TEDx

I’ve been looking forward to making this announcement… my TED Talk is live!

I talk about the importance of storytelling as a climate solution.

It’s fitting that this talk comes out as we wrap up the hottest month in recorded human history. Yesterday, I watched from a hotel as the news spent half of its block showing upward graphs and talking about how people are experiencing climate change right now. It’s a big improvement over the sparse coverage a few short years ago, but it’s still lacking something: solution-focused stories.

We often engage the climate crisis through the lens of macro-level trends and global statistics… and believe me, I know the importance of those things. But without stories–stories that are told with craft, care, and ethical standards, we run the risk of detachment and despair.

Stories can help us connect to each other with empathy. Stories can hold room for nuance, since problem-solving is hardly ever black and white. And stories can show us what real solutions look like, where they’ve already happened, and where they can be taken next.

All that to say… go watch the TED Talk! I’ve been really looking forward to sharing it with you.

Last Day in Anchorage

Anchorage was a fun little city. I love places that are at such geographic extremes, they’ve just gotta find a way to make life livable.

Some highlights from the last day:

The Anchorage Museum – Five floors of exhibits that all merit a good long visit. We spent all our time on the kid friendly floor and don’t regret it a bit.

Kincaid Park – Arctic beaches, black sand, and the awareness that this ocean is extremely far north creates such an unusual feeling beach. I loved it.

Street Art – I have a whole separate video highlighting some interesting murals found around Downtown Anchorage. Alaska probably isn’t widely associated with street art, but there’s some real creativity going on over on those downtown walls.

Jeepney Arctic Food – Arctic Filipino Hawaiian food.

Arctic Filipino Food

Arctic Filipino Hawaiian food. What even is that? I can’t say for sure, but there were some menu items here that just made sense.

Sinulaw? Take the chopped pork belly of sinugba and mix it with the cured fish in kinilaw. The contrast in texture and flavor was perfect.

Calamansi slush? Guess that one felt more arctic. Most calamansi drinks are going to be winners in my book.

Skewers? Wanna play it safe and just go with BBQ on a stick? It’s still not a bad choice. This place executes.

Rickshaw Roadrage

Heat make anyone else cranky?

I hate being too hot. And apparently so do a lot of people, as evidenced by the rickshaw roadrage I ran into on this street through Old Dhaka. South Asia gets some notoriously brutal temperatures. It was an efficient brawl, the two bike cab drivers hopped off for a 90 second fistfight before carrying on their way. Not to condone violence, but at least this approach was efficient, and way less destructive than whatever happened on Beef.

For the longest time, South Asia was a glaring omission from the places I've been. I mean, I know there will always be places and parts of the world that remain a mystery to me, but to have seen so much of the world without seeing the one area that more people call home than anywhere else? I'd really wanted to rectify that.

I've got some fun prospects to return to the region, and I know that all the different population centers there offer so much to be discovered. Can't wait for that return visit

Got any parts of the world that you haven't seen but feel the need to at some point?

A Day in Bohol

A lot of the adventure guides around Bohol pack a lot into a single day. You might see a hike, a dive, and a food tour all rolled into one itinerary. I love all these things, but rushing between them without much breathing room to let each one sink in isn’t quite my style. I hope that in time, the infrastructure evolves to make more room for taking it slow, one thing at a time. It’s an island, after all.

That being said, there are certainly some activities and sights in Bohol that are simple enough to not require their own day, and these make sense to package together. Here are some of those things we did in a day on Bohol.

So Satisfied

Taking a moment to step back and see that a whole bunch of that stuff I used to daydream about has become real life.

Life at home with the kids and Deanna is a dream come true. So is being able to go places and explore the world while doing creative work I find meaningful.

There’s been a steep learning curve around how to make the space for it all, and Deanna has been so incredibly gracious and generous as I’ve been learning, but I can honestly say most days I go off to do work I love doing and then I get to come home to a life I love.

