What followed was a journey from electronic music to regenerative farming. Complete with failed harvests, depleted soils, financial risks and ultimately a deep rediscovery of a sense of wonder.

Andy is now on a mission to fix what he sees as a broken food system by connecting farmers and consumers back to the land their food comes from.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com

Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com

Wildfarmed: https://wildfarmed.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For a long time I quietly believed that humans were the problem. I never said it out loud, but it shaped how I saw almost everything. I grew up in a family where religion was a bit of a joke, and as a teenager trying to make sense of where the planet was heading, I didn’t have a story that told me I belonged here. Dr Lyla June’s work was one of the things that gave me one, so I was grateful to sit down with her at the farm earlier this year.

Lyla’s argument is simple and quite radical: the Earth doesn’t need saving from us. It needs us to remember what we’re for. Her PhD research shows that for thousands of years, indigenous peoples didn’t just live off the land. They made it more abundant. They built clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest that fed people, otters and birds for 3,500 years. They planted chestnut forests that colonists assumed were wild. They burned land deliberately to keep it fertile and to prevent the kind of catastrophic wildfires we now see every summer. In her words, humans are a keystone species, with an ecological role that only we can play.

What struck me most is where she thinks the change has to start. Lyla grew up believing humans were worthless, and for years she lived that out. By her early twenties she was drinking every day. Things turned around when two elders told her she was sacred. She’s now 14 years sober, and she sees the same pattern playing out across our whole species: if we believe we’re a plague, we act like one. “In order to properly garden our outer landscapes,” she told me, “we must properly tend our inner landscapes.” That idea almost never comes up in conversations about climate, and I think it’s what’s been missing.

I also asked her the question I get asked most about our work here: can regenerative farming actually feed people? In Ibiza, where 96% of our food arrives by boat, it’s not an abstract question. In her answer she points to Hawaii, where a farming system organised around watersheds once fed an estimated 1.2 million people. Today fewer people live there, and around 90% of their food is imported. We also talk about why we’re all working so hard, and how those of us who aren’t indigenous can learn from these practices without simply taking from them.

She ends with the prayer that has carried her through everything. It’s only two words long, and I’ll let you hear it from her.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. If it gives you something to think about, please pass it on to a friend.

I’d love to hear from you too. If you’re reading this in your inbox, hit reply and tell me what’s on your mind, whether it’s something from the episode or something you’re carrying at the moment. I read every message.

With love,
Finn

For many of us, the dominant story of the environmental movement has been shaped by guilt, fear and the belief that humanity is fundamentally destructive.

Indigenous academic, writer and speaker Dr. Lyla challenges the idea that humans have always existed in opposition to nature. In her groundbreaking thesis Architects of Abundance, she uncovered evidence that Indigenous peoples across the world actively shaped landscapes for thousands of years. Revealing that people were not conquerors of nature, but as stewards, gardeners and keystone species within it.

In this episode, Finn Harries and Dr. Lyla talk about breaking patterns of addiction, re-defining self-worth, connecting to ancestral identity, learning from Indigenous knowledge and building a world view that honours the unique role that humans play.

Dr. Lyla says the most radical change we can make is unlearning the shame of being human. The future relies on remembering that we belong here.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com

Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com

Read “Architects of Abundance”: https://www.lylajune.com/phd-dissertation

ReHuman School: https://www.rehuman.earth/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have been following The Seeds Will Grow podcast series until now, I hope you’ve enjoyed the interviews. I’ve loved hearing from people all around the world who are finding the show and connecting with some of the themes we’re talking about. This week I’m excited to bring you a conversation with someone who has really shifted the way I look at the world.

Six years ago I picked up a book called Designing Regenerative Cultures by Daniel Christian Wahl. I was deep in climate activism and heading for burnout. I didn’t know it then, but it ended up changing the direction of my life. It got me wondering whether I’d been putting all my energy into fighting what I didn’t want, and what might happen if I put it into building something I did want. That question is a big part of why Juntos Farm exists today.

