Radical Truth

Most impact investing is just traditional finance wrapped in virtuous rhetoric—promising systemic change while demanding the exact same extractive returns. Julie Davitz breaks down why billions allocated for good are failing to move the needle and how true catalytic capital must fundamentally rewrite the rules of risk and return. Julie Davitz, Founder and CEO of Plus Purpose and renowned impact in...

"Capital is never the shortage." Duncan Logan built the San Francisco building that produced more than 30 unicorns, including Uber and Spotify. Now he is doing it for climate. If you think climate's problem is a funding gap, this conversation argues the real shortage is density, vehicles and entrepreneurs. Duncan Logan is a Scottish farmer's son turned derivative trader, tech fou...

A company can report perfect ESG scores while its core business remains extractive. Laurie Lane-Zucker exposes the gap. Laurie Lane-Zucker, founder of Impact Entrepreneur, joins TBLI Radical Truth to challenge the metrics we use to judge corporate ethics. We discuss why high ESG scores often mask harmful operations and what real sustainable finance looks like beyond the reports. Drawing from over...

Thrombectomy can have a paralysed stroke patient walking the next day. Two-thirds of the UK can't get it. An estimated 5,000 people die every year as a result. On TBLI Radical Truth, Robert Rubinstein talks with Steve Podmore, founder of Let's Fix the NHS and Sysovation, who sat beside his mother's hospital bed after her stroke and asked why a proven treatment reaches so few NHS patients. The answ...

Most movies don't make a profit, says filmmaker Rosser Goodman, who began her career on an Amblin series for Steven Spielberg. So films with a cause should be funded by philanthropy, not investors. On TBLI Radical Truth, Robert Rubinstein asks Rosser how philanthropic film finance actually works. Her model, TANŌ RISING FILM, starts with one donor and one cause, finds a production-ready script amon...

AI lies, forgets and burns through tokens. Mark Turrell, founder of unDavos and a former WEF Technology Pioneer, explains why, and how he built AI that doesn't. On TBLI Radical Truth, Robert Rubinstein pushes Mark on whether AI can be trusted at all. Mark's answer: large language models are probabilistic guessers, and prompting alone is theatre; the real work is the harness around the mode...

Women rarely default on bank loans. Banks still lend them less and charge them higher interest. That is not risk pricing. It is bias, and it costs $1.7 trillion. This is TBLI Radical Truth with Robert Rubinstein. When Anne Ravanona started, the gap was $300 billion. Everyone called it a scandal and commissioned a report. Thirteen years later it is $1.7 trillion. Her argument: this is not a diversi...

Nobody prices a relationship, and every deal in private capital runs on one. David Homan lost a foundation endowment to Madoff and rebuilt on 2,500 of them. Fourteen years running a cultural foundation, seven albums as a classical composer, and one rule that decides who gets into the room. This is TBLI Radical Truth with Robert Rubinstein. David Homan spent 14 years running a cultural foundation u...

Eight years ago they said impact investing was a fad and climate change was arguable. Now the same people call Max Studennikoff of CC Forum asking for a $1 trillion opportunity, blue or green. His answer: where have you been all along? This is TBLI Radical Truth with Robert Rubinstein, an impact investing and climate finance podcast from TBLI Group. Max built CC Forum, the gathering the press call...

A school in Manila trained 500 blind people to use a computer. Five years of teaching, and not one ended up properly employed. Thomas Ng was a trustee, and he spent three more years walking them into every boardroom he knew. Lots of excitement. Zero result. So in 2008 he started a company to hire them himself, before he had worked out what the company would do. On TBLI Radical Truth, Robert Rubins...

Carbon credits never funded a forest left standing. Philipp Kauffmann pays the Indigenous guardians who stop deforestation instead, per hectare, per year, verified by satellite, not by consultants. Nobody has built a business model for a forest that is left standing. This is TBLI Radical Truth with Robert Rubinstein. Kauffmann argues that carbon credits failed standing forests by design, because t...

Most finance podcasts protect the industry. This one interrogates it. I'm Robert Rubinstein. For 30 years TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Every week on this show, one unfiltered conversation with someone actually moving capital toward a liveable future, and no polite silence about the ones only claiming to. No sponsors. No pretending.

