Good Troublemakers

The Way We Eat ft. Isaias Hernandez (Queer Brown Vegan)

What if the way we eat isn't a default, but an inheritance? In this episode of Good Troublemakers, environmental educator and QueerBrownVegan creator Isaias Hernandez joins us for a powerful conversation about farm animal welfare, the colonial roots of the modern diet, and the future of food. Isaias takes us back to Mesoamerica before 1493, when Indigenous communities thrived on plant-forward diets of maize, beans, squash, and chilis, and shows how Columbus's second voyage, and the European livestock it carried, reshaped entire ecosystems, economies, and plates within a century. It's a history most of us were never taught: how animal agriculture became a tool of colonization, how wheat, wine, and pork became markers of class and faith, and why the idea that meat-heavy eating is "human nature" is one of the most successful myths ever sold. From there, we get honest about the present. Each year, humans kill and eat more animals than the total number of people who have ever lived, and more than seventy-one percent of Americans already oppose the factory farming practices driving it. Isaias unpacks the cascading costs: animal suffering at industrial scale, pandemic risk, antibiotic resistance, water depletion, biodiversity collapse, food insecurity, and the disproportionate burdens carried by slaughterhouse workers and frontline communities of color. But this episode isn't built on despair, it's built on agency. Isaias shares a vision of recovery rooted in ecological wealth, community abundance, and traditions older than the industrial system itself: fruit-mapping apps, neighborhood composting, regenerative farming, the Plant Based Treaty, and the lineage of thinkers, reshaping how we understand food, justice, and liberation. If you eat, this episode is for you. Listen now, share it with someone you sit beside at the table, and start a conversation that's long overdue.

Top Scientist on the Next Winter Storm ft. Tom Di Liberto

In the premiere episode of Good Troublemakers, Jerome Foster II sits down with renowned climate commentator Tom Di Liberto to explore what leadership looks like when temperatures surpass zero. For over a decade, Tom served as the face of the world’s leading scientific body on weather events, as the Eastern United States confronts an extreme cold front, the strength of city and rural infrastructure is crumbling. From translating complex science during major winter storms to navigating political headwinds around climate communication, this conversation examines what it takes to remain clear, credible, and engaging when society changes and evolves rapidly. In the Eye of the Storm is about more than weather. It is about the kind of leadership that holds firm, tells the truth, and informs people when it matters most.