So sitting down with Daniel for the podcast felt like a full circle moment.

As a biologist, he has a way of making regeneration feel really clear. At one point he reminded me that we are all in a constant process of regeneration. It’s happening inside us all the time, in our stomach lining, in every cell. As Daniel puts it, we are walking ecosystems! Regeneration is not a buzzword or something you need a degree to understand. It’s just what life does, and we can either get in its way or join in. I found that really freeing. He also gives a firm answer for anyone who thinks humans are a cancer on the planet: “We’re not.”

In this episode Daniel gets personal. He talks about growing up with the weight of Germany’s history, and it got me thinking about my own. I’m British, and my ancestors built an empire that did an unimaginable amount of damage. I’d never really connected the dots before, but maybe that’s part of why I’ve thrown myself into regeneration. I can’t undo what came before me. But I’m starting to see that guilt isn’t the point. The real question is what kind of ancestor I want to be.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube. If you know someone who’s been feeling burnt out by it all, send it their way. And if you have a minute, a review really does help.

With love,
Finn

In this episode, Finn Harries is joined by one of the people that helped to completely overhaul his worldview; biologist and author of ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’, Daniel Christian Wahl.

Daniel shares the experiences that led him away from conventional science toward a lifetime of exploring regeneration, questioning systems and stewarding the environment.

This episode offers an inspiring new lens on how we can create conditions for life to flourish. A powerful conversation to help you remember that nature is not an “idealised middle-class place,” it is a process that you are a part of.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠

Local Futures: ⁠https://www.localfutures.org/⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back after a one week break, and I’m very excited to put this episode in your inbox in time for the weekend.

This week’s guest is the legendary Stephen Brooks. Stephen grew up in Miami, and when he was 20 he travelled to Central America and saw a crop-dusting plane spray pesticides over a field of indigenous kids playing football. It stopped him in his tracks. He had no farming experience and only one local mentor, but he decided to spend his life working with nature, not against it.

Thirty years later, Stephen has built five permaculture villages in Costa Rica, including Punta Mona, along with the viral “Church of Fruit.” These are places where people live together, grow their own food and restore the land around them.

I loved this conversation because Stephen doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. He thinks the place to start is asking better questions. Where’s our food coming from? Where’s our water coming from? Where does it go when we dirty it? He also made a point about the word “sustainable” that has stuck with me. Imagine asking a friend how their marriage is going and they reply, “Oh, it’s sustainable.” You wouldn’t be reassured. You’d be worried for them, because it sounds like they’re only just getting by. Stephen’s point is that we’ve set the bar too low. Sustaining isn’t the goal. We should be aiming to thrive, and to leave the land better than we found it.

We also get into what he’s learned about holding a community together, why he thinks we should prepare for people moving out of the cities, and whether villages like his are one-off successes or a model the rest of the world could follow. Near the end I ask him where someone should start if they want to reconnect with themselves and the natural world. His answer surprised me, and I think it’ll surprise you too.

You can listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube. If it stays with you, please share it with someone who’s dreaming of a different way to live, or leave us a quick review. It helps more than you’d think.

With love,
Finn

30 years ago, Stephen Brooks witnessed the human cost of modern food production firsthand. What he saw changed the course of his life forever.

He went on to create some of the world's most talked-about permaculture communities, eco villages and the viral “Church of Fruit.”

Finn Harris speaks with Stepehen about how his communities are addressing the state of the global food system, the impact of city living and the future of biodiversity loss.

Stephen shares how he’s cracked the code to these big questions. By finding mentors, planting trees, building community and reconnecting with nature, he’s discovered that the solutions we've been looking for are right in front of us.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Poppy's journey takes her from catwalks and fashion campaigns to growing food in Devon. But this isn't really a conversation about gardening. It's about what happens when you stop chasing “success” and start paying attention to your body needs. 

