This past week, Marketplace Morning Report, an NPR radio program that airs during Morning Edition, presented a program called “Consumed” on the impact and sustainability of our consumer culture. I had numerous reactions when I began hearing the program, which had segment additions each day. I was excited, eager to hear the segments, and glad to have Marketplace address this issue. Only after the entire program aired did I realize that a critical issue – about which I’ve been teaching for two decades, and which has remained on the fringe of society, relegated to alternative media and nonprofit organizations all these years – had just become mainstream. MAINSTREAM!

Part of me sighs cynically, “Well, it’s about time.” Another part of me wants to do a jig because, as the most critical issues of our time become part of daily discourse, we have a far greater opportunity to change systems that are destructive into ones that are restorative. I think I’ll do a jig.

~Zoe, IHE President

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | consumerism, Cultural Issues, mainstream, media, National Public Radio