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The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau

A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.

Our Climate Anxieties Can Actually Help Us Save the Planet: Stanford Fellow Britt Wray on Lavin’s The Big Idea

If the thought of the climate crisis fills you with dread and fear, you’re not alone. Climate anxiety is becoming more and more widespread, but Stanford Fellow Britt Wray has good news: these difficult feelings are actually the key to finding hope and fighting for the future of our planet. Britt sat down with Lavin’s Charles Yao to discuss her new book, her research, and practical steps we can take to stay sane and find purpose.

Britt has spent years researching the emotional toll of the climate crisis, and in her vital book Generation Dread, she shows us how we can work through these feelings and emerge on the other side ready to act. Naomi Klein, award-winning author of On Fire and This Changes Everything, said, “If you are ready to feel through eco-anxiety, grieve what’s lost, and imagine what comes next, read this courageous book.”

In her insightful interview with Lavin, Britt reveals the scope of climate anxiety (it’s more widespread than you think!), explains how we can make meaning out of suffering, and provides us with practical steps to find purpose in an age of anxiety. “It’s possible to develop more flexible ways of relating to the crisis that aren’t about splitting it off into doom vs. naively optimistic,” Britt says. “That gray zone is where the most strength can be mined from.”

Watch Britt on Lavin’s The Big Idea here:

 

The Big Idea | Britt Wray | Episode 1

Patti Smith in The Guardian UK: “It Was The Impulse to Write That Led Me to Singing.”

In this weekend’s Guardian, Patti Smith opened up on everything from irony to artistic integrity to motherhood — a nice thematic timeline cutting across her life and work. Here are some highlights:

Patti on artistic integrity:

When she was still stacking books a couple of people “saw potential in me and offered me quite a bit of money to do records as early as 1971, ‘72, but not in my own way. They would have a vision of me – a pop vision, or how they could transform me, and the money didn’t tempt me.” Was there ever a moment when that was quite a hard choice? “No.” The answer is sharp, immediate. “If somebody said I’ll give you a million dollars, but you have to go against your own grain, you just have to do what I say – it would take me one second. I’ve never been tortured by something like that. Tormented more about what line to use in a poem, or the right word to use in a sentence. All I’ve ever wanted, since I was a child, was to do something wonderful.”

Patti on her desire to become an author:

Increasingly, books became her world, and by extension, wanting to write them. “Everything else grew out of that. More than anything that’s been the thread through my life – the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it’s taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing. I’m not a musician. I never thought of performing in a rock’n’roll band. I was just drawn in. It was like being called to duty – I was called to duty, and I did my duty as best as I could.”

Read more about keynote speaker Patti Smith