Stories

Assaulted again in broad daylight

Nonjudgment / Stories

Assaulted again in broad daylight

In Washington Square Park, I was sitting on a bench talking to a friend. A person came up and, unprovoked, started threatening me. I've written and recorded podcast episodes about the many times I've been assaulted and mugged, as far back as some of my earliest memories. I understand "battery" means physically hurting someone and "assault" means threatening it, which this person did. It began by him approaching and starting to say something. As he did, I said, "I'm sorry, we're in a conversation." He just went off on that, menacing and threatening for no reason I could tell. I stayed mostly calm, doing my best to talk him down. After a few minutes he walked away without touching or hurting me. I feel compelled…

May 19, 2022

“Titty twister”

Fitness / Stories

“Titty twister”

What does unwanted body fat have to do with pollution? One of Urban Dictionary's definitions At my father’s eightieth birthday last year, I saw friend and coworkers of his I hadn’t seen since childhood. The first thing one of them said to me was that he remembered me as chubby. By today’s American standards, I may not have been, but I remember from my childhood my older stepbrother grabbing my nipples and the fat underneath between his thumb and fingers, twisting them, and yelling “titty twister!” I felt helpless and ashamed. It motivated me to work on lowering the body fat I didn’t want. In high school I began to play sports. In college, I got more serious, playing the sport of ultimate at the…

May 4, 2022

Read about sustainability and me in a Korean-English magazine: 터치 매거진 4월호가 발행되어 보내드립니다.

Nature / Stories / Visualization

Read about sustainability and me in a Korean-English magazine: 터치 매거진 4월호가 발행되어 보내드립니다.

This morning I got an email: 안녕하세요,봄비 촉촉히 내리는 4월 첫 아침입니다.터치 매거진 4월호가 발행되어 보내드립니다.아래 링크를 클릭하시면 터치 스토리랩 홈페이지와 4월호 매거진으로 이동합니다.지난 한 달 동안 저희가 열심히 준비한 다양한 컨텐츠를 읽어보시고 잠시나마 여유로운 시간이 되시면 좋겠습니다.이번 달도 저희 터치 매거진을 성원해주시고 많이 읽어주시길 부탁드리며,건강하고 행복한 4월 되시길 바랍니다.감사합니다. Which translates to Hello, It is the first morning of April when the spring rain is moist.The April issue of Touch Magazine is published and sent.Click the link below to go to the Touch Story Lab homepage and the April issue of the magazine. We hope that you will have a leisurely time while reading the various contents that we have worked hard for over the past month.We ask that you support and read our…

April 1, 2022

Where I grew up, “a national model of racial integration”: Mount Airy, Philadelphia

Art / Education / Stories

Where I grew up, “a national model of racial integration”: Mount Airy, Philadelphia

I found an article in the Philadelphia Encyclopedia about Mount Airy, where I grew up, "a national model of racial integration, " created through generations of conscious, deliberate work by residents, against opposing trends the article describes below, including white realtors trying to redline and black leaders trying to protect "blackness." My mom, dad, and stepfather participated in several institutions promoting Mount Airy's values mentioned in the article, especially West Mount Airy Neighbors and Weavers Way co-op. I wonder how much it caused my views to differ from the average American's. It's outside of my experience to grow up any place else. At my junior high school and high school, my skin color was underrepresented. How much do people assume I grew up in an…

March 22, 2022

A Milestone: A Quarter-Million Views to My TEDx Talks

A Milestone: A Quarter-Million Views to My TEDx Talks

Yes, I check my TEDx talks now and then. Sometimes the comments refer to me or ask me questions. I'm curious. They say something about me. A while ago I noticed one cross 100,000. Another is getting close. Here are all four videos on one page. Here are the numbers: What everyone gets wrong about the environment (TEDxWaltham, November 2019)114,298 views444 upvotesStop Suggesting Small Things. Do Meaningful Things (TEDxConnecticutCollege, February 2020)76,861 views3.8k upvotesDon't call Doof Food: systemic change begins with personal change (TEDxCowes, November 2021)45,578 views1.6k upvotesFind Your Delicious: Leadership and the Environment (TEDxNYU, May 2019)22,076 views119 upvotes Teenagers get ten times these views for one video showing off clothes and makeup, but that's our culture. My goal is to help people quit their addiction…

February 22, 2022

One percent population growth, then and now

Nature / Stories / Visualization

One percent population growth, then and now

Here's an illustration I've meant to create for a while. Population growth when most of the Earth is unpopulated is different than when we've populated nearly every place we can. I think it tells a story, and an important one: growing our population today, even a small amount, affects the world very differently than when humans comprised a small fraction of life on Earth. Illustrations that prompted it Maybe you've seen these images before that prompted it.

