A weekly podcast that serves up a delicious mix of food, sustainability, and travel. Host, Steve Sabicer, explores the wonders of mindful eating, digging into stories about our food system, ways to eat more sustainably, and culinary adventures around the globe or right in his very own kitchen. Get ready to expand your palate and your mind. One bite at a time.
I own plenty of cookbooks, and I love reading them, but when it comes time to make dinner, I’m much more likely to open the refrigerator, see what needs to be eaten, and take it from there. Sometimes that means substituting ingredients. Sometimes it means inventing something entirely new. And occasionally it means making something I probably won’t make again.
I’ve always thought that was just how I cooked. But after my recent Substack LIVE with Katerina Pavlakis of Think Like a Cook, I realized there’s a much bigger idea behind it.
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Katerina teaches something she calls intuitive cooking—learning to trust our senses, experiences, memories, and appetites instead of outsourcing every decision to a recipe or an expert. And she believes our modern obsession with recipes, celebrity chefs, and perfectly photographed food has convinced a lot of us that cooking is much harder than it actually is.
We had a fascinating hour talking about why so many people are afraid to cook, how recipes can sometimes create a kind of learned helplessness, and why restaurant chefs probably shouldn’t be the standard by which we judge Tuesday-night dinner.
We also talked about one of my favorite subjects: permission. Permission to substitute an ingredient. Permission to add more salt. Permission to use the slightly sad tomatoes in the back of the refrigerator. Permission to make something that tastes good even if it doesn’t look anything like the photograph.
Then we put it all to the test.
I raided my refrigerator and challenged Katerina with random combinations—eggs and feta, sweet potatoes and cilantro, even mango and onion—to see how an intuitive cook thinks through ingredients without immediately reaching for Google. Katerina also cooked a simple Greek-style green bean dish while explaining how understanding why we chop, salt, sauté, and season can eventually free us from needing a recipe at all.
One idea from our conversation kept coming back to me. We spend so much time trying to make cooking more “convenient” so we can get dinner out of the way.
But as Katerina asked: What if the evening is the dinner?
If you’ve ever stared into your refrigerator wondering what the hell to make, felt intimidated by a recipe, or wished you were one of those people who could “just throw something together,” I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.
Enjoy the full recording at the top of this post.
Also, please consider becoming a paid subscriber before the end of summer. Not only will you get a bunch of great paid benefits, including in-depth workshops, more live conversations, PDFs and opportunities to connect one-on-one. But you’ll also help me to achieve Best Selling status, which helps get Enlightened Omnivore in front of more readers. I only need 12 more subscriptions!
Next Up: CookStack Collective — Kimchi!
Our next CookStack Collective class is this Friday. Paid subscribers can join Betty Williams on Friday, August 21 at 12 pm PT / 3 pm ET for a fermentation primer and hands-on lesson making two kinds of Korean kimchi: quick-pickled cucumber kimchi and fermented cabbage kimchi.
It’s the second installment of the year-long CookStack Collective, featuring 12 live cooking classes from food writers, cooks, bakers, and teachers across Substack. And if you can’t make it live, paid subscribers get access to the recording.
Come cook with us.
The Seasonal Table is Back: Fall
On September 17 at 10am PT/1pm ET, I’m co-hosting with Nicki Sizemore the next installment of The Seasonal Table — a quarterly Substack Live series marking the four seasonal turning points of the year (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter).
For our fall conversation, Nicki and I will share about my favorite time of year. What does autumn mean to nature, the body, the kitchen, and the family dinner table.
And, of course, there will be food. Nicki and I will be demoing some of our favorite recipes for fall. I hope you join us.
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LIVE: What I Learned from Talking Blood Sugar with Beth Bollinger
Monday, July 13, 2026 • Duration 01:00:30
A couple of years ago, I wrote an Enlightened Omnivore series called When Worlds Collide after my doctor gave me what I jokingly call a “pre-pre-diabetes” diagnosis. My A1C (average blood sugar) had been creeping upward for years—not enough to diagnose diabetes, but enough to convince me it was time to start paying closer attention. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d just left a twenty-year career in healthcare public relations, much of it spent working in diabetes.
