Joshua, Author at Joshua Spodek

Women-Founded Garbage

Regular readers know I pick up litter every day. The point isn't that my actions will change much. It seems about 8 billion people around the world don't seem to mind buying and disposing of plastic so I'm a tiny minority. One of the biggest values in picking up litter is that it makes it easier for me to avoid spending money on doof and other stuff that ends up filling landfills. Did I say "easy"? That's an understatement. I feel disgust and repugnance for the common stuff I find. I just got home and four Modelo empty beer cans were in my building's garden on the way in. McDonalds, 7-11, Amazon, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Coca-Cola ... All of those brands and their peers…

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July 17, 2026

Environmentalists: Are you proud that to get back at BP, you don’t stop buying their products?

Oil refinery

Pollution and Depletion

Environmentalists: Are you proud that to get back at BP, you don’t stop buying their products?

It's been nearly a year since I posted Do you think BP tricked us? Here’s a way to respond. and I'm still as aghast as ever at how counterproductive the environmentalist response to personal responsibility. Everyone knows the story of BP promoting personal footprints to distract from their responsibility. How exactly does their being responsible for what they did remove responsibility for what you do? But my main response to environmentalists: Are you proud that to get back at BP, you don't stop buying their products? You're promoting that people keep buying what BP and their peers as much as ever. Am I missing something that you aren't responding in the most counterproductive way possible?

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July 16, 2026

Nonjudgment

More conservatives promoting socialism

To clarify up front, I'm not taking a political position here, just pointing out what looks like groups doing what they criticize others for. They seem to be living by their values when they like the outcomes, but other times violating their values. I'm following up my post from a few months ago Heritage Foundation promoting socialism, as usual. Charlie Kirk did too. I've had a few guests on my podcast from the Manhattan Institute and I've attended a few of their events. I found this article last week from them: Want More Babies? We Need More Friends, whose subtitle tells what the article is about: "If Americans are to revive our sagging national birthrate, we must rebuild the ordinary social structures that made children…

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July 15, 2026

Habits / Hands on Practical Experience / Pollution and Depletion / Volunteering

Secret video of Beth picking up litter goes viral in Mexico

The background: Longtime podcast listeners may remember episode 754: (Aunt) Trish Ellis and (Niece) Evelyn Wallace, part 1: Not Even Cancer Holds Her Back. We mentioned Beth, Evelyn's mom and Trish's sister. All three of them took the workshop. Beth has been picking up litter ever since. She lives in Mérida, Mexico, where she organizes others to pick up litter too. They created a web page: Yo ❤ Mérida limpia. ¿Y tú?, which states their mission and vision: Mission: To promote the care, cleanliness, and respect for Mérida's public spaces through community actions that strengthen environmental awareness, a sense of belonging, and citizen participation. Vision: To build a Mérida where every person takes pride in caring for their surroundings, making cleanliness and respect for nature part…

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July 14, 2026

Education

I found a paper I coauthored on Wikipedia

Last week I wrote a post that referred to the satellite I worked on for my PhD. Writing it led looking up the satellite on Wikipedia. I do so every now and then. It's called XMM-Newton. XMM stands for X-ray Multimirror Misson. It was launched in December 1999, designed for a ten-year life. It's still going, so it outperformed its mission. For some reason, this time looking on the Wikipedia page I noticed footnote 44, which linked to a paper "The Reflection Grating Spectrometer on board XMM-Newton". The reflection grating spectrometer is the component I worked on. The authors listed in the footnote include my advisor. If you click the link, you'll see my name on the author list. The paper shows calibration results. A…

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July 13, 2026

Tips

This week’s selected media, July 12, 2026: New York 2140, George Washington documentaries

This week I finished: New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson: I met him at a talk at a place in Brooklyn called Pioneerworks, invited him to be a guest on the podcast, and he agreed. I finished Ministry of the Future a couple years ago so am preparing by reading another of his books. He suggested this one both because we were in New York City and because I asked him about the water in that time. I anticipate that many landfills will flood, leading nearly all the waste we thought we were keeping from polluting the rest of the world to empty into the oceans. He said the water in the book was filthy. It was, though not as much as I would…

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July 12, 2026

Freedom / Leadership

Documentaries about George Washington: I am embarrassed as an American to have learned so little so far about him, but am rectifying the gaffe.

Last week I watched a movie about George Washington. It prompted me to watch a few documentaries on him. Five so far. I can't believe I haven't learned more about him. I'm downright embarrassed. No one else is called the father of this country. He is. I study leadership. I'm studying the founding of this nation. He's widely considered the greatest President of the nation. His picture is on coins and bills. His name is on states, cities, buildings, and more. I could go on. How have I not read one biography of him? How did I not watch one documentary? Just from these documentaries I've seen his humanity, his struggles, his challenges, his failures, successes, and more. I see parts of leadership I've neglected:…

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July 11, 2026

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Pollution and Depletion

Can the Constitution Save the Planet?: A professor of environmental law’s view, part 1

I met a professor at Pace University who told me that its law school ranked number one in environmental law. It turns out it does: My upcoming book approaches problems we face today, including environmental degradation as one of many, as resulting from not understanding how the Constitution applies. More precisely, they result from not enforcing the Constitution. I was interested in talking to lawyers with constitutional backgrounds. I should note that I've learned that constitutional lawyers don't tend to be trained in leadership. When I proposed the APPLE PIE amendment in Sustainability Simplified, I learned that the creation of new amendments doesn't have to come from lawyers. As far as I can tell, they seem to train to look back at existing ones, precedent, and…

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July 10, 2026

Podcast

855: Peter DeCarlo PhD: Shocking Cancer Alley research from the scientist who did it

That this country has a region called Cancer Alley is beyond tragic. We know we're causing it, not just the companies operating the polluting refineries and other industrial plants. All of us who buy their products are funding them. I wondered if it was fair to call the region Cancer Alley. Is the evidence clear enough, even if not for a court to award damages? Peter DeCarlo is a researcher at Johns Hopkins who did original research and answered definitively: Yes. In our conversation, he described what motivated him to this research, the research, interacting with residents of Cancer Alley, how it affects him, physically and emotionally, and why he keeps going. It turns out his motivation started long before the research. The conversation returns…

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July 10, 2026

Pollution and Depletion

Last week’s heat wave, air conditioning, and fragile, entitled people

Last week the temperature went above 100 F (38 C) for two days and close to it for a day or two before and after, plus it was humid. Everyone talked about the heat. I didn't try to bring it up, but my not using air conditioning led people to the same questions over and over: how did I make it, did I use a fan, etc. Everything always about me, never about the people hurt by my polluting and depleting. Then most comment on how they couldn't make it. Occasionally an old person will mention how they grew up without air conditioning and don't like it, though they use it when it gets hot enough. I point out that people have lived on this…

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July 8, 2026

Nature

The replication crisis in science and religion

In Science I was watching a video by a conservative politician criticizing science for its "replication crisis." He implied that science was a search for truth and that this crisis implied it was failing. For background, here's the top of Wikipedia's Replication crisis page: The replication crisis, also known as the reproducibility or replicability crisis, refers to widespread failures to reproduce published scientific results. Because the reproducibility of empirical results is the cornerstone of the scientific method,[2] such failures undermine the credibility of theories and challenge substantial parts of scientific knowledge. Here's a quote from a prominent paper on the subject, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False by John Ioannidis: There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or…

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July 7, 2026

Hands on Practical Experience / Pollution and Depletion

Recent peer-reviewed research that when people live as I do, they prefer it and don’t want to go back

A friend and workshop graduate sent me a news article that described and linked to primary research published last month in a journal called Communications Sustainability within the family of Nature journals. The journal article: The undervalued quality-of-life benefits of demand-side energy and climate strategies. The news article in plain language: Cutting energy use may improve quality of life more than cleaner technology. The news article described the main result of the journal article. It compared how people felt about acting on different strategies to reduce polluting and depleting. Some strategies reduced behaviors that polluted and depleted or otherwise used less (demand-side strategies). Others relied on new technologies, like heat pumps and electric vehicles (supply side strategies). When different strategies achieved similar environmental results, how did…

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July 6, 2026

Tips

This week’s selected media, July 5, 2026: Four Horsemen, Daredevil: Born Again, Young Washington, Jackass: Best and Last

