NN Ep:13 - Intentional Communities & New Jurisdictions with Jessy Kate Schingler

11 snips

Jan 23, 2026

Jessy Kate Schingler, co-founder of the Embassy Network and builder of translocal co-living spaces, shares stories from a decade of intentional community-building. She explores how culture and identity form without formal membership. The conversation moves to jurisdictional innovation like Gelephu Mindfulness City and how special zones, charter cities, and regulatory sandboxes can anchor networked communities.

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ANECDOTE

Sister Communities Emerge Organically

Fetopia sprang from someone who lived at an Embassy and recreated its DNA without formal permission or franchising.
The result was a sister community that carried cultural and operational practices while developing its own flavor.

INSIGHT

Culture Is the Strongest Glue

Cultural transfusion is the strongest glue between intentional community nodes, even more than financial ties.
Seeing cultural experiments succeed emboldens others to try governance and economic innovations.

ADVICE

Prototype A Complementary Currency

Try complementary local currencies like Drift to smooth lodging revenue and enable mobility across nodes.
Prototype minting and demurrage at small scale before attempting network-wide rollout.

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In this episode of the Network Nations mini-series, Primavera De Filippi is joined by Jessy Kate Schingler, co-founder of the Embassy Network, to explore how intentional communities and new jurisdictions can give Network Nations real-world grounding.

Jessy shares lessons from over a decade of building translocal co-living communities, explains why the Embassy Network thought of its spaces as "embassies to the future," and how identity, culture, and entanglement emerge without formal membership rules. The conversation then turns to jurisdictional innovation, including Gelephu Mindfulness City in Bhutan, and how special administrative regions, charter cities, and regulatory sandboxes could act as physical anchor points for Network Nations.

A rich discussion on culture, identity, subsidiarity, functional sovereignty, and how digital communities might interface with states without losing their values.

🌱 greenpill.network 🌐 networknations.network 🐦 @owocki @greenpillnet https://x.com/yaoeo https://x.com/jessykate

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – Can Network Nations become political actors without land? 01:10 – Intentional communities vs new jurisdictions 02:25 – Introducing Jessy Kate Schingler (Embassy Network) 03:20 – What intentional communities look like today 04:45 – The origin of the Embassy Network 05:40 – "Embassies to the future" where the name came from 06:45 – Membership, curation & why formal rules failed 08:15 – Sister communities & translocal identity 09:30 – Cultural, financial & people-based entanglement 11:40 – Cultural transfusion as the strongest glue 13:00 – Financial support between community nodes 14:20 – Identity through shared people & movement 16:20 – Drift: experiments with shared currencies & mobility 18:05 – Private law vs public law in Network Nations 19:10 – Why jurisdictions matter for scaling 20:05 – Rise of new jurisdictions worldwide 21:50 – Introducing Gelephu Mindfulness City (Bhutan) 23:30 – Values, culture & mindful development 25:35 – Experimentation, subsidiarity & the "diamond strategy" 27:20 – Visas, access & digital-first services 29:35 – Jurisdictions as platforms for Network Nations 31:45 – New corporate forms & DAO-native structures 33:45 – Network state vs network nation approaches 36:05 – Polycentricity & layered governance 38:00 – Embassies as portals between cultures 40:15 – AI, credentials & future statutory innovation 42:40 – Regulatory equivalence & sandboxing 44:40 – Intentional communities vs territorial zones 46:40 – Dispute resolution as a legitimacy bridge 50:30 – Lessons from working with states 52:40 – Land policy, mutualism & functional sovereignty 54:50 – Where to follow Jessy Kate & closing thoughts