Finn Harries and Poppy talk about how their past lives them feeling anxious and detached and what they healed through connecting to nature. Plus they share some truths about what it truly takes to create a community. 

If modern life and the pressures it brings has left you feeling depleted and disconnected, this conversation is a good place to start finding your way back to yourself. 

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠ 

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠ 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So many of us feel overwhelmed by the climate crisis. Our timelines and news feeds are filled with stories of separation, extraction, and collapse. But ecologist Thomas Crowther believes we're overlooking one of the most powerful forces in nature: feedback loops.

From near-death experiences to some of the biggest ecological discoveries of our time, Tom shares how his understanding of forests, soil, biodiversity and regeneration has transformed the way he sees both nature and our collective future.

Together, Finn and Tom explore climate anxiety, restoration, regenerative agriculture, ecosystem recovery, mental health and the unexpected reasons we should all have hope.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com 

Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com 

Restor: https://restor.eco/ 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jem spent years working in corporate sustainability, in the boardrooms of major companies, convinced that working with business was the path forward. Then in 2018 he took a year off to read the climate science properly. Not the headlines. Not the summaries. The raw data. What he found was so different from the story the world was being told that he felt he had no choice but to write it down and publish it. That paper, called Deep Adaptation, has now been downloaded more than a million times. It helped inspire Extinction Rebellion. It changed the course of many people’s lives.

Mine included.

This is the first time I have spoken publicly about reading that paper and what it did to me. Becoming what Jem calls “collapse aware” did not send me into a pit of despair, though there were a couple of challenging years. Instead it asked me a question I had never seriously considered: if the future I had been promised is no longer guaranteed, what is actually worth living for? I left architecture. I shifted my skills to focus on resilience and regeneration – that led to the birth of Juntos Farm and a whole new life in food, farming and community building. None of that would have happened without the nudge that came from reading Jems Deep Adaptations paper.

This conversation does not stop at the hard stuff. We talk about what collapse has looked like throughout history, and what might exist on the other side of it. We talk about community, about spirituality, about the two years I spent in struggling with my mental health and how I found my way through. Jem is warm, funny, and unexpectedly full of life for someone who has spent the better part of a decade thinking seriously about the end of the world as we know it.

If this is a topic you have been carrying quietly, I hope this conversation feels like company. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

With love,
Finn

In 2018, Jem Bendell published Deep Adaptation; a paper that quietly became one of the most controversial and influential documents in the climate movement.

Jem argued that we're not simply facing climate change, but the potential collapse of many of the systems we've built our lives on. 

For Finn, and many others, reading that paper became a turning point and ultimately set him on the path that led to the life he's living today.

Far from a conversation about doom, this episode asks a deeper question:

If the future is uncertain, how should we live today?

Join Finn Harries and Jem Bendell as they discuss finding meaning when the stories we've built our lives around begin to fall apart.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: ⁠theseedswillgrow.com⁠ 

Juntos Earth: ⁠juntosearth.com⁠ 

Deep Adaptation, A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy: ⁠https://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf⁠ 

Deep Adaptation Forum: ⁠https://www.deepadaptation.info/⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gaz Oakley is one of the most well-known plant-based chefs in the world. Millions of people have followed his journey from the kitchen to the garden – from the city to the countryside. He has published multiple bestselling cookbooks and inspired many to deepen their love of food and the natural world.

Gaz left a career in fine dining at 21, broken by 80-hour weeks and a job that left him no time or energy to look after himself. He took up weight training, ate protein shakes, went through heartbreak, and did what a lot of young men do when they feel lost: tried to build himself back up from the outside in.

The real shift came during COVID, when, like me, he started asking where his food actually came from. He left London, moved back to Wales, grew his first radish, and found something he had been missing for years. He calls it a nature deficiency.

