Ready Living Podcast

Drawing from his debut book The Seven Rules of Trust, Internet entrepreneur and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales delves into why trust is essential to a well-functioning society.

He argues that the erosion of trust, spanning government, media, technology, and industry, has become a national crisis that’s destabilized personal and public life alike. Fueled by partisanship, sensationalism, and algorithms, we’re mired in an environment where division is rewarded and nuance often punished.

He says trust must be deliberately built, actively defended, and lived every day — and offers a roadmap for making that happen.

He invites everyone to start where they are and model civility in public life and online spaces, reward honesty even when it’s inconvenient, seek out perspectives that challenge their own, and demand accountability from leaders, the media, and platforms that shape public discourse.

Highlighting the human side of trust, he reminds us that people are born to connect, and that civility is not a sign of weakness but of strength. He reflects on Wikipedia’s core principle of ‘assume good faith,’ a simple idea that invites people to see the best in others instead of assuming the worst.

He also underscores that trust creates long-term benefits for companies and institutions. Those that choose fairness and transparency, even when it costs them in the short term, build reputations that endure.

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In this Ready Living Podcast interview, award-winning problem solver and change agent Art Chang examines one of the most important questions of our time: How can we save democracy and strengthen the moral and civic foundations of our country before it’s too late?

Born in Atlanta, Georgia to Korean War refugee parents during Jim Crow, his early years were marked by isolation, racism, and domestic violence. He transformed those experiences into purposeful action, working towards pursuing a more just and equitable world.

Arguing that democracy isn’t self-sustaining and instead requires participation, accountability, and an unwavering belief in our shared humanity, he is an outspoken advocate for reimagining political, social, and educational systems so they serve all Americans.

He points out how America’s diversity should be one of its greatest strengths, but that fear of difference, the language of “othering,” and the dehumanization of entire groups of people is dividing communities and corroding society.

A former managing director at JPMorganChase and a 2021 candidate for New York City mayor, he has continually sought to repair what’s broken in our institutions. His leadership reflects not just policy expertise, but also deep moral clarity and a belief that the strength of democracy lies in the dignity and participation of every person.

As an institutional entrepreneur using technology to transform broken systems, he founded a dozen tech startups, co-created NYC Votes, an initiative of the NYC Campaign Finance Board, and built Casebook, the nation’s first web-based child welfare system.

He argues that democracy can’t survive polite neutrality, and that preserving it requires taking necessary action. In a time of democratic peril, he challenges listeners to confront the myths that divide us and to imagine an America that lives up to its promise.

Art is a lecturer at Columbia University, Board Chair of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, and holds a BA in Women’s Studies from Yale University and an MBA in Finance from New York University.

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In this Ready Living Podcast episode, sociology professor Corey Moss-Pech, PhD, dismantles one of higher education’s most enduring myths: that only ‘practical’ majors lead to worthwhile jobs.

He shares details from his new book Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-Level Jobs, where he followed 91 students across business, engineering, English, and communications from their senior year to their first year in the workforce.

He reveals that while engineering and business majors tend to land middle-class jobs more directly, those jobs often involve routine clerical tasks that leave graduates frustrated and unfulfilled. Meanwhile, liberal arts students, despite having a harder entry into the job market and lower starting salaries, are more likely to apply the very skills they learned in college and report greater job satisfaction.

He also shares how class background and gender shape the college-to-career journey. Competitive-entry programs like business and engineering tend to reflect students with stronger academic preparation and family resources, while open-entry majors like English and communications draw a broader range of students, some of whom face starkly different opportunities after graduation. More privileged students can hold out for the ‘right job’ or accept lower-paid but meaningful roles, while working-class students often need to accept the first job that pays the bills, whether or not it matches their aspirations.

One of his most important findings is the pivotal role internships play in securing full-time post-graduate employment. Through well-funded university programs and employer partnerships, business and engineering majors benefit from what he calls ‘career conveyor belt internships’ that create seamless pipelines from classroom to full-time work. In contrast, liberal arts students often end up in internships that are disconnected from hiring networks. He points out that it’s these structural supports, and not students’ actual skills or drive, that explain the post-grad job divide.

Corey challenges the conventional wisdom about which degrees lead to success. By highlighting both the hidden advantages and overlooked strengths across fields of study, he makes a compelling case for rethinking how we define the value of particular majors in today’s workforce.

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In this Ready Living Podcast episode, veterinarian Cliff Redford, better known as "Dr. Cliff, Worldwide Vet,” shares extraordinary stories of animal care and rescue around the globe.

Seemingly open to any challenge, he’s helped save a giant fruit bat tangled above seven lanes of traffic in India, crawled into an underground cave in Jamaica to track endangered bats, and performed surgery without benefit of X-rays in the Arctic Circle.

He also opens up about the sobering realities of volunteering in war-torn Ukraine, where, amidst ongoing bombing, he worked in a shuttered animal shelter turned makeshift animal hospital. His time there left such a mark that he commemorated it with a special tattoo, a permanent reminder of resilience and sacrifice.

