Scott went above and beyond acting on his sustainability commitment to run. He battled covid during training. Did the extra effort bring him down? On the contrary, since he did it for personal, intrinsic motivation based in his connection to the environment, he valued it more. I read curiosity on his part so shared my personal actions and systemic strategy different than the typical ones to switch from fossil fuels to so-called renewables. I say "so-called" because they require fossil fuels at every stage plus we have to handle their end-of-life pollution. As I see it, polluting less than the most polluting energy sources but still polluting isn't sustainable, it only buys us more time to become sustainable. He seemed genuinely interested in my experience…

Geoff's story of his commitment to act on his childhood memories of playing along the Missouri River in South Dakota starts off interesting, then turns exciting, thrilling, and ultimately life-changing. One of the things we most fear happened to him and he loved it. I think our conversation then grew more interesting. He's a storyteller and educator. He learned from the experience beyond what reading a book or reading a graph on carbon levels could reveal. We explored what nature brings to us, and what its absence deprives us of. Geoff is an experienced and brilliant thinker and speaker. He explores and shares the interplay between nature and humanity, its loss, and what that loss means to us. This episode will make you think. I…

Dan Barber is helping revitalize our food system. We start by going over his background, how fear drove him maybe most of all. Then we get into what drives food: farms and soil combined with creativity. His goal is supporting farming from the most basic level. He doesn't oppose people shopping farmers markets. He comes alive describing discovering what farmers who know the land learned to practice: diversity, rotation, and all what it takes to grow wheat, for starters. The whole ecosystem. I hear him sharing joy, passion, fun, curiosity, discovery, health, and deliciousness. It comes through community, practice, honoring nature and tradition. Prepare to be fascinated. Dan Barber's presentation, The Taste of WheatBlue Hill at Stone BarnsFamily Meal in Manhattan

If you agree innovation and technology has its drawbacks, you may still worry: if we don't press onward, aren't we risking reverting to the stone age with thirty becoming old age and mothers and children dying in childbirth. Don't we store fat so well because our ancestors never knew when their next meal would come? I used to think that way. Learning about cultures that haven't adopted our technology-based culture relieved me of my ignorance. You've heard episodes with authors of books on Hawaiians before Captain Cook and the San bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. These cultures didn't barely eke out survival. They thrived. The San lived for hundreds of thousands of years. They show higher signs of resilience, health, longevity, abundance, equality, and stability…

Etienne starts by sharing how his government in England is beginning to increase how much it threatens punishment for people protesting, including what he does as an MBE working with Extinction Rebellion. He sees that reaction as showing they are making a difference. I hear it is similar to what is happening in my nation, the U.S. In our first conversation, Etienne was already acting and protesting. Sustainability is among his highest priorities. He isn't just talking about it. He's on of the most active people I've spoken to, by no means backing down. On the contrary, increasing his activities, as determined as ever. This episode features two people who have done what everyone can: making changing culture to increase human flourishing our top priorities,…

Nakisa describes herself as naturally loving science, born into a hip hop world, combining these starting points. She starts by describing her journey growing up not learning that much about our environmental situation, seeing it as abstract and unrelated to her world, to being discovered for her ability to communicate, organize, and influence. The more she learned, the more she saw it as more than just affecting her life and community, it was critically damaging it. She saw the environmental problems as intertwined with social issues that were already priorities. The polluting cement factory in her neighborhood that fouled the air wasn't just an eyesore that illustrated a failure of democracy for being an eyesore never considered to be built in a rich neighborhood. It…

Lauren's unusual knack for attracting a refined mix of brilliance and emotional unavailability created a storied dating life from 2010-2019 which included actors, pick-up artists, doctors without borders (or was it boundaries?), CIA agents (who shouldn't have confessed that), astrophysicists, and Daniel J. Jones, author of the 2014 CIA Torture Report, who was portrayed by Adam Driver in The Report (2019), among others. Approaching 600 episodes and a few years into a personal podcast, I'm bringing Lauren on partly as a fascinating person, partly to share more about my past, like my episodes with my mom, whom Lauren met, or the Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll series. Lauren and I dated during the time I was coaching (mostly) men dating and attraction skills. Lauren…