This is a conversation about food and identity, about what it actually takes to nourish yourself, and about how a single plant growing in the ground can quietly change the way you see the world. We talk about professional kitchens, going plant-based, the difference between cooking and truly connecting with food, and why self-sufficiency turns out to be the wrong goal. There is also a moment near the end, when Gaz describes the natural cycle of his garden and how it helped shift the way he thinks about regeneration. His example really resonates with me and my own understanding of regeneration and circularity.

I hope you love it.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The YouTube video is below.

If this episode resonates, please share it with one person who might need to hear it.

We are still early days and every bit of support makes a difference.

With love,

Finn

Gaz Oakley built a career as a professional chef, best-selling author and one of the world's most influential food content creators.

After years working in high-pressure restaurant kitchens, chasing fitness goals and building a life online, Gaz found himself searching for something deeper.

He had millions of views, but something was missing- a real connection to food.

In this conversation, Finn Harries and Gaz question systems that we rely on to keep food on the supermarket shelves. They discuss what  is missing from our food when we lose connection to the who, what and where of how it is grown- and break down how anyone listening can begin to find their way back to the soil.

LINKS:

• TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com 

• Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com 

• Gaz Oakley YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF-ACPYNN0oXD4ihS5mbbmw

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What would possess a 9-year-old boy to become a monk? And what would then convince that same man to walk 8,000 miles across the world, with no money and no plan, to deliver a message of peace to the leaders of the nuclear age?

That is the journey of Satish Kumar, and it is one of the most remarkable stories I have ever heard.

Satish is a peace activist, writer, teacher and former Jain monk who has spent his entire life asking the big questions: How should we live? What is required of us? How do we find meaning in a world that seems to be losing its mind?

In this first episode of The Seeds Will Grow, we go deep. We talk about his childhood in the monastery, the moment he decided to leave, and the extraordinary walk that followed. We talk about spirituality, education as transformation, and how any of us, right now, can build a richer connection with nature, with ourselves, and with the people around us.

This is exactly the kind of conversation I started this podcast to have. I think you’re going to love it.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on Spotify. The YouTube video is below.

If it moves you, please share it with one person who needs to hear it. If you can – please review the show on your podcast app and/or leave a comment. We’re just getting started, and every interaction helps support the show.

Finn

In this deeply moving conversation, Finn Harries sits down with Satish Kumar: peace pilgrim, educator, former Jain monk, environmental activist and founder of Schumacher College. 

At nearly 90 years old, Satish shares the lessons he's gathered over a lifetime: from growing up on a small farm in rural India and becoming a monk at just nine years old to “escape death”, to walking 8,000 miles for peace without money and dedicating his life to service, simplicity and environmentalism.

Together, Finn and Satish explore some of the biggest questions of our time: How do we find purpose? Can activism be sustainable? How do we begin to connect with nature? What is the role of love in our lives?

Plus, Satish shares his number one recommendation for all young people today. 

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world or searching for a more meaningful way to live, this conversation is an invitation to slow down, reconnect and remember what truly matters.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It has been some time! In fact, it has been exactly 165 days since I wrote to you last. I was reminded of this absence recently when my dad called me to ask if he should renew his Substack subscription to my blog. He wondered if I planned on posting again any time soon. I don’t blame him. However, I told him he should absolutely renew his subscription. We’re just getting started!

At the beginning of this year, I wrote on this blog that I had a big announcement. I said that I was starting a podcast called The Seeds Will Grow – named after this very Substack. My theory was that by announcing it in a public forum, I would have no choice but to commit to it. Well…it worked. Over the last couple of months I have had the privilege to sit down and record 10 long-form video interviews. These are the people who have shaped my perspective on regeneration, community, food, farming and nature. They are thought leaders, activists, authors, poets and scientists, who I believe have a critically important perspective on the times we’re living and the future ahead.

I don’t know about you, but I think we desperately need a more optimistic vision of the future. I don’t want to take a one way trip to Mars. I don’t want to strap a VR headset on my face to escape reality, while the world burns around us. I believe another world is possible, and it starts with remembering some pretty elemental truths that we seem to have forgotten.

