Welcome to Wonder Cabinet.
I'm Anne Strangeamps.
And I'm Steve Paulson.
There's a saying that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
After all, it's the only economic order you and I have ever known.
And we all know how destructive capitalism can be.
Exploiting workers, clear-cutting forests, polluting entire ecosystems, all for profit.
And how much inequality is baked in.
especially today when the top 1% of U.S. households
owns more than 30% of America's wealth
and the bottom 50% owns just 2.5%.
But does it have to be this way?
I remember when I was talking to the CEO
of one of the biggest banks in the world,
and this must have been back in about 1990,
and he looked at me and said,
Rebecca, you know, I became a banker
because I wanted to serve customers.
I thought it was about getting money
to the people who needed it.
I did not realize it was about accumulating personal wealth on a global scale.
This is relatively new, and we don't have to run capitalism this way.
We really do not.
So what else could it look like?
This is Rebecca Henderson, a star professor at the Harvard Business School,
and she's consulted for some of the world's biggest corporations.
She served on the boards of major companies.
She's also a climate activist, so she knows exactly how devastating global warming is going to be,
And she's got a pretty realistic view of why business as usual has been so hard to change.
Which led her to write a book called Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.
And I have to say, it made me question some of my basic assumptions.
I don't know. I think we're a little different here.
I am skeptical about compassionate capitalism.
I mean, that was a phrase that was popular 20 years ago.
And I don't think anybody would say it produced a more compassionate economy.
Plus, as we now know, the major oil companies systematically and knowingly tried to discredit climate science for decades.
So I don't see corporate America being part of the solution, but I would love to be proved wrong.
Well, this is why I really wanted to hear the argument for why business may actually be the one viable system for helping us get through this environmental crisis.
And I also really wanted to know what a reform to capitalism would look like.
And does it have anything to do with wonder?
because if there are two words I would not put together, they are capitalism and wonder.
But there's a reason you wanted to talk with Rebecca for this podcast.
It really goes back to the first time I met Rebecca more than a year ago
when she told me about a personal crisis that she had fallen into.
She'd been doing all of this work, sounding an alarm about the climate crisis
and talking to lots of CEOs, but it wasn't going anywhere.
And she hit a wall, which led her into a lot of soul searching.
and what she ended up doing is a really fascinating story,
which has everything to do with wonder.
And that's what I wanted to talk about,
and we'll get into that later in the conversation.
Okay, let's listen.
One of the great questions of the age right now, I think,
is whether capitalism is inherently destructive
or whether it can be a force for good.
And I know you have all kinds of criticisms about free market ideology,
but you also say business could help save the world.
Very provocative.
statement. So, in a nutshell, I mean, we'll kind of unpack this, but what's the case for why
capitalism can be a force for good, maybe our salvation? So, I do believe capitalism can be a
force for good. I also believe there are many different kinds of capitalism, that the sort of
red meat extractive capitalism we're living through now in the States is a dangerous menace.
So I'm talking about a particular kind of capital.
Let's pop it out for me.
I mean a capitalism imbalance.
I teach at the Harvard Business School, and I've been studying business all my life
because I think firms are important and free markets are important.
I don't want to live in a planned economy.
I think large private organizations and small ones are an amazing way of getting things done.
I think competition and the search for new ideas and new products and new ways of doing things is extraordinary.
So there are aspects of capitalism that I think are just fabulous.
And so when I think of a reimagined capitalism, I think of a world in which firms focus not on profit as the be-all and end-all of what they're doing, but as a means to an end.
Producing great products, employing people that they trust and respect and treat with dignity,
and operating within the bounds of the law, which is what capitalism can do at its best.
Obviously, there are many people who say capitalism is inherently extractive, inherently exploitative,
especially when it comes to some of the big pressing issues of our time.
Climate change, the obvious example.
How do you respond?
Well, firms are inherently extractive and exploitative if they are not controlled.
It's like having a very powerful dog.
And if you don't keep the dog on a lead, it's going to go anywhere and eat anything.
In this case, if you tell the managers of firms that all they need to care about is maximizing money in the short term, they will do dreadful things.
We only have to look at what's happening in private equity and health care, for examples.
or, in my own case, what privatizing the water system in England
has done to the rivers of Britain, flooded them with sewage.
It's unregulated, uncontrolled capitalism that is the problem.
This is not a new idea.
I mean, the whole history of capitalism in Europe and the U.S.
and in Japan and in Scandinavia has been about
how do we get the good bits of the competitive market
and make sure that when we tell firms, make money,
they don't hear at any cost and right now.