Venture philanthropy: Kumar Garg moved half a billion dollars into science funding in two years. Renaissance Philanthropy runs like a fund business, with thesis-driven funds and donors as LPs. This is TBLI Radical Truth with Robert Rubinstein. Kumar explains the model pulling capital off the sidelines: why most donor money is "sitting in the denominator", why philanthropy never built the...

Welcome to the TBLI Radical Truth Podcast, where we feature pioneers redefining the purpose of capital. For 25 years, TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Why Radical Truth is different: most finance podcasts protect the industry. Radical Truth interrogates it. Unfiltered conversations with the founders, fund managers, and system-changers actually moving capita...

Welcome to the TBLI Radical Truth Podcast, where we feature pioneers redefining the purpose of capital. For 25 years, TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Why Radical Truth is different: most finance podcasts protect the industry. Radical Truth interrogates it. Unfiltered conversations with the founders, fund managers, and system-changers actually moving capita...

Welcome to the TBLI Radical Truth Podcast, where we feature pioneers redefining the purpose of capital. For 25 years, TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Why Radical Truth is different: most finance podcasts protect the industry. Radical Truth interrogates it. Unfiltered conversations with the founders, fund managers, and system-changers actually moving capita...

Welcome to the TBLI Radical Truth Podcast, where we feature pioneers redefining the purpose of capital. For 25 years, TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Why Radical Truth is different: most finance podcasts protect the industry. Radical Truth interrogates it. Unfiltered conversations with the founders, fund managers, and system-changers actually moving capita...

Welcome to the TBLI Radical Truth Podcast, where we feature pioneers redefining the purpose of capital. For 25 years, TBLI Group has been the world's leading ESG and impact investing network. Why Radical Truth is different: most finance podcasts protect the industry. Radical Truth interrogates it. Unfiltered conversations with the founders, fund managers, and system-changers actually moving capita...

George Carlin once said the planet doesn't need saving; the planet is fine. It's the people who are fucked. He was talking about a different kind of delusion, but he might as well have been watching a Climeworks investor deck. I've spent thirty years in the impact space. Thirty years of watching money that was supposed to change the world get dressed up in language that would make a ma...

What does it take to walk away from a global retail dynasty and redirect your wealth toward healing the planet? Stephen Brenninkmeijer did exactly that — and in this episode, he tells us how. In this episode of TBLI Radical Truth, host Robert Rubinstein sits down with Stephen Brenninkmeijer, private investor and founder of Willows Investments, to explore his remarkable journey from family business...

Can a pension fund managing £30 billion in public money genuinely integrate ESG and impact investing — without sacrificing returns? Denise Le Gal, Chair of Brunel Pension Partnership, says yes. And she has the results to prove it. Brunel is one of eight national Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) pools in the UK, bringing together the investments of 10 like-minded funds. In this episode of TBL...

Why did a consortium of the world's most risk-averse institutions—including the World Bank Treasury, BNP Paribas, and Amazon—just pour $91 million into a forest that does not yet exist? In this episode, Robert exposes the bizarre, inverted logic of modern climate finance. We break down the strange math behind a massive cross-border deal funding 50,000 hectares of "future forest" in S...

How does a true political underdog come from absolute obscurity to win the election for Mayor of New York City, defying every expert who said it was impossible? In this reflective episode, recorded on a brilliant Indian Summer day along the canals of Amsterdam, Robert looks back at his roots as a Brooklyn kid to unpack the monumental upset victory of Zohran Mamdani . This isn’t just a conversation...

How do you lift the poorest farmers out of poverty while building a world-class business? 🌾 On the latest TBLI Radical Truth podcast, host Robert Rubinstein sits down with Arvind Narula, Chairman & Founder of the Urmatt Group. With 30+ years pioneering organic agriculture across Thailand, Argentina, and Laos, Arvind drops unfiltered wisdom on what it actually takes to scale purpose-driven bus...

Why, after decades of high-profile "impact" conferences and trillions in capital pledges, have the underlying mechanics of the financial system barely moved? In this episode, recorded in the run-up to the PEI Impact Investor Global Summit in London, Robert delivers a sharp, structural critique of why the financial system aggressively resists working for all stakeholders. Every year, asse...