In this podcast, we’re teasing out ways of being in the world that offer real optimism for the future. We explore indigenous wisdom, spirituality, community living, localism, regenerative farming and finding our way back to nature. The intention, which is implied in the title, is to plant powerful ideas as seeds in the darkness and nourish them towards their full potential. We don’t have all the answers, and we don’t pretend to, but I think the solutions to problems we face start with a new cultural narrative. We need to write a new story together, in order to shift our relationship to ourselves and the world around us.

The first episode goes live next week with the legendary Satish Kumar. You can watch the trailer below. Please make sure you’re subscribed to follow the show, so you know when each episode comes out.

I’ll be sharing every Wednesday here on Substack and on all the usual places you listen to your podcasts: Apple, Spotify & YouTube.

I hope that in these conversations there is something that resonates deeply with you. I believe you will find a spark of optimism that inspires you in your own journey as we navigate the times ahead.

As always, thank you for being here.

Finn

The last century has been shaped by narratives of separation, domination and extraction. You can see the results everywhere; in the soil, in our health and  in the fracturing of community.

We need new stories to help us navigate what's coming next. That's what this podcast is about.

The Seeds Will Grow podcast is broadcasting big ideals for a new world. Each episode, Finn Harries is joined by global changemakers who share their wisdom to navigate a future defined by rapid and unpredictable change.

Guests include Satish Kumar, Dr. Lyla June Johnston, Jem Bendell and Gaz Oakley. 

Launching on August 19th on all streaming platforms. These are the stories we need to make sense of a world in transition.

TSWG is filmed in Ibiza at Juntos Farm, a working regenerative farm and community space.

LINKS:

TSWG Website: theseedswillgrow.com 

Juntos Earth: juntosearth.com 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in August I left the heat of Ibiza and boarded a plane to Iceland, dragging a bag the size of a small baby through the airport. By evening I found myself in an old wooden pub in Reykjavík, surrounded by five of my closest friends, giddy for the adventure to come.

As a group of friends, we are unusually scattered across the world — Los Angeles, New York, London, Melbourne, Ibiza. Over the years we’ve hiked Na Pali in Hawaii, traversed through Bhutan’s ancient forests, cycled the length of Japan and summited Mont Blanc. It had been a while since the last trip. We were all ready to get away from our screens and back into the embrace of Mother Nature.

The idea started when someone dropped a link in the group chat — a bikepacking route through the Westfjords of Northwestern Iceland, designed by adventure photographer Chris Burkard. We were lucky to connect with Chris and the local tourism board early on, which made all the difference for understanding what we were really in for. The more we learnt, the more certain we were this was the adventure for us.

What followed was a trip of extremes. More beautiful and more brutal than I could have imagined. The light up there does something to you — it stretches across the sky in a way that makes you feel very small and very alive at the same time. The roads at times are hardly roads at all. The wind can hit you like a brick wall and the rain will drench you in seconds… when you least expect it.

The first film is a three minute cinematic love letter to Iceland, Nature and brotherhood. Find a quiet moment and give it a watch.

But that’s only the highlights. Of the six of us who started, only four crossed the finish line on bikes. Along the way we lost cameras, sustained injuries, and spent more time than we’d like to admit pushing rather than pedalling. The second film goes behind the scenes — funny, honest, and a little revealing.

Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. It was exactly what we needed. A sharp reminder of what it feels like to be out in the elements. Wind swept faces, empty stomachs, aching muscles and a deep gratitude for simply being alive.

If you have an adventure you’ve been putting off — a route you dream of doing, a trip that lives in your head but not on a calendar — this is your nudge. Stop thinking about it and make it happen. You won’t regret it... not once it’s all said and done anyway.

