Joshua, Author at Joshua Spodek - Page 22 of 248

Octopuses are so smart we cook them and then throw them away without even eating them.

Nature / Visualization

Octopuses are so smart we cook them and then throw them away without even eating them.

After picking up litter today, I had to look up octopus intelligence. The first link on my search was titled Octopuses may be so terrifyingly smart because they share humans' genes for intelligence. Why did I have to look up their intelligence? Because of how disgusted I felt, but didn't feel I felt disgusted enough. Below are three increasingly horrifying pictures of a garbage can in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park. Here is the can, as usual, overflowing with garbage, nearly all single-use plastic. As I got closer, I saw people had thrown away a lot of food. The clear containers come from a place a couple blocks away that just opened. The amount of single-use garbage coming from the place is sickening,…

April 1, 2025

Volunteering warmed my heart on a cold spring day

Habits / Stories / Volunteering

Volunteering warmed my heart on a cold spring day

I wrote the following to my newsletter and thought after finishing it that it would work as a post, so here it is. I forgot to mention that volunteering has come to replace time I used to spend watching TV or on social media. Since Americans average over five hours of screen time per day and I don't have a TV or use social media, I spend less time per week volunteering than the average American spends on screens per day. Maybe I should volunteer more, but I'd prefer Americans spend more time away from screens. I don't see the latter happening any time soon. Artificial intelligence will increase it. If you think otherwise, please bet me so I can have free money. Do we…

March 31, 2025

810: Giora Netzer, part 2: Leadership coaching leads to far more than “just” the C-Suite

810: Giora Netzer, part 2: Leadership coaching leads to far more than “just” the C-Suite

In our second conversation, Giora reveals more about his developing as a leader. If you listen for it, you can hear the vision he had for himself and his profession, but also the development he needed to realize it. This podcast is about sustainability leadership. You probably envision a sustainable world, or at least trying with everything you can to help achieve it. Maybe you've adopted my vision and mission. Developing leadership skills and experience as Giora have is essential. We can learn from him. Beyond his leadership skills and experience, his doing the reps earned him credibility and developed integrity, essential elements for effective leadership.

March 30, 2025

Abraham Lincoln never went overseas yet accomplished a fair amount. Maybe flying isn’t that necessary.

Abraham Lincoln never went overseas yet accomplished a fair amount. Maybe flying isn’t that necessary.

People act as if flying is necessary for life. I sometimes list people who have never flown. Here's a short list from a recent presentation I created: Marco Polo Lincoln Aristotle Jesus Paul Buddha Laozi Mohammad Mozart Shakespeare Maybe it's just me, but they seem like people who accomplished meaningful things. I was curious about Lincoln: had he traveled overseas? I knew Jefferson, Franklin, and other Founding Fathers had spent time in Europe, meaning sailing across the Atlantic multiple times. I looked up Lincoln and learned his only time outside the US was to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and the country was smaller then. Since people who fly today don't look like they'll make the history books as much as Lincoln, I conclude…

March 29, 2025

809: Alexander Clapp: Waste Wars, how we profit off polluting the world claiming to help them

809: Alexander Clapp: Waste Wars, how we profit off polluting the world claiming to help them

I found Alex when listeners sent me an opinion piece in the New York Times he wrote, The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie. Getting to where I take years to fill a load of trash means I've researched waste a lot, so based on the headline, I thought, "yeah, I've read this story before. I'll skim it so I can say I read it and then move on to important things." Instead, I was fascinated and found plenty new. I had to read his book, Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash, which came out last month. I can't recommend it enough. Whatever you know about waste and pollution, the book shares more and it's relevant to your life if…

March 28, 2025

People thinking sustainability is easier if single are insensitive, lacking empathy and compassion

Hands on Practical Experience / Relationships

People thinking sustainability is easier if single are insensitive, lacking empathy and compassion

I've been holding back on posting this post's idea for months, maybe years. It's a simple concept, though bold. More importantly, some may find it offensive, but, if so, no more offensive than people are with me. Over and over people tell me it's easier to practice sustainability for someone who is single. They suggest I can decide things unilaterally. Lacking hands-on practical experience, they think the hard part of living sustainably is the physical part. They're wrong. In a culture that, despite the lip service it pays to sustainability, promotes and rewards unsustainability, the hard part is other people. When you live in one culture but practice the behaviors and values of another, countless interactions create friction, every day, often every hour, sometimes every…

March 27, 2025

Sriracha sauce: yuck! Enjoying food over doof.

Addiction / Doof / Fitness / Hands on Practical Experience

Sriracha sauce: yuck! Enjoying food over doof.

It's been almost ten years since I posted Why Sriracha Hot Sauce tastes good. In it I wrote: Did you ever wonder why it tasted so good? Here’s the answer: It’s twenty percent sugar! Out of 100 grams, 20 grams are sugar. Sure, you only have a few grams at a time, so a serving doesn’t have a lot of calories, but that’s a high percent of sugar for when I want something spicy. Progress report on enjoying food over doof I don't think I've tasted it in the decade since. Then in my volunteer work salvaging food that would be thrown away, I ended up with a jar to deliver. It had been opened, so I had a chance to taste it. It's been…

March 26, 2025

Their conflict is with Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the Founding Fathers, not with me

Their conflict is with Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the Founding Fathers, not with me

People complain if we don't use energy sources like fossil fuels we'll collapse or return to the Stone Age. That's a failure of their imaginations, but more. Do we need to grow? Milton Friedman hardly promoted regulating markets. He said: “We have no desperate need to grow. We have a desperate desire to grow, and those are quite different. I believe that the level of growth in this country ought to be whatever people want it to be. If the people at large—if each and every person separately was satisfied with where he is and didn’t want to grow, fine. I have no objection. I don’t want to impose growth on anyone. I want people to be free to pursue their own objective.” Should we…

March 25, 2025

Year 10, day 1 without hurting people and funding lobbyists by flying

Addiction / Hands on Practical Experience

Year 10, day 1 without hurting people and funding lobbyists by flying

On March 23, 2016 my flight arrived in JFK from Paris. Since then, I challenged myself to go a year without flying. I expected it to become the worst year of my life, or at least miserable: Like many of you readers, many family members and people I love and care about live flying distance away. I relied on flying for my income so worried I might go broke. I wasn't practicing sustainability or sustainability leadership that much by then, but loved nature and considered flying a way to visit places to experience nature. I considered learning about other cultures and cuisines good for everyone. I could list more fears, but I can summarize that I considered flying an unalloyed good. If you feel you…

March 24, 2025

Hear me on the 12 Minute Conversations podcast with Engel Jones

Engel hosted me before and invited me back to catch up. Twelve minutes makes for a quick conversation and still meaningful depth. Here's the new episode (3410). (Here are my previous episode 2708 (2020) and previous episode 1128 (2017)). Usually I embed the podcast player, but I can't see how to embed his, so you have to go to his site to hear it. I think you'll enjoy the conversation, especially if you like shorter ones than I normally post. Here are the show notes: About Josh Spodek Joshua Spodek PhD MBA is the premier voice in sustainability leadership. He hosts the award-winning This Sustainable Life podcast, is a four-time TEDx speaker, bestselling author of Initiative and Leadership Step by Step, professor at NYU, and…

March 24, 2025

This week’s selected media, March 23, 2025: Courage Is Calling, Robert Clary’s Holocaust remembrances

Tips

This week’s selected media, March 23, 2025: Courage Is Calling, Robert Clary’s Holocaust remembrances

This week I finished: Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series), by Ryan Holiday: This book spoke to me about what I'm doing with living by a different culture than nearly everyone around me. I hadn't considered myself courageous. I'm just living by my values. For that matter, I'm living by the values everyone who values Do unto others as you would have them do unto you Leave it better than you found it Live and let live Love your neighbor as yourself I also hadn't considered those compromising on those values to get along with mainstream culture cowardly, but the book makes it clear that's what's happening. This book recalls another time, when people took more responsibility, spoke more clearly,…

March 23, 2025

Filter bubbles, algorithms, polarization, and living in different worlds? What you can do about it.

Nonjudgment / Tips

Filter bubbles, algorithms, polarization, and living in different worlds? What you can do about it.

We've all read stories about how algorithms, polarized media, and so on are leading to situations where people with different political views learn such different information about the world we might as well be living in different worlds. If one person watches only liberal media and another only watches conservative media, they view events through different lenses. One may view the environment as an issue about protecting wildlife while the other may view it as protecting our government from being taken over. Therefore the first might view a politician proposing emergency powers to act as taking things seriously and a potential savior. The other may see that politician as threatening dictatorship. The pattern happens across many issues. I can see polarized media. I can see…

March 22, 2025

My biggest downside to aging so far

Exercises / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

My biggest downside to aging so far

I've passed the milestones everyone my age has. Some I like, like developing patience and wisdom. I may not have much of them, but more than before. I felt my potential strength decrease in my thirties. In my forties I lost yet more, and found even walking counted as exercise. Also in my forties, I noticed injuries took longer to heal. Injuries that in my twenties would hurt and affect functionality momentarily, then go away, and in my thirties bother me for a while, in my forties would linger for months. Months! I have three pains that have lingered for months that I don't think even injuries caused. I'm writing and editing a lot. I think they came from just sitting too long without moving.…

March 21, 2025

808: Silvia Bellezza: Sustainable Marketing at Columbia Business School

808: Silvia Bellezza: Sustainable Marketing at Columbia Business School

Silvia created the course Sustainable Marketing at Columbia. It's an elective and has become the class at the business school with the most students from other schools at the university. In looking for a guest speaker on sustainable consumerism, she found the New York Times profile on me. She decided to invite me before realizing I'd gotten my MBA where she teaches. Only when we spoke did she learn I focus beyond just living sustainably to creating a leadership program with a mission to change global culture. When I spoke to hear class, I spoke about changing culture, which in some ways conflicted with the marketing goal of selling more products. It also resonated with many of her students' interests in creating a more sustainable…

March 20, 2025

One Year Without Access to My Own Roof. Nothing Replaces Hands-On Practical Experience.

Hands on Practical Experience / Stories

One Year Without Access to My Own Roof. Nothing Replaces Hands-On Practical Experience.

My building has been doing work on the facade, which for some reason meant no residents have been allowed on the roof. The building management told us they projected it to be a five month job. Today marks one year. They didn't warn as when the day we couldn't access the roof would begin. They told us it would happen some time. Then one morning they emailed us that that day the prohibition would begin. It would have been an easy excuse to view disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid as an experiment so I could pause it. While I started it as a thirty-day experiment, as it helped me see polluting as hurting other people (and wildlife), not some abstract goal or trend,…

March 20, 2025

“These are the times that try men’s souls”

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

“These are the times that try men’s souls”

I confess I haven't read Thomas Paine's The American Crisis, but I'm working so much on opposing coercion and tyranny, I keep coming across him. I'm trying to learn more about the conditions that led to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Learning history is one thing. Getting inside the hearts and minds of the people acting is another. What values were they acting on or not? If you see pollution and depletion as destroying life, liberty, and property, then you see much of our culture as depriving people of freedom. It creates tyranny, what this country was founded to oppose, yet it's everywhere. It pervades so much, few have the insight, vision, or courage to oppose it. They benefit from it. With that…

March 19, 2025

Our Deepest Values: “Do, Leave, Live, Love”

Our Deepest Values: “Do, Leave, Live, Love”

I like finding patterns and making mnemonics. I like making acronyms like sidcha, which I use here a lot, and PAID culture, which I use in my book, for concepts I use a lot but that don't have words for. I create the term doof, which I find life-changing. I write a lot about values that as far as I know approach universal in human cultures, though I'm not an anthropologist, so please tell me if you know otherwise. The values are expressed in instructions: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Live and Let Live. Leave it better than you found it. Love your neighbor as yourself. I added the fourth after the first three. I couldn't think of an…

March 18, 2025

Replacing “comfort and convenience” with “the perks of being at the top of a dominance hierarchy” or “the perks of being a tyrant”

Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom

Replacing “comfort and convenience” with “the perks of being at the top of a dominance hierarchy” or “the perks of being a tyrant”

Word choice matters. Why speak if you don't want to be understood? It's not their responsibility for me to be understood, even if I get mad at them for not understanding me. I recently wrote how I was Replacing "sustainability" with "not hurting people" and "polluting" with "hurting people" since "sustainability" is too abstract in many cases, as is the "environment." I'm not trying to help some abstract environment. I'm trying to help people and to alleviate their suffering. (I followed up with the post Corollaries to my recent post: Replacing “sustainability” with “not hurting people” and “polluting” with “hurting people”.) I'm experimenting with another change of word choice. People talk about comfort and convenience and juxtapose these things with struggle and challenge. We treat…

March 17, 2025

This week’s selected media, March 16, 2025: Judgment at Nuremberg, Venomous Lumpsucker

Tips

This week’s selected media, March 16, 2025: Judgment at Nuremberg, Venomous Lumpsucker

This week I finished: Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer: A friend recommended this movie, I think because I've been talking about how there aren't in our environmental situation the "bad guys" everyone thinks. There aren't "good guys" either. We're in a system that nobody deliberately created. My book traces the origins of how our system started from people doing things nobody could have expected to lead here. We today continue acting what seems right. The results seem more clear, which you might say should make our choices more obvious, but the inertia to keep doing what we're doing is greater. This movie represents the trials of people who followed the Nazi party to various levels of complicity or support. The context of judging…

March 16, 2025

Social media executives don’t let their children use social media. This time it’s personal.

Addiction / Doof

Social media executives don’t let their children use social media. This time it’s personal.

Months ago, when I read Adam Alter's book and hosted him on the podcast, I learned that executives of social media companies often don't let their children use the services they work for. They know they design them to addict. I recently saw an old friend who works at Facebook. He has two kids. I asked him if he let them use Facebook. He said "no," with a look of: of course not, that would be bad for them. It's one thing to read and hear about it. It's another to experience it directly with a friend. Sometimes I can't believe people put social media apps on their phones. I mean, of course I know they do and I believe it. I'm the tiny minority.…

March 15, 2025

Honoring fallen auxiliary police officers

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Volunteering

Honoring fallen auxiliary police officers

I'm approaching one year training for and participating in the NYPD auxiliary police program. I wrote earlier about mustering for the September 11 service. Tonight I walked in the annual memorial service for two auxiliary officers who were killed on duty on this day in 2007. I took this picture as we were starting. Here's a picture another auxiliary officer took from inside the group. I'm not sure if I'm in front of or behind the picture-taker, but one of those hats may be mine. As I've served more, I'm not learning as big things as fast. I've learned that a lot of police work includes standing around or waiting. Sometimes after standing at a post not doing much, when I walk away, I say…

March 14, 2025

Freedom or pollution. I would be nice to have both, but you can’t.

Freedom / Leadership

Freedom or pollution. I would be nice to have both, but you can’t.

Abraham Lincoln talked about a house divided being unable to stand. A Constitution that protected freedom in one place and slavery in another contradicted itself. You can protect freedom only. You can protect slavery only. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. Likewise, you can have a Constitution that protects your life, liberty, and property from me taking or destroying it without your consent. You can have a Constitution that permits me to pollute and deplete, which destroy life, liberty, and property. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. I'm not just stating my opinion. I wish I were. It keeps becoming more clear to me that as long as we have a Constitution that contradicts itself…

March 13, 2025

One fridge may keep a meal fresh. Dependence on a refrigerated supply chain results in less fresh food and more waste.

Hands on Practical Experience

One fridge may keep a meal fresh. Dependence on a refrigerated supply chain results in less fresh food and more waste.

I was reading The Grid: The Fraying Wires between Americans and Our Energy Future, by Gretchen Bakke, "One of Bill Gates's Favorite Books of 2016," where I learned that refrigerators didn't follow the grid. I had it backward. Fridges didn't come about for health or to improve food quality. Fridges became popular to drive more energy consumption, and therefore pollution and depletion. It turns out Bakke gave a talk on the subject, Refrigerator as Linchpin: A Brief History of the Fossil Fueled Electricity System. Quoting that page: The relationship between the refrigerator and the electric grid is much the opposite of what we assume. Rather than the grid being there for the fridge, the fridge is there for the grid. In this talk Gretchen Bakke…

March 12, 2025

Have you noticed that sanitation departments have become socialist, imperialist, and flagrant violators of the US Constitution’s original intent?

Freedom / Nature

Have you noticed that sanitation departments have become socialist, imperialist, and flagrant violators of the US Constitution’s original intent?

Once, all garbage biodegraded. All garbage would turn into food for something within time scales relevant to human lives. Not today. Plastic can take centuries to degrade, during which time they kill wildlife and poison us. Plenty of residue from our culture poisons more, like pesticides and home cleaning products. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors could just drop the parts of the fruit, vegetable, or animal they didn't want to eat on the ground and between the benign content of that part and the accommodating population density, their disposal caused no problems. At some point after we formed cities, we shifted to having others haul our trash away to put in big holes in the ground. The stuff might take longer to degrade, but it was farther…

March 11, 2025

See me with Rob and Andrew on After Dark: “When Sustainability Meets MAHA And Making English The Official Language”

See me with Rob and Andrew on After Dark: “When Sustainability Meets MAHA And Making English The Official Language”

Longtime readers know Rob, Andrew, and I appear on each other's podcasts and programs. They strongly support Trump. I strongly support sustainability leadership. Many people who support Trump or act on the environment consider the other group the enemy. We are friends. I recently appeared on their podcast-now-videocast: When Sustainability Meets MAHA And Making English The Official Language. It was evening and I disconnected my apartment from the electric grid so was just lit from a battery-powered light. (If the video appears small, click the link above for the original post.) The show notes: In the realm of sustainability and health, two influential voices—Joshua Spodek and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—offer compelling perspectives that resonate with today’s growing desire for meaningful change. Spodek, a leadership expert,…

March 10, 2025

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