Solutionary Voices brings together thinkers, educators, and activists on the forefront of building a more just, humane, and sustainable world—for people, animals, and the ecosystems that sustain us all. In each episode, host Zoe Weil explores problems worth solving with the people working to solve them.
Guests embody what it means to be a solutionary: someone who identifies inhumane, unjust, and unsustainable systems and works to transform them in ways that do the most good and least harm for all.
Ready to think differently about some of the world’s big challenges?
Reverend Kevin Ross, known as Rev Kev, asks how can faith, love, and public courage move people beyond silence and into meaningful action for justice? And how can we love across divides without becoming neutral in the face of harm?
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Peter Singer, philosopher and author of Animal Liberation, discusses fifty years of the modern animal liberation movement and where reason, emotion, and effective altruism fit in the fight to reduce unnecessary suffering.
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Abby Falik, Co-Founder of The Flight School, shares insights from her career working with young people in the transition from high school to whatever comes next. She discusses what it means to be human, elevating education for the immeasurables, not just for better test results, and putting learning about your own mind and heart at the center of education.
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Richard Lang introduces the Headless Way, a direct practice rooted in Douglas Harding’s teachings that invites people to notice their true nature beyond the face in the mirror. The episode explores awareness, nonseparation, death, love, and how a simple shift in perception may help us meet a divided world with greater presence and compassion.
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Rahim Hirji discusses algorithmic drift, human agency, education, principled innovation, and the seven human skills needed to navigate AI responsibly. This episode explores how people, schools, and organizations can stay human while using technology with greater judgment, ethics, and purpose.
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Rae Sikora, Co-Founder of the Institute for Humane Education, reflects on humane education, compassion for all life, animal protection, environmental responsibility, human rights, and the practice of meeting conflict with love rather than contempt.
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Navin Amarasuriya of the Contentment Foundation explores educator wellbeing, student agency, attention, compassion, and contentment in a rapidly changing technological world.
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Shariff Abdullah, author of Creating a World That Works for All and founder of the Commonway Institute, frames his life’s work around a deceptively simple question: how do we create a world that works for all living beings?
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Olympic silver medalist and Switch4Good Founder Dotsie Bausch discusses dairy, plant-based nutrition, school milk policy, food justice, animal protection, and how compassionate systems change can help people make healthier and more ethical choices.
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Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE) and is considered a leader in the comprehensive humane education movement. Zoe is an award-winning author of eight books, including The Solutionary Way, a speaker, and a lover of animals and nature.
“Changing the world one child at a time.” Those words have inspired my work for more than four decades in education, and they continue to inspire me now. We are at a pivotal point in the evolution of our world. We are facing a climate crisis, a health crisis, a crisis of racial justice, a crisis in our treatment of animals, a crisis of media bias. The list goes on. And perhaps our greatest crisis is our consistent struggle as a society to simply come together respectfully, intelligently, and ethically to solve our problems and save our planet. We need solutionaries. We need young people who have been educated not only to think critically, creatively, and systemically about real-world issues, but also to be passionate, persistent, and humane in their implementation of real-world solutions. And that is IHE’s mission: to support teachers and educational institutions in preparing young people to become solutionaries – and the next caretakers of our planet.
IHE offers a healing vision and a tangible pathway forward for a struggling world. As Executive Director, I am excited, humbled, and deeply honored to join with others to promote that vision and that pathway in ways that make them foundational to systems of education throughout the world – and to each child who is committed to making that world a better place.
Passionate about preparing young people to lead lives of joy and purpose, Steve Cochrane has had a remarkable journey through the field of education. It is a journey that has taken him from the campus of Princeton University, where he served as an admissions officer and an assistant dean of students, to the classroom of a public elementary school, where he had the privilege of teaching – and learning from – his fourth and fifth grade students. Steve has been a dorm director and associate dean of admissions at Wheelock College in Boston. He has also been an elementary school principal, a middle school principal, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and, prior to his work at IHE, he was the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools in Princeton, New Jersey where he was honored with the award of County Superintendent of the Year. In each of these roles, Steve has collaborated with others to prioritize innovations in learning, wellness for students, equity, and a belief that every child should be supported and inspired to achieve their highest potential.
Steve received his undergraduate degree in English from Princeton University and his master’s degree in educational administration from Harvard. He is a competitive road cyclist who also enjoys the thrill of mountain biking. Steve and his wife are both vegans and advocates for holistic health. They currently reside in Spencerport, New York, with their two dogs and a very large Maine Coon cat.
