How to Save the World | The Psychology & Science of Environmental Behavior

Today's guest is environmental psychologist, Veronica Champine, PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at Colorado State University. We're breaking down the science of "social diffusion" in her research paper "Understanding individual and diffusion behaviors related to native plant gardening" recently published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. Her research explores the difference between asking people to take individual action vs asking people to talk to people around them and showing by example - that's social diffusion - an often missing link in many climate programs and startups. We'll be diving into the power and nuance of helping people to get better at diffusing environmental behaviors in their communities - and what we need to do to become designers of social diffusion. Connect with Veronica on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-champine-5305309a/ The paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494422000433 ---------------------- How to Save the World is a podcast about the psychology of what gets people to do eco-behaviors and take climate action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to rapidly get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Join my Gamify the Planet masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet Get a copy of the book, How to Save the World on Amazon https://amzn.to/2Z4jivL  This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-patrick/

There's a line in a song that says "Words are hotter fire. Words are wetter than water." You might not think that words possess a superpower that can help you change the world, but if you're in the job of influencing people to change, language is your secret weapon.  In this episode, I talk through some of the mistakes I see people make and how you can get better at crafting your written story and your copywriting. I hope you take the time to master the art of sculpting words that deeply move people, and through that, you can spark a revolution.   I recommend you read these books: On Writing Well, by Willian Zinsser https://amzn.to/2Ty9qsr  The Sense of Style, by Steven Pinker https://amzn.to/3dDF6DH * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to rapidly get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Join my Gamify the Planet masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet  Get a copy of the book, How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

What would it take to make "A Fitbit of the world's forests"? As you could imagine, it would be a momentous task. Global Forest Watch is doing it. It's one of the world's most technically ambitious ecological monitoring projects that maps and monitors the entire Earth's forest cover, with high-frequency updates, and ecological health insights, and displays it on a beautiful and easy-to-use browser interface. Global Forest Watch a partnership between the World Resources Institute and multiple philanthropic bodies, conversation NGOs, and universities. The technical intricacy of this project spans right from the satellites that collect the data through to processing the images, the algorithms that scan for tree cover and calculate changes, the depth of data in the electromagnetic spectrum and how it conveys ecological health, and how to get it all looking nice and loadable on a browser. And then there's the biggest question of all – how does all this data visualization actually help forests get protected off the computer?  How do we use complex environmental data to drive change in the real world? Global Forest Watch (GFW) is a map-based platform that allows anyone to access near real-time information about where and how forests are changing around the world. See the Global Forest Watch platform here. https://twitter.com/globalforests https://www.instagram.com/globalforests * * * How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Join Gamify the Planet Masterclass Training in Climate Action Design for $25/month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet  Get a copy of the book, How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Follow Katie on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

We can get better at telling the story of sustainability, climate, and greener futures. I wrote down these 24 evocative words, backed by science to motivate people, and riffed on ideas of how you use each of them to tell better stories to get people to join your environmental project. We need to be able to inspire epic feelings in people. Here are some examples of how you can do it.  * * *   How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com  Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet  Get a copy of the book, How to Save the World on Amazon  This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.  Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick  Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn  Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Have you ever seen a "sustainability street" program you thought was a great idea? In this month's Gamify the Planet Masterclass, we're creating one! In this episode, I share a simple tutorial on how you can design a gamified sustainability street program to promote decarbonization, electrification, and roof-top solar - and we'll learn the theory behind behavioral techniques work to tap into the human motivational core. Images and info to follow along + register for the class: https://katiepatrick.com/sustainabilitystreet See the Climate Action Yard Signs: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkysFgJv2Cp/ Humans are group animals. By harnessing the power of groups (like a street, block, or community) we can layer on gamification features like badges, goals, comparison, and progress-tracking to create a program that has the main ingredients the decarbonization movement needs to reach the tipping point of change. Gamify the Planet: Climate Action Masterclass Sustainability Street: Gamifying Neighborhood Decarbonization Tuesday 15th November 9am PST, 12pm EST, 5pm BST. Learn more at katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet Sign up for $25/month at Patreon.com/katiepatrick

In this episode, we speak with Thijs Bouman, assistant professor and researcher from the Environmental Psychology group at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He’s done some fascinating research into the relationship between group and individual environmental values. We often think of our value systems and beliefs as if they were created by our own independent thoughts, but we as humans, are highly influenced by the groups we interact with. Seeing environmental change through the lens of group behavior could provide a very different lens through which to design environmental campaigns and programs. Thijs' research explores how, as individuals, we tend to underestimate the pro-environmental values of others, and because of this, we shortchange our own impact. Yet, when our fellow group members strongly endorse pro-environmental values, discovering this boosts our own environmental engagement.  Thijs Bouman's research: From values to climate action https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21000579 Environmental values and identities at the personal and group level https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154621000449 Contact: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thijsbouman/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/T_Bouman DOORS OPEN  Gamify the Planet: Climate Action Masterclass Sustainability Street: Gamifying Neighborhood Decarbonization Tuesday 15th November 9am PST, 12pm EST, 5pm BST. Learn more at katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet Sign up for $25/month at Patreon.com/katiepatrick How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

