GoodGeist

Send us Fan Mail Carbon removal: miracle fix or a dangerous distraction? Both takes miss what the science is actually telling us. We sit down with Christopher Neidl, Carbon Removal Lead for the Climate High Level Champions and co-founder of OpenAir, to pin down what carbon dioxide removal is, what it is not, and why it is an important part of the IPCC pathways. We unpack where CDR fits in the wide...

Send us Fan Mail If sustainability means working in Europe while other regions pay the price, is it really sustainability at all? We sit down with Suzanne Geisler, founder of the SERA Institute in Vienna, to connect the dots between sustainable construction, energy efficiency, and the global systems that quietly keep our lifestyles up and running.  We talk about why the building sector is such a h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we sit down with Göker AvcI, founder of Alalëa Social to get a clear view on what serious carbon management looks like when you move beyond the headlines of a press release or linkedIN post.  If you work in sustainability, communications, procurement or finance, you will recognise the problem straight away: targets are rising fast, yet only a small share of organis...

Send us Fan Mail A greener city is not just about planting more trees. It is about making nature easy to reach, hard to ignore, and emotionally meaningful in everyday life.  In this episode we chat to ecologist and horticulturalist Jacques Sognon, former director of Green Spaces and Environment for the City of Nantes and vice president of France’s Conservatoire for Special Plant Collections. We ex...

Send us Fan Mail Nature is infrastructure, and we keep paying the price for forgetting it. In this episode we’re joined by Professor Anusha Shah of Plan for Earth, as she launches the Nature Is Growth campaign, a rallying cry for the built environment, to stop treating nature as a constraint and start treating it as an engine of climate resilience, public health and long-term prosperity. We get pr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we're chatting to Gamze Çelikyılmaz, Vice Chair of Climate Academy Global and a long-time climate change policy specialist, to make sense of where the global energy transition actually stands and why the picture is so uneven across regions.  With Gamze we go from the big global picture to the local human reality of a just transition. For communities built arou...

Send us Fan Mail Has the public has “moved on” from climate change as some commentators might like us to believe? The data tells a different story. We sit down with Dr Susie Wang, climate and environmental psychologist and co-founder of Climate Barometer, to unpack what UK voters and MPs actually think about net zero, renewable energy, and climate action, when you track attitudes over time instead...

Send us Fan Mail Is your balcony the most overlooked piece of green space in your life? It might also be the easiest place to start changing how you feel, day to day. We sit down with Manchester garden designer Jason Williams, known online as The Cloud Gardener , who lives in an 18th floor apartment and turned a glass-fronted, south-facing balcony into an oasis that’s part pantry, part wildlife st...

Send us Fan Mail Wildflowers can feel like a “nice extra” until you see what they do to a street, a skyline, and the way strangers talk to each other. In this episode we’re joined by Polly Moseley and Richard Scott from Scouse Flowerhouse, to explore how Liverpool’s wildflower gateways and brownfield meadows create real, measurable change: more biodiversity, stronger pollinator corridors, and a re...

Send us Fan Mail A new global day is being launched for something no city or region could  function without: public transport. We sit down with Mohammed Mezgani, Secretary General of UITP, to unpack the story behind World Public Transport Day on 17 April 2026 and why a simple celebration can become a serious lever for sustainable transport and better urban mobility. Mohammed takes us from his chil...

Send us Fan Mail Nuclear power: the sensible, grown-up answer to the climate crisis? Once you look past the slogan of 'carbon-free', the story becomes harder to sell and impossible to keep local. We sit down with Pinar Demircan, coordinator of nuclearfree.org, to unpack the risks and reality behind the nuclear industry's pitch that promises so much but that could cost the Earth.  We...

Send us Fan Mail Plastic waste is not just something we step over on the street or on a beach. It is a material that has quietly rewritten ecosystems, economics, and even human biology and once you notice that, it becomes impossible to treat something like “marine litter” as a simple tidy-up job. We sit down with Sedat Gündogdu, a marine biologist and environmental researcher whose work focuses on...