So the key is ramping up the regulatory system?
Not only regulatory, but yes, the first tool is regulation and taxation.
The second tool is, this sounds so nebulous,
but it's so important, changing the mindset.
We used to have a world, and again, we've never had utopia.
But if you go back to different communities, different times and places,
business people assumed that they needed to act morally.
The idea that, well, it would be hugely profitable just to pump the sewage directly into the river
and there doesn't seem to be anyone really stopping us doing that, so let's just do it,
in some communities and some times, that would have been an unthinkable thought.
Just as now, it's not okay to say, well, let's employ small children because, hey, that would be really profitable.
You know, some things are out of bounds.
And one of the things that's happened, well, two big things have happened.
One, we've had a systematic assault on the regulatory state.
Over the years, we've had a very well-funded, heavily backed-by-business effort to destroy control of corporations.
That's a huge problem.
But the other huge problem we've had is the development of a kind of moral regime, which says, you know, morals are all very well, but they're really for women and schoolteachers and for me when I'm at home.
Business is for real.
You know, if it's not illegal, let's go ahead and do it.
And if it is illegal, let's see if we can change the law.
So one of the reasons we've had trouble dealing with climate change is there's been a well-funded effort to ensure we don't have climate regulation and heavy investments in disinformation.
This is not intrinsic to capitalism.
For a long time, I taught the required course in ethics and leadership at the business school, the Harvard Business School.
And we would always have a session on political engagement by corporations.
And when I would explain the current American rules to foreign students, citizens united, unlimited money into politics, they'd look at me and go, but that's corruption.
I mean, the kinds of rules we have in the U.S. are unthinkable even now in many parts of the world.
So let's take a concrete example of capitalism doing good things.
And you write about one case in Norway, a CEO who took a company, I think it was what the country's biggest waste disposal company.
Will you explain what happened there?
The company in question was a company called Norsk Genvinning.
And the hero of my story is a man called Erik Osmundsson.
He was in private equity.
And he ran across this company because the firm he was working for bought it.
and he was in charge of doing due diligence and trying to find a CEO
and he was learning all about this company, which was a mess
and was bleeding money and really in trouble.
But, you know, that's an opportunity sometimes for good management.
He came home to his wife and he said, you know,
I'm bored of just making money and pushing the numbers around.
I think I could do this job and I'm going to put my name in.
And so he became the CEO.
And the first thing he found out, like, the second week on the job, because he started riding along with all the employees, is that the whole industry, this was a firm in the waste management industry, the whole industry was deeply corrupt.
People were throwing hazardous waste into holes in the ground or shipping it overseas, mislabeled.
They were literally pumping toxic chemicals into the fjord off Oslo.
And it was the whole industry.
It's also cheaper to send your hazardous wastes to Asia, for instance.
I mean, you could make a lot more money for your corporation doing that.
Absolutely, rather than treating the waste.
Much easier to pump it into the field rather than treat it properly.
So it's a classic example of under-regulated extractive capitalism
and bad morals across the whole industry.
Because what happens with the bad morals and what happened to Eric
is he went to his people and said, well, this is a bad idea.
And said, well, this is what everybody does.
it's not that bad, don't get all upset, you know, it's fine. He said, it is not fine. And we are
going to make money by changing it and being the first firm to change it. I mean, he's an
extraordinary person. And he'd be the first person to say, well, it wasn't just me. I had an incredible
team. But let me say, he fired half of the senior management and systematically started to clean up
the firm. But to follow up on this, so it sounds like this is going to be a lot more expensive to
do this? I mean, to do it the right way. Well, that's where I'm going. Okay. So it's going to
be a lot more expensive. So what do you do? You start putting pressure on your competitors. How
do you do that? You tell your customers that the industry is corrupt and that they face regulatory
risk. You go to the regulators and you tell them what is really happening and you ask for better
regulation. And the third thing you do is you turn to your workforce and say, we're going to run this
firm properly? Do you want to be part of something that is part of the future, that could make a
real difference in the structure of the world? Because properly running waste management could
have a huge impact, not only on climate change by reducing global emissions, but also because
if you think of the waste stream as a source of materials, rather than just something you throw
into a hole, it reduces mining, it reduces extraction. It's huge. So you said to the
employees, are you in? Do you want to do this? A bunch left. But what happened, and I've seen this
again and again, and my own belief is the research on this is really very cast iron, is when you tell
people they are working for something more than just a paycheck. Everybody needs a paycheck.