I’ve gotten some of the most exciting work, travel, and creative opportunities I’ve ever gotten in the past couple of years. And in between all of that I’m finding places to play, come back to my body, connect with people, and build community.

Days are packed and three kids give me a lot of plates to spin. There are lots of logic puzzles to be solved every week about how to make it all fit. But it hasn’t been lost on me that life right now is about as sweet and full as it's ever been.

Old Dhaka Food Tour, pt. 2

“Can you find Bengali food in the U.S.? Sure. Around 250,000 Bengalis live in the U.S.

That said… most of them are in New York City. And tracking down a Bengali restaurant isn’t always that easy to do.

Unfortunately, there’s a long history of western countries doing a disservice to the variety and regionality of South Asian food. Taking a whole category of foods and calling them all curry. Or leaving us largely illiterate when it comes to the regional identities of certain dishes.

A lot of Bengali restaurants might be labeled as Indian food. Not wrong, exactly, since Bengal is in India AND Bangladesh, but you really don’t know if you’re getting Bengali food or Punjabi food or Goan food etc. when all the sign says is Indian.

But, my favorite workaround is this. Get to know the people running the place. That typically only leads to good things.”

Fun in Portland

Portland.
Last week.
Good time as always.

✅ Saw Meaghan and Luke get married
✅ Took Kai and Juniper to our former home state, likely their last flight as lap infants
✅ Celebrated our eighth anniversary, technically on the flight, but eventually at Magna which had been on my radar forever
✅ Stopped Juniper from running into a desk then immediately face-checked the desk myself
✅ A couple nights out in Hood River

Launching: The Creative Changemaker

You probably know I believe in storytelling and creativity as a catalyst for change. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have given a TED Talk on it last month!

To put it simply, we’re shown devastating scenes and discouraging statistics too often, and the constant exposure isn’t neutral. It actually drives people to become more fatalistic and resigned to terrible outcomes. Stories that make solutions visible show us what can still be done, and why it must be done.

But I want to take this a step further. Instead of just telling people to tell stories, I want to help people tell them effectively. The things I’ve learned in my work come from all over the place. Behavioral psychology. Creative arts. Marketing and communications. Ecology. Activism. But I see so many patterns that connect and repeat and show us how to tell a story that can lead to change.

I’m adding The Creative Changemaker as an ongoing series on both my channel and newsletter feed. If you’re already signed up on either of those places, then you need to do nothing more! It’ll be a recurring series interspersed with my other work. If not… go on and sign up!

Old Dhaka Food Tour, pt. 1

One of the most important lessons from my food tour of Bangladesh: don’t say no to tehari.

I love biryani. IYKYK. Crowd pleaser. But tehari? That’s biryani done the Bengali way… and I think that’s the way I like it most!

Most biryanis have an aggressive up front kick. I like a good spicy dish, but sometimes it can drown out other flavors, and flavors like the deep, savory mutton and spice in tehari? That’s stuff you don’t want to upstage too much.

The States Game

Let’s have a bit of fun on here.

There’s this game people are playing of blindly ranking states they’d move to at random, without knowing what’s next. Then I saw a variation of the game where you create your own state based on aspects of others. Nature. Government. Sports. Etc.

Check out my hybrid state. What do you think?

We need an international version of this game, stat. I want Japan’s cuisine, India’s movie industry, Argentine football and Mediterranean work hours.

Deforestation in Burundi

So often, when I think about deforestation, I think of greedy businesspeople with fat cigars and gold chains pointing towards the Amazon while dreaming of their next swim through a vault of cash. But that’s not always the case.

At least a third of the time… if not more… deforestation is driven by ordinary people trying to put food on the table for their families. In Burundi, charcoal was the most visible example of how this works.

Trees can be made into charcoal.
Charcoal brings in quick cash.

But the loss of trees drives soil erosion.
Soil erosion leads to food insecurity.

It’s a vicious cycle.

That’s why I don’t see climate action and development against poverty as separate streams. If you don’t pay attention to both, efforts only go so far.

