Green Grid Radio

Engaging and transformative reporting on the environment, energy, and sustainability


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S3E8: One Nation Under Meat: The American Dream Strikes Back

This week we returned to the topic of meat production and food systems, exploring political and economic barriers to change in the U.S. and abroad, ways to move toward a less environmentally and socially destructive food system, and our own thoughts and perspectives on these critical issues. Like last week, we followed the wisdom of one of our guests, Dan Blumstein, and experimented with talking about food over food; Green Grid Radio team members Mallory, Adam, Erik and Diane discussed politics, education, climate change and energy, the world food economy, interconnections in the food system, local food, diversification, American eating habits and social norms, top-down versus bottom-up change, and more!

S3E8: One Nation, Under Meat: The American Dream Strikes Back

Image attributed to Meriwether, American Meat (2013)

Guests include: Stanford undergraduate student Caroline Hodge; Matt Rothe, Fellow at the Institute of Design at Stanford; Environmental Earth System Science Professor Rosamond Naylor, of the Center on Food Security and the EnvironmentGraham Meriwether, Director of the documentary American MeatEli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager at San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association; UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Professor Dan Blumstein, author of Eating Our Way to Civility; Professor Christopher Gardner of the Stanford School of MedicineVasile Stanescu, Stanford PhD candidate in the Program of Modern Thought and Literature; and Debra Dunn, co-founder of FEED Collaborative and Professor at the Institute of Design at Stanford.

Hosted by Mallory Smith and Erik Olesund.

Resources mentioned in this podcast: the American “Farm Bill“; “Quinoa’s Global Success Creates Quandary at Home,” from the New York Times (2011); “High-yield agriculture slows pace of global warming, say Stanford researchers,” from Stanford News (2010); Carnegie Mellon study comparing carbon emission reductions of eating local versus reducing meat consumption (2008); American Meat documentary.

Music featured by James Pants, Candlegravity, Dexter Britain, Sycamore Drive, Podington Bear, and Gable.


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S2E1: Taking on Climate Change through Education and Grassroots Action

Student guests Sara Orton, Alan Propp, and Sophie Harrison visit our studio to talk about grassroots and bottom-up strategies to spur behavioral change and further education on climate change.

Green Grid Radio S2E1

Orton and Propp describe how they have worked on developing a climate change education curriculum in local high schools. Harrison, who leads the Fossil Free Stanford movement, talks about the campaign to encourage the Board of Trustees to divest from fossil fuel investments. Our discussion also touches upon how climate change needs to be communicated in a less “doomsday”-like context, and instead framed in a way that highlights the positive results of a sustainable lifestyle (rather than a life of deprivation).  As always the episode features the most recent news on energy and environmental issues.

This first episode of season two of Green Grid Radio was hosted by Adam Pearson, Sophia Vo, Kara Fong and Erik Olesund.

Listen here: