The Common Good Podcast

Episode 25 :: Shifting to a Paradigm of Service

2012-05-01T07:01:00Z

Deb Mitchell was quite like millions of her time and place, comfortable in a middle class life with a good job at a major corporation. Without meaning to, she held advantage that she didn’t even know she had over others. Eventually as her world grew larger than her Midwestern roots reached, Deb became more and more attuned to the dimension of life that had gone unnoticed for so long. Thanks to international travel and a changing corporate landscape, Deb was forced to look at things in a whole new way.

Episode 24 :: Jubilee Economics for the Uninitiated

2012-04-01T07:01:13Z

Okay, we have to admit it. Jubilee Economics Ministries has a big idea that not everyone gets. When you’re trying (like we are) to take on a world class issue that encompasses a vast swath of history and attempts to deal with the microcosmic and macrocosmic concepts of economics, it gets a little hard to follow. It’s a big job trying to get the world to think another way, and while we’ve done a range of things and employed various media, sometimes we miss the forest for the trees, and things take a bit more explanation why things are how they are with JEM.

Episode 23 :: Challenges in Socially Responsible Investing

2012-03-01T08:01:38Z

Jan Schalkwijk is a financial advisor with a specialty in targeting investment options for people who are looking at more than just the “old” bottom line of profits alone. Jan was introduced a year ago on Episode 11, but this time around we get into some more aspects of Socially Responsible Investing, of which Jan’s “green” focus is a component. Jan is approached by Lee who presents himself as a potential client with questions about green investing, community investment options, and how the limits to growth are changing the game of investment strategy.

Episode 22 :: A Common Humanity

2012-02-01T08:01:17Z

Lane Van Ham is our featured guest for this episode. (Okay, you figured it out. He’s related to Lee just like Lauren from episode 16 is. We’re a small organization!) Apparent nepotism not withstanding (no one is geting paid, ahem!), Lane’s new book, A Common Humanity: Ritual, Religion and Immigrant Advocacy in Tucson, Arizona (University of Arizona Press) just came out and stands fine on its own. Having done his graduate studies in the field of immigrant advocacy, this book emerged from that experience.

Episode 21 :: JEM, The Common Good, and Reciprocity

2012-01-01T08:01:29Z

Now that The Common Good Podcast has been going on for about a year and a half now, and now that a new year is starting, Lee and Ed reflect on how JEM has worked reciprocally to serve content and to be shaped by our guests and friends who have left their feedback for either the podcast or the blog. We’d like to see more of that happening and we encourage listeners and readers to comment and add input that we can use within our blog and podcast.

Episode 20 :: Faith Presence at the Occupy Movement

2011-12-01T08:01:13Z

Lots of stuff in this episode because there is much to report on. We plan to diversify content within each episode so as to keep you abreast of things in JEM-land, to reflect on some notable news, and to build community among our listeners and readers. We’re starting to get the hang of this after all this time!

First off, for those of you who are subscribers to this podcast, be apprised that you will need to RE-SUBSCRIBE using this new feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/thecommongoodpodcast

Episode 19 :: When a House is More Than a House

2011-11-01T07:01:40Z

Eventually the American Dream proves itself to be otherwise. For Sung and Myra Sohn, arriving in the States from their native Korea, what awaited them was getting established in architectural studies (Sung—quite a renaissance man) and starting a career in pharmacology (Myra) and then joining with the usual frantic and disjointed rhythms of American life. Eventually they found that life not to their liking as its demands took a toll on family identity and cohesion. Sung envisioned an alternative housing arrangement based on shared life and spiritual practice, not just for his own family but for other residents and guests.

Episode 18 :: Coffee As A Virtue

2011-10-01T07:01:51Z

Stephan von Kolkow and Laurie Britton, co-owners of the cleverly named Cafe Virtuoso, believe in delivering quality coffee and tea products primarily to wholesale customers. Their product line is all organic, and since October is Fair Trade month, we wanted to talk to them about that. How did Fair Trade look to them as businesspeople with a bottom line to mind?

Episode 17 :: The Eden We Can Choose

2011-09-01T07:01:21Z

This month’s show is a conversation between Lee Van Ham and Michael Johnson. Lee and Michael are collaborating on a project based on Lee’s book-in-progress,The Eden We Can Choose: Moving to a One-Earth Economy and the Stories That Get Us There.

Episode 16 :: A Chaplain for a New Century

2011-08-01T07:01:47Z

Lauren Van Ham has had a love affair with the natural world and has found renewal from being there. She has worked in nonprofit and for-profit settings, ministry settings, corporate settings, and has found herself instructing WalMart employees and management in what sustainablity means on a personal level. After some eye opening experiences showing her the great need for someone tuned into the needs of the Earth, she decided to recommit herself as an “eco-chaplain,” even re-ritualizing her ordination to solidify her commitment outwardly.

Episode 15 :: Having Enough

2011-07-01T07:01:34Z

Choosing to live on a budget of around $10,000 a year, Rick Zemlin tells how his consciousness has been shaped, how he determines what is enough for him. It isn’t a prescription for everyone else, but for those who are looking for ways to adjust to new standard of living suitable for One Earth, Rick might be inspiring. He gives conceptual and practical examples of how one can live a dignified life with less, forgoing the things that might distract him from the spiritually-satisfying life he has led for decades now.