Every firm needs profits to survive. But the paycheck and the profits are not the goal.
The goal is joy and growth and connection. And when you start building a firm where the people
who work for you can see that's what you're really about. And everyone could see Eric was for real.
He was getting death threats. He had to get police guards for his children. Death threats from whom?
Oh, from the people who were benefiting from the corruption. They wanted him to be quiet.
They threatened him and his family. This is not just, oh, let's be nice here.
This is, you know, you're dealing with some real stuff here. I mean, in many countries,
the waste businesses run by the local mob, the local version of the mob.
No, I mean, he had to have guards for his kids.
There were times when he and his wife were like,
oh, my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?
But what that is is a very credible signal that you believe what you're saying.
And when people see that, not everyone,
and, of course, the people who don't care will leave,
but you will attract people who work for love,
who work for meaning, who work for purpose.
I mean, just to reiterate this point, you're saying you can work for love,
you can work for purpose, and you can make money doing that.
Oh, well, yes.
So let me give you my favorite statistic, which is in the average industry,
the 10% most productive firms are about twice as productive
as the 10% least productive firms.
That means the top 10% are taking the same inputs
and making twice as much output with the same stuff as the bottom 10%.
Now, when that result first emerged in the literature, which is about 25 years ago,
I was part of the crowd.
I was sitting in the rooms where we were reading the papers and talking about it.
None of us believed it.
I mean, I spent 10 years of my life in windowless conference rooms
helping to make it, trying to make it go away.
We thought, well, it must be mismeasurement.
It must be they're really different inputs.
Or maybe the workforce is more skilled.
Those are all real effects, but they turn out to be very small.
The real effect is if you can run your workforce with so-called high-performance work practices,
nothing magic, high levels of communication, distributing power,
trusting people to make the right decisions, treating people with dignity and respect,
promoting the people who do good work, not because they kiss up,
you can double the performance of the firm.
Wow, that's so inspiring.
I mean, it just gives me hope.
Well, it's true.
Now, to your point about making money,
I am not telling you that you will make more money than your competition
because doing the right thing is expensive.
Really transforming a firm in the way that Eric did,
putting purpose at the heart, transforming the entire industry,
which he went on to do, that's expensive, at least in the short term.
Not now.
Now he's got it up and running.
He's the largest waste company in Norway and spreading all over Europe.
It's a great success story.
So I'm wondering, I mean, it's a wonderful story, obviously, Eric in Norway.
How rare is he?
So that's a great question.
In the sweep of history, he's not rare at all.
I think, for example, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, most firms in the U.S. and Europe were run this way.
There was a tighter regulatory regime, and so it was less tempting to be corrupt and extractive.
That's one of the things. The morals and the regulation go hand in hand.
That's why Eric tried to improve the regulation to, like, shift the whole industry.
I think most firms will run that way.
I mean, I worked in tech for a long time, teaching technology strategy at MIT.
The big tech firms, they were founded by people who were in love with their products,
who thought computers would change the world.
The money was a byproduct, a necessary condition.
And now we idolize the billionaires.
This is all relatively new.
Well, it's cyclical, right?
If we look back, what happened in the 19th century,
one of the things that drove the Great Depression
was the kind of massive acceleration in inequality we're seeing now,
the valorization of money at any cost.
And when it's money at any cost, increasingly,
If I promise my investors a 20% rate of return, what I have to do to get that 20% gets iffier and iffier.
That's what gets the sewage pumped into the water.
This is relatively new.
And we don't have to run capitalism this way.
We really do not.
Okay, this is fascinating.
And we're going to come back to this.
And we could spend three hours, obviously, talking about everything.
Well, because I'd love to talk about the details and how you really do it.
And now I want to talk about you.
So by any standard, you have been incredibly successful.
I mean, you are one of, what, 25 university professors at Harvard, you know, the highest rank designation you can have of any professor there.
You have consulted for multibillion-dollar corporations.
You've written books.
I mean, you have it all.
And yet I know, because we had a conversation some months ago, that something went sour for you.
You hit a wall, right? Like a few years ago?
It is. And, you know, everyone has a different kind of wall.
But something really happened in my life, and I took two years off.
So I was teaching a course based on these ideas at the business school.
It was called Reimagining Capitalism, Business and the Big Problems.
And it was a huge success.
Fastest-growing elective at Harvard Business School in the last 10 years, something like that.
And I wrote a book.
And the book was called, you know, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.
And it was published in April of 2020, which was, for those who have forgotten, right at the beginning of the pandemic.
