With some guests I have a hard time finding a court to start the episode with. With Anand I had the opposite problem. At least half of what he said wild me and could have been the opening statement. I saw him speak and the title of his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World I didn’t think that someone there could really challenge a community[…] Keep reading →

Colonel Mark Read heads West Point’s Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. I met him through another guest on the show Colonel Everett Spain so I recommend listening to that episode as well. Two myths about the military have unraveled in me as a result of seeing West Point from the inside and talking to these generals and colonels and heads of departments. One is that the military practices command[…] Keep reading →

Following up my first post on this topic and my last one, and while the options below don’t have to be exclusive, people usually choose as if they are. Do you prefer . . . To burn tons of fossil fuel to see the Amazon Or grow a plant at home? To see a pristine paradise and tell everyone about it Or to let it be? Coffee in a disposable[…] Keep reading →

Let’s start with some personal context. I last ate meat in 1990 which would have been about the last time that I spent any money in McDonald’s. I avoid packaged food. I avoid food with fiber removed for something like four years in counting. I pick up a piece of trash per day and McDonald’s is up there a little behind Coca-Cola and Starbucks as the greatest sources of that[…] Keep reading →

Today I want to talk about the value being a guest on my podcast offers to influential well-known people. I call Oprah and her peers single-named people because everyone knows them by one name. So LeBron, Serena, Sergey, Larry, Barrack, Beyoncé, Jay-Z. I also mean anyone influential or with a big audience. People in politics, accomplished actors, journalists, singers, artists and the like, bestselling writers, public speakers, winning athletes and[…] Keep reading →

My strategy for this podcast is largely based on my learning from Sandy Reisky in Episode 28 that community influences people behavior more than facts and that’s the strategy that most other people are doing. I’m not going to stop people from spreading facts and legislation and things like that. These things are important and I support them but I’m doing something different and I believe essential and effective. I’m[…] Keep reading →

Everybody thinks about the environment. Nearly everyone also gets bogged down in questions. Will this or that change make a difference? What does all the science mean? One of the great things about science is that there are answers to all these questions. Science is a study of nature. People associate it with going to the Moon or people in lab coats. But it’s about nature, sunsets, gravity, why is[…] Keep reading →