This Sustainable Life

In this sixth conversation between an Extinction Rebellion Rebel and a home-grown sustainability leadership (I hope) leader, we explore more of the life of someone who has devoted himself to solving our environmental problems. We continue comparing and contrasting the approaches, learning from each other, developing friendship, sharing the challenges, and sharing why we do it. If you, listener, ha...

Here are the notes I read from: 40% of pregnancies are unplanned. Overpopulation is a major problem for environment so it's a topic for this podcast. Girlfriend who pressured me into unprotected sex and got pregnant Not only women's issue. Men have as much value to add as anyone who hasn't been robbed or murdered to speak on robbery and murder. Her power, reversing her word, pressuring, irresponsi...

Having just started month three of living off the electric grid in Manhattan, technical issues led me to stop the experiment. I'm not sure the problem, but connecting the solar panels to the power station, it doesn't charge. I don't know how to diagnose it without another power station or solar panel I know works to find the problem. Here are the notes I read from: Last use of electronics off-grid...

The notes I read from: Yesterday my mom suggested I move away from the city if it makes me feel so bad. Last week my dad reaffirmed that he wouldn't appear on the podcast without some vague conditions he was using my invitation to cajole me into. To move away from the problem is exactly the opposite of my mission. Nearly everyone else identifies my work as helping the world, even if they don't see...

Mike committed to a year-long task. Few guests go for so long. Since we're in a writing group together, I've seen him in between, but since I want you, the listeners, to hear guests' results first, I didn't ask him if he stayed on track. To be candid, I suspected he didn't because of the year length. Regular listeners know I bring some guests on for episode 1.5s, where I help bring them back on tr...

Nakisa shared about the intersection of nature and its disappearance growing up, as well as her growing awareness of it, family, community, and a polluting cement factory appearing in her neighborhood. We recorded shortly after the Buffalo shooting of May 2022, and talking about access to fresh produce disappearing from her neighborhood touched on it. Everything led to her sharing about her plans...

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...