Aren’t we living in the best time in history? Don’t we have to keep pressing forward to avoid returning to medieval serfdom or the Stone Age and everyone dying young? No. History, anthropology, and archaeology show these beliefs wrong. Humans weren’t living…
You’ve heard every politician pay lip service on the environment. They talk abstractly about carbon dioxide levels, solutions to spend more money, and something about a future improved by electric cars and solar panels (conveniently missing how these “solutions” pollute). How many…
This episode is available on video. Before our conversations, I tended to see Warren as mainly focused on issues where men and boys suffer that society doesn’t see, downplays, or ignores. I still see him as a rare luminary on such issues.…
If you’ve been following Michael and my conversations so far, you know to expect thoughtful, considerate conversation coming from different perspectives. Each time we find deeper understanding, share more, and listen more. You won’t be disappointed this time. In this episode we…
Nakisa talks about her community in Charlotte, North Carolina, the environmental and social challenges it faces, the level of engagement, the biases in difficulties in engaging for people who work long or unusual hours, advantages to big businesses, and other challenges. She…
Doug is the opposite of the catastrophe we’ve made of the food industry. He created a restaurant with no trash cans; not for the customers, not for the staff, nor for suppliers. Talk about a role model. You can do it too.…
We spend most of our time talking about Frances’s latest book, Daring Democracy. I couldn’t help sharing how, decades after reading Diet for a Small Planet, I realized it was the first source that started me on the path to embracing and…
Scott went above and beyond acting on his sustainability commitment to run. He battled covid during training. Did the extra effort bring him down? On the contrary, since he did it for personal, intrinsic motivation based in his connection to the environment,…
Geoff’s story of his commitment to act on his childhood memories of playing along the Missouri River in South Dakota starts off interesting, then turns exciting, thrilling, and ultimately life-changing. One of the things we most fear happened to him and he…
Dan Barber is helping revitalize our food system. We start by going over his background, how fear drove him maybe most of all. Then we get into what drives food: farms and soil combined with creativity. His goal is supporting farming from…
If you agree innovation and technology has its drawbacks, you may still worry: if we don’t press onward, aren’t we risking reverting to the stone age with thirty becoming old age and mothers and children dying in childbirth. Don’t we store fat…
People and nations are funding Russia’s invading Ukraine, where tens of thousands have died and millions have become refugees. The laws of supply and demand dictate that any use drives up price, so any use helps fund Russia, being such a big…
Etienne starts by sharing how his government in England is beginning to increase how much it threatens punishment for people protesting, including what he does as an MBE working with Extinction Rebellion. He sees that reaction as showing they are making a…
Nakisa describes herself as naturally loving science, born into a hip hop world, combining these starting points. She starts by describing her journey growing up not learning that much about our environmental situation, seeing it as abstract and unrelated to her world,…
“What I do doesn’t matter,” say many environmentalists as they order steak or buy tickets to fly some place. That’s the addiction speaking. I recently heard Alan Mulally speak on how he led turning Ford around from losing tens of billions of…
In one of the highlights (lowlights?) of our second conversation, Sam shares that fentanyl users don’t like its experience as much as heroin’s. On the contrary, it’s worse. It pops them out faster from the euphoria, which makes them want to take…
Lauren’s unusual knack for attracting a refined mix of brilliance and emotional unavailability created a storied dating life from 2010-2019 which included actors, pick-up artists, doctors without borders (or was it boundaries?), CIA agents (who shouldn’t have confessed that), astrophysicists, and Daniel…
Derek is looking to flip a district that has been moving more Democratic through demographic shifts and redistricting. Can he pull it off? He reached out to me partly to share and explore environmental and sustainability issues. After we cover more of…
You’ll hear why Sam’s books win so many awards: he deeply, personally explores fascinating, critical, current topics, then tells rich, detailed stories that get to their heart. He cares about the people he writes about and our tragic era as you the…
Scott emailed me that he didn’t explore wilderness meaninglessly listening to birds as much as he committed. From experience, I know some guests overcommit or for some reason don’t complete their commitment. I asked him to share anyway, describing how I’m looking…