast - https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/metamodern-spirituality Facebook group - metamodern spirituality - https://web.facebook.com/groups/492060442032036 Book - Building the Cathedral https://www.amazon.com/Building-Cathedral-Answering-Meaning-Personal/dp/B0915PKWBY/ Our residency page - https://lifeitself.us/upcoming-residencies-gatherings/ Get full access to Life Itself at news.lifeitself.org/subscribe