GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
2025 - a GoodGeist Retrospective
It's time for some GoodGeist year-end reflections from our co-host Damla and Steve. We take you across 2025’s most revealing sustainability moments, from radical listening that halted deforestation by focusing on community health, via an off-grid box turning sunlight into clean water within hours, to city-scale transport fixes that make streets safer, air cleaner, and commutes saner.
It's 25 minutes of practical optimism, gathering stories that prove change is built locally and scaled through trust, clarity, and good design.
Our tour spans continents and disciplines. We revisit the ethnography of behaviour change, new money concepts and sustainable finance, and the thorny dilemmas of philanthropy and concentrated wealth. Guests challenged language itself: when “sustainability” feels poisoned by greenwash, how do we reframe for honesty and impact? From “belly’s not bins” to cocoa that respects farmers and forests, food became a lens for agency at home and accountability in supply chains.
We also dig into retrofit and property innovation, the unglamorous but essential work of upgrading what we’ve already built to cut carbon, bills, and cold homes. And the closing truth we carry into 2026? No-one can be sustainable alone.
Hold the line with us, share this conversation, and if it moved you, subscribe, rate, and leave a review so more people can find it.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability. Hosted by Damla Eusler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability, which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damlo from Mira Agency Istanbul and This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester.
SPEAKER_02:This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated, and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
SPEAKER_01:So in this episode, Steve and I will talk to each other about what happened in 2025 in this podcast. So this will be a special episode closing the year, a retrospective of 2025.
SPEAKER_02:So do you know before we go into who we spoke to, Damlet, I'm very proud of you and I, not for keeping it going, the podcast, but there's one thing we didn't. There's one thing we didn't do in 2025. And I'm quite surprised. I was thinking about this earlier. We didn't get, we didn't fall victim to Trump derangement syndrome.
SPEAKER_01:No, we didn't.
SPEAKER_02:No. So I was amazed. I was thinking, I've been so angry all year at everything he's doing. But we didn't really talk that much about the horrible orange monster. We we talked about good things and people doing amazing things and people coming up with solutions. And you know, we just didn't so interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because I think what we did was holding the line. So I feel like the army in the Lord of the Rings or other fantasy movies, and we're like holding our ground and saying, hold because we're gonna hold this line because this is for the good of all. So to hold that line, we have to stay true. We have to talk about positive change. And I think we have to still believe in each other. I think that that's another important point. We believe in each other, not only you and I, but we believe in other people and the people's strength to make positive change happen. I know it was a huge shock for us, also in our line of work. It really disturbed a lot of things, not only in the general political area of the world, but also in our little lives. It really, really changed a lot of things with the UN uh branches closing, with the funds cutting off, with the people we know losing their jobs, but also with the sustainability talk getting a little bit on the backstage. And sometimes people feeling desperate because we have to start again to that talk from the beginning, because a lot of climate deniers are very vocal at the moment, like a lot of science deniers are very vocal, but still we believe in each other and we believe in the power of holding the line, hold the line, holding the line with a little bit of a Lord of the Rings reference in there.
SPEAKER_02:You're such a geek sometimes, honestly.
SPEAKER_01:I am, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02:So what was the so tell us about the year? Where did we start? Where did we finish? Where did we go?
SPEAKER_01:Oh well, we started with a beautiful episode of lovely Dr. Felicity, and we talked to her about the ethnography of sustainability. So when we look at the episode this year, I mean 2025, and also the episodes in 2024, we have a huge range, and I'm so proud of this too. We talk about every aspect, like we continued with digitalization for sustainability, driving change through education, and so on. We had a lot of beautiful episodes and a lot of wonderful people all around the world. I think this is also important. We try to be inclusive, we try to reach out from our little comfort zones and find like-minded people all around the world. So we had guests from Africa, we had guests from Asia, we had guests from Indochina.
SPEAKER_02:We've done, I've done, I've done the list. Do you want me to run? Yeah, I've done do you want to know where we went in 2025?
SPEAKER_01:You ready? Good.
SPEAKER_02:So okay, so the obvious ones UK and Turkey, obviously. Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania, Indonesia, Canada, Denmark, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Japan, USA, and Morocco.
SPEAKER_01:That's quite a list.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, some of them. And I was I did a little count before we came on, and um, some of them we did several times. So the one the Netherlands, we had about four or five conversations with people in the Netherlands.