That curiosity sent me down a rabbit hole of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), metabolic health, protein-packed breakfasts, and plenty of surprising discoveries, including some potentially medicinal mushrooms.
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Last week, I had the chance to revisit that journey during a Substack LIVE conversation with metabolic health educator Beth Bollinger. We had a fascinating hour together, and I came away with even more questions than answers—which is usually a good sign.
We talked about why blood sugar is really a window into the body, why stress and sleep can matter just as much as food, and why a ten-minute walk after dinner might be one of the simplest health interventions available. We also explored continuous glucose monitors, the surprising foods that can send blood sugar soaring, and the small daily habits Beth recommends to almost everyone.
If you’ve ever wondered whether a CGM is worth trying, why your energy crashes in the afternoon, or how food affects your body beyond calories alone, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.
You can watch the full recording above.
I’ve also dig into the archive and shared my When Worlds Collide series again for anyone who wants to dive deeper into my own journey with blood sugar, food, and metabolic health. You can find the entire collection .
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
LIVE: The Seasonal Table; Summer Time
Tuesday, June 16, 2026 • Duration 50:42
Hello fellow Enlightened Omnivores,
Last Friday, Nicki Sizemore and I hosted the second installment of The Seasonal Table, our quarterly Substack Live series exploring what each season means in the kitchen, at the table, and in our daily lives.
You can watch the full replay above.
This season’s conversation centered on summer and the approaching solstice. We talked about why seasonal transitions mattered so much to earlier generations and why many of us have lost the habit of marking them. We explored summer through several different traditions, including the Medicine Wheel and Traditional Chinese Medicine, and found ourselves returning to a common question:
What if summer isn’t a season for accomplishing more, but rather for strengthening what matters most?
Along the way, Nicki shared some of her family’s summer rituals, including how the celebrate the the first zucchini blossoms from the garden. We also talked about why summer food often tastes better with less effort, how sauces and condiments can transform simple meals, and the surprising kitchen tool we both agreed we can’t live without.
And of course, we made food.
Nicki made a whipped labneh topped with pistachio dukkah, while I shared my Provençal-inspired tapenade loaded with olives, capers, anchovies, and a rosemary-infused olive oil. Both recipes are perfect examples of the kind of cooking I gravitate toward this time of year: simple, flexible, and designed to bring people together around a table.
As the solstice approaches, I hope you’ll find a way to mark the season—whether that’s a dinner with friends, a walk at sunset, a jump in a refreshing body of water, or simply paying a little more attention to the abundance that’s already here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
LIVE: Hot Dogs, Weird Foods, and What's in My Fridge
Monday, May 18, 2026 • Duration 59:48
Had an absolute blast this weekend talking weird food, hot dogs, Jell-O salads, presidential eating habits, duck pâté, giant wheels of White House cheese, White house ragers, and what’s hiding in our refrigerators with my friend Bennett Rea of Cookin’ with Congress.
Bennett has built one of the most fascinating food history projects online — recreating the meals of presidents, politicians, and everyday Americans to explore what food says about culture, class, power, and identity. Somewhere between hot dogs for the Queen of England, and frozen cottage cheese suspended in Jell-O, we uncovered a surprising amount about American food.
We also opened our fridges live for the internet, which may or may not have been a mistake.
If you missed the conversation, listen to the replay. It’s a fun one. Come for the hot dog history, stay for the Siberian pine cone jam and morning presidential cocktails.
And definitely go follow Bennett’s work at Cooking with Congress — especially if you love food history, strange recipes, or the beautifully weird ways Americans have eaten over the years.
WORKSHOP: The Enlightened Freezer
Most people use their freezer like a graveyard for leftovers and mystery meat. But chefs, butchers, and thoughtful home cooks know something different: your freezer might be the most important tool in your kitchen.
Join me for a practical workshop on Saturday June 13th, @9am PT / Noon ET to learn everything about freezing foods: how to organize things, preserve seasonal items, and make everyday cooking dramatically easier and cheaper. Paid subscribers can register at the link below.
Stay Connected
* Follow along on YouTube, Instagram and for video content, reels, and behind-the-scenes thoughts. I’m also on and .
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
PODCAST Season Finale: Ending With a Friend
Season 2 · Episode 216
Wednesday, February 18, 2026 • Duration 01:05:06
This is the final episode of The Enlightened Omnivore Podcast — Season Two.
