Favorites

Favorites / Freedom

Letter to the World, version 1

How I live, my work, my mission, and my vision are more conservative than today's conservatives, liberal than today's liberals, libertarian than today's libertarians, progressive than today's progressives. How? By doing what no world leader believes possible. They haven't even tried, hence their lack of credibility, integrity, vision, or remotely practical plan to address today's greatest problems. The stakes are higher but solutions more practical and achievable than they know. Most of us can't make it through breakfast without violating: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. Live and let live. Leave it better than you found it. We are restoring these values, enabling us to look people in the eye and say “we're doing our…

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June 16, 2026

Favorites / Podcast

Some of my favorite solo podcast episodes

When I redesigned my site, my page of favorite posts couldn't link to individual podcast episodes, so I'm making a separate page for my favorite solo podcast episodes. Most episodes are with guests, but in solo episodes I share personal thoughts on my own. For context, since I started working on my upcoming book, around January 2025, I saw that new ideas needed the book for foundation, so held back on solo episodes. I'll restart when the book is closer to its final draft and being prepared for printing. The new ideas move past some of the ideas in the episodes below, but even if obsolete, they reveal one person's journey from polluting and polluting more than most people ever to the first person I…

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June 9, 2026

Favorites / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs

My sidchas, standard procedures, and preferences

I meant just to list all my sidchas in my post Freedom exists in structure; it’s not chaos, randomness, or luck. Here’s my structure and freedom, but I made a mistake. I included standard procedures with sidchas. I didn't think of the distinction. One is habits. The other is the best way to do something. I've written about sidchas. What about procedures? If there's a better way and worse way, why do the worse way? Choosing a best way saves mental effort on top of the benefits of doing something better. Doing it consistently allows for continual improvement and increasing self-awareness. For example, living on the fifth floor, I could take the elevator or stairs. I decided once and for all to take the stairs.…

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May 6, 2023

Favorites / Leadership / Nature

See Reuters Video on Me. The headline: “New Yorker lives sustainable life off electric grid”

The video shows me cooking, fermenting, climbing, setting panels up, volunteering, picking up litter, and more. They recorded hours of footage. I like what they edited and only wish they could include more. For example, pulling the cart, I was bringing overstock, perfectly good food to the community center for people to pick up free. My favorite moments they couldn't include: When the interviewer tasted the famous no-packaging solar-powered vegan stew I made while they recorded. She said she liked it a lot. When I shared my three main goals: To alleviate suffering of people kicked off their land and on the receiving end of polluting and depleting, and minimize directly contributing to it. To lead leaders: you can't lead someone to live by values…

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April 22, 2023

Awareness / Favorites / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature / Perception / Pollution and Depletion

Sustainability basics almost everyone gets backward, twisting them up inside.

Things I've learned from experience: Apples taste sweeter than Ben and Jerry's, though not at first. Broccoli tastes better than Doritos, though not at first. Exercise feels better than heroin, though not at first. Not flying connects you with family more than flying, though not at first. Eating only local foods in season gives you more variety and connects you to more cuisines than foods flown in from anywhere, though not at first. Not flying teaches you more about other cultures and connects you with them than flying, though not at first. More electric cars pollute more than fewer cars, though not at first. More solar, wind, nuclear, and fusion doesn't mean less fossil fuels burned. Making a polluting system more efficient makes it pollute…

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January 18, 2022

Favorites / Models / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

Know the 2 carbon cycles and don’t confuse them.

Can we grow enough forests and use enough regenerative agriculture to sequester enough carbon to undo global warming? To answer this question you have to understand the two carbon cycles. I'm simplifying, but you can think of two different cycles of carbon. One is the regular life cycle of carbon-based life forms. When something lives, it contains carbon, including trees, humans, and everything living in dirt and the oceans. When a plant or animal dies, it decomposes and its carbon returns to the rest of the environment. If you've read about the Amazon rain forest becoming a source of atmospheric carbon, that result illustrates this effect. The other is the Earth's pressure pushing life underground and turning it to oil. I'll illustrate the two cycles.…

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July 25, 2021

Favorites / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

“Pride Destroyed the Park”, Washington Square Park after a parade (Video)