February 10, 2022

How did King Solomon get called wise for proposing cutting a baby in half?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Humor / Stories

How did King Solomon get called wise for proposing cutting a baby in half?

You know the story about the two women each claiming a baby was hers, where King Solomon says to cut the baby in half and the woman who says to let the other woman keep it must be the mother? Have you ever thought about this story? How has it become a model of wisdom? It fails at every level. First, are we supposed to believe a woman simply claims ownership another woman's baby? As if no one else would notice? As if she herself wouldn't notice she had stolen another woman's baby? As if no one had seen either mother with the baby who could be a witness? Then she didn't run away after kidnapping the baby, but stuck around so the mother can…

February 5, 2022

Nature / Stories

Read a provocative profile of me by Nancy Colasurdo

Award-winning journalist Nancy Colasurdo, who writes the Unfettered: The Power of Pure Expression blog, interviewed me for a profile of me and another executive leadership coach, Daniela Bryan. The piece is What Happened When I Talked Sustainability with Two Coaches (the same piece on Medium). You'll find it provocative for the comparisons I make between pollution and historical atrocities others consider incomparable, but are smaller already, with the death and suffering from pollution increasing and accelerating. It begins: Josh Spodek has unplugged his refrigerator because he doesn’t need it anymore. I’m going to start there.It’s where his journey in being more environmentally conscious led him and frankly that bit of information has the power to scare me right off the whole effort.You know what else…

February 2, 2022

A chapter of my life, in the words of a massively bestselling author

Nonjudgment / Relationships / Stories

A chapter of my life, in the words of a massively bestselling author

Regular readers of my blog and listeners of my podcast know that before I started coaching executives and leading famous people and after decades of struggling with social and emotional skills, limiting my intimacy, especially with women, I dove headlong into learning attraction skills. I shared about it in depth in my Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll series on my podcast, where I was the guest, particularly the episode on sex. For years, I kept that identity secret out of fear of people with loud voices and preconceived notions that society listened to more than people like me: a guy who had to go out of his way to learn social and emotional skills. Now I don't promote it, but I don't hide it…

January 30, 2022

Heartwarming reasons I pick up litter knowing it alone won’t fix the world’s problems overnight.

Leadership / Nature / Stories

Heartwarming reasons I pick up litter knowing it alone won’t fix the world’s problems overnight.

Picking up litter has its joys. A friend wrote about our meeting, in which we walked around Washington Square Park and picked up litter, also talking business. The meeting certainly was inspirational and I think back to it every time I see a piece of trash on the ground. So, you certainly made a difference in my life. I always tried to pick before, but now I make it a point. And every person counts, right? My routine dog walk was completely clear of debris this morning, which I feel is a fantastic accomplishment considering my route goes through an elementary and middle school parking lot! Since I haven't been here for a week, maybe someone saw my and also decided to take up this…

December 11, 2021

My brief conversation with someone smoking crack by Washington Square Park, next door to Babbo, with a twist at the end.

Habits / Nonjudgment / Stories

My brief conversation with someone smoking crack by Washington Square Park, next door to Babbo, with a twist at the end.

This morning as I walked to Washington Square Park to pick up litter, then to drop off my food scraps for compost in Union Square, I saw someone on the steps of a brownstone, curled up, fiddling with something. I'd seen that look before, of someone concealing doing drugs. Sometimes they pull their shirt or jacket over their heads. When not that many people are around, they just do the business in the open. I could have been wrong. If right, I couldn't tell if smoking, injecting, or what. The person was focused enough on his or her task not to notice me. I was crossing the street so was on the other side of the parked cars. I looked and saw a glass pipe…

November 13, 2021

The environment has losing stories.

The cover of Love in the Time of Cholera I read

Leadership / Nature / Stories

The environment has losing stories.