I’m taking a short break, but I’ll be back later this year with Season Three. In the meantime, there are more than 25 episodes waiting for you wherever you listen—so if you’ve been enjoying the show, please follow, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you download your podcasts. It would truly mean a lot.
Now, the real reason this episode matters.
My guest is Kurt Beardsley—one of my closest friends of more than three decades. And I don’t say that lightly. Kurt is the kind of friend who doesn’t just know my stories… he helped shape many of them.
Kurt is a photographer, an artist, a maker. He’s spent decades in music and entertainment—technical theater, production work, building sets, solving problems, getting impossible things done on impossible timelines. He has that rugged competence a lot of men quietly envy.
And somehow, alongside all that, he’s also one of the most emotionally grounded men I’ve ever known.
That combination—capable and tender—might be the most “sustainable” form of masculinity out there.
PODCAST: Clean Alcohol, Label Lookers, & the Alchemy of Tea
Season 2 · Episode 215
Wednesday, February 11, 2026 • Duration 46:17
I keep hearing this phrase: clean alcohol.
It shows up in product descriptions, social captions, and I hear it from the soccer moms as I wait in line for my decaf Americano.
I wasn’t even sure what people meant by it. Was it a health claim? A vibe? Just a marketing buzzword?
So I brought the question to someone who lives right at the center of that conversation: Jennie Ripps, founder and CEO of Owl’s Brew, a ready-to-drink alcoholic beverage company built around tea, botanicals, and transparency.
Enlightened Omnivore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Jennie and I have known each other for… an almost comical amount of time (depending on which of us is doing the math). We studied abroad together in Athens, Greece, in the late 1990s. We’ve only seen each other in person one other time — randomly, on a street corner in New York City
Then one day I saw her picture in an article in Inc. magazine. Jennie had made it. She was CEO of one of the fastest-growing beverage companies.
So this episode felt like both a reunion and a crash course in how the modern alcohol industry actually works.
And the biggest surprise?
A lot of what consumers think they’re buying… they can’t easily verify.
What “clean alcohol” is reacting to
Jennie’s definition starts simple:
Clean alcohol means no preservatives, no additives, no weird ingredients.
But the why matters more than the what. Jennie points out something most of us don’t realize: alcohol doesn’t operate under the same regulatory expectations we’re used to with food.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Wintering Like a Butcher
Season 2 · Episode 214
Wednesday, February 4, 2026 • Duration 55:15
In this episode of Enlightened Omnivore, I sit back down with my good friend and butcher doppelganger, Heather Thomason.
The first few minutes with Heather are always the same: a quick audio check, a little screen glare, the shared relief that yes—this sounds good, we’re here.
Then the real catch-up begins.
Heather’s been on the podcast a few times now, and each time feels like a different chapter of a fulfilling life. The butcher chapter. The non-profit chapter. And now, something new.
This time, Heather doesn’t arrive with a new title or a big announcement. She arrives with warmth on a cold day. With the quiet honesty of someone who’s stopped forcing clarity.
“I’m wintering,” she says. Cocooning. Not hiding—just listening.
And I know exactly what she means.
It’s that season when you stop “doing” long enough to feel yourself again.
Heather shares about stepping away from her nonprofit role—less as an exit, more as a clearing. She loved the people. She cared about the impact. But somewhere along the way she noticed the simplest truth:
This isn’t my life’s work.
Saying that out loud takes a specific kind of courage. The kind that doesn’t come from certainty. The kind that comes from finally trusting your own temperature gauge.
Putting Down the Pen, Picking Up the Brush
Heather and I first connected through writing. Her HUNGRY HEART Substack was my first introduction to the platform. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth your time. Her early posts felt eerily parallel to my own feelings after closing—like someone else had already written the thing I was circling. Her work inspired me to start Enlightened Omnivore.
For Heather, writing felt like the obvious container for her creativity.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
PODCAST: How to Save the Rainforests Without Picking a Food Fight
Season 2 · Episode 13
Wednesday, January 28, 2026 • Duration 01:00:12
This week on the Enlightened Omnivore Podcast, I sit down with Jack Bobo of the Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies at UCLA to tackle one of the most polarizing questions in modern food culture:
Can agriculture actually be part of the climate solution—or are we arguing ourselves into a corner?
