Leadership

Why I avoid polluting and depleting

Freedom / Leadership / My Favorite Posts / Pollution and Depletion

Why I avoid polluting and depleting

Media coverage on me mostly presents me as an environmentalist. When they report on my disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid, avoiding flying, and taking a decade to fill a load of household garbage, they post pictures of solar panels. They know what readers look for. I tell them that focusing on my solar panels and how I make do is like going to Martin Luther King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and asking what shoes he wears, what routes he takes, and how exercise is healthy. They would miss that the point of the boycott wasn't shoes, walking, or exercise but liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security. Everyone misunderstands why I avoid polluting and depleting. Also liberty, freedom, equality, democracy, and national security.…

July 2, 2026

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

Letter to the World, version 2

Candidate text to go on on the landing page: joshuaspodek.com. It's shorter than version 1, but less detail. If you smoke or gamble, it's hard to help others stop. You haven't felt or overcome the emotional and social challenges. Stopping alone---that is, "leading by example"---doesn't motivate others, nor does lecturing facts, numbers, ten little things, or even answering "what's one thing someone can do today." Changing deep-rooted behavior and culture is possible, even deeply rewarding, but it requires long-term, deep work, including listening, empathy, understanding others, persistence, firm resolve, accountability, and other hard parts of leadership. That's what I do. I apply leadership to our culture to stop it from rewarding behaviors that pollute and deplete. Yes, I avoid polluting and depleting, but that's not…

June 26, 2026

Awareness / Freedom / Leadership

A curse of mastering personal leadership

Talking to a friend yesterday who shares my vision and mission and agrees on the need for leadership, since it involves changing culture. Only he doesn't want to learn to lead. It's the mission's greatest need, but he doesn't like leadership. He says it makes him uncomfortable and that he'd rather follow. He says in various ways how following is his thing. Then comes the kicker, what I hear all the time, and should have long ago recognized as a legitimizing myth. He says, "You like doing those things." I can talk about psychologists' term "fundamental attribution error," thinking that what you see someone doing is what they want to do, but it doesn't capture how annoying this reaction is. I don't mean to single…

June 25, 2026

Education / Leadership / Pollution and Depletion

A tragic comment the dean said about artificial intelligence at my 20 year business school reunion

Yesterday I wrote personal reflections about my business school reunion. Today I have to share a tragic comment from the Dean of the school. There was a town-hall type gathering where he spoke about the state of the school. One of the main topics was that the school was embracing artificial intelligence with enthusiasm. He spoke of how professors were being trained in it, students were encouraged to use it, and so on. At the end he acknowledged that using AI polluted and depleted. I think he acknowledged even that the scale was already huge, accelerating, and without any ways to curb it. His response to this acknowledgment: "We have to be cognizant of that." Be cognizant? What kind of cop-out is "be cognizant of that"?…

June 23, 2026

Education / Leadership

Reflections on my business school 20 year reunion

A couple weeks ago I attended the 20 year reunion for my earning an MBA at Columbia Business School. It's been decades since I applied. I can't help sharing posts from when I applied, since the period between when I considered applying and when I started was 23 days. Here are posts on that process: I started at an Ivy League business school 23 days after deciding to apply. Here's how. My background for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days My essays for getting into an Ivy League business school in 23 days Three things struck me at the reunion. Actually, more than three but I'll write about three. Business school was not what I feared Long before considering applying, I…

June 22, 2026

Leadership / Visualization

How to Win: OG Anunoby, Game 4 Knicks

Everyone in New York City knows that in game 4, the Knicks overcame the greatest deficit in NBA finals history to win. No one can get enough of seeing OG Anunoby tip the ball in with 2 seconds on the clock. Basketball is a team sport and every second of the game counted, but if you want to win in life, and I don't mean defeat others, I mean to reach your full potential, to help everyone around you, it's worth noting a few points about Anunoby on this play. Here's the video, if you haven't seen it enough. Then I'll show a few points we can learn from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOQKRjP3ZJk Moment 1: With 5.7 seconds on the clock Anunoby has the ball on the sideline,…

June 15, 2026

Education / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Pollution and Depletion

The 5 greatest flaws I see in environmentalism

I see environmentalism increasingly causing environmental degradation because the core of its practice is misguided. I started this post to write about the two greatest flaws I see in environmentalism, but three more came to me while writing. My goal is not to be comprehensive or authoritative but to provoke thought and behavior change. [EDIT: I came up with more since posting, so now more than 5. I may keep updating.] To believe that suing more solar, wind, or any energy source, including nuclear or, should it ever work, fusion, will lower use of fossil fuels or uranium, or their resulting pollution and depletion. Corollary: To believe that calling solar, wind, or any energy source as implemented today "clean," "green," or "renewable" means that it…