He offers a behind-the-scenes look at his award-winning documentary Dr. Cliff Worldwide Vet, which follows him and his daughter Emily through India during the festival of Diwali, capturing both heartwarming animal rescues and life-or-death surgeries.

Alongside global adventures, he shares practical pet health advice every owner should know, such as how to read a dog’s tail language, what common foods and plants are toxic to cats and dogs, and which basic first-aid skills can save a beloved pet’s life.

Whether caring for companion animals at his Ontario clinic, treating wildlife at Canada’s busiest rehabilitation facility, or volunteering in remote corners of the world, Cliff exemplifies how veterinary medicine is about adaptability and courage as much as skill.

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What if your next vacation isn’t just a source of adventure or relaxation, but an opportunity to truly impact others’ lives as well? Christopher Hill, founder of Hands Up Holidays and Impact Destinations, aims to help his guests do just that.

In this Ready Living Podcast episode, he shares how a trip to South Africa over twenty years ago changed the trajectory of his life from working as a successful London investment banker to becoming an entrepreneur pioneering luxury travel with purpose.

Rolling up his sleeves alongside local residents to help build a home for a family in a Cape Town township opened his eyes to the possibility of blending philanthropy with leisure. This sparked his desire to empower others to give back in impactful, authentic ways while simultaneously enjoying the beauty of luxury travel.

His philanthropy volunteering model ensures each trip is fully personalized, designed to match travelers’ interests, ages, and philanthropic goals. Guests can engage in a variety of activities such as helping build eco-friendly stoves that protect people from burns and respiratory illness, participating in rhinoceros relocations, teaching in classrooms, and supporting coral reef restoration.

Families in particular have embraced these vacations, finding them powerful ways to instill values such as gratitude, empathy, and humility in their children. As he explains, children who help release baby turtles in Mexico or assist in building accessible bathrooms in Bali return home with life lessons that textbooks can’t teach.

Looking ahead, he sees growing demand for sustainable and meaningful travel experiences, arguing that luxury is not at odds with giving back. He envisions a future where luxury travel empowers guests to become part of something bigger than themselves.

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Drawing on years of prescribing ‘books as medicine’ to people around the world, bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud reveals how bibliotherapy can offer comfort, insight, and a way forward through life’s many challenges.

Central to her work is an unwavering belief in fiction’s transformative power. When reading a book deeply, whether alone in a quiet room, nestled in a dedicated reading nook, or even when on the move, reading allows us to step into another world and emerge changed.

Unlike nonfiction, which typically appeals to the conscious mind, fiction engages us at a deeper, subconscious level and invites us to become the characters we read about, experiencing both their joys and sorrows. In doing so, we change how we see ourselves and the world around us.

For a book to be therapeutic it needs to offer more than just a great story, Ella argues; it should also resonate with the reader’s personal circumstances and challenges. As a bibliotherapist, her recommendations span modern literature, enduring classics, poetry, and even graphic novels, each chosen with the unique needs of the reader in mind.

She also highlights how children's and young adult books can hold real value for adult readers, noting that they contain profound stories worth engaging with even in later years.

While arguing that some books should be approached with caution – differentiating between content that is heavy yet ultimately meaningful versus unnecessarily hideous imagery that’s emotionally scarring – she notes the comfort fiction can provide in times of uncertainty.

In an age of near-constant digital distraction, she champions reading as a grounding practice that builds character, increases emotional intelligence, and even contributes to physical health. She suggests keeping a notebook to nurture a richer reading life amid the noise of modern life.

Whether someone is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic reader, she invites them to embrace reading as a profoundly personal, sensory, and meaningful act.

Ella is the co-author, along with Susan Elderkin, of The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies and The Story Cure: An A-Z of Books to Keep Kids Happy, Healthy and Wise. She also wrote The Art of Mindful Reading and 30 Second Literature: The 50 most important forms, genres and styles, each explained in half a minute.

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Award-winning Australian travel writer and author Louise Southerden has spent over two decades venturing to some of the most awe-inspiring corners of the planet, from canoeing in Madagascar and kayaking in the Arctic and Antarctica, to hiking in Nepal, and expedition-cruising in the Galapagos and the Russian Far East.

In this Ready Living Podcast episode, she speaks about her fear of becoming trapped in a life that didn’t suit her and how freedom was a non-negotiable necessity.

She opens up about the profound impact her mother’s death had on her in her late twenties, describing the experience as one that stripped life down to its essentials. She recalls the clarity that followed and how everything unimportant suddenly fell away, becoming the catalyst to reimagine her life.

In a culture that encourages us to incessantly accumulate and consume, she found liberation in paring back. From traveling light with only a backpack to stripping her life down to the essentials, she embraced the power that often comes through simplicity.

She shares her thoughts on how freedom is about letting go of the expectations and assumptions that no longer serve us, and deliberately choosing to live differently in order to create a life rooted in curiosity and authenticity.

