Solutionary Voices

Rae Sikora, Co-Founder of the Institute for Humane Education, reflects on more than four decades of humane education rooted in compassion for all life. At the heart of the episode is her practice of meeting harm, resistance, and disagreement with love as her most powerful inclination and strategy. The result is a deeply personal and useful episode about how humane education can keep people’s “hear...

Navin Amarasuriya, CEO of the Contentment Foundation, explores what it means to educate for agency, attention, compassion, and contentment in a time shaped by persuasive technologies and accelerating change. Nav connects his own path from a family business to contemplative practice and service with a broader question about what schools can cultivate beyond academic performance. He emphasizes that...

Shariff Abdullah, author of Creating a World That Works for All and founder of the Commonway Institute, frames his life’s work around a deceptively simple question: how do we create a world that works for all living beings? He connects that question to a shift in consciousness, moving from separateness toward a recognition of interdependence. Shariff emphasizes that inclusivity is not about liking...

Dotsie Bausch, Olympic silver medalist and Founder of Switch4Good, discusses how cycling saved her life and how compassion shaped her life’s work. Dotsie traces her shift away from animal products to a deeper awareness of the food system, then explains how dairy became Switch4Good’s primary leverage point for health, justice, animal protection, and environmental impact. Her perspective is grounded...

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, medical director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative at Brandeis University, frames the opioid crisis as an epidemic of opioid addiction rooted in aggressive prescribing, pharmaceutical influence, regulatory failure, and inadequate access to treatment. The episode moves beyond blame toward a systems-level examination of what failed, what remains unrepaired, and what wou...

Ayo Magwood, founder of Uprooting Inequity, focuses on reducing racial and income disparities through measurable, system-level interventions, particularly in healthcare. She outlines a structured framework for understanding structural racism through interconnected factors of bias, income, and place, emphasizing how these forces shape real-world outcomes. Her work shifts the focus from individual a...

Nimo Patel’s story follows several forms of success, including business, music, entrepreneurship, and performance, before arriving at a deeper definition of purpose. The episode reveals how the recognition of misalignment can become a doorway into service when one is willing to listen, change course, and release attachment to outcomes. Nimo’s work with children in Ahmedabad becomes the clearest ex...

Shirin Karsan, a former refugee from Uganda, long-time educator, and peacebuilder, explores how conflict, bias, and disconnection persist when we fail to pay attention to our relationality. Drawing from immersive experiences she developed as a college professor when she joined her students in an experiment to live on $2/day in preparation for their service work in Africa –she illustrates how persp...

Andrew Revkin, longtime environmental journalist and former New York Times reporter, reflects on how decades of covering climate have reshaped his understanding of the role of journalism in creating positive change. He emphasizes that complex, interconnected challenges like climate change cannot be reduced to simple narratives or singular solutions. Instead, he advocates for a shift toward ongoing...

Michelle Culver, founder of The Rithm Project and former leader of Teach For America’s Reinvention Lab, is focused on rebuilding human connection in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. Drawing from her work with young people, she describes how AI is already influencing human relationships. Michelle centers the need for intentional design that prioritizes human connection alongs...

Rudy Karsan, an immigrant from Kenya and a serial entrepreneur who experienced repeated bankruptcies before selling a company to IBM for more than $1 billion, describes a turning point where achievement no longer provided meaning. In that recognition, he began to reorient his life toward joy, curiosity, and human connection. Through the creation of FunCon, he now cultivates spaces where people can...

In this episode, Tom Cledwyn reframes generosity from a private moral act into a visible cultural force that can inspire wider participation. Through his own kidney donation, the work of Drop Dead Generous, and the thinking behind the podcast, Move Over Mother Teresa , Tom invites us to consider storytelling as a multiplier of impact. The conversation also pushes against the idea that meaningful c...

Mary Pat Champeau, Director of Graduate Programs at the Institute for Humane Education, reflects on a lifetime of work in global education systems—from the Peace Corps to refugee camps to the World Trade Institute to writing teachers’ editions of textbooks—and how those experiences shaped her approach to teaching and leadership. She emphasizes the importance of cultivating curiosity, critical thin...

In this episode, Mark Anderson explores the idea that nervous-system literacy is a missing foundation in both personal well-being and social change. Reflecting on his own personal transformation from being the youngest CFO of a billion-dollar division of a Fortune 500 company to hitting rock bottom to finding a path forward to help others, Mark shares what he’s learned, with the hope that it will...

In this episode, Melanie Joy unpacks carnism as the invisible belief system that conditions people to see some animals as worthy of compassion while accepting the abuse of those used for food as normal, necessary, and/or not open to debate. She explains that the issue is not only what people eat, but how ideology shapes perception, numbs empathy, and teaches people to disconnect from the consequen...

In this episode, Doug Alexander explores how AI is not simply another innovation, but a world-shaping force that can radically expand human possibility. At the same time, AI can also destabilize labor, governance, social cohesion, and escape democratic control if it outpaces our ability to set wise safeguards and policies. The central tension is whether society can build the moral, political, and...

This episode explores what it takes to restore agency, dignity, and direction in people who have been neglected by poverty, trauma, broken systems, and/or low expectations. The central tension is not simply how people find purpose, but how leaders, communities, and institutions create the conditions for people to believe they matter, endure strategic discomfort, and grow into lives of service, res...

This conversation centers on the quiet but profound erosion of curiosity within modern schooling systems. Steve Cochrane, Executive Director of the Institute for Humane Education, argues that education has drifted from its human purpose — knowing and nurturing each child — toward compliance, standardization, and performance metrics. At its core, the episode asks whether schools can be redesigned t...

This conversation centers on transforming the mental health system by expanding legal access to psychedelic-assisted therapies through employer-sponsored benefits. Sherry Rais, CEO of Enthea, explains how systemic design—not conspiracy—limits healing, and how strategic reform within corporate and insurance structures can make breakthrough therapies accessible at scale. The episode blends spiritual...

This episode is truly about how we replace conventional meat at mass scale without asking consumers to compromise—by making alternative proteins win on taste, price, and availability—through the lens of Bruce Friedrich, Founder of the Good Food Institute. The central tension is simple: science is advancing, but engineering realities, capital timelines, and regulatory speed will determine whether t...