Breakthrough Dialogues

When was the last time you changed your mind? If you’re anything like the rest of the population, probably not very recently. Stephanie Lepp’s podcast, Reckonings, explores why that is; through interviews with people who have gone through transformative changes, she’s found a list of commonalities begin to emerge. Our worldviews, Stephanie explains, are intimately tied up with our identities: everything from the way we talk and dress to the communities we’re exposed to. Changing one belief seems to require a shift in the entire ecosystem. Those who have successfully broken free? They recognize that believing in A doesn’t necessitate believing in B and C: we can pick and choose based on an internal moral compass. We’re thrilled to end season two with Stephanie. At Breakthrough, we’re eager to stray from a mindset that’s hostile toward mistakes and mind flips. We strive to create more spaces for growth, for critical self-reflection, and we hope this podcast takes one step toward that more nurturing culture. As

Nassib Mugwanya is an outreach officer at the Uganda Biosciences Information Center, which means he brings agricultural research to farmers on the ground. He stands at the nexus, then, of the many clashing ideals over what the future of food should look like: traditional agroecology? Modern innovations? Small, big, local, organic, synthetic, biotechnical? For Nassib, questions as theoretical as these no longer feel relevant; immersing himself in the hardships and livelihoods of those growing food every day has changed the way he considers solutions. When a farmer, struggling with banana bacterial wilt, approaches Nassib for answers, the framing is always quite practical: “What will solve the problem I have?” Today, Nassib describes himself as firmly pro-choice. “I’m a very, very strong advocate for giving farmers the full range of options,” he says. “No one should stand in their way.” For more, read Nassib's piece in the Breakthrough Journal.

It is universally true that all rich countries use a lot of energy. This might make you think about in-home systems: refrigerators, lights, etc. But about two-thirds of the energy in an economy is used outside the home. In the US, a typical, mid-size office building uses a whole megawatt of power; that means Washington, DC’s K street – home to 105 office buildings – sucks up more energy than the entire country of Liberia. Poor countries need not just energy access but energy for growth: utility-scale grid technology. Todd Moss, Executive Director of the Energy for Growth Hub, entered the world of energy policy through development finance issues, first at the Center for Global Development and then at the State Department. But it became increasingly obvious to him that energy is embedded into every other problem. In today’s conversation, we ask him about the seemingly oppositional goals of energy-intensive climate adaptation and reducing fossil fuel reliance, common misconceptions around the idea of leapfroggin

For optimal sustainability, which farming practice is best? Miriam Horn, who worked for the Environmental Defense Fund for over ten years, says: it depends. Don’t choose a sweeping solution; farming smart is place-dependent: where can we sacrifice the least biodiversity, the least sequestered carbon? Agriculture’s footprint is already vast – half of the ice-free planet – so the stakes are high. But taking Miriam’s practical stance toward conservation moves us past political divisions. Her book (now also a film), Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman, pushes against both the myth that conservation is a liberal coastal value and that you must be small and local to contribute to the solution. In this interview, Miriam walks us through the many waves of environmentalism: from the bedrock laws of the 60s to the combative postures of the 80s, from bridge-building partnerships and market leveraging to information technology integration. Tune in for Miriam’s lessons on balancing land sparing with land sharing, how EDF taught Wa

In theory, vegetarianism for climate mitigation is really quite simple. Just don’t choose the ham sandwich; have the hummus instead. It seems like a much simpler switch than building electric planes – and equally, perhaps even more so, as impactful – but a mass move toward vegetarianism just isn’t happening. In this episode, Alex asks Marta Zaraska why, despite an ever-increasing abundance of vegan celebrities, memes, restaurants, and meat substitutes, we just can’t stop eating meat. As the author of Meathooked: The History and Science of Our 2.5-Million-Year Obsession with Meat and a Polish-raised, kielbasa-loving eater herself, Marta is a sympathetic voice of reason. Rather than creating black-and-white categories of ethical eating, she advocates for “a strong reducetarian identity” that celebrates incremental progress. Tune in for Marta’s thoughts on why meat-eating is different for us than it was for our ancestors, how meat is linked to power and masculinity, and what created the cultural tension between

The Green New Deal has recently picked up social and political momentum, but federal interventions into energy and environmental problems is not a new idea. In fact, as Breakthrough energy analyst Jameson McBride argues, there is no such thing as a free market in energy. So the question is not so much whether the government should intervene, but how it should do so. What is the "green" in the Green New Deal? Should we tack on other progressive social causes? And what can past federal efforts, like the Waxman-Markey energy bill of 2009, teach us about environmental policymaking in 2019? This episode is a little different than our usual format. Alex Trembath, former Breakthrough energy analyst and current Breakthrough deputy director, sits down with our very own Jameson to talk shop. Tune in to hear them discuss the ins and outs of energy policy and to get the latest news contextualized into broader trends. For more, here's Jameson's piece on the Green New Deal and the Legacy of Public Power.