Following up my last video on what American culture is doing to what could be one of its jewels, here is a shorter, punchier view of Washington Square Park today. The quote, "Pride Destroyed the Park," comes from a woman who stopped me while I was taking pictures to tell me the park had 10 times more garbage a few hours earlier. Several people told me so. You can see teams of people cleaning it, around 9:30am. It is not a sanitation issue. It is not just a parade issue. It doesn't matter who was in the parade. You can make a difference. You need never buy bottled water, soda, takeout, or nearly any packaged food again in your life, starting this moment. https://youtu.be/-P0VcMekbO4 EDIT:…

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June 28, 2021

Favorites / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

It’s Time to Ban Single-Use Packaging: The Village Sun published my op-ed piece

My city is covered with trash. There's no mystery nearly all of it comes from packaging. We used to eat three meals a day and not while we walked. Today, at anyone's slightest whim, we buy doof whose fleeting pleasure we'll forget in moments if we even notice but whose packaging will endure millennia. I said my city, but I could have said my world. The difference between scenes like this picture and the mountains covering the Philippines, Indonesia, and India is only a few years. Unless we start seeing packaging not just for its utility but also for its poison. Leaded gas, asbestos, and marketing cigarettes to children had their benefits too, but they killed people so we legislated them. Future generations will recoil…

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June 14, 2021

Choosing/Decision-Making / Favorites / Models / Tips

How I keep going when I feel like giving up (which is often)

If you choose to act on sustainability, you will face darkness. You will want to give up. You will feel alone, misunderstood. I don't say so to dissuade, but to prepare to face a part of all of us. Nobody is polluting because they are monsters. We're all human. What is the alternative to confronting this part of us? To give up? To try to ignore and forget and try to find blissful ignorance? Hope someone else solves it? Hope the predictions that have been accurate for generations turn out wrong? Or, most common and most ghastly, hope the worst hits only after you die? The Scream by Edvard Munch Nearly everyone has disengaged for the past few generations. Their vain hope has only resulted…

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June 8, 2021

Art / Education / Favorites / Nature / Nonjudgment

The Science Book of the Decade: Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, by Tom Murphy

I didn't think of how small my building's elevators were when I bought a sofa after moving into my current apartment. It didn't fit. The deliverymen tried to bring it up the stairs too. They made the first landing, but couldn't make the turn to go up the next flight. They had to take it back. I ended up paying a $300 restocking fee plus big tips for the deliverymen's extra efforts. Plus I lost weeks with no sofa. Now I know my home's limits. Living within them is no problem when I know them, only when I didn't. A few minutes of measurement and geometry could have saved me that trouble and improved my life. Can homo sapiens' elevator, also known as Earth, fit…

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May 30, 2021

Doof / Favorites / Fitness / Hands on Practical Experience / Tips / Visualization

Vegan Seitan Stew, 4 minutes prep time (video)

I saw a post on Reddit's community on vegan fitness that talked about making seitan with a prep time of 90 minutes. I responded 90 minutes sounds insane. I make mine with a prep time of about two minutes. Add water and soy sauce to wheat gluten, mix with spoon then with hands, cut into pieces. Then put in pressure cooker with stew for a few minutes cooking time. Maybe I should make a video. They asked me to make the video, so I did. If you want to see just the seitan-making part, jump to the 2-minute mark. Otherwise you can watch me make the whole stew. Including talking to the camera, the prep time is about five minutes for about five meals. Learning…

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March 4, 2021

Art / Awareness / Favorites / Nature / Pollution and Depletion / Visualization

Is the best book on pollution and depletion a picture book you can finish in a sitting?

