I talk about a mindset shift followed by continual improvement as a process to change culture. I just realized there’s a second mindset shift. This post is partly like a diary entry, exploring a new idea, so not designed for easy reading, but maybe more seeing how my work develops. A few threads coalesced to clarify a huge missing piece of my mission, maybe a keystone that makes the structure[…] Keep reading →

Do you believe we should remove statues of people who held slaves? I can see both sides of people taking down statues of Thomas Jefferson. He was President of the United States and helped write its founding documents. He advanced freedom. Yet he was a racist who believed men in Africa mated with orangutans (he spelled oranootan in his 1784 Notes on the State of Virginia) and owned slaves. Since[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been learning more about abolition in the United States. In 1776, thirteen slave states, likely no one could imagine a world or nation without slavery. Yet in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment made us one free nation comprising thirty-six free states. Today no one would seriously propose repealing the Thirteenth Amendment, what Lincoln called the “king’s solution.” No law, judicial interpretation, or executive order could achieve what it did. On[…] Keep reading →

Katherine Roth interviewed me about unplugging my fridge and apartment from the electric grid and Bebeto Matthews photographed me cooking and putting my solar panels on my roof. Read the story and see the pictures at A fridge too far? Living sustainably in NYC by unplugging. I hope it helps achieve one of my main goals for this experiment: for a few people to say “You can do that!? I[…] Keep reading →

Regular listeners heard me on the Carbon Sessions podcast, by the community created by podcast guest Seth Godin that created the bestselling book The Carbon Almanac. You can tell that one host of the Carbon Sessions, Brian, had listened to This Sustainable Life. We kept in touch after recording. He was interested in the Spodek Method. We practiced it and recorded the three videos below of me teaching it, conceiving[…] Keep reading →

Part 2 of the introduction shares a few stories that illustrate the Spodek Method, a leadership technique to create mindset shifts and continual improvement on the environment. The optimism girds us for a more challenging next episode.

Ars Technica published a piece I wrote on my experiment disconnecting my apartment from the grid, I disconnected from the electric grid for 8 months—in Manhattan. It goes into more depth than my TIME piece I’ve Been Living Off-Grid In Manhattan for Half-a-Year. It’s in my voice, unlike the New Yorker‘s Off the Grid in the Big City. One of my main points was seeing the experiment like the Wright[…] Keep reading →