4.30.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
will be reading National Geographic magazine dated April twenty twenty five.
As a reminder, Radio I is a reading service intended
for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
now for the article entitled National Geographic Celebrating thirty three

(00:25):
bold Thinkers. Yvonne Schuenard, the unlikely mogul who built the
ultimate outdoors brand then gave it away to save the planet.
Ivan Schuenard laughs when he tries to remember the oldest
piece of gear he owns. Almost everything I have is old,
says Chouinard eighty six, grinning. I use everything until it

(00:46):
completely falls apart. The Patagonian founder glances around the office
of his Wyoming ranch, then raises his hands to show
that the sleeves of his faded plaid shirt are all
in tatters. My whole life has been pretty simple, really,
I'm not a consumer. This may sound surprising, even hypocritical,
from the founder of a company with consistent annual sales

(01:08):
of a billion dollars, but Schuinard has long insisted he
did not start Patagonia to turn a profit. I have
a living, he told The New Yorker in nineteen seventy seven,
but that's all I want out of it. Nearly half
a century later, in September twenty twenty two, he backed
up that claim, stunning the business world by announcing he

(01:29):
was giving away the three billion dollar company, with a
two percent of its shares going to a trust where
profits could be used for social good and the other
ninety eight percent to newly created nonprofit, the hold Fast Collective,
which uses the funds to advocate for environmental causes. Earth
Chouinard wrote on Patagonia's website, is now our only shareholder.

(01:52):
After you're making enough money to support yourself, what's the
reason to stay in business, he asks with a shrug.
Is it a responsibility for the employees that are still
there to make more money or to do something something good.
We are doing good work and good things with our profits.
That's the real reason to keep going. It's not an
ego thing. I'll be dead in a few years anyway.
Schuenard's decision to donate the company stemmed in part from

(02:16):
his inclusion on a Forbes list of billionaires he'd never
seen himself that way, and the perception rankled. Without Patagonia,
he could live like the man he felt himself to be,
an octagenarian cowboy on a western ranch with sixty thousand
dollars a year, driving a nineteen eighty seven Toyota Corolla
and wearing frayed flannel. He would be as happy living

(02:37):
under a bridge or out of a van surfing God knows,
where as being a wealthy man, says Chris Tomkins, Patagonian's
transformative first CEO and one of Chuenard's closest confidants. That
is the genius of Yvonne Schouinard's lifelong modesty is his inheritance.
I was a dirt bag climber and I got my
dirt bag philosophy from my dad. Chewanard says, I had

(03:00):
no money whatsoever. I was eating cat food, ground squirrels.
I would sneak into yards distill fruit. He has since
climbed on every continent, and these days he finds its true.
It's the sport he truly misses. My balance is shot
to hell. He size still alpinisms. Visceral connection with the
landscape made him realize long ago the irreparable ways humans

(03:23):
changed the world, even when scarring stone for sport. For
six decades, he has striven in business to do less
harm and imperfect and unsteady process. Patagonia is not a
sustainable company, he says, There's no such thing. I look
at our philanthropy as not charity, but as the cost
of doing business, of using non renewable resources. Once you

(03:46):
recognize that you want to do something, Schuenard consists constantly
references his pessimism. He is convinced, for instance, that the
climate crisis cannot be solved until people find their spiritual
connection with nature, as he did on Wyoming's peas Peeks
and Yosemite's walls. He believes public companies will never choose

(04:06):
true sustainability over shareholder gains, but encounters that doubt with
an idealism about what individuals can do with the right
resources at their disposal, in his case, one of the
world's biggest outdoor brands. He's more active in Patagonia's operations now,
he says than when he divested himself from the company
two years ago. That's because he needs to make sure

(04:29):
it can function in perpetuity. If Patagonia is going to
have any chance of fulfilling its audacious mission statement to
save our home planet. This was written by Grayson har
Kurrn Selena Gomez the Superstars supporting mental health on a
global scale. The Selena Gomez of now Golden Globe nominated actress, billionaire, philanthropist,

(04:54):
and entrepreneur wouldn't be possible without the Selena Gomez of
several years ago, when the young singer was struggling with
her mental health. In twenty eighteen, Gomez had an episode
of psychosis, a condition in which a person experiences a
break from reality, and later learned she had bipolar disorder.
The actress decided to take a hiatus from her career

(05:14):
and retreated from the spotlight. She explored different treatments, including
a dialectical behavior therapy, a form of talk therapy for
patients experiencing intense emotional distress, eventually landing on a set
of strategies and a treatment plan that worked for her.
It was really intense for a while, Gomez thirty two says,

