This Sustainable Life

In Etienne and my continued exploration of each other's work, we look at my leadership work from his perspective. What are the differences between leadership and protest? What's the difference between a purity test and living by your values? How do my goals, strategies, and tactics differ from theirs? How do our efforts complement each other? Our time was tighter, so it was a shorter episode. I th...

We start by my reading the emails where I invited Whitney to this podcast by cursing with a few f-bombs, showing how we started our interactions. Before recording our first episode we met in Washington Square Park and picked up litter together. Read my emails cursing at Whitney Tilson that brought him to my podcast Whitney shares how he created and maintains his following, speaking his mind, delib...

You've heard of The Chicken Soup for the Soul book and series. I had to start this conversation by apologizing that I did the opposite of the advice everyone knows: "don't judge a book by its cover." Something about the title and cover didn't resonate with me. They seemed syrupy and palliative. To my credit, 144 publishers also passed on the book before one published it. The book evolved into a se...

Listen to the difference between Ash's tone, her level of engagement, and her type of engagement between what she talks about in the first few minutes and about fifteen minutes later. In both cases she shows a high magnitude of emotion. At the beginning she's outraged at stuff outside her life. Later she's passionate about things in her life. Nearly everyone trying to motivate on the environment f...

Since Bill visited the Hadza in modern-day Tanzania, and I've been learning about cultures that have lived for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, I asked him about how they lived. We talked about their religion, rituals, dancing, singing, fashion, textiles, and culture in general. Neither of us studies people or cultures, so we're just two people talking about our observations, but it's prett...

Following up last conversation with Etienne, on Extinction Rebellion's mission, strategy, and tactics, this time we talk about his path from disengagement to becoming a Rebel---that is, playing a significant role in Extinction Rebellion and committing a major part of his life to it. I don't know many others who have committed and dedicated so much personally, with such dedication and passion, to m...

Here are the notes I read from for this post: Walking through park 2017, pandemic "Thanks" Not thankworthy Restored faith / Nobody does / interrupting / construction worker Office Continual improvement Enjoying Fat / "Titty twister!" / salt "I can't" See meth, fentanyl, heroin users "I can" Forced $20 bill on me Had to run but kept talking Partly wish I'd gotten contact information Hosted on Acast...

I indulge in asking Bill about his and his wife Laurie's passions, filmmaker friends, goals, and so on. He talks about passionate peers he's worked with like Michael Pollan and Paul Stamets. The names Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen come up too, as two other people who appeared in his movies. He explains the value of celebrity. He shares his storytelling techniques not to make political films or pus...

Josh Martin started to do his commitment to shop at the farmers market, but it didn't connect. I think we didn't connect it to his experience of the environment. We decided to find a new commitment by connecting more intrinsically. We spoke on sustainability, nutrition, health, sports, and many things, him from the position of an entrepreneur former athlete, me from a troubleshooting perspective....

Sandra took responsibility when she didn't have to, as the Executive Director of NYC Pride, to respond to my requests to talk to an organizer. Longtime listeners and readers of my blog know that last year, I was disgusted by the garbage covering Washington Square Park the morning after New York City's 2021 Pride March. I posted pictures and video with the quote from another person in the park I sa...

Watch Jason's Not Just Bikes videos. I've watched them all. They're informative, engaging, funny, researched, provocative, and keep you coming back, but not like Netflix stuff designed to addict. After you watch a few, listen to our conversation. In our conversation he shares more depth than his videos of his motivations, how he makes the videos, interacts with his audience, feels frustration from...

Etienne Stott is using his Olympic gold medalist status to augment his impact acting on the environment, including working with Extinction Rebellion on peaceful civil disobedience. He's been arrested, spoken publicly, and more. When I started acting on sustainability, I looked for organizations to work with, but found none doing the leadership that I considered essential but i couldn't find anyone...

