The People Factor

In this episode, host Jane Turville explores migration by choice in a 2014 interview with Jessica, who had recently moved from Brooklyn, NY to Austin, Texas.  While there are many, many reasons for someone to move by choice, Jessica's story represents the processes and experiences one might go through when moving to a place where personal and social identity have strong ties through past exposure and experience.

In this episode I share my 2015 interview with Dr. Joshua Long, author of Weird City:  Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas.  In our interview, Josh explains the changes growth is bringing to Austin as new wealth moves in and traditional Austin lifestyles are threatened. 

We're off on a great new segment starting with Episode 15!  Migration is the third component of population growth and while it doesn't add people to the planet, migration patterns can significantly impact the places where it grows population as well as the places where migration shrinks population.  It's a fascinating subject and we'll be doing a very deep dive into the many facets and impacts of people on the move! 

In this episode, Jane goes over Place, Population and Politics, her poster which she presented at the 2018 American Psychological Association International Conference.  

The Concept:  Political rhetoric combined with continued news of refugees fleeing war, poverty and the impacts of climate change, continually bombards citizens in all nations, leaving no room for a more thorough examination of the links between traumatic psychological impacts experienced by migrants and the less traumatic, but equally important psychological impacts of changes to place.  Neither do we spend time examining how political identification influences how we experience changes to the environment that has formed our own sense of place.

In this non-empirical study: (a) the importance of sense of place in developing our personal and social identities is defined, (b) two over-arching migration motivators – choice and force – are compared, and (c) attachment to place as an influencer of political response to place change due to migration is investigated.

The relationships between these subjects are explored in order to better understand how linking place, human psychological identity, human migration and political response can open doors to how we understand ourselves and each other in changing socio-physical environments.

Today we’re going to take a look at advocacy on an organizational level. Hannah Evans, Communications Manager for Population Connection joins us to let us know more about their work and their approach to building awareness of the impacts of human overpopulation. Founded as Zero Population Growth by Paul Erlich, author of The Population Bomb, in 1968, Population Connection is America’s oldest organization focused on education about the impacts of overpopulation. With over 50 years of experience working on these issues, Population Connection can give us all a great sense of where today’s discussions are, what the challenges and roadblocks are and how we can all become involved in working towards decreased populations as a strategy to building more equitable and just economies and societies.

To learn more, visit www.populaitonconnection.org . Let me know how things go with your population conversations by sending me a note at  [email protected]. You can also leave me a message on Anchor.

Join us as we kick off our first ever People Factor Earth Day celebration with a wonderful talk about individual advocacy for decreasing population.  Population activist Alexandra Paul joins us to inspire individuals to speak out and start important conversations that are left out of larger environmental events.  Send questions or comments to Jane at [email protected].

This is the continuation of the panel discussion led by Bill Ryerson on September 17, 2020.  To learn more about Population Media Center, please visit www.populationmedia.org.

We are honored to rebroadcast Part 1 of Confronting Crisis 2050. On September 17, 2020, PMC President and Founder, Bill Ryerson, led an online event titled Confronting Crisis 2050. The event was a panel discussion of experts inspired by the recent film, ENDGAME 2050 which addresses the dire state of the planet including six key areas: the sixth mass extinction, ocean acidification, fish-less (plastic-filled) oceans, human population growth, climate crisis, and actions the public can take. Panelists included the creator of the film, Dr. Sofia Pineda Ochoa, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb; Reverend Itang Young, Faith-based Environmental Activist; and Professor Yael Wolinsky-Nahmias of Environmental Studies and Political Science at USC. Their discussion centers on the challenges Endgame 2050 exposed, including the current ecological and existential crises facing the planet; predictions of what the world will be like by 2050; and the roles human can play in slowing the environmental breakdown.

Join host Jane Turville to sum up the relationship between our need for intangible natural resources and human overpopulation.

Part 3 of this episode concludes my interview with Dr. Susan Clayton.  In this final part, we examine environmental attitudes and how they do or don't manifest themselves in our actions toward nature.  We'll also explore how behavioral change can be encouraged in order for our environmental identities and attitudes to incite environmental stewardship.

Part 2 continues my interview with Dr. Susan Clayton.  In this part, Susan and I discuss the different responses humans experience regarding natural vs built or man-made environments. We’ll also look on of my all time favorite subjects, sense of place and touch on the immigrant experience of losing place.