Announcing This Sustainable Life: Untethered, a new podcast in the growing family from Leadership and the Environment, hot on the heels of Leadership and the Environment: Sweden. The new one is hosted by Alison May, based in London. A quick explanation of the name: I'm about to change the name Leadership and the Environment to This Sustainable Life: Josh's Adventures in Stewardship. Rather than switch Alison's title shortly after starting, she's debuting the new brand and logo. Why a family of podcasts? This Sustainable Life: Untethered is part of a growing family that started with Leadership and the Environment. We want to act sustainably, just rarely first---that is, we crave leadership. With nearly 8 billion people, one podcast can't reach everyone. I train people who…

The rest of my story riding 100 miles a week and a half ago, where I gave up on myself, having lost faith in myself, but then getting lucky to force myself to finish. Only finishing strong showed I could do it. I've since fallen into the easy path of sharing my pride in finishing, but not the shame, guilt, and disappointment in myself at giving up. Finishing strong only reinforced my giving into the sweet lies I told myself to justify giving up.

You're in for a treat. Joe and I start talking business so you'll hear things happening while we're talking. We start by talking about his exercising while we talk, then my plans to swim across the Hudson about 48 hours from the recording (and the guy I swam with holding out on the video footage I describe in another episode). We talk about his picking up beach trash, but really about doing things, not just talking. Then we start doing. He starts planning during the call to transform Spartan Race's food and garbage plans. He puts me in touch with a food friend and starts the process to schedule a presentation to Spartan Race's leadership team to kick the process off. I tell him about…

Jaime and my second conversation is enjoyable and challenging. It was different than usual because for whatever reason we're talking about views on environment, personal action, education, and so on, but I didn't get to the personal challenge I like to. It was enjoyable because we're both into it for exchange, education, and understanding. Challenging because we have to figure out where the other is coming from. We start this conversation where we ended the last one, which is each putting forward his view. Getting and understanding another's view takes time, especially while trying to make yours available for the other to get and understand. Probably a third party will get and understand both faster and easier than either party. We end up at what…

People criticize environmentalists as doomsayers while celebrating futurists. This episode shares key examples where the doomsayers were the ones saying acting sustainably would ruin us. On the contrary, in these cases and many others, doomsayers said changing our polluting behavior would undermine our way of life. Yet acting on sustainability improved our situation in these cases. I also share, by contrast, cases where people projected new technologies would only improve our situations, and they may have in limited areas, but they deteriorated them in others. We can learn skepticism of those saying stopping polluting will deprive us of income, well-being, or liberty.

Bob and I begin lightheartedly, covering mulberry trees, gingkos, and how our views of nature change when we act in stewardship of it. Then I ask him about the decision as a conservative to endorse Biden. Question to you, the listener: will Bob describe that decision as hard  or easy? Did he face serious repercussions, wide support, or something else? What would you do in his situation? I couldn't put into words what he does. It's his leadership journey, so you'll have to listen. Another question for you. Who traveled more since our last conversation: the guy who wants to travel but can't but committedif he does to bring a spoon to avoid polluting or the guy who isn't  flying? We also talk about conservativism,…

George's challenge involved people congregating outside, which California banned, increasing his challenge. Personally for him, Badwater got canceled for 2020, the race that starts in Death Valley and ends up, over 100 miles later on a mountaintop. Widely regarded as the hardest race in the world, he was looking forward to it. Can you imagine the training, then you feel like what was it for? So life conspired to make acting on his environmental values for the podcast more difficult. He contacted me to ask about taking more time. I share with him how guests have struggled before. I'm not trying to suggest change is easy, but to accurately show listeners the challenges. George magnanimously agreed to share his vulnerabilities. So we scheduled this episode…

I speculate why environmentalists can be so annoying sometimes and why you'd still like to become like them, just not the annoying part. This episode will help you.

Nir and my second conversation covered how I inspired him and how he inspired me. If I'm not too presumptuous to say I inspired him, the first part is about his choosing to avoid flying. Several months into the pandemic, we're all used to not flying, but when he committed, before the pandemic, most people I talked to called not flying impossible. By contrast, Nir emailed me about 24 hours after our first conversation to say he had already substituted one flight with speaking remotely. In our conversation, he shares about how he made it happen. Then we get into a back and forth about technology. We agreed on some and disagreed on other parts. Then I switched to what he inspired me on: barefoot…

The not-flying-by-choice community is fairly small. About 80 percent of humans can't fly because they can't, but among people who can but choose not to, we're limited. Still, I can't believe I only found out about Maja recently. A few minutes into her TEDx talk, I knew I had to bring her on. She's avoided flying about double how long I have. I could hear from her every sentence that she's had to face all the addiction speaking of people claiming what I did before I challenged myself to go that first year without flying---"I can't avoid it," "the plane was going to flyanyway," and all that. You know the feeling of understanding and support you get when you talk with someone who has shared…

Everyone can lead when everyone around them agrees. How about when your conscience tells you what's right differs from everyone around you? Bob Inglis is a former Congressman from South Carolina---the reddest district in the reddist state, as he puts it. The short story is that he stated he believed the science behind climate change. That was ten years ago. They voted him out. You'll hear in this episode the story of how he transformed to take such a risk, how he responded, and what's come since. Last month he "endorsed Joe Biden for president Monday, arguing the Democratic nominee will help stabilize American politics and restore the country's institutions." I'm linking to his two TEDx talks, a Frontline interview, and his new organization, RepublicEN,…