Jade speaks with Lisa Wells, award-winning poet, essayist and author.
In her new book, Believers: Making A Life At The End of the World, Lisa seeks out and learns from trailblazers and outliers around the world who are pursuing radically hopeful lifestyles -- even in the face of climate despair.
There's so much to glean from this conversation: stories and lessons from those living the change, the treasures that await outside the norm, the beauty of bird language, the mess and wonder of non-tech-mediated human relationships and how to sow a fruitful future.
As Lisa puts it, it can take a lifetime to learn how to live -- but hearing from others who have made an art and science of living like tomorrow matters sure helps speed up the process.
SHOW NOTES
- It's not her first writing rodeo but it's definitely her first book; it took six years!
- She interviewed those who were on the absolute edge of convention. What can we learn from them?
- Do human beings have an innate capacity to be beneficial contributors?
- Growing up in a DIY sensibility
- Finishing her education at wilderness school
- Transformation inevitability
- Reckoning with the reality that we need to make significant change
- Pushing back on binary perspectives and stake-out positions
- Making our transformation more attractive: Living in community, re-wilding, growing, trial and error
- The physical intimacy of being on her knees in the dirt for the sake of future generations
- Recognising that we are just creatures on the planet with a very short lifespan
- Wilderness school: becoming rooted in her bioregion
- Learning birdsong as a foreign language
- Dismantling domestication
- Owning what it means to be in relation to others who you are reliant on
- Playing the role of translator for the 'outsiders'
- Managing balance as an empathetic person
- If you want to be in relationship, you need to be willing to throw some chips on the table
- Her vision of a fruitful future (without devices and with a whole lotta mess)
- Why it takes a lifetime to learn how to live
- Being freaked out by being immortal
LINKS YOU'LL LOVE
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