Joshua, Author at Joshua Spodek - Page 53 of 249

Official heart rate: 47 bpm. Old man still got it.

Fitness / Habits

Official heart rate: 47 bpm. Old man still got it.

I value fitness as anyone knows with my calisthenics and all, as is accessibility, with my focus on bodyweight exercises. Those who email with me may have noticed I included as one of the statistics about how I live my life is my heart rate of 50 beats per minute. I was at a doctor's office recently and they took my pulse a few times with a dedicated device, not just me counting and looking at my watch or using a cell phone app. It read as low as 40 bpm more than once, but I only got a picture at 47 bpm, so I'll count that number as official. They took an ekg to make sure I was okay, but climbing thirty flights of…

May 3, 2023

Which is worse: litter, air, water, noise, or light pollution?

Awareness / Nature

Which is worse: litter, air, water, noise, or light pollution?

I've been trying to decide which pollution is worst. I pick up litter daily so I participate actively with it. Have you picked up litter regularly? When I do, I can't help speculate what in a person's mind and heart led them to decide putting a given piece of litter where they did. It leads me to see a dark and selfish part of humanity. That people claim not to connect their litter with the world drowning in it . . . How else can I put it? They're acting stupid. Air and water pollution are similar, just less tangible. Still, even on clear days, looking to the horizon in New York City, I see the air's yellow-brown tinge, and New York City doesn't rank…

May 2, 2023

Sustainability is skills you practice a lifetime, not a checklist of “ten little things” like journalists promote.

Art / Blog / Creativity / Nature

Sustainability is skills you practice a lifetime, not a checklist of “ten little things” like journalists promote.

When I teach my core sustainability leadership practice, the Spodek Method, in classes and corporate workshops, I have participants pair up and practice it with each other. When there is an odd number of participants, one usually pairs with me, leading me to new commitments on my environmental values. At first I worried I’d run out of commitments after reading many ten-little-things-you-can-do-for-the-environment articles that promote the same things. Those CCCSC bludgeoning tactics (convincing, cajoling, coercing, seeking compliance: the opposite of how I lead) lead people to think there are are small number of things they can do. Even people who want to act meaningfully will do seven and consider themselves one of the good guys. I’ve found the opposite: The more people lead me through…

May 1, 2023

Plug in again or work less?

Choosing/Decision-Making

Plug in again or work less?

We've had a lot of rain in New York City. My batteries are all near zero so I have to write this post quick. I gave myself a deadline to finish the first draft of my book this month, but I couldn't charge my computer. I also went a month without my "cheat" of plugging in at NYU last month. It turns out the battery problem that led me to plug in that time was easily fixed with an undocumented reset. The company told me about it after I plugged in at NYU or I could have gone longer. I plugged in yesterday, though, so that was my second time in six weeks. I'm finding myself an explorer at the frontier of sustainability since my…

April 30, 2023

This week’s selected media: April 29, 2023

Tips

This week’s selected media: April 29, 2023

I'm starting a new regular post: selections of what I read, watched, or listened to each week. This week: A book so fascinating and useful I read it in two sittings (one if you don't count sleeping). The author, Jason Hickel, is an accomplished economic anthropologist who comprehensively shows problems with growth and the value of degrowth. Less Is More An article by a podcast guest, Christopher Ketcham, on how wind, solar, and other so-called "clean," "green," and "renewable" energy sources aren't. I also recorded our second conversation this week, now in the editing queue, in which he recommended Less Is More. The Green Growth Delusion Rereading posts from two of my favorite sites Low Tech Magazine and Do the Math. I reread them because…

April 29, 2023

A 360 degree rainbow this morning

A 360 degree rainbow this morning

Today is a lifting day, which also means mopping the floor, which means getting on my hands and knees and sponging the whole apartment floor. After lifting I went to the roof to charge despite today being overcast. I got to see this beauty, which the camera didn't do justice to. I figure cameras struggle with pictures centered on the Sun. It washed out the colors. Still, I think it conveys the awe it evoked. Despite my post title, it didn't quite make 360 degrees. I felt it did in spirit. Here are a few more pictures of it, trying to capture it. You can tell the pictures don't do it justice.