When myths and stories contradict, the ones that persist aren't the ones that are right. The ones that people remember and share persist. I'm writing about it after reading this quote from E. O. Wilson: Creation stories gave the members of each tribe an explanation for their existence. It made them feel loved and protected above all other tribes. In return, their gods demanded absolute belief and obedience. And rightly so. The creation myth was the essential bond that held the tribe together. It provided its believers with a unique identity, commanded their fidelity, strengthened order, vouchsafed law, encouraged valor and sacrifice, and offered meaning tot he cycles of life and death. No tribe could long survive without the meaning of its existence defined by…

October 26, 2021

My shameful reason for not learning to play basketball

Nonjudgment / Stories

My shameful reason for not learning to play basketball

Since I grew up taller than average, adults often asked if I played basketball. My parents weren't athletic, so younger than high school, I got little experience practicing. When my mom lived on Rockland Street, an economically depressed block where we were a small minority as one of I think three white families out of about a hundred households, it was Philadelphia in the 70s. Dr. J was huge, so basketball was too. The bigger kids put up a milk crate and plywood hoop on a telephone pole at the bottom of the block and played a lot of street ball. The other moms told my mom to keep me away from the dangerous bottom of the block. But not playing there wasn't shameful. I…

October 25, 2021

Inspired to my first run in almost a year: 9 miles. Still plogging.

Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs / Stories

Inspired to my first run in almost a year: 9 miles. Still plogging.

I finished six marathons and my exercise habit began by joining the cross country team in high school in 1986. Ultimate had a lot of running in it. Practice led me to love running. I didn't at first, when I struggled. I've had my share of running injuries. Last year I started running barefoot, inspired by podcast guest Nir Eyal. Over the winter I tend to row inside on the rowing machine more since it's cold outside. This spring I didn't start running how I normally do. Why not? I got a plantar's wart---that is, a wart on the sole of my foot. For some reason, I felt ashamed to mention it, which was counterproductive because when I told another runner, he told me he's…

August 18, 2021

I helped get bikes allowed on New York City subways

I helped get bikes allowed on New York City subways

Once in college my bike got a flat tire, so I took the subway home. It was probably before my year off, so likely 1989-90, but I forget. Back then I rode everywhere. I'd ride from campus to practice up at Baker Field at the north tip of Manhattan. I'd ride it to Prospect Park to play pick up. In both cases, each ride was a decent workout, but I'd play a whole practice, then ride home. Ah, lost youth. This time with the flat, I didn't make it home, though. A cop told me bikes weren't allowed and forced me off. I don't remember how I got home. One of the bikes I used to ride around New York, that I bought it in…

August 2, 2021

More Used Syringes Littering My Community, This Time at Penn Station and Moynihan Hall

More Used Syringes Littering My Community, This Time at Penn Station and Moynihan Hall

I posted last year about finding syringes in Washington Square Park. I still find them. Wednesday, I met my dad at Penn Station as he was passing through Manhattan and had some time. The weather was warm but not too hot, so we chose to sit outside. We went to the steps of Moynihan Hall, the new train station across Eighth Avenue that used to be a post office. Here's its exterior, thought not from Wednesday, when there was construction work between and behind the pillars. I've sat there before on occasion, usually with friends passing the time. I don't remember feeling unsafe. I don't remember seeing remnants of people living there, behind the construction curtains. This time I did. More than people's clothing and…

June 11, 2021

Clawing back: 4,951 meters in 20 minutes. 49 to go.

Awareness / Fitness / Habits / Stories

Clawing back: 4,951 meters in 20 minutes. 49 to go.

I exercise on a five-day rotation between lifting, resting, and cardio so months with 31 days give me an extra rest day to experiment. This time I decided to try to recapture my nearly five-year-old achievement of 5,000 meters in 20 minutes on the rowing machine, which means averaging 2:00/500m for 20 minutes. A well-trained man in his 20s or 30s could do it easily. A serious competitor might not count it as a warm-up. My turning 50 next month makes it a more serious goal, though many men older than me could do it easily. Still, a meaningful achievement. Before starting, I ate a light breakfast, went to the bathroom (several times, as a function of the fiber in my diet and my nerves),…

June 5, 2021

Memorial Day Glory in Greenwich Village

Fitness / Stories

Memorial Day Glory in Greenwich Village

Yesterday, walking south along the Hudson River, I saw a guy running sprints on a pier. The temperature hovered around 50F (10C). It had rained on and off all day and was raining then. He was alone, running sprints in the rain. I call that commitment where no one would know if you didn't glorious. I was out on my daily walk to pick up litter. I was taking a long walk despite, or partly because, of the cold spring rain. I guessed, correctly, that few people would visit my neighborhood's newest attraction, The Little Island. I also wanted to wear a pair of jeans wet that needed some stretching, coincidentally because my thighs are bigger from lifting. Few people were out for a holiday…

