Many people when they enter my apartment for the first time they say something about it being minimalist. I feel like I've a lot of stuff because I have many things that I don't need that I mean to get rid of but I still haven't. But apparently my amount of many things is well below many people's thresholds. I also bristle at people labeling me at all so whatever the label I usually don't like it. But the label minimalist especially bothers me. I think it's backward. I have friends who have dogs but no cats and I have friends with cats but no dogs. But nobody when they enter the dog person's home says, "I noticed you don't have any cats." And no…

I love watching Dr. Michael Greger's videos on nutrition available at nutritionfacts.org. A common theme of his videos is to show how medical schools barely teach doctors nutrition and exercise despite nutrition and exercise composing major parts of our health. He points out how industrial food companies promote profitable but unhealthy diets and expensive medicine that is often less effective than not eating foods and living sedentary lives that cause the problems that the medicines purport to solve. And they cost less and have healthy side effects that is nutrition and exercise. His personal inspiration to provide all his videos for free emerged from a relative nearly dying that is his grandmother until she learned to stop eating the diet and living the lifestyle that…

A lot of people say, "Josh, easy for you to act on the environment. You don't have kids." First, I could point to a former guest to this podcast Bea Johnson who with her husband and two sons produced less than a mason jar of trash per year whom I see as role models and I aspire to follow. I could point out former guest Jim Harshaw who immediately on starting his project here found that his four children and wife loved the process and it brought them together as a team building problem solving effort. Now I can point out Colonel Mark Read whom you're about to hear talking about joy, fun and bringing his family together and not in small ways and really…

Srini has run his podcast over 10 years. He's written three books, hundreds of articles, interviewing hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs, artists and more, plus me. His business is helping people develop themselves to dream, to play, to create, to go on adventures, to find their paths. In this conversation we talked about his development and how he got to help others so it's more on the leadership development end of the Leadership and the Environment spectrum. If you aspire to more, listen. He shares himself. We talk about surfing, writing, flow states, daily practices, things that help you develop. Many people have gone through changes in their lives. Srini has learned to share such changes with others so you can emulate them and you can…

As a professor of leadership, host of the Leadership and the Environment podcast and constant student of acting by my environmental values I live and work in the intersection of leadership, education and the environment. Ken Robinson does too but with one big difference he's been here for decades longer actively practicing in each. This episode approaches each of education, leadership and environment from several perspectives. I can't say anything better than his voice carries the wisdom and vitality of someone who's worked here in this space and in the intersection of these areas for longer and with greater passion than maybe anyone I've met or worked with and I'm in this world. So without further ado let's listen to Ken Robinson. I'll just say…

We've all sat in a car in traffic and thought, "If only there was another lane here, this traffic would go away and I wouldn't have to sit in traffic anymore." We all think, "LEDs are more efficient than incandescents. We should switch to LEDs. Then we'll use less electricity." Well, it turns out that everyone thought that Uber was going to ease traffic but it turns out to increase congestion. And it turns out that LEDs so far we're still in a stage where it's lowering our total power usage but we're on track to use more electricity than ever on lighting even though LEDs on a single use are more efficient than incandescents. As it turns out when it gets more efficient it…

With some guests I have a hard time finding a court to start the episode with. With Anand I had the opposite problem. At least half of what he said wild me and could have been the opening statement. I saw him speak and the title of his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World I didn't think that someone there could really challenge a community that he was in. But he did. In this episode you'll hear Anand in the first few minutes describe the starting point of the book. I would guess that almost everyone listened to a podcast called Leadership and the Environment wants to make the world a better place. Complex systems as opposed to linear ones…

Colonel Mark Read heads West Point's Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. I met him through another guest on the show Colonel Everett Spain so I recommend listening to that episode as well. Two myths about the military have unraveled in me as a result of seeing West Point from the inside and talking to these generals and colonels and heads of departments. One is that the military practices command and control leadership and someone of any rank could just order people to do something and they'll get cultural change, let alone compliance. On the contrary, you'll hear from Mark how people lead with compassionate understanding. Now of course this is outside of combat. This is in a learning environment. But he also talks about…

Anna is down to earth for anyone, let alone a gold medalist and CrossFit champion. Watch her videos to see the contrast between what she does her abilities and how she doesn't have to be humble. We start talking burpees early which for anyone who knows me knows why I would love. She talks about the value of coaching, the intimacy and vulnerability in it. I hear that she wants people to develop for themselves which she's developed for herself, community being a big part of it. Number one in the world on something highly competitive means reaching your potential. If you're interested in reaching your potential putting people like Anna in your peer group not just abstract heroes, I think helps you reach your…

