Returning to Civilization
And two stories of women changing the world at their reach
Hello earthling,
I’m writing to you from the Portuguese countryside, where I’ve spent the last couple of weeks on a self-imposed retreat, immersed in the final stages of a writing project that I will hopefully tell you more about soon, less soon than projected. It’s an amusing tension: the one between the part of me that wants to move swiftly, and the other that seeks artistic excellence. Sitting with it has been teaching me a lot about patience, discipline and discernment—three virtues which, more and more, I believe are indispensable for the realization of anything worthwhile.
Tomorrow I’ll be returning to civilization, and since it’s rainy and chilly outside, now feels like the appropriate time to terminate my Substack procrastination.
Since January, and our (reluctant) exploration of callings with the social justice activist Ashanti Kunene, I’ve released two podcast episodes. One with Alexia García, a football lover and activist, who introduced me to the transformative potential of sports when viewed through a social lens. And the other one with Maria Almeida, a journalist at Fumaça, the award-winning media organization she co-founded during her twenties, whom I inquired about, beyond her personal history, the state of the media and alternative business models for the industry.
Perhaps what binds these two conversations together, beyond the same gender of the guests in a week that celebrates womanhood worldwide, is that the two humans interviewed are exemplary embodiments of the “waking youth”: the youth that is already awake, and living the question of what it means to approach both our personal lives and vocational fields with greater wisdom.
I hope you enjoy them.
Warmly,
Carlota
Listen
Football for Social Impact with Alexia García
While the connection between football and social impact might not be an immediate one, in this episode we listen to the story of becoming of Alexia García, a football lover and activist, who will show us their joint potential.
Alexia is a player, coach, director of business development and project manager at Dragones de Lavapiés. Located in the Madrid's most diverse neighborhood, Dragones is a grassroots football club on a mission to promote social integration, equality and respect through sports.
Listen on:
Spotify | Apple | Youtube
Toward a More Thoughtful Approach to Journalism with Maria Almeida
What is the role of stories in shaping our understanding of reality? What is failing in our current media landscape and what might alternative models look and feel like? Who are the people experimenting with them and what do they value? These are some of the questions we contemplate with our guest Maria Almeida.
Maria is a journalist at Fumaça, an award-winning media organization based in Portugal she co-founded in 2016. With a focus on thoughtful investigative audio journalism, Fumaça covers themes spanning from the personal to the political, including an extraordinary series on the Israeli occupation of Palestine (mostly in Portuguese).