This is where it starts. Agartha's co-founders, Nico Shi and Jeremy Dela Rosa, sit down with Richa Parikh to tell the whole story out loud for the first time: why two people with comfortable careers in tech walked away to build a Solarpunk campus — a place with regenerative land, frontier technology, a genuinely loving community, and room for real spiritual growth, all at once.

We get into the meta-crisis and why it felt too big to ignore, three months living off-grid at Mars College, the visions that kept showing up in meditation, why most eco-villages drift toward isolation, whether any of this can actually coexist with capitalism, and the kind of people we're hoping to find. Plus the parts that sound insane — the aliens, and a plan to end the year with ten days of silence and an ayahuasca ceremony. We left them in.

It's episode one of a long journey.

Hosts: Jeremy Dela Rosa & Nico Shi · Guest interviewer: Richa Parikh

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open
01:02 Welcome to the Agartha Podcast
02:20 Nico's origin: Venice Beach & the meta-crisis
03:44 Mars College & living off-grid
07:44 Jeremy's origin: from Blizzard to Web3 to the vision
12:08 Dreams, visions & the name "Agartha"
14:30 Why most eco-villages go culty
16:55 Can Solarpunk compete with capitalism?
23:44 The four pillars & the values that matter
30:04 Attracting the right people
41:35 Change starts with a story
47:00 The problem & the solution, in plain terms
50:34 Auroville meets Harvard
51:45 Abundance vs. scarcity
58:08 Goals for the year
01:00:17 The Techno Shaman Residency
01:03:20 How to get involved

CONNECT
- Join the community group chat → https://t.me/agartha_one/
- Read the blog → agartha1.substack.com
- Explore more → agartha.one

New episodes every other Tuesday.