This Sustainable Life

Late summer means produce at peak ripeness, especially peaches and heirloom tomatoes. Regular readers of my blog and subscribers to my newsletter have read of how my volunteering to bring overstock food from stores to places that give it to anyone for free has led to my getting for free amounts I can barely keep up eating that people turn down.This episode shares a saga of my confusion and exasperation at people throwing away and not accepting perfectly good food. I don't want to take it but the alternative is to throw it away.While it's tragic that poor people don't accept this bounty of nature and our broken food system, I'm concluding a bigger picture. I think a large fraction of Americans don't know what to do with fresh, unpackaged produce. They know how to eat apples and bananas. Even other fruit, let alone vegetables like zucchini or radishes, I think they don't know what to do with. I mean, you can pick up a tomato and eat it, and heirloom tomatoes have so much flavor, eating them is like eating gazpacho. Well, the flavor is subtle, so if you're used to doof like Doritos and Ben and Jerry's, you won't notice their nuance and complexity, but still, eating them takes no skill.A couple recent blog posts on the topic:When did you last prepare a full meal from scratch, not one packaged product?More fresh juicy local peaches and heirloom tomatoes than I can handle, saved from waste by rich and poor alike Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aaron and I met after I got to see a screening of his recent short animated film Snow Bear. I knew about Aaron's achievements from participating in some of the biggest animated movies of all time. I expected to talk about art, creativity, and expression, topics I love. We did, after first hitting on leadership, especially empathy.He started by sharing his growth as an animator and director at Disney. Soon enough we dove into talking about the overlap between leadership and things he loved about his career: directing, teamwork, self-expression, and empathy. We talked about being generous, what it takes to get the best out of a team, and how it feels when you do. We distinguished leadership from authority and how many people confuse them.You'll hear we both enjoyed the richness and depth of our exploration of similar passions from different directions. Plus you'll hear the back story Snow Bear that gives it its richness and depth.Aaron's web page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Bob worked in the heart of the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He shares stories of his interactions with Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), John Lewis, and more.In earlier conversations with him, I shared what brought me to him. I had been telling people who acted as if acting on sustainability was a burden. I pointed out that people who acted in the Civil Rights movement took greater risks and undertook more challenging work, risking jail, risking physical injury, going to jail, being beaten, and worse, compared to eating fresh, local fruits and vegetables. I continued that I bet they would consider those experiences high points in their lives, ones they wouldn't take back or trade for anything.Then I saw him speak on a panel and heard him describe his experiences. I invited him to the podcast and he shared some experiences relevant to acting on sustainability, as well as on education, leadership, and more.In this episode, he speaks in more detail, including about big challenges they faced: should they continue with nonviolence or adopt violence? He shares the emotional tenor of conversations of people living through history, not knowing answers.First, we talk about fishing, family, and disappearing nature. I'll cherish this conversation. I think you'll value it too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I can't help but call Glenn "Dean Hubbard" since I met him as a student at Columbia Business School. That was 2005, making him one of the guests I've known the longest.I invited him to the podcast after seeing a talk he gave on the 300th birthday of Adam Smith. My recent learning more about Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers led me to find relevance between their thinking about how to live together without hurting each other and how we handle polluting and depleting today. I knew Glenn studied Smith for longer and in more depth than I have so I invited him to share about Smith.We started with his background, having worked with the White House. He then shared about Smith, in particular not seeing just his economics in Wealth of Nations, also his philosophy in Theory of Moral Sentiments.I shared some of the views I've been developing, though not comprehensively. He responded, politely and informatively, considering my inexperience expressing my ideas. He pushed back and educated.I couldn't help also sharing how much I'd learned at business school that was relevant to sustainability and I found little elsewhere, especially the social and emotional skills of leadership. I couldn't help building up my alma mater and the value of leadership in the task of changing culture.Glenn's home page at Columbia Business School Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We jumped in to talking about her Spodek Method commitment. She lives in a suburban area. There's a place near her that borders on bush, which I guess is Australian for undeveloped land. This spot with a bench designed for experiencing nature has been a short walk away from her for a long time, yet until now she never experienced it. Even this time, she put off acting on the commitment.Then she went. You'll hear what it did for her. I had to compare her description to what many people derive from big vacations to Hawaii or Bali, but she spent nothing, didn't have to plan, and didn't pollute or deplete.Her sharing about her experience recreating a wonderful past experience led to her sharing many unique challenges of living without money. Jo will lead you to think differently about your world and relationships to your loved ones and nature.Jo's home page, including her post on catatrophism we talked about Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam teaches leadership at Columbia Business School, where I learned there were classes in leadership, which changed the direction of my life. Regular listeners know I consider leadership the most important missing element in sustainability. To change the environmental effects we're barreling into, we have to change the causes, which are our behavior, which result from culture.Changing culture requires leadership, not just