Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected].
This solar-powered life
Joshua Spodek has been living off-grid in a Greenwich Village apartment for over a year, gleaning what power he needs from four solar panels he constantly recharges. It’s a unique lifestyle choice to make in the middle of a bustling city, as the New York Times points out in a story about Spodek that RTBC Contributing Editor Michaela Haas shared this week.
Spodek doesn’t expect that many others will make the drastic choices that he’s made, but he challenges people to make at least one change to live more sustainably. “The first thing that people do is not that important to me,” he told the Times. “It’s the mind-set shift. Is it intrinsically rewarding? Because then people will do more.”
Michaela says:
I love stories about people who go all the way.
Real news
Being able to tell fact from fiction is a vital skill in today’s information-packed landscape — and skills can be taught. In Finland, learning to recognize hoaxes, propaganda and other kinds of disinformation is part of the school curriculum, CBS News reports in a video shared by Executive Editor Will Doig.
Will says:
It’s starting to become clear how disinformation influenced the US election. In Finland public schools teach media literacy to kids as early as fourth grade to help them identify untrustworthy news.
What else we’re reading
☁️ EU emissions fall by 8% in steep reduction reminiscent of Covid shutdown — shared by Michaela Haas from The Guardian
♻️ How a Colombian Influencer Made Recycling Cool — shared by RTBC founder David Byrne from the New York Times
⚖️ How Redondo Beach brought its homeless numbers to ‘functionally zero’ — shared by Michaela Haas from the Los Angeles Times
In other news…
We’ve been blown away by the outpouring of messages we’ve received since sharing our No Matter Who Wins reader responses and, in particular, the poem that our managing director, Rebecca Faulkner, assembled from them.
If you’re looking for a post-election balm, give Rebecca’s poem a read.
