Episode 7 - TV Reporter, Lesley Nagy Inspires the new MTV-style Green Reporting and Shares Interviews with Celebrities who are Walking the Walk. Lights, Camera, Action!

TV Reporter, Lesley Nagy Inspires the new “MTV-style Green Reporting” and Shares Interviews with Celebrities who are Walking the Walk. Lights, Camera, Action!

Announcer:  This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com

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Meredith Medland:  Welcome to Living Green.  My name is Meredith Medland and our guest today is Lesley Nagy.

Lesley Nagy:  I’m showing my audience how to be more green and I realize that, you know, I can be even greener than I was being.  You know, I was just being naturally green, as how I grew up, you know, but now I’m making a concerted and conscious effort to practice what I preach.  And then I think that there’s gonna be even better ways to do it.

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You know, dude, on YouTube, go to Your Green Report, you can hit it anywhere.  You always want to check out interesting ones that give tips.  I think I did one on recycling myths and debunking the recycling myths.  And people didn’t really think about that before, but, yeah, you know, you still have a, there’s still quite a people who don’t want to use recycled paper ‘cause they think it’s not as good as, you know, virgin tree paper.  And that’s really not true, so I did a little story on that.

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But now, you know, when I talk to celebrities, I really, I don’t want to know about them personally.  I want to know about the great stuff they’re doing.  What are they really doing to get the message out about recycling or being eco-friendly and buying products?  And are they really walking the walk?  You know, what is their green message?

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Meredith Medland:  As host and reporter for “Your Green Report”, Lesley gives Your TV20 viewers in the Bay area a daily dose of news and information of relevance to green lifestyles and socially conscious living.  From efforts made to reduce greenhouse emissions and to reduce dependence on petroleum products, to profiles of individuals making a difference in the community, “Your Green Report” provides individuals with positive news of strides being made by cities, corporations, organizations, and individuals that ensure the sustainability of our planet. 

Lesley has been with Your TV20 since April of 2004, and before hosting “Your Green Report,” she was the entertainment reporter for the “Daily Mixx” and “The Mixx Extended Play.”  She travels to New York City and LA, interviewing celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, and gets lots of insight on what’s happening in green.

Today we’re gonna hear about her experiences with Ed Begley Jr.  We’re gonna learn about her ten cents recycling fund while growing up in Michigan.  And then we’re gonna finish up with her tips and tricks and all the things that she’s learned in interviewing green celebrities.  Lesley, it’s great to meet my match and have another interviewer on the show.  Let’s make it a good one.  Thanks so much for joining me.  Welcome.

Lesley Nagy:  Oh, thank you so much for having me.  I’m excited to get talking about green.

Meredith Medland:  All right, well I heard about you at ad:tech, which is the largest digital marketing advertising show in the United States.  And I was speaking to Pete Blackshaw, who is the editor of ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com, and my friend Rowan Gabrielle and I, who is the president of Urth.TV, were talking to him a little bit about Urth.TV and doing the networking thing at the luncheon.  And up popped your name in this whole chart of all these words that were Earth-based, you know, eco words like recycling, and there’s one proper name and it’s your name.  Have you seen this chart?

Lesley Nagy:  I did.  I thought it was a hoax email sent to me, actually, and said, “Oh, look, Lesley Nagy’s right in the center.”  I mean, I beat out recycling.  That was very unique for me, so after I researched it and looked it up a bit, I found, I guess my name must just be unique enough that it doesn’t come as something else, you know.  Lesley and Nagy couldn’t be taken apart into something else, and so, for some reason, it came in as green.  I was very flattered, actually.  It’s just funny.

Meredith Medland:  Now there’s some other reasons that it comes up as green and I think that, for those of us who understand the way the internet works, a lot of it has to do with your name being associated with celebrity interviews.  You told me earlier about your interview with Ed Begley Jr.  I’d love to hear more about that.

