This week I finished: Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer: A friend recommended this movie, I think because I’ve been talking about how there aren’t in our environmental situation the “bad guys” everyone thinks. There aren’t “good guys” either. We’re in a system that nobody deliberately created. My book traces the origins of how our system started from people doing things nobody could have expected to lead here. We[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Platoon, directed by Oliver Stone: Let me give you context to what prompted me to watch this movie after so long. I don’t remember when I first watched it. Before learning about sustainability, I thought technology would solve our problems. Mainly I thought fusion would, but along the way nuclear, solar, and wind seemed promising. As I learned more about each, I learned that they didn’t[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Waste Wars, by Alexander Clapp: I can’t recommend this book enough. I came across it by reading an Op-Ed piece by the author in the New York Times: The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie. That piece begins: In the closing years of the Cold War, something strange started to happen. Much of the West’s trash stopped heading to the nearest landfill and[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert, by Andrew Levy: I wrote earlier on the article Levy expanded into this book. Carter plays a big role in my book. Levy describes him as the anti-Thomas Jefferson and the document he freed his slaves with as the anti-Declaration of Independence. Beyond the biographical parts, Levy asks why Carter appears so little in our[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Transformer: Transitioning as a World-Record Powerlifter, directed by Michael Del Monte, starring Janae Marie Kroczaleski: Wow! A fascinating and illuminating documentary in two ways. First, it showed the struggle of someone with two competing inner drives. One is to develop huge muscles and compete in bodybuilding. The other is to be a woman, though born a man. This movie revealed the struggles of navigating society and[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation, by podcast guest Jack Spencer. I also watched his presentation on the book and panel at Heritage and followed up with the film he recommended in that presentation, Powering America, by the Heritage Foundation, where Jack works. Through our conversations on my podcast, especially doing the Spodek Method, and (coming soon, just recorded) on his, plus all the interactions that[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: The Anti-Jefferson: Why Robert Carter III Freed His Slaves (And Why We Couldn’t Care Less), by Andrew Levy: This piece was a journal article in the spring 2001 issue of The American Scholar. Robert Carter III plays a major role in Sustainability Simplified as a contrast to Jefferson, Washington, and their peers who spoke of freedom but did not free their slaves. Carter freed all his[…] Keep reading →

On Sundays I post the selected media I finished that week, usually books and movies, though sometimes videos or other media. I looked back at the list I finished this year. My top book is Sustainability Simplified, and not because I wrote it. I wouldn’t have written it except that I see zero approaches to our environmental symptoms that even in principle solve the greatest problem humanity faces—PAID culture, a[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West, by podcast guest Christopher Ketcham: I consider Chris one of the top journalists on our environmental symptoms for many reasons. The top two are his taking on essential topics few others do, especially growth and limits to it, and writing about them knowledgeably and effectively. In This Land he reveals the tragic horror story[…] Keep reading →