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PODCAST

Sustain What?

Sustain What? is a series of conversations, seeking solutions where complexity and consequence collide on the sustainability frontier. Revkin believes sustainability has no meaning on its own. The first step toward success is to ask: Sustain what? How? And for whom? revkin.substack.com

science social sciences

All Episodes

42:56

An Alarming Report on the Trump-Driven Surge to...

Sustain What? ·

2026/03/22

It’s hard to stay centered on issues around sustainable development and climate policy when the fragility of nations — economicaly, politically or otherwise — is in the foreground. (Sure we should get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible as Bill McKibben and Rebecca Solnit and so many others wisely counsel in the face of the latest Gulf war. But even best-case possibilities on that track will take many years, so oil and gas are still vital.)Without functioning democracies, forget about climate

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68:58

Andy Revkin with Physicist Adam Frank on Aliens, the...

Sustain What? ·

2026/03/18

Here’s the post-show post of my conversation with planetary-intelligence analyst Adam Frank on the roles of science and fath in human affairs, the arguments for and against humanity’s sustainability, the need for multi-generational approaches to addressing climate change and so much more. Please listen to the full show and, as important, SHARE it. Sharing is the only way we grow the Sustain What community. Here are a couple of highlights if you’re in a hurry. We started out talking about threats

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70:41

A Debate About Building Audiences for Good Climate...

Sustain What? ·

2026/03/11

Just in case you missed the live event, here’s my Sustain What conversation with two passionate climate communicators, both with experience in broadcast news media, pursuing distinct strategies via online video. Each has a very distinct vision of the path to action, and - as I exclaimed during the show, that’s exactly what’s needed. The climate challenge, and audiences out there, are both far too prismatic for one approach to be “right.”My guests:* Chase Cain, who recently left NBC News after a

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2:50

We Sent an Army to the Desert To Keep This Country...

Sustain What? ·

2026/03/04

Most of you already know I’ve been writing and performing songs for 30 years, mostly hidden behind my journalism. Only a few of my tunes cross directly over into my “beat” - and none more so than “Liberated Carbon,” which I wrote as the United States invasion of Iraq played out in the early 00’s and which I included on my first album, A Very Fine Line, in 2013.I’d first touched on how oil access delineates areas of global interest and conflict in 1991, as I explored yesterday:But I thought it worth

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34:58

Amid All, a Dose of Sunday Sanity with Texas-Spawned...

Sustain What? ·

2026/03/01

There’s a lot going on.For me, at least, one vital counterpoint is music — writing it, performing it, and convening with musician friends to talk about it. (If you happen to be in Downeast Maine this Thursday, March 5, come hear my first effort at an event in which I talk and sing about my interrelated life tracks in journalism and songwriting.)Today, I want to introduce you to a dear old musical friend, Vince Bell. I hope you’ll listen to our conversation and his music above (recorded a few days

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63:07

Libertarian and Liberal Lawyers with a Climate Focus...

Sustain What? ·

2026/02/21

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live Sustain What show on Team Trump’s effort to demolish a foundational finding by the Environmental Protection Agency - that heat-trapping greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.My guests were:* Jonathan Adler, a William and Mary Law School professor and commentator with a libertarian orientation who’s deeply dug in at the intersection of law and federal climate policy. Read his analysis of Trump’s endangerment strategy:* The Dangers of Pursuing

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85:05

Meet "Death of Science" author John Horgan and Steve...

Sustain What? ·

2026/02/18

Boy this conversation with End of Science author John Horgan and transhumanism fan Steve Fuller was fun, given how dark some of our conclusions were. Read the pre-show post to get a lot of relevant links and background:Precautionary versus “proactionary” strategies for managing the present with the future in mindFuller said it’s important to let go of many of our worries about how present actions related to science and technology might affect future generations. “We get very hyped up about future

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36:13

Gernot Wager on Surviving Team Trump’s War on Climate...

Sustain What? ·

2026/02/10

I just had a truly helpful - and dare I say hopeful - pop-up conversation with Columbia University’s Gernot Wagner - a top-notch climate policy and economics analyst - on what to think and work on as the Trump Administration carries out its long-pledged plan to repeal the 2009 “Endangerment Finding” by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama. Quick points: * The litigation over this Trump move (details are still to come later this week) will play out for many years.* There’ll be

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60:32

Why AI's "Simulated Intelligence" is Great for Grunt...

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/31

This is the post-show podcast post of my Sustain What conversation with Christopher Mims, the Wall Street Journal tech columnist and author of How to AI, and Melanie Mitchell, the Santa Fe Institute researcher deeply dug in on the thing called artificial intelligence that remains pretty unintelligent. If you want to understand where this exposively evolving technology is, and isn’t, taking us, you have to subscribe to Mitchell’s Substack blog: And if you want to make the most of the AI toolkit at

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58:51

Extreme Winter Weather in a Human-Heated Climate

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/29

This was a deeply illuminating conversation with top-flight researchers aiming to get beyond the back-and-forth edge-driven volleys on global warming’s role in shaping severe winter weather in the United States.Watch above or watch and share on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and X/Twitter.Here’s one key point from Jacob Chalif, the lead author of a 2025 study that found the recent upswing in waviness in the jet stream was matched or outmatched by earlier periods several times in previous decades back

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4:04

Save Dreams for Sleeping, It's Time to Get Loud

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/25

I have deeply mixed feelings about AI in music, which I’ll elaborate on soon. But as a songwriter in act three of my life, and facing the reality that it takes a lot of time and money to build full productions of songs, I’ve started using Suno to envision what my barebones guitar-and-vocal tunes can sound like on a bigger scale.I am going to pull together some of the wonderful musicians around our Downeast Maine home to record an album later this winter and spring. But given the latest atrocity in

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61:10

Meet Former Russian Propagandist Andrew Ryvkin and...