June 13, 2026

Doof / Education / Leadership / Nonjudgment / Pollution and Depletion

NYU’s president breaks NYU’s rules, to pollute and deplete of course

I wrote in 2023 about NYU consistently violating its own rules in NYU in 2019: We will stop buying bottled water. NYU in 2023: Here’s some bottled water from us. It's tempting to read something I'm not writing. I'm talking about leadership, which requires credibility and integrity, which require hands-on practical experience, not mere talk. I'm not writing in judgment. During a bus boycott, Martin Luther King would undermine everything if he occasionally took the bus, or even once, even if it took him places faster than any other way and he could do more with that extra time than anyone else. I attended a wonderful event hosted by NYU this week. The prominent author Walter Isaacson spoke about his book on the Declaration of Independence…

June 6, 2026

Most people don’t realize how much stupid stuff they do every day that they consider critical

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises / Leadership

Most people don’t realize how much stupid stuff they do every day that they consider critical

The title says it all, but it bears repeating: "Most people don't realize how much stupid stuff they do every day that they consider critical" I've been meaning to write this post for a while. People constantly say how busy they are, often as an excuse not to do something meaningful. As best I can tell, most people today don't know their values enough to know how to choose to act on their values and create meaning in their lives over acting in ways to entertain them and deliver short-term reward but nothing or less-than-nothing in the long term. Coaching clients and workshop participants find that the exercises bring them more free time and save them money, even though those results aren't the main goal.…

May 20, 2026

Environmentalists rarely try to solve the problem

Addiction / Doof / Leadership / Nature / Pollution and Depletion

Environmentalists rarely try to solve the problem

Fixing the results of a problem is not the same as stopping it from recurring and you rarely can undo all the problems, especially if you do it persistently. For example, exercising doesn't make up for an addiction to doof. Even if you burn off the calories, it doesn't fix the health problems or make back the wasted money. More importantly, since you keep consuming doof, you'll likely miss exercising sometimes. Relevant to polluting and depleting: plant all the trees you want. If our culture values affordable houses and food, when they want to chop your trees back down, they'll find a way to. I distinguish mopping up the mess from not causing it because I'm getting flooded with requests for people promoting stuff for…

April 21, 2026

I Challenge You to Find an Environmentalist Who Doesn’t Argue Against Sustainability

Leadership / Pollution and Depletion

I Challenge You to Find an Environmentalist Who Doesn’t Argue Against Sustainability

I just returned from another event by environmentalists. As usual, they promote climate most, mainly through emissions, but also through ESG and DEI. As usual, they promote anything but sustainability. When they talked about circular economy stuff, they talk about mining waste streams, but not ending nonrenewable inputs. When they talk about plastic, they talk about increasing recycling rates, but not that its mere production creates pollution that we have no way of rending benign, not now nor in any plan on any meaningful level. You get the picture. They usually talk in bubbles that don't challenge that they lack a vision to reach sustainability. Many of their proposals don't help and often accelerate problems or at least distract from actually reaching sustainability by leading…

April 6, 2026

Did Paul Ehrlich Help or Hurt His Cause?

Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership / Nonjudgment / Pollution and Depletion

Did Paul Ehrlich Help or Hurt His Cause?

Paul Ehrlich died two weeks ago. I read The Population Bomb a while ago and heard him speak in many interviews. I recently listened again to a few recordings of his and read a few articles of him. In each he was speaking to people who liked him and agreed with him so he spoke freely. In each he called people who disagreed with him "idiots" or something like "people who can't count to twenty without taking their shoes off." He wasn't perfect. Nobody is, but though he acknowledged he was wrong on some points, he didn't take responsibility for mistakes. He just said that he would be right in the long run. He didn't acknowledge that he didn't take huge factors that would affect…

March 25, 2026

Something important missing in my life

Exercises / Leadership / Relationships

Something important missing in my life

I was talking to a coaching client about leadership, which works with people's intrinsic motivations. Since our greatest motivations and passions tend to be our greatest vulnerabilities, we tend to protect ourselves by hiding them. A challenge, then, for the leader who wants to go beyond just managing, beyond just leading, to inspire people, is to learn their deepest motivations, which they often protect the most. I was working with the client on how to make people feel comfortable sharing their vulnerabilities. As much as we protect them, since they are passions we care about, we want to share them... as long as we feel the person we're talking to will support us, not judge us, make fun of us, manipulate us, or otherwise use…

March 19, 2026

I searched “comprehensive list of environmental solutions.” No wonder everyone feels hopeless and gives up.

