Ethically Questionable

Is PR a Scam? Juliet Fallowfield Calls Out Her Own Industry Ethically Questionable, Electrified by Polestar. PR agencies that promise founders guaranteed coverage, say journalists will only talk to them, and pitch with the senior team before handing the work to the intern. Juliet Fallowfield is a PR consultant, B Corp founder and host of How to Start Up. She spent over 20 years in luxury PR, train...

All the Tea on the Very Great Midterms Ethically Questionable, Electrified by Polestar. What even is a midterm, and why are Americans everywhere celebrating? Jenn and Jamila explain the 2026 US midterm elections for everyone outside the US (and plenty of people inside it). They cover how the House and Senate work, why this vote mattered so much, and how a blue wave turned into a tsunami as Democra...

Ethically Questionable, Electrified by Polestar. A South Korean government study says paper straws are worse for the environment than plastic ones, and the New York Post could not contain its joy. Jamila and Jenn dig into what the study measured, what it left out (litter, ocean pollution, microplastics), and why the best straw might be no straw at all. Plus, H&M’s investment arm hosted an even...

Ethically Questionable, Electrified by Polestar. Jenn hosts this week. Our theme is governments letting us down, and the bar is on the floor. Trump’s new press secretary Katie Zacharia held a 14 minute briefing, took three questions, admitted she never passed the bar, and was out after five days. That’s half a mooch. We get into how she got the job in the first place, and why Jamila’s sarcastic co...

Sh*t’s Creek: WTF Is Happening to Our Water? Ethically Questionable, Electrified by Polestar. This week, Danny Dyer floated a giant poo sculpture down the Thames and delivered a petition to Downing Street calling for the water industry to be nationalised. Nearly 350,000 people have signed it. So how did we get here? Jamila and Jenn dig into the story behind the stunt: the 1989 privatisation of Eng...

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...

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...

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 unc...

Recorded live at DUMBO House for Climate Week NYC, Jamila welcomes back her first ever repeat guest, Christopher Griffin, aka Plant Kween, educator, storyteller and author of You Grow Girl . Between them they've been to a lot of events this week, and they've pulled out the three conversations they kept hearing everywhere. Nature as infrastructure, not decoration. Street trees placed where...

This week's news cycle had it all, and Jamila and Jenn are not holding back. First up: CFDA CEO Steve Kolb's shocking physical altercation with PETA protesters at a COS runway show, caught on camera and now under investigation. Then, adult content creator Lily Phillips teams up with Yellow Dot Studios (the team behind Don't Look Up) on a provocative climate change campaign that's turning heads for...

Why "Polyester" Became an Insult (And Why Brands Are Still Making More of It) Shayeza Walid, sustainability journalist at The Business of Fashion Polyester turned into a slur online this year. Teenagers use it to mean cheap, plastic, fake, and people now read clothing labels the way they read ingredients lists. So the obvious question is whether any of that hatred has changed what the industry act...

This year's heatwaves have produced what English wine growers are calling a genuine vintage year for sparkling wine, and that's not a coincidence. Jamila and Jenn get into three reports that landed this week and what they add up to. The UN's new Limiting Overshoot report says the world is on track to blow past 1.5°C, likely reaching 1.8°C or higher under current policies, and lays out what actuall...

This week Jamila and Jenn look at two very different "cancellations" making headlines right now. The Met Gala had to scrap a planned museum exhibition honoring designer John Galliano after backlash over antisemitic remarks he made back in 2011, remarks serious enough that a French court actually convicted him for them. Meanwhile, Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah was fired within 24 h...

Gen Z has a new insult and it is savage. This week Jamila and Jenn break down "polyester," the TikTok slang word taking over from "larp" to call something fake, janky, and low effort. Except it turns out the word did not come out of nowhere. Its a direct analogy to the actual fabric. Tune in as we trace how a fiber that was once sold to 1950s housewives as a wrinkle free miracle became such an ins...

This week on Ethically Questionable News, Jamila and Jenn pause to talk about the death of Cambridge professor Jason Arday following weeks of press scrutiny, and what it says about the responsibility we all carry (media and public alike) for the negativity we aim at real people, from Meghan Markle to public figures closer to home. Then it's onto some good news: a new Queen Mary University of Londo...

Big Oil just posted $93 billion in profits in three months while the rest of us pay more to fill up our cars. Jamila and Jenn dig into the Guardian investigation showing eight major oil companies nearly doubled their earnings during the Iran conflict, why "the market" means we all pay more even when a country produces its own oil, and the surprising twist: even Trump thinks Exxon and Chevron are m...

This week, Jamila and Jenn tear into OpenAI's very first influencer trip, a "digital detox" weekend at a luxury eco-farm upstate, complete with workshops on using ChatGPT more, because nothing says reconnect with nature like a company whose data centers are draining it. They debate whether OpenAI is uniquely tone-deaf or just doing what every tech giant does at Cannes Lions, and why Anthropic stil...

Ethically Questionable: Joe Roberts Walker Jamila's back from a summer break with Mejuicer founder Joe Roberts Walker, whose circular ginger-shot subscription business supplies offices, festivals, and film sets (Netflix, The Crown) across London. Riding in the Polestar, they dig into six years of building a business reputation: why treating reputation like compounding capital beats chasing viral m...

Meta's AI glasses are being called "pervert glasses" for a reason. Jamila and Jenn break down the covert filming, the "Hey Meta" data pipeline, the content reviewers, and why wrapping all of it in a Kylie Jenner collab makes it worse, not better. Electrified by Polestar Follow us below for more: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ethicallyquestionable/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@ethically...

In this week’s Ethically Questionable news segment, Jamila Brown and Jenn McGarrigle dive into the viral “death pants” conversation around Zara and what it reveals about fast fashion, overproduction, and the hidden cost of trends. From pants getting caught in escalators and bikes to the bigger problem of flammable jumpers, destroyed stock, and overflowing secondhand markets, they unpack how price,...

This week on EQ News we cover 2 stories both about the US Secretary of War (gag) Pete Hegseth. With a new investment in testosterone for US troops, and divestment in Women's Leadership... what other conclusions can we really come to? Pete Hegseth is a weirdo misogynist and we really gotta vote the folks who put him in power out ya'll... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're off this week guys so dropping one of our most listened to episodes in the feed for you with ByRotation Founder Eshita Kabra-Davies on building out the wardrobe of your dreams without f*cking up the planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a world where your options for political leadership are a man often confused for a walking trash can or Count Binface who will the people of Clacton-on-Sea vote for? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elise Som is the serial entrepreneur behind Mijenta, a B Corp tequila made with recycled glass bottles and just three ingredients, and Bare la Terre, a compostable kids' skincare line her daughter asked her to build. On the pod, she and Jamila get into why simpler products are actually cheaper to make, why ESG departments are mostly talk without action, and why banning kids from skincare doesn't w...

Jamila gets in the car with Marine Tanguy, founder of the world's first B Corp art agency MTArt and author of A Visual Detox , to talk about something most of us never clock: the art and advertising around us is quietly deciding who matters. Marine breaks down the brutal stat behind UK billboards (the poorer your postcode, the more ads you see), why 97% of London's sculptures depict men on pedesta...