Sustain What?

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 post that preceded this show:Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

Peter Raven, 1936 - 2026Rhett 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 over the weekend at age 89. I was lucky to get to know Raven over a couple of decades as an expert source in my environmental reporting and then work with him when I joined the Executive Committee for Resaearch and Exploration at National Geographic Society, which he led at the time I joined. (Watch this video about Raven’s Hubbard Medal.) Here’s the opening to Butler’s piece: Life on Earth is often described as a web, but for much of modern science it was catalogued as a ledger: names, specimens, distributions, relationships drawn in careful lines. Over the course of the 20th century, that ledger gave way to a more connected view. Plants and animals were no longer just entries in a system; they were participants in it, shaping one another across deep time. The implications of that shift were not merely scientific. They pointed, more directly than before, to the role of a single species—our own—in altering the terms of that participation.Few scientists did more to define that transition, or to explain its consequences, than Peter Raven.Peter Hamilton Raven, who died this weekend, aged 89, was among the most influential botanists of the past century. Over a career that spanned more than six decades, he combined taxonomy, evolutionary biology and conservation into a coherent body of work: to understand the diversity of life, and to argue for its preservation with a clarity that was unusual among scientists of his generation. PLEASE READ THE REST:So many greats from the early generation of conservation leaders are gone, including Jane Goodall, E.O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy.But so many more leaders are emerging. To understand that, and to feel Raven’s mix of deep knowledge, puckish humor and trenchant analysis, I encourage you to watch the Sustain What conversation above, which was recorded in May 2021 but is eternally relevant. I introduced Raven to two younger generations of botanist: Angelica Patterson, who calls herself the “shotgun scientist” because that’s the tool she uses to collect the flowering and fruiting treetop branches that help identify a tree species; and Hilary Callahan of Barnard College. This 2022 short documentary is also well worth your time.I hope you appreciate what I try to focus on amid the flood. To help susstain Sustain What, consider becoming a paid subscriber.And share this post with others. That’s the only way to grow the Sustain What community. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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.Bowermaster, a couple of years older than I am, has amassed an extraordinary globe-spanning body of great journalism — most of that in documentary films. His latest, “The Keeper,” is an intimate portrait of Hudson Riverkeeper John Lipscomb’s quarter-century effort to curtail pollution and revive the ecosystem along “the river that flows both ways.” (Lipscomb retired in 2024.) See a clip and more on Bowermaster’s other films below.Radio Kingston has grown substantially since my last visit and now includes 2/47 Spanish language programming for the large immigrant community in the region.I’d been on Bowermaster’s show many times, but this was the first time in more than a decade that I’d gotten to sit face to face with my old friend in the studio — and also the first time I was there with my guitar and bouzouki and a new album of original songs. My album, Wake Me up Martha, is launching April 30th and this was my first radio interview supporting the record. Let your favorite stations know about the album! Here’s a promotional flyer you can share.We ranged widely in the hour, talking about how some environmental challenges (climate, ecological degradation) seem immune to even the best efforts of journalists, about the importance of truly engaging audiences, about his fine films. And we talked about my growing focus on my music. I’m pasting some highlights below, but I hope you’ll listen to, and share, the full conversation! I’m grateful to Bowermaster and the station for allowing me to post the segment on Sustain What.How I fell in love with blogging at The New York Times — as a way to build a conversation on complex questions; how the name of Sustain What derives from the main tool of journalists — the quetion mark — and why asking questions isn’t always a delay-seeking form of “whataboutism”: How my journalistic and musical journeys intersected off and on — here when I wrote “Liberated Carbon” to describe the long human love affair with fossil fuels:Why sustaining democracy has become a vital focus of my sustainability quest, and why the plasticity of the Constitution is its greatest strength, and now greatest weakness — one being exploited almost hourly by