We need to avoid the trap of getting caught up in a single idea. Ideas are plentiful. When it comes to climate or social change, an idea is just a hypothesis. Will your idea actually create the change you think it will? You'll only know by testing it.  In this episode, I talk about how you need to have lots of ideas and rapidly iterate them. You need to test them and discover the causal mechanism of what works on people. The faster you can test and iterate, the faster you can get to the mechanisms of what people love and why they change. Work on your vision of the future world and less on your "idea."  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

This episode is a short tutorial on my custom behavior mapping process for climate action. It's the most powerful thing I've ever learned how to do and once I learned how to do it, it changed everything. If you're trying to influence humans to take any action at all for the climate, you need to learn how to behavior map. It's the secret to great ideas that get real impact results. I developed a specialized behavior mapping system designed specifically for climate and environmental change.  Behavior mapping is a process where you map out your target human's daily actions and figure out where on their journey you will pounce. Then you assess what psychological technique you'll use to capture their attention and which tool you'll use to get them to act, buy, or change – such as a flashing light, an audio chime, a written pledge, a group identity sticker, a goal, a social norm, a default, an animated character, a confetti reward, or a color change – I've cataloged 96 techniques! I put these 96 techniques together in my custom Behavior Mapping Template – and I'm hosting my first-ever workshop next Tuesday to teach you how to master it! Download the PDF here and follow along. https://www.dropbox.com/s/t32o6ox43yfb3jq/Behavior%20Mapping%20for%20Masterclass%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0 DOORS OPEN Behavior Mapping for Climate Action Masterclass Tuesday 27th September 9am PST, 12pm EST, 5pm BST. Sign up for my Climate Action Design Masterclass group for $25 / month on Patreon.com/katiepatrick *Get a free 24" wall poster of the behavior mapping template when you join. Each month I'll be hosting a special advanced workshop for my Patreon supporters on the Gamify the Planet tier. The workshop will be recorded and sent to the group.

How do we persuade homeowners to make climate upgrades to their homes such as electrifying, installing solar, or improving energy efficiency? Do we persuade them using environmental facts and energy data, or is a social mechanism more effective, like sparking a conversation with a neighbor or friend?  Our guest today is Brian Southwell. Brian is the Adjunct Professor at Duke University’s School of Medicine, the director of the Science in the Public Sphere Program at a large non-profit research institute called RTI, and he also is and hosts The Measure of Everyday Life radio show. His research paper we are diving into today is titled “Weatherization behavior and social context: The influences of factual knowledge and social interaction” and it tests which works better to get people to take action on their homes - facts or conversations?"  When big climate, decarbonization, and electrification programs are rolled out by utilities, local governments, and NGOs across thousands or millions of homes, when these organizations often spend millions of dollars trying to get traction in communities, the nuance of what works to drive action really matters.  * * * Sign up for my new monthly Masterclass, Gamify the Planet, on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/katiepatrick What we'll be learning: http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based techniques you can use to get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon  This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.  Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn  Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

You need to tell the world why your idea or mission matters – and not just in any way. You need to tell a story that deeply resonates so that people will fund you, work with you, and take action to support you. In this episode, I talk through the power of using The Hero's Journey template to tell your non-fiction story – and how discovering this twelve-step structure dramatically changed the course of not just my environmental work,  but my life, and how it might change yours, too. See the article and free downloadable story template How to Tell a Story that Changes the World Get the book, Resonate, by Nancy Duarte https://amzn.to/3qGuwkm  Get The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell https://amzn.to/3dCOmrz * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

People come to me with all sorts of elaborate ideas to "change the world," like games, festivals, art projects, films, and apps. Often, these ideas have little connection to how the idea will make a real change happen on the ground once people have "experienced" the idea . . . (i.e. "I suppose we'll just put a link somewhere, then people will . . . ") This entrepreneurship model is back-to-front. If you have an idea to make an impact, you need to forget your crazy idea and go straight to a real human being and get them to make the change you are hoping your idea will influence them to make. Talk to ten people on your street. Call every person you went to school with. Talk to your dad's golf buddies. Get them to do a real thing and observe what it takes. I'm calling it the ACTION DESIGN THRESHOLD. Pass it before you write any code or spend any money - or before you even have an idea at all. Use Slack, Google lists, Zoom, Instagram, Canva, Figma, and Discord. Do it using your own email and your own phone number. Just get a real human to do a real thing in the real world. You can do it with a conversation, a party, a poster, or a sticker. Create a 21-day challenge. Offer free consulting calls. Start a group. Just get out there and practice making change happen by talking to a human in real life. Once you've succeeded in getting your first real human to do the action, then try and replicate it with two humans. Then try and get ten humans to do it. What will it take to scale your actions from ten humans to 100 humans? Look for a pattern and an opportunity. What kind of actions do you need to design this scaling for? This is your idea that will work. Any idea you have before you get ten real humans to change is probably a junk idea. At the least, it will need much pivoting. And if you can't get ten people to make a change from a conversation with you and any simple tools you give them, or you don't have the networking and marketing skills to find these ten humans, there's no way your idea will fly in a theoretical future when you have millions in funding. * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based techniques you can use to get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my climate action design masterclass training for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