Lesley Nagy.  You know, he is a huge person, so I’m a very petite, I’m at 5’2”, you know, he’s probably 6’7”.  So we sat down for our interview and he was a very nice, you know, almost like a teddy bear guy, because he is so big you almost always find that opposite personality.  And we sat down and had a conversation and he was just about the nicest man that I’ve interviewed, just really genuine.  And he wasn’t, he didn’t necessarily want to talk about himself.  He was saying, “Oh, you know all these other environmentalists.  They’re doing wonderful stuff,” and he was really patting everyone else on the back.  And so you really got the sense that, you know, he is in this genuinely, and he got in it so long ago that he’s not out to prove anything.  He’s really just out, maybe to give a message that change is within, and if you change yourself it will lead to bigger and better things, as it has for him, really.

Meredith Medland:  What was the peak of the interview experience for you, and something that changed your attitudes or behaviors around going green?

Lesley Nagy:  For Ed Begley Jr.?  I think, first of all, the wind farm.  He said he purchased wind farm back in the seventies, you know, and he said, “You know what?  I always thought I was cheap, but it became a good investment.”  And, you know, it peaked me because it reminds me how I grew up with my parents, and a lot of the things they’d do I thought were classified as being cheap.  “But let me buy this or that, and all these wasteful products.”  You know, you consider that cheap parents, but really my parents were teaching me the value of things.  I don’t think it was called the green movement at the time, but it really, it was the value of the Earth and the value of products and not having so much.  And so, when he said that he really thought he was being cheap, I realized that, you know what, I think everyone who is concerned about the Earth really kind of takes themselves that way, but really it’s not being cheap.  It’s really being considerate.

Meredith Medland:  When you started  doing your show--you have, I think it’s the only fully green news show in the United States, isn’t that right?

Lesley Nagy:  It is.  It’s a short show.  It airs about two minutes every day, it repeats four times a day.  And it’s gonna get you, you know, I try and tell people in the young generation that it’s like MTV News for the green world.  You know, we’re gonna get you right between your shows and actually teach you something that maybe you didn’t know.  And then, for my parents, who watch it and love to just talk to me about, you know, people I’ve interviewed such as Denis Hayes, the cofounder of Earth Day, or I just interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  For them, I think they love to see that, wow, these people are still around.  They’re still talking about the environment. They’re still doing this.  You know, yeah, they’re still in the media highlight.  So that’s exciting.

Meredith Medland:  What was the subject matter with Robert F. Kennedy?

Lesley Nagy:  He actually gave a speech this weekend at Eco-Live, which was a brand new green event sponsored by KGO, and he really was the keynote speaker.  And his message was one of a lot of things.  I mean, he really wanted businesses, though, to go to Free Market Capitalism, and that was the main message that he was giving.  And so it was interesting because he can pull back in politics in history, and he knows, because he was inside the realm of the politics, he knows the person who is responsible for this, the person who made this decision, why this person was hired.  You know, I don’t know the ins and the outs.  I know what I know from reading media and newspaper, and so it was a unique perspective for sure.

Meredith Medland:  When you’re interviewing celebrities or celebrities in the green movement, how do you make a discernment between who to interview, who’s real, and who’s doing something that’s newsworthy to you.

Lesley Nagy:  You know, I think it’s hard to discern that right now, but really the celebrities that are getting involved in the green movement are the ones who keep getting involved, and you keep hearing their name over and over again.  Leonardo DiCaprio, he actually was at this big green event and he didn’t want to talk to the media.  You know, everyone knew he was there, but he was there because it’s something he believed in and he had been working on, you know, documentary.  So he’s been working on things and he, you know, he’s not really outspoken, so I really, actually, would love to interview him because I think he is probably really true to heart.  I appreciate those type of celebrities.

Meredith Medland:  You have a really unique perspective ‘cause you were doing junket reporting on the celebrity, kind of red carpet line prior to doing green reporting.  So how is it watching that transition occur in Hollywood?