(05:35):
it's not easy, but luckily I'm in a much healthier
mindset and I just try not to pay attention to
any noise. As her career took off again with critically
acclaimed roles in Only Murders in the Building, produced by Hulu,
which shares apparent company with National Geographic in the recent
musical film Emelia Perez. She felt compelled to share her

(05:56):
experience in a way that could help others. She did
this most intimately Lee through the twenty twenty two documentary
Selena Gomez, My Mind and Me. I was terrified, she
says of the project. But I didn't want anyone else
to control the narrative of my experience. I just wanted
to take control of that and be honest. That always
seemed to be my go to. She also directed profits

(06:18):
from her cosmetics company, Rare Beauty to create the Rare
Impact Fund, a nonprofit that provides mental health resources for
young people around the world. I love what I do
more than anything, but to have a purpose behind a
cosmetics brand is very important, she says. I wanted other
people to feel like I wasn't some unattainable thing that

(06:39):
no one could really relate to. Since launching in twenty twenty,
Rare Impact has contributed millions of dollars across thirty organizations
on five continents. Eighteen groups focused on education, crisis response,
and suicide prevention Recipients include the Ever Forward Club in Oakland, California,
which supports at risk young men, and Kolkata Sanved, which

(07:04):
uses dance movement therapy as a form of rehabilitation for
vulnerable children in India and across South Asia. Elise Cohen,
Rare Impacts president, points out that by raising awareness about
these issues, Gomez is also tackling the consistent challenge of
how to raise funds for solutions. People who haven't personally
experienced mental health struggles may now better understand the need

(07:27):
to invest. For her part, Gomez says she just wants
people to know there is help available, support that can
be as private or public as they want. I still
don't have it all figured out, she says. Once I
started having a relationship with my emotions, it helped. This
article by Alexis Okyowo next Oksana Masters, the multi sport

(07:50):
athlete challenging us to rethink what's possible. Six toes on
each foot, five webbed fingers on each hand, no thumbs,
and no tibi. Born with congenital deformities in Ukraine in
nineteen eighty nine, three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster,
Oksana Masters lived at an orphanage until she was nearly eight.

(08:11):
Once adopted, she came to the United States, where her
legs were amputated and she endured painful reconstructive surgeries. Now
thirty five, she has competed in seven consecutive Paralympics, every
Winter and Summer Games since twenty twelve, earning nineteen medals
in hand cycling, rowing, skiing, and biathlon. She models what's

(08:31):
possible and normalizes the idea that we're all unique through
Sisters in Sports, a nonprofit that brings together young girls
and women with disabilities. If one of those competitors eventually
ends up beating Masters, she'll be the first to congratulate her.
I want those women to take that torch and carry
it past me, she says. Just thinking about it gives
her goosebumps. By Christine Phantasy Next Taishan Hayden Smith, the

(08:57):
Gorilla Gardener, bringing horticulture to a new generation. When Tashon
Hayden Smith was growing up in London public housing, he
dreamed of becoming a soccer star. His family's small garden
became his pitch, inspiring a pro career. After the Grenfeld
Tower fire devastated the same community. In twenty seventeen, he
returned home and began rehabbing urban parcels into green spaces.

(09:20):
He founded Grow to Know, which makes nature more accessible
to everyone while educating a diverse new generation of gardeners.
In the garden, boundaries and barriers come down, says Hayden Smith,
who's doing his part to make blighted neighborhoods bloom again.
By Alex Hoyt. Emily Liman, The scientist deepening our understanding

(09:42):
of human senses. Emily Leman is raising the question of
whether there are more than just five basic tastes. An
expert in human perception, She's revealed a class of proteins
that detect both acids and ammonium chloride, the ingredient that
gives Nordic salt licorice. It's astrndent favor flavor. The work
holds potential health benefits with new insight on otopetrons, compounds

(10:07):
that have been linked to colon cancer. Whenever we find
a molecule in the body that has sort of a
new function, Lehmann says, we can better understand how our
body works and how we can manipulate it. By Lauren
Vespoli Jason Momoa, the actor using his superpowers to protect
our oceans long before he played Aquaman, rightful heir to

(10:29):
the underwater kingdom of Atlantis. Actor Jason Momoa was an
aqua boy. Born in Hawaii, Momoa spent much of his
childhood in smalltown, Iowa, where he lived with his mother.
But even landlocked, he was extremely invested in aquatic ecosystems,
spending his high school years taking college level marine biology classes.
We had all these up aquariums, Momoa forty five says, animatedly,

