On the 123rd episode of the
What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome our guest,
Jessica Böhme. Jessica is a professor and academic director of technology management at FHM Berlin, and she is the founder of the
Institute for Practical ekoPhilosophy (IPeP). She writes a weekly newsletter "
wild:philosophy," where she explores how to live life in a collapsing world. Her expertise lies in utilising philosophy as a meta-technology for individual, social, and ecological transformations.
In this episode, we delve into the profound question of how to live this life—particularly in the context of sustainability and personal responsibility. We discuss the concept of 'messy disturbance' in navigating life's complexities, the paralysis that can come from heightened awareness, and reflect on the experiments Jessica undertook to align her actions with her values—including her remarkable "one dress" experiment, in which she wore the same dress every day for over a year.
This conversation celebrates curiosity, the wisdom gained through lived experience, paying attention to life’s feedback and how philosophy can be practiced in everyday life, offering a grounding force amidst uncertainty.
Ultimately, this episode points to a richness of life that can be experienced when we allow ourselves to be seen.
04:10 Living in the messy disturbance of life
07:10 We are more resilient than we think
11:00 Engaging with the difficulty of our choices
13:30 The importance of living our theories
18:05 Wearing the same dress for a year
23:00 People don’t notice as much as you think
26:30 The connection with items through familiarity
30:00 The relationship between scarcity and care
32:05 The friction between long term and a world in flux
37:05 Standing by and living in our choices
42:35 Integrating more than rejecting ways of life
46:17 Seeing Philosophy as a daily practice
49:00 Life’s feedback and responding to it
51:30 Summary and what is a good life for Jessica?