How do you face challenges? Not little ones like a pandemic lockdown for a year. Big ones. Regular listeners hear me talk about role models like Viktor Frankl and Nelson Mandela in the context of handling life challenges. During the pandemic, for example, I recognize there was suffering before, there will be suffering after, and there's suffering now. Our challenge is not to take on things outside our control since we can't, but to figure out how to respond, not just to the world but within our hearts and minds. We're locked down. Nelson Mandela was locked down for 27 years. If he could create meaning forced to break rocks, I can find meaning in my home, able to go out every day, with access…

Your blood contains PFOA, also known as forever chemicals. They cause cancer of several types, birth defects, and more. Dupont and other companies produced this stuff after learning it caused harm and dumped it into our environment. As best we can tell, they chose enormous profits over the health of their employees at first, and eventually all Americans and all humans because this stuff takes millions of years to break down and accumulates in our bodies. We know because Robert Bilott, today's guest, took on a small farmer's case. His cows were dying, we now know from water poisoned from Dupont dumping these chemicals. They pulled on the thread and the whole sweater unraveled. Robert's story became on par with those in the movies Erin…

Kathryn Garcia, candidate for Mayor of New York City joined. No matter where you live, the mayor here matters. Many national trends in politics, business, culture, education, sports, and more start here. Our output in entertainment, culture, but also pollution and population affect the U.S. and world. I wanted to treat two issues: sustainability and leadership. Also hear Kathryn Garcia as a person, not just a candidate. Talk about a welcome change from all-too-common American politics! You'll hear a public servant speaking with experience, knowledge, and heat. There are more issues than a mayoral candidate could talk about in one episode with the city in the midst of a pandemic, ethnic and racial strife, a cultural scene that's been shut down, disparities in wealth greater…

I noticed a trend among podcast guests that the people who have already acted the most on sustainability find new things fastest. By contrast, people who do less say they're already doing all they can, or at least all they can think of. That's backward, or would be if you thought there were a limited number of things you could do. The so-called experts who themselves haven't acted promote big, Earth-saving projects which of course I support, but they end up knowing only big, complex things. Most people can't think of what to do when they want to. That the people doing the most find more to do fastest suggests the more we act the more we want to act, the more we know what…

We got into territory I'd wanted to talk to a religious scholar about. I would have expected being recorded would make us more tentative, but I found the opposite. I didn't keep track, but several times I said feel free not to answer. Instead he answered more, sharing what he'd thought and researched about in depth. We cover Joseph, Isaac, the Arch Bishop of Burundi, population, contraception, consumption, and more, both in principle and in our personal lives. We also cover his personal experience in the woods near his home, his family, his work, and how they all interplayed. Family is the number one reason people give about not being able to act. "Josh, you don't have kids, you don't understand how it's impossible." Well,…