President Trump:Bowermaster asked me for my thoughts on what Lee Zeldin has been doing at the Environmental Protection Agency. I responded with the point I made in a meme and column here awhile back:Watch the conversation for some of my songs. And please SHARE this post. That’s really the only way we can grow the Sustain What community. Here’s more on Bowermaster’s films, starting with “The Keeper”:I loved “Sink or Swim - Learning to Crawl in the Maldives” because it gets at a critical issue for safety and sustainability I’ve explored before: making sure people in coastal communities can appreciate the ocean environment that surrounds them.I love his short intimate film about The Wonder of the Bobolink, a threatened field-nesting bird with an intercontinental migratory cycle that we’ve come to love in our part of downeast Maine because they nest in hayfields near us (and are beginning to return as conservationists work with farmers to time mowing safely).There’s so much more from Bowermaster and his team. Thanks, Jon, for helping elevate my music side!Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 wisely counsel in the face of the latest Gulf war. But even best-case possibilities on that track will take many years, so oil and gas are still vital.)Without functioning democracies, forget about climate policyThat’s why I focus periodically here on the vital need to maintain the kind of political systems and norms that are vital for any progress on deeper themes. In February, 2025, I hosted a conversation with scholars at the V-Dem Institute in Sweden who, for a decade, have been charting nations’ vital signs in ways that reveal drift either toward or away from autocracy. Their 2025 report was gloomy but focused on analysis showing that, in recent decades, countries that had moved to control by a single individual or cabal could experience u-turns back toward democracy. My first Sustain What conversation with them is here: Amid the Worst Surge Toward Autocracy in a Century, Here’s How U-Turns Toward Democracy Can Happen.No bright spots this time in Trump’s AmericaIn our discussion of the V-Dem Project’s 2026 report, I kept pressing Staffan Lindberg and Marina Nord for good signals, but we came up empty. The section on the United States — no surprise — is very grim. Read these nuggets, but don’t weep; get busy! Sustained civil resistance across society is an essential precursor for restoration of good governance.Their new report, like last year’s, noted that the autocratization trend remains strong around the world and is measurably worse than in the 1930s. We discussed a range of situations, from efforts to influence the upcoming election in Hungary to questions around what comes next after the youth-driven uprising in Nepal.I hope you’ll take time to listen, and SHARE, and let me know what you’re doing to defend humane democratic government from the local to global scale.Here’s Lindberg describing the evidence that the current global situation is worse than the 1930s:Thanks to those who tuned in live.Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 the show, that’s exactly what’s needed. The climate challenge, and audiences out there, are both far too prismatic for one approach to be “right.”My guests:* Chase Cain, who recently left NBC News after a decade focused on climate change reporting there, has launched a YouTube channel aiming to bridge cultural gaps by highlighting stories forging closer, and more relisient, relationships between people and nature.* Betsy Rosenberg, a former CBS radio journalist who has spent decades trying to engage audiences on the vital need to stem global warming and conserve the natural world. Her current platform, also on YouTube, is Code Green:In our conversation, a listener on Facebook, Courtney A. Kaaz, posted this great question:Make more desalination, hydroelectric dams, that chemically filter water, make breakwater piers that also clean the water, explain how you can use solar in a way that is actually economical in real time. All of Texas could get on board if you can give us economical, safe water and solve our toxic summer oceans, ponds and lakes.Cain offered an answer that completely syncs with my view that often the best way to gain traction on energy and resilience choices that can improve climate outcomes doesn’t involve focusing on that grand, and divisive, thing called climate change:I think what i think part of what [Courtney] is saying is she didn’t also say the word climate, and in a place like Texas that’s probably what’s going to reach people. If you say climate you’ve lost the Fox News audience but we need and want the Fox News audience. I’m not saying that everything I’m going to do is devoted toward that. But I do want to create content that is accessible and as an invitation to those people.