Kevin and I have been friends since we both wrote for Inc. and before I appeared on his podcast. I think that led to a more open conversation. This is two guys talking about leadership and love with examples of hardball, football and basketball coaching and things like that. Not to say that's our only perspective on leadership. His book describes a contrarian view of how to develop yourself as a leader. But that talk about love recalls the blurb that I wrote for his book which is "If you want to lead so people love working with you, not just manage so they comply and the usual instruction isn't helping you probably need some shaking up. Kevin Kruse wrote his book to provoke you…

Let's start with some personal context. I last ate meat in 1990 which would have been about the last time that I spent any money in McDonald's. I avoid packaged food. I avoid food with fiber removed for something like four years in counting. I pick up a piece of trash per day and McDonald's is up there a little behind Coca-Cola and Starbucks as the greatest sources of that garbage on the street. I've watched the McLibel documentary multiple times. I stopped in a McDonald's the other day to try my laptop and one of the closest ATMs to my home is in a McDonald's so I find myself in them periodically. I don't like the place but I got an email that Bob…

Katie continues the line of world class sailing champions I've had the honor of interviewing for this podcast who've translated their athletic success to leadership in their sport, business and beyond. What's success in Katie's case? How about competing in three America's Cups including being the youngest member of the first ever all female boat, two around the world races as well as the famed Sydney Hobart and Worrell 1000 extreme catamaran races. Watch the videos of these things. They're incredible. She's also a lawyer and president of the Rising Tide Leadership Institute. She just got back from an Olympic racing regatta in Miami which followed placing second in the Sydney Hobart race about a month ago and that Sydney Hobart race Ocean Respect Racing…

This episode is about a simple experiment that anyone can do. It costs nothing, takes no extra time or other resources besides carrying a mug with you. Everybody knows how much garbage we're dumping in the ocean. Everybody knows they can pollute less including me, including you. This episode shares Sean's experience cutting out coffee cups. I'd say you probably never have to use another coffee cup again but practically speaking some people they hit challenges. Sean did. So let's hear his experience. You can probably do something similar yourself. *** Joshua: Well, let's start. Sean: Yeah. Where do you want to kick off? Joshua: So where do we leave things last time? We're talking coffee. Sean: Yeah, we were talking mostly about coffee. And…

Do you feel gratitude toward people who have helped you? Do you express that gratitude more than enough, not enough or about right? You're probably familiar with research that expressing gratitude and feeling it improve people's lives measurably. I love my exercise of writing ten gratitude messages a day for a week. I'll link to the Inc. article piece that I wrote on it. It was challenging but worth it in ways that I could not have predicted before I did it. Today's episode is Chris Schembra interviewing me as part of his research project including Bill Gates, Simon Sinek and other luminaries. He asked the question of all of us — "If you could credit or thank one person that you haven't enough, who…

Those who know that I'm flying might also know that I'm learning to sail to explore off North America. Most people when they think about not flying focus on what they miss. Well, they focus on the part that they miss that they like. They don't seem to have trouble ignoring the pollution the flying causes. But that's a separate thing. Sailing and other things that I replace flying with have given me far more than I could have predicted at a fraction of what it is to spend on flying. Among the many benefits of sailing is the sailing community. Today's guest Dee Caffari is off the charts. For many years a schoolteacher she started sailing to reach world class athlete levels. The international…

Tom Szaky has been working on waste since his undergrad days at Princeton in 2002. Then I suddenly heard about him from many sources in the past few months never having heard about him before. His company TerraCycle recycles waste that others don't but his new company Loop got attention at Davos recently and support from many companies whose business plans depend on producing waste within an economic model that promotes growth. It's a dangerous place to be. He also published a book The Future of Packaging co-authored by top executives from waste and growth places. I wrote more notes from that book to prepare for my conversation with him than any other book including the McDonald's one. The book never mentioned reducing consumption. Twisting…

If you've never heard Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, it's something to hear. It's a spoken essay. It's four and a half minutes long. I'm about to play it. I recommend that even if you listen to podcasts at faster speeds to put it back to regular speed because it's really touching. I still get chills up and down my spine. I get choked up sometimes just listening to it or thinking about it and I listen to it periodically. It speaks for itself. Briefly, it describes something he asked NASA to do which was to look back at Earth from very distant space. And if you haven't seen the image that he refers to I put it on the podcast page so you can…