People often ask me why we should practice individual environmental behavior change when what we really need is "systems change." It's not an easy question to answer. We need "systems change" implemented by governments as policy (like plastic bans), economic levers (like a carbon tax), and physical infrastructure (like bike paths). Yet, all systems are made up of networks of individual people who influence systems and are allowed individual freedoms. The two cannot be separated. In this episode, I talk about the social and political dynamics of government-enforced systems change. No two environmental scenarios are the same and each needs to be solved with a different approach to influencing individual people to take personal actions (like composting) and governments to bring in policy (like providing compost pick up).  I see environmental psychology as a way to implement structural change across millions of people in a way that succeeds - because the solution is designed to harmonize with the human mind. In this way, systems change IS behavior change.  I categorize scenarios into what I'm calling the "six buckets" that range in government involvement to help clarify the various arrangements of government control and individual freedoms that come with environmental change. * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join Katie's masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Do you ever hear animals you never see? Secretive and rare animals, such as Eastern bristlebirds, can be most easily found by the sounds that they make. We can only do this, however, if we learn how to decipher their calls!  In her PhD research, Jessie is exploring how to design future technologies that support people in becoming familiar with identifying bird calls from audio recordings. Birders and members of the public explored Jessie’s research prototypes, such as the Bristle Whistle Challenge. Conservationists and members of the public are likely to benefit from having enticing tools that include creative playful and task-oriented gameful interactions with bird calls. Such tools may support many people, whether learning calls for fun, or to support citizen science, ecology, or wildlife conservation efforts. Jessie mentions these apps: Fold IT - Protein folding game https://fold.it/ Zooniverse - https://www.zooniverse.org/ Rorshak ink blot test - http://rorschachinkblottest.com/ e-Bird app - https://ebird.org/about/ebird-mobile/ Frog ID - https://www.frogid.net.au/ I-Naturalist - https://www.inaturalist.org/ Otter-AI - https://otter.ai/ Cornel Lab of bird sounds - https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/ Xeno Canto bird sounds - https://xeno-canto.org/ Cat Tracker - https://cattracker.org/cat-tracker/ Eco-Acoustics Researcher, Bernie Krause https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bernie-Krause Learn more about Jessie’s PhD and broader research here https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3464-0247 and email or connect via Twitter https://twitter.com/JessieLOliver for paper access. * * *  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Does your website, pitch deck, and marketing material ACTUALLY explain what you do, clearly? Or is it a confusing word salad of environmental world-saving generalities? Remember this phrase: "If you confuse, you lose." In my experience, most climate and environmental projects struggle to simply explain what they do. In this episode, I explain how to write a "power sentence" in three easy steps so anyone can immediately "get it." You need to follow the steps to write this power sentence because clarity is what creates the emotional connection with your audience. It's what will get people to fall in love with your project and want to sign up, donate, join, purchase, and share - because they instantly understand what it is.  We'll also learn how to use the basic framework of The Hero's Journey to write a single paragraph that will hook people in to your story and tip and tricks on how to write better.  Clear succinct copywriting is the secret to growing your movement.  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my masterclass training in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

Imagine using augmented reality outdoors on a real city street to re-imagine the street and buildings around you covered in plants, trees, green walls, cars-free - or whatever your eco-future imagination can dream up. Our guests today are Sebastian Schlecht and Robin Roemer. Sebastian is an architect from Germany who co-founded the Lala Ruhr project - an urban design lab that re-imagines cities with biophilic nature-based solutions. Robin is the co-founder of the software startup CityScaper which specializes in augmented reality and urban planning. Sebastian and Robin got together and created this world-first AR project where people could hold up an iPad or iPhone and see a greenified ecotopia version of the street they were on - and they could even design their own. This style of augmented reality is that it’s embedded into a streetscape’s geo coordinates - and that requires creating a 3D model of the street and geolocating the ecological design to fit with the exact location where the user is standing. We’ll be taking a deep dive into the tech stack that includes Lidar, GIS, and Google AR Core, with Robin about 20 mins in. Connect with Sebastian and Robin on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-schlecht-fromgreytogreen/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-roemer/ The Lala Ruhr Lab https://www.lala.ruhr/en/start-en/ City Scaper https://ar-gument.de/   How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Join my private masterclass in climate action design for $25 / month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

We talk with environmental psychologist Anaïs Voşki. She's a researcher at Stanford University studying the effect that seeing the Earth from space has on astronauts' climate change attitudes and their sustainable lifestyles back on Earth. Her recent published research paper is titled “The Ecological Significance of The Overview Effect: Environmental Attitudes and Behaviours in Astronauts.” The Overview Effect is an experience whereby people, especially astronauts, increase their environmental concern when viewing the Earth as a singular object from space. The Overview Effect is credited with not only influencing astronauts directly but also as being a keystone moment in cultivating the modern environmental movement. Before the first moon landing in 1969, no photograph of the Earth had existed. These first photographs of Earth, coined the "pale blue dot," are thought to have elicited a new kind of environmental connection that had not existed before.  Anaïs and I talk about the deeper experience of ecological transcendence that is embodied in The Overview Effect and how it could be applied to the practical design of encouraging more climate action and sustainable behaviors in the wider public. Read the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494420300517 Connect with Anaïs Voşki on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anaisvoski/ How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. Contribute a monthly donation to the How to Save the World podcast at patreon.com/katiepatrick Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute Idea Storming Call with Katie: https://calendly.com/katiepatrick/idea-storm