SPEAKER_01:Well, they're working hard on sustainability, and they have a lot of people there working on the architecture and the sustainable transportation, which were always very popular topics. But besides that, we also touched ground with some interesting topics like with Japan, with a new money concept. I mean, that was so mind-opening for me. Also, women's rights, girls' rights, the scientific approaches to in many fields, and we will have some very interesting guests in 2026 too about the AI and how AI can contribute to a sustainable, developed world. I think that's important, not only the diversity of the guests we are having, but also the diversity of issues. Because when we're talking about sustainability, we always talk about a multi-layered issue, and sometimes people think that it's a huge issue, and they just kind of a fear of that. But when you break it down, yeah, when we talk with those guests, we see that it's our everyday lives, actually.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you see, I mean, we talked, we did talk about money a few times. So with my Makoto, wasn't it, where we talked about good the good money, and that was fascinating. And Dana from Barclay is talking about sustainable finance and farming. We got into money with her. I very much liked our discussion with Jana from Bulgaria from Finacts.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, she was great.
SPEAKER_02:She was great. Art meets activism and her playful, playfulness to open minds. I thought she was, I thought she was amazing. But we did, we had a whole run. If you I know you remember them, but with thanks to Ashton, we had a whole run of basically African eco-entrepreneurs who were just incredible, absolutely incredible.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I think the episode with Pain, land, gender, and dialogue. I mean, it was a totally game changer for me, not only in the gender thinking frame, but also when we to think of land and the always think about kind of a western culture, but there land was a property of everyone, and women were not included in that everyone. So it's kind of a different dynamic when you talk about it. I think that was very interesting, and radically listening. That was another interesting concept we came to. We had a lot of very nice concepts in this podcast. I like radical listening, radical listening.
SPEAKER_02:Radical listening was excellent with N Fabriani, Febri.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, from Indonesia in Indonesia, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I thought that was amazing. So the radical listening was all about basically co-designing solutions with local communities to kind of halt forest destruction. So, how do you bring it to a whole? Well, you don't just impose the solution on these communities, but you actually listen to them really hard and continue listening to them, which is the radical listening piece. And also, she had that wonderful approach where planet health and community health were one and the same. So the conversation they had with communities who otherwise might be destroying the rainforest was you know, the planet's health is is absolutely inextricably linked to your health. Amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and we had also like food was very important, what we eat, how we eat. So we had this cocoa session, a better and sustainable cocoa. We had the wonderful Corinne, she was hilarious.
SPEAKER_02:Belly's not bins, belly's not bins, and also I think possibly I forgot when we were uploading that episode. I needed to check the little radio button saying, is there explicit language in this episode? And I completely forgot to. I think we dropped the F bomb a few times in that episode, actually.
SPEAKER_01:Well, as you know, I am sometimes the gig, and you're sometimes the F-bomb.
SPEAKER_02:No, not I'm not averse to a bit of sweariness. Sometimes it's sometimes it's called for it. There's a very famous entrepreneur in Manchester who started Factory Records, a guy called Tony Wilson, uh, that brought the world things like Joy Division and the Happy Mondays in New Order. And he's as somebody said, Why why uh why do you swear so much, Tony? He says, You don't fucking understand in Manchester, it's actually a form of punctuation.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's totally acceptable. And in the episodes, we're using it, it's totally, totally acceptable.
SPEAKER_02:You sometimes you need it. So I think we had quite a lot on land, quite a lot on gender, quite a lot on food. Corin was very funny, and we had quite a lot of transport. It's been a very transport year. Yeah, we had some good ones.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we had the Italian take of sustainable communications. We had a lot of big campaigners out there talking about how they made great campaigns in the past and gave us hope, actually. Yeah, and we did framing.
SPEAKER_02:We did framing several times. We had Tamsin talking about moving mindsets. Who else did we have in framing? Actually, Adela from Charity Communications, she talks about framing as well.
SPEAKER_01:She talked about us about framing. Also, we talked about how to communicate it better. And well, we had this wonderful episode with Casper saying sustainability is bullshit. I mean, we had quite disruptive ones.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Casper did say Casper did say that what we do is bullshit. Well, he did he did, he did. Well, it's the word. I think he sent thinks the word has been poisoned.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe also after that, have you seen the new Patagonia sustainability report?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I have.