Lesley Nagy:  You know, it is a complete backflip from what I was doing before.  I was interviewing celebrities about how great they are and the great movie that they were in, and they were acting, and what great thing.  But now, you know, when I talk to celebrities, I really, I don’t want to know about them personally.  I want to know about the great stuff they’re doing.  What are they really doing to get the message out about recycling or being eco-friendly and buying products?  And are they really walking the walk?  You know, what is their green message?  And if they have their green message, are they following it?  Are they, you know, are they doing what they say, you know, practice what you preach, walk the walk, right?  So I think that’s the difference.  It’s just completely different.  One hundred percent.  And I hope it keeps… No, I know it will keep going this way.  It’s hit mainstream.  If it hits celebrities, you know it hit mainstream.  When I see on E! Entertainment that they’re talking about green, I know that the movement is changed and it’s gone mainstream and it’s bigger, and I don’t think it can be stopped, which is the beauty of it all.

Meredith Medland:  I was really excited to learn that you grew up in Michigan ‘cause my listeners know that I grew up in Wisconsin as well, so we’ve got that midwest thing in common.  Listeners, you can also check out my blog on PersonalLifeMedia.com, and I talk a lot and share a lot of pictures of what’s going on and my universe and the travels that I take, but those midwestern values, particularly around recycling and reducing and… Can you share a personal story?  I mean, you were talking earlier about those recycling bottles that are ten cents and some things that you used to do as a child, and that was pretty fun.

Lesley Nagy:  Wow, you know, I have so many stories growing up from the midwest and really, yeah, the cans and bottles are ten cents to return them, and I, that was so valuable.  I mean, you do not throw out your Coke can and you do not throw out your bottle because it’s ten cents, and so we actually had a big bag that we would throw it all in, and then once it got to be big enough, we were like, “We can do it.”  And so, I remember we would divvy up the bag because it was too big for all of us and I come from a big family, so my family—

Meredith Medland:  How many?

Lesley Nagy:  I’m the youngest of five.  So we would all take a little garbage bag and—garbage bag? a little bag’s worth—and put it around our bike handles, and we would bike up to Meyer, where you returned your bicycles, and we would buy pudding pops.  I don’t know why we always bought pudding pops, but it was really, you know, you probably made three dollars and fifty cents or four dollars and, really, it felt very valuable.  It was very empowering, you know, because my mom wasn’t someone where you said, “Mom, I want money for pudding pops.”  Well, you have to earn your money.  Well, this was like a job.  Your job was to collect cans and they were going to the recycle bin because, you know, you could earn money this way.  So it felt, you know, like employment.  It was great and it was eco-friendly.  Who knew, at the time?

Meredith Medland:  Yeah, who knew?  Who knew?  And now when we fast forward to your life today, you live in San Francisco, you’re hanging out at Funky Door Yoga Studio, doing Hot Bikram Yoga, eating organic food.  You were kind of the weirdo at the TV studio, when you were doing the entertainment reporting, the healthy one.  And that day came when you were a cohost of a reporting show, an entertainment reporting show, and let’s hear the rest of this story.  Your manager comes in…

Lesley Nagy:  My manager announces that we are going green and I think it just shocked… because this is the first, you have to remind me, that this is still right before the movement got really hot—

Meredith Medland:  Which was about eight months ago, did you say?

Lesley Nagy:  Yeah, back in September.  So everyone saw “Inconvenient Truth” and wanted to start doing things, but really the ball was just getting rolling.  So he came with this idea of we are gonna go with the programming that we produce ourselves, we’re gonna go with a green news show and we’re also gonna go with green half-hour specials to really educate people.  And so he called me up to his office and he said, “Would you like to stay on and solo host” you know?  And I don’t know, everyone keeps saying, “Hmm, now did he know that you were green and that’s why he asked you, or did he want to go green first?” and I actually don’t know the answer to that.  I like to think it was a great marriage between my two passions and I couldn’t have predicted something so happy to happen to me personally.  If it was just some luck that my personal life met my career life and meshed into green hosting, really.

