Radical Truth

When nobody in the investment world wanted to touch an oat milk company, Gustaf Brandberg wrote the cheque. That company became Oatly — a $10 billion IPO. But for Gustaf, that was just the beginning. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Gustaf Brandberg, co-founder of Gullspång Re:food and partner at Gullspång Invest — a Swedish family office built on patient, evergreen capital and...

She inherited millions from one of Europe's great chemical dynasties. Then she gave 90% of it away — by letting 50 strangers decide where it went. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Marlene Engelhorn — Austrian-German activist, co-founder of the Taxmenow campaign, and one of the most radical and clear-eyed voices in the global conversation about wealth, power, and democratic l...

Trillions of dollars sit in private banking accounts managed for the world's wealthiest families. More and more of those clients want their money to mean something. What happens when three of the people responsible for making that shift sit down to tell you what it actually looks like from the inside? In this special TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein convenes a panel of three senior private banking...

For over three decades, one Irish-born priest has been quietly — and not so quietly — changing how the Catholic Church thinks about money. Meet the rock star of faith-consistent investing. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Father Séamus Finn OMI — Director of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate's Office of Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation, former chair of the Interfaith C...

Impact investing has a matching problem. There is capital that wants to do good and there are ventures doing good — but connecting them rigorously, at scale, and with genuine due diligence has remained one of the field's most stubborn failures. Audrey Selian has spent her career trying to fix it. In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Audrey Selian, Head of Artha Impact — a platfo...

In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Dr Geoff Kendall — co-founder and CEO of Future-Fit Foundation and one of the most rigorous critics of how sustainability is currently measured. With a PhD in AI, two successful tech start-ups, and four years advising the world's largest corporations at sustainability think-tank SustainAbility, Geoff had a front-row seat to the gap between co...

What if your relationship with money is the most important relationship you have — and you have never examined it? In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Peter Koenig — Zurich-based researcher, educator, and author of 30 Lies About Money , who has spent over four decades studying the phenomenology of money and how our relationship to it shapes everything: our health, our organisations...

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....