Happy holidays everybody.

I’m sitting around the house watching videos of public speakers, not a very Christmas-y activity. But I really enjoy hearing stories.

I don’t know why, but this interview at Google Zeitgeist really caught my eye. Tom Brokaw and his longtime friend Yvon Chouinard take the stage and Tom interviews his buddy in front of a live audience. They talk about technology and the rate at which the world is changing. I’m not really sure what the topic of the conference was, but it’s really entertaining. Plus Yvon Chouinard is like the real-life Colonel Saul Tigh. He’s sort of gruff. He has this view of the world that I don’t share, but I understand it completely. And this grim pessimism. I really think that the actor who played Tigh in Battlestar Galactica must have watched videos of Chouinard to prepare for the part.
😀

Anywa, I was surprised when wine came up in the interview. Chouinard concedes at many points that he’s not a hippy. His company in Patagonia tries its best, but he’s still a polluter and he has an impact on the world that he cannot deny. And while he’s willing to eat locally, he still drinks globally.

He badmouths California vineyards at one point, which again I understand (though I think it’s a sweeping generalization). And a few minutes later he brings wine up again. He wants people to keep things small and human scaled. He talks about fine restaurants. The best restaurants in the world, in his opinion, never have a hundred tables. They’re always small and human and intimate. And he reminds the CEOs and Fortune 500 company leaders present in the audience that sometimes, we shouldn’t scale up. Sometimes small is beautiful.