Meredith Medland:  Yeah, you are really blessed.  Me too, thanks to the universe.  So you say, “Did he, and he knew I was green.”  How do you define green for you personally?

Lesley Nagy:  I guess it…healthy.  You know, I define it as healthy.  I like to buy my organic fruits and veggies, I definitely try and treat my body healthy.  But I recycle and I think about the products I use.  You know, I stopped using my plastic water bottle and I started using, you know, your stainless steel bottle, which is what your supposed to.  And the reason, and you know you need to start looking at the plastic bottles, you keep looking at them and figure out how many you must have consumed.  I didn’t actually use water bottles until I came to California, but they were hip for a long time, so I, you know, unfortunately they’re hip but they’re very wasteful. 

So then I started looking at the things that I wanted to do, and I actually did get a Prius.  I’d been looking at hybrids for a number of years and I was never, I didn’t think that it was gonna be a good financial solution.  They’re expensive, you know, hybrid SUV.  And then I realized I don’t need a hybrid SUV, that’s still very wasteful, so I got a smaller car and now I just play the game of, “How much gas can I save this week?” and taking my foot off the accelerator as much as possible, especially with the hills in San Francisco, it’s pretty easy to do.  So it forced— it helped me, not forced me—it showed me the way to be more green, because I’m showing my audience how to be more green and I realize that, you know, I can be even greener than I was being.  You know, I was just being naturally green, as how I grew up, you know, but now I’m making a concerted and conscious effort to practice what I preach.  And then I think that there’s gonna be even better ways to do it.  You know, we’re gonna, we’re not gonna have to compromise how to, you know, live your life, it’s just gonna be the better way to do it, you know.  Grab your canvas bag to go grocery shopping.  And everyone’s gonna do it, just like San Francisco, you know.

Meredith Medland:  How has it changed your attitudes and beliefs around your own personal alignment with yourself?

Lesley Nagy:  It hasn’t changed it.  It actually just confirmed how I was raised.  You know, I keep saying I get older and I’m more like my mother every day, and this is like my mother, and you know, as Ed Begley had said, my mother’s very cheap, I was very cheap, I’m not a spendthrift woman.  I try to look good, but, you know, I was your thrift store shopper, fixing stuff up, and I truly believe that I’m a minimalist for a reason and it was how I was raised, to be a minimalist.  You know, I don’t get my nails done at the salon, I’m a do-it-yourself midwesterner.  And so, really, being involved in the environment, a do-it-yourself personality is the way to go, so it just confirmed that I’m not as strange as I thought I was.

Meredith Medland:  I love it.  A do-it-yourself personality, that’s nice.  Now I’m looking at you, and you’re a very attractive, beautiful, turned on woman any person or man would be, you know, very excited to be in your physical presence, as well as, you know, we’re having a good time talking to you.  And after the break, what I’d like to talk to you about is how make-up, hair, and clothing are being influenced in the way that you produce your show.  So listeners, we’ll be back right after this, we’re gonna take a break to thank our sponsors.  My name is Meredith Medland and you’re listening to Living Green, we’re about to take a break to listen to our sponsors and we’ll be back right after this.

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Meredith Medland:  Welcome back from the break.  We’re gonna talk about hair, make-up, appearance, television appearances.  You gotta look good when you’re on TV and you’re doing green reporting.  Let’s talk about that.  How does that influence your buying and decision making?

Lesley Nagy:  You know, reading product labels, there’s your key.  And, yeah, a lot of make-ups use really harmful chemicals, so I have good skin, thankfully, but I don’t want to clog it up with some chemicals.  I do have allergies, and so I have environmental allergies, but I didn’t want to test stuff out on my face.  So I really wanna pay attention to products that are natural and have…and I’m gonna use less, say less is more. 

