Podcasts about relocalization

Kara Pecknold, VP of Regenerative Design at Frog and a leading voice in sustainable innovation, joined us for a conversation on what it truly means to design for regeneration.She breaks down the challenges and opportunities of embedding regenerative thinking into organisations, helping us explore how brands can move beyond green checklists toward a deeper, systemic approach that lies at the intersection of nature, culture, and business goals.Highlighting that “Regenerative design can help businesses localise,” she also discusses a potential direction to navigate today's global crises, thus requiring a reframing of business as we know it.This episode invites us to imagine futures where businesses give back more than they take, offering a hopeful push we all need.In this episode, Kara draws from her experience of guiding regenerative design with clients across diverse local contexts, helping us imagine the power of viewing business like nature. She speaks on how regenerative design cannot be siloed into CSR activities, and why it's important that it be tied to all parts of the organisation.She also touches upon several frameworks tackling this problem, like biomimicry, the doughnut economy etc. - helping us put a practical approach to regeneration, rather than viewing it as an idealistic utopian future.Tune in to discover how this future-focused approach can guide you through the complexities within the boundaries of today's world.Key Highlights

Send us a textDo you contemplate topics like climate change, biodiversity loss, and the risk of civilizational collapse? If so, then you probably understand something about bargaining – a psychological defense mechanism that's one of the five stages of grief. With just a wee bit of embarrassment, Asher, Jason, and Rob reveal damning episodes of bargaining from their personal histories (involving green consumerism and cult-like devotion to technology). Having admitted their sins, they discuss the allure of false solutions to our environmental predicaments and how even veteran environmental journalists can be susceptible to it. Stay to the end for thoughts on how to avoid getting hoodwinked by the horde of ecomodernist tech bros who continuously shove unworkable "solutions" down our throats. Originally recorded on January 16, 2025.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.Sources/Links/Notes:Julia Musto, "The end of the world as we know it? Theorist warns humanity is teetering between collapse and advancement," Independent, January 13, 2025 (about Nahfeez Ahmed's take on superabundance versus collapse).Rob Dietz, "Chris Smaje Vs. George Monbiot and the Debate on the Future of Farming," Resilience, October 27, 2023.Crazy Town episode 32 on cognitive biasMegan Phelps-Roper's six questionsCrazy Town episode 45 on feedback loops, featuring an interview with Beth SawinPost Carbon Institute's Deep Dive on building emotional resilienceSupport the show

Natasha Hulst, Director of the European Land Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, describes a spirited campaign by commoners to build an urban farm and green space, Voedselpark, or Food Park, on the edge of Amsterdam. While climate change and global economics argue for relocalizing agriculture, city officials and businesses are determined to build a big-box distribution center on the unspoiled land. The question at hand: Will a famously progressive city double-down on capitalist growth and consumerism as its vision for the future, or can it embrace a modest experiment in climate-friendly land use and commoning?

Talk about cascading consequences: when a few nerds wanted to get high and orchestrated a small exchange of cannabis, they kicked off the age of ecommerce. Now that online shopping and the technology supporting it have ramped up commercialization and supercharged consumerism, we're facing existential crises. Exactly what nefarious internet innovation might lead Jason to unbox a trebuchet? Why would Asher consider having an Amazon truck deliver his kid to school? What's the most efficient way for Rob to get his plastic packaging to the ocean so it can choke the most marine mammals? Get online, order a must-have product (perhaps that pair of fentanyl-laced blue jeans you've been eyeing), and take part in the end times of capitalism. Or consider canceling that Amazon Prime account, shutting off the computer for a spell, and getting busy prioritizing community over consumption. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

British activist Sara Arnold and Dutch fashion scholar/activist Sandra Niessen explain their vision for "a radical defashion future" driven by degrowth, decolonization, and commoning. As two leaders of Fashion Act Now, they are part of a growing network of dissident fashionistas trying to make the global clothing industry more ecologically responsible, relocalized, and responsive to climate change. They argue that the fashion industry needs a serious economic and cultural makeover to curb its colossal waste and energy use, and allow a rich pluriverse of clothing cultures to flourish.

Self domestication, the process by which humans became a more cooperative and less aggressive species, paradoxically contributes to humanity's overshoot predicament. While trying to wrap their heads around that nugget, Asher, Jason, and Rob geek out on evolutionary biology, 80s professional wrestling characters, and a certain comedic song about foxes. Don't miss Jason's entertaining pronunciations of the names of Russian scientists and politicians as he tells the story of a groundbreaking experiment that took place in the hinterlands of Siberia. In the Do-the-Opposite segment, we struggle with the conundrum of how to maintain the benefits of cooperative behavior and avoid violence during economic relocalization, all while trying to figure out what the hell a fief is.Support the show (https://www.postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown/)

