Coconut Thinking

What if the way we eat could root us back into place, instead of tearing it apart?In this episode, I speak with Elspeth Hay. Elspeth is a writer, public radio host, and food systems advocate whose work explores what it means to live thoughtfully in place. Raised in Maine by birdwatcher parents, she grew up seeing how species adapt seamlessly to their ecosystems, while human communities eroded them, often just to feed ourselves.For more than 15 years, Elspeth has interviewed farmers, harvesters, cooks, policymakers, and visionaries, asking how we might eat and live without extraction. Her work reveals a paradox: humans are highly adaptable to ecosystems everywhere, yet we’ve forgotten how to belong to them. Based in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, she co-founded the Wellfleet Farmers Market and Commons Keepers, and works on community food initiatives like the Wicked Oyster restaurant.We discuss:🥥 How food connects us to place and to all the living beings we share it with.🥥 The flow state that comes from engaging with what grows around us.🥥 How disconnection from story shows up materially, and why storytellers must tell stories of what we are for to nurture imagination and possibility.Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.comCheck out Elspeth's website: https://elspethhay.com/

What if sustainability’s future was driven by passion, shaped with youth, and told through real stories?In this episode, I speak with Josh Dorfman. Josh is a climate entrepreneur, author, and media voice at the intersection of sustainability, innovation, and culture. He is the co-founder, CEO, and host of Supercool, the climate-tech podcast and media brand spotlighting the bold founders, investors, and policymakers designing a low-carbon future. His interviews reveal the business models, technologies, and cultural shifts redefining prosperity in an age of ecological disruption. A serial entrepreneur, Josh launched Plantd, a carbon-negative building-materials company recognized by Fast Company in 2024 as one of the world’s most innovative ventures. Before that, he created Vine.com, Amazon’s first natural and organic e-commerce store, and Vivavi, an award-winning sustainable furniture company honored on Inc.’s “Green 50” for leading eco-design. Josh first captured attention as The Lazy Environmentalist, a blog that grew into a SiriusXM radio show, a Sundance Channel TV series, and two books blending wit with pragmatic eco-living. His work consistently challenges the status quo, reframing climate response as an opportunity for creativity, commerce, and cultural transformation. We discuss: 🥥 Influencing through interests and passions, appealing to the heart, not just cognitive spaces (with all the data we already know);🥥 How industry might collaborate with young people on projects relating to sustainability, to develop careers; 🥥 The importance of telling great stories of sustainability, with successes and failures, which can influence and inspire others and not just virtue signal.Check us out www.coconut-thinking.comAnd check out Supercool: https://getsuper.cool/

How might we consider collapse as a a transformative process that brings us together through loss and renewal?In this episode, I speak with Maya Frost. Maya is a creative adaptation strategist, grief worker, and trauma‑informed facilitator who specializes in what she calls “creative adaptation": helping collapse‑aware individuals disrupt their despair and cultivate joy even as systems erode. As the founder of Collapse Forward and the Doom to Bloom™ process, she works with clients across more than 20 countries to transform “despairalysis” into grounded gratitude, rewilded imagination, and enlivened engagement. Maya's roots lie in alternative education and creativity‑based healing: she began by teaching mindfulness and creative play to thousands online. She’s also the author of The New Global Student, a playful guide to global education alternatives. In recent years, she has gained recognition for her “post‑doom optimism”—a refusal to flatten complexity into despair and instead engage collapse with creative resistance and realistic hope. We discuss: 🥥 How glossing over the truth around collapse risks giving a false sense of reality that eventually leads to greater despair; 🥥 The importance of having hard conversations, out in the open, so that we might respond, not in spite of, but thanks to the struggle; 🥥 How there is much we. can do right now to adapt, refusing paralysis even faced against tremendous odds.Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How do you lead with courage and love for every child when the culture around you is demanding you do the opposite?Jennifer D. Klein is an educator, author, and global learning advocate with over 30 years in student-centered, project-based education. A product of the very pedagogies she champions, Jennifer has taught and led in diverse contexts—from all-girls education in the U.S. to heading an innovative school in Colombia. She has worked with educators in over 20 countries, helping them design equitable, inquiry-driven learning that amplifies student voice, embraces cultural inclusion, and transforms school culture.The author of The Global Education Guidebook, The Landscape Model of Learning, and the forthcoming Taming the Turbulence in Educational Leadership, Jennifer blends classroom experience, leadership insight, and a passion for equity to inspire meaningful change. She partners with schools to tackle equity, engage in brave conversations, and empower young people as agents of change in their communities and beyond. Based in Denver, she continues to connect educators worldwide through workshops, coaching, and keynote talks.We discuss: 🥥 Having a North Star and knowing what we are willing to to stand up for, in the face of risk; 🥥 How no one can give you the gift of liberation, we have to strive for it (Freire). This is true in leadership of all sorts; 🥥 Students as protagonists of their own stories and these of others.You can purchase Jennifer's book here: https://www.principledlearning.org/taming-the-turbulence-in-educational-leadership.Check out Coconut Thinking on www.coconut-thinking. com.