You know, I put on make-up every day, I have to be camera ready; I do my own hair, I do my own make-up, I get ready probably as quick as I can, you know, I really just slap it on.  I’m getting better and better at doing it, make it look like I’m not doing it as rushed, and that’s pretty much because I’m trying to cut down.  I’m always using SPF products, though, for the sun, on my face.  But I do use MAC, which has a recycling program which I appreciate.  They will take back all the containers and actually give you a free lipstick if you give them six containers.  I mean, they recycle those out, is what they tell me, which is a great deal.  And then Aveda has a great number of products that are more eco-friendly.  Their containers are recycled, made from recycled plastics, so I appreciate products like that. 

When I’m going for my hair products, I definitely try, you don’t want the harsh chemicals in your hairspray, and I use shampoos and conditioners I just, you know, I try to look on the back.  And, you know, my sister—I’m really lucky, I have a twin sister who is a toxic epidemiologist, so every time there’s a long word on the back of a package, “What does that word mean?” and she actually knows all those long words and can tell me, “No, no, that’s very harmful for the environment, that’s horribly harmful.”  So I’m lucky that I have a cheat sheet in that sense, a personal cheat sheet.  And so she’s really helped me decipher what products you should use and what you shouldn’t. 

And I think more and more products are going to turn the page because they’re being pressured that, you know, I don’t want to buy a product if I find that it’s not eco-friendly.  If I find out, then I have to stop buying it, and sometimes it really hurts ‘cause you really like that product, you know, the acetone nail polish, you know.  You don’t want to buy, you want non-acetone nail polish because acetone is so harmful.  And you know, there are great colors out there, you just, you can’t buy a lot of the popular nail salon products.  But if you look at a salon, they do have a couple colors that you’ll notice they won’t even realize, so it is about product labeling.  And for me, my job, I think the message is getting that out there, so that when you’re going to a store you’re not confused what products to buy, what products not to buy, you know.  And so I think there’s probably going to be a rating system or something coming around soon that will help consumers a lot more.

Meredith Medland:  What about your clothing?

Lesley Nagy:  Clothing is a hard one as well.  I love organic cotton t-shirts, bu they only make organic cotton t-shirts, you know, it’s really hard to buy.  So I don’t over-indulge and try to over-spend.  You know, when I am going through my clothes, I just did spring cleaning, and I actually give them to my relatives, I have a couple relatives who are similar sizes, but we swap them out in that sense.  And actually my sister and I just decided, okay, pick out six of your spring tops that your wore last spring that you’re not gonna wear this spring, and let’s have a little wine social and all six friends get together and, you know, see if we can swap clothes because what I wore last spring is old to me, but you know what, it’d look great on you and it’s new for you.  So if you have some friends who are similar size and can swap clothes, it worked great.  I mean, I have four tops from my friend that I’ve been wearing and, you know, they feel like brand new tops to me and I didn’t have to go shopping or spend any money, so it’s perfect.

Meredith Medland:  That’s awesome, that’s great.  That’s one of the things that I really enjoy doing too, is thinking about reduce, reuse, recycle.  But then, there’s also in episode five of Living Green, I interviewed Tierra Del Forte who actually lives in Oakland, and she does Del Forte Denim, which are these amazing, amazing jeans and vests and all sorts of exciting things.  And then actually, there’s organic leather which Rowan Gabrielle produced; that’s in episode number one, you can hear more about that.  So there’s lots of eco-fashion that I’ve been exploring.  That’s something that’s personally exciting to me, is the fabulousness of fashion, and I’m finding that when I’m wearing organic fabrics, my behaviors are much more lined up, and there’s ease with it.  It’s not an uncomfortable greenness, it’s just like, ooh, I want to because I love it and it’s fun.

Lesley Nagy:  Have you tried Loomstate?  Loomstate is organic as well and they have really comfortable clothes, t-shirts and dresses for the summer, and jeans as well, organic line.

