Podcast

If you haven't listened to Brent and my first two episodes, I recommend listening to them first. Also, I recommend reading Milwaukee Brewers' Brent Suter Sharing Love and Joy. I haven't approached the environment from a religious view and Brent and I spoke about plenty of interesting things the first two times, so we didn't get to it. Lately listeners have probably heard how much William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and their peers have become role models. I wrote Brent to see if he knew more about them and could share. He said he was happy to. I'm not used to talking about religion in public, but he was and was happy to record. I reread the story about his Christianity and was pleasantly…

We correct two big misunderstandings. First, most people associate acting on the environment with obligation, chore, deprivation, and sacrifice. We lead them to feel that way when we tell them what to do. We may think we're right because the science says so, but leadership depends not on how right you are but how the person you want to motivate feels. Second, people don't know Deming, or associate him, to the extent they know him, with statistics and how they felt about math problems in school. When you get Deming, you see understanding patterns reveals effective leadership, which is liberating, even fun. Kelly shares how digging dirt and planting plants became fun when led effectively. Since everyone cares about the environment in some way---after all…

Of Adams' earlier books, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves changed my approach to sustainability---my hopes, expectations, role models, strategies, . . .  a lot. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His stories recount people righting unfair situations. You'll hear how the British abolitionists of the late 1700s and early 1800s took on and overcame the most profitable industries funding the largest empire the world had ever seen. No other situation connects to our environmental situation as much as it does. We're desperate for role models. Reading his book felt like coming home…

My second Behind the Mic conversation with Dan McPherson gets to why I've talked about race lately. Why on a podcast about sustainability, leadership, and the environment, do I take the risk as to talk about a topic that straight white men get canceled for? If it didn't further my mission of helping restore Earth's ability to sustain life and society, I wouldn't let another topic divert attention. Whatever problems people struggle over, if anything ties us together, we breathe air, drink water, and eat food that we are sleepwalking as a nation, culture, and species into poisoning. This episode presents a topic connected to race I've talked a lot about with friends and family to figure out how to treat publicly but that I…

I started this podcast November 30, 2017. In this episode I reflect on before starting the podcast, the fears and hopes driving it, the friends it brought me, some challenges, some joys, accomplishments, and such. I also share how it changed me and how if you want to change the world and love doing it, you can too. I've trained a few new hosts starting their versions. Between my personal growth, the guests, the hosts starting their branches, and feedback from listeners, I can't tell what part I love most. Here's to another three years! Here's to another thirty years! . . . though I hope we will have changed course enough before then not to need it.

Let's talk fatherhood and sustainability. "Josh, you don't understand since you don't have kids, it's impossible to avoid producing waste," people keep saying. Since they say other things I've done is impossible before learning I've done them, I expect they're making excuses and that I could solve parenthood problems too. Without kids I haven't solved their problems (though guest Bea Johnson has in her family of four that produces less landfill waste than I do), but I expect I could. Balint became a father since he was a guest. We decided to record a new challenge for him as a father. The first episode we just spontaneously started recording, so we didn't set up microphones. I decided to trade catching the moment for sound quality.…

The Global Top 30 Gurus named Chester the world's number 4 best leadership speaker, trainer, and thought leader, as I happened to find while researching before our conversation. I had to ask him about it, which led to him sharing about it. Naturally, he spoke humbly about it, but we get some inside views of his rarified level of the corporate and government leadership world. (The list named two other podcast guests and one who hosted me). When I asked about his path, he shared so many wonderful and helpful stories, I kept asking him for more. I wanted to hear about his bottle commitment, but our conversation became a master class in more than becoming a leadership guru, but also to manifest any passion.…

Between asking about recovering from a heart attack in your 40s and about water bottles, where do you start? As it turns out, they're more closely related than you think. We started talking about recovering from the heart attack. Dan has faced his mortality several times before, so fear of death didn't hit him most. We talked more about changes to his lifestyle, particularly diet, which connected with sustainability. As a leadership community leader, Dan noticed and shared about his emotional experiences. Since we're friends who talk a lot, I think you'll find the conversation more friendly than most, so I think you'll hear more intimacy than with many podcast conversations. Dan seemed to reach a greater ratio of change to effort than many guests.…

In June and July 2019, you may remember reading about Rod Schoonover in the NY Times, State Dept. Intelligence Analyst Quits to Protest Blocked House Testimony, Washington Post, CBS, and more in the links below. He resigned in protest as a long-time government intelligence and security researcher and analyst, focusing on a field he helped create---climate security. He focused on learning how environmental changes would affect the security of the United States. If you're American, that's your life and mine as our nation leads the world in plunging the Earth into uncharted environmental territory. The White House blocked his testimony to Congress---not disagreed, blocked. Even places like the conservative American Enterprise Institute went on record saying how things like that don't happen in the US.…

