Durable Good

This episode is inspired by two things: a recent conversation with Dr. Wendy Dean, author of If I Betray These Words , about moral injury in medicine, and a morning spent in a clinic waiting room. Dean’s idea reaches further than medicine. Moral injury, the distress of being unable to do the work you believe in, lives in classrooms, in newsrooms, in foreign aid work. That thread continues in one o...

Ray Jennings has been away from Durable Good for two months. A Maine spring will do that — the list of things requiring attention is long, and it doesn’t negotiate. This podcast is inspired by a Maine Spring and a chance encounter with a civil wedding that Ray wasn’t expecting to walk into. Just a couple, a clerk behind a high counter, a pen on a chain, and the quiet machinery of public record-kee...

Razan Abd El Haque and Courtney Brown trace the arc of their lives from early awakenings about responsibility and service to decades of community-based work in conflict settings and at home. From founding Proximity International to amplify voices amid war, to launching Proximity2Humanity to advance community-based solutions in the aftermath of war or in the face of local challenges, Courtney and R...

This episode of Durable Good looks at bearing witness as a form of public service in a time when civic values are ignored as coercive authority works to entrench its power. Drawing on examples from Cairo, Tehran, Minneapolis, and historical moments of transition, the episode examines how acts of coordination and mutual aid preserve dignity, civic life, and social ties under threat. The essay explo...

Editors note This episode began as something celebratory and ended up becoming something else. It’s a reflection on what the end of the year tends to make briefly visible: the shape of our social lives, the relationships that are present, the ones that have drifted, and the small, often awkward moments where connection still surprises us. Moving between research, memory, and lived experience, this...

Jason Aplon has spent more than three decades working in some of the most difficult post-war and transitional environments in the world. A deeply thoughtful colleague and widely respected practitioner, he has worked in more than 30 countries with communities that are fragmenting, recovering from violence, or trying to rebuild a political center after the guns fall silent. His work has placed him o...

Welcome to Durable Good. Today I am revisiting an earlier post, something I published on Durable Good in July of 2025. It's titled Rescue 10 , and it’s about my experience as a volunteer firefighter and being new to volunteer firefighting in our small town - and my observations about the relationships and the things that volunteer firefighters do for their communities. Many of you asked that I tur...

Community isn’t consensus; it’s persistence. This episode traces how people build and sustain it across town halls, conflict zones, digital spaces, and everyday life — and why staying together is still the hardest and most necessary work we do. Get full access to Durable Good at durableproductions.substack.com/subscribe

A brief reflection for the open road: on patience, proximity, and the choreography of shared life. Mile by mile. Get full access to Durable Good at durableproductions.substack.com/subscribe

A Durable Good audiocast about the link between dignity, decency, and respect — and what they reveal about the measure of who we are. Get full access to Durable Good at durableproductions.substack.com/subscribe

I taught at a college in Sitka, Alaska in the early 1990s. Sitka is nestled beside the ocean and mountains on one of the bigger islands in the state’s southeast. Along the town’s 16 miles of drivable roads, life is intimate and insular - even more so among the households and smaller communities scattered throughout the other islands and coves in the archipelago. Every day around noon, I - like nea...