Meredith Medland:  Excellent.  And listeners, if you’re looking for more, Stewart+Brown is another option, or you can go to Eco-Petal.com and you can find some more clothing names there, so yep.  Lesley’s over there, writing that down.  All right, so let’s take a little bit of a transition.  Looking at the next three months ahead, if you took a look at the projects you’re working on and the things going on, what are three outcomes that you could look back, or we could come back in three months, and you could say, “Oh, Meredith, I completed these three things, A, B, and C”?

Lesley Nagy:  Oh, wow.  Three outcomes.  See, if I could make the outcomes happen, I would say the plastic bag ban that San Francisco just passed.  In three months, I know other cities have talked to our mayor and our assemblymen and I hope that, you know, in three months’ time, thirty states—I mean, if not all fifty—thirty states pass that legislation.  You know, in three months, it could happen.  They have the legislation written, right, so that would be a goal that I would just love to see happen.

I would love to see an outcome where, I guess, I wanna say that people’s mindsets change, you know, and it’s not still just called the green movement and it’s really now more like the fun movement, the hip movement, this is, you know, it’s not still labeled a little odd.  And I think in three months’ time, if celebrities keep on this movement and more people start practicing it, it’s not gonna be so rare anymore.  We’re really gonna find that it’s a harmonious part of our Earth and our way of living.  And so I think that’s what I would really love to see as another outcome.

A third outcome, oh gosh, there’s just so many to choose from.  A third outcome would probably be ten cents recycling for these aluminum cans in California and all over the rest—I wish it would be adopted everywhere because Michigan has a ninety-five percent recycling rate for our bottles and cans because of this.  And so, if there was an easy law, I mean, they should just say that, look at that, ninety-five percent recycling rate.  We could have that through the rest of the United States.  In three months’ time we could get that passed and, boy, I know all the homeless people on the street would be happy as well as I would be happy.  And people would definitely think twice about throwing their cans and bottles away.

Meredith Medland:  Nice.  Now it sounds like you have a pretty big political appetite.  Any interest, or are you already involved in any other organizations or affiliations?

Lesley Nagy:  Oh, I was gonna say, political?  No, I wasn’t going…I like being on this end of the politics.  I like interviewing the politicians to see what they’re gonna do and making sure that they’re, you know, passing their laws as they should be.  As for affiliations and organizations, I am part of, we have the Northern California Emmys coming up, so I’m part of that TV society.  I’m actually part of Global Green, just you know, a great member, and I got to cover the event, so I’m a contributing member, trying to help rebuild Katrina.  I donate.  That’s my great thing, just because that’s how I give gifts, I give donations.  My friend was traveling to Australia, so for her birthday I got her a TerraPass, which is a strange gift.  My mother, for Mother’s Day’s day coming up—

Meredith Medland:  I’m going to jump in for you, just ‘cause some of our listeners might not know about TerraPass, so just tell them what it is.

Lesley Nagy:  Oh, sure, it’s in a sense buying wind farm offsets—I think they might also do solar—so that they calculate, okay, she was going to Australia, that’s this many carbon emissions from the airplane, and instead you purchased a wind farm, I guess, for that calculation.  And they figure it out through their, you know, through their great mathematical skills, about how much carbon you’re offsetting.  And so, really, just trying to, if you’re gonna do the bad thing by flying to Australia, at least you’re gonna buy some purchase in the wind farm and that’s supposed to—they’re calling it offsetting, it’s just trying to maintain neutral.  Hopefully in the future, I see an outcome where we won’t even have to offset things, it will just be that we’ll be able to reduce the pollution from the airplanes.

Meredith Medland:  Ooh, I like that.  On my blog I talk a lot about the things that are coming up,  Yahoo going carbon neutral, all sorts of things, and, listeners, I just want to remind you that you can comment on my blog and I’ll send you an iFrogs.  Those are these wonderful, I think they’re sort of rubber cases to protect your iPod.  So if you’re listening to this in your earbuds and you downloaded this podcast in iTunes, you know that you can go ahead and check out the blog on PersonalLifeMedia.com.  And if you’ve been listening to this by going to our website, you can also just type Living Green into iTunes and subscribe, and we’ve got lots of exciting shows and guests coming up in the future. 

