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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

55:37

Meet Kate Marvel, the NASA Climate Scientist Who's...

Sustain What? ·

2025/06/20

Here’s my Sustain What conversation with Kate Marvel, a prominent climate scientist and communicator whose first book, Human Nature - Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet, is a bracing and deeply personal tour of climate science, planetary history and the array of hopeful and/or heartbreaking environmental futures ahead, depending on choices made or avoided now.Thank you, Matt Burgess and cliff Krolick, for being among subscribers who watched live on Substack. Please subscribe to catch future

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54:22

A Visual Tour of American Character(s)

Sustain What? ·

2025/06/19

Given how Trumpism seems deadset on squeezing the dizzying diversity out of the United States, it seemed a great time to reach out to Peter Guttman, a world-roaming photographer who’s spent decades portraying the full prismatic wonder and weirdness of us.Please watch and/or share this conversation here or on Facebook, LinkedIn, X (at my handle @revkin) or YouTube.Here’s a snippet focused on one of the grassroots voices pushing for Juneteenth as a national holiday - LaVerne Ross of the Calvary

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31:05

From Communities to Corporations - How to Cut...

Sustain What? ·

2025/05/27

When I was building my sustainability communication project at Columbia University, I was recruited to be an author of a chapter on “communicating risk for decision-making” in what would become the 2022 Global Assessment Report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. I couldn’t participate fully in the end (boring reasons) but gained a valuable view of the depth and breadth of expertise brought together by these periodic reports. Explore some of the results here:The pandemic,

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53:07

A Poet and a Picker Explore Everything from Romania's...

Sustain What? ·

2025/05/19

Whenever you need a break from the dueling pundits, have a listen to one of my Sunday Sanity shows. For those who missed us live on Sunday, here’s an audio and video antidote for Trump’s lock on our brains - a conversation, poetry reading and picking party with a couple of remarkably creative humans - the provocateur poet Andrei Codrescu, who you may have heard as a frequent NPR commentator in decades past, and masterful bluegrass and trad musician John McEuen, best known for his 50 years in the

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20:47

Trump's Freezing Unidata - Just Another Boring...

Sustain What? ·

2025/05/09

Updates below | The effect of Trump’s initial blitzkrieg assault on science is like a multi-armed monster eating away at budgets, agency staff, technical systems and the spirits of thousands of scientists and other staff who support them - and citizens who rely on the innovations that flow from research, and students pondering careers in everything from meteorology to medicine.And Trump loves it when concerned people like me or you get fixated on the potency of his impact. But I have to set aside my

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64:46

A Teaching Framework Helping Students (or Others!)...

Sustain What? ·

2025/05/01

Here’s the video and podcast version of my Sustain What conversation with two Maine-based educators and a superstar student taking on tough problems in their communities that have links to the wider world. Learn all the background in my “curtain raiser” post:We were joined for a bit by Radhika Iyengar, a colleague of mine during my time at Columbia University. She’s working on an online course with Jeff Sachs on the Ages of Globalization.There were wonderful comment contributions and questions from

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70:13

Facing Trump Attacks, a Funding Implosion and Too...

Sustain What? ·

2025/04/16

Here’s the curtain raiser post with all the relevant links related to Jon Allsop’s new book, What is Journalism For?, and Karen Bordeleau’s New Bedford Light newsroom, which made national waves with its vivid coverage of an atrocious abuse of force by immigration officers in New Bedford several days ago. Here are two illuminating moments:Jon Allsop on how an “emergency mode” for journalism facing the autocratic attacks from President Trump is out of date now that he’s settled into the White House:A

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53:59

Yes, Climate and Democracy Progress is Possible...

Sustain What? ·

2025/04/11

This is my first stab at a Substack Live video - done by adding Substack to my Streamyard livestream tool. Here’s the curtain-raiser post with lots of context:Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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39:01

"We Shall Not Be Moved"

Sustain What? ·

2025/04/05

Here’s the podcast post of my virtual Sustain What meetup with a batch of folks out in the Hands Off protests against the Trump and Musk approach to “governing.” I was also joined by a longtime reader, Josette, from New Hampshire, who used to work in telecommunications at Perkins Coie, one of the law firms that Trump has attacked. We discussed this bit of good news from Friday (here from Reuters):More than 500 law firms have signed a court brief denouncing Donald Trump's targeting of Perkins Coie

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55:58

Assessing the Dangerous Trump / Musk Effect on...

Sustain What? ·

2025/03/04

“Elon Musk can declare, properly, every Starship explosion as a step forward because you have to try lots of things until you see what works. You can't do that with commercial airlines.” - James Fallows Here’s the webcast / podcast version of my Sustain What transportation conversation with longtime journalists James Fallows, David Kerley and Jim Motavalli. All the details and relevant links are in the “curtain raiser”:Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support

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57:32

Essential Insights from a Top Climate Researcher Who...

