If you haven’t listened to episode 781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community Project, four years in the making, listen to it first for context. That episode describes my journey to start volunteering as an auxiliary police officer and the background to it. Depending on how well you know me or not, you may find the activity as surprising as I do, though I seem to be a minority in[…] Keep reading →

Ali Horriyat and I have become friends since we started recording together. He hosts the Compassiviste Dialogues podcast. Friendship doesn’t mean always agreeing. On the contrary, I consider one of the roles of friendship—true friendship—is to disagree when appropriate and to confront a friend when you think they’re wrong, deserve criticism, or the like. People who aren’t friends may hold back from confrontation. That holding back may be polite, but[…] Keep reading →

Jan is a listener of this podcast who contacted me about how it changed his life. He is listening to each episode, starting from the beginning. I invited him to be a guest and he accepted. We’ve also crossed paths through working with podcast guest Dave Gardner, and his work in Growthbusters and running for President of the United States. Jan is Dutch, living in Germany, so can’t vote in[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and you can learn more about him from my podcast conversation with Martin Doblmeier, who directed a documentary about him, which I learned a lot from. I included Bonhoeffer in my upcoming book as a historic role model. He could have passed through WWII unscathed. Instead he chose to engage. In particular, he participated in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. On the face of it,[…] Keep reading →

I recovered from a week of events known as Climate Week 2024. It felt like 1776 Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home. Before reading why, I should tell you that I shared the views below with several attendees of several events and they all agreed. Climate Week brought bold pronouncements from CEOs, government representatives of cities, states, and nations, and cultural leaders. They said we could solve our environmental problems if[…] Keep reading →

This week’s first two works were masterpieces whose relevance to our world taught me about us and our times: A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition], by Eric Foner: I remember classmates talking about Professor Foner’s class as being one of the great classes when I was in college and he taught at Columbia. I watched and posted a bunch of his videos in Diving into Eric Foner Talks. I[…] Keep reading →

Would you drive a car that sent its exhaust into where you sit? Would you fly in a plane that sent its exhaust into the cabin? Would you dispose of all your garbage by digging a hole in your yard and keeping it there forever? If you send the exhaust and garbage into the rest of the world, it doesn’t go away. You’ve made your problem your neighbors’ problem. If[…] Keep reading →

People are going to read their preconceptions into what I’m asking, so if my question of this post seems provocative or you think it implies I’m promoting or espousing views, you’re misreading. There’s a pattern I see often. One example was last weekend at an alumni event at Columbia University. Former US Attorney General Eric Holder spoke. He’s a Democrat and liberal. As best I can tell, so were most[…] Keep reading →

Sustainability doesn’t promise you’ll live forever or that it will end all suffering. I don’t want to shock you or hurt your feelings, but we will all die. People we love will die. We will conflict with neighbors forever. No matter what advances we make in medicine, at some point a doctor will be unable to prevent you from dying. Worse, for all the advances made in extending life, other[…] Keep reading →