I want to take a little bit of a transition to the online environment.  Many, many of your newscasts are on the web, so that people can see them, and I’d like to talk to you about the editing process and your producing of the information that’s shared with the public in those shows.  How does it work and what’s your contribution to it?

Lesley Nagy:  I’m not only a host, I actually do produce the daily shows.  Pretty much, I set up my interviews, I interview them, I log the tape, write the story, and then we tape the ins and outs in the studio here. I give that paper to all those tapes to the editor, who edits and formats it for the web as well.  And they post it online; we post it to MySpace and YouTube, those are so hot right now.  And especially because I think it’s the next generation and that’s the really important thing, to get that message to the younger generations because this is who it’s affecting the most.  Not that I’m not young and we’re all not young and it’s not gonna affect us, but it really needs to set the stage there, and I think, you know, if I’d heard the word global warming in high school growing up, it just really probably would have knocked my socks off.  And now, I think it’s going to be in every high school and middle school and, you know, my little five-year-old niece is probably going to learn about it soon.  And so I think that the message is, the web is attracting all the audience, you know, the web is attracting so much audience that you can’t miss that, you have to go on the web as well.  And that’s really, and it plays easy.  You can go back and pick what days you want, I mean it’s archived for you, it’s so much easier than, you know, waiting for the show to come up on TV.  So we’ll avoid the couch potatoes, we’ll go get the people on the web who really are searching to watch this, and they’ll probably watch one or two episodes and I think, I hope that the message gets to them clearer.

Meredith Medland:  All right, so give us the URL and, if you can, can you flag three to five episodes that you’d like our listeners to take a look at?

Lesley Nagy:  Boy, there’s so many episodes that I do, but our URL is www.yourtv20.com/greenreport, you can just go to Green Report.  You can also go to myspace.com/yourgreenreport.  You know, dude, on YouTube, go to Your Green Report, you can hit it anywhere.  You always want to check out interesting ones that give tips.  I think I did one on recycling myths and debunking the recycling myths.  And people didn’t really think about that before, but, yeah, you know, you still have a, there’s still quite a people who don’t want to use recycled paper ‘cause they think it’s not as good as, you know, virgin tree paper.  And that’s really not true, so I did a little story on that.  My favorite stories are always the follow-ups.  We do little events that go on, to save the Bay area.  The plastic bag story.  If you’re not familiar with it, or you live in a city that doesn’t have that plastic bag ban story, go back two weeks ago and you’ll find the plastic bag ban story.  And that will really let you know what’s going on with that and the fact that it’s not that hard.  They’re giving out canvas bags, I mean, if your city wants to give you some canvas bags to use, you should be all for it too.  And press your assemblymen to do the same thing.

Meredith Medland:  That sounds good.  All right, well I’ve watched some of those episodes and I sure liked them, so I definitely encourage our listeners to do that.  Listeners, if you go to PersonalLifeMedia.com, you’ll see under Lesley Nagy’s profile that there’s a list of links, so if you want to go there, you can actually just click on those links and we’ll make it easy for you there as well.  All right, little bit of transition here, we’re gonna come back from this break, we’re gonna ask you about your living legacy and what’s ahead in the future.  Thanks a lot for listening.  You’re listening to Living Green, my name is Meredith Medland and we’ll be back right after this.

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Meredith Medland:  You’re listening to Living Green and I’m your host, Meredith Medland, with Lesley Nagy.  Lesley, your living legacy.