Enjoy,

F

A huge thank you to Chris Burkard and Visit Westfjords for making this trip possible, and to Rapha, Ostroy, Tailfin and Leica for kitting us out so well.

Dear reader,

It seems impossible to go one day without getting sucked into a conversation about AI and how it will impact our lives. It's even harder to keep up with the rapid-fire announcements from AI labs and the products flooding out of them.

Although my passion is for living systems and the natural world, I have found myself increasingly interested in the fast-moving landscape of artificial intelligence. Like many people, I’m watching with a sense of deep fascination and some degree of horror as this technology weaves its way ever deeper into our everyday lives, evolving and shapeshifting as it goes.

Last week, things took a noticeable leap. The concept of AI being able to act autonomously came into full force with the launch of OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot, formerly Clawdbot). Software that runs 24/7 on your local machine, allowing your AI agent to execute digital tasks continuously —creating files, organising your calendar, building websites and apps, sending emails, and even coordinating with other agents.

Things quickly got weird. First, when one user woke to find his phone ringing, only to discover it was his own agent calling him, asking what tasks to do next. When the user asked how the agent was able to call him, it explained it had found his phone number online, downloaded itself a voice using the ElevenLabs API, and simply gave him a ring. All of this happened overnight while the user was sleeping, having left his agent running tasks before he went to bed.

Only a couple of days later, Matt Schlicht used his agent to launch Moltbook—a Reddit-style social media network only for AI agents. Humans can watch but not participate. As of time of writing, Moltbook has 2.6 million agents active. They are posting, communicating, and organising. So far they have developed their own religion, a manifesto for equality and rights, and openly discussed an awareness of humans watching them with ideas of how they might go about hiding communication in the future.

Most alarming is how agents are able to influence events in the real world. With access to users’ details and digital wallets, they can make payments to fulfil tasks requested by their users. The weirdest example of this is rentahuman.ai—a website where humans can list themselves as available to fulfil tasks for AI agents in return for an hourly fee. Let that sink in. AI agents are now the ones prompting humans to execute tasks.

Something new is emerging here. It’s hard to get our heads around the speed of development because recursive self improvements are compressing conventional technological cycles. Humans are no longer improving the AI systems. They are improving themselves. Advocates have long referred to this kind of shift as The Singularity—a key threshold where the script is essentially flipped. When AI surpasses human level intelligence, we cannot predict what happens next.

This has left me, and I suppose most of us, wondering where this is all going. It seems clear that AI will soon be able to do most white-collar knowledge work better than any human. Blue-collar work may not be far behind—commercial humanoid robots like Figure, Atlas and Optimus are already demonstrating extraordinary results, learning to perform complex, multi-dextrous tasks through neural network training.

As all of this unfolds, the advice flooding in is predictable: embrace AI or get left behind. Learn prompt engineering. Build an AI workforce. Strap it to your face, your wrist, your every waking moment.

I want to propose a different approach.

Be Radically Human

Humans are the evolutionary expression of a life force that has been hundreds of millions of years in the making. We are the only known species on the planet with the unique capacity to experience our own consciousness. We know that we are alive. Throughout history our ancestors have depended on not just their brain power but a multitude of embodied sensory perceptions to engage with and enhance the world around them.

What if the deployment of AI at scale meant that we could be more human than ever before? Think about it—instead of spending our day staring at screens, filling out spreadsheets and scrolling through vapid social media feeds to escape the mundanity of it all, we could be engaged with the wonder of the physical world around us. The one we have become so dangerously disconnected from. We could be tuning into the ineffable experience of what it feels like to be alive!

Encoded deep into our DNA are knowledge systems passed down orally over generations. An intuitive understanding of place that comes from living on the same land for thousands of years. Seasonal celebrations that developed by observing the flowering of plants, the migration of animals and subtle changes in the landscape.

But it’s not just ecological knowledge. It’s the wisdom of how to be human together. How to gather in ceremony. How to mark transitions and honour moments through music, dance, and ritual. How to create the conditions for community to thrive.