(10:53):
recalling the campuses, eels and sharks. That's where it all started.
I was in marine biology in Iowa. After high school.
He was cast in bay Watch at nineteen, not an
obvious avenue toward a marine biology career, but a move
that was ocean adjacent. Nonetheless, a new trajectory opened up,
and with Rowells in Game of Thrones, Doune, and of

(11:15):
course Aquaman, he became a Hollywood star. Mamoa's love of
the ocean persists in these days. He sees himself as
a megaphone for experts whose voices don't carry quite as
far as his. In twenty twenty two, he linked up
with the un Environment Program, becoming its advocate for Life
below Water. Not long ago, Frustrated by all the plastic

(11:36):
water bottles Mamoa saw on plains, he started an aluminum
water bottle company manan Na Lo Lola, which means which
moves that include a partnership with reusable water bottomling system Boomerang.
Mimoa is always chasing sustainability. I'm trying to make a change,

(11:57):
he says, and I'm trying to be accountable by Lauren Larsen.
Next Jennifer Uchendu, the climate activist creating spaces for Africans
to process their echo anxiety. For years, Jennifer Uchendo had
been warning fellow Nigerians about the imminent dangers of climate
change without realizing that a related issue had escaped her attention.

(12:21):
Simply put, she felt increasingly anxious and overwhelmed. Residents of
the global South experienced some of the most dramatic effects
of climate change flooded cities, drought stricken farmland, excruciating heat waves,
often without contributing significantly to the problem themselves. For Uchendu,
who was acting as a sustainability consultant in local communities

(12:45):
and had launched a blog susty vibes to help young
people reduce their carbon footprint and encourage more accountability among others.
It felt like she couldn't make a difference fast enough.
International leaders certainly didn't seem to be taking the check
challenges that her community faced seriously. I came from a
place of anger and frustration, she says. I felt like

(13:06):
I either do the hard work of exploring these emotions
or I completely give up and do something else. Then
a twenty twenty Uchandu had an idea. She started a
project to validate and explore emotional responses to climate change
for her community. The Echo Anxiety in Africa Project or TEAP,
is a Lagos based organization that helps young Africans meet

(13:30):
and talk about the emotions they are feeling around climate change.
Two years ago, TAP launched a cafe in its office,
offering a gathering space for its members. Tiap's leaders want
to inspire a sense of empowerment among the more than
seven hundred people who've joined the project, whether the goal
is to plant more trees or lower an electricity bill.

(13:52):
Conversations among members often explore intersecting hardships in Nigeria. Even
though we've come together because of climate change. It's not
out of place when some one talks about unemployment or
the high prices of food, because we see that these
are the broader impacts of the problem. Uchendu says. She's
since expanded TEA up to several more states in Nigeria,

(14:15):
and she plans to train organizers to create similar spaces
in South Africa, Ghana and Kenya. Meanwhile, she's conducting research
with the University of Nottingham in England about the emotional
impact of climate change for urban residence in large African cities,
which may raise awareness of the problem. More broadly. As
Uchendu sees it, providing a venue for young Africans to

(14:38):
talk about their egoss anxiety is an essential step in
continuing the fight for a better future. If young people
feel completely powerless and crippled, it's not just a public
health crisis, but a disaster for climate change. She says,
you have to have the energy to do something. That's
another valuable resource to protect. By Charlie Locke. Next, hamdi Ulukaya,

(15:02):
the business leader matching refugees with good jobs. The son
of Kurdish sheep farmers, hamdi Ulukaya fled his native Turkey
after being targeted for supporting the rights of fellow Kurds.
While founding Chobani, the Greek yogurt company in Upstate New York,
he often thought about others fleeing persecution and began hiring

(15:22):
from a nearby refugee settlement center. He has since created
the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a nonprofit that has helped
tens of thousands of displaced people find jobs around the world,
including with Airbnb, MasterCard, Ups, and Ikea. Chobani now employs
a work force that speaks more than twenty languages. Our

(15:44):
pitch is that you're not going to find more loyal,
hard working, and determined people to work for your company,
He says, They'll never forget that you open the door
for them. Next Edward Norton, the actor, imagining a new
way to conserve African wildlife. From an early age, Edward
Norton was given an education in what protecting the environment
really requires. His father, Edward M. Norton, an environmental litigator,

(16:09):
founded the Grand Canyon Trust and co founded the Rails
to Trail's Conservancy. Norton's maternal grandfather, the real estate developer
and urban planner James Rouse was a pioneer in low
income housing policy. I just grew up listening to people
talking about social entrepreneurship, mission driven strategy and fundraising. Norton

(16:29):
fifty five explains, everyone around me was always on the stump,
nobly trying to raise money. I certainly cannot remember a
time my dad wasn't raising money for environmental organizations. Norton
built his own career in a different field, writing his
works in films like American History, ex Fight Club, and
Twenty fifth Hour to a perch as one of his