Lesley Nagy:  This is a tough one because I don’t think I need a living legacy.  I think that, you know, for me, when I think about the word legacy, it’s all about the future generations to come, so that if I’ve done my part well enough to leave a legacy, maybe it will be that they won’t think twice about recycling or they won’t think twice that, they won’t think of the word global warming and say, “Oh, you know, this is this big problem we have and we don’t have a solution.”  I hope that, you know, if my legacy would be just to help change the mindsets a little bit.  And the fact that I don’t want my name involved in it in any way, but I just want a mindset change, so that the future generation really thinks about living differently, and living for the Earth, and really living in a manner that we don’t have this threat that we consider that is doomed and making it really bad.  But really, I hope that they live a legacy, I hope that they live a life, I should say, that, you know, treads less on the Earth, you know, treads less, and therefore they don’t see the repercussions that they’re predicting, you know, that seem really sad.  And I just hope that would be a legacy I would live, that I’d help change little mindsets and they’d think that it was their own mindset, obviously, and I hope everyone’s mindset changes.  And I think the future generations, that’s just the key to it all.

Meredith Medland:  You’re definitely already doing that.  So one more question for you here.  As you think about Earth Day next year… Actually, I’m going to ask you two questions.  So Earth Day next year.  If you had a message— and I’m sure that you do—and you could speak to three million people and you only had ninety seconds, what would you say that would change their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to have them live in a healthier way?

Lesley Nagy:  I am the happiest I’ve ever been. I am, and I think internal happiness comes from positive energy, you know, raining around you.  You’ve all seen that, right?  So if we could get the rest of the world circulating in this positive energy with each other and moving in it, I think that that’s really the message I have.  The green movement is a positive message.  It’s not doom and gloom; it’s happy.  I feel better.  I’m healthier, you know, I’m not treading on obesity, I’m not worried about my kids, I’m not worried about my home and my pillow and allergies and things working around me.  So if I can get the message out there, I think this is a positive way to live.  This is not neglected way to live, this is not, I’m not hindered in any way, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.  I, in fact, the opposite, I feel like I’ve gained things.  I’ve gained perspective, I’ve gained happiness for the Earth, and I’ve gained the ability to want to be outside and just go, “Ohhh, I love nature.”  And so, if you can just go outside and say, “Oh, don’t you just want to see this ever day?  How beautiful it is outside,” then really join the green movement.  It’s not the green movement, it’s not the bad movement; it’s the hot movement, it’s the hip movement, it’s the here movement, it’s the now movement, jump on board, everyone wants to do it.  You definitely want to get on board with everybody else.  That’s what I would definitely tell them, that, come on board, you’re gonna love it, you’re gonna feel like a little celebrity and you’re gonna join the rest of us and we’re gonna have a grand old party, you know?  Eco-friendly, of course.

Meredith Medland:  I love it.  All right, this is great.  My name’s Meredith Medland, you’re listening to Living Green.  We’re collecting Earth Day challenges for next year for our listeners, Lesley, so if you have one challenge that you’d like our listeners to take on through next year Earth Day, would you make that request of them right now, and then we’ll wrap up the show?

Lesley Nagy:  All right, I request that you ditch the water bottle, buy a stainless steel water bottle, and just stop buying, and fill your water up with the tap.  And if you need it extra cold, put the water bottle in the refridgerator and cool it down.  But I really request that all the viewers stop the water bottle habit.  I stopped it, it feels so much better, I don’t waste my money on it anymore, my tap water tastes great, and actually it’s healthier for me, I’ve found out.  So, you know, who knew?

Meredith Medland:  All right, we’re on.  Thank you so much Lesley, it was really great spending time with you.  I appreciate your time today, this was great.  Thank you.

Lesley Nagy:  Thank you, Meredith, so much.  I’m glad I was here.

Meredith Medland:  All right.  For texts and transcripts of this show or other shows on the Personal Life Media network, you can go to www.personallifemedia.com.  And of course, if you’d like to communicate with me directly, you can do that at [email protected] and I’d be happy to answer your emails, or you can post to my blog.  Thanks so much for listening and I hope you keep living green.

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