Consuming products in an informed and vigilant way can produce substantial health benefits to you, your family, and your co-workers. But you’ve got to know your stuff! Paul D. Blanc, MD holds the Endowed Chair of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and his new book is titled How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace. LISTEN (12 min)

Among the most important rituals that we take part in, the funeral’s true emotional and cultural impact has been compromised by the enormously profitable funeral industry. Mark Harris joins Betsy to discuss his new book "Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial". It’s one of the most interesting books we’ve come across in a long time. LISTEN (8 min)

The Washington Post called Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute "one of the world’s most  influential thinkers." In
1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that
his writings “have already strongly affected thinking about problems of
world population and resources.” We all know that Plan A has brought us to our current state. Now it’s time for Plan B 2.0.
PART 1 (11 min)  PART 2 (7 min)

Lester Brown founded the World Watch Institute in 1974, and since 1975 they have been publishing the most comprehensive and instructive policy environmental reports in the world. This year’s State of the World Report was released yesterday, and the report’s over-arching theme is Our Urban Future. State of the World Project Director Molly O’Meara Sheehan chats with Betsy about population density, urban innovations in Brazil, and even quotes Plato! LISTEN (10 min)

Sue Whitney and Ki Nassauer– the JunkMasters— have combined good taste, an unabashed love for the discarded gems found at garage sales and the spirit of conservation in their new book Decorating JunkMarket Style. There’s beauty in the texture and tactile sense of so many of the things we throw out. Junk, Vintage, Shabby Chic, whatever you want to call it: Let’s live within our means in style. LISTEN (10 min)

EcoTalk is often so busy in the studio cranking out shows full of the politics, science, and lifestyle news that even we some times lose touch with the natural world that keeps us grounded and spiritually guided. Mark Coleman’s illuminating new book is called Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery. Coleman believes that acknowledgement of oneself as a part of nature is crucial to understanding onself, and facing up to the challenges we all face.  LISTEN (12 min)

Lyn Miller Lachmann, author of the eco-thriller Dirt Cheap , talks fiction vs. nonfiction, her characters’ complex motivations, and how she came to write the story of a professor hot on the trail of the chemical company that gave him cancer. LISTEN (10 min)