This week I finished: Four Horsemen, directed by Ross Ashcroft: I'm not sure how I hadn't heard about this documentary since it came out in 2012. Still, it's another documentary full of information, lacking a vision or plan how to get there. As I understand it, it lays our economic system at the root of our society's problems. It says we should be informed, but actual changes are things like changing the federal reserve system and global equivalents. What exactly should I do? I was pleased to see two people I've met and one whose book I'm in the middle of. I know Joseph Stiglitz because he teaches at Columbia Business School. I didn't take a course with him but attended at least one talk he…

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July 5, 2026

Freedom

Some notes on 1776

For Independence Day, I thought I'd share some notes from my upcoming book on the huge historical significance of what happened around 1776 in the colonies that became the United States. For context, for most of the 250,000 years of human existence until the last Ice Age, when the current geological period began, called the Holocene, as far as we know, our ancestors lived in egalitarian groups. After the Holocene, agriculture began, which led to surpluses of food, animals, and other resources, which led to the formation of dominance hierarchies---also known as tyranny. People also began to deplete resources, which led to imperialism. From 12,000 years ago until 1492, the development of human society from those first necessary resources that could be controlled, when agriculture…

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July 4, 2026

Podcast

854: John Perkins, part 2: New Book Preview: The Art of the Steal (and restoring American ideals)

John returns to describe his upcoming book The Art of the Steal: Trump and the Economic Hit Man Presidency, described as his best book of the Economic Hit Man series. I'm honored that he came to this podcast first. Longtime listeners and readers know how much of an impression Confessions of an Economic Hit Man made on me. Regular blog readers know from my descriptions of my upcoming book how much imperialism factors into it. John's book couldn't have come at a better time. Listen to this whole conversation. He starts by describing the new book, then puts it in context of how what he wrote about decades ago is happening more than ever, and by the US government on its own citizens. I think you'll feel as…

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July 3, 2026

Freedom / Leadership / My Favorite Posts / Pollution and Depletion

Why I avoid polluting and depleting

Media coverage on me mostly presents me as an environmentalist. When they report on my disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid, avoiding flying, and taking a decade to fill a load of household garbage, they post pictures of solar panels. They know what readers look for. I tell them that focusing on my solar panels and how I make do is like going to Martin Luther King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and asking what shoes he wears, what routes he takes, and how exercise is healthy. They would miss that the point of the boycott wasn't shoes, walking, or exercise but liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security. Everyone misunderstands why I avoid polluting and depleting. Also liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security.…

2 Comments

July 2, 2026

Freedom / Pollution and Depletion

Beyond no electric bill: Money returned from allegedly fraudulent overbilling

This post is about my home being disconnected from the electric grid. Everyone misunderstands why I disconnected, so first a few words for context. I'm not an environmentalist. Environmentalists make my skin crawl. I disconnected for a few reasons. First, I don't want to hurt people without their consent. Polluting and depleting hurt people without their consent, therefore I try to avoid polluting and depleting. Second, polluting and depleting violate the Constitution by depriving people of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, as well as the Declaration, which says that for a government to be just requires the consent of the governed. This nation has a cancer alley, death mile, and other sacrifice zones, as well as many other ways people are…

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July 1, 2026

Pollution and Depletion

Environmentalists fund pollution and depletion

I value the Washington Post's Climate Coach newsletter. It has featured me and my voice several times: Read my plucky quote in today’s Washington Post and See me in the Washington Post’s Climate Coach again, for example. I email with its author, Michael Coren. I also know the Post serves its customers. Last I checked, Jeff Bezos runs it and does so actively. I presume the publishers know their readers and deliver what they value, even if those readers don't include many past readers. The newsletter includes ads. That's business. I'm not complaining. I suspect Coren doesn't choose the newsletter's ads. I presume some tracking and profiling determine who reads it and what they spend their money on. With a name like Climate Coach, I suspect the readers consider…

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June 30, 2026

Fitness

Lifting: not always progress

I've posted a bunch on personal bests on lifting. I like that even as age limits my body's potential, I'm overall able to lift heavier weights. But it's not nonstop, monotonic progress. Yesterday was a lifting day. It was humid. My digestive tract felt woozy, I figure from something I ate the day or night before. I didn't sleep well. Also, I was fatigued and partly sore from the day before. I met some old college teammates from Ultimate Frisbee to toss in Prospect Park. I rode my bike there and back. These days, that much exercise counts as a lot, even though it wouldn't have counted as a warm-up in college. The net result: Where I recently was able to do 11 reps on…