The most transformative journey she undertook was building and living in her own tiny house, which she recounted in the new book TINY: A memoir about love, letting go and a very small house. Constructed during the emotional turbulence of a relationship ending, her home became a literal and symbolic structure for embracing inner peace.

Louise has been Australia's Travel Writer of the Year a record five times and won the Australian Society of Travel Writers’ Responsible Tourism Award six times. Her past travel stories and posts can be found on her blog No Impact Girl and her Facebook page. In addition to TINY, Louise is also the author of Surf's Up: The Girl's Guide to Surfing, Adventures on Earth, Japan: A working holiday guide, and A month of simple Sundays. Her tiny house has been featured on the international YouTube channel Living Big In A Tiny House.

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What if our gardens could be more than simply beautiful? What if they could also serve as shared spaces and vital habitat for pollinators and other wildlife?

In this Ready Living Podcast episode, nature writer and habitat consultant Nancy Lawson, author of the books “The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife” and “Wildscape: Trilling Chipmunks, Beckoning Blooms, Salty Butterflies, and other Sensory Wonders of Nature,” invites us reconsider what it means to care for nature.

Rather than imposing human design over natural processes, she suggests letting native plants lead the way. This doesn’t just restore habitat, it also strengthens a sense of connection to the world beyond ourselves. She says we need to create a deeper understanding of why planting native species matters, especially for insects like butterflies, moths, and native bees that have evolved in tandem with local flora. It’s a respectful kind of gardening that prioritizes ecological relationships.

She explains why removing fallen leaves destroys the habitat of insects like butterflies, moths, beetles, and ground-nesting queen bumblebee; why chemical sprays marketed as "natural" aren’t truly pollinator-safe; and how people can navigate the sometimes tricky dynamics between environmentally conscious homeowners and their HOAs.

For everyone who wants to coexist more harmoniously with the natural world around us, Nancy explains how our everyday choices can support the delicate ecosystems right outside our doors and offers us a practical path forward. She reminds us that we don’t need to choose between beauty and biodiversity, or between aesthetics and ethics.

Whether you have acres of land, a suburban yard, or a modest balcony garden, she offers simple ideas for creating wildlife-friendly landscape habitats. She makes clear that regardless of where we live, through humane gardening, everyone can help minimize habitat fragmentation and species decline.

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Information and digital literacy are essential human rights crucial for building resilient societies, says internationally recognized digital transformation expert Dr. Danica Radovanović, author and editor of the book “Digital Literacy and Inclusion: Stories, Platforms, Communities” in this recent Ready Living Podcast episode.

While nearly a third of the world still lives without internet connectivity and far more remain digitally excluded due to a lack of skills, resources, or support, she dismantles the myth that internet access alone equals inclusion.

She argues that critical thinking, privacy awareness, and ethical participation are needed to effectively navigate a world increasingly shaped by misinformation and disinformation, AI-generated falsehoods, and algorithmic manipulation.

She offers grounded, practical strategies for positive action, sharing how each of us can help build a more inclusive and safer internet. Whether through community-led workshops, media literacy programs for youth, equitable tech policies, or simply practicing kindness and accountability online, she says that the online realm is impacted by the daily actions and choices we all make.

She speaks to the growing human need for real connection and reflects on a growing hunger for authentic, in-person experiences, especially in a post-pandemic world marked by digital fatigue. She argues that authentic human creations, versus artificial AI ones, may soon become sought-after luxuries.

She encourages people to embrace lifelong learning, practice self-knowledge, and recognize that every online action is a chance to shape a digital world worth living in.

One of the most powerful moments in the episode is when she shares how she recently learned about her grandfather’s imprisonment in a Nazi camp during World War II. For Danica, the act of writing about her family’s history is a way of transforming trauma and reclaiming the narrative, and underscores her deep commitment to human dignity and inclusivity.

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Narcissists lack empathy, pathologically lie, and thrive on manipulating and controlling others. Their playbook includes gaslighting, withholding emotionally, triangulating, exerting financial control, and sowing chaos and confusion.

In this Ready Living Podcast episode, narcissistic abuse recovery coach Lynn Catalano shares the red flags of narcissistic abuse, unpacks the stages of the narcissistic abuse cycle, and explains how victims can begin to reclaim their lives.

She reveals the truth behind narcissists’ arrested development and how they quickly move from seemingly idolizing their victims to mistreating them. She offers concrete examples to help listeners identify toxic behaviors and understand how these play out across relationships, especially within families and romantic partnerships.

This episode isn’t just about recognizing narcissistic abuse, it's also about empowering victims. For anyone struggling with feelings of confusion, shame, or isolation that often accompany narcissistic abuse, Lynn provides guidance and hope. She explains that victims have the right to set boundaries, say no, and walk away. Her insights empower survivors to rebuild their lives.

Lynn is the author of the book Wrecking Ball Relationships: How to Identify, Live With, or Leave the Narcissist in Your Life, creator of Rebuilding After the Wrecking Ball: 30-Day Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Journal, and a narcissistic abuse recovery course creator. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Boston University and a law degree from University of Buffalo Law School.

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