We are a podcast, but we have to admit: images can speak more than words. A powerful visual can tell a story, evoke sensations, and even inspire action. And isn’t that an essential tool in communicating about climate and sustainability?

Yet, for one reason or another, we resort to cliches: a polar bear on melting ice, a blue marble image, hands joining together over some greenery. Sure, they are cliches for a reason – but which are the alternatives, and how can they capture the attention of our audience?

In this week’s episode, Felicia interviews Dr. Rebecca Swift, SVP creative at Getty Images, to explore the fascinating world of visual communication. They discuss how iconic visuals shape public perception, the emotional connections brands can create through imagery, and the importance of authenticity and transparency in messaging.

Rebecca talks about how the advent of artificial intelligence risks eroding trust, how humour resonates across all ages, and provides tips on how to create imagery that is honest and free of cliches for corporates.

Imagery depicts reality, while simultaneously shaping our view of the world. For sustainability, this means providing an example of how change can look like, making us believe it will be possible. 

Getty Images' "Visualizing Sustainability" report: http://reports.gettyimages.com/VisualGPS-Visualizing-Sustainability-Report.pdf

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PFAS, or forever chemicals, are one of the most urgent but misunderstood issues in environmental health. 

This group of nearly 15,000 man-made substances are used to make many products more durable or waterproof, but they don’t break down. Instead, they accumulate in our water, our soil and even our bodies. 

While we don’t yet have a full picture of their impacts, we know that they have been linked to health issues, such as increased risk of cancer and immune disorders. So, how do we deal with them?

This week, Felicia speaks to Anoosheh Oskouian, president, CEO and co-founder of Ship & Shore Environmental, a company that produces systems for industrial air pollution control.

They talk about the historical context of PFAS, how they end up being released in the atmosphere at the manufacturing level, and, most importantly, how this can be prevented. The conversation highlights the challenges in enforcing prevention measures, the need for global standards, and the future of PFAS management and awareness.

Awareness and education about the forever chemicals are essential for public health and safety. We need policymakers to tighten regulations because prevention is crucial, and also more cost-effective than remediation when it comes to our health.

Note: the inventor of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant who added lead to gasoline, mentioned by Felicia, is Thomas Midgley Jr.

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Carbon markets are intended to be the backbone of climate finance – but they’re often criticised for being opaque, inefficient, and riddled with credibility issues.

 This week, Giulia talked to Alex Taylor, co-founder at KlimaDAO and Carbonmark, about the messy reality of the voluntary carbon markets, from opaque pricing, questionable credit quality, middlemen capturing most of the value, as well as why so many people doubt the whole system.

KlimaDAO tried to use blockchain to make the market more transparent and efficient by tokenising carbon credits and putting them on-chain, exposing real prices, cutting out intermediaries. That is the sort of move expected to result in more transparency, liquidity, and, crucially, accountability.

Yet, there are always challenges in new approaches, and the conversation doesn’t dodge the 2022 ‘zombie credits’ controversy: when older and largely inactive credits bridged via Toucan ended up dominating KlimaDAO’s early pools, raising concerns from independent analysts about quality and integrity.

Alex talks candidly about what went wrong, why it happened, and how they’ve redesigned their systems to focus on higher-quality and removal credits. This could be a case study in what it takes to rebuild trust in a market many people already see as flawed, and the role technology can realistically play in cleaning it up.

The real question is: will it deliver? And what does it mean for the future of climate finance if the markets themselves are being rebuilt from the ground up? 

This episode examines the integrity challenges across voluntary carbon markets, why additionality and credit quality matter, and how efforts like KlimaDAO aim to fix long-standing problems. It revisits the ‘zombie credits’ controversy and explores the regulatory questions shaping the sector’s future.

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Europe talks a big game on marine protection but, beneath the surface, the picture is far more fragile. 

This week on Shaken Not Burned, Felicia speaks with Professor Callum Roberts, one of the world’s leading marine biologists and lead scientist on the Convex Seascape Survey. His research reveals a climate risk we almost never count: what happens to the carbon stored in our seabed when it’s torn up by trawling.

