Do you ever find yourself getting into bed and thinking about bookmarking sustainability podcast episodes on your phone real quick, and then you accidentally curate a playlist with 11+ hours of bomb-ass content?
I get it — there is just too much information out there. Who’s got the time to read all the articles and reports on the thing? When are you gonna watch that documentary or TED Talk? Who’s got the mental bandwidth anyway?
Thankfully, you can listen to a podcast episode while doing something else in your busy lives (like commuting, cooking, or folding laundry). Bonus when the podcast is informative and engaging too.
I tried to pack this playlist with the heavyweights in sustainability – like Paul Hawken and Naomi Klein – but I also tried to add interesting voices like the Sioux Chef Sean Sherman. Below I’ve highlighted some episodes that particularly tickled my ears. So if you’re looking for an excuse to get away from your desk and take a brisk walk, here are some sustainability and social justice podcast episodes to keep you company.
1. How to Save a Planet
I think many long-time listeners will agree that it was better when Ayana Elizabeth Johnson was co-hosting this podcast (no offence Alex Blumberg), but even without her bright light, the podcast is still a lighthouse of shining episodes that leave you inspired to take action.
I learn so much from each episode, but this one lives forever in the front of my mind. Up until I heard it I had no idea how much carbon oceans sequester (a lot!) and how one badass fisherman is creating underwater vertical farms of kelp.
2. Finding Humanity
B Lab partnered with Finding Humanity to launch a podcast series highlighting how businesses must play a role in saving the planet. In the ‘right to repair’ episode, Nathan Proctor‘s barely concealed outrage at having to replace phones every two years honestly gives me life.
In ‘the urgent case for stakeholder governance’, the episode looks at how top-level company stakeholders drive business decisions toward profit and why that economic focus should be managed (just reading this sentence fills my head with the screams of pro-business lawmakers and that alone makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside).
3. Jane Goodall and Robin Wall Kimmerer.
People. These are arguably the two biggest names in the sustainability movement and they’re here TOGETHER. Scientist to scientist, woman to woman, nature lover to nature lover. Bask in the hopecast.
4. Planet B
Social justice podcast looking at balancing the climate scale between the global north and south, Planet B takes on all the heavy topics. In this one, executive director of the anti-poverty charity War on Want Asad Rehman talks about the climate refugee and all of it is quotable.
5. Kerning Cultures
Not specifically a podcast dedicated to sustainability, but the topics covered by Kerning Cultures falls in and around ‘social impact’. This gorgeous podcast is about ‘stories across the Middle East and the spaces in between’ and documents people and places with both journalistic integrity and captivating storytelling.
There is one environmental-focused story for the water warriors: Dr. Azzam Alwash is an environmental engineer who gave up his comfortable life in California to work on restoring Iraq’s salt-water marshes that were destroyed by Saddam Hussein as retaliation to uprisings in that area. “The personal cost of giving up my family life for these marshes was heavy, but this is bigger than me,” says Dr. Alwash.
For the social focus, this is a story about a specific form of trauma that happens to some refugee children after relocating to Sweden. It’s a tough one, but important to listen to.
6. Damages
I can’t describe this podcast better than the show description, which says it’s “Law & Order meets the climate crisis.” When the state of Minnesota greenlights Enbridge’s intention to build a pipeline through Anishinaabe territory and threaten the wild rice in those wetlands, the lead plaintiff that motions to stop them is Manoomin. Plot twist: Manoomin is the rice.
The “Rights of Manoomin” tribal law recognizes wild rice as having the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation. This resistance is working, on the ground and in court. But stop reading my summary and listen to it in full.
There are so many more I could list, but I still haven’t heard them all yet. I bookmarked Paul Hawken’s interview on How to End Climate Change in One Generation for a long weekend walk.
Image credits:
- Featured image photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash
- The podcast playlist cover image is taken from Time. You can hear more about olive groves here.
Khalisah Stevens 