Leadership means choosing and deciding for yourself and for others. To lead effectively, it helps to know how you choose and what happens in your heart and mind when you choose---that is, how your intellect and emotions interact in the decision-making process. This episode refines and adds an element to a model by a guest of this podcast, Jonathan Haidt, for how we decide. I describe his model---you may know it, about the rider on the elephant, which contrasts with a common model of a charioteer with horses. Then I describe how our world differs from the world where his model applies. His model still works as long as we're in a benign environment. My model adds a different part of our minds from emotion…

Our second recorded conversation covered Rob's experience with separating his recycling. The first time we met we meant to record but ended up speaking for three hours, partly meeting as person-to-person and also talking about what people in this country with differing political views probably used to but don't any more. We also ate my famous no-packaging vegetable stew---a delicious way to minimize polluting. The second time we recorded, but also spoke a good hour first. In other words, despite Rob supporting Donald Trump and my opposing, we're communicating a lot---in the style of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. We don't plan to keep talking unrecorded, but we start and next thing you know we've covered a lot. As you'll hear at the end…

Many of us are struggling living in lockdown. Nelson Mandela has inspired me in many ways. Going beyond subsisting in captivity, he emerged from 27 years imprisoned on Robben Island---South Africa's Alcatraz---to become President. Today's episode shares part of what I believe helped him, which I believe can help us. First, he endured 27 years. We're only a few months in, and not in a small cement prison cell with a bucket for a toilet. More, he practiced daily habits. We can too. I describe his in this episode, I hope in ways we can learn from. Here are a couple quotes I read in the recording, both from his autobiography: "I attempted to follow my old boxing routine of doing roadwork and muscle-building from…

A great joy of podcast success is talking to people who changed your life. I read John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man about ten years ago. I couldn't put it down---as much from the writing as the stories and content. It led me to see the world differently, especially government, corporations, America, money, what my taxes support, politics. It recalled Upton Sinclair and Henry Thoreau. He is about to release a new book, Touching the Jaguar. He's written several books on shamanism, his experiences relevant to shamanism from before his economic hit man path, how the worlds interact, bringing them together, and showing how they are relevant today---including during a virus. If you're here just after I posted it, listen for the workshop…

People often ask for advice on how to lead in a given situation, what leadership means, or one tip they can improve their leadership with. Nearly none of the questions help someone improve their leadership. The most useful question I can think of is: How do I learn to lead? In other words, what steps can I take to learn to lead? No leader would answer: read a lot of books, magazine articles, or journal articles. Nor would they suggest discussing case studies of other people's experiences, write papers, listen to lectures, or take tests. They'd probably say something about getting experience, especially related to leadership, not sitting in a classroom. What experience, though? Only random life experience, hoping it will help? Learning the social…

You'll hear about Rhonda and how we met in the beginning of our conversation, but I brought her in for a different reason than most of my other guests. I invite a lot of people to my famous no-packaging vegetable stew. Though I created the stew with accessibility from the start, people kept saying I didn't understand that for some people they were less accessible, especially the "single mother in a food desert with three kids and three jobs." None of them were single mothers from food deserts. Well, no need to speculate. We can hear from one---Rhonda. I think you'll find our conversation surprising. We met for stew once before, with her son, to eat and record, but got so caught up in cooking…

I used Oskar Schindler in my third TEDx talk along with a few others as examples of people who took risks to do what they considered right—and that I think nearly all of us do. People like Rosa Parks and those who operated the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. I'm going to share about Oskar Schindler in a bit so you learn more than the movie showed. The video of the talk is being edited and should go up soon. I researched more about Dunkirk, as you'll see in the video, but I looked up a bit about Oskar Schindler. Why do we make movies about people like him and not the millions of others who saw what was happening but didn't act, hoping…

I thought about recording with parents for a while. Environmental action is personal and people keep asking me what motivates me. Well, now you'll get almost 50 years more background. Another issue with family and changing habits, lots of people talk and ask about challenges of changing others or selves within close relationships. This episode will give you my background, environmental and otherwise, how it affects our relationship, her views, and some dirty laundry. Both my mom and I think or hope you'll enjoy toward the end, where we talk past each other. We think you'll find it funny, though frustrating for us. For context and what precipitated doing this episode now: COVID-19 has led me to live in her and her husband's (my stepfather)…

One of my goals of this podcast is to bring people with alternative views. I won't deny this motive being mainly selfish. I want to learn and grow from alternative view. I grew up viewing technology and efficiency as better ways for humans to live. I saw them as ways to decrease our impact on nature. I've changed, as my podcast episodes distinguishing raising efficiency from decreasing total waste, to working on values. Most of the world, especially Silicon Valley, seems to think even more the way I used to. I read Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandas's upcoming book, The Future is Faster Than You Think, wondering what to expect. It's part of their Exponential Technology series that includes Abundance: The Future Is Better Than…

Growing up in Philadelphia in the 70s meant Bruce Springsteen was a part of my life. I'll always remember a fan in a promotional radio b-roll clip from one of the classic rock stations saying excitedly, definitively, "He's the best, he's Bruce. . . He's the Boss!" One of the earliest albums I bought was Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ. My high school girlfriend's older brother saw every show of his he could. I loved the Beatles most as a kid, but I've come to appreciate Bruce more over the years. I don't know anyone else who does anything like him, so raw, open, and honest, yet able to fill stadiums for weeks on end—not in music anyway. Maybe Muhammad Ali. If Woody Allen kept…

Before we recorded, Marni humbly said what she did wasn't that big of a deal, just a bit more than she normally did. She wondered the point of sharing it. So this second conversation with Marni was short and we talked as much about the podcast as about what she did. Which is to say, the episode narrated itself. I look forward to where it's mainstream for stewardship to feel second-nature, for people not just to say they care but act that way naturally. I don't feel that everyone doing little things adds up. I don't argue that it won't, but I believe that if leaders don't, then most others will follow their inaction with inaction of their own. Actually, I think I described the…