This Sustainable Life

The U.S. is ramping up its Presidential campaigns. The environment is an issue for many reasons. At first you'd think because of global warming, plastic, mercury in fish, extinctions, bees are mysteriously dying, and so on. But any candidate knows it's important because people care about it . Any leader knows that when people care, a leader can tap into that emotion and motivation. One of my defin...

I've known Michelle longer than almost any guest. I met her in business school, which would mean 2005 or 6. She may be the friendliest guest of the show, partly from our being friends. But I've seen her in a room of unknown people where she attracts people. They like her. It happens from skills she learned through practice. She's devoted herself to teach and develop them in others. I know because...

A friend introduced me to Hunter and I met her in person a day she was teaching in Bard's MBA program. We start with Limits to Growth, the 30-year update (the book , a synopsis ), preparing to talk about her new book, A Finer Future , which follows its tradition. I felt the root of our conversation was responsibility. We know what to do. We don't need more technology. We lack political will -- lea...

I hear a lot of people's reasons for not flying, for using single-use plastic, for leaving the air conditioner on when they're not home. I know them not just because people told them to me. I know them because I'm human and we all think similarly. When I want something that pollutes, I feel my mind justifying why getting it should be okay. It took years of training my mind to resist that knee-jerk...

James is fascinating and, I believe, fascinated. He interviewed me as much as I did him. The recording starts mid-conversation since we were just talking but his engineer started the recording. You'll hear a few minutes in when we found out we were being recorded. Since his engineer mixed live as we went, I'm giving you the conversation unfiltered. No removing ums even. We talked about initiative,...

Caspar leads a fulfilling life and helps people do the same. What's his expertise? How has he found purpose more than others? Why do corporations book him to help them with morale? He sailed around the world with his family. He lived a comfortable corporate life. He didn't have to do something out of the mainstream and independent. It forced them to figure out their narrative and purpose. Since mo...

I've learned in leading that you can lead people best when you meet them where they are. That means speaking their language and understanding their perspective. Many people I talk to take their cues from the Bible, including guidance on how to act regarding the environment. Among them, the term stewardship plays a key role. A steward is one who manages another's property, finances, or other affair...

Brandon loves negotiation and teaching it. He learned from the top in the field and practices it apparently 24/7. We start our conversation by covering negotiation as developed by an FBI hostage negotiator---Chris, his father. More than the family nature of their business or the FBI basis of his training and technique, I enjoyed his educational approach to negotiation. Brandon wants to help you im...

Everybody talks about political polarization, the communication messes this nation and world are in, and how people who disagree can't talk to each other any more, so we can't resolve conflict. I do it too---that is, get into conversations where I shut down meaningful communication---though less than before, telling me that we can learn to communicate effectively. I've learned tremendously the tim...

When I studied physics and spent time in universities, I met a lot of Nobel laureates. Physics is Nobel heavy so Columbia physics connected me to 3. Other science departments led me to another 1 or 2. The business school led me to another. Seth Shelden and ICAN---the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons---won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize "for its work to draw attention to the catastroph...

People ask me if I worry or lose sleep from my environmental habits in a world where most people pollute profligately and unnecessarily. In this post I try to illustrate by analogy how it feels. How would you feel if you were magically transported to the 50s or 60s and most people smoked and drove cars with no safety equipment but they all considered it normal? Or to 1850 Alabama and someone offer...

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Tom's Do The Math blog is one of the best site on internet. If you measure a site by how much it can improve a reader's life and human society, I challenge you to find one with greater potential. A couple peers include Low Tech magazine and Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air , which is a book that you can download for free. Tom makes the physics behin...

From our first conversation you know Tim's history as a musician and founder of the Eden Project. This time you'll hear the passion of a man who loves restoring the Earth's ability to sustain life and human society. He talks about the spirituality of his work, connecting to the Earth, eating, and growing. For city dwellers like most of us, he shares the potential for that connection available to a...

Laura and I go back a few years, from being on her podcast. We talk about her concept of emotional obesity : a parallel between physical health and emotional health. I find it a rich analogy on many levels. Characteristics of addiction to food that cause obesity resemble thoughts that cause emotional obesity. She describes her concept in more detail, but I find most helpful about it that it enable...

Mark and my second conversation it about happiness, pleasure, meaning, and purpose, though it sounds like it's about personal growth, food, and environment. In our first conversation, he didn't really connect on the environment at the start. This time you'll hear it resonates with him, largely through health and food. I see the pattern over and over: people protect themselves from saying the envir...

Outside the MBA world, not everyone knows McKinsey. Within it, and at the upper echelons of business and government, McKinsey advises some of the largest and most influential organizations, including governments and the world's largest companies. If a company wants useful advice, it has to share everything, which means McKinsey is privy to the secrets of the most influential people and companies....

Nadya and I mostly talk about business and sustainability. She describes what she saw growing up in the dissolution of Kazakhstan, where she saw the opposite of sustainability. I can't describe what she saw, but you'll hear the craziness of collusion, economic collapse, political collapse, and so on. She talks about how business works best when sustainable. I tend to agree. Tangential to what Nady...

Proctor and Gamble produces a lot of plastic and waste, which makes them very interesting to me. An old me would protest. The leader me sees the opportunity to support change if they aren't changing and help motivate it if they are. Not just reduce waste---also to help increase the joy, meaning, and purpose in the process---what the "leadership" part of this podcast's title alludes to. Steve Sikra...

Mark seeks transitions---what most people avoid, certainly around leadership and the environment---and loves them. He shares them with the world. Listening to his podcast and reading his results, they're working. Change can make for a great life, as much as most people prefer to do what they always have. You'll hear him embracing challenges, learning, seeking understanding. He seeks action and peo...

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. This post is about being a part of something greater than yourself, than all of us, benefiting us all, and benefiting yourself -- one of the great feelings and experiences available to humans. I happened to read four documents around the same time that illuminated each other and our attitudes toward acting on the environment. Our complacency in the face o...

As founder and CEO of iMiller Public Relations (iMPR), Ilissa Miller brings nearly two decades of experience in sales, marketing and product development to her clients in an effort to help them differentiate their messages and achieve notoriety within an ever expanding and evolving industry. With a wealth of experience and knowledge in the emerging global telecommunications and technology industri...

Sammy is a cofounder of Fitspot Wellness -- a fully managed solution for companies and properties, bringing on-site and digital workplace wellness programs and amenities to engage employees and tenants through community experiences. Sammy is an attention-to-detail aficionado who brings a blend of grit and imagination to the zillions of tasks that confront every startup. She has always thrived in o...

Jezzibell is a co-founder and SVP of Business Development of PacketFabric. From their web site: PacketFabric redefines how companies build and use network services. The PacketFabric network-as-a-service platform provides instant connectivity between colocation facilities, to major cloud providers, and Internet Exchanges. PacketFabric is simple, cost-effective, and scalable network connectivity and...

In his words, JV Bharathan cares about every single human being on the planet and celebrates the greatness of being human. He is an accidental author. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from India and received double masters of science degrees in software engineering and management from Brandeis University. JV is an avid traveler, people lover, and enjoys working with people from cross-cultur...

I subscribe to almost no newsletters or video channels, but I subscribe to Dr. Greger's Nutritionfacts.org. More than subscribing, I promote it. Watching his videos is a highlight of my Sundays, when his newsletters go out, and I've watched hundreds of them. Regular listeners know that food began my move toward environmental leadership, as well as loving fresh vegetables, fruit, legumes, and food...