Creativity / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Nature

I searched “comprehensive list of environmental solutions.” No wonder everyone feels hopeless and gives up.

I searched "comprehensive list of environmental solutions." The results search results showed nothing meaningful or helpful. Before continuing, I should point out what prompted that search was writing my next book, which does present a solution, not only to our environmental problems, but to things that result from it, such as corruption, tyranny, racism, addiction, despair, and more. So I don't feel despair or anxiety from pointing out that not one proposed solution nor combination of them so far presented in the media solves our problems, at least that I know of, including from the search above. I think everyone can tell they don't work. Even the people proposing them know they don't work and will likely never work. That's why ardent environmentalists don't try…

January 16, 2026

Can you help me understand how liberals and progressives view leadership?

Leadership / Models

Can you help me understand how liberals and progressives view leadership?

I grew up in liberal, progressive households and I don't remember everything of how I viewed leadership, but I'm pretty sure I viewed it skeptically. Well, when Martin Luther King or Gandhi did it, it seemed inspirational, but when I considered doing it, I shied away. I'm trying to remember how I viewed it because I work with a lot of people who are liberal and progressive and they shy away from leading people. More than shy away, they seem to sabotage themselves from improving at it. They seem to shun it as something unseemly. I think they view it as coercive, like "If I do something that leads someone to do something they wouldn't have otherwise, I must be coercing them without their consent."…

January 9, 2026

Do people who fear learning to lead think it means imposing hierarchy?

Awareness / Leadership

Do people who fear learning to lead think it means imposing hierarchy?

A friend calls leadership "the l-word." I used to think of leadership as not something anyone could learn. I thought you either had it or you didn't. I also associated it with control. Today I associate it with help, support, empathy, compassion, listening, awareness, and social and emotional skills like them. It's been so long since I associated it with control, I have to work to reconnect with that feeling so it takes work for me to empathize with someone who describes it as "the l-word." I mean, when I was little we used "the f-word" to describe the worst curse word, which rhymes with duck. Today, "the n-word" seems the most taboo word to say or write, at least for people who aren't African-American.…

December 24, 2025

Dr. Larry Arnn on Churchill on technology and modern life

Freedom / Leadership

Dr. Larry Arnn on Churchill on technology and modern life

I recently finished Hillsdale College's course on Churchill, hosted by the school's president, Dr. Larry Arnn. If you don't know, the school is as conservative as schools get. Arnn is also on the board of the Heritage Foundation, also as conservative as they come. Both institutions support policies and activities that pollute and deplete. To my mind, activities that pollute and deplete deprive people of life, liberty, and property without due process of law and violate the principle of the consent of the governed---that is, they violate the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. People at those institutions haven't seen that problem yet, as far as I can tell, but it looks like they violate their values. A different, though similar, violation appeared to Churchill.…

December 17, 2025

Have you thought about sanitation systems? They violate ideals of the left and right. They are socialist *and* imperialist.

Leadership / Models

Have you thought about sanitation systems? They violate ideals of the left and right. They are socialist and imperialist.

Americans are divided over health care. Since everyone knows about the controversy there, I'll share some properties about it, then connect to sanitation. For comparison: health care People on the left want socialized health care. Everyone gets sick, no one wants to, so to them it makes politically, morally, and economically to provide health care to all. It spreads out the costs no one wants to pay but everyone has to. People on the right want a free, competitive market. Health care is a service. It benefits from people developing new technologies, drugs, ways to provide service, and other things that free markets develop best. People on the left fear that a free market with lead to monopolies, price gouging, oversupply of health care to…

December 10, 2025

Listening is sharpening your axe

Leadership / Tips

Listening is sharpening your axe

The playing field of leadership is the other person's emotional system and situation. The more you know them, the more you can lead and inspire them. The challenge is that people's greatest motivations tend to be their greatest vulnerabilities, so we tend to protect them instead of sharing them. Thus it helps to listen, but many people who want to accomplish things tend toward action. Acting or prompting others to act rarely leads people to lower their protections and share their vulnerabilities. You've probably heard the saying, often mis-attributed to Abraham Lincoln, "If I had four hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first two hours sharpening the axe." It says that preparation for action helps, and often the more the better. I've…