April 28, 2023

My ChatGPT predictions

My ChatGPT predictions

People keep asking me my predictions on ChatGPT. Here are some so far. Top level: An unintended side-effect will end up being the dominant effect. Applications will addict people. It will lead to people becoming more isolated. The most addicting, isolating applications will have been introduced as ways to combat isolation and addiction, like as a way for lonely people to have conversations. People will be surprised to find that in the physical world the program pollutes and depletes far more than most people expected. Companies will use it to motivate people to share their interests and passions at first to sell them things, but will graduate to changing their lifestyles. People will enjoy the conversations. They will feel natural buying things it recommends. It…

April 27, 2023

Clean, green, renewable imperialism

Clean, green, renewable imperialism

When a culture doesn't live within its means, looks beyond its borders to fill the gap, and starts figuring out how to take others' resources, it's likely to become imperialist. Our so-called clean, green, renewable energy sources like wind and solar (that aren't renewable) require materials most countries lack. They have to obtain them elsewhere. Before a few decades ago, no place with cobalt was mining cobalt in large amounts to export. We look to those places and covet their cobalt. You can just see Europe salivating at the Sahara Desert, wanting to figure out how to fill it with solar panels and take the power for themselves. If you're taking their land, not just resources, then you're colonial too, and a short jump to…

April 26, 2023

Why I focus on helping CEOs, elected officials, and other renowned, influential people

Leadership / Nature

Why I focus on helping CEOs, elected officials, and other renowned, influential people

When I talk about sustainability leadership, almost guaranteed, someone will say something like, "not everyone can do what you do. Some people don't have the resources you do." or "You don't know what it's like for a single mom in a food desert with three kids and three jobs." I'm not sure what world they think exists that I don't know these things, but the illustration below, though a weird way to present the information, shows where the biggest changes are possible. Of course, I work to help everyone, but I see leading the biggest polluters to pollute less as the place with the greatest potential to change. I see too many environmentalists focusing on the people being affected. I understand they are where we…

April 25, 2023

Sustainability: Too many Thomas Jeffersons and not enough Muhammad Alis

Thomas Jefferson

Leadership / Nature

Sustainability: Too many Thomas Jeffersons and not enough Muhammad Alis

Thomas Jefferson was one of history's great advocates for freedom, with great accomplishments. He led writing the Declaration of Independence. His writings on freedom of speech, religion, and thought helped prompt the Revolutionary War that created this democratic nation. Thomas Jefferson Yet he was a racist and owned slaves. He suggested orangutans mated with Africans (he spelled oranootan in his 1784 Notes on the State of Virginia), for which he can not have had evidence. Did he make it up? Since he would never choose to be a slave, how can anyone excuse enslaving others? He could have freed them but didn’t. He had children with a woman he enslaved. I can't see how she could consent in such a relationship. His racism and anti-freedom…

April 24, 2023

If modern technologies (flying, social media, etc) promote culture, why do they homogenize everything?

Art / Visualization

If modern technologies (flying, social media, etc) promote culture, why do they homogenize everything?

Addiction leads you to believe that you're getting more of the pleasure that the drug or behavior gives you. Gamblers feel like winners, and they do win sometimes, but they lose more overall. Meth users feel like they have more energy, and they do briefly, but they have less energy overall. In short: You tell me what you fear losing, and I'll tell you what you'll gain more of when you unaddict yourself. People addicted to flying, social media, binge TV, and other things that make them feel like they're propagating and adding to culture are demolishing culture. They're homogenizing it on the scale of travel and communication. When family and work was driving or walking distance away, more than driving or walking distance would…

April 24, 2023

Overwhelming research: “Green Growth” is a scam that accelerates lowering Earth’s ability to sustain life. Following or propagating it hurts us.

Overwhelming research: “Green Growth” is a scam that accelerates lowering Earth’s ability to sustain life. Following or propagating it hurts us.

Podcast guest Christopher Ketcham compiled a bunch of research, including from two other podcast guests, Mark Z. Jacobson (not so positively) and Mark Mills, that overwhelmingly show that making up phrases doesn't make the lies they represent true, such as "green growth," "decoupling," and "electrify everything." I recommend reading his article The Green Growth Delusion. It's sobering, but wouldn't you rather not operate under a delusion when your life and the lives of everyone you know depends on accuracy? While his article is comprehensive and points to more, there are plenty more. I also recommend Alice Friedemann's book Life After Fossil Fuels (I'm emailing with her to bring her to the podcast and have linked to her work before) and podcast guest Tom Murphy's Energy…

April 23, 2023

See Reuters Video on Me. The headline: “New Yorker lives sustainable life off electric grid”

Leadership / My Favorite Posts / Nature / Volunteering

See Reuters Video on Me. The headline: “New Yorker lives sustainable life off electric grid”

The video shows me cooking, fermenting, climbing, setting panels up, volunteering, picking up litter, and more. They recorded hours of footage. I like what they edited and only wish they could include more. For example, pulling the cart, I was bringing overstock, perfectly good food to the community center for people to pick up free. My favorite moments they couldn't include: When the interviewer tasted the famous no-packaging solar-powered vegan stew I made while they recorded. She said she liked it a lot. When I shared my three main goals: To alleviate suffering of people kicked off their land and on the receiving end of polluting and depleting, and minimize directly contributing to it. To lead leaders: you can't lead someone to live by values…

