Podcast

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…

We've seen suggestions to defund the police. Many on the left consider it an obvious step. Many on the right think it's loony and will lead to society falling apart. I propose a way forward, building on my civilian service academy idea from a past episode, putting responsibility to act first on those proposing the idea. It would be hard, but if people seriously believe other agencies can do some things better than police, they can show it.

Following up my conversations on sex, drugs, and rock & roll with Dov, Dan McPherson and I talk about race. We start be reviewing our relationship and why we chose to record a conversation on race. We then talk about risks for white people talking publicly about race, even innocent topics everybody would value being covered. Frankly, I feel vulnerable and scared talking about my personal experience in our current climate. Then how when I hear whites describe their experiences regarding race, they sound foreign. Often the stories of people of color sound like mine. Once in my life did I hear a white person's situation sound familiar to mine, a couple months ago. We talk about why the term fragility doesn't seem to apply.…

Mark Tercek stands tall in environmental action. He was president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy for 11 years. From Wikipedia: "Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members, and has protected more than 119,000,000 acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide. The largest environmental nonprofit by assets and revenue in the Americas, The Nature Conservancy ranks as one of the most trusted national organizations in Harris Interactive polls every year since 2005. Forbes magazine rated The Nature Conservancy's fundraising efficiency at 88 percent in its 2005 survey of the largest U.S. charities. The Conservancy received a three-star rating from Charity Navigator in 2016 (three-star in 2015)." Before then he was a partner at Goldman Sachs. Curious how someone…

Rip committed to avoid waste through coffee, which he describes as harder than he thought. Wait a minute. A three-star Marine Corps general is describing not using coffee cartridges as hard? In the Millennium Challenge we talked about in our first conversation he led a team taking on the best of the entire US war machine and won. How hard can coffee be? That's the point of this podcast. Personal change doesn't depend on calories burned, monetary costs, and so on. It depends on our hearts and minds, which depend on our stories, beliefs, images, and so on. It's as easy or hard as we believe. Another main point of this podcast is to empower you to change our beliefs, stories, and images. While a…

Eric Orts is a tenured professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is also exploring a potential race for the U.S. Senate: the seat from which two-term Senator Patrick Toomey has announced he will retire in 2022. On this broadcast he promises, as an expression of his values, not to fly for the next year. He pledges further, if he decides to run for office, not to fly during his campaign. To join or contribute to Orts for Pennsylvania: friendsofericorts.com.

My goal in this podcast is to bring leaders from many fields and share what made them effective. I believe sustainability and stewardship would benefit from learning more effective leadership. A goal with each guest is to feature them. Everyone is unique. Everyone brings something we can learn from. Sometimes I don't achieve my goal. Sometimes a guest and I end up talking at cross purposes, which I think happened this time, meaning I didn't do justice to the guest. This time I started off exploring Margaret's views and experiences but part way through misunderstanding arose and I don't think I gave Margaret the chance to shine that she deserved. I apologize to her. I hope I didn't distract from her work. You'll hear at…

Announcing This Sustainable Life: Untethered, a new podcast in the growing family from Leadership and the Environment, hot on the heels of Leadership and the Environment: Sweden. The new one is hosted by Alison May, based in London. A quick explanation of the name: I'm about to change the name Leadership and the Environment to This Sustainable Life: Josh's Adventures in Stewardship. Rather than switch Alison's title shortly after starting, she's debuting the new brand and logo. Why a family of podcasts? This Sustainable Life: Untethered is part of a growing family that started with Leadership and the Environment. We want to act sustainably, just rarely first---that is, we crave leadership. With nearly 8 billion people, one podcast can't reach everyone. I train people who…

The rest of my story riding 100 miles a week and a half ago, where I gave up on myself, having lost faith in myself, but then getting lucky to force myself to finish. Only finishing strong showed I could do it. I've since fallen into the easy path of sharing my pride in finishing, but not the shame, guilt, and disappointment in myself at giving up. Finishing strong only reinforced my giving into the sweet lies I told myself to justify giving up.

You're in for a treat. Joe and I start talking business so you'll hear things happening while we're talking. We start by talking about his exercising while we talk, then my plans to swim across the Hudson about 48 hours from the recording (and the guy I swam with holding out on the video footage I describe in another episode). We talk about his picking up beach trash, but really about doing things, not just talking. Then we start doing. He starts planning during the call to transform Spartan Race's food and garbage plans. He puts me in touch with a food friend and starts the process to schedule a presentation to Spartan Race's leadership team to kick the process off. I tell him about…

Jaime and my second conversation is enjoyable and challenging. It was different than usual because for whatever reason we're talking about views on environment, personal action, education, and so on, but I didn't get to the personal challenge I like to. It was enjoyable because we're both into it for exchange, education, and understanding. Challenging because we have to figure out where the other is coming from. We start this conversation where we ended the last one, which is each putting forward his view. Getting and understanding another's view takes time, especially while trying to make yours available for the other to get and understand. Probably a third party will get and understand both faster and easier than either party. We end up at what…

People criticize environmentalists as doomsayers while celebrating futurists. This episode shares key examples where the doomsayers were the ones saying acting sustainably would ruin us. On the contrary, in these cases and many others, doomsayers said changing our polluting behavior would undermine our way of life. Yet acting on sustainability improved our situation in these cases. I also share, by contrast, cases where people projected new technologies would only improve our situations, and they may have in limited areas, but they deteriorated them in others. We can learn skepticism of those saying stopping polluting will deprive us of income, well-being, or liberty.

Bob and I begin lightheartedly, covering mulberry trees, gingkos, and how our views of nature change when we act in stewardship of it. Then I ask him about the decision as a conservative to endorse Biden. Question to you, the listener: will Bob describe that decision as hard  or easy? Did he face serious repercussions, wide support, or something else? What would you do in his situation? I couldn't put into words what he does. It's his leadership journey, so you'll have to listen. Another question for you. Who traveled more since our last conversation: the guy who wants to travel but can't but committedif he does to bring a spoon to avoid polluting or the guy who isn't  flying? We also talk about conservativism,…

George's challenge involved people congregating outside, which California banned, increasing his challenge. Personally for him, Badwater got canceled for 2020, the race that starts in Death Valley and ends up, over 100 miles later on a mountaintop. Widely regarded as the hardest race in the world, he was looking forward to it. Can you imagine the training, then you feel like what was it for? So life conspired to make acting on his environmental values for the podcast more difficult. He contacted me to ask about taking more time. I share with him how guests have struggled before. I'm not trying to suggest change is easy, but to accurately show listeners the challenges. George magnanimously agreed to share his vulnerabilities. So we scheduled this episode…

I speculate why environmentalists can be so annoying sometimes and why you'd still like to become like them, just not the annoying part. This episode will help you.

Nir and my second conversation covered how I inspired him and how he inspired me. If I'm not too presumptuous to say I inspired him, the first part is about his choosing to avoid flying. Several months into the pandemic, we're all used to not flying, but when he committed, before the pandemic, most people I talked to called not flying impossible. By contrast, Nir emailed me about 24 hours after our first conversation to say he had already substituted one flight with speaking remotely. In our conversation, 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 he inspired me on: barefoot…

The not-flying-by-choice community is fairly small. About 80 percent of humans can't fly because they can't, but among people who can but choose not to, we're limited. Still, I can't believe I only found out about Maja recently. A few minutes into her TEDx talk, I knew I had to bring her on. She's avoided flying about double how long I have. I could hear from her every sentence that she's had to face all the addiction speaking of people claiming what I did before I challenged myself to go that first year without flying---"I can't avoid it," "the plane was going to flyanyway," and all that. You know the feeling of understanding and support you get when you talk with someone who has shared…

Everyone can lead when everyone around them agrees. How about when your conscience tells you what's right differs from everyone around you? Bob Inglis is a former Congressman from South Carolina---the reddest district in the reddist state, as he puts it. The short story is that he stated he believed the science behind climate change. That was ten years ago. They voted him out. You'll hear in this episode the story of how he transformed to take such a risk, how he responded, and what's come since. Last month he "endorsed Joe Biden for president Monday, arguing the Democratic nominee will help stabilize American politics and restore the country's institutions." I'm linking to his two TEDx talks, a Frontline interview, and his new organization, RepublicEN,…

I first crossed paths with Coleman at a conference that previous guest Jonathan Haidt organized on promoting viewpoint diversity in academia. I hosted a breakfast panel discussion. Coleman spoke on a panel later that day. He shared views that sounded reasonable and well-expressed, but I also knew social media mobs attacked him, though not often engaged. You hear about situations like that. I wanted to bring someone on who had weathered such storms. Partly, you've heard me talking more about race. My next book covers race a lot, so I've had to practice developing my voice in an area I've seen people lose their careers. Coleman didn't. On the contrary, he recently spoke to the US Congress on reparations, opposite another well-known writer on similar…

Here are my notes that I read from for this episode: Play Thomas N. Todd recordingRepeat it, explaining from ad campaignContext was civil rights---that is equal rights for blacks as for whites in the US. I don't know context but I think pointing out that blacks who could fight best---educated, could speak to whites best---instead of helping other blacks would rather be white and not fight for equalityI'm going to approach this concept from three directions applying it to sustainability and stewardship.I've spoken to a lot of people about sustainability and led many through my podcast's 4-step process and have seen them from many backgrounds, levels of awareness, levels of greenness, how much they say people should act.I'm going to share an observation. Personal and…

Are you fatigued from pandemic defenses like wearing masks and washing your hands? Is your community, like New York City, doing well? Do you feel since we're doing well, we can let up at last? One of Usain Bolt's many injuries. I haven't been injured near to his scale. Do you know what happens when competing against an opponent you can beat, but instead of playing to your potential, you play to theirs? You tie them or even lose. The fatigue we feel is mental and emotional, which means under our control. We can choose from among plenty of role models who persevered through harder challenges than wearing masks and washing hands. In this episode I share how I learned not to let up or…

Kelly is experienced in theory, practice, and community of W. Edwards Deming. If you don't know Deming, you'll hear from this conversation, but for context, growing up my top role models were Gandhi, King, and Mandela. As I practiced sustainability, I realized acting in harmony with nature and motivating others to connect with deeper values isn't exactly what they did. New role models emerged: Patton, Eisenhower, and Ali, for example, but they didn't lead people exactly to connect with their values. Then came Deming. He transformed a war-destroyed Japan starting in 1950 after helping win WWII in the US in a way comparable to developing radar or cracking the Nazi's codes for their secret messages. He did it in four years, an attractive time frame…

Kevin Cahill's grandfather, W. Edwards Deming, changed nations. An emperor awarded him a medal. If you don't know either, listen to the first few minutes when I describe him. Deming has become one of my top role models. He transformed nations in a few years---the time scale that climate scientists say we have, not that climate is our only problem. He shows what one person can do---the opposite of what everyone who doesn't act justifies their inaction with: "What one person does doesn't matter." W. Edwards Deming saw and acted on systems, what many people talk about but not many get. This episode will illuminate them and, I hope, give hope and direction for what we can do. Kevin's TEDx talkThe Deming Institute