…The Fox News audience probably spends more time in the outdoors, probably spends more time in nature than an MSNBC audience or an MSNBC audience, whatever it’s called. So they love the outdoors. They love nature. I just don’t know that they’ve connected the dots to how some of these policies are impacting the things and the places that they love. And so if we bridge that divide, then gosh, you’ve just won a huge segment of the American population, which would, I think, almost overnight flip our politics.That closing assertion about a quick flip is pretty questionable (and Rosenberg expressed a very different view and strategy) but Cain’s core point is important.Please watch and share the full show and weigh in.There’s more background in the curtain raiser post that preceded the show:And here’s my related conversation with Sammy Roth, the former Los Angeles Times climate columnist who’s moved to Substack:Thanks for reading Sustain What! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 interrelated life tracks in journalism and songwriting.)Today, I want to introduce you to a dear old musical friend, Vince Bell. I hope you’ll listen to our conversation and his music above (recorded a few days ago), and on his vincebell.com website. He’s just dropped a wonderful song from his second spoken-word album (words spoken over marvelous music from a spectacular ensemble he convened in 2024 in Brooklyn, N.Y.). The song and album are “Break My Heart”:Vince’s roots are well worth understanding. Here he was singing his song “The Sun, Moon and Stars” back in 1977, having emerged from Houston to join a remarkable cohort of Texas bards including Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith. Here’s Griffith’s interpretation of the song.In December 1982, just as he was getting into high gear and recording his first album, his life and musical journey were derailed by a near-death encounter with a drunk driver in Austin. He suffered brain damage and the near amputation of one arm. It took him a decade of grinding effort to rebuild his ability to sing and pick guitar. In 2009, he wrote “One Man’s Music,” a touching and sometimes-amusing memoir of his journey back to health and creativity.I can’t recall my first meetup with Vince, but it was in New York City in the mid 1990s when he was beginning to tour in support of his 1994 album “Phoenix.” The name of this collection of spellbinding songs reflected his physical and professional ressurection. I consider it one of my “desert island” records. Here’s “Mirror, Mirror”:We became friends and I’ve had the utter pleasure of backing him up on mandolin or guitar in some shows in the New York Region. “Is it hot enough for you, yet?”I’ve also visited him a couple of times in his Santa Fe home and got a chance to play slide guitar in this take on his great song about pollution - “Local Charm”:For a Dot Earth post way back in my New York Times days, he explained its origins:Vince says: “Local Charm was a joint in the old Harrisburg part of Houston down by the ship channel. I lived there for a few years among the railroad tracks and the rust. The imageries in this piece were my backyard.” An excerpt:Miles and miles of twisted trash,railroad tracks in all directions.Whining ‘dozers climb like antsin holes they can’t get out of.Above the filth so wide and deeppyrites spire before the sun.Where water taps as clear as glassbefore it gets to here.Is it hot enough for ya, yet?Beyond his music and wordsmithing, Vince is an absolute paragon not just of resilience, but of dogged determination to squeeze the joy and creativity out of whatever life brings his way. I sense that’s a pretty rare quality.Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 the future in mindFuller said it’s important to let go of many of our worries about how present actions related to science and technology might affect future generations. “We get very hyped up about future generations,” he said. He added:I think we need to imagine when we think about future generations that their baseline about what counts as a good life will be whatever they’re born into. So in other words, they will not be thinking like us, just like we’re not thinking like Aristotle….But there is an issue here about how you face the uncertainty of the future. And this gets to the business of the precautionary principle versus what I’ve proposed — the proactionary principle.These are two different attitudes toward risk, right? And the precautionary principle, you could trace it back to the Hippocratic Oath. Above all, cause no harm, right?So it’s a harm avoidance approach to risk because you treat uncertainty under those conditions as potential threat. So you set very high standards with regard to regulation for new technologies, stuff like that.The European Union actually has a version of the precautionary principle built into its environmental regulations.The other is the thing that is associated with transhumanism, and that is the proactionary principle. And the pro-actionary principle treats risk as an opportunity.So in other words, you treat