A few months ago I attended an event called The Summit in Los Angeles. You may have heard of it. It's up there with TED Talks, Burning Man, Davos. Things like that. It was expensive. I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth it. I also took the train out there which was a long time. I wasn't sure if I would get the value out of it that I put into it. As it happened it turned out to be great for me. As it came together which happened during the event I met the founder Elliot and then happened to meet his mother Margot and she is who I have the conversation with today. She was a big part of making…

Today I want to talk about the value being a guest on my podcast offers to influential well-known people. I call Oprah and her peers single-named people because everyone knows them by one name. So LeBron, Serena, Sergey, Larry, Barrack, Beyoncé, Jay-Z. I also mean anyone influential or with a big audience. People in politics, accomplished actors, journalists, singers, artists and the like, bestselling writers, public speakers, winning athletes and so on. So anyone who's listening who is like them or knows them this episode is for you. I'll say it bluntly but this is nothing you haven't heard before. We are in a very difficult situation environmentally speaking. We could potentially lose civilization. If we don't, it's because people changed culture. We are at…

My strategy for this podcast is largely based on my learning from Sandy Reisky in Episode 28 that community influences people behavior more than facts and that's the strategy that most other people are doing. I'm not going to stop people from spreading facts and legislation and things like that. These things are important and I support them but I'm doing something different and I believe essential and effective. I'm bringing world renowned guests to share their environmental values and to act on them which I expect they'll get to share that they really enjoy these things. So if Oprah, say I get Oprah on the show, if she were to share her environmental values to act on them and share the results that they…

Being coerced to do something you don't want to do under threat of punishment is an experience that nobody likes. Nor do people like being told that they're wrong or ignorant by someone telling them that they know better yet it happens all the time. Our politics and public dialogue that is our leadership is about coercion, it's about self-righteousness, it's about hitting people over the head with facts. And it doesn't work. Or rather it works but not at what people wanted to do. It works at people resisting, at people disengaging, at people undermining their leaders' authority. Particularly in the area the environment there's a lot of self-righteousness, a lot of attempts to coerce, expectation that facts will change people's behavior. So if…

I saw Al Gore speak for the first time in November in person. I've seen both of his movies and I guess I've seen a lot of him in the news. I've been meaning to record this episode since probably November, probably since I saw Inconvenient Sequel. So I confess that I have not interacted with Al Gore personally so I don't know how he leads in person. I saw him on stage and by the way, the person interviewing him Jaden Smith, was 20 years old. I don't really think he grasped the situation at the level that Al Gore did so they couldn't speak on that level. Jaden Smith is Will Smith's son and he promotes a bottled water brand. Well, that is…

Everybody thinks about the environment. Nearly everyone also gets bogged down in questions. Will this or that change make a difference? What does all the science mean? One of the great things about science is that there are answers to all these questions. Science is a study of nature. People associate it with going to the Moon or people in lab coats. But it's about nature, sunsets, gravity, why is the sky blue and everything about global warming, pollution, resource depletion and all these environmental issues. Using computers, motors, eyeglasses and so on means your life relies on science. I find it beautiful which is why I got the PhD in physics. I also find it informative. Also, mathematics is the language of nature. You…

Boy, do I wish I'd met Ana before. She works in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She's the executive director for an organization called, I hope I pronounce this right, Nipe Fagio which means "Give me the broom." in Swahili as in let's do something ourselves. I wish I'd met her before because it sounds to me like she leads effectively not telling other people to do but leading them. She and her organization promote doing things focusing on action - beach cleanups, clean up neighborhoods, things like that, organizing people to act. I've spoken to a lot of people about acting and more people talk about awareness and talking than actually acting. Acting is more effective. It gets results. More importantly, in terms of leadership.…

Ron is deep into entrepreneurship and sustainability. As an entrepreneur he's contributed to making policy. Now he's in investing. He started several ventures starting with recycling but then moving in to lots of different areas with transparency and trust and other parts of sustainable business. And he's grown a lot. He's been a founder and investor. He's gotten in press coverage, he's got awards, working with city governments. Again, I want to point out people taking on environmental challenges leads to leadership. As you'll hear opportunities are only increasing. If you've been thinking about acting and starting an environmental project, now's the time. I have to comment that we were very restricted on when we could make this recording. So the call is not that…