We start with regenerative agriculture, but the conversation quickly zooms out to something bigger: why food debates feel so toxic, and why progress keeps stalling.
Jack offers a simple but powerful reframe:
“Most food fights aren’t about values. They’re about metrics.”
Most of us want the same things—healthy people, a livable planet, farmers who can stay in business. But we measure success differently: carbon, water, biodiversity, labor, price. Cue the shouting.
Here’s the surprising part: Jack argues that many U.S. agricultural sustainability metrics have improved dramatically since the 1980s. Less land. Less water. Fewer emissions per unit of food.
The real problem? We’re producing more food than ever—and not improving fast enough to keep up with demand.
We dig into why doom-and-gloom narratives backfire, how policy can accidentally export environmental damage, and why the next 25 years may be the most important food transition in human history.
The takeaway is simple—and radical:
You don’t fix the food system by creating more villains.
PODCAST: Salmon, Sculpture, and the Art of Disappearing
Season 2 · Episode 12
Wednesday, January 21, 2026 • Duration 54:28
This week on Enlightened Omnivore, I sit down with Shannon Ninburg, an artist and salmon educator whose work lives right at the intersection of ecology, attention, and awe.
If you’ve ever watched a salmon run, really watched it, you know it’s not just a biology lesson. It’s a story about endurance, memory, return… and the strange beauty of an ending that becomes a beginning all over again.
Shannon teaches that story through Salmon in the Schools, a Seattle-area program where kids raise salmon from eggs in classroom tanks and release them into local creeks and streams.
But Shannon doesn’t only teach these cycles.
She sculpts them.
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Her recent work features endangered animals carved in salt, and then shared with goats who lick away sections of the sculpture—leaving behind voids, absences, and a kind of visual grief that is hard to unsee.
Shannon admits that constructing the body of a disappearing creature felt unexpectedly powerful. And then she put that body into the world.
She let the goats do what goats do, making the sculpture a collaboration—equal parts beautiful, grotesque, and devastating.
What’s left isn’t just an image of an animal.
It’s the experience of absence.
The emotional lesson underneath the science
What I loved about this week’s conversation is how seamlessly it moves between the literal and the metaphorical
The salmon story is already a masterclass in keystone species: the fish return, lay their eggs, break down, become food and fertilizer. Teachers of reciprocity.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
PODCAST: Raptors, EVs and Eating Sustainable
Season 2 · Episode 11
Wednesday, January 14, 2026 • Duration 58:16
This week on Enlightened Omnivore, I sit down with Nurit Katz, the Chief Sustainability Officer of the University of California, Los Angeles, for a conversation that stretched far beyond campus boundaries.
UCLA isn’t just a university. On any given day, it functions like a small city, serving nearly 90,000 people. It has its own power systems, water demands, food operations, transportation networks, and emergency infrastructure. It’s no wonder that it’s a fascinating test case for sustainability—not just in theory, but in practice.
UCLA is a “living laboratory,” a place where research doesn’t sit on a shelf, or only get pondered in the classroom. It gets translated into real, shovel-ready projects.
One of the most compelling examples we discuss is a recent solar microgrid project. The campus used electric cars like mobile batteries, borrowing electricity from student, staff, and faculty vehicles during evening hours when solar isn’t available. In simple terms: your car can charge during off-peak hours and then send energy back to the grid when demand spikes—earning you money in the process.
Enlightened Omnivore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
That idea—science moving into action—comes up repeatedly in our conversation. Nurit’s work is about bridging worlds: academic research and operational reality, climate ambition and institutional constraints, idealism and pragmatism.
And none of these ideas are small in scale. The university’s transition to renewable sources of energy requires enormous shifts that cost billions of dollars. Yes, I used the b-word.
But this conversation isn’t just about energy and infrastructure. It’s also about food—something every student, staff member, and listener can immediately relate to.