" Your story is truly inspirational ": feedback from an attendee. The government advisory Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board invited me to speak on sustainability leadership Wednesday. I spoke on what led to my experiment going off-grid in Manhattan, two-and-a-half weeks at the time. Here's the video of the presentation , which includes the slides I refer to, though here is the Venn diagram and...

Including their greatest proponents, nearly everyone thinks of and uses solar, wind, and other so-called renewables wrong if their goal is to reach sustainability or to stop reducing Earth's ability to sustain life. They all pollute in manufacture, transportation, installation, maintenance, recycling end materials, and disposal. I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't use them. I'm saying using them...

Whitney's background and accomplishments are incredible and we start with them. He shares his beliefs and mindsets that lead to his high performance in business, philanthropy, fitness, family, and more. Then we share a fun part of how I invited him to this podcast. After he, in a friendly, helpful way, cursed at some of his newsletter readers in criticizing their behavior during the pandemic, I cu...

We started from Ash's TEDx talks, which cover vulnerability, intimacy, and support. You can listen to our conversation on its own, but it won't hurt to watch them first. She could easily say, "As a lesbian, I have it so difficult," but she speaks more universally. Everyone has something difficult to share, hides parts of their identity, has been made fun of, has felt judged, shamed, or the like. S...

The start of this episode's text: Regular listeners know I’ve been living with my apartment off the electric grid for two weeks, in Manhattan, not off in the woods. Most of the benefits are about connecting more with nature, being humble to it, not dominating it. I’m waking up earlier, for example, to work and read by daylight, so I don’t have to drain the solar-powered battery. Direct sunlight is...

We start with one of the great cases of a corporation choosing to act with integrity in the face of pressure and incentive not to. Mark was part of the team that chose for CVS drug stores in rebranding to stop selling cigarettes. The choice was superficially difficult in that cigarettes made them billions of dollars in profit and their competitors could gain market share. But it was easy in that i...

Regular listeners know I love talking with professional athletes. They open themselves to failure every time they compete. They often make incredible feats look so simple and natural, we forget the years of dedication and effort that made it possible. Whether you want to play professional sports or not, you can adopt from them to reach your potential, which is one of my definitions of competition...

More continual improvement: the more sustainably I live, the easier each next step. Business people know about continual improvement, also knows as kaizen, the Toyota Way. How do you go from the Wright brothers' airplane to a 747? Not in one jump. Continual improvement, part of the process I have to convey more. I share observations on my week without using the electric grid: about food, climbing...

When a man who founded a restaurant that uses no trash cans meets a guy who doesn't fly and hasn't filled a load of trash since 2019, we start by expressing mutual appreciation. Anyone can do these things. It's a matter of doing it. Doing it leads to experiencing similar challenges and overcoming them, facing similar resistance from people saying it's impossible, and enjoying similar feelings of r...

I share thoughts after two days using only solar power in Manhattan. After recording I turned off the circuit to the whole apartment. I'm on the roof now, charging the battery. The recording shares more. The main themes: freedom and continual improvement . Also fun and curiosity . Caption for the cartoon, which I refer to in the recording: "Look at that glassy stare, those vacuous eyes... He's bee...

The notes I read from for this episode: “Lead by example”. I’m not leading by example. “Extreme” implies values, as does “middle ground” and “balance.” Everyone is extreme by someone else’s views. Everyone I talk to says they are balancing, that extreme is too much. What are you balancing with if one side is sustainability? How can the answer be anything but growth and unsustainability? People wil...

Gaya gets systems, how to change them, and not fall prey to rationalizations that sound tempting but are self-serving excuses like "individual actions don't matter" or "only governments and corporations can act on the scale we need." I loved this conversation for her knowledge and experience in what will reverse humanity's pattern of lowering Earth's ability to sustain life. She shares and elabora...

  Ambrose and I start by reviewing his commitment. After a bit, as best I can tell, we talked past each other. Every now and then, the Spodek Method doesn't resonate and this conversation looks like one of them. His description of how he sees the world and my read don't seem to overlap. I suspect he felt I didn't understand him or his world. I read him as guarded, not sharing his personal vie...