This Sustainable Life: All Episodes

791: Sustainability Leadership Is a Performance Art

791: Sustainability Leadership Is a Performance Art

I’m following up my recent solo post, 790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk, with another extemporaneous one. This one is also with a former podcast guest and fellow teacher of our sustainability leadership workshop, Evelyn Wallace. This episode gives…

790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk

790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk

On a beautiful sunny Saturday, 9:50am, I was walking to Washington Square Park to charge my battery and talk at 10am to my friend Dan McPherson (he’s been on the podcast, where he shared about his heart attack at age 46 the…

789: Solomon Schmidt: Author of Legal Gladiator, on Alan Dershowitz

789: Solomon Schmidt: Author of Legal Gladiator, on Alan Dershowitz

As a podcast host, I get pitched a lot of authors, books, and more. Most aren’t relevant or are counterproductive to sustainability. I received an email promoting the author of Legal Gladiator, a biography of Alan Dershowitz. I knew the name from…

788: Susan Liebell: John Locke, Stewardship, and the US Constitution

788: Susan Liebell: John Locke, Stewardship, and the US Constitution

I quote Susan in my book, Sustainability Simplified. In it you’ll see how much John Locke influenced my long-term vision for the US to understand and solve our environmental problems. Learning about the Thirteenth Amendment, which (mostly) banned slavery, and its improbable…

786: Jan Mulder, part 2: The joy of finding and leading community

786: Jan Mulder, part 2: The joy of finding and leading community

Usually when someone does their commitment with the Spodek Method, they enjoy it. Nearly always they do more than they commit to. Sometimes someone really enjoys it. Jan went to town on his commitment. You might wonder if there’s any appeal to…

785: Josh Bandoch, part 1: Teaching persuasion and leadership

785: Josh Bandoch, part 1: Teaching persuasion and leadership

I participated in an online workshop in influence and persuasion that Josh led. We got in touch afterward and found our approaches to the practices and how to learn them overlap. We start this episode talking about his background and what led…

784: Serving in Uniform on September 11, 2024

784: Serving in Uniform on September 11, 2024

If you haven’t listened to episode 781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community Project, four years in the making, listen to it first for context. That episode describes my journey to start volunteering as an auxiliary police officer and the background to…

780: Jack Spencer, part 2: Policy and the Individual Choosing

780: Jack Spencer, part 2: Policy and the Individual Choosing

Jack shares his love for nature and passion to care for it, how central it is to his life, how much of his time and focus he devotes to it. He shares his principles of individual choice over top-down regulation. He especially…

779: Nick Loris, part 2: Freedom to Explore, Freedom to Choose

779: Nick Loris, part 2: Freedom to Explore, Freedom to Choose

Nick and I talk about freedom, liberty, personal action and, however paradoxical to most people, how important personal behavior is in changing systems. Then we talk about markets, regulation, and democracy and how they interact with community norms. Looking at the words…

776: Chuck Marohn, part 1: Strong Towns and Sustainability Leadership

776: Chuck Marohn, part 1: Strong Towns and Sustainability Leadership

I’d heard of Strong Towns for years, mainly through guest Jason Slaughter‘s Not Just Bikes video series, and finally joined the community by taking a couple of their courses. I can’t recommend them enough. Chuck Marohn founded that community. He found and…

775: Bruce Alexander, part 4: The Spodek Method clicks at last

775: Bruce Alexander, part 4: The Spodek Method clicks at last

You’ve probably listened to Bruce’s past three episodes, so you probably know he wants a path to exist that leads people to want to live more sustainably and spread that change to others. It would mean them overcoming their addictions. By them,…