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June 29, 2026

Tips

This week’s selected media, June 28, 2026: Plastic Inc., Free to Be You and Me, Psychedelics, Friedemann

This week I finished: Plastic Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil's Biggest Bet, by Beth Gardiner: I read this book for the book club of alumni of my workshop. I watched and listened to several interviews before reading the book. In the interviews, she did the usual liberal/progressive environmentalist bending over backward to say that individuals aren't responsible, only the corporations are. I don't see the logic that you being responsible for your actions makes someone else not responsible for theirs. Yes, Exxon and its peers are responsible for what they did. So is everyone who funds them by buying their products, at least when they don't have to. I also expected I'd know most of what they book covered---at least…

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June 28, 2026

Pollution and Depletion

Do you still believe in an “energy transition”? Learn Alice Friedemann’s research

Someone posted about Alice Friedemann in an online community I participate in. I found her book Life After Fossil Fuels and blog energyskeptic.com influential. The book may be expensive and the blog dense, but she cites all her sources and her publisher is Springer, which holds a high reputation for science publishing. I haven't yet read her book When Trucks Stop Running, but she's described a lot of it in her interviews and conversations. I've mentioned her in several posts: Reader question: Why do I say solar and wind aren’t clean, green, or renewable? Renewables are less renewable than we thought. That’s the starting point. Overwhelming research: “Green Growth” is a scam that accelerates lowering Earth’s ability to sustain life. Following or propagating it hurts us.…

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June 27, 2026

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

Letter to the World, version 2

Candidate text to go on on the landing page: joshuaspodek.com. It's shorter than version 1, but less detail. If you smoke or gamble, it's hard to help others stop. You haven't felt or overcome the emotional and social challenges. Stopping alone---that is, "leading by example"---doesn't motivate others, nor does lecturing facts, numbers, ten little things, or even answering "what's one thing someone can do today." Changing deep-rooted behavior and culture is possible, even deeply rewarding, but it requires long-term, deep work, including listening, empathy, understanding others, persistence, firm resolve, accountability, and other hard parts of leadership. That's what I do. I apply leadership to our culture to stop it from rewarding behaviors that pollute and deplete. Yes, I avoid polluting and depleting, but that's not…

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June 26, 2026

Awareness / Freedom / Leadership

A curse of mastering personal leadership

Talking to a friend yesterday who shares my vision and mission and agrees on the need for leadership, since it involves changing culture. Only he doesn't want to learn to lead. It's the mission's greatest need, but he doesn't like leadership. He says it makes him uncomfortable and that he'd rather follow. He says in various ways how following is his thing. Then comes the kicker, what I hear all the time, and should have long ago recognized as a legitimizing myth. He says, "You like doing those things." I can talk about psychologists' term "fundamental attribution error," thinking that what you see someone doing is what they want to do, but it doesn't capture how annoying this reaction is. I don't mean to single…

2 Comments

June 25, 2026

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Nonjudgment / Pollution and Depletion

Do you believe Exxon and peers were wrong to sell and burn fossil fuels when they knew the results?

Do you believe Exxon and peers were wrong to sell and burn fossil fuels when they knew the results? I hope you do. Why? Because today, June 24, in 1988, the New York Times published those results on its front page news. Since then, you and everyone in the world have known at least enough to know the important part of what they knew. Actually before then, since the Times story was far from the first widespread publication about it, but it was a big one. It's tempting to say that they are different because they are bigger than you. Tempting but specious. If you do something that hurts people, who else but you is responsible for your actions? If you can't change the world, are…

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June 24, 2026

Artificial Intelligence / Education / Leadership / Pollution and Depletion

A tragic comment the dean said about artificial intelligence at my 20 year business school reunion

Yesterday I wrote personal reflections about my business school reunion. Today I have to share a tragic comment from the Dean of the school. There was a town-hall type gathering where he spoke about the state of the school. One of the main topics was that the school was embracing artificial intelligence with enthusiasm. He spoke of how professors were being trained in it, students were encouraged to use it, and so on. At the end he acknowledged that using AI polluted and depleted. I think he acknowledged even that the scale was already huge, accelerating, and without any ways to curb it. His response to this acknowledgment: "We have to be cognizant of that." Be cognizant? What kind of cop-out is "be cognizant of that"?…

4 Comments

June 23, 2026