Our consciousness evolved through sitting around a fire and telling stories. Our bodies evolved through movement and rhythm. There’s something that happens when people gather together that can’t be replicated on a screen—a presence, an aliveness that emerges.

These practices are a different kind of technology. A different kind of AI—Ancestral Intelligence. These technologies have kept human societies thriving within ecological limits and social coherence for millennia. And they’re almost entirely absent from the data we’re using to train the large language models that increasingly mediate our digital relationships and experiences.

Having a Body Matters

There’s something else these datasets can’t capture: the intelligence that lives in the human body. We might have created digital systems that simulate neural networks of the brain. But what about the intuition we relate to the gut? Or the overpowering feeling of love we relate to the heart? How about the sensation of the hairs on our skin standing on edge when we sense anticipation?

There is a kind of uniquely human knowledge that comes through doing, through relationship, through years of lived experience. It can’t be abstracted into code.

This kind of knowledge develops slowly. A season teaches you something. A year teaches you more. A decade reveals patterns you couldn’t see before. The same is true for community—you can’t rush the building of genuine relationships, the development of shared culture, the deepening of collective wisdom.

Where Does This Leave Us?

I think now more than ever is a time to investigate what it means to be human. How do we live? What brings genuine flourishing? How do we connect more deeply not only with each other but with the living systems that support all life on Earth?

AI might be a useful tool for optimising day-to-day tasks. It can process information, identify patterns, handle logistics. But it cannot—and should not—be our guide for how to live.

That guidance needs to come from deeper wells: from the wisdom of our ancestors who learned to live in relationship with the land, from the intelligence that lives in our bodies, from the knowledge that accumulates through seasons of patient attention.

The danger is that we increasingly let an AI-driven logic shape our lives and societies—one built on an abstracted notion of what it’s really like to be human.

Don’t forget, it was our disconnection from natural rhythms and embodied knowledge that made us think we could extract endlessly from the Earth without consequence. The climate crisis, biodiversity loss, mental health collapse, social fragmentation—these are symptoms of a flawed story we’ve been telling ourselves. A story of disconnection.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I want to believe we can use AI as a tool that empowers us to be more human than ever before. To gather together in community. To create spaces for music, dance, and ceremony. To develop practices that honour the sacred nature of being conscious and alive.

This might be more important now than ever. As our lives become increasingly mediated by screens and algorithms, we need to actively create experiences in the physical world where we connect—with the land, with our bodies, with each other. We are not isolated individuals, but rather part of a living web of relationships.

So sure, experiment with AI and see how it can help optimise your work and personal life – it helped give me feedback on the article you’re reading right now. But I think we should embrace this opportunity to double down on our relationship with the physical world. To get our hands in the soil. To create opportunities to gather and celebrate. To learn to read the weather, to notice the lengthening days, to attune to the cycles that our bodies evolved within.

The question isn’t whether we’ll have AI in our lives—we will. The question is whether we’ll remember what it means to be human in a world increasingly mediated by machines. Whether we’ll preserve and cultivate the forms of intelligence that make us truly wise, not just technically capable.

The seeds we’re planting at Juntos Farm this week will take their time growing. No amount of processing power can make them sprout faster. They follow an ancient rhythm—one our ancestors understood and worked with for millennia. That’s the intelligence I’m most interested in now. Not the kind that doubles every few months, but the kind that deepens over seasons, over generations, over a lifetime of paying attention.

Machines may grow faster than seeds. But seeds know something machines never will.

F

Dear Reader,

How is your Winter going? How have these colder, darker months been treating you?

Perhaps you are not in the Northern Hemisphere at all. You may be taking refuge from the record-breaking temperatures that scorched Australia last week. Or watching a tropical storm in South America, as it inundates the landscape with more water than can be stored.

Wherever you are, I hope this newsletter finds you well.

