How to Save the World | The Psychology & Science of Environmental Behavior

In order to build a new world, we must first imagine what it will be. In the episode, I created a guided meditation you can use to enter a deep state of relaxation which allows you to experience different brain frequencies that bring out new creative ideas, visions, and inspiration that isn't possible while using your regular "busy" executive functioning style of thinking. Take a quiet 35 minutes of uninterrupted time to listen to this meditation. The meditation will take you through a body scan followed by a guided story that will help unlock your creative energy and shine a light on how you'll use it to transform the world.  This meditation is part of my work to launch The IMAGINE Project. Its mission is to kick off a movement to help people imagine the world we DO want (instead of worrying about the one we don't). Sign up to get a free Earth Imagination Kit at http://katiepatrick.com/imagine and get an invitation to join the community and monthly group Zoom calls. Email or DM me your thoughts, ideas, and feedback about this meditation (and the podcast in general) and time at kp@helloworlde.com - I'd love to hear from you. 

In this episode, we're chatting with Professor Jaap Ham. He's a leading cognitive scientist who researches how people respond to seeing their electricity use displayed with colored lights that glow red if you used too much electricity, or green if you are saving energy (also known as "persuasive technology" or "ambient signaling"). His research has shown that colored light is one of the most effective ways to influence people to change their behavior: red=bad, yellow=ok, green=good. Then why aren't we using colored light as a design tool to encourage more pro-environmental behavior? The evidence suggests that we should be.  Professor Ham also studies how robotic cats help people to change their energy consumption. The toy cat smiles when you use less, and frowns when you use more – evidence shows it’s a surprisingly powerful way to change behavior. Jaap Ham joined us for our first monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Jaap Ham's research here and his LinkedIn Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

In this episode, I talk about an important initiative by a group called Green Roofs for Healthy Cities to create a $500 million dollar fund that will be used to build and maintain new green roofs for schools across America. This bill will create thousands of green jobs, introduce thousands of children to eco-building design, and have big environmental results for energy efficiency in schools.   If we want to see biophilic eco-cities take hold, we all need to support initiatives like this that will help make hundreds of green roof projects happen.  I supported the campaign by following the prompts on this page and sending a letter to my local congressperson, https://greenroofs.org/advocacy.  I know it's easy not to fill out these kinds of political forms - but it's ALSO easy actually click it and send it - and it will make a difference. Please share this episode and share the link to the green roofs advocacy letter. Let's make these hundreds - or even thousands - of new green roofs happen! Wouldn't that be amazing to see it come true? It could change a generation. **CLICK HERE AND FILL IT OUT** - >  https://greenroofs.org/advocacy Follow Green Roofs for Healthy Cities https://twitter.com/grhcna https://www.instagram.com/grhcna/

What does your creativity have to do with saving the planet? Everything. In this bonus episode, I share a free audiobook chapter from my book, How to Save the World, called Your Creative Genius Zone. It's about how we need your vision, innovation, and your creative genius to uncover the many ideas and epic problem-solving it's going to take to genuinely build a new world. The future of the planet lies in the hands of those who can take on the long and complex quest of re-designing the future – and it's going to take every thread of creative thinking we have to get there.  Get the full audiobook from Audible https://adbl.co/32HrO2D Or the digital package PDF + MP3 files https://katiepatrick.gumroad.com/l/NTLXy

In this episode, we’re talking with Naomi Augustine-Yee about her recent work as Innovation Lead at Magic Leap. If you aren't familiar with Magic Leap, they make those headsets where you can see a visualization of augmented reality superimposed over the real world. I think she has worked on one of THE most interesting “Fitbit for the Planet” styles of technology projects. She and her team created a real-time digital twin of the city of Los Angeles. That means anyone can put on a Magic Leap headset and “see” the entire city of LA, along with the real flows of data, as they are happing in real-time – like air pollution, traffic, kilowatt-hours, and water use – all as if you were looking at the city re-created on a boardroom table.  We can also use AR to create an immersive experience of an alternative world. We can create AR experiences that visualize what a better eco-friendly futuristic world could look like in a way that is much more salient, inspiring, and impactful than a 2D picture or video might be. Check out the blog article on my Medium page to see the pictures she’s created - they are quite wonderful. Naomi joined us for our first monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Naomi Augustine-Yee Twitter @GST_naomi LinkedIn naomiaugustine.com Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Applying game design principles to environmental change projects can lead to powerful results. Game designers practice the art of engaging players and getting them motivated and intensely focused on achieving a goal. Here is a free chapter of the audiobook version of my book, How to Save the World on game design. It's the largest chapter in my book and dives into how to apply twelve different gamification techniques to environmental programs as well as the evidence of how these techniques have succeeded in creating pro-environmental change.  Get the full audiobook from Audible https://adbl.co/32HrO2D Or the digital package PDF + MP3 files https://katiepatrick.gumroad.com/l/NTLXy

