Teju Ravilochan is an entrepreneur who sees problems and envisions grand communal solutions. From the Unreasonable Institute (now Uncharted.org), which he founded, to GatherFor.org, a community based mutual aid accelerator borne from the pandemic), he brings people together to solve problems and explore possibilities.
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Tyson Yunkaporta is an Australian Aboriginal artist, philosopher, and researcher who lectures on Indigenous Knowledge at Deakin University in Melbourne. He’s also the author of Sand Talk, a book that has influenced my thinking more profoundly than any other.
Basically, Yunkaporta turns the lens of anthropology around and puts Western civilization under the microscope, showing us how insane and unsustainable the entire project is.
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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams returns to the podcast to talk about his new book, Healthy at Last. Part family memoir, part political mission statement, part science review, part self-help book, and part cookbook, this is a celebration of the possibilities of health for the American people in general, and the Black community in particular.
We talk about the title – from Etta James, and not Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, as I first assumed – and the fact that, in Adams’ words, “slavery never ended,” and remains entrenched in the slave foods that are still harming Black people to this day.
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For the last 7 years, I’ve worked to improve human health and wellbeing by focusing on better nutrition, vigorous physical activity, sleep hygiene, and stress management.
Turns out I may have been missing the most important determinants of health – the social ones.
Marta Zaraska has written a book that is fun, fascinating, scientifically sound, and socially revolutionary. In Growing Young, she argues that eating well and exercising are all well and good, but spending time with friends, cultivating a positive attitude, and helping others are far more powerful (and enjoyable!) determinants of health.
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In tough times, you might expect people to hunker down and hoard what’s theirs.
We see some of that these days, for sure.
But we also see incredible displays of generosity. I personally am benefiting from the generosity of my listeners as I broadcast from lockdown in South Africa.
Today I talk about how generosity benefits us as givers and receivers.
So somehow my son and I ended up in front of his laptop with Hulu open. I don’t recall what he wanted to show me, but it ended up not being very interesting.
So, cultural rubber-necker that I am, I was drawn to a thumbnail of a show I had never heard of: My Strange Addiction. Apparently it ran for six seasons on TLC, starting in 2010. Apparently I had missed this cultural phenomenon entirely
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Caroline Webb is the author of the wonderfully entertaining and useful How to Have a Good Day, which is basically a cookbook of how to be an effective human in the world.
She is an executive coach, economist, and speaker, and the book comes out of her extensive knowledge of behavioral science and its application in the real world.
How to Have a Good Day has influenced my own health coaching so much, I wanted to talk with Caroline specifically about applying her tools and “recipes” to the challenges around improving diet and lifestyle.
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Gwyn Whittaker is a change-maker, and for the past several years she’s deployed her considerable “get-it-done” skills to the plant-based movement.
Whittaker is CEO of Greenfare Cafe in Herndon, Virginia, which is the only 100% whole-food, plant-based (WFPB), organic restaurant either of us has ever heard of. (If you know of one, please let me know in the comments section so I can give it a shout-out!)
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