it as like a fair throw of the dice almost. You adopt the attitude kind of the way entrepreneurs do.When they see a sort of uncertain situation, they’re going to make something out of it. And this idea then leads to a much more open sense of what the future can be.I mused on the reality that there’s little sign among the current world’s great powers — big tech firms, the oligarch class, superpowers — that regulation can be meaningfully applied.Horgan, long largely a techno-optimist, wrapped up our chat with this uplifting thought:And I’ve just concluded over the last five years, and it’s just been growing on me lately, that humanity doesn’t really give a s**t about understanding, illumination. It is always all been about power with the quest for truth as kind of marketing and window dressing. My view of the future of science and even of civilization is quite dark right now.There is much, much more. Please listen to the full show if you can and post reactions. I’ll drop the paywall, although I would love it if a few more of you decide to chip in to help me keep this Sustain What project going.Please consider becoming a financial supporter of Sustain What:Insert, Feb. 19 - Via Googl AI, here’s a summary:* Introduction to the Guests and Discussion Themes (0:44-2:25)* Andrew Revkin introduces his long-time friends and intellectual sparring partners, John Horgan and Steve Fuller.* The core topics of discussion are set: artificial intelligence (or synthetic/simulated intelligence), the “end of truth,” and the current state of our information environment.* Steve Fuller’s Background and Approach to Knowledge (2:38-5:04)* Steve Fuller explains his academic background in the history and philosophy of science.* He describes his focus on the social and political dimensions of science, particularly how technology and changing political economies influence the production and evaluation of knowledge.* The Impact of Social Media on Knowledge and Power (5:09-7:00)* The discussion shifts to how social media has drastically altered the dissemination of knowledge and the dynamics of power, especially in politics.* Steve Fuller highlights Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon as pioneers in using social media to channel information for ideological purposes, leading to a fragmented epistemic landscape.* John Horgan’s “End of Science” Revisited (10:56-12:05)* John Horgan reflects on his book The End of Science, suggesting that major scientific breakthroughs aimed at understanding the world (like relativity, quantum mechanics, and evolutionary theory) are largely behind us.* He expresses a dark view of the future of science and civilization, concluding that humanity primarily seeks power rather than truth or illumination.* AI: Horror vs. Positive Potential (15:13-17:03)* John Horgan admits his horror at AI, viewing it as bringing out his “Luddite” tendencies, despite his love for other technologies like his MacBook and iPhone.* He contrasts this with Steve Fuller’s more positive outlook on AI, particularly its potential to utilize vast amounts of scientific material that currently goes unused.* The “Replication Crisis” and AI’s Role in Science (27:00-27:51)* Steve Fuller attributes the “replication crisis” in science to narrow and competitive research frontiers, where pressure to be first leads to cutting corners.* He suggests that a broader distribution of scientific effort would reduce incentives for fraud.* The Future of Wikipedia in the Age of Generative AI (28:08-29:00)* Steve Fuller predicts that generative AI will put Wikipedia out of business because AI can provide customized, Wikipedia-style answers more efficiently.* He views Wikipedia as “old-fashioned crowdsourcing” that is laborious and prone to disputes.* Science as Faith and the “Conservation of Ignorance” (1:16:14-1:19:00)* The host plays a clip of Pete Seeger discussing his father’s view that scientists have the “most dangerous religious belief” – the idea that an infinite increase in empirical information is inherently good.* John Horgan challenges this, noting that science, unlike religious faith, has materially altered the world through technologies like the hydrogen bomb.* The “Conspiracy Mentality” and Endless Data Seeking (1:19:00-1:20:05)* Steve Fuller connects Pete Seeger’s critique to the “conspiracy mentality”, where people constantly seek more information, believing something is being hidden.