In this episode, Katie talks through the latest published research from The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79. She explains the psychological concepts and behavioral science principles in the studies and shares her thoughts on how they can be practicably applied to real-life programs, startups, and campaigns.  1:17 Self Contol Skills Are More Important to Eco-Behaviors Than How Much People Care About the Planet Paper: When and how pro-environmental attitudes turn into behavior: The role of costs, benefits, and self-control  6:12 People Have No Idea of the Climate Impact of Various Behaviors And Meat is the Big Ticket CO2 Item Paper: Knowledge, perceived potential and trust as determinants of low- and high-impact pro-environmental behaviours  12:48 You Need to Tell People "**Everyone Else Around You** Supports Renewable Energy Policy" Paper: Effects of perceived social norms on support for renewable energy transition: Moderation by national culture and environmental risks  16:05 Practicing Gratitude for Nature Will Help You Do More Eco Behaviors Paper: Gratitude to nature: Presenting a theory of its conceptualization, measurement, and effects on pro-environmental behavior  19:54 Imagining Yourself Being Old Makes People Take Better Care of the Planet Now Paper: Enhancing environmental resource sustainability by imagining oneself in the future 23:01 Making People Feel Proud AND/OR Making People Feel Guilty About Their Eco-Behaviors Works  Paper: Pride and guilt predict pro-environmental behavior: A meta-analysis of correlational and experimental evidence  The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79 February 2022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-environmental-psychology/vol/79/suppl/C  The Journal of Environmental Psychology is the premier journal in the field, serving individuals in a wide range of disciplines who have an interest in the scientific study of the transactions and interrelationships between people and their surroundings (including built, social, natural and virtual environments, the use and abuse of nature and natural resources, and sustainability-related behavior). The journal publishes internationally contributed empirical studies and systematic reviews and meta-analyses of research on these topics that advance new insights.  Sign up to katiepatrick.com for my free video course on environmental gamification and behavior design.  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me. I'll listen to your mission over Zoom and share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

In this episode, Katie talks through the latest published research from The Journal of Environmental Psychology Issue 79. She explains the psychological concepts and behavioral science principles in the studies and shares her thoughts on how the findings can be practicably applied to real-life programs, startups, and campaigns.  2:19: People Who Care About Other People, Also Care About the Planet Paper: Self-construals and environmental values in 55 cultures  4:37: Do This To A Menu and All the Meat-Eaters Will Order Vegan Paper: Menu design approaches to promote sustainable vegetarian food choices when dining out  8:26: When Packaging Design Cues An Environmental Action Paper: A meaningful reminder on sustainability: When explicit and implicit packaging cues meet  10.09 Quirky Novel Actions LIke Using Soap Nuts Can Break Other Bad Eco-Habits Paper: Doing Laundry With Biodegradable Soap Nuts: Can Rare and Novel Habits Break Bad Habitual Patterns?   15:26 Personal Experience of Climate Disaster Makes People Support Climate Change Mitigation Paper: Exploring how climate change subjective attribution, personal experience with extremes, concern, and subjective knowledge relate to pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions in the United States  18:18 Telling People It's Eco-Friendly Doesn't Really Work Paper: The Limited Impact of Positive Cueing on Pro-Environmental Choices  20:46 Being Rich and Able to Consider Long Term Future Helps to Consider the Planet Socioeconomic status, time preferences and pro-environmentalism  23:45 How To Stop People Flaking Out (Moral LIscencing) After They Do a Few Good Deeds Paper: Regulatory focus and self-licensing dynamics: A motivational account of behavioural consistency and balancing  How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

This episode is about testing if putting people into groups and asking them to compete towards an environmental goal works to get the group members to increase their environmental behavior, compared to asking people as individuals can often fail to get people to take the action. Group competition (like we see in sport) is a powerful psychological mechanism that has been largely untapped by the sustainability profession and it could be harnessed to reach our climate goals.  Our guest today is Assistant Professor Laila Nockur Ph.D. from Aarhus University in Denmark. She recently published a paper titled “Fostering Sustainable Behavior Through Group Competition.” She specializes in the study of the "social dilemma." It's a tricky incentive problem that plagues most environmental change missions. A social dilemma means that to do something for the greater good (which ultimately helps everyone), each individual person has to make a personal sacrifice. These problems all involve an "environmental commons" - a resource we all share like the air, climate, streets, oceans, and forests. Laila's research shows how we can override the vexing problem of the social dilemma by putting people into groups and asking groups to compete against one another to reach an environmental goal.  Read the paper, Fostering sustainable behavior through group competition https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494419305742 How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product.  Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick  Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn  Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

Have you ever had a hunch that scary or negative images of climate change could turn people away or cause them to shut down? This is what professor Joshua Carlson from North Michigan University has been studying in his cognitive science lab. Environmental communications has often used "negative" images such as drought, fire, melting glaciers, pollution, or deforestation. However, we also use "positive" images that show solutions such as solar panels, green roofs, or wind turbines. Joshua's research tested the effect that positive (solutions-oriented) images and negative (problem-orientated) images had on people's attention and cognition. In this episode, he'll be sharing his insights on how negative climate images were found to slow attention and cause a "freezing" effect which has serious implications for how we communicate about climate change. How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts, down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me where I'll share everything I know on how you can apply behavior design, gamification, storytelling, social marketing, and movement building to your project - and any novel ideas I think up along the way.  https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