I've read a lot of books on nature. Most focus on facts, figures, and information that don't help. To the extent they provoke emotion, they do so heavyhandedly, lacking genuineness or authenticity. If you're explaining, you're losing, as a former U. S. President said, and most books on nature explain. I just finished a book, Over, which you can review online in its entirety for free. It's mostly a book of photographs. By aesthetic standards like composition, color, line, and form, the photographs are beautiful. Like many great works of art, it says something I knew but in a way I didn't know it could be said. It illuminates my understanding of myself, what human means, nature, beauty, and purpose-level parts of life. By measures…

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February 3, 2021

Favorites / Nature / Perception / Pollution and Depletion

The cause of our environmental problems, aka “the addiction speaking”

We were born into a world with systems and practices that pollute. I don't see how we can blame past generations for decisions they couldn't have expected to result in our world. Who could have believed when coal first boiled water to steam and that steam created mechanical motion that we could choke the sky with fossil fuel smoke and heat the whole damned planet? Who could have imagined when cars cleared the roads of horse manure that lead in the gasoline powering them would lower your intelligence and mine? Who could have imagined when plastic replaced cruel ivory for making billiard balls that we would fill the whole Pacific Ocean with it, replacing the fish to where they couldn't replace themselves? Yet they did.…

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November 16, 2020

Favorites / Podcast

This Sustainable Life popular guests

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May 6, 2020

Favorites / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs / Stories

Life-Changing Habits Even (Especially) Under Lock-Down

Here is the video from my webinar last week on life-changing habits during lock-down (and the rest of your life). https://youtu.be/BfnO0nQSuPk Wondering if you should watch? Quoting attendees: "My boyfriend was an Olympic fencer and I texted him: this webinar is like  an insight into your brain. Now I see how you do everything and how you're so productive." "Holy cow, it's so simple. It's so true. I could immediately see the ways . . . I'm pretty fit, I was a collegiate athlete. I work out. I'm doing the insanity program now and I was like 'Wow!'" "We talk a lot about freedom, whether it's financial freedom. Mental freedom is not something I've thought of. I thought about freedom with my time---I'm an advertising…

2 Comments

May 5, 2020

Favorites / Nature / Visualization

Imagine well-known people responding how we do to the environment

Heroes and role models Acting on one's environmental values is a leadership issue we are shirking. However challenging, stewardship, responsibility, and action improve our lives, families, and communities. We are missing out on richer, more fulfilling lives. Want evidence? I made images of heroes and role models of mine responding as most people today do to acting on their environmental values. Not heroes I also made images of people who chose to do what hurt others.

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October 30, 2019

Awareness / Exercises / Favorites / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs

Cold Showers Rock

I write a lot about cold showers. They may sound crazy, but bear with me and you may find them more helpful than you could have imagined. After taking a few in Shanghai because the water took five minutes to warm up that I couldn't stand wasting, in December of 2013, I took thirty days of cold showers. I can't tell you how much the discipline, dedication, and so on have helped. Taking them enables you to do things you wouldn't have thought you could but always wanted to, or that others dream of. If you're interested, read the posts in this series. Click on the links below to read my posts about it. 30 days of cold showers review: Lessons in discipline and pleasure…

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August 22, 2019

Doof / Favorites / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

Avoiding food packaging

In the fall of 2014, I noticed a lot of my garbage came from food packaging. I don't like when people pollute my world, so I try to avoid polluting theirs. I thought of an experiment: to try to go one week without buying any food where I'd have to throw away food packaging. For six months I planned and thought about doing it until one day I realized all the planning and thinking wasn't getting me anywhere. I decided to start the week then and there. I knew I wouldn't die. It turns out you succeed more when you act instead of planning for six months. You just go to the store, buy food without packaging, and don't buy food with packaging. You have…

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August 21, 2019

Favorites / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

Sidchas — the series

EDIT (May 2020): I gave my most comprehensive talk on sidchas. Here is the recording https://youtu.be/BfnO0nQSuPk Most people seem to want improve themselves, personally or professionally. Reading, watching, and listening to people tell you how you can develop yourself professionally or personally doesn't change anything beyond give you a bit of information. People don't succeed because they have more information. They succeed because they act. Even if you know you should do something, how do you know what? Marketers are trying to tell you what to do. They promote diets, exercise, how to start businesses, learning business skills, learning to be rich, learning languages, learning programming languages, religions, networking, and so on. It's bewildering. Each category has innumerable sub-categories. I bet you can name dozens…

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June 14, 2019

Favorites / Fitness / Habits / Stories

I’m famous for plogging! See me pick up litter while I run on local news.

