Podcast

Hi, Listeners have requested I solicit questions from readers and listeners to answer them on podcast episodes. I'm sure you've seen Ask Me Anything or AMA episodes and threads on other media. Do you have any questions on what I write about: leadership, sustainability leadership, sustainability, initiative, etc? If so, contact me and ask. I don't know how many questions I'll get, if any, but look forward to answering. Josh

Janet shared how she found This Sustainable Life, what kept her coming back, the guests she liked, and how it's affected her. I wish I had recorded episodes with listeners before to learn what you all like, don't like, and want more or less of. Listening to it after recording, I consider our conversation one of the most accessible for new listeners. Janet described various aspects of it that I suspect will resonate with many listeners. One thing that hit me was how the podcast restored her enthusiasm to act. Years ago she acted as much as she could on sustainability, to the point of picking up fruit rinds people had littered to put in compost. She didn't act for internal reasons but external, so…

Leaders who know how to lead and change culture know culture eats strategy for breakfast. This concept figures strongly in Michael's book, Gridiron Genius. When most people watch football, they see the game, maybe the game plan and strategy. We see it on the scale of a play, maybe a game involving twenty-two men on a field, maybe also the coaches and trainers. Michael sees each play in the context of the game, season, and overall culture of football as it evolves over decades. He knows the key players, coaches, owners, past players, their careers, their relationships, and their families if relevant. To understand and change culture doesn't come from just telling people what to do. It means listening, understanding, testing, trying, failing, coming back,…

Regular listeners know I started an experiment disconnecting from the electric grid. I began May 22. Then on July 22, I posted an episode that the solar panel or battery broke, or both. I didn't see how I could continue so said that after I finished recording, I'd declare victory, reconnect to the grid, cook lunch, and move on. Regular listeners and readers of my blog know that I posted about keeping going. What gives? Did I stop or not? I'd meant to record an episode explaining that I kept going without even solar power, though still using my "cheat" of allowing plugging my computer and phone at NYU. Recording my second episode with Michelle Nijhuis, I got to share that story, so I'm posting…

Where was Michelle Nijhuis all my life? She lived off the electric grid for fifteen years and I was about two months in, so we shared stories of the experiences. She did it much longer and her fiance had to assemble everything from scratch. I'm only two months in and can use off-the-shelf parts, but I'm in Manhattan, so can't set up a permanent system. Some similarities: connecting with nature, learning to respect power, living with less resulting in living more. Michelle shares her challenges of connecting with the human world when disconnected to a power grid, but I don't think you'll hear regret. I have to correct myself: I said kilowatt-hour when I meant watt-hour. My battery isn't 1,000 times bigger than I said.…

When I wrote up my experiment to live with my apartment off the grid in Manhattan for a month, I looked up what I did the morning I started. My library records show I borrowed and listened to Sebastian's book Tribe, then my browser history shows I watched a ton of videos featuring him. Soon after I read Freedom, watched Restrepo and The Last Patrol. His work makes you question your values, the values of our culture, and what you do about it. In my case, his exploration to why in a culture of material plenty, that according to, say, Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now or The Better Angels of Our Nature, which say life is the best its ever been, in head-to-head competition, people who…

In this sixth conversation between an Extinction Rebellion Rebel and a home-grown sustainability leadership (I hope) leader, we explore more of the life of someone who has devoted himself to solving our environmental problems. We continue comparing and contrasting the approaches, learning from each other, developing friendship, sharing the challenges, and sharing why we do it. If you, listener, haven't yet decided to make sustainability your priority, I think you'll find everyone needs your help. I hope this conversation helps influence you. Whatever else you're working on, clean air, land, food, and water will help. I hope Etienne and my conversations help reveal it's a deeply rewarding life. And hearing from an Olympic gold medalist who sees this work as the most valuable he can…

Here are the notes I read from: 40% of pregnancies are unplanned. Overpopulation is a major problem for environment so it's a topic for this podcast.Girlfriend who pressured me into unprotected sex and got pregnantNot only women's issue. Men have as much value to add as anyone who hasn't been robbed or murdered to speak on robbery and murder.Her power, reversing her word, pressuring, irresponsibility, tearFinancial abortion. If you support abortion, it's consistent and will help you win your caseStories of pro-lifers getting abortionsMany men who support abortion and many women who oppose itWhat if someone believes unique human life begins at conceptionTo me, fertilized cell is not a human being. Like an ant, not an anthill, nor are a dozen ants or even thousands.…

Having just started month three of living off the electric grid in Manhattan, technical issues led me to stop the experiment. I'm not sure the problem, but connecting the solar panels to the power station, it doesn't charge. I don't know how to diagnose it without another power station or solar panel I know works to find the problem. Here are the notes I read from: Last use of electronics off-grid before cooking lunch with pressure cooker, which will mean reconnecting the apartment's master circuit that I disconnected in May.I knew I'd feel dirty because I would cause pollution.Up and down stairs, sleeping in heat, knee injuredThe hard part wasn't living traditionally. My food was more fresh. I lived with more meaning and purpose.The hard…

Here are the notes I read from: Yesterday my mom suggested I move away from the city if it makes me feel so bad. Last week my dad reaffirmed that he wouldn't appear on the podcast without some vague conditions he was using my invitation to cajole me into. To move away from the problem is exactly the opposite of my mission. Nearly everyone else identifies my work as helping the world, even if they don't see the underlying beauty, harmony, glory, and such I do, but my parents get annoyed and try to change me. Why the discrepancy? If you listen to this podcast, you're probably interested in leading people on sustainability. You probably face different problems with your family than others you try…

Mike committed to a year-long task. Few guests go for so long. Since we're in a writing group together, I've seen him in between, but since I want you, the listeners, to hear guests' results first, I didn't ask him if he stayed on track. To be candid, I suspected he didn't because of the year length. Regular listeners know I bring some guests on for episode 1.5s, where I help bring them back on track. Usually it happens because I didn't connect them enough to their intrinsic motivation. I can't stand about our culture, including environmentalists: everyone uses extrinsic motivation, coercing, cajoling, convincing, and seeking compliance. All these techniques promote resistance. Even if the person complies on the action you bludgeon them into, you…

Nakisa shared about the intersection of nature and its disappearance growing up, as well as her growing awareness of it, family, community, and a polluting cement factory appearing in her neighborhood. We recorded shortly after the Buffalo shooting of May 2022, and talking about access to fresh produce disappearing from her neighborhood touched on it. Everything led to her sharing about her plans to garden and the role of gardening in her life growing up. She hasn't made the headway she wanted to, but isn't letting up. We'll have to wait for another episode to hear about more visible results, but she shares plenty about gardening and how we could use more in all neighborhoods. I think you'll hear her talking about nature, through gardening,…

In Etienne and my continued exploration of each other's work, we look at my leadership work from his perspective. What are the differences between leadership and protest? What's the difference between a purity test and living by your values? How do my goals, strategies, and tactics differ from theirs? How do our efforts complement each other? Our time was tighter, so it was a shorter episode. I think it may lead to collaborating some time with Extinction Rebellion.

We start by my reading the emails where I invited Whitney to this podcast by cursing with a few f-bombs, showing how we started our interactions. Before recording our first episode we met in Washington Square Park and picked up litter together. Read my emails cursing at Whitney Tilson that brought him to my podcast Whitney shares how he created and maintains his following, speaking his mind, deliberately sharing provocative opinions. He shares how and why he engaged so much on the pandemic. I see that passion raising the potential for him to engage on sustainability, but we'll see. He became as knowledgeable as anyone I know and led a large number of people on it. Then we talked about carbon offsets. I shared my…

You've heard of The Chicken Soup for the Soul book and series. I had to start this conversation by apologizing that I did the opposite of the advice everyone knows: "don't judge a book by its cover." Something about the title and cover didn't resonate with me. They seemed syrupy and palliative. To my credit, 144 publishers also passed on the book before one published it. The book evolved into a series of hundreds of titles selling hundreds of millions of copies. Still, I only read the book after a mutual friend introduced us. I can't describe how valuable I found the book. The stories resonated with me, coming at the right time for me, though I wish I'd read it earlier. The stories tell…

Listen to the difference between Ash's tone, her level of engagement, and her type of engagement between what she talks about in the first few minutes and about fifteen minutes later. In both cases she shows a high magnitude of emotion. At the beginning she's outraged at stuff outside her life. Later she's passionate about things in her life. Nearly everyone trying to motivate on the environment focuses on problems elsewhere, trying desperately to convince, cajole, or coerce people to act because they have to or disasters will happen. That extrinsic motivation comes off as bludgeoning, all the more because it always comes from someone who isn't living sustainably. If you want to motivate someone, connect with intrinsic motivation. What do you care about? What…

Since Bill visited the Hadza in modern-day Tanzania, and I've been learning about cultures that have lived for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, I asked him about how they lived. We talked about their religion, rituals, dancing, singing, fashion, textiles, and culture in general. Neither of us studies people or cultures, so we're just two people talking about our observations, but it's pretty clear when little boys learn to use bows and arrows around when they learn walking and talking that there are cultural differences we can learn from. As for our culture, the summer after high school, a friend and I rode bikes and camped from Philadelphia to Maine and back, about 1,500 miles over a month. Everyone jokes at least, but…

Following up last conversation with Etienne, on Extinction Rebellion's mission, strategy, and tactics, this time we talk about his path from disengagement to becoming a Rebel---that is, playing a significant role in Extinction Rebellion and committing a major part of his life to it. I don't know many others who have committed and dedicated so much personally, with such dedication and passion, to making sustainability one of their priorities or the priority. Most people seem content to talk about it and get outraged but not act. Etienne shares about peaceful civil disobedience, pressuring the state, his personal risk, coming to terms with engaging so fully, talking to loved ones about it, and more of the personal side of preparing to act. He knows his history…

Here are the notes I read from for this post: Walking through park2017, pandemic"Thanks"Not thankworthyRestored faith / Nobody does / interrupting / construction workerOfficeContinual improvementEnjoyingFat / "Titty twister!" / salt"I can't"See meth, fentanyl, heroin users"I can"Forced $20 bill on meHad to run but kept talkingPartly wish I'd gotten contact information

I indulge in asking Bill about his and his wife Laurie's passions, filmmaker friends, goals, and so on. He talks about passionate peers he's worked with like Michael Pollan and Paul Stamets. The names Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen come up too, as two other people who appeared in his movies. He explains the value of celebrity. He shares his storytelling techniques not to make political films or push people, despite covering fields others treat more bluntly. He and Laurie share nuance and subtlety. Also joy and appreciations. He takes an interest in the Spodek/AIM Method so I describe it to him, not just do it. I hope everyone practices it and spreads the joy, fun, freedom, and rewarding emotions and experiences that connecting with…

Josh Martin started to do his commitment to shop at the farmers market, but it didn't connect. I think we didn't connect it to his experience of the environment. We decided to find a new commitment by connecting more intrinsically. We spoke on sustainability, nutrition, health, sports, and many things, him from the position of an entrepreneur former athlete, me from a troubleshooting perspective. The result was covering many topics, eventually leading to a new commitment. My read from his tone at the end is that the new one resonates more for him. One of the main discoveries of this podcast is that with rare exception, everyone cares about the environment. What's separating most people from acting isn't a lack of facts or lists of…

Watch Jason's Not Just Bikes videos. I've watched them all. They're informative, engaging, funny, researched, provocative, and keep you coming back, but not like Netflix stuff designed to addict. After you watch a few, listen to our conversation. In our conversation he shares more depth than his videos of his motivations, how he makes the videos, interacts with his audience, feels frustration from some, learns from others, and more. He shares how life could be versus how it is. In this conversation he shares more about his wife and children, which drive his passion and choices probably most of all. We also bond on how our searches for a better life revealed huge cultural myths that, if we never try living differently, we never think…

Etienne Stott is using his Olympic gold medalist status to augment his impact acting on the environment, including working with Extinction Rebellion on peaceful civil disobedience. He's been arrested, spoken publicly, and more. When I started acting on sustainability, I looked for organizations to work with, but found none doing the leadership that I considered essential but i couldn't find anyone doing. I only learned enough about Extinction Rebellion to see it wasn't doing what I thought I should. After all this time I figured I should learn more what they do, so emailed Etienne to ask if he'd describe the organization. Before he started explaining, he asked if I was recording, so I started to. Etienne then extemporaneously but thoroughly described Extinction Rebellion at…

"Your story is truly inspirational": feedback from an attendee. The government advisory Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board invited me to speak on sustainability leadership Wednesday. I spoke on what led to my experiment going off-grid in Manhattan, two-and-a-half weeks at the time. Here's the video of the presentation, which includes the slides I refer to. Here's the audio for that presentation. It starts a bit slow, but stresses one of my main discoveries, that my method goes beyond shifting your mindset. It leads to a cycle of continual improvement. Looking back, I see the pattern. My challenge to avoid buying packaged food for a week gave me the humility and curiosity to question sacred cows like that flying is good and expect that experimenting will…