Right, right.
And we were all at home.
And I thought, well, my book is going to disappear without a trace.
But everybody was home.
Everybody wanted to hear about reimagining capitalism in a world on fire.
So in my small world, the book was quite a big hit.
It went into seven languages.
I ended up giving, oh, hundreds of talks to thousands of people.
And what happened is it became quite clear to me that they weren't going to do anything.
They, the business people I was talking to.
So I'm talking to senior teams at very large multinational corporations.
I'm talking to gatherings of senior business people all across the world.
And what would happen is you could see them in the Zoom.
They look at me and they go, very interesting, Professor Henderson.
Very, very interesting.
Why were they even there?
Why were they listening to your talks?
Oh, because, and this is what it took me a while to work out, it made them feel better.
It made them feel better to think that business could save the world.
that there was a way out. But the idea that actually on Monday morning I should go and do
what Eric did, well, you know, I'm busy. I've got lots going on. It became clear to me,
and I knew this before, but business people are caught in a web. It is a web of short-term
expectations, low regulation, and a social circle where not making as much money as possible at any
cost is like not okay. I mean, don't get me wrong. Of course, there were a few business people who
took fire. But I had naively, narcissistically, lunatically thought that, you know, well,
here's the book. It lays out the process. It shows you you can make money. Five easy steps to changing
the world. Everyone would go, oh, yeah, let's just do it. You know, and I had a consulting firm lined
up to help. And no, it just wasn't going to happen. It was too hard. And I got very depressed.
because, you know, the work I do means I'm very current with modern climate science.
I know what's happening across the world, and I got very depressed.
Can you tell me more about that?
When you say you got very depressed, what do you mean?
What happened?
Well, 25 years ago when I started this work, I thought, this isn't that hard.
It's 2% or 3% of GDP.
We can make money on a lot of it.
We can build a decarbonized world.
It will be cleaner. It will be richer. It won't be burning. Of course, people will do that. No
brainer. And I think lots of us in climate thought that. And what happened is it became clear to me
that the whole way we structure our lives, our firms, our politics, how we think about who we
are and what matters, our focus on ourselves, on our own well-being at almost any cost. And when I
say we, I mean the educated classes in the global north. In the global south, and people at the
edge, they know what's happening. They've known it for a long time. I'm talking about the people
living in the beautiful manicured houses in suburbia like me. So I want to tell you, if you're
willing to go here, I want to take you back to that. You said for two years, you basically dropped
out. You know, it hits everyone differently. I would go out into the garden, and I would look
at the trees and I would go, you're all going to burn. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. We really
screwed up and we've been too greedy and we're too comfortable and we're not going to change
and I'm really sorry. And, you know, I have friends who live in the Philippines or in
Bangladesh, it's real there, right? It's going to feel as if we're living in a war zone. It's going
to feel as it has been feeling for many people, not in the global north for many years. I could
feel the waves of suffering. So this is, I mean, a really dire scenario that you're painting and
And you have not backed off from that, but you somehow got to another side here.
Well, firstly, it was my husband.
He said, you need to take two years off.
And I started to go on retreat.
I'd always been the Buddhist equivalent of a Christmas Christian, you know, someone
who kind of reads the occasional book and does the occasional meditation.
But I started doing a week of meditation a month.
I needed to find a way to hold all that was happening and not shut down.
I need to be able to look at what was coming and function.
And there are many ways to do that.
But for me, that was meditation.
And I will say, I mean, I remember my first retreat so well.
It was a 10-day retreat.
It was amazing.
And at the end of it, I stood up and I thought, I said to myself, amazing technology.
Impossible to scale.
A technology that goes back 2,500 years.
Yeah, it goes back 2,500 years.
It's a technology.
I mean, this is what I love about Buddhism is my understanding, at least, is no required existential beliefs.
You know, when the Buddha was asked, is there a second life or something, he said it's a completely useless question.
That's not the question.
The question is reducing suffering now.
And I have tools and techniques to help you to do that.
And he was absolutely right, at least in my case, that techniques are fabulous.
not for everyone but for some people and certainly for me so helpful and they've really worked
why did that i mean i can understand at a personal level you know you were feeling
hopeless i think is is probably the right word about you know you were giving all of these
talks and it didn't seem like it was making any difference and so it's sort of somehow these kinds
of meditation retreats this contemplative practice give you some sense of equanimity i guess
it doesn't seem like that would necessarily deal with this larger sense of futility.
Oh, well, here's the thing.