* He argues that science, when working correctly, engages in “self-limitation” through method and tests, drawing lines rather than seeking data endlessly.And do share this post with friends concerned about the future and the present state of science. Thank you Larry Hogue, Jeanne Manion, Karen Malpede, Eleanor Margulis, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 unintelligent. If you want to understand where this exposively evolving technology is, and isn’t, taking us, you have to subscribe to Mitchell’s Substack blog: And if you want to make the most of the AI toolkit at work or in the rest of life - from investing to music making to…. - you really need to read Mims’ book.I loved this moment when Mims introduces the concept of “productivity theater” - when AI produces what looks like work, but the work required to make the output useful can eliminate any true productivity gains:One thing AI is good at is efficiently summarizing conversations, so here goes, thanks to the Google AI tool embedded in YouTube:* Introduction of Guests and AI Context (0:48-1:31)* Andy Revkin introduces Christopher Mims and Melanie Mitchell, setting the stage for a discussion on managing information in a world increasingly shaped by AI.* Christopher Mims’ new book is highlighted as a user’s guide to AI technologies, emphasizing both their capabilities and limitations.* Critique of AI Hype and Investment Bubble (4:25-8:18)* Melanie Mitchell expresses skepticism about the predicted societal transformation by AI, noting the “crazy” amount of money flowing into the sector (4:52).* Christopher Mims discusses the significant investment bubble in AI, predicting an “ugly” outcome when it inevitably bursts, leading to stranded assets like half-empty data centers (7:44-8:18). He introduces the term “productivity theater” to describe AI’s ability to generate “products that look like work” (6:42-6:56).The limits of simulated intelligence* Understanding AI: Simulation vs. True Intelligence (9:22-12:21)* The conversation delves into the nature of AI, explaining that these systems are “incredibly good at simulating intelligence” but lack abstract reasoning, long-term planning, and world models (9:36-10:17).* Melanie Mitchell elaborates on the ambiguous definition of “intelligence,” suggesting that AI should perhaps be viewed as “complex information processing” rather than “artificial intelligence” (10:48-12:09).* AI’s Role in the Workplace and “Jagged Frontier” (13:31-22:20)* Christopher Mims describes AI’s “jagged frontier,” where it excels at retrieving and remixing information (e.g., coding) but struggles with tasks outside its training data or in novel environments (13:31-14:57).* Melanie Mitchell discusses the misunderstanding of how AI impacts jobs, noting that AI systems often fail in real-world scenarios despite performing well on benchmarks (18:00-19:44). She emphasizes that a “job is not equal to a set of tasks” (18:37).* Christopher Mims adds that AI’s high failure rates can lead to a decrease in human productivity, as time is spent correcting AI-generated “messes” (20:29-21:20).* Regulation and Ethical Concerns (28:57-32:17)* The discussion touches on the need for AI regulation, especially in critical areas like healthcare, where AI is being considered for Medicare benefit applications (29:10-29:23).* Christopher Mims highlights intense lobbying efforts against state-level AI regulations and uses the example of Grok on X (formerly Twitter) to illustrate the “horrific ways” AI can be abused without proper oversight (29:48-31:22).AI’s energy demands will shrinkMelanie Mitchell made a fascinating and important point responding to a viewer’s question about energy and water demands. What she says parallels the shift from “baseload” power generation to distributed renewable and solar energy (not to mention from mainframe computers to your phones):* Environmental Impact and Future of AI Architecture (32:26-35:54)* The energy and water consumption of AI data centers is discussed, with Melanie Mitchell noting the push for more efficient and smaller AI models, a trend she believes will continue in the long term (33:07-35:02).* Christopher Mims agrees that efficiency drives will lead to more localized AI models, eventually running on devices like phones (35:07-35:28).* AI as a Tool vs. Superintelligence and Scientific Inquiry (37:33-46:51)* The guests discuss whether AI’s simulated intelligence is “good enough” for certain applications, like companionship, but caution about the potential for catastrophic failures and detachment from reality (38:08-40:11).* They debate the scientific and commercial pressures within the AI field, with Melanie Mitchell arguing that the focus on “making products” (43:04) hurts fundamental scientific inquiry by de-incentivizing “slower science” (44:56-45:12).* Christopher Mims contrasts AI development with other technologies (like energy), noting that AI breakthroughs have often been “kind of an accident” rather than the result of patient, long-term research (46:12-46:51).AI and the arts - music case studyI closed things out by demonstrating how Suno took my barebones guitar-and-vocal version of my song “Save Dreams for Sleeping” and generated a rousing anthem. As I explained, the downside is a lot of SLOP on Spotify etc, but also demoncratization of music making. What do you think?Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 can sound like on a bigger scale.I am going to pull together some of the wonderful musicians around our Downeast Maine home to record an album later this winter and spring. But given the latest atrocity in Minneapolis, and the even more atrocious spin by scum like Stephen Miller, I had to put this Suno take on my song “Save Dreams for Sleeping” out for you to hear, sing along on, and hopefully share. Here’s the rough bedroom recording of the basic song as posted here and on CD Baby last year, followed by the lyrics.Save Dreams for Sleeping© 2025, Andy Revkin, Written Feb. 4, 2025, updated August 3, 2025We all hold a dream somewhere deep in our minds,Where everything’s fair and everyone’s kind.Flowers all blooming, no smoke in the skies.No wars in the headlines, no tears in your eyes.But save dreams for sleeping. It’s time to get real.Hard workers are suffering while billionaires steal.Young women in trouble can’t find caring hands.House builders born elsewhere get bundled in vans.I’m not saying it’s easy. All good things take time.Those trying to divide us are good at their crimes.But if we stop dreaming, dive into the fray.A more perfect union is coming our way.Our country needs mending, but how to begin?With problems so tangled, no start and no end?Begin by protecting those facing the fire.Reach out by connecting through common desires.One day at a time, the trust you createWill carry us further than fighting and hate.One stitch at a time the fabric you weave,Will grow ever stronger than you can believe.So save dreams for sleeping. It’s time to get real.Hard workers are suffering while billionaires steal.Young women in trouble can’t find caring hands.House builders born elsewhere get bundled in vans.I’m not saying it’s easy. All good things take time.Those trying to divide us are good at their crime.But if we stop dreaming, dive into the frayA more perfect union is coming our way.~ ~ ~To sustain Sustain What and my music side, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 material and widgets designed to alarm, disarm, distract, confuse or entice - in other words, to enshittify what could otherwise be a miraculous set of tools for connecting and informing society. We spoke at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.But make sure to watch below as well. On Sustain What I just introduced Hobbs live to Andrew Ryvkin, a Russian-born writer and analyst focused on propaganda, authoritarian rule and international relations with a special level of expertise: he spent many years producing propaganda inside the Kremlin’s multi-layered media system. Watch and weigh in (and share) on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube.As Ryvkin has been explaining in a series of “Pop Propaganda” talks (and will lay out in a forthcoming book), “Modern Russian propaganda is much more than angry talk-show hosts waving missiles on TV or troll farms flooding social media. It’s influencers, streaming platforms, and marketing campaigns that promote the Kremlin’s agenda, just as Nike advertises its sneakers….”Make sure to subscrribe to Andrew Ryvkin’s Substack letter of course. Start with his origin story: I used to work for the Kremlin…And read his articles in The Atlantic.Just for the record, despite our super similar names, we don’t seem to be related. He says his roots go back to Odessa. Mine go back to Ripky, a village in Ukraine my paternal grandfather fled around 1905 amid a peasant revolt and pogroms. Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber.Just in case missed, here’s ANOTHER evergreen conversation I did with Hobbs in year one of the pandemic: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 Thwaites Glacier, could raise sea levels. Miles O'Brien and Kate Tobin are an independent team working together through three decades at CNN and now independently, with their output seen on CNN, PBS and now Substack through O’Brien’s Miles Ahead newsletter. This map from the latest report of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration shows vividly why this region is so important. Here’s a relevant portion of the research collaborative’s 2025 report:Following some key studies beginning two decades ago, it was widely recognised that Thwaites Glacier posed a potential threat of rapid contributions to sea level. Prior to our research, little was known about the mechanisms controlling the retreat of this enormous glacier - one of the largest and fastest-changing glaciers in the world. If it collapsed entirely, sea level would rise by 65 cm. Thwaites Glacier spans an area equal to the island of Great Britain or the US state of Florida, and in places is almost 4000 m (13,000 ft) thick. The amount of ice flowing into the sea from Thwaites Glacier and its neighbouring glaciers more than doubled from the 1990s to the 2010s, and the Amundsen Sea region now accounts for 8% of the current rate of global sea-level rise of 4.5 mm a year.Here, O’Brien describes why this particular ice mass matters so much:From ice sheets to Main StreetWe also