PODCAST · science
Sustain What?
by Andy @Revkin
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
Episodes
-
A Song For These Times: “I Want to Live in a Land Where Money Ain’t God”
Whether you blame the Supreme Court’s Citizens United tragedy, social media, late-stage capitalism, all of the above, I encourage you to listen to this song about wealth’s stranglehold on America by my dear friend Carl Karush, one of the wonderful characters and creators in our Downeast Maine...
-
Tracking America’s Energy Trends and Prospects for the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Bill
I hope you’ll watch, listen to and/or share my Sustain What conversation with Daniel Palken, a highly-regarded guide to energy trends and legislation at Arnold Ventures. My curtain raiser for the webcast has background on the new U.S. Energy Data tracker we discussed and the permitting reform…
more -
Suno vs. Homo - Matt Richtel and Andy Revkin on AI and Music
On October 3, The New York Times published a provocation (more than a story) comparing songs generated by humans and generated by giving prompts to generative artificial intelligence trained on vast catalogues of human-created music. The writer was Matt Richtel, a wide-ranging, Pulitzer-winning...
-
Meet Jacob Weisberg, Outing Political and Corporate Trump Sycophants Enabling Autocracy
As regular readers know, I consider the sustainability of government of, by and for the people part of the focus of Sustain What. You won’t get anything productive done on climate, biodiversity, AI or the other issues of our time if autocratic rule continues to gain power here. With that in mind…
more -
Update from Trump’s War: Oil Traders Party While Families Struggle with Surging Energy Bills
Amid the flow, a story out of Singapore from The Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It’s the kind of sidenote feature that can be easily missed, but I feel is very important. So I did a quite live video chat and I’m posting the lede and a gift link from me here. Barrels of Sake and Rooftop...
-
Beyond the Social Dilemma: Navigating the Online Media Crisis - Before the AI Crisis
In March 2021, I hosted a fascinating discussion on the stormy, co-opted, polarizing online media environment with Georgetown Internet scholar Renee DiResta, Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology and Jeff Orlowski, the director of the hit 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma...
-
Avoiding AI Doom - a Cyber Security Guru and a Tech Philosopher Weigh in
Here are my pop-up Sustain What AI conversations with a top cybersecurity expert who says the Trump administration is poorly positioned to undertake the steps necessary to avoid superintelligence hacking us all, and a philosopher of technology who sees the path to safer artificial intelligence...
-
Experts Lay Out Paths to a Safer Future in the Unstable, Warming, Crowding Himalayas
Amid the still-unfolding tragedy following the Nepal rock and ice collapse and tsunami-like mountain flood, there are hints of a safer future. That was the core idea emerging from a pop-up conversation I had Friday with Basanta Raj Adhikari, the director of the Center for Disaster Studies at...
-
Fresh Updates on the Himalayan Ice and Rock Collapse and Flood Catastrophe
After my initial post on the unimaginably violent and deadly flood in the crowded valleys along the Nepal-Tibet (China) border, I reached out to two experts on this kind of catastrophe and just ran a pop-up Sustain What conversation on the still-unfolding situation and science. You can watch…
more -
Want to Protect Your House in the Fiery West? "Think Like an Ember"
I just held a solution-filled Sustain What conversation with three people working to spread materials and methods that can substantitally stem wildfire risk to communities (by cutting vulnerability) even as the long fights to stem human-driven global heating and manage wildland fires at the…
more -
How to Boost Public Trust and Engagement in Science and Policy
Think of how Anthony Fauci has become kind of a tainted totem, tussled over by starkly opposed factions in fights that omit almost all of the complexity that attended the COVID-19 pandemic. Then watch my pop-up Sustain What conversation with three of the 11 authors of an important recent Nature...
-
For Those Who Work the Sea (and Those Who Don't Return)
Updated below July 25 - My new song, "For Those Who Put to Sea," honors men and women who harvest the ocean's bounty and is sung in memory of those who sometimes don't come back. I just posted this fresh video version on YouTube and TikTok (and will post elsewhere soon). Please share this song…
more -
Paths to Safer Seafood Harvests – Lessons and Solutions from Maine's Bountiful, Dangerous Coasts
My new song about maritime dangers, “For Those Who Put to Sea,” is out on all platforms (YouTube, Spotify, etc.). Here’s my post from Maine’s Commercial Fishing Remembrance Day: Growing up in Rhode Island, I got out on the water any way I could, ranging from skin diving to sailing to fishing to...