management. Effective leadership inspires. Adam's latest book is Inspire.You can imagine my enthusiasm to talk with a star professor at one of the world's top institutions (to which I'm deeply connected) teaching leadership on the topic of how to inspire and become an inspirational person and leader.We begin by talking about his background, how he began working in psychology, then moved to teaching at a business school, and the rewards he found there. Of all the departments and schools in a university, I believe business schools' leadership departments provide the most useful and effective tools and people to solve our environmental situation.In other words, if you are interested in solving our environmental problems, you can learn from Adam. We mostly talk about his book, Inspire, and how to put it into practice.Adam's home pageAdam's page at Columbia Business School Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When people talk about helping men, a lot of people think any and maybe every man might just have latent misogyny, so helping him risks augmenting misogyny. Richard Reeves has researched the situation extensively and for whatever advantages they (we) once had in some areas, still have in some of them, society has been kicking us down, especially in education, income, medicine, and law.A big part of his job is handling preconceptions and objections. In this regard, his work overlaps a lot with sustainability leadership: people's preconceptions override seeing what's happening right in front of them. Listen to him on any other podcast and you hear he has to bend over backward and repeat himself on simple points that I would think should be obvious to clarify that helping men doesn't mean hurting women. His success shows me that we who work on leadership in sustainability can learn a lot from him.His book Of Boys and Men takes him into challenging territory, but to do important work, sadly difficult. Many of these problems are not caused by boys and men, but boys and men experience them. I found it heavily researched, well researched, and well written. I don't think I'm overstating things, not that I came up with the following observation, but when society disadvantages girls and woman, people tend to say society needs to be fixed but when society disadvantages men, people tend to say men need to be fixed.We can learn from his leadership.Richard's home pageThe American Institute of Boys and Men Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sound pollution is pollution. You know it's been growing for your whole life with little sign of decreasing.I wish I lived in a world with less sound pollution, but given that I do, I'd rather be aware and conscious of it than not know. Ignorance of how much sound was affecting me wasn't blissful. Noise still affected me. Awareness enables me to act.But it's not what you think. More decibels doesn't necessarily mean more annoying. Lower decibels doesn't necessarily mean less. Just think of a whiny drone that sounds like a mosquito. I can hear an electric leaf blower as I'm typing these words and while it may be quieter than a two-stroke engine, it's freaking annoying and I can't tune it out.Chris's book Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back describes more about sound, noise, how they affect us, how our understanding of them change, and new industries developing on sound design. I start by sharing how just the first chapter of his book illuminated elements of sound I hadn't thought of.We cover in our conversation many of the topics his book does, not only the facts but the emotional and health responses, what we can do, what others are doing.Chris's home pageChris's newsletterScientific American's review: 4 Books Scientific American Loved Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can you imagine living without money? Humans lived without money for 250,000 years, so it's not necessary for life. Money seems like an invention on par with the big ones, like fire, the wheel, writing, and language.Right off the bat, Jo shares how her life before choosing to live without money was stressful, with less freedom or free time. If you thought having more money would give you more freedom, more free time, and less stress, her experiencing the opposite may prompt you to consider the basics of human interaction. What does it mean about our lifestyles, values, and beliefs that having zero of our culture promotes having more of actually giving us what we want?In earning a doctorate in experimental science, maybe the most fundamental thing I learned is that no matter what I expect or want, nature is always right. If my theory predicts one thing but nature does something different, nature is right and my theory is wrong. Jo's experience suggests something wrong at the heart of economic theory.Anyway, you'll hear how she learned of the possibility of living without money and acted on it. You'll also hear our mutual appreciation and admiration of our living without things society teaches us we can't live without. We're not extreme. More like we're conservative and loving.Jo's page: Jolowimpact Moneyless Low Impact Living Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ryan shares his experience approaching people to share in his joy. The task is not easy anywhere, least of all the Bronx, where he doesn't live but was visiting.Do people in the big city want to hear why some guy is walking around looking at trees and the sky? They wouldn't know he was bird watching until he told them. Do you think they'd welcome him or consider some guy with big binoculars too odd?I don't think I'll spoil anything by giving away that the several conversations he initiated went well because the issue is how they went well and how it led him to feel and act the next day and after.Aren't we all looking for ways to talk about the environment and sustainability that bring joy, affect people, and result in them expressing gratitude?Ryan's home page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob starts by sharing his experience from leadership coaching in the context of a hospital with people in intensive care as well as their families. Situations are often emotionally intense. Treating just facts doesn't work, or can work against you. It can be "terribly ineffective" (not unique to medicine).He recounts learning to lead through emotional awareness, using social and emotional skills he developed through practice in our coaching. He connects with people meaningfully: patients, their families, the other members of his team, everyone.He talks about not telling people what to do but to listen and act with empathy and compassion, that he's developing through deliberate practice.Maybe the most heartfelt part of our conversation comes at the end where he speaks about his longtime vision and dreams for being a doctor. As much as he wanted to care for patients and their families, now he sees how much the skills of leadership enable him to help far more people by leading others to care more effectively. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reading Mark's recent piece We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition in Manhattan Institute's City Journal prompted me to write my recent post, When they say “transition fuel,” they mean “more polluting and depleting,” not less pollution or depletion.Read them both and you'll see he inspired what I wrote and he wrote a lot more, with more research and editing. I recommend reading it and listening to his podcast episode there, but I'd start with this one. In our conversation, you'll hear more details and back story.The core idea of his piece: Every fuel we’ve ever used, we still use, and more than ever. If you think that by ramping up solar and wind that in any way that new energy availability will decrease our use of old energy, you’re dreaming. More likely you’re lying to yourself.That idea is hard for people to swallow if they think humanity's best hope for survival is what they call "clean," "green," or "renewable" energy and learn that those sources aren't clean, green, or renewable. It matters to do the numbers. Mark does.For the record, I come to different strategies than Mark, but I agree with his starting point in the article. I don't think we should start from denying the numbers.Mark's home pageHis recent article in City Journal that prompted me to invite him back: We’ll Never Have an Energy TransitionHis appearance on the City Journal podcast on that piece: Green Energy Fallacies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This recording went far beyond my usual preference for recording with guests in person when I can.We met in Prospect Park on one of the peak birding days of the year. Tons of people were out with powerful binoculars and cameras. You'll hear lots of birds chirping in th background and even people who knew Ryan coming up to talk to him.Nature is everywhere. We can enjoy it where we are when we want.You'll pick up how much fun we were having, wonder we were experiencing, and community we were connecting with. Nature makes such experiences happen.Have fun listening to us in nature watching and listening to birds and birders. Keep in mind: the point is only superficially birds and birders, as important as they are. The point is that you can access nature and create moments. It doesn't hurt to have an expert who wrote the book on local wildlife, but it's not necessary. As I mention in the recording, if you plan to visit New York City and want to explore, I'd recommend Wild NYC over nearly any guidebook.Ryan's home page, which links to his book Wild NYC: Experience the Amazing Nature in and around New York City Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob is one of my coaching clients. I asked him to be a guest here since many people perceive leadership and learning it as different than I mean. His work in medicine may not be at the center of sustainability, but I work in leadership, which I apply to sustainability. Listen to this episode to learn what changes to your life you can expect when you take my workshops. Listen to him for the full picture, but I think you'll hear profound and enduring personal growth, professional growth, improved relationships with spouse, children, and coworkers, promotion, security, connecting with your passions and realizing them, and more.It seems an overwhelming majority of people I talk to who haven't explicitly learned leadership associate leadership with the opposite of what I mean when I talk about leadership. They think of it as imposing authority, manipulating, convincing, telling people what to do, and the like.My definition of leadership is helping people do what they already want but haven't figured out how. Rob shares how he is learning and improving his leadership. People in sustainability can learn a lot from his fast and significant learning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you thinking about acting more but concerned about feeling guilty or judged that you aren't doing enough? If so, you'll love this conversation. I feel honored to work with people with Andy's background and community, which you'll hear about in our conversation.Despite his working with prime ministers and across Europe and the world, and acting in many ways already in his life, he was also worried about feeling judged or guilty.As he learned more about the Workshop, especially listening to Lorna's episodes before and after she took the workshop, he went for it. The nerves he started with faded before the first session ended, as you'll hear.You'll also hear that instead, he ended up fun. Try to count how many times he says the word in the conversation. He shares about the rewards (also the work). One big benefit: He lives in a home he's rewilding, already surrounded by nature, but the workshop led him to appreciate more.As much as he appreciated nature more, it sounds like the people and community that came with the workshop created as much value as the other changes. Maybe also the connections what he learned helped him create and deepen outside the workshop.Make sure you listen to the end. Andy shares the most in the last 10 to 15 minutes. Hearing people share things like he did makes all the time, effort, and other resources creating the workshop worth it.When you're ready to join, here's the link.Andy's personal pageLorna's episodes that led him to expect not guilt but fun Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This last recording in the series brings together the opportunities. We can't fix all the world's problems or to go back in time and change history. We can't change that people are already dying by the tens of millions annually from environmental problems, a number projected to increase by factors of ten or more.But we can do the best we can. The best we can is all we ever could do. Even if our culture weren't creating all these environmental problems, conflict would always exist. Restoring lost value to our culture that would restore stewardship would keep us from having to hurt innocent people, contributing to this suffering, just to live.Doing the best we can replaces despair, helplessness, hopelessness, anxiety, and all the internal conflict resulting from giving up on our values with meaning, purpose, love, and passion. People say action is the antidote to those things, but not just any action. The action must be effective, as part of a plan that leads to meaningful results.This series shows what action will work for you in the moment and for humanity in the long run, leading to global cultural change, restoring basic human values we've jettisoned in a fool's trade for what we think of as comfort and convenience but has become satisfying short-term, meaningless craving.This summary shows what you can do, on a different scale than avoiding straws. It means taking leadership roles to bring others with us. It's hard work that will take years, but you will love it. You will grow and you will help others around you grow, as well as your whole nation and species to grow from timidity and hoping for the best to restoring values of love, stewardship, family, community, and more.