UCLA Dining is consistently ranked among the best in the country, serving thousands of meals a day. That scale brings unique challenges: sourcing responsibly, reducing waste, balancing nutrition, and responding to student demand for more plant-forward menus. We talk about why “eating sustainably” gets complicated fast when you’re feeding a campus of this size, and how some of the solutions might sound familiar to former customers of Electric City Butcher—ideas rooted in sourcing, scale, and transparency.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
Also, please consider becoming a paid subscriber in the month of July. Not only will you get a bunch of great paid benefits, including in-depth workshops, more live conversations, PDFs and opportunities to connect one-on-one. But you’ll also help me to achieve Best Selling status before the end of the month. I only need 12 more subscriptions!
Paid subscribers can join us on Friday, July 17 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET, for the inaugural CookStack Collective class. Rebecca will be teaching live from the galley of her sailboat, preparing a colorful hummus platter, sesame chicken salad, and…a watermelon salad—proof that summer may have many flavors, but watermelon is almost always one of them. I’ll be there too with some watermelon trivia.
* Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
* Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
Enjoy the replay, and let me know what summer rituals, traditions, or recipes shape this season for you.
Steve
Coming in July: Food, Blood Sugar, and Metabolic Health with Beth Bollinger
A few years ago, I discovered I was edging toward prediabetes and started paying closer attention to how food affected my body. For my next live conversation, I'll be joined by metabolic health expert Beth Bollinger to discuss blood sugar, the foods that trigger it, and the simple habits and foods that can help create more stable health over time—as well as a few cool tech gadgets that helped me learn more about my body.
* Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
* Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
* Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
* Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
You might be someone who avoids high-fructose corn syrup, potassium sorbate, or caramel coloring in your food… and then one night you settle in to watch a show with your main squeeze and pour a cocktail — without realizing you may be drinking those exact same ingredients. That’s because alcohol producers generally aren’t required to disclose them.
I’m not trying to be alarmist. I don’t think alcohol is secretly packed with highly toxic ingredients (other than, of course, the alcohol itself). But it is remarkable how many of the most popular beverages we ingest live inside a black box.
“Label lookers” and the new trust economy
Jennie told me Owl’s Brew aspires to be “the most trusted beverage brand in the world.”
Yes, it’s a bold statement. (And yes, I told her it was great marketing.)
But her point was serious. Consumers are increasingly trained to turn the bottle around and ask:
What’s in this?What does “natural flavors” actually mean?How much sugar is in it? How many calories?Why isn’t there a nutritional panel?
She calls these people label lookers — and once you hear the term, you realize: that’s a lot of us now.
And that’s when it clicked for me. Jennie isn’t trying to sell a wellness brand. We all know alcohol, even on its best day, isn’t exactly health food. Instead, “clean” has become shorthand for something deeper.
Jennie’s selling accountability, and I’m buying.
Drinking habits are changing — and visibility is part of it
When I asked Jennie about shifting drinking habits — especially among younger people — she shared the explosion of choice these days. You used to have beer, wine, and spirits. Now theres a ready-to-drink (RTD) category, cocktails with THC, Non-Alcoholic, and low-ABV.
She also shared how social media might be reducing demand, but not in the way you might expect. Or maybe you’re smarter than I am and you’re spot on. You’ll just have to listen to the podcast to know.
Tea as ritual, tea as alchemy
Somehow we almost forgot to talk about tea — which is kind of the whole point for Jennie. Probably the second beverage humans imbibed after water, tea is a most ancient beverage.
You put leaves in water.The water changes.Something beneficial appears.
Alchemy, in the most literal sense.
It was nice to hear her passion and expertise on the subject. I’m going to get some genmaicha tea this weekend.
As for me? I’m still more likely to pour a finger of bourbon or open a bottle of wine than to drink one of these RTD “clean” alternatives.
But I’m definitely paying closer attention to the labels these days.
* Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
* Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
Enlightened Omnivore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
She describes the feeling without drama: the page started to feel like a job. The discipline didn’t feel like devotion—it felt like pressure. The words weren’t flowing. The identity didn’t fit.
And then, almost accidentally, she returned to an older self.
A class. A paintbrush. The smell of oil on canvas. That sensation of your hands remembering something your mind forgot.
Within weeks, she was walking outside and seeing differently—light on bark, shadow on snow, the way trees hold their posture through winter. She started taking photos on hikes the way painters do: not documenting a moment, but collecting a future one.
There’s a particular kind of happiness that shows up when you’re back in the right medium.