May 31, 2021

Dominion, the documentary

Art / Freedom / Nature / Stories

Dominion, the documentary

I watched the documentary Dominion on how the factory farm system treats animals. It's brutal but important. It shows many graphic scenes so I know the link below won't play inline, but the producers made it freely available. Click through to watch it online. I recommend watching Dominion when you're ready for a sobering gut-punch you'll wish you had watched earlier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko Why I recommend it I last ate meat in 1990, went vegan several years ago, and when vegetarian at less animal products than anyone I'd met who called themselves vegan (different people seem to define zero differently), but I don't consider eating meat immoral or wrong in any absolute sense. When I read James Suzman writing about people in hunter-gatherer societies hunting as…

May 23, 2021

The Benefits of Staying Local

Sailing Across the Atlantic

Fitness / Nature / Stories

The Benefits of Staying Local

I would have viewed avoiding flying as missing out until I experienced what happens when I don't fly. I don't sit in the corner crying, feeling sorry for myself. I develop the skills to create what I used to pay for. I'll give a few examples how avoiding flying, or as I put it now, staying local, enriched my life. Wondering how I'd get off North America, I took sailing lessons, itself a wonderful experience. Sailing in New York harbor, a few miles from home, takes me to another world, living at a different pace, connecting to the rhythms and patterns of nature. But I learned to sail not just for pleasure or to take short vacations much cheaper and less polluting than flying. I…

April 23, 2021

Progressing From DJs to Dirt

Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Stories

Progressing From DJs to Dirt

My first business was based on an invention of mine that looked amazing---an optical device that animated still images to people in motion. For the business, we installed them on subway tunnel walls to show ads to riders between stations, sharing revenue with the subway system, before everyone had animation devices in their pockets. Outside the business, I also explored the medium as an art with properties unlike any other, which led to shows in galleries and museums. Since they were internally lit and glowed from the inside, they also looked great in dance clubs. In those younger days I frequented a few, which led to the installing the displays in VIP rooms. Then a friend connected me to the people building Crobar and the…

April 15, 2021

20 years ago, my first media coverage: The Wall Street Journal

Stories / Visualization

20 years ago, my first media coverage: The Wall Street Journal

On January 9, 2001 the Wall Street Journal published New Motion-Picture Advertising May Enhance London Subway Rides by Sarah Ellison, on the technology I conceived of. We launched later that year in Atlanta, then soon after New York City, Philadelphia, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Budapest, Athens, Mexico City, Chicago, and more, eventually reaching the Heathrow Express. News coverage of our launches Our launches got a lot of press. The technology was very cool, and still is. Here are videos from launching in Manhattan in early 2002. I was a few years more than half my age. So many years have passed that many people who know me today don't know about the company I co-founded once with displays operating on four continents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjIpsx29GQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16nIXVizq5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wopbf-W77G4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfFY2WwNo9U…

January 9, 2021

America’s bullsh*t stories about the environment

Nature / Stories

America’s bullsh*t stories about the environment

Most of us tell and believe similar stories on the environment, something like the three below. Do they sound familiar? A while ago some scientists figured out that we're destroying the planet. Everything I do is bad and I have to stop or they say I'm killing future generations. Every now and then they tell me it's worse than they said before. There have been some big storms and droughts, but we've recovered. Nothing I do makes a difference, but no one else is doing anything either, least of all the people telling me, who seem rich, polluting the most, and aren't changing either. They seem to want me to feel shame or guilt so I'll give up things they aren't. What one person does…

December 14, 2020

Special invitation to sneak preview I Am Greta

Leadership / Nature / Stories

Special invitation to sneak preview I Am Greta

As a proud member of Flight Free USA, where I've pledged another joyful year of not flying, I'm extending to you the invitation they extended to me. I just watched it. It's touching and honest as a documentary and she is honest, genuine, and authentic as a leader and person. After years of people asking me, confused, why I would act in service of the environment, asking me why I'm "so extreme" about not polluting, I feel one person who understands me and acts. She acts differently than I do, but we can all learn from her. I urge you to watch this important movie about her. I hope you'll try to understand her, not see her as unusual but human, aware, caring, and active.…

November 11, 2020

Used syringes littering my neighborhood

Used syringes littering my neighborhood

I've written how I pick up litter every day in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park on top of the other litter I pick up daily. For the twenty-one years I've lived here, walking through that corner after dusk means someone approaching saying, "smoke smoke, weed, smoke smoke." Since the pandemic that corner has evolved to harder drugs. I saw a guy smoking something other than cannabis a couple months ago. A couple weeks ago I saw the first syringe, discarded onto the middle of a park bench. Any kid could have walked by. I didn't think to take a picture of that syringe, but I saw another yesterday. My phone camera may be the worst one around, but I had it so took…

October 1, 2020

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