December 6, 2025

Democracy, wedge issues, and calm

Leadership / Nonjudgment / Relationships

Democracy, wedge issues, and calm

People's language and emotions get intense around wedge issues like abortion, gun rights, and tax levels. One side says the other wants to control women's bodies, the other says the one wants to kill babies. Such characterizations, mischaracterizations, and seeing the other from your view not theirs makes finding common ground nearly impossible. I call this pattern the worst problem in the world. Yet we have to live together. Secession didn't work so well in 1861. That's at the national level. At the individual level, if we can't talk calmly to our neighbors or think calmly, we can't become calm in the rest of life. Being angry all the time, or being stuck in emotions in that direction, doesn't make for a fulfilling life. My…

December 5, 2025

One of the most important statements of environmentalism: giving up on changing culture (and what to do instead)

Doof / Freedom / Leadership

One of the most important statements of environmentalism: giving up on changing culture (and what to do instead)

I enjoyed reading Bill McKibben's latest book Here Comes the Sun. I found much of it well researched. Still, I don't think it made clear what I consider its starting point. Before you read the critical stuff I start with about the book, I end on a high note. I've written many times how tools like technology, market incentives, and legislation aren't good or bad. They implement and augment the values of the people and culture wielding them. As long as our culture rewards behaviors that pollute and deplete, it will bend the use of any tool to accelerate itself. Whatever your intent with, say, solar panels, if you don't change culture, however much solar panels decrease emissions in one area, overall, they will enable…

December 4, 2025

Differences between environmentalists’ strategies and mine

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Nature / Nonjudgment

Differences between environmentalists’ strategies and mine

I've been increasingly realizing and pointing out that I am not an environmentalist. I surprised myself to discover it. I had long felt misunderstood when people asked, “If you like nature so much, why don't you go to the woods live in nature?” It had long been obvious to me that we needed to change culture, not escape it, and New York is an influential cultural center. Then I checked and in 2014, shortly before my first experiment in acting sustainably of avoiding packaged food for a week, in a post in this blog entitled The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the world we live in, I wrote, "The issue is not how other people think about us or trends. Polluting means hurting people. Dirty…

November 11, 2025

Lincoln didn’t heal slaves’ wounds. He led their “owners” to stop owning them. I’m following Lincoln, and then some.

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Lincoln didn’t heal slaves’ wounds. He led their “owners” to stop owning them. I’m following Lincoln, and then some.

Our environmental problems are symptoms. I won't fight people trying to protect and conserve nature, but the degradation of nature isn't the problem. Restoring an old growth forest doesn't change that billions of people are acting in ways to cut down whatever is restored. Many times I've described how the suffering and death we and our culture is causing is orders of magnitude times greater than slavery, so I won't hesitate describing what I'm doing in terms of slavery. Also, while I value nature, we have laws to protect people, not as much to protect nature. Many environmentalists point out that since we're all connected, protecting wildlife is protecting humans. It works the other way too: protecting humans means protecting wildlife, since protecting humans means…

October 31, 2025

Climate Week NYC: Slimy and Duplicitous, causing the problems they complain about.

Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

Climate Week NYC: Slimy and Duplicitous, causing the problems they complain about.

Climate Week NYC was a month or so ago, but its sliminess lingers. I'm writing this post not to complain, but to call attention for the need for leadership, integrity, and credibility. I saw none there, but huge demand for it. I haven't engaged yet with the event planners so attended passively, therefore include myself in showing no leadership there. It's further motivation to finish my next book, which will be my platform for taking responsibility and leading. In the meantime, people act performatively---that is, as if they were helping, but doing nothing effective, or more often counterproductive. Take, for example, the first thing on display at one of the main events, a race car. Is the idea that its being electric means it helps?…

October 29, 2025

Hear my second time on the Heritage Foundation podcast The Power Hour with Jack Spencer

Audio / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Podcast

Hear my second time on the Heritage Foundation podcast The Power Hour with Jack Spencer

It's been close to a year since I first appeared on the Heritage Foundation's podcast The Power Hour, hosted by Jack Spencer, who has been a guest on my podcast three times. First, I enjoy Jack's hosting both as a guest and a listener. I really was laughing as hard as I said when I came on. You'll hear me share more about how America's founders, Lincoln, Adam Smith, and other Enlightendigenous thinkers inform my views and actions. To my credit, I think I convey important thinking about sustainability based on what we need for society to work. It won't work if anyone can just do what they want. Roles for government include ensuring the consent of the governed and protecting people's life, liberty, and…

October 21, 2025

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