SPEAKER_01:Nothing we do is sustainable, so basically, they are saying the same thing.
SPEAKER_02:Same thing, Casper Patagonia. The new, I mean, let's plug it. The new Patagonia Sustainability Report is a thing of great beauty. Yeah, yeah. It's really well done. Um, I quite liked, okay, so my vet my favorite entrepreneur, I think, probably was Joe DeWu in Rwanda, who does off-grid box. So I've told several people since then about off-grid box, and I thought it was amazing. The idea of basically a shipping container that arrives at your village or local community, the sides drop down to reveal solar panels, and there's a water, a water treatment works being powered by solar, so you can get clean water for a community within hours. I think off-crip box was amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they were really amazing. But I want to go back, circle back to Casper because he was just kind of breaking the lines and saying something very bold. And like him, we had another one, Jana Areva from Kirkizan. Remember? And she talked about the climate gender nexus, and there she really go went deep into the UN's framing of the climate issue, not only UN's, but also the corporations and the general framing. And she really went head-on and said everything there has to be said.
SPEAKER_02:So, in terms, but let's face it, Tamil, in terms of climate conversations, you pulled off quite a big one this year, didn't you? Uh, in terms of getting guests for the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Simon Steele, we had the chief of climate of UN, and that was a pinnacle moment for us, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And Simon was very, very open, very friendly, and very energetic, as you remember. And it was just before the COP. So he was just giving the message of accelerating the climate action. But the COP in Brazil was kind of a disappointment for all parties, I think, because that acceleration didn't happen. On the other hand, I think I must say that many people say that UN buddies and the UN framing of climate talk is not progressive enough. But on the other hand, I think we should think that UN is a very diplomatic uh platform. There are a lot of stakeholders there, and trying to navigate around these high diplomatic arena do has its restraints. So we shouldn't maybe expect them to be real activists. So the activism is on one side, yeah. The UN and the bodies, not only UN but international bodies and the governments are on one side and the corporate. So this talk has to have different frames all around. I think we have to navigate between them and try to make the best of it.
SPEAKER_02:I no, I do, I agree. I mean, that was a disappointment, and it was it, yeah. I mean, it was very personal actually. Your comments when you managed to get uh Simon for the podcast, he had a very deeply personal kind of story background story, which is very powerful. I think that wasn't the most listened to episode, though.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, I thought it would be very much I mean it's popular, but do you know?
SPEAKER_02:Do you know who was the most popular?
SPEAKER_01:Who?
SPEAKER_02:Steve Walshall, make trouble and change the world.
SPEAKER_01:But come on, he's kind of a hero, of course. He's kind of a superhero in the climate action sphere.
SPEAKER_02:So he's he's so humble, and he's like, Oh, yeah, I that these conferences you did Greenpeace business, Steve. It was transformational. Come on, I did some conferences, they were like, I did a conference.
SPEAKER_01:It was a well, you know what I like most about our conversation with him, he just gave us a context from the 70s to today and to future, and in that context, he wasn't giving false hope, he was saying that we are not on a very good point at the moment, but he was also saying that there were a lot of a lot of hopeless situations during this 40 years, yeah. And then when you hold the line, hold the line, they may pass.
SPEAKER_02:Hold the line, hold the line, hold the line. Steve told us, hold the line, yeah. Oh, I know, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, when I look at all the episodes, I see that different people in different countries in different backgrounds, from different backgrounds, from different expertise, they're always trying to make something. Oh, yeah, and they say that this is what I can do, and I will do it, and I will do my best.
SPEAKER_02:I know, I know that honestly, if you you could power the world with the energy of these people, couldn't you? I know amazing. Yeah. No, I th they uh all of them, they're just constantly and and with such momentum. Some of them had so much drive, they just wouldn't stop. I think they're amazing. So, which so we also had, I don't want to miss it. I enjoyed talking to Karen from the Polis Network.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. How to move your city.