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Look up "Greatest of All Time" on Wikipedia and you'll find Muhammad Ali. This lesson shares how he went from being just the heavyweight champion of the world to the greatest of all time, transcending sport to becoming a statesman.Business people say "culture eats strategy for breakfast," and our culture, while paying lip service to sustainability, promotes and rewards polluting, depleting behavior. Celebrities play a major role in setting culture. When I tell people, "Taylor Swift is probably in an airplane right now," they know what I mean. No one disputes because even if she isn't flying literally that moment, she flies plenty.Yet billions of people want leadership. They want to follow people living by their values.This lesson shares the potential legacy available to any celebrity in an area of global demand that can last centuries to millennia. Those doing performative, ineffective things won't reach it, but that constraint doesn't mean celebrities have to act perfect.They don't have to act perfect.They only have to show they are doing their best.But they have to act genuinely and authentically, allowing their vulnerabilities to show.The Spodek Method enables them to automatically, which is why so many of my podcast guests return for multiple episodes.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sustainability has become a polarized partisan political issue, despite everyone wanting clean air, land, water, and food. In the US, neither the Democrats nor Republicans have a vision of or plan to sustainability. Both rely on purported solutions that exacerbate and accelerate our current results. Since we reach the general through the specific, I focus on US political opportunities. I believe those outside the US will see clearly how to apply the spirit of this video to their homes.They're like two tired boxers who get stuck toward the end of a fight in an embrace, holding each other up, acting like they're punching but not. On the contrary, they've evolved into a mutually supportive dance, pandering to their bases, pointing at each other, not taking responsibility.Yet there are political paths toward sustainability, which is why I work in sustainability leadership, as opposed to sustainability itself. We need leadership, not performances designed to look like leadership but are the opposite.This video shows conservative, libertarian, and liberal approaches to sustainability from each tradition's principles, including limited government, free market approaches and anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial approaches. All are based in the opposite of coercion, convincing, cajoling, or manipulation.They lead to what appears the only solution that works, an APPLE PIE amendment. While it will work, it's as hard for people as dependent on pollution and depletion as we are to envision as the Thirteenth Amendment must have looked to plantation owners. Yet the Thirteenth passed, replacing the most divisive issue in America's history with a source of unity.Passing the APPLE PIE amendment will unify us. Future generations will wonder why we took so long.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The solution in video 3---the Spodek Method---creates a new, more effective situation than anything I know of in sustainability.People act on their own motivation that they felt before I met them. Instead of me motivating them, it was more like I unleashed and inspired them. That's the difference in acting on intrinsic motivation instead of extrinsic.Every other sustainability effort I'd ever come across convinced, cajoled, coerced, lectured, manipulated. It might get compliance, but squashed motivation.When someone wants to do something but doesn't know how to achieve it, and you know they'll thank you for helping them do it, that's a business opportunity.This video explores the potential to revolutionize leading people and cultures, even global, toward acting more sustainable. It covers just leading yourself to live more by your values, to working with our team, to starting a project or venture yourself, up to creating a culture-changing project creating a legacy to last centuries and beyond.I'm not saying you can just start these projects tomorrow. Our culture has poisoned the market so much that nearly everyone associates living more sustainably with making their lives and cultures worse. The Workshop will lead you to know otherwise from hands-on practical experience, but it will take time to build the market.Then we'll see demand from billions of people.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now that we understand our environmental problems as cultural, proposals based in technology, market incentives, and legislation don't address the problem. They generally won't achieve the desired outcome and will often achieve the opposite.I share my path toward discovering a solution that works, now called the Spodek Method. Changing culture requires many things, and leadership is one. The Spodek Method is an experiential leadership technique that prompts people to share and act on their values---that is, based on intrinsic motivations. I describe how it works and what it achieves, in yourself and others.So you don't have to take my word for it, I share the experiences of people who have learned the technique, some renowned. Some took my Workshop, others were guests on the podcast. Once you get the Spodek Method and a sense of how it prompts you to transform, I share the vision, mission, and strategies it enables in my mission of changing global culture through a path that is intrinsically rewarding for everyone who tries it.To follow up:The videos of this courseMy book, Sustainability SimplifiedThe Workshop and community Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.