Podcast

On a beautiful sunny Saturday, 9:50am, I was walking to Washington Square Park to charge my battery and talk at 10am to my friend Dan McPherson (he's been on the podcast, where he shared about his heart attack at age 46 the week before we recorded). I saw the guy in the picture injecting. I asked if I could take his picture and a brief conversation ensued. Instead of my planned conversation with Dan, we recorded my experience and thoughts about the conversation with the guy injecting on the sidewalk. I haven't edited anything. I recorded with just my headphone microphone so sorry about the audio quality, but I think you'll be able to understand us fine. I also didn't prepare. I'm not speaking from…

As a podcast host, I get pitched a lot of authors, books, and more. Most aren't relevant or are counterproductive to sustainability. I received an email promoting the author of Legal Gladiator, a biography of Alan Dershowitz. I knew the name from the news, but didn't know more than the name, maybe a whiff of his being controversial. I looked up the book and author and found both fascinating. I scheduled talking to Solomon unrecorded to meet him and see if the connection would fit. I like bringing leaders from any field to sustainability since the field nearly completely lacks it. Solomon and Alan both seem like leaders, so I invited him. Quoting from the book's page: Praise for Solomon Schmidt:“You are a very talented…

I quote Susan in my book, Sustainability Simplified. In it you'll see how much John Locke influenced my long-term vision for the US to understand and solve our environmental problems. Learning about the Thirteenth Amendment, which (mostly) banned slavery, and its improbable path to passage and ratification led me to think about solving our environmental problems similarly. I learned that many people working to abolish slavery worked hard when drafting the US Constitution to make it able to support abolitionism and to disallow property in man. Slaveholders opposed them, so they accepted compromises. Still, they put enough into the Constitution to enable weakening the institution enough to eventually end it. I wondered if sustainability might have similar precedent, like some law or phrasing of the…

I've been curious in what ways libertarian views on the environment and sustainability differ from conservative views. Travis worked at the Heritage Foundation, which is more conservative, and now works at the Cato Institute, which is more libertarian. Since I haven't spoken to many libertarians directly, I'm interested in this conversation to learn, so it's a conversation, not a debate. Early in our conversation, he describes some of their differences and similarities, and why he chose Cato. He shares some of his training and background that led him to his views. Then we talked about a few issues: the Inflation Reduction Act, regulation, how government funding of many programs results in industries growing without being profitable from its customers. We look at several moral hazards,…

Usually when someone does their commitment with the Spodek Method, they enjoy it. Nearly always they do more than they commit to. Sometimes someone really enjoys it. Jan went to town on his commitment. You might wonder if there's any appeal to picking up litter. Is it worth the effort? Who cares, anyway? After all, more people litter than pick it up, as anyone can tell by how much litter there is and how much it's growing. Yet the pattern I've discovered keeps happening. On the other side of working on sustainability is always community. I can't prove it always happens, but so far it does. In Jan's case, he found community, in particular, people who had long wanted to act. They were just waiting…

I participated in an online workshop in influence and persuasion that Josh led. We got in touch afterward and found our approaches to the practices and how to learn them overlap. We start this episode talking about his background and what led him to learning and training others in the practices. Then we talk about what we like about learning and practicing them, what works, what doesn't, misconceptions, and other aspects. Some related subjects include authority, extrinsic emotions, management, and such. We practiced the Spodek Method, him experiencing it for the first time. In this first conversation, he only experienced being led to share what the environment means to him and coming up with a commitment to help evoke that meaning. You can hear that…

If you haven't listened to episode 781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community Project, four years in the making, listen to it first for context. That episode describes my journey to start volunteering as an auxiliary police officer and the background to it. Depending on how well you know me or not, you may find the activity as surprising as I do, though I seem to be a minority in that regard. Everyone else congratulates me. I remark on how different this part of my identity seems compared to the younger me who protested America's involvement in Central America, disrupted graduation to protest Apartheid, and knew friends who chose to be arrested at such protests. This episode recounts one of my first activities as an…

Jan is a listener of this podcast who contacted me about how it changed his life. He is listening to each episode, starting from the beginning. I invited him to be a guest and he accepted. We've also crossed paths through working with podcast guest Dave Gardner, and his work in Growthbusters and running for President of the United States. Jan is Dutch, living in Germany, so can't vote in the US, but acts on sustainability locally. He told me he found my podcast made him feel empowered to act in a world where most people seem resigned not to act. I invited him to share more and to experience the Spodek Method. Beyond recording this episode, he joined the sustainability leadership workshop. To other…

Toxic chemicals leach from food packaging into your food. Some of these chemicals disrupt your hormones. Some cause cancer. Some affect your children more. Some disperse into the environment and harm wildlife. For 300,000 years, humans lived without plastic. We created this system, maybe thinking only of the effects we wanted, imagining these toxic effects wouldn't happen. Maybe we didn't imagine they could happen. We don't have to create these materials or use them. We are creating more all the time. There's just so much oil, it's so cheap, and there's nothing stopping producers from creating and selling them. Nearly everyone agrees a role of government is to protect you from my taking or destroying your life, liberty, and property, yet businesses and government gain…

When I say I spend less time cooking than I used to now that I eat mostly from fresh fruits and vegetables, and legumes and grains from bulk, people generally say they don't have time to cook. It's as if they didn't hear that I'm spending less time than I used to, therefore likely less time than they do. They just hear what they expected to. The average American spends five hours per day on social media. I spend about zero on social media and, if I'm in a hurry, less than an hour or two cooking per day. I have never heard anyone react to the greater time people spend on social media by saying they don't have time for social media. How can…

I started a new project volunteering in my community that is also a big life change I wouldn't believe I'm doing except that I am. In a sense I started the project over four years ago and it's only seeing the light of day now. Sorry I'm writing little about and the episode is long, but for now I wanted only those interested to learn in so you have to listen all the way through to hear the full scope and details. The episode I quoted in this one: 366: The Cops, Jocko Willink, and Joe Rogan Another episode I mentioned: 506: I lost $10 million on September 11, 2001. Here is what I learned from those who sacrificed and served.

Jack shares his love for nature and passion to care for it, how central it is to his life, how much of his time and focus he devotes to it. He shares his principles of individual choice over top-down regulation. He especially opposes government subsidy for squashing innovation, including industries he prefers, like nuclear. He's not anti-government. Listen to the episode for his views in more detail. He is as sincere as they come and has thought the issues through. I couldn't help wonder how many political conservatives and libertarians care deeply about the environment yet get called "not caring." If they care but approach it differently, if I said they didn't care, it would drop my credibility in their view. I valued this conversation…

Nick and I talk about freedom, liberty, personal action and, however paradoxical to most people, how important personal behavior is in changing systems. Then we talk about markets, regulation, and democracy and how they interact with community norms. Looking at the words markets, regulation, and democracy, they may look academic or abstract, but I think you'll find the conversation fun because it's personal. We don't talk theory. We're talking about how we live and work. A core of our conversation is where a society or state draws a line between things that benefit some people but hurt others. Some things may make messes but everyone agrees should be allowed, like exhaling or pooping. Others everyone agrees should be illegal, like putting poison in someone's food.…

This episode follows up the last one, on how you can learn sustainability leadership through our workshops, so you can practice sustainability joyfully. You can teach others to, and teach others to teach others. If the process only led to a few people changing, or even many, it wouldn't be worth pursuing. Unlike almost any sustainability work, it can lead to global cultural change and a joyful, rewarding path to it. It doesn't require sacrifice or deprivation. It may look like it from our current culture, the culture that's lowering Earth's ability to sustain life, increasing isolation, and decreasing health, safety, and security globally, despite our reaching such pinnacles of scientific and technological achievement. Hear in this episode how we can change the world by…

If you've listened to a lot of this podcast, you've heard me walk many guests through sharing their values on sustainability and acting on them. If you haven't, you should, in my opinion. Why do they enjoy what most people consider deprivation and sacrifice? You can learn to do it. A growing team of us teach workshops in sustainability leadership. One is coming up soon, September 10, 2024. This episode shares what it's about, experiences of people who have done it, and how you can sign up. You can become a leader in a movement to live joyfully sustainably, to change global culture at the last minute. Can you imagine helping restore sustainability? You can. Listen to this episode, then contact me to learn more…

I'd heard of Strong Towns for years, mainly through guest Jason Slaughter's Not Just Bikes video series, and finally joined the community by taking a couple of their courses. I can't recommend them enough. Chuck Marohn founded that community. He found and publicized several of their core discoveries. Some include: North American cities grow based on a Ponzi scheme, the combination of a street and a road fails at both and wrecks everything it touches, cores of cities usually make the most economic sense, and outlying areas usually sap money and vitality. I invited Chuck because of the overlap between city planning and sustainability. Over half of humans live in cities. Many can't avoid following the patterns of where to live, traffic, where to eat…

You've probably listened to Bruce's past three episodes, so you probably know he wants a path to exist that leads people to want to live more sustainably and spread that change to others. It would mean them overcoming their addictions. By them, I mean all of us, since if we order takeout, fly, and drive big cars, we're in the group that has to change. His experience with addicts tells him it's hard, maybe impossible. On the other hand, while people may be conflicted and may have suppressed many of our emotions around the environment, we love nature. In this episode, we hear the Spodek Method finally clicking with Bruce. One interaction with it isn't supposed to change the world itself. It creates a mindset…

I ask guests to do episodes 1.5 when they tell me they couldn't do their Spodek Method commitment or keep postponing. Sometimes they say they don't want to share that they didn't do it. But experience has shown that talking about that vulnerability by sharing that they didn't do it overcomes it. Then redoing the Spodek Method usually leads to it working better than expected. The goal isn't perfection, after all. It's to create experiences that prompt emotions they like. Alden wasn't doing her ebike commitment, as you'll hear in this episode. She also shares some of her priorities in the rest of life. Many people think they don't have time for sustainability, but that view is a red herring. The Spodek Method acts on…

Frederic describes his program The Week in our conversation. I did it last year, invited by a friend (whom I misname in our conversation, sorry) and recognized him. Podcast guest and mutual friend Lorna Davis had introduced us before he had started creating The Week. The Week is one of the few programs on sustainability approaching it as a leadership effort, not management or lecture. Anyone can do it. It's a series of videos you watch with a group, then engage in discussion about it. It's different than the Spodek Method, but shares many aspects. I could describe it more here, but the best way to learn is to hear his description in our conversation, then sign up for it. Frederic's program The Week His…

I find this series of conversations with Bruce to be ending up excellent examples to learn advanced Spodek Method from. I think they're also engaging. I certainly enjoyed the conversations with Bruce. You can tell he believes in the vision and isn't trying to answer askew, or maybe I'm not picking up on cues, but the interaction is both not clicking but not falling apart either. If you're learning the Spodek Method from the How-To Guide or a workshop, or finished either, I think you can learn a lot from these conversations. Also, from Bruce, a lot about addiction, science, and applying them to modern life.

Regular readers of my blog know I took a course, Conservatism 101, from the Leadership Institute, which led me to read conservative literature I hadn't before: Edmund Burke, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek, Russell Kirk, and more. This reading came after I started reading and watching Milton Friedman, Julian Simon, Ayn Rand, and current followers of their work like Marian Tupy, Gale Pooley, and Alex Epstein. I had blogged about them after reading their works too. I began seeing relevance of their work to sustainability that I don't think even their fans appreciate. At a social event, I met a woman who works at the Cato Institute. I told her of what I was learning and invited her to talk about it. She said sustainability and…

Regular readers of my blog know I took a course, Conservatism 101, from the Leadership Institute, which led me to read conservative literature I hadn't before: Edmund Burke, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek, Russell Kirk, and more. This reading came after I started reading and watching Milton Friedman, Julian Simon, Ayn Rand, and current followers of their work like Marian Tupy, Gale Pooley, and Alex Epstein. I had blogged about them after reading their works too. I began seeing relevance of their work to sustainability that I don't think even their fans appreciate. At a social event, I met a woman who works at the Cato Institute. I told her of what I was learning and invited her to talk about it. She said sustainability and…

Kevin and I talk about volunteering at the Chelsea Community Fridge, how it formed, how it's evolved, and our roles. You'll hear he's involved with it more. I was curious to learn about parts I don't know about. It's outdoors so it operates 24/7, 365 days a year. New York City has no lack of hungry people, nor places with extra food. It's insane to see how much we waste, except that nearly every American wastes food. We can reduce that waste. I hope hearing our conversation inspires you to volunteer more, waste food less, and appreciate what food you have. Volunteering for me replaces time in front of screens, so it saves time and money. It connects me with my neighbors, including the hungry…

Trish and Evelyn took the workshop, and neither seriously acted on sustainability before it, so one thing to listen for in this conversation is what people who look at personally living more sustainably sound like. I think it's safe to say we have fun. Partly we express exasperation at the depravity of our polluting and depleting culture. We also share the experience of our eyes opening to those things. Trish, for example, shares how she doesn't want to take cruises, despite anticipating enjoying them and her friends not seeing their pollution. I share how our culture turned preserving fruit from a way to conserve to a way to waste. We also talk about our vision to create sustainability awards. A few of them exist, often…

If you like food, you'll love this episode. I shared before how unbelievably delicious Andrew's food was, even if it were at a top restaurant. But he works at a hospital, so it was healthy too. I almost don't go to restaurants any more since they just pile salt, sugar, and fat onto everything. I don't need a stick of butter in every dish. I also tasted his food at a chef competition. He's shared his background training at groundbreaking top restaurants. I couldn't help indulge in asking him about behind the scenes in top kitchens and he shared. We talked about his artistry, how he learned, and teamwork. He also shared about his commitment, which led to talking about leadership, changing culture, intrinsic emotion,…