In June 2018, a raccoon climbed up a skyscraper in Minneapolis. It captured the attention of tens of millions of people, united around a shared concern over the creature’s wellbeing. Environmental journalist Brandon Keim is heartened by the interest, calling it a “reservoir of care” that might contain the antidote to problems of animal suffering in today’s society. The first step toward alleviating non-human pain, Brandon argues, is to grant animals political representation. He’ll be the first to admit that it sounds like a radical step, but respecting the democratic process in every sense of the word – for every creature of the world – can alter the way we think about our relationships to pets, wild animals, and everyone in between. Tune in to hear about what it would mean to give animals voice, and how compatible that vision is with everything from real estate zoning laws to agricultural production. For more, here’s his essay in the Breakthrough Journal: “If We Could Talk to the Animals.”

If dense cities are so good for communities and the climate, why is it so hard to find an affordable home in the San Francisco Bay Area? Kim-Mai Cutler, a partner at Initialized Capital, contributor to TechCrunch, and one of the leading voices in urban policy, sits down with Alex to take a deep, historical dive into how we got into this mess in the first place. She touches on everything from tech jobs to population growth, wildfires to tax codes, systemic racial inequalities to the inheritance of home ownership. Is it possible for housing to be both affordable and a generator of wealth? Why is housing one of the few instances in which we celebrate rising prices? And what do vomiting anarchists and burrowing owls have to do with all this, anyway? Kim-Mai herself grew up in South Bay Area, in a house built the same year that Steve Jobs graduated high school. A lot has changed since then – Apple moved from a garage to a $5-billion headquarters, for example – but the neighborhood remains static. Out of curiosity

As the President of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS), George Sparks always has good science communication on his mind. For him, this begins at the very fundamentals: a better definition of science – one with a lowercase “s.” We often think of science as a cerebral, individual activity, like chess; really, George says, it’s more like rugby: it’s a team sport. It’s ugly. It’s messy. Scientists are humans, too, with the same biases as the rest of us, and the quest for truth couldn’t be further from a straight line. For better public policy, then, we need a transparent triad between journalists, policymakers, and scientists – one that’s ripe with honesty, centered around values, and grounded in better relationships. George Sparks prides himself on the museum’s efforts to distribute inquiry-based learning methods more widely. Among his favorite projects: science-in-a-box. Just as with Blue Apron, a teacher can request a lesson on, say, “energy in Colorado,” and DMNS will ship a monopoly-like board ga

We often think of progress and failure as mutually exclusive. Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data (OWID) says otherwise: there can be single catastrophic events within larger narratives of human progress. At OWID, Hannah couches rigorous, data-driven analyses into big picture trends; the online publication has become the go-to reference for anyone looking to gain a basic understanding of what’s going on in the world. They cover topics from poverty to energy, food prices to technology adoption. Hannah’s focus is on food, environment, and energy; most recently, she put together a report on plastic pollution: where it comes from, how it’s managed, and why to fix it. Hannah’s journey began with a traditional environmental degree, where the overarching message she heard again and again was one of human’s destructive influence on the planet. Encountering the work of Hans Rosling of the Gapminder Foundation made her realize she had a huge blind spot: what about the stories of progress and human wellbeing? Today, you

“Most technologies require a social license to operate. Public opinion matters.”   So says Suzy Baker, the Communications Director of the Clean Energy Program at Third Way. She and Alex – the Communications Director at Breakthrough – often talk shop, and this episode reveals their secrets: how do they communicate climate change in an inclusive way, without falling back onto tired tropes? It isn’t just about creating better taglines; it’s about economic and political restructuring.   While Suzy now works primarily on nuclear energy and carbon capture, her story is an unusual one. She studied fine arts, and spent her school years making sculptures of ocean bacteria to visually advocate for the importance of ocean health. After graduation, her resume grew increasingly diverse: art teacher at a pediatric oncology hospital, NGO founder working on nuclear digital campaigns in the Southeast, artist focused on lead poisoning awareness, policy analyst at the US Department of Energy… The list goes on and on. Her unique

What is nature, and what isn’t? Is it helpful to make that distinction? If you had asked Alan Levinovitz a few years ago, he would have been skeptical. Today, however, he’ll defend the concept fiercely. As he argues, “largely unexamined and incredibly powerful beliefs [like nature] are dangerous, and they make dialogue difficult.” In this episode, Alex and Alan try to have that difficult dialogue. How do we preserve nature without knowing what it is, exactly, we want to conserve? Why do we tend to equate naturalness with a kind of morality? As a Religious Studies professor at James Madison University and a well-known food journalist and book author, Alan is uniquely positioned to take on these questions. The issue of natural-unnatural line-drawing is not limited to environmental stewardship – it cuts across so many different areas of our lives. Ever touched a plant to check whether it was “real” or not? Is clean meat “natural”? Does nuclear energy count as part of the primal order? Tune in to better understan