Send us Fan Mail If you're feeling a bit beaten up by the relentless negative news coverage on net zero and climate action, guess what? The data tells a more complicated and more hopeful truth. We sit down with Becca Massey-Chase, Head of Citizen Engagement at IPPR, to unpack their new research on public opinion, media narratives and the real risks to climate progress. If you care about clima...

Send us Fan Mail The world is  changing, and the tricky question is whether business is shaping that change or sleepwalking into it. We sit down with Sam Baker, a director at Business Declares, to talk about the 'polycrisis' of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, widening inequality, and the way these shocks reinforce one another in daily life, markets, and politics. We find out how Sa...

Send us Fan Mail What if we treated wetlands, rivers and forests with the same seriousness as bridges, tunnels and treatment plants? We sit down with Prof Anusha Shah, the engineer, former ICE President, and founder of Plan for Earth, to explore how putting nature at the heart of decisions can transform cities, infrastructure and public health. Anusha shares the personal path from the lakes and la...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we sit down with the amazing urbanist and cultural heritage expert Dr Banu Pekol to rethink our notion of 'home' as a human right, as a store of memory, and as a foundation for belonging. From Istanbul’s Sulukule to Cape Town’s District Six, Banu analyses how, when housing policy ignores people, renewal becomes removal and communities become museums while...

Send us Fan Mail What if the secret to national wealth isn’t faster growth or smarter tech, but a fairer invitation to participate? We sit down with Dr Hermann Stern to unpack the Prosperity Gate—a striking pattern in World Bank data showing that most countries grind along a poverty “brick” until they expand political inclusion enough to trigger a steep rise in income per capita. Once through the...

Send us Fan Mail Ever wondered why so many people say they love nature yet so little seems to change? We sit down with Savita Wilmott, CEO of the Natural History Consortium, to unpack the stubborn care–to-action gap and share practical ways to move from saying you love nature to doing something about it. We dig into the Festival of Nature as a living case study. By keeping it free, thematic, and w...

Send us Fan Mail Billionaire wealth is hitting historic highs while one in four people face hunger—so what exactly is growth doing for the rest of us? We sit down with Prof. Öner Günçavdı to unpack the mechanics behind inequality and global economics.  Starting in Turkey and widening to global trends, we trace how housing, education, and healthcare drift out of reach when asset values dominate pol...

Send us Fan Mail We sit down with Ümit Şahin—physician, public health scholar, and long-time climate advocate—as he traces his journey from medical school to air pollution research and climate policy, showing why health is the most human lens for energy choices. He dismantles the idea that nuclear can deliver on time or at scale, pointing to rising costs, long lead times, and unresolved waste, whi...

Send us Fan Mail In our first episode of 2026 we sit down with Chris Annous from More in Common to look at how values-based research can bridge divides—and why pride in place may be the most underrated lever for social and climate progress right now.  Chris shares how his team’s segmentation moves beyond left-versus-right to reveal seven distinct worldviews, and how that map helps leaders speak to...

Send us Fan Mail It's time for some GoodGeist year-end reflections from our co-host Damla and Steve. We take you across 2025’s most revealing sustainability moments, from radical listening that halted deforestation by focusing on community health, via an off-grid box turning sunlight into clean water within hours, to city-scale transport fixes that make streets safer, air cleaner, and commute...

Send us Fan Mail Want a sustainability claim that inspires without inviting a regulator into your inbox? We sit down with Steve Meyer, director of Carbon Blue Solutions, to explore how.  From mangrove forests and seagrass meadows to desert halophytes, Steve first of all explains why blue carbon stores CO2 for millennia and how that changes the maths on offsets, resilience, and coastal protection....

Send us Fan Mail What if a walk could change how a city works? We sit down with walking artist, activist, and academic Morag Rose to explore psychogeography as a living practice—one that uses curiosity, conversation, and gentle mischief to reclaim streets from noise, ads, and exclusion.  From dérives guided by pigeons and dice to community-led wanders across Manchester, Morag shows how moving side...

Send us Fan Mail The airport‑as‑engine of growth story is powerful, but the data tells a different story. We sit down with Denise Auclair, who leads the Travel Smart campaign at Transport & Environment, to unpack a new Europe‑wide study that tracks the real relationship between air traffic and prosperity across 274 regions.  The headline is striking: in much of northern and western Europe, eco...