Ep 9: C. Derick Varn on Leftism in the Rocky Mountain West, Buddhism, and more

On this episode of The Liminauts, my guest is Robert Zevin. Zevin grew up in a family made of jewish refugees from Poland and the Ukraine. One side started the World Publishing Company, at one point the largest publisher of the King James Bible, while the other ran a Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills that became a refuge for Jewish communists and other leftists during the Depression. This intersection of entrepreneurship and radical politics shaped Zevin’s career from the start. In the late 60s as a professor of economics at Columbia, Zevin got involved with the United States Servicemen's Fund which was responsible for The FTA Show, an anti-war counterprogram of troop entertainment to oppose Bob Hope's USO tour. Then, in the 1970s and along with Robert Schwartz, Zevin helped invent the idea of socially responsible or sustainable investing, which is now a 30 trillion Dollar segment of investments known as ESG.

Robert Zevin is also my grandfather, so I hope you enjoy this very special episode as much as I did.

**If you are enjoying the podcast, please consider giving us five stars on Apple Podcasts and/or Spotify. It will help the show get in front of new listeners! Much appreciated -- Ben**

Here is an interview with Robert about socially sustainable investing and the origins of ESG on Bloomberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRWxFNqaciA

Here's a trailer for the rereleased F.T.A.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWAbhonmCOg

If you want info on the United States Servicemen's Fund and the GI coffeehouses, here's the wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Servicemen%27s_Fund

Watch on The Liminauts channel on YouTube.

Subscribe to Ben's Substack

Host: Ben Hawes

Music: terjerselfanewone by Ben Hawes/Jungjungle

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.