E68 Lisa Wells ~ Making a life at the end of the world

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

• The underground history of American education ~ John Taylor Gatto
• End Game ~ Derrick Jensen
• A paradise built in hell ~ Rebecca Solnit

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