You’ve probably heard people say that "You just need to make (an environmentally polluting thing) expensive." Monetary incentives DO work to motivate people, but how much and for how long? And are there other more effective ways to change behavior than literally paying people to go green? In this episode, I speak with professor Florian Kaiser. He’s a former Co-Chief-Editor Journal of Environmental Psychology; Professor of Personality and Social Psychology; Otto-von-Guericke University; in Germany and he’s published many many papers on how environmental attitude influences behavior (which aren’t always the same thing) and some of the less obvious difficulties in getting financial incentives work to drive pro-environmental behavior. Professor Kaiser explains the deeper nuances of how attitude drives behavior from his research into The Campbell Effect. We explore why the value-action gap can be untrue, and how sustainability program designers can't isolate a single behavior out of the context of a person's wider environmental value system. Behavioral nudges, gamification, and incentives work, but they work best on people with high environmental attitudes - and with an environmentally attuned audience, the behaviors will stick long term. His insights illustrate that we can't short-change the development of a person's deeper environmental attitude and jump straight to simple behavioral incentives if we want to achieve deep and permanent social change.  Professor Kaiser's LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/fgkaiser/ Professor Kaiser's Published Research https://www.ipsy.ovgu.de/ipsy/en/fgk-path-980,1404,31,196-p-210.html Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Sign up to katiepatrick.com for my free video course on environmental gamification and behavior design. Follow me on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

Do individual behaviors make a difference? We are often asked to take personal action to help the planet like eating less meat and riding more bikes—but many decree individual behavior as limited and naive in the face of powerful companies and governments. So, how does mass change really come about? There’s more to it than a simple individual-vs-system dichotomy. The core mechanism of how change unfolds through societies is by people — our sensitivities to groups, perceptions, trends, and imitation and the social trends that are passed from human to human that lead to bigger systems changes such as laws, taxes, technologies, and urban design, are carried on the back of human behaviors. Jan Willem Bolderdijk is an associate professor and researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He studies how small groups of people influence bigger systems with respect to sustainability and climate change. Jan's research papers here: Minority influence in climate change mitigation “How do you know someone's vegan?” They won't always tell you. An empirical test of the do-gooder's dilemma Why going green feels good How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with me: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

Are you getting sick of messages of climate doom and dystopia? There’s another way to talk about the future. In this episode, I'm chatting with Professor Joshua D. Wright on his fascinating research into the power of the “environmental imagination” and how it drives both practical behavior change as well as political action. It’s about communicating “solutions” instead of “problems” – and it makes a dramatic difference to how people respond to the information, form groups, and lead movements. The effect of thinking of an alternative world is more subtle and nuanced than it seems. I think this might be the first research investigating the effect that looking at, and thinking about, ecotopian futures has on our pro-environmental behavior. I have a hunch that this research might be part of a growing zeitgeist of people moving out of overwhelm and into empowerment and agency over the future of our planet. Find his paper here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494420306885 Sign up to my group, The Imagine Project at katiepatrick.com/imagine - we've got a group on Discord and a monthly Zoom devoted to building a movement of imagining a better world. How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

What is environmental leadership? Everyone who is trying to improve the world needs to activate people to do things they have not done before – and every time you are trying to persuade people (especially many people) you are practicing the art of environmental leadership. In this episode, I go through 14 specific things you need to do in order to activate a group of people to make change happen. These techniques are based on the social science of group dynamic theory, social network analysis, social imitation, tipping points, behavioral science, and good ol' human bonding.  There are many climate and sustainability-themed groups that meet regularly to learn, talk, and network. These groups are nice, but this style of group fails at implementing the core principles that can make a group a powerful force for change.  You've probably heard that famous quote by Margaret Mead, "Never think that a small group of people can't change the world. It is in fact, the only thing that ever has." By implementing the 14 techniques in this podcast, you'll be able to step up as an environmental leader of a group (even if it's just a group of a few friends), activate other humans around you, and have the kind of influence in the world you want to have. You might be surprised at how quickly it works! I may host an environmental leadership workshop sometime soon. Send me a DM or email at kp@helloworlde.com if you like the sound of it!  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Sign up to katiepatrick.com for more free environmental gamification and behavior design resources. Follow me on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

In order to build a new world, we must first imagine what it will be. In the episode, I created a guided meditation you can use to enter a deep state of relaxation which allows you to experience different brain frequencies that bring out new creative ideas, visions, and inspiration that isn't possible while using your regular "busy" executive functioning style of thinking. Take a quiet 35 minutes of uninterrupted time to listen to this meditation. The meditation will take you through a body scan followed by a guided story that will help unlock your creative energy and shine a light on how you'll use it to transform the world.  This meditation is part of my work to launch The IMAGINE Project. Its mission is to kick off a movement to help people imagine the world we DO want (instead of worrying about the one we don't). Sign up to get a free Earth Imagination Kit at http://katiepatrick.com/imagine and get an invitation to join the community and monthly group Zoom calls. Email or DM me your thoughts, ideas, and feedback about this meditation (and the podcast in general) and time at kp@helloworlde.com - I'd love to hear from you. 

