Knox Pods

In The ripple effect : the fate of freshwater in the twenty-first century, Alex Prud'homme explores how people in the U.S. and around the world use and abuse water, and how our actions impact the earth's limited water supply.

Steve Scarborough, one of the founders of Dagger Canoe Company, discusses the book and his views on the problem of water quality. Scarborough has been active in river and water issues for 40 years. He is a former board member of the American Canoe Association and now sits on the board of Conservation Fisheries. He is working on a project to establish conservation easements on White's Creek Gorge in Rhea and Roane counties. (Recorded January 18, 2012)

Elandria Williams of the Highlander Research and Education Center discusses My work is that of conservation : an environmental biography of George Washington Carver by Mark D. Hersey in this Brown Bag, Green Book podcast. Carver's efforts to improve the lot of Alabama’s poorest farmers let him to promote agricultural practices that were considerably “greener” than is often assumed today. (Recorded February 15, 2012)

City of Knoxville Neighborhood Coordinator David Massey talks about the impact of blight on a community as he reviews Bringing buildings back: from abandoned properties to community assets: a guidebook for policymakers and practitioners by Alan Mallach. 

“Mallach is a principal in the Center for Community Progress, a nationally acclaimed team of experts who have assisted the City of Knoxville and other Tennessee cities in efforts to adopt a more proactive approach to abandoned, blighted and vacant properties,” Massey says. “His work is exhaustive in its detailed explanation of the tools and best practices used across the country, including Knoxville, to combat blight.” 

In Bringing Buildings Back, Mallach pulls together insights from law, economics, planning, and design to address all sides of the problem, from how abandonment can be prevented to how best to bring these properties back into productive reuse. (Recorded April 18, 2012)

You may be sick of hearing about climate change, but it might also be making you sick. Dr. Agricola Odoi, University of Tennessee Associate Professor of Veterinary Medicine thinks about the impact of climate change on health as analyzed in Changing planet, changing health: how the climate crisis threatens our health and what we can do about it by Paul R. Epstein in this Brown Bag, Green Book program.

“Paul Epstein, a physician, and Dan Ferber, a journalist, team up to discuss relationships between changing climate and changes in the occurrence of different health problems through stories of real people from different regions across the globe," Dr. Odoi says. The author explores the connections between global warming and cholera, malaria, lyme disease, asthma, and other health threats. Most importantly, the book offers innovative solutions for shaping a healthy global economic order in the twenty-first century. (Recorded May 16, 2012)

Mike Edwards, CEO and President of the Knoxville Chamber, leads a community discussion of the book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman. In his groundbreaking book, Thomas Friedman discusses what he sees as America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since the September 11 terrorist attacks, as well as the global environmental crisis. Friedman explains why he believes this is a great challenge, but also a great opportunity—one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth, it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.

Edwards says he chose Hot, Flat, and Crowded because it "hits the nail on the head. We're facing a big uphill climb, but fortunately, in East Tennessee we've got some world class resources to deal with the issues ahead of us." (Recorded March 11, 2009)

The City of Knoxville’s Deputy to the Mayor and Chief Policy Officer Dr. William Lyons discusses the book The signal and the noise : why so many predictions fail-- but some don't by Nate Silver. (Recorded January 16, 2013)

Silver is the statistician behind The New York Times' FiveThirtyEight election blog. In his book, Silver examines successful forecasters on the topics of hurricanes, baseball, poker, pro basketball and Capitol Hill.

"Nate Silver is a master of highlighting and simplifying the assumptions that enable our ability to forecast physical, social, political outcomes," says Dr. Lyons. "In this insightful book he notes the importance of human judgment as a valuable supplement to the use of probability-based models to understand and explain some of the most important recent events.”

In this podcast Knoxville News Sentinel editor Jack McElroy summarizes and comments on the book Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond. (Recorded June 19, 2013)

"The subject matter of Jared Diamond’s Collapse is, in some ways, the opposite of his earlier Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel," McElroy says. "That book dealt with the development of human civilization. This more recent book looks at examples of societal collapse. Both works are ruthlessly analytical, and that makes Collapse especially thought-provoking, and frightening. As you read the book, it becomes all too clear that the factors confronted by people in such isolated societies as Easter Island or Pitcairn Island are the same basic issues we are now facing on our much larger but ultimately just-as-isolated planet."

Dr. Nissa Dahlin-Brown of the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy discusses The death and life of the great American school system : how testing and choice are undermining education by Diane Ravitch. (Recorded May 15, 2013)

Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education and a leader in the drive to create a national curriculum, examines her career in education reform and repudiates positions that she once staunchly advocated. Drawing on over forty years of research and experience, Ravitch critiques today’s most popular ideas for restructuring schools including privatization, standardized testing, punitive accountability, and the feckless multiplication of charter schools. She shows conclusively why the business model is not an appropriate way to improve schools. Using examples from major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, and San Diego, Ravitch makes the case that public education today is in peril.

Elizabeth Wright, Director of Women’s Advocacy and Written Communications at Young Women's Christian Association Knoxville, discusses The new feminist agenda: defining the next revolution for women, work, and family by Madeleine Kunin. (Recorded April 17, 2013)

Jay Leutze talks about his book Stand up that mountain: the battle to save one small community in the wilderness along the Appalachian Trail, that tells the story of how his neighbors formed a coalition to save a treasured mountain peak from destruction by a mining company. (Recorded March 20, 2013)

One day the author got a call from fourteen-year-old Ashley and her Aunt Ollie. Ashley and Ollie said they had evidence that Clark Stone Company was violating the Mining Act of 1971 up on Belview Mountain, one of the most remote and wildest places in the eastern United States. They wanted Jay, a non-practicing attorney, to sue the company to put a stop to their mining operation. Upon meeting Ashley and Ollie, he knew he was embarking on a course that would change his life. He formed a plaintiff group and sued the state of North Carolina for violations of its own mining laws. He and Ashley's family were eventually joined by several national conservation groups seeking to save Belview Mountain and protect the Appalachian Trail in one of its most scenic and fragile stretches. This is an underdog David vs. Goliath story with lots of good guys you love, and bad guys you love to hate, told by one of the good guys.