What if paying attention to what's going right in the world is just as important as understanding what's going wrong? In this episode of Stories from Everywhere, Jill L. Ferguson talks with writer, journalist, climate communicator, two-time TEDx speaker, and lifelong environmental advocate Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff about sustainability, storytelling, optimism, and the wonderfully "squiggly" paths our lives can take. Rachel's career has been anything but linear. Armed with a master's degree in journalism, she moved from magazine publishing into public relations, environmental advocacy, nonprofit leadership, climate communications, podcasting, and, more recently, fiction writing. Along the way, curiosity has remained her compass. As Rachel explains, she doesn't want to get stuck doing just one thing; she wants to keep learning and evolving. That curiosity also helped put Rachel at the forefront of conversations that much of the world is only now beginning to have. As executive director of the 5 Gyres Institute, she worked on the problem of plastic and microplastic pollution as public awareness was beginning to grow. Research from the organization identifying microplastics in the Great Lakes helped propel the movement that ultimately resulted in federal legislation banning plastic microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics. Rachel later brought the issue to the TEDx stage, asking whether one straw could change the world and, in a second talk, challenging the way we think about trash and recycling. Her 2019 TEDx talk specifically argued that solving plastic pollution would require far more than simply eliminating straws. Today, Rachel is Senior Director of Communications at global nonprofit alliance Cascale, where her work centers on sustainability leadership and collective action. She also hosts Cascale's Source of Good podcast, which brings together leaders across the consumer-goods industry to discuss climate change, decent work, transparency, circularity, and sustainability. But this conversation isn't about telling people to recycle more. Rachel and Jill dig into a much bigger question: Who is actually responsible for creating environmental change? Consumers matter. Corporations matter. Governments and legislation matter. And, Rachel argues, real systemic progress happens when all three exert pressure on one another. The conversation explores extended producer responsibility, supply-chain transparency, fast fashion, plastic, recycling, emerging technology, and a future in which consumers may be able to scan a piece of clothing and discover where and how it was made. Yet perhaps the most powerful part of Rachel's work today is her refusal to surrender to despair. After years of writing about environmental issues through projects including EcoStiletto and Mommy Greenest, Rachel realized that the constant stream of frightening climate news was becoming overwhelming. She also knew something the headlines weren't always showing us: Good things are happening, too. That's why she transformed her long-running newsletter into The Good Newsletter, where she connects the dots among positive developments in climate, sustainability, technology, policy, and community. Researching it changes her own outlook each month—and she hopes reading it does the same for everyone else. Her August 2026 edition describes the newsletter as a nearly 20-year "labor of love" devoted to finding fact-based silver linings amid difficult news. Rachel and Jill also talk about her return to creative writing, completing an MFA and multiple novels, and her belief that fiction can change us without preaching to us. And then there's one of Rachel's most charming community-building projects: the Santa Monica Silent Book Club, an "introvert's alternative" to the traditional book club where everyone brings whatever they want to read, spends 30 minutes quietly reading, and then talks about their books—if they feel like it. Ultimately, this is a conversation about what happens when curiosity meets action and realism meets hope. Because knowing what's wrong with the world matters. But knowing that people are working every day to make it better may be what gives us the energy to join them.
