Radical Truth

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Isabel Hilton OBE, one of the world's most authoritative voices on China, climate, and geopolitics. A journalist, broadcaster, and founder of China Dialogue — the world's leading bilingual, independent newsroom covering China and the environment — Isabel has spent five decades reporting from the frontlines of global power: the fall of com...

Germany has created a €24 billion sovereign wealth fund to decommission its nuclear power plants. What happens when that capital is deployed for the green industrial revolution? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Jochen Wermuth, one of Europe's most consequential climate impact investors. As founder and CIO of Wermuth Asset Management and investment committee member of KENFO —...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Armin Steuernagel, serial entrepreneur, co-founder of the Purpose Foundation, and one of the most original thinkers in the global conversation about corporate governance and ownership. Armin has spent his career asking the question that conventional capitalism avoids: who has the real power in companies — and should it be bought and sold like any...

Oceans are dying. Pollution, climate change, and overfishing are creating dead zones, destroying coral reefs, and unraveling the marine ecosystems on which all life on Earth depends. Can this still be turned around? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Patricia Ricard, President of the Paul Ricard Oceanographic Institute and Vice-President and co-founder of the Ocean & Climate P...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Leonie Schreve, Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainable Finance at ING Group — one of the world's leading banks in green and sustainability-linked finance. ING issued its first green bond in 2015, pioneered the world's first sustainability-linked loan in 2017, and has since become a benchmark for how major financial institutions...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Michael Madden, founder and Managing Partner of Ronoc and founder and Chairman of OnGo, Myanmar's leading digital payments business. With over 30 years of experience operating in some of the world's most volatile and underserved markets — from post-Soviet Russia to Mongolia to Myanmar — Michael has built businesses through coups, genocide...

Before ESG was a buzzword, before impact investing had a name, and before any major financial institution offered responsible investment products, Amy Domini was building the infrastructure for a movement. Thirty years on, she is still asking the hardest questions. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Amy Domini — founder of Domini Impact Investments, co-founder of KLD Research &amp...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Sean Kidney, co-founder and CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative — the organisation that has done more than any other to build, shape, and defend the integrity of the global green bond market since 2009. Sean has been at the centre of the green bond revolution from the very beginning: advising the UN Secretary General, shaping the EU Taxonomy, wor...

In the wealthiest nation on earth, people are being arrested for not having a functioning toilet. This is America's dirty secret — and Catherine Coleman Flowers has spent two decades refusing to let the world look away. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Catherine Coleman Flowers — 2020 MacArthur Fellow, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and...

He spent 20 years helping the health insurance industry deny coverage, kill reform, and deceive the American public. Then he walked away — and told the world everything. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein welcomes back Wendell Potter — former VP of Corporate Communications at CIGNA, New York Times bestselling author, and the only health insurance industry insider ever to publicly blow the whistl...

She spent 11 years inside Shell, surveying 35,000 frontline workers across 65 facilities in 30 countries. Then she emailed 1,400 executives to tell them exactly what she thought — and walked away. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Caroline Dennett, Director of CLOUT Ltd and one of the most striking whistleblowers in the history of the fossil fuel industry. As Shell's senior s...

Europe has a €70 billion equity funding gap for breakthrough innovators. The EU has responded with one of the largest startup investment funds in the world. But how does it actually work — and how do you get funded? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Mauro Andriotto, founder of Andriotto Financial Services, former jury member of the European Innovation Council, and one of Europe's...

From the Pittsburgh Steelers to Pittsburgh's startup ecosystem — one NFL veteran's journey to becoming an impact investor for founders the venture world has long overlooked. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Will Allen, founding partner of Magarac Venture Partners (MVP) and 12-year NFL veteran. After a career defined by discipline, teamwork, and elite performance, Will ha...

What if communities could create their own money — and use it to trade their way out of poverty without waiting for banks, governments, or donors? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Will Ruddick, founder of Grassroots Economics Foundation and one of the world's most original thinkers on community currency and poverty eradication. A physicist turned development economist, Will...

The billionaire class emerged from the pandemic richer than ever. The rest of the world did not. How did this happen — and who is responsible? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Peter S. Goodman, Global Economics Correspondent for The New York Times and author of the bestselling Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World . Drawing on decades of reporting from over 40 count...

🎙️ SPOTIFY / APPLE PODCASTS DESCRIPTION 70% of the world's food is grown by smallholder farmers. 70% of the world's poor are smallholder farmers. And a 2% increase in global soil carbon concentration could offset climate change. One company is tackling all three challenges simultaneously — and doing it profitably. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with John Denniston, co-found...

There are nearly 100 million forcibly displaced people in the world. Most governments treat them as a burden. John Kluge has spent years proving that they are one of the world's greatest untapped assets. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with John Kluge, founder of the Refugee Investment Network (RIN) — the first impact investing and blended finance collaborative dedicated to long...

What does it actually take to align every dollar of a foundation's endowment with its mission — and what does that teach us about the future of sustainable finance? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Clara Miller — one of the most influential and original thinkers in the history of impact investing and nonprofit finance. Over four decades spanning the founding of the Nonprofit...

Every diamond has a story. For millions of people in West Africa, that story has been one of conflict, exploitation, and poverty. Martin Rapaport has spent decades trying to change the ending. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Martin Rapaport — chairman of the Rapaport Group, founder of the Rapaport Diamond Report and RapNet, the world's largest online diamond trading network...

What happens when you invest $64 million to expand a university in West Africa — and the new Vice-Chancellor tries to tear up the contract by claiming you seduced his predecessor into signing it? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Andrea Pizziconi — TBLI Hero, serial social entrepreneur, Gates Cambridge Scholar, CFA, and one of the most tenacious impact investors working in Africa...

One billion people worldwide suffer from depression, anxiety, addiction, or PTSD. Conventional treatments fail most of them. What if the solution was sitting in a magic mushroom? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Christian Angermayer — German serial entrepreneur, founder of Apeiron Investment Group, and the single most consequential financial driving force behind the global psych...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Mats Andersson, former CEO of Sweden's Fourth National Pension Fund AP4 and the architect of one of the most consequential decarbonisation strategies in the history of institutional investment. In 2012, Mats surveyed ten of the world's largest pension funds about their exposure to climate change risk. None of them had any view at all. He...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Benjamin Bingham — founder and CEO of 3Sisters Sustainable Management, chairman of Scarab Funds, and author of the pioneering book Making Money Matter: Impact Investing to Change the World . A Yale-educated artist, biodynamic farmer, teacher, and Certified Financial Planner, Ben has spent two decades building something the investment world insist...

He convinced a billionaire to fund Indonesia's first online lending platform. Then he pivoted to building a waste management company with the waste pickers themselves. This is social entrepreneurship on steroids. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Thierry Sanders — one of the most versatile and relentless social entrepreneurs alive today. From a global crowdfunding platform th...

She built her career championing ESG from within some of the world's largest financial institutions. Then she blew the whistle on the biggest greenwashing scandal in history — and paid a heavy personal price for it. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Desiree Fixler, former Group Sustainability Officer at DWS — Deutsche Bank's €460 billion asset management arm — and the wom...