If you have a Republican senator: call, email, comment on all their social posts. Tell them to vote NO on the abominable budget bill. Get your friends to do it too. ☎️ Seriously, call Congress: (202) 224-3121. (Especially if you live in Maine or Alaska.) Details in this week's newsletter and all over the news. Okay, Season 2 is a wrap — 12 delightful conversations with people showing us the ways forward on climate. This summer, we’ll be dreaming up season 3… so if have any wishes, ideas, or requ...
Jul 01, 2025•58 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Today’s guest is Ben Wolkon. Ben is founding partner at MUUS Climate Partners , a venture capital firm that invests exclusively in climate solutions, and operates on the belief that “climate is the biggest business opportunity of the 21st century.” To be honest, when I think of venture capital, I often think of like that "greed is good" mentality and just corny finance bros. And maybe that's a bit unfair. But I'm also very pleased to say that Ben is nothing like that. He's thoughtful, and genero...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Today is publication day for our favorite climate scientist. Dr. Kate Marvel wrote a book called Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet . Kate is a researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (one of the world’s leading research centers), where she specializes in climate modeling. Although, given the various infuriating, retrograde, anti-climate science shenanigans of the Trump administration 😤, who knows how much longer that will remain the case... I wrote a b...
Jun 17, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Alexia Leclercq is a face of the youth climate movement — something that, as we discussed, is a tricky thing to be. She is a grassroots environmental justice organizer and scholar in Austin, Texas. Alexia is also co-founder of the Colorado River Conservancy and of Start:Empowerment , an education non-profit that provides students and teachers with an immersive climate justice curriculum. She’s led campaigns at the international and local levels to phase out fossil fuels, fight for clean water, a...
Jun 11, 2025•58 min•Season 2Ep. 10
For this live event at the WBUR Festival, Gina McCarthy and I discussed the EPA, the IRA, what’s at stake for us all... and, why we must never, ever pave paradise. Gina led the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Obama, was president of NRDC, and then, under President Biden, became the first ever National Climate Advisor, setting up a climate team in the White House. Perhaps Gina’s crowning achievement was her work on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Congress passed this land...
Jun 04, 2025•47 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Today’s episode is a very sweet reunion with my former podcast co-host Alex Blumberg. Alex and I co-created How to Save a Planet, which ran for 2 years as Spotify’s flagship climate show. This episode opens with the hilariously unlikely origin story of our fab collab. (Note: When you hit play, remember to also follow this podcast :) Podcast nerds will be familiar with Alex’s work, but for the rest: Alex was a longtime producer at This American Life , one of the biggest radio/podcast shows of all...
May 28, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 8
A tale of over-ups, poison, sludge, and the last bipartisan environmental issue. They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals by Mariah Blake is a true crime story on the scale of what the tobacco and fossil fuel industries have done to knowingly imperil our health and our futures. But this book also highlights what’s possible when unlikely advocates, regular folks, come together and unite for a common cause. In other words, there are heroes in this story too. The book...
May 20, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Today's guest, Sarah Stillman, is a Pulitzer and MacArthur genius award-winning journalist. She founded and leads the Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale, and she's been a staff writer at The New Yorker for about a decade. Sarah’s writing typically focuses on our immigration and justice systems, but increasingly (and in some part due to my nudges), she's also writing about climate change. Sarah's first piece about climate was an essay, “Like the Monarch,” she wrote for my first book, All We Can ...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Hey there Earthlings. 💛 We’re talking sustainability and fashion, again. It’s a major industry impacting the environment and shaping the cultural context within which we make climate decisions... and I may be overcompensating for having not given fashion a chapter in the What If We Get It Right? book . A few weeks ago, I shared here a conversation on Sustainable Fashion and the Art of Care with supermodel/artist Cameron Russell. And what better time to continue this discussion than in the wake ...
May 07, 2025•55 min•Season 2Ep. 5
This week, I’m chatting with Jainey Bavishi, an expert in climate adaptation and resilience. We cover everything from social aid and pleasure clubs, to recovering from climate disasters, civic infrastructure, why we should absolutely not privatize weather forecasts, and – of course! – what getting it right in coastal cities looks like, in New York City, New Orleans, and beyond. I’m so glad to be sharing this conversation with you, because local action matters so much right now. One in seven peop...
Apr 29, 2025•58 min•Season 2Ep. 4
What the heck is going on in environmental law right now? Michael Burger , executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University’s has some answers for us. In this episode, we talk federal climate funding, the billions of dollars that are at stake (frozen, impounded, and otherwise), and what’s going on with climate law at the international and local levels. Michael’s CALLS TO ACTION: (1) Don't despair. (2) Solutions require political support, so don’t run away from...
Apr 22, 2025•57 min•Season 2Ep. 3
This episode, we're talking sustainable fashion and the simple joys of care and repair with supermodel, author, activist, and friend Cameron Russell. Also: why stats on the climate impacts of fashion are super sketchy. If you haven’t heard of Cameron, chances are you’ve seen her. As a model, she’s appeared on many magazine covers for Vogue and Elle, and on runways and billboards for brands like Prada, Calvin Klein, and Victoria’s Secret. But Cameron’s not only recognized for her modeling. She's ...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Greetings, Earthlings! 🌏 Welcome to Season 2 of the What If We Get It Right? podcast. If you’re new here (hi!) let me quickly read you in: I wrote a book called What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures (which became a NY Times Bestseller! 😮). The heart of that book is 20 interviews with people sharing what getting it right on climate could look like and how we can make those visions into reality. Of course, way more than 20 people have important insights for how we can get things m...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 1
My guest this episode is The Jean Flemma. Jean spent over two decades working on Capitol Hill as staff to members of Congress, making magic behind the scenes over and over again. She is an absolute wizard of ocean and climate policy and the politics of achieving policy change. Jean and I co-founded Urban Ocean Lab , a nonprofit think tank for the future of coastal cities. So you’ll hear a bit about that in this episode. Heaps of good change can happen at the city government level — adapting to c...
Mar 26, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In the last few months, the term “Green New Deal” has been popping up a lot again. And it’s the Trump administration bringing it up — as a boogeyman, as a foil for everything his crew fears about accelerating the clean energy transition. So I thought it would be a good time to discuss: What actually is the Green New Deal? How far have we gotten on implementing the concepts it includes? And why do those ideas still matter? My guest for this episode is Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of the original archi...
Mar 13, 2025•50 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Near the end of my book tour, I found myself gazing up at those large concrete guard lions outside the New York Public Library, astounded to be entering for an event about my book. The occasion was all the more sweet because it was a family affair: I was in conversation with my cousin Steve Connell , whose incredible poem “This Living Earth” appears in my book (and which you get to hear him read in this episode!). We talked about how our family shaped us, the role of art and humor in the serious...
Dec 24, 2024•36 min•Season 1Ep. 10
I was originally going to title this episode “Facts Matter,” but instead chose the 90s hiphop version of that sentiment, as I’m prone to do. Today, we are peeling back the curtain on how I achieved the maximum possible accuracy and precision in my book What If We Get It Right? : I hired a fact checker named James Gaines . James is a freelance science writer, journalist, and fact checker with a special focus on solutions journalism, which we love. He grew up in a cabin in the woods in Texas, and ...
Dec 11, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 9
I am home from my book tour (50 days!) and it feels soooo good. 😮💨 Towards the end of the tour, in Detroit, Michigan, I got the chance to sit down with adrienne maree brown . We’d been following each other’s work for years, and it was such a treat to gab and snack and joke in person. adrienne is a best-selling author, activist, facilitator, a songwriter, a poet, and doula. She also has a new book out, called Loving Corrections , which I have been delighting in. This is absolutely a moment to ...
Nov 22, 2024•54 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Hi everyone. We recorded this episode before Election Day, when we had no idea what new version of the world this would reach you in. Wherever and however this finds you, I hope you’ll enjoy this sweet and lighthearted conversation with Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, the Georgia-native, social scientist, bestselling writer, strategist, teacher, and dear friend with whom I co-edited the All We Can Save anthology — which is kind of like the older sister to my new book What If We Get It Right? Katharine ...
Nov 16, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Election Day is TOMORROW, y’all. 🫠 So I thought the best conversation to share with you right now would be one about some of the really important progress the Biden-Harris administration has made on ocean and climate policy. This progress is very much at risk if Trump and his fossil-fuel funded, climate-denying cronies end up back in the White House. This conversation took place in Washington, DC with two White House staffers, climate policy experts and dear friends of mine: Maggie Thomas, spec...
Nov 04, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 6
This episode is about the importance of home and community. It’s about the role of culture, of traditions, of protecting democracy, and how all of that is woven together in the context of the climate threats that we’re facing. This is a conversation with two incredible and grounded women: Colette Pichon Battle, attorney and co-founder of climate justice organization Taproot Earth , and Jade Begay , a Dine and Tesuque Pueblo climate policy expert and Indigenous rights strategist currently serving...
Oct 31, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Recorded at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, for the Climate One radio show and podcast, this episode features journalist and environmental legend Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act , and tenacious environmental attorney, Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice . Both are interviewed in What If We Get It Right? , but we covered new ground here, together: fossils for fossil fuels, changes in the Supreme Court, the Environmental Justice For All Act, some lessons instilled by my parents, ...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 4
I’ve always been impressed with Stacey Abrams from afar, so when I got an invitation to be directly in conversation with her, I was thrilled. In addition to her political leadership, Abrams is also a small business owner, a New York Times best-selling author, and —something far fewer people know — a champion for clean energy and climate justice. In 2023, Abrams joined the team at Rewiring America as senior counsel. That’s a great nonprofit dedicated to electrifying our homes, businesses, and com...
Oct 14, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 3
The environmental movement has a voter turnout problem: 8 million environmental voters did not vote in the 2020 election. Eight MILLION! In a presidential election decided by thousands of votes. This 2024 election is similarly, stressfully close. On September 20th, at Bowdoin College (where I teach), I sat down with Whit Jones, founder and executive director of Lead Locally , and Nathaniel Stinnett, founder and executive director of Environmental Voter Project for a conversation on climate and v...
Oct 06, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Welcome to WHAT IF WE GET IT RIGHT?: the podcast! Here, we'll continue exploring answers to the big (huge!) question “What if we get it right?”, beyond what’s in the ( New York Times bestselling!!! 😮) book . Our vibe is to take climate seriously, but don't take yourself seriously. Irreverent, nerdy, soulful, goofy. I’m on a 7-week book tour 🫠 across the USA, and I’m taking you with me: 20 cities, 40 events, each one different. I’ll be in conversation with all sorts of fantastic folks, talking ...
Sep 27, 2024•32 min•Season 1Ep. 1