(16:50):
generation's best regarded actors. Most recently, he played social justice
legend Pete Seeger to Timide Challemet's hunchy young Bob Dylan
in A Complete Unknown. When Norton first became famous, he
concluded that he wasn't interested in garden variety celebrity ambassador work.
One thing I've always had a very very sharp sense

(17:11):
of is that I'm not interested in accessorizing or being
some weak sauce kind of articulator. He says, I'm not
interested in what I would call the soft mission of
being a public advocate. It's not that I don't believe
those things are important, but that held no nourishment for me.
What does nourish Norton, he says, is his work with
a Kenya based organization called the Mahasi Wilderness Conservation Trust. Norton,

(17:37):
who serves as president of the group's US board, describes
it as an economic development first organization, figuring out how
to create preferential economics out of natural resources for communities,
which is another way of saying that the Trust is
dedicated to thinking creatively about ways to tie ma Asai

(17:59):
of efforts of protecting their land and the wildlife there
to economic development. The group does plenty of the things
you might expect from a Kenyon conservacy. We run over
two hundred twenty community rangers, wildlife enforcement, biodiversity monitoring, all
of that stuff, Norton says, But the Trust, he explains,
is a receptacle for bolder ideas too. One project he's

(18:22):
particularly proud of funnel's revenue from the sale of carbon
offsets to local Masai communities, who use that money to
support health, education and conservation initiatives. The sizeable concern that
preoccupies Norton would be familiar to his father and grandfather.
What he refers to as the white knuckle experience of

(18:42):
raising funds. This led Norton to a realization, we can't
have the global conservation movement remain a donor funded philanthropic strategy.
He says, it just can't. It not only can't scale,
it fundamentally is too unstable. A new model is needed
in Norton gets especially energized when discussing what he thinks

(19:03):
it will be a reimagining of the luxury ecotourism model
to better support conservation efforts. The way Norton and his
partners see it, tourist dollars being spent in fragile places
ought to remain in country, or, better yet, in community.
Norton and his team started a company called Conservation Equity

(19:23):
that will invest in tourism in critical places, but crucially,
will reinvest its profits locally rather than delivering returns to shareholders.
Norton is bullish on the model's prospects. I think what
we are doing has no precedent, he says. If we
get it right, I would argue we'll have contributed a
big new idea about how conservation can be financed and

(19:46):
incentivized and economically structured globally. I think We're on the
cusp of demonstrating how powerful tourism could actually be if
the mission driven world can come up with a model
to compete against private equity capital. Norton thinks we're at
a pivotal moment where the mechanism of conservation can be reinvented.

(20:06):
We are in the era of the economics of nature.
We're forcing ourselves to accurately account for nature within our
economic system. He says it may not be as romantic
as John Moore, but I think it's got to be
acknowledged that the needs of eight billion people are not
going to take second tier priority to the spiritual value

(20:27):
of nature. They're just not. If you cannot deliver a
more resilient and superior economic outcome from stewardship and restorative
stewardship of nature, you lose, And Norton isn't particularly interested
in losing. By Sam Shubey next Cole Brower, the Fearless

(20:47):
Sailor bringing her sport to a new group of fans.
Cole Brower didn't grow up going to a yacht club.
It was only at a college student living in Honolulu
that the idea hit. I just googled sailing Hawaii, says Brauer,
now thirty, of her casual introduction to the sport that
changed her life. Last year, a decade after that start,

(21:08):
Brauer became the first American woman to sail solo, NonStop
and unassisted around the world. When she set out, Brauer
had about ten thousand Instagram followers, eighty five percent of
whom were men, pretty standard for a male dominated sport.
After one hundred thirty days at sea, she had roughly
five hundred thousand followers, and the demographics had shifted. Half

(21:30):
her audience was now female. Inspiring others matters to Brauer,
who wants to demonstrate what's possible for women and for
people who didn't grow up around yachts. By Eva Holland
Next Sana Javari Kadri, the entrepreneur inspiring a more sustainable
and ethical spice trade. Sana Javari Kadri's radical quest to

(21:52):
disrupt the global spice industry started with one small action.
She took an aim at golden milk lattes. Nearly a
decade ago and twenty sixteen, Javeri Cadri was working in
marketing for a large San Francisco grocery store when she
noticed the fad sweeping America's coffee shops. She knew the
drink's key ingredient, Howard. Turmeric, grew mostly in her native India,