April 22, 2023

Profiled for Earth Day by my school: Columbia College Today

Education / Nature

Profiled for Earth Day by my school: Columbia College Today

My college magazine profiled me: Joshua Spodek ’93 Found Connection by Disconnecting. The piece begins: On May 22, 2022, Joshua Spodek ’93, GSAS’99, BUS’06 disconnected the electricity in his West Village apartment. Nearly a year later, it’s still off. For Spodek, an environmentalist, executive leadership coach, motivational speaker, author, professor and podcaster, living off the grid is the latest effort in his mission to encourage personal and corporate sustainability. “You can’t influence others to live by values you live the opposite of,” his website reads. Click to read the rest.

April 21, 2023

682: Gautam Mukunda, part 1: Teaching Passion for Leadership at Harvard

682: Gautam Mukunda, part 1: Teaching Passion for Leadership at Harvard

I've made it no secret that sustainability lacks leadership and leaders. If you want to help on sustainability, I suggest that the most valuable thing you can do is learn to lead. If you know how to lead, improve it. Nothing can change as much as leading cultural change. Gautam's passion is to learn how leadership works, how to teach it, learning more about it, writing about it, the military, most relevant to our conversation: conveying what he knows and that passion. The upshot: someone who knows as much as anyone about leadership, what works, what doesn't, learning more about it, how to teach it, and passionate to convey what he's learned. He also knows and has befriended some of today's most effective leaders, whom…

April 21, 2023

First outdoor holiday of the year, filling Washington Square Park, my back yard, with garbage

First outdoor holiday of the year, filling Washington Square Park, my back yard, with garbage

April 20th is the cannabis holiday and Washington Square Park attracts people celebrating it. I have no problem with people growing a psychoactive plant and smoking it. I think it's legal anyway. But trashing our shared environment becoming standard for every occasion is tragic. I could cry. Plastic doesn't break down on human time scales. Unlike, say, fruit peels that become plants later, the doof wrappers everyone dumps make their way to our blood streams, killing wildlife along the way. Paying for it funds kicking people (and wildlife) off their land, Cancer Alley, Sacrifice Zones, and more. I saw not one piece of fruit or vegetable. Everything people shoved down their maws caused suffering of poorer people. These pictures show an imperialist culture. How can…

April 20, 2023

If transported to 1850, would you rather be an abolitionist with little hope of success or a slave owner with comfort and convenience?

If transported to 1850, would you rather be an abolitionist with little hope of success or a slave owner with comfort and convenience?

An exercise to the reader: say a genie snapped his fingers and forced you to live in 1850 with your choice of two conditions: As an abolitionist fighting apparently insurmountable odds with little chance of success (say you didn’t know the Thirteenth Amendment was coming) or As a plantation owner with material comfort and convenience, but knowing you’d feel as The Ruling Race quoted people, feeling guilt and shame but mostly suppressing and denying it. Try rationalizing flying, bottled water, and disposable diapers with not living option 2. You can't. sorry to break it to you, but the sooner you get the water splashed in your face, the sooner you can act like a human with compassion. Sadly, Nearly everyone today chooses option 2. If…

April 19, 2023

The alternative to what we call progress isn’t what you think

Leadership / Models / Visualization

The alternative to what we call progress isn’t what you think

I see American culture moving toward increasing isolation. Compared to any time in human existence, we spend more time alone. Our paltry amount of skin-to-skin contact between parents and infants might be considered child abuse in other cultures. We talk about visiting other cultures, but even when in-person, we generally look at them from the outside through curated experiences like going to zoos. All that visiting is homogenizing culture more than learning. When I pollute someone’s environment, plunder their resources, impose my values on them, and run roughshod over their culture, I don’t want to connect with them. It would make me feel shame. Despite our medical advances, returning longevity to ancestral levels, and such, that isolation leads to anxiety, depression, and suicide. The pollutionist…

April 18, 2023

Sustainability simplified

Leadership / Nature

Sustainability simplified

If doing something kills people and you don't want to kill people, you have to stop doing that thing. I'm not talking about morality or suggesting guilt or blame. I'm saying something as simple as if you don't want to break a glass, don't drop it on the ground. This situation couldn't be simpler, at least for people who don't want to kill other people. If stopping doing that thing is inconvenient, if you want to stop killing people, you still have to stop doing it. If stopping doing that thing means you can't travel as much, if you want to stop killing people, you still have to stop doing it. If you really want to do that thing, if you want to stop killing…