In this episode, we're chatting with Professor Jaap Ham. He's a leading cognitive scientist who researches how people respond to seeing their electricity use displayed with colored lights that glow red if you used too much electricity, or green if you are saving energy (also known as "persuasive technology" or "ambient signaling"). His research has shown that colored light is one of the most effective ways to influence people to change their behavior: red=bad, yellow=ok, green=good. Then why aren't we using colored light as a design tool to encourage more pro-environmental behavior? The evidence suggests that we should be.  Professor Ham also studies how robotic cats help people to change their energy consumption. The toy cat smiles when you use less, and frowns when you use more – evidence shows it’s a surprisingly powerful way to change behavior. Jaap Ham joined us for our first monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Jaap Ham's research here and his LinkedIn Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

In this episode, I talk about an important initiative by a group called Green Roofs for Healthy Cities to create a $500 million dollar fund that will be used to build and maintain new green roofs for schools across America. This bill will create thousands of green jobs, introduce thousands of children to eco-building design, and have big environmental results for energy efficiency in schools.   If we want to see biophilic eco-cities take hold, we all need to support initiatives like this that will help make hundreds of green roof projects happen.  I supported the campaign by following the prompts on this page and sending a letter to my local congressperson, https://greenroofs.org/advocacy.  I know it's easy not to fill out these kinds of political forms - but it's ALSO easy actually click it and send it - and it will make a difference. Please share this episode and share the link to the green roofs advocacy letter. Let's make these hundreds - or even thousands - of new green roofs happen! Wouldn't that be amazing to see it come true? It could change a generation. **CLICK HERE AND FILL IT OUT** - >  https://greenroofs.org/advocacy Follow Green Roofs for Healthy Cities https://twitter.com/grhcna https://www.instagram.com/grhcna/

What does your creativity have to do with saving the planet? Everything. In this bonus episode, I share a free audiobook chapter from my book, How to Save the World, called Your Creative Genius Zone. It's about how we need your vision, innovation, and your creative genius to uncover the many ideas and epic problem-solving it's going to take to genuinely build a new world. The future of the planet lies in the hands of those who can take on the long and complex quest of re-designing the future – and it's going to take every thread of creative thinking we have to get there.  Get the full audiobook from Audible https://adbl.co/32HrO2D Or the digital package PDF + MP3 files https://katiepatrick.gumroad.com/l/NTLXy

In this episode, we’re talking with Naomi Augustine-Yee about her recent work as Innovation Lead at Magic Leap. If you aren't familiar with Magic Leap, they make those headsets where you can see a visualization of augmented reality superimposed over the real world. I think she has worked on one of THE most interesting “Fitbit for the Planet” styles of technology projects. She and her team created a real-time digital twin of the city of Los Angeles. That means anyone can put on a Magic Leap headset and “see” the entire city of LA, along with the real flows of data, as they are happing in real-time – like air pollution, traffic, kilowatt-hours, and water use – all as if you were looking at the city re-created on a boardroom table.  We can also use AR to create an immersive experience of an alternative world. We can create AR experiences that visualize what a better eco-friendly futuristic world could look like in a way that is much more salient, inspiring, and impactful than a 2D picture or video might be. Check out the blog article on my Medium page to see the pictures she’s created - they are quite wonderful. Naomi joined us for our first monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Naomi Augustine-Yee Twitter @GST_naomi LinkedIn naomiaugustine.com Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Applying game design principles to environmental change projects can lead to powerful results. Game designers practice the art of engaging players and getting them motivated and intensely focused on achieving a goal. Here is a free chapter of the audiobook version of my book, How to Save the World on game design. It's the largest chapter in my book and dives into how to apply twelve different gamification techniques to environmental programs as well as the evidence of how these techniques have succeeded in creating pro-environmental change.  Get the full audiobook from Audible https://adbl.co/32HrO2D Or the digital package PDF + MP3 files https://katiepatrick.gumroad.com/l/NTLXy

If you want to save the Earth, you need to think like a game designer.  In this episode, I sat down with Jesse Schell, author of the canonical game design textbook, The Art of Game Design, and asked him how he would go about saving the planet as a game designer. Jesse is a Distinguished Professor of Experience Design at Carnegie Mellon University and the CEO of Schell Games. Think about these qualities :  peak motivation, obsessive focus, a drive to win, life-long mastery of a complex skill, desire for epic planetary-wide quests — it all sounds like a pretty good skill set to save our real planet, right?  Manifesting these emotions listed above is the craft that game designers specialize in.  People who specialize in game design are a treasure-trove of design-thinking insight about how to get people into a state of obsessive flow, hack into human happiness, and pique the reward system of the brain. I love Jesse’s book The Art of Game Design because when I read it a few years ago, I asked myself “how would l apply all this game design thinking to climate change, plastic waste, or eating less meat”?  Reading a game design textbook through the eyes of an environmentalist opened my imagination when thinking of ideas for environmental change, in a way that nothing else really has. Jesse joined us for our monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live monthly group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Read the blog article about this episode. Follow Jesse Schell Get a copy of The Art of Game Design on Amazon Jesseschell.com Twitter @jesseschell Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