SPEAKER_02:I another transport one, but I really like that. I mean, she we had trans, she covered transport and moving cities, and I thought she was absolutely brilliant. And I think just even if you just executed all of her solutions at a city scale, you know, you could sort out the transportation problems of any city. She was amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we also had local action global change that was with Yunus Orikan, director of ICLE, and he gave us a very good perspective on how to manage the local politics and bind it to the general, the big climate policy. I think that was important. Yeah, but also I would like to say that the episode with Kunle Barker was interesting because that was something, that issue was something that is not a prominent issue in the climate talk, but property innovation. How to change areas, small areas, how to develop sustainable properties. So this is something that I'm not gonna say nobody is talking about, but that's not talked very on the stage, it's not upfront. So I think that was a very niche issue, and it was interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Cundli would be happy to hear that. It's really interesting doing retrofit of building. So we didn't do too much AI, did we? We did a bit of AI, but not too much. And we had Sam. Sam Fanku, yeah, I know we're gonna have to. We had Sam who came live from was he LA? He was in California, wasn't he? He was yeah, and and I thought that was extraordinary. The idea of really embracing AI, the fact that he had big chunks of their basically their social their social enterprise powered by agents and not by people. Like half his team are AI agents.
SPEAKER_01:I thought that was amazing. It was Golden, the volunteering network. But also with that volunteering network, we had a similar one with sites, site beast directly.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, Needs Map.
SPEAKER_01:Needs map. They are also using AI and geographical locations and everything during the disasters. So these two issues were kind of uh similar, but also I think it's interesting when you listen to them in different times but close times, you can see the differences in approaches and what they see important in different countries and different backgrounds. So say it is coming from an NGO background and needs maps, but also an NGO kind of. And Golden, the founder of Golden, comes from tech background and an Ivy League university. So the two approaches are very interesting, and I think there are a lot of takes that we can have from both of them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, no, they were. I tell you, so there was another topic that we covered a couple of times that I thought was really fascinating, and that was philanthropy.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_02:We had a little bit of a run on philanthropy and the psychology of giving and why you give, and the whole idea of impact investing. I thought that was really interesting.
SPEAKER_01:It is. One of them was Phyllis, and she's a very important philanthropic advisor here in the US. And the other episode was from uh Nina, Nina Haas. I mean, she is in the advisory board of the one of the biggest, I think, private equity firms, and also royalty. Yeah, we forgot royalty, we had royalty there, and you know what? Nina also had received an award, the uh philanthropic advisor of the year, like two weeks ago. Oh, I guess that's cool. Yeah, I think we are kind of a celebrity show, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Do you think we did we line that up? I mean, do you think she got that award because she spoke to us?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's probably out of good one, see thinking not.
SPEAKER_02:I'm thinking not. No, so I found that really interesting. And the idea of these sort of significant wealth. I mean, I partly it was really interesting because quite a few times, Damler, you and I, we go towards the edge of discussing late-stage capitalism and whether the way we run our economics globally works or not. And I think anybody who's listened to quite a few of our episodes would know that at least one at once every three or four episodes, we question global global capitalism and whether it's a force for good or not, which it isn't. But talking to people who uh represent royal families and huge wealth also is quite interesting. Yeah, and talking about how that inherited wealth is uh almost a burden in terms of what you do with it and how you're stuck with it. And it reminds me a lot about that dialogue around whether accumulated wealth now globally is becoming a major problem because it's so weighted towards such a tiny minority globally, and what do they do with it? So, yeah, philanthropy. We could get into that a bit more next year.
SPEAKER_01:Let's do that. I think next year we're gonna go into AI, obviously, but also what happens in the climate action, especially in the international relations, because a lot of things are changing. We are in a very chaotic times in terms of political restraints all around the world, but I think also we will see another wave coming from the scientific and sustainability sphere because this is the you know the kotomi, it has to be like that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, we know that's gonna happen, and next year uh we will see a cop taking place pretty much where you are. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, let's see what good guys will be doing there. I think, oh my god, we shouldn't run out of time in our own episode. We shouldn't do that, but for a closing, I would just like to borrow one of last year's guest's headline. Rike told us that no one can be sustainable alone. So I think that should be our closing argument this in this episode.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's perfect, Tamla. Brilliant stuff. We better close.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so thanks to everyone who has listened to Good Guys, the message on sustainability. In this episode, we made a retrospective to the 2025. And for the coming weeks, we will give a short break for Christmas and New Year's Eve. Happy New Year all around the world, and hold the line.
SPEAKER_02:Hold the line and make sure you listen to our future episodes in 2026. Damla, it's been a joy.
SPEAKER_01:Bye, Steve. Bye, everyone.
SPEAKER_00:Goodgeist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Ozler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
