425 episodes listed below
Regenerative business without the shortcut thinking.
Next Economy Now is a business podcast about replacing business-as-usual habits with practical regenerative models. Recent conversations move from hemp textiles and reusable packaging to worker ownership, climate timelines, and the daily work of building organizations that match stated values.
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Next Economy Now is an editorially serious business podcast about economic transition. Its center of gravity is not market disruption for its own sake, but the slower work of making enterprises, communities, and supply chains answer to ecological and social values. Recent episodes show that range clearly. A conversation with Brianna Kilcullen looks at textiles through farmers, factory workers, hemp, apparel production, and the consumer’s distance from where clothing is made. The show uses that distance as a business question. What would it take for a product to support a healthier supply chain instead of hiding the cost of production? Another episode with Tom Szaky turns from recycling to the deeper problem of disposability. The argument is practical rather than purist: reuse has to address convenience and affordability, because those are the reasons people keep choosing throwaway systems. That kind of tension gives the show its texture. It wants transformation, but it also respects the messy steps that make transformation possible. In the conversation with Kevin Bayuk, the frame widens to theory of change, climate anxiety, worker ownership, values-based invoicing, and the long memory of the podcast itself. The language can be movement-oriented, with phrases like regenerative, bioregional, equitable, democratic, and whole systems appearing as guiding commitments. Still, the best moments are grounded. Farms, packaging, socks, shoes, climate impacts, learning cohorts, and local communities keep the ideas from floating away. The tone is warm, earnest, and deliberate. It is built for listeners who want business to be accountable to life beyond quarterly performance. It also suits entrepreneurs, artists, community leaders, and other listeners already asking how values move from mission statements into operating models. There is urgency here, especially around climate and business-as-usual systems. There is also patience. Next Economy Now argues, implicitly and repeatedly, that a different economy is not a branding exercise. It is a set of choices, relationships, and structures that have to be practiced in public.
Made for: For entrepreneurs, artists, community leaders, values-driven operators, and curious listeners who want business conversations grounded in ecology, equity, ownership, and practical systems change.
What sets it apart: The show connects broad economic theory to tangible operating questions: who farms, who makes, who owns, what gets reused, and how local communities move from values to action.
Next Economy Now highlights the leaders that are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, democratic, equitable, racially-just, and whole-systems approach to creating the new economy. Popular guests include Vincent Stanley (Patagonia), Winona LaDuke (White Earth Reservation), Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations), Autumn Brown (AORTA), Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics), and Aaron Tanaka (Center for Economic Democracy). Learn more at www.lifteconomy.com
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear, grounded look at hemp, consumer action, and supply-chain relationships in regenerative apparel.
Brianna frames regenerative apparel around a gap many shoppers do not often get to see: the distance between a finished piece of clothing and the farmers and factory workers behind it.
A clear look at disposability as the deeper problem, with Loop positioned as a practical reuse model for packaged goods.
Disposability is framed as a systems problem, not a mess that recycling can clean up by itself. Tom Szaky's comparison of recycling to Tylenol for a headache gives the episode its clearest image: useful for easing symptoms, but not enough to address the cause.
Kevin Bayouk shows how climate triage and long-range economic transformation can belong to the same practical frame.
Kevin Bayouk frames the next economy as a problem of timing as much as design. In conversation with Ryan Hunneman, he argues that projects can answer immediate crises while still pointing toward transition and deeper transformation.
Impact business, without the gloss.
Odd questions, followed patiently down to the incentives.
Ryan Hunneman and Kevin Bayuk celebrate the 10th anniversary of Next Economy Now, reflecting on its origins and evolution.
Ali Anderson, founder and co-executive director of Feed Black Futures, explains how a 2020 campaign tied to Black Mama's Bail Out raised $90,000 in two weeks to buy food from Black and Indigenous farmers.
Erin Axelrod speaks with Brianna Kilcullen, founder of Enact, about building a sustainable towel brand around hemp, supply-chain transparency, and regenerative business design.
Next Economy Now speaks with Tom Szaky, TerraCycle's founder and CEO, about why waste is a modern concept that appeared in the 1950s and why he thinks business should measure health, not just shareholder profit.
Fabiola Santiago, founder of Mi Oaxaca, describes home through her experience as a formerly undocumented person, a diasporic Zapotec from Santiago Matatlán, and a mother raising a child in California.
Laura Ash tells Sean Berry how recurring childhood pneumonia, a $6 aromatherapy book, and lavender led her into clinical herbal medicine and entrepreneurship.
Julia Watson, author of Low-Tech, explains how traditional ecological knowledge can inform climate-resilient systems in conversation with Next Economy Now host Kevin Bayouk.
This episode announces a new cohort of the Next Economy MBA and introduces a conversation about regenerative, equity-centered business principles.