Food started me on this journey. If it's not a major source of joy, community, and connection, the opportunity is there to make it so. Marion Nestle does it. She returned after recently launching her book Let's Ask Marion, which I consider her most accessible. I read What To Eat, around 500 pages, and loved it, but Let's Ask Marion is under 200, with quick chapters, though still comprehensive in covering her most important topics. Our conversation covers background not in the book of her and her co-author, Kerry Trueman, who researched the questions, asked them, and planned with Marion the book's structure and content. Since her first appearance on this podcast, I sat in on her class at NYU---one of the benefits of teaching…

We covered two main points: how I inspired him and how he inspired me. If I'm not too presumptuous to say I inspired him, that is, the first part is about his choosing not to fly. Several months into the pandemic at the time, we were all used to not flying, but when he committed, before the pandemic, most people I talked to called not flying impossible. Some backstory: Nir emailed me about 24 hours after our first conversation to say he had already substituted one flight with speaking remotely. In this episode, he shares about how he made it happen. Then we get into a back and forth about technology. We agreed on some and disagreed on other parts. Then I switched to what…

Michael wrote me the morning before we scheduled this conversation to say he ended up spending more time on the screen when he intended less. He wondered if we should skip it. Longtime listeners may remember similar results with guests Jim Harshaw and Caspar Craven. I told him I'm not looking for a Disney version implying that acting sustainable was easy. I believe listeners engage more with hearing the challenges than perfection, though it would mean him sounding human. He magnanimously agreed. So we'll get to hear his challenges. As it happens, his next book is called Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, which overlaps with getting hooked on screen time. We ended up with some sneak preview of…

Announcing , a new podcast in the growing family from Leadership and the Environment, Conversazioni Sostenibili (Sustainable Conversations), hot on the heels of Leadership and the Environment: Sweden and This Sustainable Life: Untethered. The new one is hosted by Nicola Pirulli, based in Turin. Here is his description of the podcast: Conversazioni Sostenibili è un podcast con un'ambizione: ispirare chi ascolta.Come? Incontrando persone comuni e fuori dal comune che raccontano con leggerezza e passione successi, sconfitte, sfide e la loro idea di ambiente. E provano, nel tempo di una chiacchierata, a trasformare le parole in azioni per sostenere lo straordinario pianeta che abitiamo. Ci riusciranno?Forse, ma quel che conta è mettersi in gioco perché ogni piccolo cambiamento farà nascere connessione, gioia, consapevolezza, senso.Se anche tu…

"You heard it here first." We start by reviewing George's experience picking up garbage with a team he organized. We started creating a project. It spontaneously arose, but I see a chance that we'll make it happen. Maybe soon, maybe it will take time. Maybe it will go nationwide. Maybe it will fall apart. Maybe it will change culture. Maybe future generations will look back at these changes as what sparked the turning point. George's gym, Spartan, Litterati, SoulBuffalo, Generation 180, Living Lands and Waters, The Story of Stuff, . . . there are a lot of organizations that want to act who are part of this growing community. I want to contrast George's motivation from your typical gym's or most organizations'. Most gyms work…

The notes I read from: Missing messages on the environment we can learn from Churchill. I'll read from some of his most famous speeches, during WWII, then I'll play the close of one, from June 4, 1940 "We shall never surrender." Some points: It's bad. It's as bad as it's ever been. There's no escape. Your life is in peril.It's huge. Nations have been wiped off the map. The world is at stake.We are dying. Many of us will die.We must act, ourselves. You, me, everyone. We must put ourselves on the line.We can't delegate or pass this off.We can make it. We must join together.We have done it before. We are a great people.We are humble. "We" are just an island.We have a purpose,…

My second episode with guest Dan McPherson of Leaders Must Lead on race. Probably one more after this one. Say someone doesn't know something about race but wants to. If that person sees others talking about the subject get chastised and even fired, how can that person learn? If anything, won't they learn not to ask? If so, won't they remain ignorant? Doesn't ignorance contribute to racism. Dan and I discuss these questions and more. He shares some surprising personal stories of being attacked and more, as do I.

Everyone gets we have to change system, which means global economy. They think we have to start huge. If it's not big enough, it's not worth doing. History suggests otherwise, in particular Edwards Deming's results transforming Japan in the 50s, or the U.S. war efforts before that, or several American companies since. Kevin runs the Deming Institute, which trains people in the Deming philosophy and practice. Kevin speaks from experience as the grandson of Dr. Deming. They didn't start by doing big huge things. They started with a systemic perspective, understanding where and how to act. Kevin's personal project of changing light bulbs in his house illustrates how leading this way leads to results beyond what we see with just going big from the start.…

Here are my notes I read from for this episode: Just say no drugs winning Try telling smoker that cigarettes cause lung cancer and see if it stops. Doesn't. It takes work but rewarding Try giving more and more facts. They heard already. Now imagine Nancy Reagan was a smoker or cocaine user while saying just say no Imagine she smoked or did drugs while saying not to. That's Al Gore, DiCaprio, everyone! The problem isn't hypocrisy. I can't stand people making environment into moral issue. I'm not good for not polluting. You live by your values as much as I live by mine. If you don't value stewardship I'm not good by your values. If you value it as much as I do, then…

A few months ago I hadn't heard the names William Wilberforce or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now they rank among my greatest influences. Eric Metaxas's biographies of these two men were among the main reasons. Once I read them, I had to meet Eric and bring his view here. Read the books, learn about the men, what they did, and the environments in which they did it. Few who spend time with me would expect me to find inspiration from a man whom I heard describe himself as a "Jesus freak" or strongly promote President Trump, whose policies I haven't seen increasing Earth's ability to sustain life and society, but those who know me well know my intense curiosity for people with unfamiliar views. Those who know…

J. B. MacKinnon's book The Once and Future World influenced my view of nature as much as anyone's. I thought I knew what nature was, what we were trying to conserve or preserve, but I wasn't even close. I found his writing gripping and colorful. I'll link to a couple recordings I made that quoted the book at length. We've been talking about our work, his new book he's nearly finished, my book I've just started, and how he was thinking of acting on hisresearch personally. He was sharing so personally about the challenge he was considering for himself, impromptu, I asked if he would consider recording a podcast episode. We just jumped into it. Here's both of us unrehearsed, unprepared. I loved getting to…

Here are the notes I read from: No, it's not just a piece of cloth • Context â—¦ Mark Meadows and Ben Carson tested positive â—¦ US is spreading virus maybe most in world. White House more infections than Vietnam â—¦ In fact there are more people in Ben Carson with covid than in Vietnam. â—¦ Masks halt spread. â—¦ People say tragic that it's become political, but even so, it's just a piece of cloth. Just wear it. â—¦ "A mask is not a political statement, but it is a good way to start bringing America back together," Biden said on Monday. "The goal is to get back to normal as fast as possible." â—¦ From leadership perspective, couldn't be more counterproductive or for…

Michael Moss had already risked his life as a reporter in Baghdad, where he interviewed Islamic militants and exposing that US marines lacked body armor. He had also already won a Pulitzer prize for reporting on food. Then he wrote Salt Sugar Fat, which has become one of the core books on the field of the food and doof industries. For me, the title has become one word, SaltSugarFat, to which I often add convenience, SaltSugarFatConvenience. The book shows how the system evolved its incentives and motivations. They lead all players to create products and behavior that take advantage of our reward systems to induce craving, temporarily satisfy that craving while re-creating it, and continuing that loop. The book pulls you along with detailed stories,…

From a leadership standpoint, acting on sustainability and the pandemic overlap. You probably see Ashish's name everywhere too. He's in the thick of it at the highest national level. He shares an inside view of the political happenings on responding to the pandemic. He also shares the emotional experience---the frustration at seeing people dying unnecessarily. I think you can tell that despite the numbers, he cares. You may hear me realized I spoke too glibly in stating the number of American depths. Most of our conversation covered the leadership vacuum responding to the pandemic as well as the environment in general. I believe you'll hear we're moving toward talking leadership strategy, the emotional challenge of leadership, and finding what works besides management. We cover Avoiding…

Why do I act on sustainability when everyone around me says there's no point? Faith. This episode shares a few words about faith. If you lack it, I think you'll prefer living with it, especially about things you care about.

I posted about the start of our UK offshoot to the growing podcast family by Alison May, This Sustainable Life: Untethered a few weeks ago in the post ANNOUNCING: A new offshoot of the Leadership and the Environment podcast!. (Recall we're changing the podcast name from Leadership and the Environment to This Sustainable Life. Since Alison is just starting, she's using the new name before we switch. Sorry for any confusion on the name.) I don't know how often I'll share others' episodes here, but I found her next two posts touching. You might remember her first two episodes were of me. Episode 3: Alison's partner of 11 years One recorded her conversation with her partner of 11 years, Neil. Since I haven't been with…