If you work on buildings in any way - getting people to save energy, green architecture, decarbonization - or even if you’re just keen on gamification design for the planet this episode is for you. We are going to be chatting with one of the world’s foremost experts in psychology, technology, and the design of how to get people to save energy in buildings. His name is John Petersen. He’s a professor of systems ecology at Oberlin College and author of multiple really interesting papers on the gamification of displays of data and he also created environmentaldashboard.com  His experiments have gotten up to 56% reductions in electricity - using an interesting combination of digital wall screens, colored lights, a competition, an animated squirrel that shows emotions depending on energy use, and a systems-thinking approach showing the individual’s impact in the context of the community. John joined us for our monthly Fitbit for the Planet video hangout for this episode. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Read the blog article about this episode.  Follow Environmental Dashboard  Get in touch with Professor John Petersen  Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon  katiepatrick.com  Twitter @katiepatrick  Instagram @katiepatrickhello  Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible.  Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Are the words ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ helpful or harmful to the quest to reduce society's ravenous meat consumption? Gregg Sparkman is a Ph.D. student in social psychology at Stanford University who specializes in the study of how to get people to eat less meat. In this interview, he takes us through the many fascinating (and often counter-intuitive) dynamics of what it takes to get people to measurably reduce their meat intake - and it’s not what you think. We talk about social norms in messaging and in particular his specific field of ‘dynamic norms’ where he proved that simply changing a few words in a message has the proven capacity to double the number of vegan meal choices. This episode is a rare gem and an absolute must for anyone trying to influence ethical, plant-based, or sustainable eating habits. Gregg explains many crucial psychological concepts often left out of the vegan and vegetarian movement’s attempts to change the world.  Contact Gregg Sparkman Gregg Sparkman {at} gmail.com if you're interested in more behavioral science on getting people to eat less meat.   Sign up to join our live "Fitbit for the Planet" group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Book a 90-minute idea-storming call with Katie: https://buy.stripe.com/8wM8yS92c0mg1q07ss

In this episode of the How to Save the World podcast, I talk with Dan Stokols, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus at the University of California Irvine.  Dan has recently published a book, Social Ecology in the Digital Age, and he talks to us about what the field of *social ecology* is all about. In a world that often compartmentalizes issues into bite-size boxes, Dan illustrates the importance of taking a “systems thinking” view – and urges us to look more deeply at the interdependence of the many systems around us and how the very small, such as a piece of litter, is governed by a larger system of forces. Dan explores the need to look at the human behavioral dimension of environmental issues to truly understand how to solve the planetary challenges we’re facing in the 21st Century.  Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

You can easily see the number of calories in your peanut butter and your car’s safety rating. But this publicly available data comes from hard-won battles - and the numbers behind many of our most crucial issues in healthcare, environment, and finance are either under lock and key -  or they are simply not even measured. In this month’s podcast episode I interview Harvard University Professor Archon Fung Ph.D. about what happens when we turn important data that is often hidden and contentious into a publicly available resource for the world to see.  Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

This episode is the recording of a talk I put together about my thoughts and theories about why creativity is the missing link in saving the world. This talk covers the technical creative process, the positive constrictive imagination, the neuroscience of optimism and creative productivity, and most of all, it makes a powerful and scientifically robust argument why we need a positive vision of a future world in order to solve the world’s biggest problems.  Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Planet Labs has launched nearly 200 very small satellites in the atmosphere that take high-resolution images of the earth just about every single day. Today’s guest Joseph Mascaro is a Ph.D. tropical ecologist. He is the Director of Academic Programs at Planet Labs and has the fascinating role of helping conservation groups and academics use these spectacular images of the earth for good. We talk about how fast-paced agile technology development can be used to support environmental protection, how images help us emotionally connect with issues in a way that plain data tend not, and how (counter to popular environmental belief), going to Mars is essential to protect life on earth. Don’t miss out on this fabulous episode! If you are a conservation organization wanting more information on forest cover, ice-cover, fires, or anything you can see from the air, check out planet.com Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

This understanding lead me to coin the term, the “two lenses” approach to social change. The two lenses approach means, 1) Your problem needs to be understood through the lens of measurement or data. and 2) Your solution needs to be understood through the lens of behavioral psychology. This is the cornerstone of the design work I do. From my book, How to Save the World, page 7. Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

It’s easy to talk about saving water, but how do you *actually* get people to make real water reductions that you can measure? Environmentally friendly actions are known by psychologists as one of the most difficult things we try and get people to do. A new technology company called WaterSmart has been developing an app that shows you how much water you use compared to your neighbors – and it works. We talk about the technology behind modern water smart meters, what it takes to design for behavior change, and how the water industry’s new immersion in big data is changing how we get people to change for the better.  Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

What can Russian dolls possibly have to do with changing the world? It’s a metaphor that I borrowed from a book called “The Big Leap” by PhD psychologist Gay Hendricks. He used the metaphor of “Russian dolls” to describe the process of digging deeper into oneself, and into the subliminal drivers that guide the real reasons we do things. A bit like the process of asking “Why . . . why . . . why?” To peel away the layers of the onion of our life decisions, or to open up the Russian dolls of our inner selves to find the little one that sits in the very core. Hendrick’s metaphor for digging deeper into the self seemed to also fit beautifully for digging into our strategy for how we change the world. I started to explain gamification as a kind of “motivational wrapping” we can apply to human behavior.  Sign up to join the live "Fitbit for the Planet" group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