The rest of the episode meanders around two friends with such busy lives that they need a podcast to catch up.
At some point, the conversation drifted—like it always does—from craft to emotion.
I tell her about my sad movie experiment. She tells me about the books she’s reading and what’s coming up in her garden this year. This episode is as close to a conversation at my kitchen counter as I’ve gotten all season. I loved it. I think you will too.
Shannon’s art echoes the same truth—just in a form our modern brains can’t scroll past. We can know species are disappearing. We hear it constantly. But feeling it, really feeling it, is something else entirely.
Both are reminders that our modern culture loves beginnings… tolerates middles… and struggles mightily with endings.
And I guess that’s what this episode kept circling for me:
Life moves in seasons.
Things arrive, take form, dissolve, and become nourishment for what comes next.
And when children learn that rhythm early, they grow up understanding not just how the world works—but how a livable future is made.
Don’t forget, I’m hosting an Ask Me Anything Substack Live on Saturday, February 1st at 8am PT/11am ET. I’ll be sharing some behind the scenes Podcast conversations, talking a little more about how I pick my topics, what I’ve been reading, and what I’m working on for the month.
* Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
* Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
Enlightened Omnivore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Nurit also shares something more personal: why she’s no longer 100 percent vegan.
She became vegetarian as a child out of concern for animal welfare and the harms of industrial agriculture. But over time, the rigid, all-or-nothing food ideologies seemed more divisive than constructive in her work as an environmental leader. She talks about how moderation—eating less meat, sourcing it better, and making plants the center of the plate—often reaches more people and creates greater impact than excluding items from her diet ever could.
Our conversation continued to mirror that perspective again and again. Not defending the status quo, but also not pretending there’s a single perfect solution. Progress, as Nurit puts it, comes from approaches that people can actually adopt.
Beyond campus, Nurit also serves as a commissioner for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest public utility in the United States. There, she’s helping guide ambitious goals like 100% clean energy by 2035, and major investments in water recycling, stormwater capture, and nature-based solutions.
One of the most unexpected—and inspiring—threads in our conversation centers on birds of prey. Nurit is a co-director of the Los Angeles Raptor Study, a community-science project that tracks hawks, owls, and falcons nesting throughout the city. Raptors, she explains, are powerful indicators of ecosystem health—and powerful connectors between people and the natural world.
When neighbors discover a hawk nesting outside their window, something changes. People pay attention. They care. They start asking questions about pesticides, rodenticides, tree trimming, and habitat. Conservation stops being abstract and becomes personal.
Late in the conversation, I get personal and share a lesson I learned the hard way with rodenticide.
If you like this episode, there are a few events coming up soon that you might want to consider attending. You might even see me at them:
* Show Up and Count 30X30 Webinar: Jan. 22, 2026 10am PT; Webinar;An overview of California’s progress toward the global 30×30 Goal to conserve 30% of land and ocean by 2030.
* California Nature-Based Solutions Summit: January 29, 9:00am – 4:00pm; Sacramento; The first ever summit featuring nature-based solutions in California to address climate change. Learn more about what California’s doing in this space.
The overarching theme of today’s conversation was connection. It runs through the entire episode. Whether we’re talking about energy grids, food systems, biodiversity, or urban wildlife, Nurit keeps returning to the same idea: we are not separate from nature. Even in cities. Especially in cities.
We don’t uncover any easy answers in the hour we spoke, but what it offers instead is something far more valuable: a grounded look at how change actually happens, by someone working at the intersection of policy, science, community, and daily life.
If you’ve ever wondered what sustainability looks like when ideals meet reality, or how big institutions can still move the needle, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Don’t forget, I’m hosting an Ask Me Anything Substack Live on Saturday, February 1st at 8am PT/11am ET. I’ll be sharing some behind the scenes Podcast conversations, talking a little more about how I pick my topics, what I’ve been reading, and what I’m working on for the month.
* Say hi on Substack Notes—I’m posting almost every day about my random reflections on life.
* Join me in Chat. It’s a space just for subscribers, kind of like a group text but less embarrassing. Download the app, tap the Chat icon (it looks like two speech bubbles at the bottom), and find the latest “Enlightened Omnivore” thread.
Enlightened Omnivore is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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