I went on a retreat in the first place because we can change the world.
We have the technology and the resources.
We just don't want to.
We need to want to.
And where is the technology in our civilization that has been holding for thousands of years
the idea that humans should focus on the long term
and care about each other.
It's the great faiths.
The great faiths have always been,
and of course there's all kinds of problems with them.
I hold no brief, you know, institutionalized religion
and some of what's happened.
But at the core of all the great faiths
is the idea that there is more than status, money, and power.
That just focusing on yourself is a disaster.
That the way to create thriving society
is through, excuse me, love and compassion.
That's not a revolutionary idea to the human race.
There have been societies built entirely around those ideas.
And so I went on retreat because I thought it is the only way through.
We have to find a way to help people understand that this is a dead end,
that the only way through is to focus on the long term and each other.
the only way through is to rediscover those capacities for a deep relationship with yourself
I mean we just have to look at the billionaires right now to see that you know they don't appear
to be very happy at all you know total focus on yourself deeply unskillful that we need to
rebuild relationships with ourselves with each other and with the natural world and if we could
do that. You know, the politics, the economics, we know what to do. I mean, I have a book that
says here's what to do in business. There are many others. I have friends who know exactly what to do
in economics, in housing, in inequality, in taxation policy. I mean, that's not the issue.
The issue is not getting the right policies. The issue is wanting the right policies. The issue
is moving away from the fear and hatred and tension that is created by this extractive
capitalism. I mean, how do the rich stay in power? By pitting poor white people against poor black
people. That's what's happening. But I say, you know, you got a better plan, you go do the better
plan. Here's what I'm trying. What I'm trying is we need a spiritual revolution. And I don't mean
the whole world is going to sing Kumbaya. I mean, we need to learn to wake up to these basic truths
of what makes us happy, of the world we want for our children. And that will mean,
and everybody is different, but it will mean getting in touch with our inner core.
Can I just say, I mean, to hear you, you know, this, you know, renowned professor at Harvard
Business School saying we need a spiritual revolution. That's the thing that's going to
save us, that's going to, you know, help us navigate this next period of our history, you know,
dealing with this major problem. I mean, that is just, that's kind of amazing, actually, to hear
you say that. But it's so distressing that it's amazing. Because what I mean by spiritual, it's
not spirits and woo-woo and all that stuff. I mean, thinking about the purpose of life. I mean,
thinking about what we really value. I mean, really being engaged in this world full on
for good. That's what I mean. Okay, hold that thought for a moment while we take a short break.
And when we come back, we'll hear how Rebecca took these personal discoveries back into the classroom.
Hi, it's Anne. I am so glad you're joining us.
We have some amazing guests lined up for the weeks ahead, and I'm really excited about them.
And here's a tip. Maybe you know this already, but if you follow Wonder Cabinet on Apple Podcasts,
those new episodes will show up automatically, like a little weekly gift in your podcast feed.
I hope you like it.
This is Wonder Cabinet. I'm Steve Paulson. My guest is Rebecca Henderson, the author of
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire. And she was just saying what we really need
is a spiritual revolution. What did you do with this? I mean, you said you took two years off
from teaching, then you went back to Harvard Business School.
So I took two years off for teaching and read and read and read and talked and met all these
cool people that I would never have met otherwise. And I came back and I said to the dean,
I want to teach a course on really a spiritual revolution? Like what? And I want to teach it
to students from right across Harvard, not just business school, because this is not just a
business issue. And so now I teach a course, 75 people asking this question. What does it mean
to turn in. And then, if you turn in, what's next? So I want to talk to you a little bit more about
this class. So I've read your syllabus, so it's called Reweaving Ourselves, and you have a fabulous
reading list, I have to say. Thank you. I know a lot of the people who you assign. Everyone from
the science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson to the indigenous plant biologist Robin Wall
Kimmerer to, I love this, the risk report of the World Economic Forum.
Of course.
Sort of putting it all together.
What do these readings have in common?
Oh, so the intellectual project here is threefold, or maybe manyfold, you know.
One is, what does it mean for humans to behave in a different way?
What do we know about that historically?
What do we know about the tools and techniques?
And what do we know about how that's been enacted in ordinary life?
What does that look like politically?
What does that look like if you're building a firm?
What does it look like if you're an economist or designing an accounting system?
And so the project is a deliberate attempt to not turn our back on what one might call modernism or current civilization,
which has many, many strengths.
I don't want to go back to an era before penicillin.
I've already said I don't want to live in a planned economy
where someone makes all my choices.
