Radical Truth

Note: Since this recording, Ruben Vardanyan was arrested by Azerbaijani authorities in September 2023 and remains imprisoned. His family and the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative describe his detention as politically motivated. This description reflects his work at the time of recording. What does it mean to give away 90% of your wealth — and build the systems that make giving meaningful? In this TBL...

Africa is the world's fastest-growing continent — in population, economic output, and the creation of entrepreneurial family wealth. But can that wealth be mobilised for impact? And do Africa's family business owners even know what impact investing is? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Tsitsi Mutendi — third-generation family business owner, internationally recognised fam...

Companies worry about the cost of going sustainable. Tensie Whelan wants them to calculate the cost of staying the same. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Tensie Whelan — founding director of the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, former President of the Rainforest Alliance, and the researcher who developed the ROSI™ framework: Return on Sustainability Investment. With 35...

🎙️ SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS DESCRIPTION Trillions of dollars have poured into ESG and impact investing. So why do we have more pollution, more inequality, and accelerating biodiversity loss than when we started? In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with B. Lorraine Smith — writer, researcher, speaker, and one of the most clear-eyed critics of mainstream sustainability. A...

🎙️ SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS DESCRIPTION What happens when a 350-year-old bank — still owned by the founding family — decides that capitalism must be redeemed from the inside? In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Alexander S. Hoare — Partner and Director at C. Hoare & Co., the first of the eleventh generation of the family to join the partnership, and a founder p...

America's criminal justice system is cruel, expensive, racist, and broken. One lawyer decided she could no longer save people one by one — and went to find the constituency powerful enough to change the system itself. In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Celia Ouellette — dual US-UK qualified lawyer, former death row defence attorney, and founder of the Responsi...

🎙️ SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS DESCRIPTION In October 2005, a 150-page legal document was quietly rolled into a UN chamber in New York. Twenty years later, it remains the foundation on which the entire ESG investment industry was built. In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Professor Paul Q. Watchman — the Scottish lawyer who, as Senior Partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus...

Everyone knows Bhutan as the "happiest country in the world." But what if that story is a carefully constructed myth — and behind it lies one of Asia's most ignored human rights crises? In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Dr. Rieki Crins — Dutch cultural anthropologist, one of the world's leading authorities on Bhutan, and the woman the Bhutanese...

What happens to a financial professional when the products they are asked to sell conflict with the values they actually hold? For many in finance, that tension is never spoken aloud. Dr. Giulio Franzinetti has spent 30 years living it — and now helps others navigate it. In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Dr. Giulio Franzinetti — Italian-born financial services ve...

In June 1989, a biology student at Peking University walked out onto Changan Avenue and into history. Thirty-five years later, he is building the future of food — and still fighting for democracy. In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Shen Tong — Chinese dissident, Newsweek Person of the Year 1989, exiled student leader of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, and...

What if the green energy revolution is not saving the planet — but just replacing one form of destruction with another? And what if the people saying so are lifelong environmentalists? In this special panel episode of TBLI Radical Truth, Robert Rubinstein convenes an expert discussion around Planet of the Humans — the incendiary documentary directed by Jeff Gibbs and executive produced by Michael...

🎙️ SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS DESCRIPTION What if the most radical thing a business could do is refuse to grow? What if hacking a company's security systems and hacking the logic of venture capitalism require exactly the same mindset? In this TBLI Radical Truth episode, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Dr. Melanie Rieback — professional hacker, cybersecurity pioneer, and one of the most provocat...

The financial system is the most powerful force on Earth. It can accelerate the climate crisis — or fund the solutions. It can entrench poverty and inequality — or dismantle them. The question is not whether finance shapes the world. The question is: who decides how? TBLI Radical Truth is the podcast that cuts through the noise, the greenwash, and the comfortable half-truths of mainstream finance....