-
A "Sunday Sanity" Back Porch Song Sift in Open-C Tuning
I found myself having a quiet moment (I’m hoping you find them) at home and thought I’d share a bit of a musical ramble as a “Sunday Sanity” offering. You can find a short playlist of previous episodes of this track of Sustain What shows here. I’m playing my first guitar, which I bought in pieces...
-
Clearwater Sloop Booted from "Sail 250" Tall Ships Parade in New York City
Insert, July 16 - Listen to or read this conversation between Rob Verchick and Dan Farber, two legal eagles on the muzzling of the Sloop Clearwater: Insert, 3:15 p.m. - Months of planning and permits amounted to nothing as the Coast Guard, apparently on orders “from above” (see below), ordered…
more -
AI for Good? Yes. Really. Meet a Coder Connecting Venezuela Quake Survivors and Kin
These days, many of us tend to think of coders, algorithms and AI as a predatory threat stalking our online communication environment, and all too often that is true. But here is an inspiring example of an effort to put these skills and technologies to vital use in an unfolding catastrophe. Jorge...
-
Pursuing Online Weather-Forecast Impact in a Fast-Changing Media Climate
Here’s the post-show post and audio podcast for my conversation with the Capital Weather team, who’ve just returned to independence after 18 years of weather communication and community building affiliated with the Washington Post. Details are in the curtain-raiser post: We talked about their…
more -
Meet Researchers Holding a 50-Hour Livestream to Sustain Weather & Climate Science
I just hosted a pop-up Sustain What conversation with three of the dozens of climate and weather scientists who are running a 50-Hour livestream to boost public appreciation of the observational and analytical science that bolsters societal resilience and boosts understanding of our amazing, and...
-
From "The Republican War on Science" to a Climate-Science Pulitzer to Deconstructing Storytelling - a Chat with Chris Mooney
Program note: Today at 11 a.m. Eastern, join me live with several of the dozens of scientists participating in a 50-Hour livestream to sustain federal support for weather & climate science: YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack, Facebook, and X. The webcast is under way through June 3: My conversation with...
-
🎶 New Song on Cooking in War Zones and Knitting a Red Wool Shield Against ICE
I’m continuing to write songs along with my Sustain What webcasting and blogging here — in part to keep sane and in part because this has always been one of my ways of connecting people with ideas. (Buy my new album here.) In this post, you’re getting the first look and listen to the first rough...
-
What to Think and Do as the Pope and an AI Founder Weigh in on This Fast-Forward Technology
I just wrapped a super-sobering and, at the same time, fun and hopeful conversation on the urgent issues surrounding the plaid-speed evolution of AI. With my guests Brad Allenby and Andrew Maynard at Arizona State University, the prime focus was the Vatican rollout of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical...
-
Burgess, Hausfather, Pielke and Tol on the overdue end to the worst-case RCP8.5 climate scenario
I hope you’ll watch and share this illuminating and constructive face-to-face discussion with four key analysts of the scenarios for emissions of planet-heating gases that indirectly have shaped, and sometimes misshaped, climate policy discourse and decisions (and media coverage). My guests were...
-
Sustaining Long-Term Science in a Short-Term World
I just hosted a great discussion of the importance of bolstering long-term observational science and the capacity to integrate findings into decision making and policy. As I wrote in the curtain raiser post on Thursday, what drives me nuts is that even scientists who think global warming warnings...
-
Chat with a Singing Journalist – Me
Snag “Wake Me up Martha,” a sonic survival guide for these crazy times, on Bandcamp today - Bandcamp Friday - when the company doesn’t take its percentage: revkin.bandcamp.com. You can listen on every conceivable platform and they’re all here: andyrevkin.hearnow.com. Here’s the curtain raiser…
more -
How the Hormuz Shutdown is Reshaping The Material World
J.A. Ginsburg, a k a Janet Ginsburg, is a business analyst and writer (and many other things) who is scouring the world for scientists and startups pursuing substitutes for the materials societies have long depended on — but that are in short supply because of bottlenecks like the one created by...
