Joshua, Author at Joshua Spodek - Page 18 of 249

Another Green Revolution?

Another Green Revolution?

I read an article by podcast guest Elizabeth Kolbert about running out of food. Like nearly everyone, she takes for granted that our population will keep growing and we have to feed them. Like nearly everyone, she figures we have to keep producing more food. She quoted Norman Borlaug's Nobel acceptance speech. He won the Nobel Prize for the Green Revolution so is a reasonable person to learn from. She left out the most important part of what he said, what set his direction for much of his career, which said that making more food won't solve the problem. Only curbing population does. No one values humanity, technology, innovation, and markets more than he did. I wrote a letter to the editor clarifying what she…

July 31, 2025

The social cost of gratuitous plunder and destruction of life, liberty, and property.

The social cost of gratuitous plunder and destruction of life, liberty, and property.

This restaurant is called American Bar although, with the government permitting this violation of its role to protect people's life, liberty, and property, it's violating the original intent of America's founders. How? See how the sliding doors are wide open? Also, see the vents on the white wall facing the wide open window? Those vents are blasting air conditioning into the outdoors. Why should anyone care if they pollute and deplete? This nation's Founders (and writers of the 14th Amendment) didn't just suggest protecting life, liberty, and property for the fun of it. They recognized that if we don't think our future will be better than today, or that if we create something someone can just take or destroy it, we lose reason to invest…

July 30, 2025

830: Jo Nemeth, part 2: Nature improves time with loved ones

830: Jo Nemeth, part 2: Nature improves time with loved ones

We jumped in to talking about her Spodek Method commitment. She lives in a suburban area. There's a place near her that borders on bush, which I guess is Australian for undeveloped land. This spot with a bench designed for experiencing nature has been a short walk away from her for a long time, yet until now she never experienced it. Even this time, she put off acting on the commitment. Then she went. You'll hear what it did for her. I had to compare her description to what many people derive from big vacations to Hawaii or Bali, but she spent nothing, didn't have to plan, and didn't pollute or deplete. Her sharing about her experience recreating a wonderful past experience led to her…

July 29, 2025

I love recognition for my work and friendships that others pay for, like going on the field for batting practice

I love recognition for my work and friendships that others pay for, like going on the field for batting practice

In my clubbing days over a quarter-century ago, I used to have to work to meet people to get into cool clubs and VIP rooms. I went for the music and dancing, but New York City clubs are like status sorting machines. At first I didn't know many people, but over the years I met and befriended club owners, DJs, staff, and friends of all these people. They could bring me to VIP areas, behind the booth, and so on. Cash could get you past most velvet ropes and closed doors. I saw cash as a crass way to show status, or rather to fake it. When I showed my art at Crobar when it was the biggest club in the city, being a resident…

July 28, 2025

This week’s selected media, July 27, 2025: Cool Food

Tips

This week’s selected media, July 27, 2025: Cool Food

This week I finished: Cool Food: Erasing Your Carbon Footprint One Bite at a Time, by Robert Downey Jr. and Thomas Kostigen: I listened to this book for a book club. I found it painful to listen to. It's nice to eat foods that pollute less so I won't argue with it, but it distracts from the problem: our culture lost values that kept humanity safe, secure, healthy, and living long lives in favor of one that tricks us into believing those things require polluting and depleting. Digging in, it misses that there are two carbon cycles and only looks at the distracting one. Know the 2 carbon cycles and don’t confuse them. And, Only specify fixing climate and carbon if you want to wreck…

July 27, 2025

I love a good leadership or entrepreneurial challenge, but few others seem to

Education / Entrepreneurship / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

I love a good leadership or entrepreneurial challenge, but few others seem to

Why do my students give me reviews like: “This was the best course I ever took at NYU. There is no substitute for doing the exercises. Thinking I understand a concept and actually trying to execute the concept was difficult. Only in working through the exercises was I able to be aware of what I am currently doing. With these exercises, I now have a roadmap for how to be the kind of person I want to be. Thank you for changing my life for the better!”? I do because when I began teaching, I started learning experiential, project-based learning. I don't teach through lecture or assigning reading and writing papers. I don't claim to be the best in the world, but I try to…

July 26, 2025

I love learning about the Enlightendigenous origins of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy in America

Education / Freedom / Leadership

I love learning about the Enlightendigenous origins of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy in America

I've written before about my functional new word Enlightendigenous. In that post I shared what I learned about the evidence for the philosophy and practice of indigenous people in North America influencing and inspiring Europeans into what became called the Enlightenment. Europe at the time had little to no democracy or social mobility. Your status at birth---that is, the status of your parents---determined your place and role for life with rare exception. People lived under a dominance hierarchy based on access to resources like arable land enforced by a system of justice and military. Meanwhile, on the east coast of North America, there were no river valleys like Mesopotamia or the Nile to precipitate dominance hierarchy on that scale so people practiced local politics. They…

July 25, 2025

I love where I live but it’s being destroyed, part 3a: More drugs

Addiction / Doof

I love where I live but it’s being destroyed, part 3a: More drugs

Following up a recent post I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs, here are a few more pictures and videos of addicts in my neighborhood. To clarify, I'm not going out of my way or looking for these images. As a New Yorker, I'm usually in a hurry. Most scenes like the ones below I pass by without taking pictures or videos. These images are about our culture, not the individuals in the images. If you use social media, fly, buy doof, or own shares in companies whose business models depend on addiction, THESE PICTURES ARE OF YOUR CREATION. I see little difference between these scenes and McDonald's or Instagram. Here's a video version of the couple: Here's a video…

July 24, 2025

829: Adam Galinsky, part 1: Do you love being inspired? He wrote the book on it.

829: Adam Galinsky, part 1: Do you love being inspired? He wrote the book on it.

Adam teaches leadership at Columbia Business School, where I learned there were classes in leadership, which changed the direction of my life. Regular listeners know I consider leadership the most important missing element in sustainability. To change the environmental effects we're barreling into, we have to change the causes, which are our behavior, which result from culture. Changing culture requires leadership, not just management. Effective leadership inspires. Adam's latest book is Inspire. You can imagine my enthusiasm to talk with a star professor at one of the world's top institutions (to which I'm deeply connected) teaching leadership on the topic of how to inspire and become an inspirational person and leader. We begin by talking about his background, how he began working in psychology, then moved…

July 23, 2025

I love learning about nature from hands-on practical experience in helping people

Fitness / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature

I love learning about nature from hands-on practical experience in helping people

If you don't know my apartment, this picture and why it makes me feel so joyful and free will take some explanation. You're seeing the space below my window, which faces nearly due south. For the past two months, the sun hasn't shone directly into my apartment. On the solstice one month ago it rose almost exactly to the left, went overhead, and set to the right. Now, a month later, it's passing slightly lower from directly overhead at noon so that some sunlight around midday enters my apartment directly. One highlight of this picture is the sunlight directly hitting the counter and floor. It only just started doing so in the past week or so. You might at first think, "Don't you want the…

July 22, 2025

I love simple things, like this Gandhi statue

Art / Leadership

I love simple things, like this Gandhi statue

Of the throngs of people who pass this Gandhi statue in Union Square, I'd guess a few percent notice it. That modesty and humility are part of its appeal to me. Also that my parents met in Ahmedabad, India, where his ashram was. I spent a year there as a child. My father probably spent ten or fifteen years of his life there. Also that Gandhi has long been one of my leadership role models. When people want to meet near Union Square, I usually suggest meeting near this statue. The statue isn't usually covered with this canopy of green. Rarely do I take a picture of it, but the green compelled me. He was backlit, so I changed the contrast in this version: He…

July 21, 2025

This week’s selected media, July 20, 2025: Manufactured Landscapes, Benjamin Franklin (of the city of brotherly love, where I was born)

Tips

This week’s selected media, July 20, 2025: Manufactured Landscapes, Benjamin Franklin (of the city of brotherly love, where I was born)

This week I finished: Manufactured Landscapes, by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky: I hadn't heard of Burtynsky before reading a review of an exhibit in Manhattan of decades of his photography, which included several images. He creates images that are compositionally beautiful of scenes that are scary and horrific but resulting from our culture and lifestyles. They show mines, factories, dying landscapes and ecosystems, and apocalyptic scenes. I plan to go to the exhibit. I recommend looking at his images online, but since he takes wide format original photographs, I anticipate online images pale in comparison to the originals. This video is the first of three of his work and how he works. I recommend his images and this movie. It's beautiful and horrific. Still,…

July 20, 2025

This week’s selected media, July 20, 2025: Mein Kampf, Volume 1, because I love learning, even (especially!) from those I disagree with

Tips

This week’s selected media, July 20, 2025: Mein Kampf, Volume 1, because I love learning, even (especially!) from those I disagree with

This week I finished: Mein Kampf, volume 1, by Adolph Hitler: I'm partly nervous about posting about finishing it or even reading it. The First Amendment may make it legal, but just associating with it can blemish, but I oppose that thinking. I finished other works this week but put them in a separate post since who wants to be on a page with Mein Kampf? When I teach the skill of empathy in my leadership classes, I talk about the importance of empathizing with people you disagree with most. My extreme example is that if you were a general during WWII, it would be supremely important to empathize with Hitler. It could make the difference between winning and losing. To understand doesn't mean to…

July 20, 2025

828: Richard Reeves: For Boys and Men: More support and love, less misunderstanding

828: Richard Reeves: For Boys and Men: More support and love, less misunderstanding

When people talk about helping men, a lot of people think any and maybe every man might just have latent misogyny, so helping him risks augmenting misogyny. Richard Reeves has researched the situation extensively and for whatever advantages they (we) once had in some areas, still have in some of them, society has been kicking us down, especially in education, income, medicine, and law. A big part of his job is handling preconceptions and objections. In this regard, his work overlaps a lot with sustainability leadership: people's preconceptions override seeing what's happening right in front of them. Listen to him on any other podcast and you hear he has to bend over backward and repeat himself on simple points that I would think should be…

July 19, 2025

Which person has more love in their life?

More litter in the creek.

Hands on Practical Experience / Relationships

Which person has more love in their life?

Two people are walking down the street. There's litter on the ground. One picks up some of the litter. The other doesn't. Which person has more love in their life? More litter in the creek.

July 18, 2025

827: Chris Berdik: Scientific American loved his book Clamor (so did I)

827: Chris Berdik: Scientific American loved his book Clamor (so did I)

Sound pollution is pollution. You know it's been growing for your whole life with little sign of decreasing. I wish I lived in a world with less sound pollution, but given that I do, I'd rather be aware and conscious of it than not know. Ignorance of how much sound was affecting me wasn't blissful. Noise still affected me. Awareness enables me to act. But it's not what you think. More decibels doesn't necessarily mean more annoying. Lower decibels doesn't necessarily mean less. Just think of a whiny drone that sounds like a mosquito. I can hear an electric leaf blower as I'm typing these words and while it may be quieter than a two-stroke engine, it's freaking annoying and I can't tune it out.…

July 17, 2025

To conservatives and libertarians annoyed at trash strikes: Sanitation systems are socialist. Most of your garbage promotes socialism.

Doof / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

To conservatives and libertarians annoyed at trash strikes: Sanitation systems are socialist. Most of your garbage promotes socialism.

Sanitation systems across the nation are on strike. It started in Boston: and expanded to the west coast in solidarity: Since people who are conservative and libertarian often don't like strikes, which they may see as socialist, communist, or moving in that direction, Today I want to clarify for them: Sanitation systems are socialist and motivate waste, violate Enlightenment thinking and practice, and violate the original intent of the Constitution. (For liberals and progressives, they are also imperialist, colonialist, and contribute to racism, which I'll cover in another post.) First, a personal note: you can improve your life by reducing your garbage by well over 99 percent. Also your health, safety, security, freedom, family, budget, and longevity. I grew up generating as much or more…

July 16, 2025

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

Addiction / Artificial Intelligence / Awareness / Creativity / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Perception

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the New Yorker wrote about how people who are suffering from loneliness are finding help from artificial intelligence. Some people can't help loneliness, not out of character defect but circumstance. It gets the reader thinking about the elderly, for example, who outlive everyone they've been close to, or it describes as worse, if those who remain are senile. Sorry to give away the ending but it suggests that for however it helps people who can't escape, it will create dependence in far more. The article is A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem: The discomfort of loneliness shapes us in ways we don’t recognize—and we may not like what we become without it. by academic psychologist…

July 15, 2025

I love where I live. A perk of volunteering: July 4th fireworks up close (also Thanksgiving)

Freedom / Volunteering

I love where I live. A perk of volunteering: July 4th fireworks up close (also Thanksgiving)

Common roles for auxiliary police officers include crowd control and traffic control during big events, like parades. July 4th fireworks is another big one (scroll down for pictures from last year's Thanksgiving parade). This year my patrol during the fireworks was right next to the water. I took a video toward the beginning (after ensuring it was okay with the officer I report to). Should I say it's only a minute because the fireworks went for half an hour, or it's a full minute, because even a few minutes would seem long for fireworks in most places. In any case, I love volunteering, all the more when I'm fulfilling what feels to me like civic duty. Here are two pictures from before the fireworks started.…

July 14, 2025

This week’s selected media, July 13, 2025: Eichmann in Jerusalem, Madison, Akhil Reed Amar

Tips

This week’s selected media, July 13, 2025: Eichmann in Jerusalem, Madison, Akhil Reed Amar

This week I finished: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt: I heard about this book a long time ago. I wondered if I'd ever read it. I took it on now while learning how people came to do things so contrary to what seems human we can't believe they happened, in particular after The Lucifer Effect. For a book about one of the greatest atrocities ever, it was remarkably accessible. Arendt seemed almost breezy at times and wrote about hundreds of thousands of people being killed in an intervention as you might talk about a typical workday. I didn't know about how much Nazis worked with Jewish Councils. For Nazis to work with Jews wouldn't make sense from…

July 13, 2025

I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs

I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs

I've posted plenty on the heavy drug use in my neighborhood. The police and parks department recently cleaned the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, but, as they predict, the junkies move to other nearby places. I believe the effort is worth it. I talk to neighbors about forming local groups to occupy spaces the junkies would go to before they get there and make it hard for them to set up. In the language of Jane Jacobs, to put more eyes on the street. So far, it seems like my neighbors prefer to retreat. When I walked out of my front door the other day, half a block from my home, a junkie was urinating on an empty storefront. Next to him were three…

July 12, 2025

I love where I live but it’s being destroyed, part 2: Online delivery

I love where I live but it’s being destroyed, part 2: Online delivery

Amazon: save pennies, ruin your community. My neighborhood is filled with delivery trucks taking up public space delivering tons of stuff daily, followed by sanitation trucks hauling tons of garbage. Meanwhile, there are no produce stores almost anywhere in the city. People shopping online wreck communities. First, they mostly buy less-than-useless things that will end up poisoning landfills. Click any result from a search on "most popular purchase on amazon" and you'll see. Second, they may save some on the purchase, but they're not buying from local businesses. It's tempting to think shopping online cuts out the middleman, but it's not so simple. Shopping online takes advantage of infrastructure that they don't have to pay for, like handling the shipping garbage. Among the results of…

July 11, 2025

A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love

Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love

About a month ago, the core organizational team behind the workshop I lead and its alumni community had our quarterly meeting. I shared my vision and mission. I thought everyone knew it, but when I finished, they said, "You have to share this message with the alumni community." I was wrong: everyone didn't know it. It was my responsibility to share it. I didn't want to impose my views on others, but my history having started many of the projects and exploring the frontier of leadership in this area, I could see how my views could help others see beyond their horizons. Future vision 1 year: thriving online community, self-sustaining. A core team will still manage things like the online site and new initiatives, but…

July 10, 2025

I love where I live but it’s being destroyed, part 1: Takeout instead of food

Doof / Visualization

I love where I live but it’s being destroyed, part 1: Takeout instead of food

Many new restaurants have few to no tables. Single-use packaging costs less than rent for the space for tables, a dishwasher, people to wash dishes, etc. They don't have to pay for cleaning anything. We taxpayers pay those costs. We suffer their pollution we didn't consent to. Since the packaging takes resources to make, in polluting processes, and the waste poisons the rest of us, they destroy life, liberty, and property for personal benefit, the opposite of a free market. A government-run sanitation department is socialist and creates perverse incentives. I could go on about polluting and depleting undermining democracy, but in this post I want to show the pictures I took when I went for a walk Saturday morning. I wasn't looking for trouble.…

July 9, 2025

826: Jo Nemeth, part 1: Living without money frees her to do what she loves

826: Jo Nemeth, part 1: Living without money frees her to do what she loves

Can you imagine living without money? Humans lived without money for 250,000 years, so it's not necessary for life. Money seems like an invention on par with the big ones, like fire, the wheel, writing, and language. Right off the bat, Jo shares how her life before choosing to live without money was stressful, with less freedom or free time. If you thought having more money would give you more freedom, more free time, and less stress, her experiencing the opposite may prompt you to consider the basics of human interaction. What does it mean about our lifestyles, values, and beliefs that having zero of our culture promotes having more of actually giving us what we want? In earning a doctorate in experimental science, maybe…

July 8, 2025

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