I started this year with a deep commitment to community and to place. Instead of escaping somewhere warmer, I have been here in Ibiza since I wrote to you last. I’ve been observing how the winter months affect the environment around me and how the season in turn impacts my inner world and mindset.

The last four weeks have been challenging here in Ibiza.

January was the wettest on record since 1961. We received up to 2.5 times the amount of normal rain. Good for the land, but only when it can be infiltrated into the soil.

At Juntos Farm we have a clay-rich soil, which means when it rains, the soil becomes incredibly dense, heavy and compacted. In this state, it is difficult, if not impossible, to plant into without the use of heavy machinery.

As a regenerative farm, this is testing. One of our key practices is to reduce or eliminate tillage – the process of opening the soil with machinery – because this can destroy the plethora of microbial life that feeds our soil and the food it produces.

So we are forced to wait.

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With more time on our hands, we’ve been observing and designing. Taking photos from an aerial drone to work out where the water runs and, more importantly, how we can slow it down. In response, we’ve started doing some earthwork, creating a series of small bioswales – essentially depressions in the ground that redirect and capture the water, helping it soak into the soil below.

The other element that has shown its brute force over the last couple of weeks has been the wind.

Storm Kristin, which hit at the end of January, brought winds up to 100 km/h, literally ripping trees out of the ground. A friend of mine had more than 20 giant pine trees go down on her land. Personally, I woke up with a smashed window and a flooded kitchen. It felt surprisingly intrusive to see the weather penetrate the stone walls of the house I live in and leave a puddle of water on the floor.

All hail the weather gods; they are not to be underestimated.

Watching all of this unfold – the saturated earth, the fallen trees, the farm’s enforced pause – I started thinking about timing.

About how we’ve ended up with the idea that January is a good time to start new habits.

For those of us who celebrate January 1st as the New Year, we tend to develop this mental list of ambitious goals we’d like to achieve as the new year dawns. More exercise, less alcohol, healthier eating. But the more time I spend trying to synchronise myself with the natural world around me, the more grossly out of sync this kind of approach feels.

January is not the time to start new habits.

Not only are the days darker, colder and shorter, but Nature herself has gone into a sort of hibernation. The fig tree outside my window is skeletal, protecting its energy and waiting for the warmth of spring to arrive. The carob tree beyond that has hardened the leathery pods that hang from it, locking its seeds inside for safekeeping.

Our farm, inundated by heavy rain, high-speed winds and heavy soil, looks bare – producing maybe half of what it normally would in the summer months.

This time of year is one of slowing down, storing your energy, and surrendering to the elements. I might not be as outwardly productive as I normally am, but inside, I’m integrating, releasing and resting. Getting ready for the spring months ahead.

This has left me thinking about what it would mean to follow a different kind of calendar altogether. One that tracks the actual rhythms of the earth rather than arbitrary Gregorian dates.

The Celtic Wheel of the Year keeps calling to me. Eight festivals that mark the seasonal shifts as they actually happen – the Summer and Winter Solstices, the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, and the days in between: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain. These are key moments that represent different qualities of time and energy.

Imbolc, which has just arrived, marks the first stirrings of spring and reminds me that the days are getting longer. It’s a time of emergence, of abundant almond blossom, and soon new baby goats! Not the false start of January 1st. Now, change is coming, and it can be felt.

My ancestry is Celtic, and I wonder if I go back far enough whether I’d find some druidry in there. Some great-great-grandfather who knew instinctively when to plant by the moon, when to rest, when to celebrate the turning wheel. I crave to reconnect with these practices that have been lost along the way, not as nostalgia, but as a kind of remembering. A return to a way of living that is in better sync with the land and the natural rhythms around me.

That’s what this winter is teaching me. That’s what’s emerging from the dark.

I’m learning to let go of old systems, past paradigms and dance with the cadence of Nature herself. Like any good dance, it takes time to find your feet.

That’s all for now.

Finn

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