At the heart of Shaken Not Burned is sustainability literacy. But not in the sense of teaching acronyms or repeating headlines. What we mean is something bigger: the skills to understand how systems really work – and how to change them.

The same skills that help you spot greenwash or untangle climate policy are the ones we all need to face today’s challenges: misinformation, polarisation, geopolitical shocks, even the cracks in democratic norms.

Here’s the thing: we don’t need more theories telling us where we should be. We need the how. How do we move from brilliant ideas and elegant frameworks to action that actually changes things?

We are placing power at the core of our project. Not power as something distant or elite, but power as agency. Knowing where you stand, what you can influence, and how your actions ripple through the system. That shift – from paralysis to agency – is the foundation for resilience and change.

This season we’ll be exploring how people are already doing it. Different approaches, different products, different ways of thinking – but all rooted in action, not theory.

Whether you’re running a business, allocating capital, or simply trying to build a better future, Season 5 is about finding your leverage points and learning how change actually happens.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram – and why not spread the word with your friends and colleagues?

What does it take to scale real-world climate solutions fast?

In this episode, we explore what happens when you treat climate action like an engineering challenge, not just a moral imperative.

Joining us is Nick Wirth, aerodynamicist, engineer, and former Formula One team owner turned cleantech entrepreneur. Today, he’s applying high-performance engineering to supermarkets, trucks, and buildings through Wirth Research, saving clients energy costs and cutting emissions with every installation.

Nick walks us through his journey from designing wind-tunnel-free F1 cars to developing AirDoor and EcoBlade, technologies which are now being used across the UK retail sector to cut heating and cooling loads by up to 70%.

We explore why sustainability only scales when it delivers a strong return, how overlooked retrofits could unlock widespread adoption of heat pumps, and what supermarkets reveal about behavioural economics and invisible design.

The good news is that the business case is stronger than ever. The challenge now is moving fast enough, and thinking big enough, to match the moment.

Nick’s story is a powerful reminder that many of the answers we need already exist. What’s missing isn’t innovation but implementation at scale. Listen in, and find out what it looks like when a Formula One mindset meets a broken energy system – and decides to rebuild it.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram – and why not spread the word with your friends and colleagues?

Let’s step out of the ESG echo chamber and into a much bigger conversation: what are the real limits of our planet and how close are we to crossing them? Life on Earth has remained stable for the last 12,000 years, but that stability is starting to unravel.

It’s tempting to treat climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and land use as separate “issues,” each with their own strategy, timeline, and department. But that’s not how Earth works, and businesses that think that way are flying blind.

In this week’s episode, Felicia speaks with Dr. Katherine Richardson, Earth system scientist, professor of biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen, and one of the architects of the Planetary Boundaries framework.

We explore why six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been breached and what that really means for our future. Katherine explains how Earth system science reframes sustainability, moving us beyond the idea of simply doing less harm toward a far more urgent goal: staying within the planet’s safe operating space.

We may be overdue for a social tipping point, and business leaders can help accelerate that shift. We ask what executives actually need to understand about science (hint: it’s not the chemistry), and examine how outdated metrics, short-term thinking, and misaligned incentives keep many companies stuck, while others are quietly forging a different path.

This episode is a wake-up call, but also a message of hope. Change is happening, albeit not fast enough. But as we’ve learned from smoking bans to seat belts, social tipping points often come quickly if enough of us help push.

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram – and why not spread the word with your friends and colleagues?