When thinking about the environment would you think that the army would be quick to change or late to change? In my second conversation with Colonel Everett Spain he talks about using only one plastic bottle where he would have used something like 40. He also talks about how he had already reduced his garbage from leading a garrison in Germany. He also reduced his family’s use. And this is[…] Keep reading →

I learned a lot from this conversation. And partly that’s a euphemism for it being challenging for me since my measure of a challenge working was different from hers. You’ll probably hear me struggle to listen and feature her without disagreeing too much. Part of why I invited her and why I value her friendship is our different values and therefore balancing them differently. Personally, I felt like she was[…] Keep reading →

Junior year in college I met a guy who ended up being one of my most longstanding friends. He still is. The year was 1991. I had just returned from a year in Paris taking a year off from school. He’d returned from serving as a marine in the first Gulf War. At Columbia, time off meant losing your guaranteed housing. So we lived relatively far from campus. But it[…] Keep reading →

David Gardner left a well-paying mainstream job to create and star in a documentary called GrowthBusters. That’s a play on Ghostbusters. He saw the problems with growth to local communities, the national economy, the global economy, the environment and many other places. He also saw the nearly unquestioned belief that growth is good, especially GDP growth and population growth. And once you question this belief, then like a sweater unraveling[…] Keep reading →

For those who don’t know one of the origins of this podcast was a series of talks that I gave at NYU. I gave the talks because at the time I recognized that something missing from environmental action was what I would think of as effective leadership, not telling other people what to do or spreading facts and figures of doom and gloom but leadership in the style of Mandela,[…] Keep reading →

It happens a lot that people walk into my apartment, see how little stuff I have and a they call me minimalist or they call my lifestyle minimalist. Minimalism is misnamed. I don’t like being labeled but a lot of people do and I think people should see the misnomer. It relates to the environment because reduces the first word on the list of reduce, reuse, recycle that Americans tend[…] Keep reading →

Jeff Madoff is a friend of mine. He teaches a class in living a creative life at Parsons right around the corner from me in New York City. I’ve sat in on his classes for years. I don’t need more formal education. I have plenty of that. Listen to the guests that he’s interviewed – Ralph Lauren, Halston, Brooke Astor, Liza Minnelli, Donna Karan, Martha Graham, Tom Brokaw, Tony Bennett,[…] Keep reading →

If you haven’t started plogging, I recommend it. What’s plogging? It’s a Swedish term created for picking up garbage while you run so it’s running, most people carry a bag with them, and they pick up garbage as they go leaving the world cleaner for their running or for their plogging. So I picked up at least one piece of trash per day for a few years and I still[…] Keep reading →

I have a friend whose business is to find people on heroin and other opiates and bring them into treatment. He goes to hotels where they live or whatever they do. And it’s based on government money because apparently his interventions work. He tells me that when he goes to visit these hotels where they live it’s squalor, filth. There’s blood and urine and feces. These rooms are really dark[…] Keep reading →