What is to be done?
Claim This Podcastby Carolina Sachs, Sasja Beslik och Joel Lindefors
Podcast Overview
<p>We know we can’t stay on the current path. We roughly know what needs to change, but we don’t yet know how.</p><p>This podcast takes that question as its starting point. We’ll talk with people from business, politics, academia, and activism who can help us see new ways forward, people whose experience, perspective, and courage might help us answer that question. With this podcast, we want to begin mapping out and inspire others to map out, strategies and action plans for greater speed and force in the transition toward sustainable development.</p><p>We ask ourselves, and our guests, the same question:</p><br><p><strong>What is to be done?</strong></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
11/25/2025
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Recent Episodes
June 15, 2026
Season Wrap Up
<p>Joel, Sasja and Carolina reflect on the season's 15 episodes, which have explored growth and economic systems from widely different perspectives -- from techno-optimists to advocates of an entirely new economic system. They conclude that the series has succeeded in keeping the tension between different viewpoints alive, but that they want to meet more entrepreneurs in the next season.</p><br><p>The conversation moves through several themes: AI's dual role as both resource drain and potential solution; the financial system's short-termism as a structural barrier to transition; the need for political reform (including around corporate law and quarterly reporting); and a new report associated with Piketty on global justice and concrete steps toward a more equitable world within planetary boundaries.</p><br><p>They also highlight the weakening of democracy as a deeply troubling parallel process, alongside the climate crisis, the AI boom and demographic shifts, and want to explore this further next season. Other topics flagged for season 2 include rewilding, religion and social development, Buckminster Fuller's systems thinking, and AI from multiple angles. </p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
June 3, 2026
Regenerative Economics with John B. Fullerton
<p>We spoke with John Fullerton, author of Regenerative Economics and former top banker, about why the economic system isn't broken and working exactly as designed. And that's the problem.</p><p>His core argument: we built the economy like a machine. But life doesn't work like a machine. And no amount of carbon taxes or ESG reporting will fix a design flaw that deep.</p><p>What would it look like to build an economy like a living system instead?</p><p>That's what this conversation is about.</p><br><p><strong>Background</strong></p><p>John spent nearly 20 years at J.P. Morgan before leaving in 2001. The September 11 attacks, which he witnessed firsthand, prompted a deep personal search for meaning. He began reading widely outside finance, including Limits to Growth, and eventually developed the framework of regenerative economics.</p><br><p><strong>The Core Problem: Economy as Machine</strong></p><p>The root of today's economic crisis lies in how neoclassical economics was founded: 19th-century mathematicians deliberately modeled it on Newtonian physics, treating the economy as a machine rather than a living organism. Two critical errors followed, ignoring the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) and assuming time is reversible. The Nordhaus Nobel Prize, which deemed a 3.5°C temperature rise acceptable, is a product of this flawed thinking.</p><br><p><strong>Regenerative vs. Other Economic Frameworks</strong></p><ul><li>Environmental economics (Nordhaus) uses externalities, useful as a concept, but inadequate because not all harms can be priced or fixed with money.</li><li>Ecological economics (Herman Daly) was a major leap, re-embedding the economy within the biosphere, but still frames things as a trade-off between growth and sustainability.</li><li>Regenerative economics goes further, treating the economy as a living system governed by emergence, adaptive cycles, and self-organization, not top-down management toward preset goals.</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>Co-Inherited Wealth and the Commons</strong></p><p>Drawing on Peter Barnes' work, John argues that natural resources, the internet, mathematical knowledge, and accumulated technological progress are all co-inherited wealth, shared assets that the private sector currently uses for free. He estimates that privately owned wealth represents only about 13% of total real wealth. A proper institution of the commons, similar to Norway's oil fund or Alaska's oil trust, could govern these shared assets, generate universal revenues, and make the economy self-fueling.</p><br><p><strong>Practical Pathways</strong></p><p>Rather than one grand plan, John points to many existing examples:</p><ul><li>The <strong>Mondragón cooperative</strong> in Spain, managing 80 businesses as a single ecosystem for 80 years</li><li><strong>Bioregional movements</strong> and decentralized food systems</li><li>The opportunity presented by the <strong>"silver tsunami", </strong>as aging baby boomers exit their privately owned businesses, there's a chance to buy and reorganize half the global economy into place-based regenerative ecosystems</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>On AI and Energy</strong></p><p>John believes the current AI boom is likely a financial bubble. That said, the massive energy demand it creates is already spurring engineering innovation in efficiency, the challenge is directing that ingenuity toward systemic health rather than billionaire-making.</p><br><p><strong>The Path Forward</strong> </p><p>John sees this as fundamentally a re-education and paradigm shift project. Drawing on Ilya Prigogine's mathematics, he argues that when systems are far from equilibrium, small "islands of coherence" can shift the whole. His online community (withlife.net) is one such island. The transformation may happen suddenly and unexpectedly, like the fall of the Berlin Wall or through painful collapse first. Either way, he believes the regenerative economy is already emerging, even if we can't fully see it yet.</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
May 13, 2026
Seduce, Don't Preach with Olly Lawder from Revolt
<p>This week we sit down with Olly Lawder, a strategist and storyteller with extensive experience in sustainability communications. We trace the arc of sustainability communication from its origins in corporate philanthropy and early CSR, through the rise of ambitious net zero targets and "rock star CEOs," to the more cautious and compliance-driven moment we find ourselves in today. Along the way, we ask an uncomfortable question: did the movement win over the corporate world while losing voters and consumers?</p><br><p>Olly has spent 20 years helping major global brands figure out how to make sustainable choices genuinely desirable, not as a moral duty, but as something people actually want. The closer sustainability gets to the real reason someone buys something, the more powerful it becomes. Nobody buys a perfume for the recycled packaging. But if the sustainably sourced vanilla makes it smell more complex, more unique, more seductive? </p><br><p>We dig into why terms like "net zero" and "degrowth" leave people cold, what the fossil fuel industry understands about communications that the sustainability movement still doesn't, and why the pendulum will eventually have to swing back, because none of the fundamental problems have gone away.</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
16 total episodes available
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- What is What is to be done??
<p>We know we can’t stay on the current path. We roughly know what needs to change, but we don’t yet know how.</p><p>This podcast takes that question as its starting point. We’ll talk with people from business, politics, academia, and activism who can help us see new ways forward, people whose experience, perspective, and courage might help us answer that question. With this podcast, we want to begin mapping out and inspire others to map out, strategies and action plans for greater speed and force in the transition toward sustainable development.</p><p>We ask ourselves, and our guests, the same question:</p><br><p><strong>What is to be done?</strong></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p> - How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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