Sustain What? ·

2025/02/15

I hope you heard (or now watch) my 2021 conversation with the Cambridge University climate researcher Mike Hulme and science and propaganda historian Naomi Oreskes on trust and mistrust in climate science. The same goes for our 2023 conversation about his latest book, Climate Change Isn’t Everything, which describes what he calls “climatism” - a tendency in climate-policy discussions to put CO2 reduction in the foreground no matter what the issue is. I’ve loaded it above and here we are on

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42:01

With U.S. Aid for Lifesaving Overseas Programs Still...

Sustain What? ·

2025/02/13

Here's today’s Sustain What discussion with two journalists from Global Press, an international newsroom supporting female reporters in the world’s most troubled regions. Global Press immediately began widespread reporting on the realtime impacts of the initial USAID freeze and persistent chaos around money flowing to public health and other vital programs from Nepal to Uganda. (I apologize for some audio echo but you can scan the rough transcript as well.)The editor-in-chief, Krista Karch, and

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63:12

Amid the Worst Surge Toward Autocracy in a Century,...

Sustain What? ·

2025/02/11

Here’s the podcast version of my Sustain What conversation with three authors of a sobering, and yet slightly hopeful, paper identifying a rising number of autocracies that are followed by a sharp social and political u-turn to democratization. A rough dynamic transcript is here. The paper is here:The hopeful part of the open-access study is this:The analysis presents a systematic empirical overview of patterns and developments of U-Turns [from autocracy toward democracy between 1900 and 2023]. A

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2:05

Music for Trump Time - 🎶 Save Dreams for Sleeping,...

Sustain What? ·

2025/02/07

Here’s a fresh tune for these times from my songwriting side, which has been energized since I signed on to a two-decade-old annual project called February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org). There’s more below about this remarkable effort - aimed at getting participants to write 14 songs in 28 days (yes, FOURTEEN!) - including a video explainer by its founder, Burr Settles, a machine learning researcher focused on language learning at DuoLingo and, of course, on music. I hope to interview him soon.My

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40:19

Caught in the Trump & Musk Flood Zone? Ezra Klein and...

Sustain What? ·

2025/02/06

I’ll wager that most of you have already heard or read Ezra Klein’s powerful audio “Don’t Believe Him” manifesto examining Trump’s take on Steve Bannon’s longstanding “flood the zone” strategy designed to overwhelm media and institutional capacity to convey and challenge his unfolding demolition derby presidency.If not, here’s the captivating opening. But it’s vital to get past the initial statement about Bannon’s strategy.In his piece, Klein notes Trump is already getting caught up in his own flood

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57:09

Wealth Management with Human and Planetary Progress...

Sustain What? ·

2025/02/04

Here’s the podcast / webcast version of my talk with Tom Kalil, who’s moved from advising two presidents on science and technology policy to building Renaissance Philanthropy, a consultancy for wealthy people who want to help fill funding and capacity gaps to help science serve society and sustainability.We talked about that work and also about the challenges and some possibilities as the second Trump presidential term gets into gear.Here’s the curtain raiser with lots of relevant links:Sustain What

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92:11

Michael Liebreich on How A.I. Giants Can Help (or...

Sustain What? ·

2025/01/22

This is the podcast version of the Sustain What discussion I just had with the relentless clean-energy optimist, investor and evangelist Michael Liebreich. Key sections are on the need to switch metrics for success from kilowatt/hours to energy services; the ethics of focusing decarbonization on the most carbonized nations; the potential for energy-hungry AI giants to help United States regions revive wider grid reliability and clean-energy sourcing; and the possibility of having constructive

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62:55

Clarifying Methane Sources and Solutions

Sustain What? ·

2024/12/06

Here’s the video and audio podcast of my #SustainWhat show offering a valuable update on trends in emissions of heat-trapping methane and emerging science showing the tropics are the dominant driver of the recent rise in the flows of this potent greenhouse gas. Listen and share and weigh in. Background on my guests along with a batch of relevant links are in the “curtain raiser” post below.Here are some additional sources we touched on in the conversation that weren’t in my initial post:* Human

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47:29

What I've Learned and Unlearned in 40 Years of...

Sustain What? ·

2024/11/23

This new talk is the latest iteration of what I’ve learned and unlearned through 40 years of reporting and conversation wrangling around the intertwined challenges of building a safer human relationship with the climate system and with energy. My focus, echoing my goals in these dispatches, was conveying how to get beyond amorphous labels like sustainability and climate emergency by asking productive questions, starting with “Sustain what?” Watch or listen above and share this post, or watch and

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2:15

How do You Stay Sane in Such Turbulent Times? For Me,...

Sustain What? ·

2024/11/03

Take a mental break and do tell me how you stay sane and centered given the turbulence of this political and societal moment and the tough path ahead?For me - along with our dogs, cooking, carpentry, hikes and the like - there’s always music. (Read my post explainng that side of my life if you haven’t already.)This new song of mine, “After the Roaming,” was inspired by a melody composed by fellow student Kathy O'Rourke during our current songwriting workshop at Bagaduce Music in Blue Hill, Maine

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80 results

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