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 Michael Franti on Politics and Music: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Michael Franti has never been shy about his politics. The latest album by Franti and his band Spearhead, called All Rebel Rockers, mixes the songwriter’s progressive-minded lyrics with some of the best music of his career. It’s also been his most commercially successful album, showing that people are hungry for consciousness-raising music.

In the latest episode of the UtneCast, senior editor Keith Goetzman talks with Franti about recording All Rebel Rockers in Jamaica, Franti’s politics of inclusion, and his music’s role in rallying progressives.

You can listen to the interview above, or to subscribe to the UtneCast for free through iTunes, click here.

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 Podcast Interview with Irena Salina and Maude Barlow on the Global Water Crisis: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The world is facing a potentially catastrophic water crisis. More than a billion people currently lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Multinational corporations including Nestlé, Vivendi, and Coca Cola are buying up the world’s fresh water supply and selling it back to people at a profit. A movement is growing, however, opposing the tide of privatization, wrestling control away from the corporations, and working to bring water to everyone.

The documentary FLOW: For Love of Water explores this fight over who owns the world’s water. For this episode of the UtneCast, I spoke with Irena Salina, director of the film, and Maude Barlow, one of the world’s most prominent activist against the privatization of water.

You can listen to the interview above, or to subscribe to the UtneCast for free through iTunes, click here.

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 UtneCast 40: Gaining Ground: From Green Building to Green Cities / Review: Bachata Roja: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode, we look at what it will take to scale up the green building movement into a full-blown green cities movement. You’ll hear excerpts from Leif Utne’s interviews with several observers and practitioners of green building and urban planning — including Paul Hawken, Pamela Mang, Bill Reed and John Knott — who presented at the Gaining Ground summit on sustainable urban development, held last June in Victoria, British Columbia. [Photo: Craig Jewell]

Also, don’t forget to check out the feature package on green building in the November/December issue of Utne Reader.

And this week Utne Reader assistant editor Bennett Gordon reviews the new album Bachata Roja, a compilation of Dominican music from the 1960s.

Leif’s Last Episode
This will be Leif Utne’s last episode as host of the UtneCast, at least for now. He’s moving on to other projects. You can follow Leif’s ongoing adventures via his blog, Foglio’s Field Notes.

For future UtneCasts from the editors of Utne Reader, please stay tuned.

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 UtneCast 39: Marnita’s Table: Social Networking Across Cultures / Levon Helm's Latest: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode you’ll hear Leif Utne’s recent conversation with Marnita Schroedl, creator and host of Marnita’s Table, a cross-cultural dialogue and social-networking project that is, as she puts it, “spreading world peace, one meal at a time.” Marnita’s Table is the subject of a feature section on conversation in the November/December Utne Reader, including the articles A Feast of Ideas and Dish It Up, the latter about how to host your own dinner-dialogue gathering.

And this week Utne Reader senior editor Keith Goetzman reviews the new album Dirt Farmer from Levon Helm.

Episode Sponsor: Mother Earth Coffee & Tea

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 UtneCast 33: Chris Jordan Runs the Numbers / New Roky Erickson Doc: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode, host Leif Utne speaks with photographer Chris Jordan, creator of the series Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait featured in the Sept/Oct Utne Reader. Jordan uses large-scale digital images to bring to life dry statistics about things like the environment, public health, and war. One image, for example, stands 16 feet tall and 32 feet wide, and depicts 9 million ABC blocks, representing the number of American children without health insurance. Jordan also discusses the recent Storyfield Conference, a gathering of storytellers from various disciplines, exploring how to change the dominant narrative in our culture–the “story field”–from competition, exploitation and destruction to something more life-affirming.

And this week, contributing editor Joe Hart reviews the film You’re Gonna Miss Me, about legendary rock-n-roll pioneer Roky Erickson.

Episode sponsor: Mother Earth Coffee & Tea

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 UtneCast 32: The New Elders: Eric Utne & Richard Leider / DiCaprio's 11th Hour: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode, UtneCast host Leif Utne looks at the changing role of elders in America, with guests Richard Leider and Eric Utne. Leider is a consultant, speaker, and author of many books, including Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose. Utne is the founder of Utne Reader and executive director of the Earth Corps for Global Service, a new initiative that aims to become a sort of Peace Corps for the whole earth. In the September/October Utne Reader, editor David Schimke interviews the two of them about mentoring, wisdom, and their generation’s remaining potential. Last week, Leif followed up by phone to give them a chance to elaborate even further, and to get the skinny on an exciting new intergenerational initiative they’re cooking up.

And this week, assistant editor Bennett Gordon reviews Leonardo DiCaprio’s new global warming documentary The 11th Hour (watch the film’s trailer and video extras here on the UtneCast blog).

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 UtneCast 28: The Future of Fair Trade / How Green is Your City? / Cuban Funk: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this episode, we take a look at the future of Fair Trade. It’s about much more than just coffee and chocolate. But what is it really? And where is it headed? Host Leif Utne talks to a student activist promoting Fair Trade; a spokesperson from TransFair USA, the group that certifies Fair Trade products in this country; and two companies that are pushing the movement in new directions — Oké USA, which imports Fair Trade fruit, and Fair Trade Sports, which imports soccer, volleyball, rugby and other sports balls.

Then you’ll hear from Warren Karlenzig, chief strategy officer at SustainLane and lead author of the recent book How Green Is Your City?

And Bennett Gordon reviews a sizzling new compilation of 1970s Cuban funk music titled “Si, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba,” available on the Canadian label Waxing Deep Records.

Episode sponsor: Equal Exchange

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 UtneCast 25: Paul Hawken on Building the World\'s Largest Movement: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Feature Interview: In episode 25, my guest is Paul Hawken — activist, green businessman, eco-philosopher, and author of two of the seminal works on the green economy: The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism. His latest book is just out, titled Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being; And Why No One Saw it Coming. Hawken makes the case that the disparate movements for ecological restoration and social justice are merging into one massive global movement. In the book, he attempts to count and classify both the number of organizations in this movement (he estimates about 1.5 million) and the diversity of issues they work on (at least 400).

To help build the connective tissue that ties this movement together, Hawken’s nonprofit Natural Capital Institute has just launched a related project called WISER Earth (WISER = World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility), which aims to build an interactive directory of all 1.5 million groups in this global movement. The institute’s staff has seeded the database with profiles of over 140,000 organizations. But realizing they couldn’t possibly do all the research or legwork needed to grow the database to include all the groups they believe are out there, NCI has opened up the system so that, like Wikipedia, anyone can create or edit an organization’s profile. And they have added tools that make it easy for organizations to use the database for their own purposes. After WISER Earth gets up and running, NCI plans to launch WISER Business and WISER Government, as clearinghouses for information about best practices in sustainability for businesspeople and policymakers.

Music Review: Joe Hart joins us again with a review of the new album by his newest drug of choice: Los Angeles-based crooner Eleni Mandell.

Housekeeping Note: Starting today, we’re posting new episodes on Wednesdays, a day earlier than before, to coordinate the schedule with our weekly online publication, the Utne Web Watch, which also goes out on Wednesdays.

Episode sponsor: Mother Earth Coffee & Tea