There are all kinds of things that we need to celebrate
and build on in the existing way of doing things,
but we need to do it from a, use them from a different place.
What does it look like to run a firm this way?
Oh, you can run a firm this way.
What does it look like to run a city this way?
What would it look like to run a society this way?
And then, what do we know about those moments in human history
where there has been something like a spiritual or cultural revolution?
Do you have an example of that, historically, sort of one of these turning points?
So, you know, there are many.
And again, one can't expect that, oh, and on the other side was utopia.
Sure.
But let me point to a couple.
Firstly, just a very small one.
It happened in Mauritius in 1968, which is an island in the Pacific.
Mauritius was a slave plantation, mostly slave plantations.
And at the time, it had like eight or ten official languages.
French aristocracy who owned the sugar plantations
and mostly the descendants of black slaves who worked the plantations,
but also Chinese and African.
I mean, it was huge.
And the British left.
and said, OK, it's up to you now.
You rule the island.
And there were two political parties,
one the Landowners Party and one a popular party.
Right before the elections, there were serious riots.
It looked like the whole society might break down.
And there were all kinds of possible reactions.
But what happened is the leader of the Populist Party
reached out to the leader of the Landowner Party and said,
what would happen if we ran Mauritius as if the most important thing was creating good jobs and
decent living standards rather than growing the GDP and making ourselves rich? And they did.
They worked together.
They worked together. And Mauritius is not paradise, but it scores very highly on all
measures of well-being, and they did it. And let me give you another example, which is so close to
home we forget, but I think it's worth thinking about, which is the ruins of Europe after World
War II. There's a very famous intellectual called Stefan Schweig who killed himself in 1943. He was
Jewish and he thought, this is hell and there is no way out. The idea that World War II would lead
to the kinds of societies that the Europeans built, healthcare for everyone, education for
everyone, prosperity for everyone, that that would be possible, that they would do that,
was almost unthinkable in 43 or 44. You know, it's so interesting to hear you use that example,
because I've thought about that myself in terms of like, right now, in this new Trump administration,
it seems impossible to see the other side. It seems impossible. And it seems impossible to,
I mean, like, where are the leaders that we need? Exactly. You can't see the leaders, you can't see
it. And that's the other reason I talk about this example is, I hate to say this, I think things are
going to get worse. And I think one of the reasons we need to turn inside and learn to reground and
learn to rebuild our communities, because we do a lot of work in the class on, okay, it's you.
Now you need a group of people to keep you honest. And we can call it different things. You could
call it a church or a sango or a reading group or a mentoring circle. I don't care what you call it.
But you need a group of people around you who are also trying to do the right thing to keep each other honest, to hold each other in bad times.
I mean, again, this is not news.
If you're a black American activist, you've been working this for hundreds of years.
You know, situation impossible, you need to turn inside, and you need your friends, and you need the joy, and you need to be right here in the moment.
But you also need some sense of hope.
So I want to ask how you do that.
So I was fascinated reading, again, your syllabus for this course, Reweaving Ourselves, where you talk about, I mean, not only is there this great reading list, but also you talk about the experiential component of your class, things like the value of holding grief or deep listening and somehow doing that in the class.
And I want to know how you do that.
I mean, how you sort of, what do you do when you bring these people together?
Probably most of them don't know each other.
And you're basically asking them to expose themselves, to be vulnerable.
Well, we know a lot about how to help people be vulnerable, how to help people connect, how to help people go, oh, there's another way to do life.
You begin with deep listening.
You know, it's amazing how many people are never really listened to.
What do you mean by deep listening?
So, Steve, suppose that I said to you, okay, tell me about a place you really love and why you love it and why you're afraid for it, given all that's happening.
And I'm going to sit here for five minutes and I'm going to listen really carefully.
I am not going to talk about, I'm not going to even think about what I'm going to say next or what I can do to show you that I'm smart.
I'm just going to listen to you.
And I'm going to hold everything you say in confidence.
and I'm not going to give you advice.
Just five minutes.
People cry, really,
because we're not in the habit of doing it.
We're not in the habit of really listening to each other.
It's the most simple exercise
and it's the one I come back to again and again.
And they get to know each other.
It's a cross-university group
and we could talk more about that
because all kinds of things happen
when you put divinity school students
and law students and history students and business school students in the same room.
And it sounds like we're also not just talking about 18 to 22-year-olds here.
No, no, no.
These are all graduate professionals.
Okay.
So these are 27, 28.
