Category Archives: Podcast

709: Madeline Ostrander, part 1: At Home on an Unruly Planet

on August 7, 2023 in Podcast

What’s actually happening with our environmental problems? Scientists predict. Journalists in periodicals tend to write what gets attention and clicks, so we don’t know how accurately they represent versus sensationalize. There’s plenty to sensationalize after all. Madeline spent time with several communities to find out what problems they faced, how seriously, and what they were doing about it. The result is she sensitively portrayed them in her book At Home[…] Keep reading →

707: Arnold Leitner, part 1: The founder of YouSolar, more than off-grid living

on July 31, 2023 in Podcast

Do you like my work because of my nearly unique background of a PhD in physics, having cofounded a couple companies, and having an MBA? You’re in luck with Arnold, who has done the same. We got our MBAs together at Columbia so inevitably met. He was working on his solar startup then, Skyfuel, which was making news, though I wasn’t working on sustainability yet the, still feeling like individual[…] Keep reading →

706: What I sound like talking sustainability when I forgot I was being recorded

on July 29, 2023 in Podcast

You’ve heard me talk sustainability leadership on this podcast and probably others. Have you wondered what I sound like talking to friends unrecorded? A friend who also teaches leadership at NYU knew my background and had talked about climate with her students. She scheduled a call to talk sustainability leadership with me to help prepare. She told me she would record it, but since we were talking on the phone[…] Keep reading →

705: Greg Bertelsen: A bipartisan climate roadmap including a carbon tax

on July 26, 2023 in Podcast

Recent guest Bob Litterman spoke highly of Greg and his work at the Climate Leadership Council, a rare bipartisan effort on climate. He put us in touch. In the meantime, I was curious about a climate group started by Secretaries of State James A. Baker and George P. Shultz along with Ted Halstead. But they and other prominent Republicans published The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends. Greg is CLC’s CEO,[…] Keep reading →

704: Gernot Wagner, part 1: Guiding Misguided Economic Forces in the Right Direction

on July 24, 2023 in Podcast

Gernot and I go back a few years from meeting online over sustainability issues, finding out that we lived about a mile from each other, then meeting in person. Our first meeting, we got annoyed at each other, but our second we found we agreed on more controversial topics and had a grand old time. We also ran into each other at the conference where I met his longtime collaborator[…] Keep reading →

703: David Gessner, part 1: A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World

on July 21, 2023 in Podcast

What does the world look like today with regard to our environmental situation? Not the latest news about a disaster we can write off as a one-time event, even if yet another once a once-in-a-century event now common, but what does it look like on the ground. We know there have been record-breaking fires, floods, and storms. What are they like? David travels the United States to record what he[…] Keep reading →

702: Peter Singer, part 1: Calm, reflective talk considering not flying

on July 17, 2023 in Podcast

With Peter Singer, I could have picked several topics relevant to sustainability leadership: veganism, vegetarianism, and charity come to mind, as does my post about him six months ago, Fixing Peter Singer’s drowning child analogy for sustainability. The day before recording, I saw him speak live and asked during the question-and-answer period at the end about not flying. He answered thoughtfully and reflectively, not with the usual reactivity and emotional[…] Keep reading →

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