#282  How to Save the World – tipping points of social diffusion with Katie Patrick of Hello World Labs 

apple podcasts

stitcher

spotify

google-play

you tube

‘If you’re not changing the numbers, you’re not changing the world.’ So says this week’s guest, Katie Patrick. Katie Patrick is a Silicon Valley based environmental engineer, climate action designer, and author of How to Save the World: How to Make Changing the World the Greatest Game We’ve Ever Played, now taught in Harvard University’s graduate program and top recommended reading material by UNEP.

Katie specializes in designing innovative apps, dashboards, and campaigns that drive environmental action by leveraging insights from behavioural science and game design. Her work combines rigorous research with creative execution to develop solutions that inspire sustainable behaviors and measurable impact. She has advised the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Google, the U.S. State Department, the University of California, the European Commission, Dassault Systèmes, the Institute for the Future, Magic Leap, and Stanford University, as well as numerous startups focused on behavior design for environmental action.

Katie is passionate about biophilic design and envisions a future shaped by ecotopian principles. Her thought leadership has been recognized globally; she delivered a TEDx talk in 2020 and spoke at the UN General Assembly in 2021 on the role of creativity, optimism, and imagination in environmental change.

In our conversation, we range wide and deep through and across the ways each of us can bridge the divides in our cultures and bring change to our local worlds – and thus to the wider world, exploring the power of gamification, evidence base and feedback loops to create real, enduring change.

In Conversation

You may also like these recent podcasts

Laws of Nature, Laws with Nature: Nature on Board with Alexandra Pimor of the Earth Law Center

Laws of Nature, Laws with Nature: Nature on Board with Alexandra Pimor of the Earth Law Center

Across the world, our legal systems are crumbling, the rule of sane law dismantled in real time. Yet at the same time, rivers, mountains, bees are being granted legal rights in ways that would have been thought impossible even a few years ago.  And in boardrooms around the planet, C-suites and businesses are increasingly looking to the natural world for guidance on how to be in ways that heal the web of life. So how do we make this work? How do we ensure that it’s not just another layer of corporate greenwash? 

What ought we be? Hope, despair and the resilience of life with Professor David Farrier

What ought we be? Hope, despair and the resilience of life with Professor David Farrier

We live in an ever-changing world, but it is not always obvious what kinds of evolutionary change we are seeing in the broader web of life: in physiology, behaviour, language – and human responses to these.  How plastic is the natural world? How resilient?  How capable – or not – of adapting to the chaos of the climate emergency, the cascade of toxins in our air, soil and water, to the plastics, heavy metals and other detritus we throw out into the world as if the entire planet were one vast sewer for waste we forget about as soon as we’ve had the dopamine drip that acquiring it evoked?

Seeing Round Corners: Upgrading Democracy with Suzette Masters and Dr John Izzo

Seeing Round Corners: Upgrading Democracy with Suzette Masters and Dr John Izzo

If we ever had a genuine democracy (and I would argue we never have) then it is clearly disintegrating now, along with the entire system with which it was entwined.  Everyone agrees we need something new, what we don’t necessarily agree on across the board is the design of this new thing.  This week’s guests are two people who spend their lives imagining how things might be different, particularly in the US, where even the pretence of democracy has been abandoned.

STAY IN TOUCH

For a regular supply of ideas about humanity's next evolutionary step, insights into the thinking behind some of the podcasts,  early updates on the guests we'll be having on the show - AND a free Water visualisation that will guide you through a deep immersion in water connection...sign up here.

(NB: This is a free newsletter - it's not joining up to the Membership!  That's a nice, subtle pink button on the 'Join Us' page...) 

Share This