Last year, research at Johns Hopkins showed that healthcare consumes nearly half of all federal spending, which includes funding for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, military health benefits, health benefits for federal employees and their dependents, plus interest. Our federal government spends 48% of its money on health care and still healthcare devastates state budgets all across this country, with serious consequences in public health, education and other national priorities. This week's guest, Dave Chase, is the Creator, Co-Founder, and CEO of Health Rosetta. Health Rosetta is an ecosystem enabling public and private employers and unions to reduce their health benefits spending by 20% or more while improving the quality of care for plan members. Dave is also the author of Relocalizing Health: Relocalization is a strategy to build communities based on the local production of food, energy and goods.  When applied to healthcare, a relocalization effort bring about systematic change – it could lead to strengthened local economies, improved population health, higher value in care delivery, and health equity. Dave expounds that health doesn't start with a pill or in a hospital. It starts at home, with parents, with neighborhoods, with workplaces, and communities. Relocalization will be an important key for winning the race to value! Episode Bookmarks: 04:05 Defining the Relocalizing Health strategy and why it needs to be applied to healthcare 05:45 How to create systems change at a grassroots level 06:25 Applying a systems change model that focuses on adaptable replication (not scalability) 07:15 The Nuka System of Care in Southcentral Alaska as an example of a successful effort to relocalize health care 07:25 Rosen Hotels as another example of creating a consumer-oriented redesign of health care 07:40 Learning from the Jönköping Health System in Sweden 08:35 “Transformation moves at the speed of trust, and trust is built on complete transparency.” 08:50 How the legal and economic underpinnings of health plans are ‘completely rotten' and must be made transparent 09:15 Seeking transparency in the way health insurance brokers are paid 09:27 “There is no well-functioning healthcare system in the world not built on proper primary care.” 09:35 “Healthcare isn't expensive -- only 27 cents of every healthcare dollar goes to clinicians who are the value creators. What's expensive is profiteering, price gouging, administrative bloat, and fraud.” 10:00 Dave discusses the advancements of modern-day computing as an example of why we need to work on the fractals of healthcare (i.e. the piece parts) 11:05 Research from Marty Makary showing that the federal government spends 48% of its money on health care 12:55 A broken financing model for hospitals steals from public health, kids, education, social services, and public infrastructure 13:15 Economic Development 3.0: Playing the Health Card 13:35 How considering every hospitalization as a failure is a starting point for reform 14:30 The economic depression of the middle class due to wage stagnation, and how that was caused by healthcare costs 15:30 The Millennial Generation is the first generation in American history where life will not be better for their parents because healthcare is stealing their future 16:35 Referencing David Goldhill's Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care 16:55 “I believe the Millennial Generation can be the greatest generation of this century.” 17:45 Massive student debt and how healthcare has driven up the costs of Higher Education 19:51 The national opioid epidemic crisis that is devasting communities.  More than 760,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose, and two out of three drug overdose deaths involve an opioid. 21:45 The opioid crisis isn't an anomaly – it is our healthcare system.  The key unwitting enabler is the employer.

Before you heap praise on someone's cooking, even for something as delicious as porcupine pot pie, you might want to consider the effects of ego inflation and the downsides of a hyper-individualistic culture. In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason wonder if individualism (not to mention all those other "-isms"... capitalism, socialism, communism) is simply the product of a relatively short period of expansionism, and what of our values must be kept or discarded as we enter a new era of contraction and bureaucratic breakdown. While expressing a profound desire to retain the progress humanity has made on numerous fronts (don't sleep on 21st-century dentistry), they make sure to insult one another just enough for proper ego containment. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show (https://postcarbon.org/donate)

We are living through a time when the entire world is taking a good, hard look at itself. This has given humanity an incredible opportunity to shift focus and choose systems that feed life, that create biological resources, rather than only financial resources. We have a chance to turn away from systems that marginalize, extract, and degrade…and choose what we want to cultivate for ourselves and for future generations. Trained as a cultural anthropologist and skilled in four languages, Juliana Birnbaum has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Nepal, Costa Rica and Brazil. She is the co-author of Sustainable [R]evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms and Communities Worldwide and CBD: A Patient’s Guide to Medicinal Cannabis. She is also the mother of two daughters and has attended over 100 births as a doula and assistant midwife. Juliana currently coordinates the Volunteer and Faculty departments at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA. In this episode… Juliana’s fascinating background Far-reaching effects of consumerism Seeing life through the lens of permaculture What a sustainable city looks like How the Coronavirus pandemic is revealing the flaws in our societal structures The cost of industrial agriculture Relocalization of food Relocalization of energy Co-housing and ecovillage communities Impact of our diet choices Force and violence against Life that is inherent in our modern societal structures De-commodifying humans’ basic needs The need to develop communication skills that support the sustainable community   Resources Sustainable [R}evolution: Permaculture in Ecovillages, Urban Farms and Communities Worldwide CBD: A Patient’s Guide to Medicinal Cannabis Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken Mary Oliver www.cultureofpermaculture.org

