Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

We talk with investor, venture capitalist and philanthropist Woody Tasch about [amazon-product text=”INQUIRIES INTO THE NATURE OF SLOW MONEY” type=”text”]1603580069[/amazon-product]. Then poet and former hedge fund executive Katy Lederer tells us about her collection, THE HEAVEN-SENT LEAF. And journalist Jeff Sharlet (THE FAMILY) gives us the context to President Obama’s appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5.

[amazon-product align=”left”]1603580069[/amazon-product]

We’re all reeling from the roller coaster-ride of fast money, where trillions of dollars transact daily across silicon microchips, and trillions evaporate in the shifting sands unfettered capitalism.  The solution?  Slow money, according to Woody Tasch, recent founder of the nonprofit by that name.  In SLOW MONEY Tasch consciously riffs on the notion of Slow Food, the Italian-gone-global movement of reconnecting our eating with the land that produces our food.  As he hints in the subtitle of his book — Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered — Tasch plays on the agrarian metaphor of slow money as compost in which to nurture a new kind of economy.

In the 1990s, Tasch worked with the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, which has poured a fair amount of grant money into sustainable agriculture. There, he was involved in developing strategies for integrating the philanthropic with the investments foundations make. He’s the founder of the Slow Money Alliance.

A shorter version of this interview aired first on Sea Change Radio, which I produce with Bill Baue. Baue joined me on the interview.

[amazon-product align=”right”]1934414158[/amazon-product]

In her poetry volume, [amazon-product text=”THE HEAVEN SENT LEAF” type=”text”]1934414158[/amazon-product], Katy Lederer reflects on her work for a Wall Street hedge fund.  While there, she wrote poems that meditate on the spiritual costs that enter into the emotional balance sheet. She told Writer’s Voice what it was like to be a poet while toiling on Wall Street during the biggest  speculative bubble in its history.

Katy Lederer’s poem, Me A Brainworker

[amazon-product align=”left”]0060560053[/amazon-product]

We first talked with journalist and author Jeff Sharlet in August 2008 when he came on Writers Voice to talk about his book, THE FAMILY: The Elite Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. In it, he mentions that the national prayer breakfast is organized by The Family, a shadowy right-wing Christian group that wields great influence in the halls of American power and around the globe. So when I read in the news about President Obama’s appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast last week to announce his new initiative on faith-based charities, I asked Jeff Sharlet to come on the show and explain to us what this meant.

Jeff Sharlet writes about religion, including at The Revealer, a blog about religion and the press. He also has his own blog, Call Me Ishmael.