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/23

There were many notable moments in my Sustain What discussion of Russian and American political propaganda, so I encourage you to watch the whole show. But here are a couple of highlights: Andrew Ryvkin, who created propaganda for the Kremlin for many years and now writes about information wars (now living in the United States), described a talk show he produced more than a decade ago, called “Honest Monday” (seriously), which would explore an issue each week (chosen by Kremlin officials) through

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77:02

How to Navigate a Superstorm of Malicious, Divisive,...

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/23

First, I hope you can find time to listen to this evergreen conversation I had with Renee Hobbs, a leading authority and educator (at the University of Rhode Island) aiming to spread propaganda literacy. Her mission, in essence, is to help us all cut through the ever-evolving superstorm of online material and widgets designed to alarm, disarm, distract, confuse or entice - in other words, to enshittify what could otherwise be a miraculous set of tools for connecting and informing society. We spoke

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58:57

Meet U.S. Scientists Working in Greenland Who are...

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/12

I’ll be doing another conversation about Trump’s threats to take Greenland soon - with Greenlanders. But I had to elevate the important statement made on January 9 in defense of the 57,000 citizens who inhabit Greenland’s coastal communities - signed by more than 200 American scientists who have worked on that giant ice-sheathed island. The curtain raiser post for this webcast with Greenland-focused researchers Yarrow Axford and Paul Bierman has all the relevant links:Please watch (and share!) the

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41:39

From the Field: Taking the Temperature Under...

Sustain What? ·

2026/01/09

Here’s the audio/video podcast post of my live conversation with a determined duo of longtime broadcast journalists spending two months with intrepid scientists aboard the South Korean icebreaker RV Araon seeking fresh data that could show how fast Antarctica’s most vulnerable ice mass, the Thwaites Glacier, could raise sea levels. Miles O'Brien and Kate Tobin are an independent team working together through three decades at CNN and now independently, with their output seen on CNN, PBS and now

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60:46

Sammy Roth on Climate, Culture and the Changing Media...

Sustain What? ·

2025/12/22

I hope you’ll great Sustain What chat on the shifting nature of climate journalism and the role of culture in climate [in]action with Sammy Roth. His 14-year track on the climate and energy beat has taken him from the Desert Sun to the Los Angeles Times (where his Boiling Point newsletter became a key read for climate-concerned folks) to Substack since October, with his fast-growing Climate Colored Goggles newsletter.Here’s his foundational post explaining how he focuses his work and why culture

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53:07

Exploring the Toxic Politics Around Migration &...

Sustain What? ·

2025/12/15

Here’s the webcast/podcast post for my Sustain What conversation with Jennifer D. Sciubba, the new president of the near-century-old Population Reference Bureau, a longtime source of unspun demographic data and analysis.The focal point was her new book (with two veteran expert coauthors), Toxic Demography - Ideology and the Politics of Population.Learn more in my “curtain raiser” post:But here are some quick takeaways and links to material we explored. We discussed long cycles of politics and fear

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27:32

Can Doomscrolling Be Harnessed for the Public Good?

Sustain What? ·

2025/12/12

This is the Substack Live video and audio podcast post of my Sustain What chat with journalist Tina Kelley and lawyer Eric Jepeal, who are seeking partners for Commonloop, a social media platform that would funnel revenue generated from humans’ online habits (which are unlikely to change soon) into enterprises or programs that are a boon for all of us - instead of a boon for billionaires.Here’s the curtain raiser post with lots of relevant links:Here are some relevant papers and posts we alluded

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53:54

"Kyoto" Playwrights, a Climate Scientist, Journalists...

Sustain What? ·

2025/12/02

I think you’ll love this Sustain What conversation I just had with Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy, the brilliant young playwrights behind Kyoto, the tragicomic play describing the titanic diplomatic and political tussle as climate change science threatened to bring an early end to the fossil fuel age.My “curtain raiser” post has a heap of details and related links:But much more emerged in the discussion, which also included Ben Santer, a veteran climate scientist who’s a character in the play (he

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52:54

A "Buy Nothing Day" Chat With Rev. Billy Talen of the...

Sustain What? ·

2025/11/26

I needed an intervention today and reached out to my old friend from the anti-consumption wars, the Rev Billy Talen of the Church of Stop Shopping, and to Lloyd Alter, one of the great longtime guides to low-impact and low-carbon building, transportation and the rest. I hope the resulting conversation above offers a tonic during this crazy “Black Friday” week. You can also watch and share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter and YouTube:I needed help after reading a great piece by Alter calling out

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102 results

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