The ocean floor is one of the planet’s largest natural carbon stores, locking away vast reserves built up over millennia. But each time a trawl drags across the seabed, that carbon is disturbed – some is released back into the ocean, some into the atmosphere. The scale of this disruption is still uncertain, which is why Callum now leads the Convex Seascape Survey, a five-year research effort to map, measure, and understand these hidden climate dynamics.

In this conversation, Callum explains why marine protected areas in Europe aren’t enough, how seabed carbon loss could reshape our climate models, and what meaningful protection actually requires. 

We also explore the policy and finance implications: why seabed health matters for supply chains, food security, and long-term resilience – and why ocean action must sit at the heart of climate strategy, not the margins.

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Let’s dive into a part of climate action that too often sits behind the scenes: the hard work of making impact measurable and decision-ready. Sustainability teams may spend years drowning in data, frameworks and reporting demands, yet businesses still struggle to answer the simplest question of all: what’s the best choice to make?

This week, Felicia speaks to Nick Catania, co-founder of ClimatePoint, a company that is building bottom-up tools that trace impacts through the full life cycle of a product. The purpose is to quantify the delta between business-as-usual and climate-positive alternatives, to reveal the real, cumulative effects of a company’s decisions. 

Some call them avoided emissions or Scope 4: they are the emissions generated outside of a company’s product life cycle or value chain. ClimatePoint seeks to find what it calls the… climate point, or when a company’s operational emissions are outweighed by its positive impact.

In the interview, Nick argues that traditional carbon accounting falls short, and explains how system boundaries shape the stories told by businesses. The conversation covers the growing pressure for credible, comparable data as the Paris Agreement enters its next phase, and why visibility is fast becoming a competitive advantage.

Once you make the invisible visible, you open the door to better decisions and faster climate action. When we make impacts comparable and traceable, we change which choices look attractive, which innovations scale, and how leaders understand risk. 

Measurable, comparable impacts change the incentives; and when incentives change, the system starts to shift.

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What does it really mean to be net zero? In a world overflowing with climate claims, standards are becoming the new currency of trust, as they set technical definitions and create common ground.

This week, we’re exploring something that could reshape how the world defines and delivers climate ambition: the new ISO net zero guidelines.

Our guest is Noelia Garcia Nebra, head of sustainability at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO’s purpose is to bring credibility to achieve net zero, a race that’s been plagued by confusion and greenwashing.

The organisation has partnered with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to align accounting rules, improve comparability, and restore confidence in what “net zero” really means.

The new guidelines are designed to make ambition measurable and accountability possible. They promise to bridge the gap between lofty corporate pledges and the proof needed to back them up. By creating clearer expectations, they also help direct capital toward credible action, reducing the risk of greenwashing and reinforcing confidence in global climate goals.

According to Noelia, we all have to start speaking the same language. Without shared definitions, there can be no shared trust, and without trust, there can be no real transition.

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The Conference of the Parties, or COP30 this year in Brazil, can seem remote – bureaucratic, elite, hard to connect with. But it’s also one of the few spaces where solidarity can still take shape. 

The same is true of philanthropy: when it’s built on listening and trust, not hierarchy or control, it becomes a bridge between people and resources rather than another layer of power.

This week's guest is Raysa França, climate justice educator and philanthropy advisory manager at Impatience Earth. We talk about philanthropy, power, and persistence – and why, even when global climate talks feel distant or political, moments like COP30 still matter.

We explore how gatherings like COP can foster connection and shared purpose, not just negotiation, and what decentralising power looks like in real terms, from who gets funded to who gets heard.

Ultimately, showing up – in partnerships, at summits, in uncomfortable conversations – is an act of resilience. Hope isn’t naïve: it’s a practice of persistence.

Raysa offers a powerful reminder that the very act of coming together – across borders, sectors, and disagreements – might be one of the few things still holding our shared future together.

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Working in sustainability means getting the story right. 

We may have crunched the numbers and estimated the risks of biodiversity loss in a certain area, or the opportunities arising from decarbonising a certain sector. But if we don’t communicate effectively with our stakeholders, there is a real risk that all of this effort will go to waste. 

This is particularly true when interacting with stakeholders requires navigating cultural differences. So how can storytelling help enable a just transition? 