In this video, I interview Xiaojing April Xu Ph.D. about what it takes to motivate people to do eco-friendly things. It turns out that it’s often not what you think it is. We talk about interesting phenomena like the Value-Action-Gap, The Crowd-Out Effect, and whether financial or environmental information is more motivating to get people to change. Xiaojing April Xu conducts post-doc research in the behavioral science of energy efficiency at The University of Tennessee. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Have you ever felt like you had a special kind of skill, or a calling, or some bigger reason for existing on the planet? Have you felt like there is more to life than just working a regular nine-to-five job? Or being a struggling activist working for a pitifully low salary in a sweet but ineffectual non-profit? Do you get that weird feeling that “there’s gotta be more to life than this?” I’ve had this feeling forever. I think you probably have it too. I believe this feeling is a calling that is telling you that you are not operating from your creative genius zone and that you really need to be. From my book, How to Save the World, pg 41. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Did you know that heatwaves kill more people than all the other weather-caused fatalities (like from cyclones, floods etc) put together? Cities around the world are getting baking hot. Extreme heat gets a lot worse when you live in the city, because of all the concrete and asphalt and it’s called an Urban Heat Island. In this episode, I speak with the very fun and enthusiastic Jeremy Hoffman Ph.D. from the Science Museum of Virginia about a study he conducted that involved getting volunteer drivers and cyclists to ride around the city in Summer wearing a thermometer. What he got was a map of Virginia’s urban heat island. We talk about the frightening dangers of urban heat islands, but also the exciting opportunity we have to use heat data to catalyze a massive revolution in urban greening. The cities of the future are ours to invent. We can all get to work to plant more urban trees, install more green roofs, and turn old car parks into gardens, and really change the world with easy practical contributions to the built environment.  Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Jeremy Hoffman  Twitter @jer_science jeremyscotthoffman.com How to Save the World is a Podcast About the Psychology of What Gets People To Take On Sustainable Behavior and Climate Action. Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to get magnitudes more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at katiepatrick.com Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action. You might enjoy joining their communities and events. Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx Follow on Twitter @katiepatrick, Instagram @katiepatrickhello, and LinkedIn

Where does all your trash really go after you throw it away? Dietmar worked on the MIT Trash Track Project where they attached GPS sensors to hundreds of pieces of garbage and followed it around the country. We talk about the good and bad side of smart cities, the growing trends around data in urban legibility and we explore some significant flaws in the recycling industry for solving the waste problem.  Dietmar has recently authored a book called "Waste is Information" published by MIT Press and is a consummate intellectual force in the urban data, design, and in particular the complex story behind all the stuff we throw away. Dietmar Offenhuber is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy. See more of his work here http://offenhuber.net/ Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon https://amzn.to/2Z4jivL Follow Katie: Twitter @katiepatrick http://twitter.com/katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello http://instagram.com/katiepatrickhello   Support the podcast  Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing!

I got this sense a few years ago, that if people could see the numbers that made up their environmental footprint (such as the litres of water they used in a shower or the number trees felled to make their toilet paper) in an immediate and easy-to-understand way, then this data must, absolutely must, cause the person to use less resources, right? I had such a strong hunch about this connection that it has obsessed me ever since. This episode is about why the public disclosure of data matters and how it enables change.  Sign up to join the live group "Fitbit for the Planet" calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

Why do some people seem to consider environmental issues deeply, while others glance over our greatest earthly challenges and seem to hardly care? Our capacity for a “systems thinking” mindset can help tell us to answer why. Today’s guest, research psychologist and geographer Stephan Lezak, conducted a study that measured people’s tendency towards systems thinking and how this correlated to their environmental values. He found that people who rank higher as systems thinkers substantially consider environmental issues to be more important. In this fascinating conversation, we discuss what it takes to see the grey areas and the vast interconnectedness in a complicated world, the mistakes we make in our reasoning, and how we can build a new generation of systems thinkers in schools and universities today. Sign up to join the live "Fitbit for the Planet" group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Stephan Lezak Twitter @StephenLezak Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx

In this video I talk with Kimberly Hunter, the VP of Communications at one of the Bay Area’s most interesting new environmental data companies. Aclima is the first company in the world to map out air quality by specific address by attaching air sensors to the Google cars that take images for Google Street View. We discuss the fascinating evolution of electronic sensors that are now starting to cover the world that are telling us information that we never had before. This detailed environmental data is opening up a huge change in the way governments and individuals make decisions and could even lead to a future world where sustainability is fully automated. Sign up to join the live "Fitbit for the Planet" group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Aclima Twitter @aclima aclima.io Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing!

Here’s the problem: Many people start projects without understanding much about what it is they are trying to change in the world. I mean, they don’t look into the data about their problem. You may have heard the saying, “If you can’t measure it, it probably doesn’t exist.” That’s well and good for scientists, but what does this mean for social-change entrepreneurs, world changers, and designers? Or creative people in general? The brutally honest truth is: if we can’t measure the impact we are having on the world, we probably aren’t having any at all. Let this sink in for a moment: Despite your best intentions, you may very well not be making any meaningful impact on the world. Sign up to join the live group calls at katiepatrick.com/fitbit. Follow Naomi Augustine-Yee Twitter @GST_naomi LinkedIn naomiaugustine.com Follow Katie Patrick Get a copy of How to Save the World on Amazon katiepatrick.com Twitter @katiepatrick Instagram @katiepatrickhello LinkedIn Support the podcast Contribute a monthly donation at patreon.com/katiepatrick to help me continue to make these episodes possible. Thank you to Jordan, Nader, Mike, Gary, Alex, Ben, Dee, and Ian for contributing! Xx