How might our relationships other-than-human animals help us consider sustainability and regenerative education in more life-centered ways?In this episode, I speak with Charlotte Hankin. Charlotte is an educator, sustainability consultant, and PhD researcher in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. Her doctoral work explores how relationships between children and animals in international schools can help shift education away from human-exceptionalism toward more regenerative, relational ways of learning. Guided by posthumanist and feminist materialist theory, Charlotte uses arts-based, post-qualitative methods, including poetry, photography, sound, and craft, to attend to spontaneous, everyday encounters between human and other-than-human beings. These ‘multispecies moments’ offer insight into power, care, and co-existence, inviting schools to reimagine pedagogy as something co-created in the spaces between species. And, of course, Charlotte is the co-founder of Coconut Thinking. We discuss:🥥 How schools often portray animals in ways that separate us from the natural world and contribute to extractive practices;🥥 How school curricula might embrace an ethic of care, beyond what serves humans;🥥 The importance of cultivating relationality in schools over content mastery.Check us out, www.coconut-thinking.com

How can learning&doing help us become good participants in the web of life?In this special episode, I speak about how systems change won’t happen if we replace names and labels but continue to do the same old thing. I propose that we move beyond assessing learning, competencies, soft skills for their own sake. Rather, what if we collected the voices of the community (human and other-than-human) and had that be the measure of quality of learning? Emphasis placed on testimonials of how the learning and specifically the application of the learning contributed to a more positive world. And if we really want to go nuts, we can answer the question at the top of these show notes.This takes us beyond the individualization of student achievement because it becomes about how we use our learning for good. It de-centers the student and centers life.This episode is inspired by a post I put up a couple weeks ago, that you can find below. Please listen to this one-take, uncut episode, with a guest appearance by Clementine the cat.To access the post, click here.

Dan Burgess, a regenerative practitioner and founder of the Spaceship Earth podcast, dives into humanity's role on our living planet. He emphasizes the need for connection and participation in communities to tackle ecological challenges. Burgess also reflects on individuality and cultural perspectives, advocating for authentic engagement. He shares his transformative journey through climate activism and community-building initiatives. Ultimately, the conversation highlights the importance of introspection and relationality in fostering meaningful change.

What does it mean to nurture good relationships through regenerative education in these times we live in?In this episode, I speak with the authors of the soon-to-be-published book, The Art of Regenerative Educatorship.Bas is an associate professor in regenerative leadership at the Mission Zero Centre of Expertise at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, where he also serves on the management team of the Master’s in Sustainability Transitions. He lives in Dordrecht with his partner, writes novels, and is an avid gamer.Mieke is an associate professor in Regenerative Education and Development at the University of Amsterdam, where she works within the international development studies programme and the Governance and Inclusive Development research group. She lives in Amsterdam with her partner and twins and is a committed Reiki practitioner and yoga teacher, engaged with the Reiki Regenerative Resource Development Community in The Hague.Koen works as a regenerative educator at the University of Amsterdam. He teaches change-making within the Computational Social Sciences programme and supports interdisciplinary educators. He lives in Utrecht with his partner and dog, and draws deep inspiration from his intercultural connection with Turkey.We discuss:🥥 How regeneration invites us to become grounded in the project, connected with love to all life, to be present with all life in place, to have the courage to keep working, no matter the outcomes.🥥 How we are complicit in the system, but we can be constructive disruptors and have the will to remain in the system in spite of its damaging effects.🥥 How the process of writing the book was emergent and invited the reader as part of the process, opening up spaces for contextualized meaning-making.Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

We honor Nyepi with this special episode, in which Charlotte Hankin interviews Benjamin Freud. Nyepi is the Balinese Day of Silence, and is a Hindu New Year celebration marked by 24 hours of complete stillness. No travel, no lights, no work, and no noise. It is a time for self-reflection and spiritual renewal. We recorded this episode a few days after Nyepi and after that time of pause and gather. We discuss:🥥 Regenerative education and how nothing goes beyond Nature’s paradigm (referencing Denise DeLuca);🥥 How education is part of a larger system that replicates itself, meaning education won’t change without deeper systemic transformation;🥥 How sometimes it’s either/or, both/and, and even or/either.Join us for this special episode and check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might we shift our educational practices to deepen students’ ecological awareness, nurturing a culture of care and reciprocity with Earth’s living systems?In this episode, I speak with Katharine Burke. Katharine has been an educator for over 30 years, passionately advocating for ecological literacy, permaculture, and regenerative education. She currently teaches Geography and Social Studies at the secondary level, focusing her work on transformative ecological education projects. Katharine’s master’s thesis, “Restorying our Connection to the Natural World,” led to practical school initiatives including gardening programs, composting and seed studies, survival excursions, immersive nature camps, and integrating systems thinking across literature, geography, economics, and social studies. She authored EARTHWARDS, a practical guide reflecting educators’ real-world experiences. Katharine also founded The Small Earth Institute to offer deep ecology and regenerative design training for teachers. We discuss:🥥 How sometimes change starts with having the space to talk about what uncomfortable, challenging, or simply not spoken;🥥 How building a value system requires building it with others, 🥥 How transformative education is about shifting perceptions, identities, and values, which, when coupled with ecological education, bring us to understand we participate in the web of life.Check us out, www.coconut-thinking.com