The winter is over and it's time to get outdoors running. Jessica Formoso covered me plogging on WNYW Fox 5 local news last night. You can hear my experience that made plogging stick: I cleaned where I live---my home. Here's the video, where you can see me running like an old man. Let me know if you want to join me for some plogging or if you plog on your own. What's plogging? The video explains it, but plogging means picking up litter while you run. I spoke about it on my podcast, episode 120: Rules for plogging in New York City. Arianna Huffington's Thrive Global quoted me on it in “17 Creative Weekend Routines For a Happier, More Successful Week,” including plogging. More TV…

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March 29, 2019

Favorites / Fitness / Habits

I rowed a marathon today

Three weeks ago, inspired by an Olympic gold medalist and Crossfit Games champion podcast guest, I rowed my first half-marathon. Before then, I don't think I had rowed more than 7,500 meters at once, and even that distance happened probably five years ago. But the inspiration came from seeing the Crossfit competitors rowing a marathon, not a half marathon, so the I knew I had to go the distance one day. Why today? Because I exercise on a five-day cycle of lifting and cardio and February, with 28 days, gives the longest break between cycles. It was also crisp outside, about 30 degrees, making for comfortable rowing conditions on my rowing machine. A side benefit I didn't think about until starting was that my stomach…

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February 27, 2019

Favorites / Fitness / Habits / Nature

My famous no-packaging vegetable stew formula, take 1

After making my famous no-packaging vegetable stews for friends who hosted me across the country, one friend's mom emailed me: "Hi Josh, My son says you make an awesome vegetable stew with seasonal produce. Is there a formula for it?" One of my main goals is to make cooking delicious, economical, healthy food available to everyone, so I'm happy to share. I wrote the following: (EDIT: she acted on the email. Read about her first stew here.) Hi, Glad to hear from you and I believe I do make a mean no-packaging vegetable stew. I'm glad you asked if there is a formula and not a recipe since I do follow more of a formula than a specific recipe. Things change with the seasons. I…

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December 28, 2018

Education / Favorites / Freedom / Models

Mind-blowing learning that works: Self-Directed Education

Sometimes you discover a way of doing things so obviously more effective than how you were taught that you can't believe how twisted our society has become. The new way shows how much the systems we've created twist us to fit their goals, however much those goals smother and corrupt our basic humanity that served us for hundreds of thousands of years, living in harmony with our world, and still do in vanishing communities our twisted society is infecting, corrupting, and smothering. My educational discoveries A decade ago I heard of project-based learning. A few years later I started teaching that way and haven't looked back. I haven't prepared a lecture or given a test since (I hope my students don't feel I lectured). My…

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September 14, 2018

A Watt Steam Engine

Favorites / Leadership / Models / Nature / Podcast / Pollution and Depletion

Technology won’t solve environmental issues and you know it

EDIT: I recorded a podcast version of this post (episode 63) that covered same views beyond this post: If anything marked the beginning of the industrial revolution, it was James Watt's steam engine. It wasn't the first steam engine, but was more efficient than any before. More efficient means using less energy and less pollution, right? Wrong. Each engine, yes, but more people used engines, so Watt engines used more energy and polluted more than anything. They drained mines, which helped collect more coal, which fed more engines. The direct result is today's polluted world. If you fantasize that technological improvements will, after centuries since the industrial revolution increasing pollution and demand for natural resources somehow, magically, in your lifetime change their effects, you're dreaming.…

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July 13, 2018

Me holding a year of garbage

Favorites / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

More than a year since I emptied my garbage

More delicious, more convenient, more social, more food, more satisfaction, less money, less preparation time, more joy. How? Avoiding packaging. Avoiding packing by at least 90% has reduced my garbage to where I empty it less than once per year. Think you can't do it? I'm not special. Anyone can do the same. It took a while to transition---going from emptying garbage weekly to biweekly, to monthly, and so on to annually. It was hard, not impossible, and it improved my life at every step, same as it will with you. I'm aiming for biannually next time. I empty recycling 2 or 3 times per year, since it pollutes too, nearly as much as landfill garbage. Reducing consumption reduces pollution a lot more. And it…

8 Comments

June 14, 2018