Episode 14 :: Last Acts of Caring

2011-06-01T07:01:00Z

This show features Eric Putt and Andrea Deerheart of Thresholds, a mortuary service that provides home- and family-directed funerals that put the human dimension back into taking care of the deceased—a real alternative to the commercial funeral industry, which by intent or accident has usurped the role of loved ones to care-fully tend to the body.

Episode 13 :: Consciousness, Cosmology, and Sheep

2011-05-01T07:01:01Z

Ed Lucas, usually the producer of this podcast, takes his seat on the couch, offering reflections on his recent trip to New Mexico and some of the layers of meaning it is wrapped in. Here are some stories about his time on a ranch, a visit to the Center for Action and Contemplation, visits to a nuclear test site and the Very Large Array of radio telescopes.

Episode 12 :: Teaching Triple Bottom Line

2011-04-01T07:01:00Z

How are business majors being trained for the marketplace in the new context shaped by Earth’s pushback on unlimited growth business models? That’s where The Common Good goes in this episode with guest Harry Watkins, Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at the Fermanian School of Business, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego. Harry tells us about his “a ha” moments that moved him to a passion for incorporating the people and planet into the bottom line, and the drive to get others on board with the triple bottom line.

Episode 11 :: Green Investing

2011-03-01T08:01:00Z

Jan Schalkwijk kicked off his financial advisor career in the traditional mold. But after a sweeping tour of the world in 2005, he came back energized to approach his career life with new vision for how to keep moving people toward sound investments but with an added criterion: to invest in companies and ventures that have the sustainable ethic in mind.

Episode 10 :: Cooperatives

2011-02-01T08:01:00Z

This month our guest is Nancy Cassidy, the General Manager of the Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market, a cooperatively owned retail store in San Diego. OB People’s concentrates in selling vegetarian food, but the cooperative as a business model can be applied to any kind of business that is now run by a corporation. The difference of course, is that shares are held in a one-owner, one share manner and no one can accumulate shares and the influence that goes with them.

Episode 9 :: Sabbath, Solstice, and Spirit

2011-01-01T08:01:00Z

This month, Lee and Ed go it alone and talk about a season that is filled with holidays in so many traditions, most related to the solstice and its cosmological implications of downtime and ultimate promise of renewal. The shorter days are nature’s way of modeling what the ancient Hebrews called the Sabbath: a punctuation in time, a bit of downtime for rest and renewal. Nature heeds this by default, but humans have, particularly in the last century, brushed that pattern aside with the go-go-go schedule operating at all hours on all days of the year.

Episode 8 :: Community. Land. Trust.

2010-12-01T08:01:00Z

This month’s episode features two guests from the San Diego Community Land Trust, where Lee Van Ham is the board chairman. Richard Lawrence, ordained in the Methodist Church, has a long history in social justice work, affordable housing efforts and community building in Chicago and San Diego. Anastasia Brewster, coordinator, has experience in Real Estate consulting and has worked with a Phoenix area CLT before coming to San Diego and working with the local CLT.

Episode 7 :: Fair Trade for Dummies

2010-11-01T07:01:00Z

David Funkhouser of Fair Trade USA (formerly TransFair USA) is our featured guest for this episode which coincides with Fair Trade month (October). David is Strategic Relations coordinator for FTUSA in Oakland and just finished a day of presenting at three universities before coming to meet and talk with us. He talks about his attraction to and involvement in the movement, the origins of FT, the processes for certifying cooperatives that produce the goods, and how FT meets needs of smaller producers better than the so-called free trade market, ensuring that participating farmers and artisans can remain situated in their homelands, as dignified and productive citizens.

Episode 6 :: Education from the Ground Up

2010-10-01T07:01:00Z

Lee’s spouse Juanita is now our first guest on the podcast programs, and in this show she is talking about her work at the San Diego Cooperative Charter School, where their grandson went to school. She liked the role of managing the “compost train” so much that she stayed at the school even after Tyler moved on!

Episode 5 :: JEM gets WWW

2010-09-01T07:01:00Z

This video temporarily leaves the chronology established in the audio podcasts, about components of a new economy.

JEM is in a big place in its history as it plunges headlong into the Web. Leaving the static HTML page behind, we’re now going for the whole Facebook, Twitter, blog, podcast and kitchen sink package to help move our message. So, in order to get ready, we’re trying out our new toys and newfound means to spread the word.

Episode 4 :: Market as a Functional Religion

2010-08-01T07:01:00Z

This show looks at how we can see the Market and the macroeconomic picture as a functional religion. That is, how it takes on deity-like qualities, and is supported by figures akin to high priests, and has with it a narrative mythology of progress, ultimate worth, sin, and so on.

Episode 3 :: Prophetic Imagination, Envisioning a New Economy

2010-07-01T07:01:00Z

Episode 2 :: Metanoia

2010-06-01T07:01:00Z

Episode 1 :: Introducing Jubilee Economics

2010-05-01T07:01:00Z