Life Itself Podcast

In this episode, Rufus Pollock sits down with Esther Montmany for part 3 in their mini-series on Conscious Parenting. Esther Montmany has spent more than 20 years developing a unique approach to conscious parenting and education. She has worked with Mauricio and Rebecca Wild at their legendary school in Ecuador and led the children's program at Plum Village summer retreats as well as starting seve...

In this episode, Rufus Pollock sits down with Esther Montmany for part 2 in their mini-series on Conscious Parenting.   Esther Montmany has spent more than 20 years developing a unique approach to conscious parenting and education. She has worked with Mauricio and Rebecca Wild at their legendary school in Ecuador and led the children's program at Plum Village summer retreats as well as starting se...

In this episode, Rufus Pollock sits down with Esther Montmany who has spent more than 20 years developing a unique approach to conscious parenting and education.   Esther has worked with Mauricio and Rebecca Wild at their legendary school in Ecuador and led the children's program at Plum Village summer retreats as well as starting several initiatives of her own.  In this episode, Esther shares wit...

Rufus Pollock is joined by Dr Jeffery Martin. Jeffery is a founder of the Transformative Technology space, a serial entrepreneur, and a social scientist who researches personal transformation and the states of greatest human well-being.   In this episode, Jeffery discusses Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience, more commonly referred to as Fundamental Wellbeing. He discusses his research and key find...

In this episode, Rufus Pollock sits down with philosopher, practitioner, and spiritual mentor, Dr. Thomas Steininger. Dr Steininger offers insights and reflections from over 30 years of spiritual practice and cultivation of emergent, co-conscious "We" spaces and practices. Rufus and Thomas explore emergent dialogue, the victories and shadow sides of individuation, and the integral and metamodern m...

Rufus Pollock sits down with Professor Joseph Henrich to discuss the study of cultural evolution. Joe gives an insight into how the discipline has emerged and the interdisciplinary nature of the field. He discusses some examples of areas of interest within the field, such as understanding innovation and  institutional evolution, scaling and cooperation. Rufus and Joe finish with a brief considerat...

On November 11th 2022, crypto giant FTX collapsed into bankruptcy. In this episode, Stephen Diehl and Rufus Pollock explore what happened, what went wrong, and what we can learn. They look back on the past 6 months in the crypto industry, examining other prominent crashes, namely Terra Luna, Celsius and Voyager, and Three Arrows Capital, and their contagion effects.    Stephen and Rufus then look...

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 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 Lern...

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 p...

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:...

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...

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 wh...

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://c...

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.lifeit...

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, sof...

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...

In the third episode of our Exploring Social Transformation series, Eilidh Ross sits down with Life Itself Pioneer, Valérie Duvauchelle. Valérie discusses the value collective practice brings to a community and tells us what we can expect from the upcoming Open Residency at the Life Itself Bergerac hub. Valérie also offers some insight into individual activation and its central position in social...

In the second episode of our Exploring Social Transformation series, Theo Cox sits down with visionary cultural catalyst, Karl Steyaert. Karl explains what it is to be a 'Champion of Human Wholeness', why inner transformation is central to wider societal transformation, and tells us about the series of residencies he will be facilitating in the Life Itself Bergerac Hub from September-November 2022...

We are excited to be broadening the scope of the Life Itself podcast to encompass the full spectrum of work Life Itself is involved with. In this episode, Life Itself team members Theo Cox and Eilidh Ross introduce this new era, discussing how our web3 project fits in with the wider social transformation work Life Itself engages with. Theo also introduces the newest branch of Life Itself, Life Its...

In a previous episode, Collective Action Problems & Climate Change, Steven Diehl and Rufus Pollock discussed the utility of web3 in tackling collective action problems and climate change, using KlimaDAO as a case study. In a follow up to this conversation, Rufus and Theo from Life Itself Labs sat down with Marcus Aurelius and 0xy moron, two core members of KlimaDAO, to discuss the KlimaDAO mod...

Episode #7 of our ongoing deep dive into #crypto and #web3 with Rufus Pollock and Stephen Diehl. This week we’re exploring the thesis that Bitcoin (and crypto more generally) is an anti-authoritarian force and can help undermine tyranny. To view notes, references and key concepts from this episode, visit: https://web3.lifeitself.us/notes/bitcoin-as-anti-authoritarian To learn more about our Making...

In this episode of our Making Sense of #Crypto and #Web3 series, Stephen Diehl is joined by economist and data scientist, Matthew Ranger, in a discussion on crypto assets from a macroeconomics perspective.  You can learn more about Matthew and his work here: https://www.singlelunch.com/ To learn more about our Making Sense of Web3 series visit https://web3.lifeitself.us/ Get full access to Life It...

In this episode of our Making Sense of #Crypto and #Web3 series, Rufus Pollock is joined by activist, journalist and author Cory Doctorow. Cory outlines the problems he sees within the web3 space; economic, technological, and ethical. You can learn more about Cory and his work here: https://pluralistic.net/ https://doctorow.medium.com/ To learn more about our Making Sense of Web3 series visit http...

In this episode of our Making Sense of Web3 series, Rufus Pollock speaks with Pia Mancini on Open Collective, steward ownership and exit to community. Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of Democracy Earth Foundation.  You can learn more about Pia and her work here:  https://www.piamancini.com/   https://opencollective.com/...