Bangladesh Loves Football

I live 20 minutes from Mexico. I’ve lived in Italy and Argentina, and yet the most soccer-obsessed country I’ve been to just might be…

Bangladesh??

I visited around the time of the World Cup, and I saw more Brazilian and Argentine flags than Bangladeshi flags. Many of them were homemade, constructed out of available materials and pure passion for South America’s most popular national squads.

A few people had really deep explanations as to why rivalry plays an important role culturally, but I liked the simplest explanations best– most people’s parents grew up during the era of Pele and Maradonna and their kids inherited the passion as it was carried onwards by Neymar and Messi.

Also- the only layer I packed was my Argentina selection track jacket. TOTAL COINCIDENCE before I knew Bangladesh was like that about their football.

8th Anniversary

8 years marks the mango popsicle anniversary.

AKA the anniversary where there’s nothing you’d rather do at night than sit on a friend’s couch together eating mango popsicles since it was a loonnng day spent flying in to Portland with twins on your laps.

It’s amazing how much can happen in eight years. We’ve now filed married taxes eight times, finished four seasons of Manifest, and upgraded our dining plates. We mayyyy have done a few other things too!

Love you so much Deanna - the life we have together feels way too full to be real life, and yet it is.

Flaming Betel Leaf

Paan. Betel leaf.🍃Stuffed with candy, spices, chocolate syrup. Then lit on fire and shoved in your mouth.

Sounds good?

Apparently this snack is illegal! Or at least in a legal gray area.

I have a video dropping next week about the time I took a food tour of Old Dhaka. Really excited to put it out there so make sure you’re following along on the Tube and the newsletter.

Also, recognizing my room for growth here. If I’m gonna do this food and travel stuff on camera, I gotta go bigger with the reacts! 🫠 So stoic for having fire just put in my mouf.

Balicasag Marine Sanctuary

Wish I could give everybody this moment of wonder right here.

The ocean sometimes feels like a whole different world. Then you remember that it’s very much a part of our world and that no matter how much you travel or learn, you only really know a very small corner of that world.

Obama vs. Fieri

I’ve been to plenty of mom-and-pop restaurants proudly displaying framed photos and newspaper clippings of the time Obama paid them a visit.

I’ve also been to plenty with the signed Guy Fieri cookie sheet, indicating a feature on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives.

But what carries more weight?

I decided to rank some of the restaurants I’d been to decide if I’d rather have a food itinerary planned by the former POTUS, or the Mayor of Flavortown.

Fathers Day 2023

“Good night. I love you.”

“I love you too… because you’re squishy.”

Fatherhood is so flattering.

Then there was also the time Rhys decided to reply to me saying “I love you” with a sudden “My name’s Rhys!”

You three…

Biggest adventures of my life right here. Thanks for making everyday a mashup of a miracle and an Animaniacs episode.

Dhaka

Crowded. Dusty. Packed.

People tend to use the same words over and over when talking about the city of Dhaka. And they’re not wrong. It is all those things. And distinctions like being the most polluted city don’t exactly make it seem like the most appealing destination.

But like most places, I refused to believe that was all there is to the city until I got there. And sure enough, I found a city at the heart of a country on the rise. One making unprecedented moves against poverty in such a short span of time. A place that holds the promise of opportunity, along with the pains of lost opportunity due to climate change.

It’s hard to do justice to the complicated capital that is Dhaka without simply going one story at a time. Talking to people. Learning how they got there. It’s what I do.

Lolo & Lola

Filipinos are everywhere! Which means? I can find Filipino food almost anywhere I go.

That included Vienna, Austria where I got to enjoy a night out exploring by going to Lolo & Lola out in District 6. I loved this place. The concept of an adobo schnitzel just makes sense. And the calamansi spritz was IT.

The most fun part for me was talking with the staff in a hybrid of English-German-and-Tagalog. No need to speak them perfectly if you can switch tracks as you go.