And they're climate activists.
This is a climate cause.
You're pretty explicit about that.
I mean, we're not going to be debating whether climate change is real.
I mean, you agree with that premise, and we're starting from there.
And you think it's hopeless, and I'm tempted to think it's hopeless.
And we're going to talk about, is this a path?
Is there a way through?
That's the goal of the course.
Is there a way through?
And the reason I do the experiential stuff, so the deep listening, we close every class reading a poem in circle together.
Everyone reads a line of the poem.
We go around the circle.
We do social presencing theater, which is when you express what you're feeling through your body, not through words.
You know, all of them are ways of, instead of being in your, like, chattering, thinking, how smart I am mind, which all the students are superb at, these are all Harvard students, it's getting you into your body and your heart.
It's getting you embodied.
How do you feel?
So many of us, you know, we pampered, privileged, educated, small segment of the global north, we're in our heads.
Like our bodies are sticks and the head are just machines for walking our heads around.
And when you get into your body and you allow yourself to think about what's happening
and how you feel, I mean, a lot of stuff comes up.
But if you're with a group that you can see the caring and the reflection and the holding,
and then we try and give people the long-term tools to hold it and move with it as they
go out into the world. Amazing stuff happens. What are you hoping happens once they go out
into the world? This is a difficult moment we're in, right? It's super difficult. We talk a lot
about alternative theories of change and what you can do with your life. And we talk about,
you know, do you try and change the existing infrastructure? So one student from the class
went to work for one of the Federal Reserve Banks because he thought fiscal and financial
policy was really important. And he's pulled together a group at that bank and he's, you know,
trying to think about what they can do that might be helpful. Or you can go completely the other way
and start a cooperative farm and try and build strong local community out somewhere in the
country and really model what a different way of living might look like. Or you can start a
small firm or go into media. But it also sounds like you are finding and sometimes creating
groups of people that are to some degree like-minded, or maybe you bring them along
to make change, to make real change. And, you know, there are, of course, lots of examples of
this. I mean, you know, people, small groups, nonprofits, institutes doing wonderful things.
Everywhere. There are thousands of them. It seems like the issue is how do you scale this up to
To actually make a difference in the larger society.
And I think none of us know.
I'm doing what I know how to do, which is teaching.
One of the striking things, and I've been trying to track major social transformation, political upheaval across history,
is in nearly every case, and the Mauritius example is an example,
things went well when there was a segment of the ruling elite that said,
you know, things look really bad.
but rather than doubling down on the secret police
and putting the troops in the streets,
why don't we try something different?
Why don't we try the middle way?
Why don't we, like, see if we can really rebuild our democracy?
Wouldn't that be better?
So it's a kind of dual-pronged strategy
is try and reach the people who are in those rooms,
and we know their names,
who might be open to having these conversations.
giving them the experiential practices and the peer group that could support.
It's super hard to do this on your own.
You need people around you who are encouraging and supporting,
that can support that and create groups within that 0.01%.
Just as with the educational structure,
we're trying to build what's sometimes called these islands of coherence
where we're demonstrating that there's a different way to do things.
Well, I mean, another point that you're making,
I think I'm reading you correctly here, is that you want to work within existing institutions.
You're not saying, you know, throw out the whole system and we're going to start from scratch and do it better.
I mean, no.
There are these existing institutions there, powerful institutions, governmental institutions, and we need to reform them or remake them, radicalize them maybe.
Oh, yeah.
So I'm an incrementalist, yes.
I think it's all about reform.
But I have huge support and cheers for people who say, Rebecca, you've got to be kidding.
I mean, we need to start over.
Reimagining capitalism, let's throw it out the window.
To which I always answer, well, show me.
Show me.
Show me the better system.
All the historical examples I know, they didn't work.
We need better capitalism.
We need Japanese capitalism at its best or Scandinavian capitalism at its best or American capitalism at its best.
We need to get back there.
I mean, it will be different.
When we get back, it will be different.
You know, I spent 20 years studying innovation.
That was my early training.
And what I learned is if you're really going to transform an industry,
you need people out there in the front trying new things, radical new ideas.
But you also need to change the big institutions because they have the money and the power.
And it's that integration that you need.
And the second thing I learned is no one knows what the future is going to look like.
So I think it's going to look like some version of transformed capitalism.
I might well be wrong, but we need multiple experiments in different countries, in different institutions.
And we need the out there experiments because they might be right.
Things might get so bad that we need the out there stuff.
Where do you personally, coming back to your own story, where do you find sustenance?
