While I was jogging (actually plogging) along the Hudson River around 7:30am, a person not wearing a mask stepped into my path, blocking me, saying the person's shoes had been stolen. The person seemed to let me pass, but then threatened me and threw a bottle that shattered at my feet as I ran past. I kept running, the hair on the back of my neck standing up and my adrenaline high. I don't know if the person had a weapon. I describe more and some of how it affected me in the audio. I was first going to say I was threatened since he didn't touch me. I'm not a lawyer so I looked up the definition. According to FindLaw.com's page on Assault Torts…

If you've followed sensible, expert advice on the pandemic, you've probably read or seen Ashish Jha in the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, Washington Post, and everywhere. On Tuesday he testified to the US Senate. He's Harvard's Global Health Institute's Director. Over 200,000 people have taken his online Harvard courses, which you can for free. Over 80,000 took Ebola, Preventing the Next Pandemic and over 120,000 took Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety. As it turns out, we were college teammates on the ultimate frisbee team. I'll link to a few top articles by him. With so many interfaces between the pandemic and us---health, government, research, policy, etc---you can read a lot of his views and experiences from different sources. I wanted…

I loved Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art. I found it inspiring. It had a property that qualifies for me that something qualifies as a work of art: it said something I always knew was true but that I'd never seen expressed that way." I mention it for two reasons. One, I recorded a podcast episode with Steven the other day, which led me to reread the book. Two, I found the book applies to acting in stewardship. Substitute a few words and new meaning emerges, mainly changing art to stewardship. Most of the rest follows. That recording is in the editing queue so should be ready in July. I describe the analogy in this episode's recording. I share a few examples. I hope…

Today was a rough day for me in New York. Most of my solo episodes I start with a point. Today brought me down enough that I decided to share more openly some thoughts I get when seeing situations that look hopeless and are deteriorating. I wouldn't listen to it if you feel down. Normally I try to support others. It occurred to me, I hear almost nothing back from listeners, friends, family, or the world providing hope or support. More commonly people seem mystified that I or anyone would try to live sustainably when they could instead eat, travel, buy, etc with nary a thought of stewardship or empowerment. Below are my notes reminding me of a few things during the day to cover…

I haven't taken political stance because I am working to removing wedge-ness from environmental policy. I'm working for people to see laws about how people affect others through the environment as we view traffic laws. We don't see red lights as red tape or bureaucrats telling us what to do. They make our world safer even if they slow us down sometimes. One day we'll see keeping mercury out of fish and other pollution similarly. I met Jonathan in person practicing democracy---gathering signatures in my neighborhood. I learned of him after meeting Andrew Yang, whose candidacy I valued. Last year I heard Andrew Yang speak and liked his message enough to read his book, The War on Normal People, and learn more about universal basic…

Think of where you are now in two ways---first, how it looked before humans arrived there, second, how it looks now. The difference is our influence, which results from our behavior, which results from our beliefs, values, hopes, dreams, and so on. In other words, the environment is the outward manifestation of our beliefs.

Dave Chappelle set a line for himself that when he became famous he would not cross it. His life crossed it and he left a successful show and a $50 million contract. He returned to become more successful than ever. I recently saw him win the Mark Twain award. Here's Wikipedia on him staying true to himself: Season 3 was scheduled to begin airing on May 31, 2005, but earlier in May, Chappelle stunned fans and the entertainment industry when he abruptly left during production and took a trip to South Africa. Chappelle said that he was unhappy with the direction the show had taken, and expressed in an interview with Time his need for reflection in the face of tremendous stress: "Coming here, I…

Dov and I started by talking about experiencing fun for the first time. I'm not the most fun person ever but a lot more now than before. He handled context that kept me from recording before despite knowing I wanted to. By context I mean legality, framing, and things that if you don't cover it's just talking about drugs, not life. I shared a few stories showing how I integrated the social skills the MDMA experience helped prompt, which leadership work eventually complemented and augmented when I went to business school. But the deep part of this episode is my sharing my experiences of powerlessness as a man compared to women, as well as the stories of few men who experienced similar situations that suggest…