April 17, 2023

People who pollute are judgmental and defensive

People who pollute are judgmental and defensive

I didn't pay attention to it, but now that I do, people who pollute judge nonstop on sustainability issues. They also defend themselves even when the issue has nothing to do with them. I think they feel judged, which tells me they know they are doing something they believe is wrong. They can't resolve this internal conflict so suppress and deny it. Then when the issue comes up, they feel judgment and blame whoever brought it up for their feeling guilt and shame. They call me extreme for living as sustainably as all humans did until about a century ago, but it seems easier to me to resolve the inner conflict by not doing what I believe is wrong so I don't cause my own…

April 16, 2023

See Me for Earth Day at Union Square, Manhattan tomorrow (April 16, 2023)

Events / Nature

See Me for Earth Day at Union Square, Manhattan tomorrow (April 16, 2023)

I'll help man the table for The Carbon Almanac in Union Square, Manhattan tomorrow. Podcast guest Seth Godin started The Carbon Almanac and I've participated in the community, including appearing on its podcast. I plan to bring my solar kit for anyone interested in seeing how I make it work. I'll help set up before noon, then have to step away to run my sustainability leadership mastermind group for a couple hours, then return a bit after 2pm, staying until about 5pm. See you there! EDIT: Pictures of the Event: A couple influencers saw the solar panels and interviewed me about disconnecting my apartment from the grid. My favorite question was what was my biggest challenge. It's people causing inertia by pushing back and saying…

April 15, 2023

681: Albert Garcia-Romeu, part 1: Psychedelic Reseach and Time in Nature

681: Albert Garcia-Romeu, part 1: Psychedelic Reseach and Time in Nature

Regular listeners know I've been asking people what the environment means to them as part of the Spodek Method. Many people respond with touching answers that I would call something close to life-altering. Maybe more like life-guiding, life-enhancing, or giving meaning and purpose. I've heard of increasing research into psychedelics recently. Reading reports of people who took psylocibin in clinical settings with guides for the experience, I was struck by how similar their effects to those of quintessential moments in the environment. Both talked about oneness, awe, humility, understanding, feeling understood, connectedness, and similar things, though, of course, each experience was unique. Many said that the effects of their experiences lasted sometimes years, potentially permanently. Many could stop addictions overnight without relapsing. Some improved relationships…

April 15, 2023

How I answer “What’s one thing everyone can do to start acting more sustainably?”

Addiction / Nature

How I answer “What’s one thing everyone can do to start acting more sustainably?”

Every interviewer asks like a robot: "What's one thing everyone can start with?" For context, people don't pollute and deplete because they want to pollute. We do things we value and enjoy that our culture has made polluting and depleting necessary to do. Our culture has also engineered those activities to trigger the mechanisms of addiction. We are addicted to doof, social media, flying, etc. We don't think of flying as taking us away from families, making businesses less secure, or homogenizing cultures, but it does. Nonetheless, being addicted, we protect it, feeling like it helps what it hurts. My point, answering what simple things people can start with is like asking what simple things an addict can do to get off heroin or cigarettes.…

April 14, 2023

Hear me on the Walk Talk Listen Podcast

Hear me on the Walk Talk Listen Podcast

The host of the Walk Talk Listen podcast, Maurice Bloem, Chief Sustainability and Impact Officer of the Church World Service and Main Representative at UN Headquarters, invited me to a conversation on his podcast: Virtual Walk Talk Listen with Josh Spodek (click to listen) The podcast overview: Walk Talk Listen, an attempt to connect people and make this world a bit better by sharing opinions and experiences based on the belief that everyone’s perspective is true albeit partial. It is also an effort to create awareness and to inspire a growing group of listeners to be engaged with the Global Goals (SDGs) and their attainment. A spin-off of the 100 mile walk. #gotheextra100mile Virtual Walk Talk Listen with Josh Spodek (click to listen) About Maurice…

April 13, 2023

One month without even my “cheat” of plugging in at work. Then both batteries died.

Freedom / Nature / Volunteering

One month without even my “cheat” of plugging in at work. Then both batteries died.

Today marked one month since I last plugged in at NYU. I made it a whole month without plugging my computer, phone, or anything else to the grid. I still used power, and plenty, taking subway trips, train trips to New Jersey and Philadelphia, and more. How? The days got longer. My skills to avoid polluting developed. The company whose power station (battery with many charging ports) I used sent me a battery of the next generation to test, so I had a second battery and more than double the energy I did before. When I disconnected my apartment last May, I didn't see how I'd make more than a few days so I didn't try to figure out how to do it best. Remember,…

April 13, 2023

End of content

No more pages to load