(22:14):
but unlike existing varieties of farm to table coffee, chocolate,
or fruit, there was little visibility in to the supply chain.
When she returned to Mumbai early the following year, Javeri
Kadri investigated and realized two things. Some regenerative farmers in
India used distinct growing and processing techniques that resulted in

(22:37):
varieties far superior to anything she'd seen across Mumbai in California,
and yet no farmers seemed to be profiting from tumeric's
newfound vogue among wellness seekers. So she decided to reinvent
the supply chain. That naivete meant that we built something
from scratch and made something possible that previously didn't seem possible,

(22:57):
she says. The global spice trade is rooted in more
than five hundred years of colonialism, marked by long supply chains,
little transparency, and farmers paid a pittance for their labor.
Spices often sit in transit between grower and grocery for years,
losing potency in the process. So Javeri Kadri invested the

(23:17):
only money she had about three thousand dollars from her
tax refund, to buy the freshest tumeric she could find
and bring it to California. I was hand packing it
in my basement and then selling it on the internet,
she remembers. Thanks to a knack for Instagram marketing in
a few key contacts in the food world, the business
took off. Today, Javeri Cadre's Diaspora Company offers forty one spices,

(23:43):
including black peppercorn and cardamen and spice blends sourced from
India and Sri Lanka. Unlike conventional spice companies, Diaspora deals
directly with more than one hundred fifty farms, reaching thousands
of farm workers, while paying them on average four times
the commodity price for the organic spices they grow. Fair
Trade International, by comparison, pays just fifteen percent above market.

(24:08):
The high quality product allows the company to charge a premium,
which has led to more investment in its farm partners.
To Veri Kadri is continuing to offer customers an unmatched
level of transparency, sharing the farms on which each spice
is grown, as well as harvest dates and contract prices.
Because we're sourcing from South Asia, I think there's a

(24:29):
very problematic assumption that it should be cheap. She says.
That's basically the effects of colonialism and racism, where we're
devaluing this labor and we're devaluing the worth of this product. Meanwhile,
the company recently expanded into whole foods and wholesale distribution.
There's a difference you can taste by Elizabeth Dunn. Next,

(24:51):
Ivan Aki Sawyer and Eugenia Kargbo. The local leader, is
saving their city from a climate emergency. A decade aga,
just as Sierra Leon's Ebola epidemic was ending, Yvonne Aki
Sawyer saw the effects of another catastrophe. The tropical rainforests
encircling the country's capital, Freetown, had been cut down for

(25:12):
housing and fuel. I just suddenly noticed the level of deforestation,
she says. I literally parked my car and wept. Today,
temperatures there routinely exceed a hundred degrees fahrenheit, accompanied by
deadly floods and landslides during the rainy season, including a
mudslide in twenty seventeen that killed more than a thousand people.
One of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world,

(25:35):
Sierra Leone is also one of the poorest, severely restricting
its ability to adapt to a crisis primarily caused by
wealthy nations burning fossil fuels. If that sounds bleak, Aqi Sawyer,
who campaigned against the blood diamond trade and co founded
a charity that helped women and children displaced by the
country's civil war before being elected as Freetown's mayor in

(25:57):
twenty eighteen, offers another way of thinking. Things that aren't
right don't need to stay that way, she says. Born
in Freetown, she had a career in finance and property
development in London, but returned to direct a national response
to the Ebola outbreak. As mayor, one of her most
important initiatives was appointing Africa's first Chief Heat Officer, Eugenia Cargbo,

(26:21):
to help Freetown's citizens adapt to increasingly extreme temperatures. In
the role, Carbo has built canopies to shade women selling
goods at the city's open air markets. She is also
experimenting with heat resistant materials to protect those residing in
shelters made from corrugated metal. Many of the people living

(26:41):
in these communities suffer from both outdoor and indoor heat.
Carbo says, there's so much more to do, but one
of the major problems that we have is funding. Despite
those challenges, city leaders have made progress replenishing the forests
that were once lost. Over the past five years, the
community he has planted more than one point two million trees,

(27:02):
eighty two percent of which have survived, for a project
known as Freetown the Tree Town. The foliage offers more
shade to elders, and the roots safeguard neighborhoods from mud size.
Acqui Sawyer recalls a tradition that was once common in
her country. A newborn's umbilical cord was buried with a
freshly planted tree, symbolically tying each person to the land.

(27:26):
She believes in the power of customs that connect us
to our world, and she's hoping future generations can rediscover them.
By R. L. Samuelson. This concludes readings from National Geographic
Magazine for today. Your reader has been Marcia. If you
have enjoyed hearing this content, please give us a call
at eight five nine four two two six three nine zero.

(27:48):
Thank you for listening, and have a great day