explored the challenge of linking Antarctic ice sheet dynamics with decisions in coastal communities around the world faced with the reality that sea levels of the past - relatively stable for centuries - are history. I noted my earlier Sustain What show on the importance of driving “managed retreat” or other policy shifts, as articulated in a great paper by Lizz Ultree et al, “From ice sheets to main streets: Intermediaries connect climate scientists to coastal adaptation.”A viewer asked about ways to stop the ice escape and warming and O’Brien mentioned that David Holland of New York University is on the research team aboard the ship. He’s part of a collection of researchers eager to test whether a “seabed curtain” - a small-scale geoengineering intervention - could hinder the melting influence of warm waters getting beneath the ice sheet.Learn more at the seabedcurtain.org website.Conveying a momentous story without hypeAnd we got into the challenges of doing accurate but effective journalism in a world fixated by, but also paralyzed by, overstatements. O’Brien makes vital points here about the challenge of balancing compelling narrative and the real complexity and time scales revealed by the science:For more on that issue, make sure to explore my post and Sustain What #Watchwords webcast on asking “by when” when you see the word COLLAPSE in the context of glacier science:Thanks for watching, weighing in AND sharing this post. I guarantee you know at least a few people who don’t know about Sustain What but could benefit from the information and ideas here. And of course chip in to help me justify the time it takes to do this work in my 69th year. :-)Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 Demography - Ideology and the Politics of Population.Learn more in my “curtain raiser” post:But here are some quick takeaways and links to material we explored. We discussed long cycles of politics and fear mongering, as I noted how Elon Musk’s December 11 tweet about New Zealand losing its whiteness (so much to think about there) echoes the anti-immigrant U.S. political art of 1903.Sciubba stressed that while a core goal of the book is creating more reality-based discourse around population data, some critical sources of such data are threatened under Trump and the current Congress.I pointed to George Monbiot’s column - “The facts are stark: Europe must open the door to migrants, or face its own extinction” - and Sciubba spoke about the limits to what governments can do - even in China - to reverse fertility trends (read this related Mercator Institute article)I pointed to the latest piece by longtime demographer Joseph Chamie on fertility declines, in which he echoes Sciubba et al’s conclusions about the limits of what countries can do to change fertility trends:There’s lots more in the conversation of course. Please watch above and offer some thoughts in the comments. Or watch and share on Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, YouTube.And of course consider supporting my work if you can afford to:I hope you’ll consider becoming a free or paid subscriber or you can send a one-time donation below.Thank you Susan Spencer, Rachel of Sunchoke Falls, Bart Ziegler, Patricia Watts, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe

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 age.My “curtain raiser” post has a heap of details and related links:But much more emerged in the discussion, which also included Ben Santer, a veteran climate scientist who’s a character in the play (he writes about that here), Jean Chemnick, an E&E News/Politico reporter who wrote in depth on petrostate and industry efforts to derail climate talks, and Jenny Shalant, a Natural Resources Defense Council writer who wrote a great essay after seeing the play.If you appreciate what I’m doing curating these webcasts, please consider pausing on Giving Tuesday to chip in so I can keep at it in 2026.Here are a couple of highlights, starting with Joe and Joe’s origin story as public-minded playwrights, which involved building a performance dome in a Calais, France, migrant community.Here’s Ben Santer, who was consulted in the writing of the play and has seen it three times, describing a crucial turning point in the play and in history - the fingerprint analysis he and others did showing the human effect on climate that undercut the industry’s argument for delay:Attacks and dead ratsSanter also discussed the discomfort of watching the play describe the attacks he faced, and the fear his son faced, when a rat was left on his doorstep:The Joes described how they are working on two more plays in what they see as a series - on the Copenhagen round of climate talks in 2009 and the journey to and beyond the Paris Agreement in 2015. I’m looking forward to the next steps in their theatrical journey.Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video. Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe