Podcast

Adam's book Bury the Chains inspired me to see British abolitionism as a role model movement for sustainability. The writing was simple and clear. The subject inspirational and relevant. We talked about it in our first episodes, which I recommend. At last I read his most renowned book, King Leopold's Ghost, which we talk about in this episode. I came to it after reading Heart of Darkness, which it complements. Regular readers know how much I've found imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. King Leopold's Ghost covers the case of Belgium's king pulling it off while cultivating a philanthropic reputation. It's shocking and more relevant than ever, given the continuing imperialism, colonialism, and slavery in Africa today, now for our cell phones and electric vehicles. They aren't clean,…

Matt and I talk about his commitment and how it affected him. I talk about the Spodek Method in general and other leadership tools like creating role models. Matt talked about his hopes and expectations about technology. When I asked him if he could imagine a world where no one polluted, he shared that he hadn't thought about it, but find the idea almost beyond conception. Think about it: if someone can't imagine an outcome, how likely do you think that person can achieve it? How likely do you think they'll subconsciously sabotage attempts? Won't it seem scary? Can you imagine a world without pollution? Matt points out if we pollute, we violate Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. That…

Guy is a successful, well-known hedge fund founder. He's famous for paying a lot of money for one meal with Warren Buffet (hundreds of thousands of dollars), which he found worth it. He and I know each other partly through a guest also in finance I did several episodes with, Whitney Tilson, though we emailed before we found Whitney in common. Regular listeners know a strategy of this podcast is to bring leaders from all areas to sustainability, which lacks leadership. I also look for people in fields that people who call themselves environmentalists often call the enemy. They talk about finance people as just looking for profit, not caring whom they hurt. I think they're presuming someone's intent based on what they see. I…

I was led to Kate's article Should I Stop Flying? It’s a Difficult Decision to Make. from a newsletter from Flight Free USA. I've read, heard, written, and said a lot about not flying. I found her article the most sensitive, comprehensive, and thoughtful on the internal, personal challenge and gut check of deciding to stop flying. I'll let you read the article to find where she lands on not flying. I expect you'll find she covers your angle and others. It's challenging. We know it pollutes. We know it's not necessary. We want to do it, so we convince ourselves that what we believe is wrong is right, that the plane was going to fly anyway, that we're powerless to choose otherwise, and various…

Since our last conversation, check out the reviews that have come in about Home on an Unruly Planet from past guests of this podcast: “With deep, compassionate reporting and elegant prose …  Ostrander finds creativity, vital hope, and a sense of home that outlasts any address.”—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction “As each new climate calamity obliterates, incinerates, or engulfs entire communities, we shudder to think our own could be next. Gently but purposefully, Ostrander guides us into places that have known this nightmare, not to shock but to show that the meaning of home is so powerful that people will make surprising, imaginative, even transcendent leaps to hold on to theirs. By her book’s end, you…

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 on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth. The book reads at time like she's projecting doom, but she isn't. She's describing things as she sees them and the people there describe them. The second half of the book talks about what people are doing. It's sobering, but if we want to do…

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 action wouldn't matter yet. We ran into each other and talked about his new company, YouSolar, comparing how much power, energy, and reliability he supplies his clients with my little portable battery and panels I have to carry to my roof. In today's conversation, after he shares his background, he shares YouSolar's grand goal, which…

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 and I wasn't using my recording microphone, I forgot. I felt like I was just talking to a friend. I'm posting that recording: what I sound like when I haven't prepared and don't know I'm being recorded. In this case, I'm talking with someone I know who wanted to talk about sustainability, so it's not…

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, leading that project on the ground working with politicians. If you're curious how it can work, he explains it in our conversation. You'll hear my long-standing concern that people and organizations who focus on climate and greenhouse gases end up increasing other problems. He sees in some areas that if you solve part of the…

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 Bob Litterman, who was a recent podcast guest. Gernot combined economics with sustainability before others did and kept at it, putting him at the forefront of environmental economics. As regular listeners know, I value experience and living by one's values, not just talking about it. How else can you gain relevant experience, credibility, integrity, and…

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 sees and reports it in Traveler's Guide to the End of the World. He comes from a literary background, so he puts it in the context of past nature writers. He also has a daughter so asks scientists what the world will be like when she is his age. The book is not always easy…

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 intensity most people do, protecting their feelings of guilt and shame, as I see them (I wrote The reason you feel judged isn’t because environmentalists are judging you. It’s because you have a conscience.) Several audience members told me they appreciated my asking the question. So when we spoke after he finished his stage performance,…

You won't hear many finance people promoting more taxes, though it's increasing. Bob talks beyond our conversation a few weeks before about a carbon tax, integrity, permanence, standards, measurement, and many different angles. He talks about responsibility and holding the companies creating the problems responsible. It just takes courage. Regular listeners know I find that when anyone focuses only on carbon, greenhouse emissions, and climate, they almost always miss our other environmental problems, like plastic, pollution, deforestation, and you know the rest, Bob agrees the tax incentive should apply to these other areas, though I'm not sure he acts on them. It's easy not to change the system, but to make it more efficient and accelerate it overall, even if you lower problems in one…

Matt shared last time about the redwoods I keep hearing about in California that I've never seen but find they transform people. His goal was to plant a tree. He ended up with a new tree, plus he planted other plants. Listen to hear the story. More than what he did, I recommend listening to his emotional experience. Did he have to do all the things he did? Could he do other things that are more mainstream but might pollute more if he wanted? We talked first about the problems with what most people mean when they talk about teaching children, helping poor people experience nature, and a few other tactics people promote without thinking them through, as I believe. They sound great. What are…

I met Bob at a conference on climate at my old school, Columbia Business School. He knew another participant, Gernot Wagner, with whom I recorded an episode I'll post soon, and was a peer with past guest Mark Tercek. I didn't work in finance, but I understand Bob and Mark were like dieties there. Bob brings two huge new things to climate (he talks about climate almost exclusively among our environmental problems, though we touch on others briefly in the conversation). First, he knows risk management. Most of his career, he didn't think much about the environment, but when he learned about it, he identified that we have to manage risk, so he dove into the issue. Second, he connected with a group of conservative…

Population modeling can be hard, as is figuring out a prediction's accuracy, therefore how much confidence to give your conclusions. Many people can't hear talk about population without hearing things like eugenics and racism even when they aren't there. But population is one of the most important factors in sustainability. Everything becomes easier when population isn't near or above what Earth can sustain and harder when it's above. I came to Chris from reading his paper on modeling population growth, Footprints to singularity, which showed a couple things. It clarified that UN and peer projections lacked feedback mechanisms so couldn't show population decline. If your model can't show a population decline, it will blind you to the possibility and therefore keep you from preventing or…

In what looks to me like one of the biggest overcommitments of guests on this podcast and participants in the Spodek Method, Dan shares that to free his mind for meditation, he ended up selling his motorcycle and Playstation. Then we spoke about coaching and leading people to reach their potentials, which he experienced on the receiving end in reaching the Olympics twice and does now with others, and he appreciates me doing in corporations and on sustainability. You'll hear we both admire each other and are learning from each other. A curious note: you'll hear me puzzled at his tone, which I couldn't place. It didn't convey the sense of accomplishment and freedom his words did. We're still getting to know each other. I…

People who work at fossil fuel companies are people just like you and me. When you buy what the industry sells, you support it too. You rationalize and justify that your money supports lobbyists, advertising, extraction, pollution, depletion, making refugees, dictators, and so on. Want to stop people working there? I suggest it helps to understand them. We can start by understanding ourselves. Stopping ourselves from supporting that industry is easier than stopping them, so I recommend starting with ourselves. Note: we recorded this episode a few years ago, before I fully developed the Spodek Method.

If learning what it's like to watch your team win an Olympic gold medal from the sidelines isn't enough, and if learning what it's like to grow up in a family beset with poverty and addiction before reaching Olympic level competition isn't enough, and if learning what it's like after four more years to win an Olympic medal isn't enough, I'd say the best part of our conversation comes after all that. Then we talk about bringing out the best in others as a coach. How do you find out how to coach each person, athlete, executive, or otherwise? How to you lead a team to give to their potential? How do you keep everyone motivated? How do you keep yourself motivated? We both deeply…

Matt invited me to his podcast, A Climate Change. We stayed in touch after recording. He shared that he ran for President, including supporting sustainability. A goal of this podcast is to bring elected officials of all stripes. While he didn't get that many votes, he ran for several reasons, including to run as a Republican opposing Donald Trump. Listen to our conversation to learn more of his motivation. I wanted to bring him here not for the campaign alone but for his acting with integrity and character, even if not a huge campaign. How many pro-sustainability, anti-Trump Republicans do you know of? I saw determination arising from personal action. I also learned he's trying some things, like buying a hydrogen-powered car. My research shows…

Christopher may be the most direct, accurate reporter on sustainability. Our last conversation treated his helpful and accurate reporting on the book Limits to Growth. Today we start from his (in my opinion) excellent article The Green Growth Delusion, in which he reports on the futility and false promise of chasing growth. It's tempting, alluring, and seductive to believe technology, growth, or economic trickery will save us, but wanting to believe something doesn't make it true, even if you really want to believe it. As before, Christopher doesn't hold back, nor does he speak inaccurately. I recommend reading the article first, though you won't go wrong listening right now. Here's how it starts: In the annals of industrial civilization, the Green New Deal counts as…

The spiciest parts of this conversation come at the end. It's possible listeners may think we were annoying each other, but I think I can speak for both of us that we enjoyed the repartee. Anyone who has talked to me about my work since I started watching and listening to Daniel's What Is Politics? videocast knows it's shaped how I view politics, meaning how groups make decisions. If we want to change culture, he covers much of the core. If we want to undo some people dominating others, it helps to know how dominance hierarchies form. The core is in anthropology, which shows how humans have related to each other going back hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and current material conditions. We…

I've been recommending Oliver's book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals a lot. When people ask about it, I have a hard time explaining what it says, only that it's valuable. He has a way of communicating important things about values, time, intent, decision, and related concepts that are hard to express otherwise. In this conversation he shares more. One thing I can express that I value: what he says about time parallels what I say about energy, specifically energy as physicists describe it, not emotional energy. We don't have infinite amounts of time or energy. If we see life as missing out on what we lack time or energy for, we'll crave what we lack. We'll be insecure. If instead, we recognize we…

This podcast and my mission are about changing culture. The Color of Law compiled our culture's practices that I can only see as cruel and unfair. As long as they're hidden, we can't do much about them. Listen to my episode with Richard and read that book if you aren't on top of America's history of cruel and unfair housing policy. Once you're outraged, then what? In this episode, Leah answers that question. She shares at a high level what people can do in their communities. You'll hear a couple extra notes of interest from me. One is to see what techniques in the culture she's changing can apply in changing our culture in sustainability. The other is that my episodes with my mom talking…

Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective? Yes! I just finished leading my first workshop in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably: enduring systemic change and immediate personal change. Best of all: it was FUN! . . . both the workshop and the action it led to. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the participants results. Today's post is the audio from a conversation with them on their experiences. Better yet, watch the video. You can learn to help change culture and restore a safe, clean, healthy world. We're organizing two summer 2023 cohorts. If you want to help fix our world, sign up at https://spodekleadership.com/workshop