In her 1997 book, BIOMIMICRY: Innovation Inspired by Nature, JANINE BENYUS – biologist, author, and innovation consultant – coined a term and invented a field. After 3.8 billion years of R&D on this planet, failures are fossils. What surrounds us in the natural world has succeeded and survived. Animals, plants, and microbes have found what works, what’s appropriate, and what lasts here on Earth. So why not learn as much as we can from them? Janine and I recorded our first conversation in 1999. In this one we look back together at the birth of biomimicry and its growth and impact over the years.

 

Benyus-12-08-2025-Transcript

 

Here’s my 2002 conversation with SHARON SALZBERG, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society on her book, FAITH: TRUSTING YOUR OWN DEEPEST EXPERIENCE. Sharon is a New Yorker, and the book is her response to the experience of 9/11. Seems like it might be helpful in our current dark time. Faith in what? Where do we place our faith when the US is beset by cruel authoritarianism and the world by multiple wars and climate driven disasters? Is faith today painfully naive or absolutely necessary in order to fight on?

 

Sharon Salzberg 07-16-2002 Transcript

 

I speak with journalist and best-selling author, GEORGE PACKER (THE UNWINDING, LAST BEST HOPE) about his first novel in decades, THE EMERGENCY. He felt facts were no longer hitting home. It’s an allegory – not unlike those of his hero, George Orwell – in an unknown time or place with plenty of resonances with our current moment. What happens to society when the established order falls? …to families? to our moral creed? …to our sense of self? 

Packer, George-12-03-2025-Transcript 

 

As deadly protests engulf Iran and a mass pro-democracy movement seems the path forward in the US, here’s my 2012 conversation with WAEL GHONIM about his book, REVOLUTION 2.0. Ghonim, a 30-year-old Google manager, unwilling to publicly criticize the Egyptian regime, anonymously launched a Facebook campaign to protest one killing by security forces. How did the Egyptian people finally find their voice and reject 30 years of oppression?} Two reasons I chose this episode: 1) Iran, taking a lesson from the Arab Spring, has cut off the nation’s internet. 2) Though the later Muslim Brotherhood coup was tragic, Egypt’s nonviolent revolution succeeded in toppling an authoritarian dictator and regime. What did it take? How did it build? What can we learn?

 

FF_GHONIM 2012_transctipt

 

I talk with BILL McKIBBEN (The New Yorker), co-founder of both the global climate campaign, 350.org, and ThirdAct.org, for folks 60 & above. I did publish an episode with Bill in the fall, but then I was invited to talk with him in front of an audience for LiveTalksLA. This is that new conversation, including a bit of audience Q&A. In these dark times, Bill’s new book, HERE COMES THE SUN offers hope – not with happy talk but with a clear declaration of facts: Solar and wind are no longer alternative fuels. They are now the cheapest as well as the cleanest. But winning on the science and the economics is not enough. The power of the people must defeat the power of the fossil fuel industry. Learn more: billmckibben.com, thirdact.org

McKibben-LiveTalks2025-Transcript