If you want to save the Earth, you need to think like a game designer.  In this episode, I sat down with Jesse Schell, author of the canonical game design textbook, The Art of Game Design, and asked him how he would go about saving the planet as a game designer. Jesse is a Distinguished Professor of Experience Design at Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Schell Games. Think about these qualities :  peak motivation, obsessive focus, a drive to win, life-long mastery of a complex skill, desire for epic planetary-wide quests — it all sounds like a pretty good skill set to save our real planet, right?  Manifesting these emotions listed above is the craft that game designers specialize in.  People who specialize in game design are a treasure-trove of design-thinking insight about how to get people into a state of obsessive flow, hack into human happiness, and pique the reward system of the brain. I love Jesse’s book The Art of Game Design because when I read it a few years ago, I asked myself “how would l apply all this game design thinking to climate change, plastic waste, or eating less meat”?  Reading a game design textbook through the eyes of an environmentalist opened my imagination when thinking of ideas for environmental change, in a way that nothing else really has. Jesse joined us for our monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live monthly group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Read the blog article about this episode. Follow Jesse Schell Get a copy of The Art of Game Design on Amazon Jesseschell.com Twitter @jesseschell Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

If you work on buildings in any way - getting people to save energy, green architecture, decarbonization - or even if you’re just keen on gamification design for the planet this episode is for you. We are going to be chatting with one of the world’s foremost experts in psychology, technology, and the design of how to get people to save energy in buildings. His name is John Petersen. He’s a professor of systems ecology at Oberlin College and author of multiple really interesting papers on the gamification of displays of data and he also created environmentaldashboard.com  His experiments have gotten up to 56% reductions in electricity - using an interesting combination of digital wall screens, colored lights, a competition, an animated squirrel that shows emotions depending on energy use, and a systems-thinking approach showing the individual’s impact in the context of the community. John joined us for our monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Read the blog article about this episode.  Follow Environmental Dashboard  Get in touch with Professor John Petersen  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon  katiepatrick.com  Twitter @katiepatrick  Instagram @katiepatrickhello  Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible.  Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Are the words ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ helpful or harmful to the quest to reduce society's ravenous meat consumption? Gregg Sparkman is a Ph.D. student in social psychology at Stanford University who specializes in the study of how to get people to eat less meat. In this interview, he takes us through the many fascinating (and often counter-intuitive) dynamics of what it takes to get people to measurably reduce their meat intake - and it’s not what you think. We talk about social norms in messaging and in particular his specific field of ‘dynamic norms’ where he proved that simply changing a few words in a message has the proven capacity to double the number of vegan meal choices. This episode is a rare gem and an absolute must for anyone trying to influence ethical, plant-based, or sustainable eating habits. Gregg explains many crucial psychological concepts often left out of the vegan and vegetarian movement’s attempts to change the world.  Contact Gregg Sparkman Gregg Sparkman {at} gmail.com if you're interested in more behavioral science on getting people to eat less meat.   Sign up to join our live "Fitbit for the Planet" group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

In this episode of the How to Save the World podcast, I talk with Dan Stokols, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at the University of California Irvine.  Dan has recently published a book, Social Ecology in the Digital Age, and he talks to us about what the field of *social ecology* is all about. In a world that often compartmentalizes issues into bite-size boxes, Dan illustrates the importance of taking a “systems thinking” view – and urges us to look more deeply at the interdependence of the many systems around us and how the very small, such as a piece of litter, is governed by a larger system of forces. Dan explores the need to look at the human behavioral dimension of environmental issues to truly understand how to solve the planetary challenges we’re facing in the 21st Century.  Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx