Joshua, Author at Joshua Spodek - Page 33 of 248

766: Chip Conley, part 1: Learning to Love Midlife

766: Chip Conley, part 1: Learning to Love Midlife

I'd heard about Chip long ago but only met him recently at a launch event for his book Learning to Love Midlife. It resonated since at 52 years old, I was smack in the middle of the part of life he was talking about, after adulthood but before old age. I've also been approached by universities with programs for people in their third acts. A big topic is finding and creating meaning and purpose. My life is overflowing with them since no one seems to be leading on the biggest issue or even know effective things we can do. So I was curious how sustainability fit into Chip's curriculum. Since he started a program from scratch, I was curious how it started and what drove…

July 12, 2024

For every technology you think will help you, remember people who make you miserable will use it too

Artificial Intelligence / Nature

For every technology you think will help you, remember people who make you miserable will use it too

People keep asking how artificial intelligence (or blockchain, nuclear energy, fusion, or whatever the technology of the day) will help them. People think, "Oh, AI will help me do X or Y" where X and Y are things they want to do. Maybe in sustainability they'll use it to make some process more efficient, thinking it will reduce energy use and therefore depletion. Well, everyone else will use that technology too, including the ones causing what problems you're trying to solve. They'll drill deeper, extract faster, and lower costs do extract more profitably. Most of our problems are caused by other people. For example, earth has plenty of resources, or would if so many people weren't consuming them. Guns, abortion, taxes, migration, etc. . .…

July 11, 2024

765: Bruce Alexander, part 2: Can the Spodek Method scale from the individual to the world?

765: Bruce Alexander, part 2: Can the Spodek Method scale from the individual to the world?

I think I can safely say Bruce and I have formed a friendship, both professional and from similar interests, even though he's retired and I'm not a psychologist. I learn psychology to help lead. We're both intrigued by addiction. We both want to improve our environmental situation, not just give in. He likes the idea of the Spodek Method. He hopes it works beyond just one person. He's not sure it can. In this episode we start practicing it. Working with him was one of the more challenging times doing the Spodek Method. I expect that as more people learn it, these conversations with Bruce will make effective lessons in challenging cases. He wasn't trying to challenge me. So far, it just works with some…

July 10, 2024

The Village Sun profiled me and the Spodek Method

The Village Sun profiled me and the Spodek Method

The Village Sun profiled me after seeing me charging my battery with solar panels a few months ago. The reporter, Otto Fritton, spent time talking and learning what I'm up to. I'm not doing it for myself or for pipe dreams. Check out the story: The Spodek Method: Saving the planet and ourselves by not harming others. It begins: Often humans struggle to understand their impact upon a larger humanity, making the prospect of changing their mindset and committing to environmental sustainability daunting. After all, what can one person do, if anything, that will have an impact on others in a world of 8 billion people? According to Josh Spodek, though, the answer to the question “what can one person do?” is not as bleak…

July 10, 2024

Flying = Funding Lobbyists

Flying = Funding Lobbyists

There's no two ways about it: Flying = Funding Lobbyists Not just lobbyists, fossil fuel lobbyists. Flying lines their pockets, along with the pockets of executives and shareholders of the fossil fuel-extracting companies that own them. It's 93F (34C) in Manhattan and not yet 11am. Congratulations to those who fly, buy plastic, and buy things needlessly shipped across oceans in container ships, like cars, fast fashion, and food that isn't local. Since I'm near NYU and its community often says we have to fix racism first, anyone who does those things promotes unsustainability and therefore imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. We know from history that slavery caused racism, as historian Eric Williams wrote in his book Capitalism and Slavery: Slavery was not born of racism: rather,…

July 9, 2024

Addiction in Greenwich Village, Early Summer 2024

Addiction in Greenwich Village, Early Summer 2024

Here is the greatest sign of addiction I commonly see, a disposable plastic cup from Starbucks, being thrown away, sweat still forming on the plastic from the ice not yet melted. Someone paid for oil to be extracted to make the plastic and cool water to make ice in 90F (32.5C) weather just to throw it all away. Below are more addicts, although these ones are mostly only hurting themselves. Starbucks customers hurt humanity (and wildlife) more, even if they put their plastic waste in trash cans or "recycling" bins. Do Starbucks customers think their plastic doesn't poison? Do Starbucks customers think they money they spend isn't going to more lobbyists? Do Starbucks customers think they money they spend isn't going to fund more extraction?…

July 8, 2024

This Week’s Selected Media, July 7, 2024: Not Just Bikes and Strong Towns course, Stolen Focus

Tips

This Week’s Selected Media, July 7, 2024: Not Just Bikes and Strong Towns course, Stolen Focus

This week I finished: The joint course in urban planning between the video series Not Just Bikes (hosted by podcast guest Jason Slaughter) and Strong Towns: I can't recommend Not Just Bikes or Strong Towns enough. If you live in an American city, know and act on these resources. The course comprised nine videos (I think I counted right) plus dozens of articles. They repeated a fair amount, but you'll never look at cars, highways, stroads, suburbs, congestion, growth, or many parts of American history and culture again. Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again: by Johann Hari: Hari writes well and covers many reasons why we can't pay attention, or rather why corporations and greedy businesspeople steal our focus…

July 7, 2024

A Visual Representation of the Spodek Method in Venn Diagrams

Leadership / Nature / Visualization

A Visual Representation of the Spodek Method in Venn Diagrams

I can't think of a message I received from environmentalists that suggested I would enjoy the experience of trying to live more sustainably. Every message from every source, including the most ardent environmentalists, told me living more sustainably meant giving something up. We had to worsen our lives to possibly help someone far away or in the future. A definite loss here and now for a possible gain sometime somewhere for someone else is a bad trade. In Venn diagrams, I was taught that activities people enjoyed and improved their lives did not overlap with activities that improved the environment: My experience avoiding packaged food for a week a decade ago surprised me. I expected a worse week since I had learned to expect that…

July 6, 2024

764: Erica Frank, part 2: “No Hairshirt At All.” Instead: Abundance

764: Erica Frank, part 2: “No Hairshirt At All.” Instead: Abundance

I rarely get to talk to people who expect living more sustainably to be joyful and rewarding from personal experience, not just hoping for the best. I enjoyed sharing that perspective with Erica last time, I invited her back with no specific agenda. This episode presents conversation between two people who have left mainstream culture and are living more how many people agree we should, but hold themselves back. So they speak in speculation and generalities. They still think more sustainability means lower quality of life because they can't speak from experience otherwise. Erica and I can, so we do. We don't lament missing out on things we don't do any more because we don't miss them. Moreover, we realize they weren't helping us in…

July 5, 2024

Our culture: spring trash. Homeless don’t cause it as much as executives, elected officials, shareholders, and rich people

Addiction / Nature / Visualization

Our culture: spring trash. Homeless don’t cause it as much as executives, elected officials, shareholders, and rich people

Litter isn't a result of too little sanitation. It's too much production and people still buying it. I've meant to post these pictures since I took them in the spring. I took them on a regular day. If you think cities mean more garbage, our per-capita environmental impact is less than Americans who live outside cities. If you think this garbage and treatment of public property is disgusting, as I do, see not the results of homeless people but of corporate leaders and elected officials prompting its production and rich people paying for the extraction and depletion causing it. Just because you can't see car, cargo ship, and airplane exhaust, or the packaging for your shipped goods doesn't mean it's not far greater than the…

July 4, 2024

Happy Independence Day, America. Let’s return to protecting life, liberty, and property and stop being imperialist

Freedom / Nature

Happy Independence Day, America. Let’s return to protecting life, liberty, and property and stop being imperialist

The number one topic of my book is freedom and liberty. In my view, science, technology, market reforms, and legislation follow from freedom and liberty. Without freedom and liberty, you can't have the other things, but without them you can still have freedom and liberty. Pollution destroys life, liberty, and property. Our Constitution was built on a premise that a role of government is to protect life, liberty, and property. Usually I think of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, but I'm going to write about the Constitution today. The U.S. Constitution mixed European Enlightenment thinking with indigenous wisdom of cultures living sustainably that Europeans found as they explored the world. At the time, Europe nearly completely lacked democracy in government. Your status at…

July 4, 2024

Invited on the field at Yankee Stadium with my family (thank you Brent Suter!)

Blog

Invited on the field at Yankee Stadium with my family (thank you Brent Suter!)

Podcast guest Brent Suter plays for his hometown team the Cincinnati Reds and the Reds played the Yankees last night in Yankee Stadium. Brent and I have recorded three episodes so far. We've kept in touch since recording too. I asked him if I could see him at the game. He arranged for me and some family members to meet him on the field at Yankee Stadium for batting practice before the game started. You can tell from our conversations what a great guy Brent is. In person he's as friendly, humble, and salt-of-the-earth as they come. Genuinely interested in you and taking care of you. No wonder he was nominated for the Roberto Clemente award, the highest award in baseball outside competition. As usual,…

July 3, 2024

Volunteering: I just helped deliver a mammoth summer load of vegetables to the community fridge

Habits / Stories / Volunteering

Volunteering: I just helped deliver a mammoth summer load of vegetables to the community fridge

The community fridge where I volunteer by bringing food (and doof, sadly) stores would otherwise through away for anyone to take recently coordinated a deal with the Union Square farmers market to pick up what vendors don't sell. Half a dozen of us picked up and delivered our first load. Several of us made two trips. It was the most volume and I'd say highest quality of any load I helped deliver. These pictures don't show how much and how glorious the produce was, all local. Redistributing food so it doesn't go to waste solves an immediate problem. I still can't see how to solve the systemic problem of overproducing. In the meantime, at least people got to eat this food instead of it being…

July 2, 2024

Giving up on sustainability is a permanent solution to what could be a temporary problem

Nonjudgment / Tips

Giving up on sustainability is a permanent solution to what could be a temporary problem

I heard someone talking about suicide describe it as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I looked it up and it seems a well-known concept. Many people seem to have given up on trying to live more sustainably or sustainability in general. We can solve it. Dropping your impact over ninety percent, if done with the right mindset, will improve your life. Combining it with having at most two kids and sharing the improvement with others, and we can reach sustainability soon. There's no reason to give up. There's tons to look forward to. Sorry to break it to you, but you already knew you and everyone you love would die. We don't have to reach nirvana or heaven for success, only to reach…

July 1, 2024

This Week’s Selected Media, June 30, 2024: Albatrosses

Tips

This Week’s Selected Media, June 30, 2024: Albatrosses

This week I finished: Albatrosses, by Diane Ackerman: I took a year off of college in 1990. I gathered all the savings I could, about $1,000, bought a one-way courier ticket to Paris for $140, and did my best to stay a year. If my savings dropped to $140, I'd have to decide either to use my last $140 to buy a flight home or commit to staying somehow. I found a family to stay with as an au pair, rare for men, which took care of room plus some board. I taught some English and found some odd jobs, which handled living expenses, and found French classes to take at very low costs, so made it. I was starved for English to read. My…

June 30, 2024

McKinsey, Rightsizing, and Population: Businesspeople have the tools to get sustainability

McKinsey, Rightsizing, and Population: Businesspeople have the tools to get sustainability

Human ingenuity doesn't mean all companies should hire as many people as possible. Business gets it. I've meant to write this post since reading When McKinsey Comes to Town and hosting one of its authors on the podcast, Michael Forsythe. A concept the book coversIs it the case that the "ability to is "rightsizing." I had associated it with McKinsey, since the book documented McKinsey advising companies to do it, but I looked it up and the term seems widespread. For context, people debate over how many people can live sustainably on Earth---its carrying capacity. Many people lob verbal grenades at people who say that number is finite, suggesting it can always be higher. They say people who suggest human population is already above Earth's…

June 29, 2024

How I don’t need willpower by learning to feel disgust for what once tempted me. You can too.

Addiction / Leadership / Models / Tips

How I don’t need willpower by learning to feel disgust for what once tempted me. You can too.

Maybe you've heard me share how from when I had my own kitchen, I always had ice cream in my freezer and pretzels and Doritos in my cupboard. I struggled to pace my consuming them, but nearly always ate more than I meant to, but kept buying more. Now I say there isn't enough money in the world for me to eat that stuff. I also talk about my relationship with doof as an addiction. Many people who kick addictions describe themselves as "in recovery" for the rest of their lives. What changed? Why is it beyond easy for me not to consume Ben and Jerry's, bordering on inconceivable? The transformation began with hydrogenated oil, now also known as trans fat. The roots of my…

June 28, 2024

763: Guy Spier, part 2: Limited government, free market, low tax sustainability solutions

763: Guy Spier, part 2: Limited government, free market, low tax sustainability solutions

I loved where this conversation led. We began by talking about recent news: Greta Thunberg taking a political stand and acting publicly on it on an issue unrelated to the environment. Guy described how he saw this action distracting and undermining her credibility in sustainability. We got to talking about overwhelming tribalism today. In the process, Guy shared views he once held that he overcame, specifically about Apartheid. We talked about ones views changing. In the end we got to Guy sharing what I read as something he's had to settle on: that while he generally prefers limited government, low tax policies, with our environmental problems, he's concluded otherwise. Like with national defense, where you need aircraft carriers and such, with the environment he's concluded…

June 27, 2024

Today’s greatest privilege: denying one’s personal contribution to pollution, depletion, plunder, and imperialism

Awareness / Nonjudgment

Today’s greatest privilege: denying one’s personal contribution to pollution, depletion, plunder, and imperialism

Liberals talk a lot about privilege. Conservatives, libertarians, and other political groups have their problems facing their contribution to our environmental problems, but liberals contribute as much. Their denial is through the roof. In particular, they throw around the term 'privilege' like it was candy. I think they think they're silencing the people they accuse of it, but in a way the other person deserves, doesn't realize, and benefits from owning up to. My point is not to accuse back but to invite people to try taking personal responsibility for the effects of their actions on others, especially innocent people. I predict people will find the initial discomfort of facing one's internal conflicts worth the uncomfortable emotions it causes to connect to them. I've learned…

June 26, 2024

What did they do that ice cream doesn’t melt in baking hot sun?

Addiction / Nature

What did they do that ice cream doesn’t melt in baking hot sun?

I admit since I haven't had ice cream in five or ten years, I'm no expert on it, but I see a lot of ice cream disposable cups left on the street, plus dropped cones like the one pictured below. It was a hot day. I'd say hot enough to melt butter. Yet, I don't know if you can tell, but the ice cream partly melted but mostly retains near solidity. What do they put in the ice cream to make it stay solid in baking hot sun? How do people keep consuming doof? I mean, I know the answer. It's designed to addict and they're addicted. It reminds me of a video where a chef shows school children how chicken nuggets are made. He…

June 25, 2024

Today in 1988: Global Warming on the front page of the New York Times. Today in 2024: Americans pollute more than ever.

Today in 1988: Global Warming on the front page of the New York Times. Today in 2024: Americans pollute more than ever.

Today in 1988, the New York Times front page headline said "Global Warming Has Begun." Today today, Americans blame, rationalize, and justify, but pollute more than ever. They blame CEOs, companies, and politicians, denying and suppressing that they pay them to do what they do. We can stop if we choose to. It would mean valuing other people's suffering over our convenience.

June 24, 2024

How what I’m doing feels, subway version

Addiction / Fitness / Models

How what I’m doing feels, subway version

Sometimes I feel like I'm responding to someone who fell on the subway tracks. No one else acts. I jump down onto the tracks to help the person to safety, but the person is morbidly obese and struggles just to lift themselves from the ground. They've decided to stop trying. "It's too hard. It's not worth it." They resign themselves to the train hitting them. "As long as I can't do anything, I might as well enjoy the time I have left," they say, and get out some Twinkies. I'm trying to help the person to safety, or even just to try to move. I'm trying to lead them to see that if they free themselves, they'll be glad they did. But they suggest they'll…

June 24, 2024

This Week’s Selected Media, June 23, 2024: Strong Towns

Tips

This Week’s Selected Media, June 23, 2024: Strong Towns

This week I finished: Strong Towns 101, by Strong Towns: Podcast listeners know I hosted Jason Slaughter, the host of Not Just Bikes, a video series I love. It's one of my few subscriptions to anything. He refers to Strong Towns a lot. I finally dug in to their courses, so I'm not just learning courses on conservatism and their recommended readings. Regular readers may know I I helped get bikes allowed on New York City subways and continued volunteering with Transportation Alternatives and other city-improving causes since the 1980s. I read The Power Broker and The Death and Life of Great American Cities decades ago. I recommend Strong Towns' introductory course.

June 23, 2024

What I think of when I think of Taylor Swift and her jet

Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership

What I think of when I think of Taylor Swift and her jet

Is someone criticizing Taylor Swift's flying lately? People talk to me about it all the time. In the past few days, a few people told me she was in the news for flying a few miles on her jet. Today, I turned the corner from Sixth Avenue onto Waverly and saw the scene below. I didn't want to include identifying pictures so didn't take it from their front, but what you see is an encampment of five or six people on the street. If you saw their faces, you'd see they're zoned out on whatever they're addicted to. They seem a tight community, but unhealthy, surrounded by waste, wrecking the environment for everyone around them. This image is what I associate with private jets (also…

June 22, 2024

Limiting government and limiting pollution and depletion can overlap. Here’s how.

Tips

Limiting government and limiting pollution and depletion can overlap. Here’s how.

Want to hear what we should do to decrease polluting, depleting, and plunder? Milton Friedman's advice on curbing government spending to reduce inflation applies: "A tough policy that takes courage." Watch this video, but substitute the following, So I hear: "Pollution is the most destructive disease known to modern society." Instead ofSubstituteInflationPollutionEconomyEconomy and peopleEmployment/UnemploymentMore technology/Less technology He knows what has to be done in one area. It turns out it's what we need in another area. To clarify: I'm not promoting or discouraging his ideas in economics or philosophy. I'm only saying even this limited-government free-market advocate supports big government action in domains where he considers government action appropriate. If you don't advocate limiting government as much as him, I propose you consider government banning…

June 22, 2024

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