When you listen to Kenny Coogan and Anni Ellis on WMNF’s Sustainable Living show, you hear the perspectives of two very knowledgeable, but delightfully different hosts. Together they offer a compelling balance of yin and yang, art and science, feminine and masculine to produce a show that is wholistic at its start. The result is a fascinating and enlightening show that explores how people, businesses, and large organizations can all work to “balance people, profits, and planet,” Coogan says. “That’s the triple bottom line.”
Pairing Coogan and Ellis was the idea of former Sustainable Living host Tanja Vidovic. When Vidovic stepped down at the end of 2021, she tapped Coogan to co-host (he was a guest on the show in 2016 and later an occasional substitute host). According to Coogan, she said, “You know, there’s this person—her name is Anni and she will keep you in check if you say something she doesn’t agree with. She will tell you in real time…. That would be a really good balance for the radio show.”
“That’s hilarious,” Anni said hearing the story for the first time. “That’s so interesting, because that’s exactly the way it works with us.”
Coogan and Ellis share an intense love of learning and research, a desire to live in harmony with our natural environment, a passion for gardening (especially growing food), and an enthusiasm for educating people. But it’s their complimentary personalities and approaches to hosting the weekly radio show makes each episode an informative feast.
With Coogan, listeners hear from a published author, educator, scientist, and widely respected expert on carnivorous plants. He grew up in Niagara Falls, NY, where he bred, raised, and showed ducks and other fowl. By the time he finished high school, Coogan estimates he raised about 400 ducks, chickens, pigeons, and geese.
A defining moment came when Coogan was studying for a bachelor’s degree in animal studies. During a study abroad program in Costa Rica, he saw plantations where bananas were being farmed without concern for the workers who suffered from cancer and other diseases from the pesticides sprayed; and without concern for the environment—each bunch of bananas was wrapped in a blue plastic bag to keep wasps from laying eggs that can spoil the bunch.
“There’s these blue plastic bags everywhere in the ocean. The sea turtles are eating them on the land. The land animals are getting wrapped around in it,” Coogan said. “How can a banana be $0.69 a pound? It’s because the cost is being put on the people who live in Costa Rica.” This was the first time he thought about the systemic problems of our food chain. “This is a messed up system,” he thought, “and I don’t want to participate in it.”
For 10 years after college, Coogan worked for several aquariums and zoos—including Zoo Tampa (then Lowry Park Zoo). On a zookeeper’s salary, he bought a home in Tampa with space to raise chickens, grow vegetables, and practice permaculture (a systematic approach to sustainable agriculture). He was determined to grow as much food as possible. Within a few years, his backyard had grown to include dozens of fruit trees, nearly all of which he obtained for free from other local gardeners.
At one point, Coogan tracked all the food he grew, recording each item on a spreadsheet. “I counted every single egg, every single banana, every single tomato, every single bowl of salad. And after a year, I said, ‘Oh, this is not enough.’ I would let things go to seed or I wasn’t harvesting, or I would [buy] this plastic box of salad, because it’s so much easier.” Wanting to learn more, be more efficient and sustainable, he completed a master’s degree in global sustainability.
Even after he started making a bit more money, first as a middle school science and agriculture teacher and now as a successful writer, a designer of educational materials, and a carnivorous plant expert and grower, Coogan continues to live responsibly on using as little money and as few resources as possible.
Anni Ellis grew into the sustainable lifestyle a bit more organically than Coogan, following a path less structured, but just as significant. After finishing high school early, she left her home in the Deep South, to live first in Houston, Tex., then Hawaii.
In Hawaii, Ellis bought a Volkswagen van as her home (and then learned how to drive a stick shift). She learned about island plants and about healthfood through friends who owned a restaurant. Perhaps most important, Ellis discovered a living by painting surfboards and murals, and eventually did some commercial art.
Returning to Mobile, Ala., Ellis attended college to deepen her knowledge and skills in studio art. Having a degree was unimportant to Ellis, so her objective in school was to learn to do something that she loved and that would support her for the rest of her life.
After college, Ellis continued to do work that she loved–she was a fitness instructor, a sports physiologist, a fitness model, a chef on a yacht in the Bahamas, and had a line of hand-made fabric jewelry in high-end departments stores and boutiques.
“I did so many things that people when they thought of me, they didn’t know me for anything in particular,” Ellis said. That’s when she opened a landscape design and installation business in which she designs and installs everything from the color of a client’s house, to the gardens, the outdoor furniture, pools, and other landscaping.
“I’ve doing landscape design and installation for 27 years, but I’ve been reducing waste, and reusing and recycling materials for 50 years,” she said. “We used to say ‘reduce, reuse, recycle.’ Now we’re adding ‘refuse’ to that list. For instance, if someone offers me a plastic bottle of water, I refuse it. I refuse to be part of the cycle of waste.”
Ellis’s home gardens have become as much about growing food as about creating a beautiful space. “I’ve moved almost all into the edible field. Beauty is the most important part of a design, but most of the beauty is edible as well.”
Growing edible plants is only one of dozens of topics that Coogan and Ellis cover on Sustainable Living. They select a topic by consulting their topic list and listener responses and requests. Coogan said WMNF listeners “love beekeeping. They love butterflies.”
“And butterflies,” Ellis said.
“People are very curious about gardening for butterflies,” Coogan said.
Guest interviews are booked three months in advance to allow Coogan and Ellis ample time for research and planning. They intentionally invite experts, community leaders, and business owners from Central Florida—as a way of illustrating that sustainable living and working is possible right here in Tampa Bay.
They want people to see how balancing “people, profits, and planet is a viable way to make money, if you do it properly, that’s the perfect circle of nature. But, if one thing’s out of whack, then the whole thing falls apart. So, if you get in the groove, then it all runs smoothly.”
“We need good people to intervene with the businesses and corporations who are greedy,” Coogan said, and that requires connecting to people in our community. “We need to educate people.”
“And, we call them out,” Ellis said. By asking guests how their businesses are working toward sustainability, she hopes listeners will realize, “If this big group can do it, I can do it, too.”
Listen live to Sustainable Living with Kenny Coogan and Anni Ellis on Mondays, at 10 a.m. ET or listen anytime on your favorite podcast app.