Some of the most interesting deviations between US retro games and their Japanese originals are the decisions made when they were localized to non-Japanese countries, the politics of the time, and subsequent censorship. What if we had it all to do over again? Sean and Vinnk explore new localizations of games that either never got one, or are getting new ones, and in Pile of Shame we try to figure out if the release of Shenmue III is 15 years too late, Vinnk realizes he's never played Riven: The Sequel to Myst, and discovers out he has a massive Pile of Shame of Good Old Games... Details about the podcast, links to related articles, and supplemental audio/video are available at FamicomDojo.TV: https://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/161 Leave us a voicemail at 608-492-1923, or share your thoughts on Facebook (http://facebook.com/famicomdojo), Instagram (http://instagram.com/famicomdojo), Twitter (@FamicomDojo), or our Famicom Dojo YouTube channel (http://youtube.com/famicomdojo). "One More Continue" and "RPG" theme songs by the Imari Tones: http://imaritones.net Vinnk and SeanOrange pixel art by Louis Lloyd-Judson: https://louistrations.co.uk This podcast is brought to you by the Nerd & Tie Podcast Network. Listen to other great shows at http://nerdandtie.com.

You know what drives Jason really crazy about auto traffic? No, it’s not the 42 hours per year that the average commuter wastes stuck in it or even the global warming pollution spewed, it’s the 3 BILLION (with a B people!) gallons of fuel that are wasted instead of helping with the transition of our food system. In this episode, Rob, Asher, and Jason talk about why fossil fuels are so embedded in our food system and how changes in the way we grow food might change where all of us live. This episode is designed especially for people who like to eat food and hope to continue doing so. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show (https://postcarbon.org/donate)

Relocalization may be the most important strategy for minimizing climate change. According to Bill McKibben, “working as communities is the most important thing that we can be doing right now.” In this wide-ranging conversation about the sustainability of our civilization, McKibben shares his thinking about much more than climate change, including the fact that having “more” is not necessarily the key to our happiness. Bill McKibben has played a major role in public awareness and discussion about climate change. His 1989 book, The End of Nature, was likely the first book for a general audience about climate change. He’s one of the founders of the planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, 350.org, he spearheaded resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fossil fuel divestment movement. Local food, small farms, suburban isolation, more leisure and less stuff, community connections, and greater satisfaction all come up for discussion. Dave Gardner sat down with McKibben in 2007, shortly after publication of his book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, the year before he co-founded 350.org, for this macro-level look at climate change, human behavior and happiness, and public policy. We're sharing encore episodes from Season One while we take a break between seasons two and three. Make sure there IS a season three by pitching in at http://www.tinyurl.com/ceseason3 Learn more about Bill McKibben, subscribe to get a weekly email notification and learn more at http://www.conversationearth.org

From November 30 to December 11 the world’s attention is riveted on COP 21, the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. Bill McKibben has played a major role in public awareness and discussion about climate change. His 1989 book, The End of Nature, was likely the first book for a general audience about climate change. He’s one of the founders of the planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, 350.org, he spearheaded resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fossil fuel divestment movement. Relocalization may be the most important strategy for minimizing climate change. According to Bill McKibben, “working as communities is the most important thing that we can be doing right now.” In this wide-ranging conversation about the sustainability of our civilization, McKibben shares his thinking about much more than climate change, including the fact that having “more” is not necessarily the key to our happiness. Local food, small farms, suburban isolation, more leisure and less stuff, community connections, and greater satisfaction all come up for discussion. Dave Gardner sat down with McKibben in 2007, shortly after publication of his book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, the year before he co-founded 350.org, for this macro-level look at climate change, human behavior and happiness, and public policy. Learn more at http://www.conversationearth.org/durable-future-bill-mckibben-115/ Photo Credit: Steve Liptay

Second part in a two-part series. Do we privilege larger cities when we talk about a sustainable, low-carbon future? Are smaller cities excluded from these conversations? Catherine Tumber, author of Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America?s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, argues that smaller industrial cities have an increasingly significant role to play in our low-carbon, relocalized urban futures.

Visionary architect Mark Lakeman talks about the inception of the City Repair movement, and his mission of creating villages within cities. By reclaiming urban spaces, we can transform cities into places of beauty, art, creativity, and connection.

Think Locally! Michael Brownlee of Relocalization tells us how to save the world - literally.

Think Locally! Michael Brownlee of Relocalization tells us how to save the world - literally.

Julian Darley is Founder/Director of the Post Carbon Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia, author of High Noon for Natural Gas: the New Energy Crisis. He describes kinds of natural gas, their depletion and scarcity, how they are located in countries not necessarily friendly to the US and the difficulties of transporting natural gas. Darley also focuses on how "relocalization" and living very very simply is the only way to deal with the depletion of oil and natural gas, both of which have already peaked, never to be available again as they have been before. We are nearing the end of the industrialized world, it will be a very big change and it behooves us to prepare starting right now to cushion the move into these new times. www.globalpublicmedia.com