Designing Human Habitats for an Abundant Lifestyle: Interview With Ben Falk, Permaculture Designer and Founder of Whole Systems Design RPF0124
Radical Personal Finance
Joshua J. Sheats, MSFS, CFP, CLU, ChFC, CASL, RHU, REBC, CAP
4.2 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2014
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guest today is Ben Falk. Ben is a really incredible permaculture designer with a comprehensive focus.
Ben runs a planning firm called Whole Systems Design. Through this firm, he "identifies, designs, and develops human habitats - landscape and infrastructure systems - that yield perennial abundance and enduring value. These are adaptive, resilient and secure places in a future of peak oil, climate instability, and deepening economic insolvency."
They also "plan, develop, and manage land-based wealth preservation and security projects for those with the forethought to invest an abundance of present day resources to reduce their familly's vulnerability to future food, energy and other supply-chain disturbances, as well as peak-oil, climatic, economic and other events."
The interview covers a variety of topics, including:
- Ben's path from architecture to comprehensive design.
- How to approach personal lifestyle design from a systems mindset.
- How to prioritize needs and investment.
- How he heats his house, heats his water, cooks his food, and dries his clothes in Vermont with a very small amount of wood.
- How he grows 80 to 90% of his food intake.
My favorite quote from the interview: "Don't fight something that's wrong. Make a new system that makes the old system obsolete."
Enjoy!
Joshua
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. |
| 0:01.8 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. |
| 0:03.7 | Today is Monday, December 22, 2014. |
| 0:07.6 | And today I have a great interview show for you |
| 0:09.7 | with Ben Falk from Vermont. |
| 0:12.4 | Ben is a really great guy. He runs a planning firm called Whole Systems |
| 0:16.5 | Design and he is involved in fairly comprehensive. I would call him a |
| 0:22.0 | permaculture designer but if you're scared off by that word, |
| 0:24.4 | just call him basically a comprehensive designer, where he brings a comprehensive perspective about designing |
| 0:29.9 | the needs for human habitat into our current context. |
| 0:35.5 | Ben has written a book on the subject |
| 0:38.2 | and it's one of the most beautiful well-integrated books |
| 0:40.7 | that I've ever read. |
| 0:41.8 | I've looked for people to bring on the show who |
| 0:43.9 | are living more independent self-sufficient lifestyles and Ben is one of those |
| 0:49.0 | people that I think is a really great example of how to do this in a modern context and to |
| 0:53.9 | integrate all of the great things about the current highly technological world |
| 0:58.0 | that we live in but also to benefit from some of the old world technology and benefits that we simply don't |
| 1:07.4 | probably respect very much today. It's a really great show. We go over a |
| 1:11.4 | comprehensive perspective on designing for heat for |
| 1:14.7 | housing for food and also a little bit of more I guess intellectual theory a little bit of theory about |
| 1:24.4 | behind design and we also talk about Ben's story so I hope you enjoy this |
... |
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