In this week’s episode, Giulia interviews Somia Sadiq, a peacebuilder, environmental planner, and all-around communications expert. She is the founder and CEO of Narratives and Kahanee, and very recently published her first novel, Gajarah.

Somia explains how to create spaces for difficult discussions around climate change, how to champion cultural nuances in business settings, and what approach to take when interacting with people who have different opinions. 

At a time when most of us are stuck in echo chambers, we cannot afford to shy away from establishing a dialogue: we must harness the power of words to find equitable solutions.

Hate misinformation? Us too. If you can spare some time, help us in our next endeavour and take our Climate Misinformation Survey!

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Every day we read new headlines about climate extremes, yet behind the noise lies a quieter, more corrosive threat: misinformation.

In this week's episode of Shaken Not Burned, we explore why climate misinformation isn’t a communications issue or a social-media nuisance, but a systemic business risk that can destabilise economies, erode public trust, and undermine effective climate action.

Our guest, Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, explains how misinformation spreads through ad-tech systems and algorithmic incentives that reward outrage over truth. She reveals why brands, often without knowing it, end up funding the very content that delays the energy transition and weakens democratic resilience. 

In conversation with Felicia, Harriet unpacks how climate misinformation is engineered rather than accidental and who profits from confusion, why fewer than 5% of companies list misinformation on their risk registers, and the hidden links between advertising, data, and the erosion of public trust.

The episode also provides practical steps businesses can take from pre-bunking and inoculation to demanding supply-chain transparency in digital media, explaining why the human side of persuasion and how emotion, trust, and relatable stories work better than facts alone.

We also invite you to take part in our Climate Misinformation Survey, a new initiative exploring where and how people experience false or distorted information, so organisations can build stronger defences against it.

By treating misinformation as a core resilience issue, businesses can lead the shift toward transparency, rebuild public trust, and strengthen the foundations of a sustainable economy.

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This week, we are talking about the turbulence surrounding ESG and sustainable finance. The question we’re exploring: is the backlash against ESG a crisis, or a necessary correction?

Joining us is Professor Thanos Verousis, an economist and researcher on sustainable finance at Vlerick Business School. Together, we unpack why ESG is under fire, what went wrong, and how finance can evolve to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

It is tempting to see ESG as the future of finance or to dismiss it entirely as a failed fad. But as Thanos explains, ESG was never meant to be the system. It is a measurement tool. Sustainable finance requires something deeper: transparency, regulation, and a willingness to grapple with real trade-offs.

The discussion covers the tension between financial returns and social trade-offs, how a narrow financial definition of fiduciary duty is shifting to include climate and social concerns, why alliances often stall, and how ESG is interpreted differently globally.

As Thanos puts it: “Sustainable finance will only mature when we are honest about trade-offs, transparent in pricing externalities, and inclusive of those not yet at the table.”

ESG hype was bound to face correction: by reframing this moment as a sustainability correction, finance has a chance to rebuild on stronger, more resilient foundations.

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Think about the products you use every day at home. The hand soap. The cleaning spray. The sponge for the dishes. The face cream. The toothpaste. 

Why do you buy certain brands, with certain packaging and certain ingredients? 

Whether it's because they were the products of our childhood, or the advertising has convinced us, or the price is just too convenient, we may not spend much time questioning our purchase decisions. It feels like consumers are pushed towards disposable items that contain powerful chemicals that may not necessarily be good for people or the environment. 

But is there another way? 

In this week’s episode, Giulia speaks to Ira Guha, founder at Asan, to challenge the consumer products status quo through the lens of the menstrual cup.

They explore the history of menstrual products, including their environmental and health impacts, and the issue of period poverty. Ira shares insights on the need for education and behaviour change to promote reusable options, which are not often displayed in shops and pharmacies, remaining a bit of a “secret”.

Breaking the taboo surrounding menstruation ignites the discussion on the vast array of reusable products. By opening up to other people who menstruate, we can discover that they are more environmentally friendly, and arguably more comfortable, than what the status quo has us believe.

This blueprint can be applied to all those products that we use on a daily basis. Can you make the switch to a reusable option today?

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