-
Remembering Peter Raven, a Plant- and Planet-Loving Force for Nature
Peter Raven, 1936 - 2026 Rhett Ayers Butler, the founder of the biodiversity-focused online news network Mongabay, has posted a marvelous tribute laying out the extraordinary life and legacy of Peter Raven, a groundbreaking botanist and fierce defender of Earth’s biological diversity who died…
more -
On the Path to Worldwide Slaughter-Free Meat
There’s no one more focused on building a future with affordable, delicious, nutritious, ethically produced food than Bruce Friedrich, a onetime PETA animal rights activist who’s co-founder and president of the Good Food Institute. His focus is protein - in the form we know of as meat. I was very...
-
Green Journalism Graybeards Explore Communication Frontiers, from Film to Songs and Beyond
On a road trip from Maine to Nashville and back, visiting our sons and other kin, my wife and I spent a couple of days back in the Hudson Valley, where I popped into the studios of Radio Kingston to speak with my old environmental-media compadre Jon Bowermaster for his Green Radio Hour show....
-
Using AI Without Losing the Best of Being Human
This is the post-webcast post of my invigorating and unnerving conversation with Andrew Maynard and Jeffrey Abbott, the authors of a “practical guide to thriving with AI while rediscovering yourself in the process.” The curtain raiser post is here with more background: The more I dive into the…
more -
An Alarming Report on the Trump-Driven Surge to Autocracy, American Style
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...
-
Andy Revkin with Physicist Adam Frank on Aliens, the Anthropocene, Trump's War on Science and More
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...
-
A Debate About Building Audiences for Good Climate Outcomes Without Putting Climate Change in the Foreground
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…
more -
We Sent an Army to the Desert To Keep This Country Free - and to Liberate Some Carbon, Baby, for You and Me...
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...
-
Amid All, a Dose of Sunday Sanity with Texas-Spawned Songwriter and Poet Vince Bell
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...
-
Libertarian and Liberal Lawyers with a Climate Focus Agree on Big Weaknesses in Trump's Attack on the EPA “Endangerment” Finding
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...
-
Meet "Death of Science" author John Horgan and Steve Fuller, a philosopher of knowing (and much more)
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...
-
Gernot Wager on Surviving Team Trump’s War on Climate “Endangerment”
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...
-
Why AI's "Simulated Intelligence" is Great for Grunt Work, But Not Breakthroughs or Creativity
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...
-
Extreme Winter Weather in a Human-Heated Climate
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…
more -
Save Dreams for Sleeping, It's Time to Get Loud
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...
-
Meet Former Russian Propagandist Andrew Ryvkin and Propaganda Expert Renee Hobbs
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...
-
How to Navigate a Superstorm of Malicious, Divisive, Dangerous and Distracting Propaganda
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...
-
Meet U.S. Scientists Working in Greenland Who are Urging Trump to Respect Greenlanders
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...
-
From the Field: Taking the Temperature Under Antarctica's Most Threatened Glacier
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...
-
Sammy Roth on Climate, Culture and the Changing Media Environment
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…
more -
Exploring the Toxic Politics Around Migration & Population 📈 & 📉
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...
-
Can Doomscrolling Be Harnessed for the Public Good?
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)…
more -
"Kyoto" Playwrights, a Climate Scientist, Journalists and a Campaigner Explore Climate Drama - Onstage and Off
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...
-
A "Buy Nothing Day" Chat With Rev. Billy Talen of the Church of Stop Shopping and Low-Carbon Maven Lloyd Alter
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...
-
A Check-in on COP30 with a Top Brazilian Climate Journalist and Kim Stanley Robinson on the Role of Fiction Facing Inconvenient Facts
I hope you can watch and weigh in on this conversation I had on the final official day of COP30, the thirtieth round of climate treaty talks, which are wrapping up in Belém, the gateway city to Brazil’s vast portion of the Amazon River basin. First we had a pop-up update from my friend Cristiane...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
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
HOSTED BY
Andy @Revkin
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Sustain What? have?
Sustain What? currently has 129 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Sustain What? about?
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
How often does Sustain What? release new episodes?
Sustain What? publishes regularly with 129 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Sustain What??
You can listen to Sustain What? on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Sustain What??
Sustain What? is created and hosted by Andy @Revkin.
URL copied to clipboard!