How can environmental philanthropy have the greatest impact? Rachel Pritzker has spent a lot of time thinking about this question. As founder and president of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, and an ecomodernist thought leader in her own right, Rachel has focused on US innovation policy, advanced nuclear power, and energy for human development in emerging economies. She challenges conventional wisdom to get complete clarity: what, exactly, is the problem, and what are the underlying drivers? What solutions are being overlooked? Instead of staying gridlocked in old battles, Rachel seeks new ideas that are less politically rigid and offer space for bipartisan action. While Rachel Pritzker is a signatory of the Ecomodernist Manifesto and chair of the Breakthrough Institute’s board, she wasn’t always an ecomodernist. In fact, she tells us that one of her earliest memories is of protesting nuclear energy; she grew up on a goat farm, with parents devoted to the back-to-the-land movement and a general skepticism of tec

Varun Sivaram is really excited about the potential of solar energy. Every hour, more sunlight hits the Earth in the form of energy than the world uses in a whole year, so the abundance alone is hugely significant. And yet, like others within the energy sector, the solar industry has been slow to invest in innovation: “My dad is in the semiconductor industry,” Varun tells us, “and I've seen how fast they innovate and how much money companies plow back into R&D as a proportion of their revenues. It's over 10%, in comparison to less than 1% for the solar industry.” To increase solar’s share of the energy mix, then, the industry must re-double its enthusiasm for innovation, which will ultimately help its long-term success. Varun is one of the world's foremost advocates for solar innovation. He’s a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the new book Taming the Sun. Varun is also a pleasure to chat with – he’s an informed, charismatic communicator who can explain minute technicalities while k

Julio Friedmann is a carbon wrangler. Wrangling entails three things: keeping carbon emissions from the air and oceans, taking them out of the air and oceans, and creating a circular economy where the carbon is used and restored. This sounds like a futuristic system, but carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are actually quite mature. Ever drank beer or soda pop? You’re almost certainly drinking CO2 that came from a capture device in a power plant. We’ve known how to wrangle carbon for decades; what isn’t mature is the financing mechanisms and the policy. But as Julio argues, “we’re all on the clock and winning slowly is the same as losing,” so it’s time to double down on CCS efforts. Julio is probably the world’s leading thinker on CCS technologies. He is distinguished associate at the Energy Futures Initiative and senior advisor at the Global CCS Institute. Previously, he served as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the US DOE, chief energy technologist for Lawre

Many ecofeminists contend that women have a "mystical" connectedness with the earth. But as Jennifer Bernstein argues, this idea conflates women with the biophysical environment, taking women's agency away from their own bodies.  In this episode, Jennifer, lecturer at the University of Southern California, tells us about the ways in which environmental discourse is still highly gendered. We talk about the “white guy problem,” naturalizing ideals of the farm, and how cloth-diapering signals a particular kind of environmentalism. These issues are structural, but “proximate possible” solutions point a way forward: what can we do, given what we have right now? For more on this topic, here is Jennifer’s essay in the Breakthrough Journal: “On Mother Earth and Earth Mothers.”

Tisha Schuller is an energy and environmental consultant; she used to be the president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. This week she joins us to talk about what it’s like to straddle that divide. In her career, Tisha has learned to move past the tribalism that often dominates environmental politics, and she shares some of her most transformative lessons with us. One of our favorites: “Our job is not to change minds,” she says. “Our job is to create rapport and be out in the world looking for common ground, forward progress, and solutions.” We also ask Tisha about working as a woman in a heavily male dominated field, and her thoughts on the future of gender equality in STEM. Read her essay in the Breakthrough Journal here.

Jon Symons joins us to talk about the politics of inequality in climate change innovation. We discuss geoengineering (large-scale climate interventions, like thinning clouds or reflecting sun rays back into space) and the risks and benefits those projects present. We talk about who should be in charge of these initiatives, and why the developing world should be allowed to develop to the extent the rich world did. We end with our favorite question: where do you see progress in the world today? Jon’s answer includes snippets from his extensive research in the world of LGBTQ (in)equality. Jon Symons is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia. He’s an expert on international environmental policies and norms. In the latest edition of the Breakthrough Journal, Jon asks whether the policy conversation over geoengineering is fundamentally unjust. You can read his thoughtful essay here.

Jenny Splitter joins Alex and Emma to talk about her personal experience visiting a feedlot. She was surprised to find that the conditions at Tiffany Cattle in Herington, Kansas were very different from what she was expecting. In our conversation, we talk about animal welfare, environmental efficiencies, and trends in meat consumption. Jenny also tells us about a values-driven exchange she had with her rabbi on organic farming. It left us thinking about how to have productive discussions with people you care about but disagree with. Jenny Splitter is a science journalist whose work has focused on the intersection of food, technology, and consumer health. She’s also one of the “Science Moms,” a group of moms with a blog, a podcast, and a lot of expertise on the health and nutrition impacts of consumer products. She’s been published in Slate, The Washington Post, Salon, The Outline, and, very recently, the Breakthrough Journal.

Charles Mann is a historian and a journalist, whose books include 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. His most recent work is The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. It’s a book about how humans use science, technology, and policy to confront our impact on the planet and, ultimately, our own survival as a species. In this interview, you’ll learn what wizards and prophets are, why the scale of a given technology might be more important to us than the technology itself, and whether humans have a special role in the Universe.