Stanzin Dorjai Gya is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and cultural leader from Ladakh. Born in one of Ladakh’s oldest villages called Gya, Stanzin lived a partly-nomadic childhood, spending half the month tending his family’s herd of yaks and cashmere goats in the mountains above 4000 metres, while attending school during the other half. As a teenager, he dropped out of conventional high school, and began attending Ladakh’s alternative school, SECMOL, where he discovered filmmaking.

Stanzin’s much loved documentary films generally deal with issues of climate change, cultural change and cultural survival. The Shepherdess of the Glaciers, which is probably his most celebrated work, is a touching portrait of his elder sister, Tsering, who still lives a nomadic life in the mountains, tending her family’s sheep and goats.

In this episode, Stanzin shares the gems of wisdom he’s gathered high in the Himalaya – from the interdependence of all beings to the profound inner peace borne of farming and shepherding. He talks about his films, his family, his village and his childhood. He questions and redefines education and intelligence, and reflects on Ladakh’s deep past, its modernisation, and its future.

Warwick Smith is an Australian economist, ecologist, writer and policy analyst, working across many areas of economic research, from labour and taxation to environmental and wellbeing economics. He has He’s an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne's School of Social and Political Sciences, co-founder and economist at the Castlemaine Institute and a co-founder of the Castlemaine Community Investment Co-operative. He’s been putting strategies for localised economic development into practice for many years. In this episode, Warwick introduces his town of Castlemaine on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Victoria, Australia, and the range of interesting projects happening there. He shares the process of starting the Castlemaine community investment cooperative, which is acquiring real estate for the community and by the community, remove it from rampant speculation to support the local culture, community and economy instead. He stresses relationship building as a key part of this hands-on work, and reflects on ways to help ordinary people and public policymakers understand and put into practice alternative economic development ideas.

This episode features our very own Anja Lyngabek. Anja is the Managing and Programs Director at Local Futures, and has been working tirelessly and internationally to strengthen the localization movement for decades. She is an activist and analyst, with a particular passion for food and farming and much experience in that arena. She’s happiest with her hands in the soil, growing food, either with her husband and community in the cloudforests of Mexico, or on the small island of Denmark where she’s originally from.

In her interview for Planet Local Voices II, Anja discusses the cascade of social and environmental harms being caused by the global growth-obsessed corporate-controlled economy, and conversely, the multiple benefits to people and nature the accrue from a systemic shift towards the local. This dynamic is, she argues, most starkly visible in the food system, which under corporate globalization is destroying the planet, local economies and health, but under a shift to localized, ecological production and consumption models heals our interlocking polycrises simultaneously. Anja issues a rousing call to get involved, become an activist - especially a food activist - and link up with others to heal our relationship with the land beneath our feet, but also to transform the system that is driving catastrophe. Millions of people are already doing this, she reminds us, and from this realization we can draw inspiration and hope in dark times.