Wondering how you can have everything you want in life without f*cking up the planet?
Join Jamila Brown, former Global Head of Sustainability and Social Impact at Soho House, & founder of international impact agency Light/Work, each week as she talks to the culture shapers, industry innovators, and impact activists who are figuring it out too.
From fashion to food, dating to design, wealth building to wellness, we're diving into it all. From simple swaps to mindset shifts, to just being able to decode the language some greenwashing marketer is trying to sell you, this is a lift under the hood of the things we love, with some of the coolest people in those spaces.
Tune in each week as we figure out what's worth keeping in our pursuit of the good life, and what's well... Ethically Questionable.
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Starbucks wants to get “Back to Starbucks.” So why has it just dropped or scaled back most of the sustainability goals it set in 2020, including its targets to halve water use and landfill waste, while CEO Brian Niccol pushes through $2 billion in cost cuts?
This week on EQ News, Jamila Brown and Jenn McGarrigle get into the Financial Times report on Starbucks’ retreat from its green goals. Jamila confesses to walking into a Climate Week event in New York holding a single-use Starbucks cup. Jenn, a former Starbucks barista and coffee master, remembers the company it used to be: compost bags made from coffee grounds, pastries donated to local shelters, and a “third place” people actually wanted to spend time in.
They talk about why watered-down goals worry them more than missed ones, how a change in what gets counted turned 500 billion litres of water into 53 billion, why a coffee company should treat climate change as one of its biggest business risks, and the citywide reusable cup trial in California that worked and then quietly disappeared. Plus, the private jet commute.
Is it greenwashing to set a goal you might miss? Who should a sustainability team really report to? And can “Back to Starbucks” work while cutting the people who made it Starbucks?
Stories mentioned: Financial Times, “Starbucks retreats from green goals amid $2bn cost drive” (29 September 2026). Bloomberg, “Hot Potatoes Mean Higher Prices and Shorter Fries in Europe” (16 September 2026).
Ethically Questionable is Electrified by Polestar, the Swedish electric performance brand created to accelerate the shift to zero tailpipe emissions.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
2 Oct 2026
We're Creating a Culture Where Sexual Assault is an Opinion
Trigger warning: this episode discusses sexual assault.
A former Cornell student alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven fraternity members in 2024. Messages about it were reportedly shared in a group chat with dozens of other men, and no one stepped in. The district attorney didn't bring charges, and Cornell handed out sanctions that included essays and workshops. Two years on, the case is everywhere. Online, people are arguing about whether it counts as assault at all.
Jamila and Jenn talk about how we got here. Why do men in groups stay silent? Why do universities, prosecutors and TV hosts keep landing on the side of the accused?
And what would actually change things: education at home, in schools and in the media, or real consequences?
The men named in the case deny the allegations, and none of them has been charged.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
29 Sept 2026
Hating AI Whilst Using AI
Artificial intelligence is becoming impossible to ignore. It is changing how businesses operate, how people work, how students learn, and even how we think about productivity.
But behind the excitement is a much harder question: What happens when we adopt AI faster than we understand its consequences?
In this episode of Ethically Questionable, Jamila Brown and Susan Allen Augustin explore the uncomfortable side of AI, from the pressure to use it at work to the environmental cost of the infrastructure behind it.
They discuss AI regulation, workplace productivity, education, sustainability, AI ethics, corporate responsibility, and the growing influence of the companies and individuals building these systems.
The conversation also explores a particularly uncomfortable contradiction: AI can help people work more efficiently while simultaneously increasing the amount of work expected from them.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.
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