I mean, you've already said meditation retreats, but what else?
I've always loved being outside.
That's why I became a climate activist.
But mostly what is new is, again, I can't do this all the time,
but I can be in a room and I can look at people
and I can see them shining.
All the striving and the suffering and the pushing and the shoving,
and I can see the beauty.
I can see the beauty.
There's a kind of phrase I say to myself, which I really believe is true, which I certainly didn't believe five years ago, which is we are all doing the best we can.
That's really true.
It's true of the fossil fuel executives, too.
I have a friend who runs a major fossil fuel company.
He's doing the best he can.
And I can see the amazing thing that is the human spirit.
And it's extraordinary.
And people say, well, what gives you hope?
And we have no idea what's going to happen next.
We have no idea what our species is capable of.
We know that when push comes to shove, humans have done some amazing things.
And push is going to come to shove.
But mostly it's about right now.
Mostly it's about right now.
Yeah.
So I could leave it there, but I have one final question
that's going to seem like it's going to come out of left field totally,
but because you've been talking about the importance of doing inner work.
So I've just recently started trying to pay more attention to my dreams,
which I did this morning at 4 o'clock in the morning.
So I'm going to tell you sort of the end of this dream that I just had,
and I don't know what to make of it.
There was a person, I don't think me, who had a cell phone and made a call,
and it rang in some other dimension some other time and someone else picked it up
and was waiting for that call and sort of clearly this other person in the future is waiting for
this call and then I woke up and I'm thinking you know maybe my unconscious knew that I was
about to talk with you and we're going to talk about the future and when things are sort of
really hopeless. And does that resonate with you in any way? Part of me is just thinking, well,
what does this mean for you? Believe me, I'm wondering that myself. Yeah. And maybe it's
just about me. No, no. But you know, we're all about everything. That's the thing. I love that
phrase. We are not a drop in the universe. We are the universe in a drop. I love that. One of the
exercises we do is called moral imagination. And moral imagination is all about putting yourself
in the shoes of not only people in the future, but the insects and the birds and the trees
and the children. Can we really extend ourselves beyond this narrow self, both now and into the
future, to feel the consequences of our actions, to we really understand what's happening and what
we're doing. And so what comes up for me is there's someone in the future waiting for the call.
They want the call that says, I hear you. I'm moving. I take it seriously. I'll change my life.
yeah and for me as i was thinking about this dream it's both the now trying to imagine
someone in the future and then that person in the future responding to some person people who are
reaching out from the past it gave me hope and actually when i got up and was writing this down
it sort of i was tinkling all over about that anyway i just sort of i just thought because i
knew that, you know, we were going to talk about difficult stuff and it can seem really hopeless
right now. And then how do we imagine something better? So it helps to have taught technology at
MIT for 20 years. We really do have the technology and the resources to fix the problems we face.
We have enough resources to give everyone on the planet a secure place to live, decent education
and real health care. Even though we keep hearing that, you know, we've crossed another line in
No, no, it's bad. There's going to be a lot of suffering. But there's a huge difference between
total collapse, which I actually think is quite unlikely, although possible, and taking what we
have and rebuilding. We could rebuild a much better society. I mean, I think it would be poorer. I
think there would be fewer cheetahs studied with gold and snow resorts in Saudi Arabia. But I think
if we could build a world where we were partners with the natural world, where everyone had enough
to eat, where everyone felt included and respected and there was work for all, that would be a very
beautiful world. And I think it's very possible. I do believe it. I mean, absolutely we could do it.
If we put the planet on a wall footing, I mean, just do the thought experiment, put it on a wall
footing with a unified goal, no child left behind. For me, that would be the way I would do it.
No child, no place. We'll keep the beautiful places, and every child will have enough to eat,
decent education, real health care, and a chance at a job. And you do it village by village,
city by city, country by country. It'd be completely different.
Anyway, we're going to leave it there. So anyway, thank you so much.
Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure.
That's Rebecca Henderson.
She teaches at the Harvard Business School,
and her book is called Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire.
Steve, I think her point about the moral teachings of the world's faith traditions
is actually really interesting.
I know a lot has been written recently about the resurgence of interest
in traditional religions like Catholicism, especially among young people.
So I think there really is a sense of spiritual longing
that is not just individual, but collective.
I know that's something we'll talk about in future episodes.
Wonder Cabinet comes to you from Madison, Wisconsin
and Versher, Vermont.
Our audio engineer is Steve Gotcher.
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I'm Anne Strangehamps.
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