This Sustainable Life

Aaron is the president & CEO of the NJ Tech Council and founder of Propelify ---the Propelify Innovation Festival. Propelify empowers the community of innovators who act. He launched Propelify in 2016 to inspire the tech and innovation community and those who act---who propel . Propelify welcomed over 8000 attendees in 2016 and over 10,000 in 2017, making it one of the largest tech events ever...

I felt a special bond with Ani before interviewing him. He introduced himself telling me that he read my Inc article What a Year Without Flying Taught Me About Responsibility, Empathy, and Community over a year before and, agreeing with it, challenged himself to avoid flying . He was 14 months into avoiding flying. He joked, "I hate you and I love you," because the challenge was so great but so wa...

Shana is the founder, CEO, and Lead Trainer at Yadid’it! Dog Training, the Executive Director at Yadid'it! Sustainable Dog Rescue and an ABCDT (Animal Behavior College Certified Dog Trainer). She is, in her words, super quirky, a loving dog-mom, an eldest sister to two loving siblings, and a sexual trauma survivor. #metoo Growing up a practicing modern orthodox Jew and attending a yeshiva day scho...

You might not guess from the beginning of our conversation that we'd talk about almost being attacked by a hippopotamus in Botswana, with crocodiles, and apes that might rip your head off, nor family triumph and tragedy, the Amazon, exploration of the world, external and internal. Jonas lives a wonderful life and it wasn't handed to him. After covering his tremendous accomplishments, we turn philo...

I finally saw how to see reducing versus reusing and recycling. The distinction is subtle until you get it. Then you see that missing it leads people to counterproductive behavior and, egregiously, feeling good about that counterproductive behavior, leading them to do it more. I read yet another person posting about recycling who didn't realize or address that if we keep producing plastic, it won'...

When last we heard from Dov, about a year ago, he had limited driving his James Bond Jaguar, enjoyed the experience beyond expectation, and said he was considering getting rid of it. For a year I've wondered what came of his commitment. Many people "forget" or give up on commitments to bring mugs with them to cafés. What could I expect from a guy who aspired since childhood for a specific car to s...

My book, Initiative , launches in two days. In it I start by describing how Shark Tank , other media, and other parts of our culture that claim to promote entrepreneurship actually discourage it. A few months ago, I met Mark Cuban, one of Shark Tank 's main figures, at NYU-Stern and saw him playing his Shark Tank role with students presenting. I was impressed with Mark and initially with the forma...

Imagine someone said too much stress and proposed giving someone with stress shoulder rubs or body massages. I bet a lot of people would say, "I'm stressed. I could use a shoulder rub." If they were ready to give the shoulder massage then and there, they wouldn't say, "You know who should really get them: the government or big corporations." Yet suggest acting on their environmental values and the...

This is a podcast about leadership. Initiative is a major part of leadership. If you want to lead environmentally, you need to initiate because the world is likely going in an opposite direction than you want. More fundamental to knowing the parts of leadership is how to learn to do them . You can't lecture or coerce someone to learn to take initiative or to initiate, but lecture and coercion are...

We're living in a world of people who are judging parenting from the view of a partier, which makes sense when you don't have a child -- something to take responsibility for. But we have such a thing, the environment. The joy you wish you could get from exploring nature you can get from protecting it, even if that means picking up other people's garbage. I know people who used to party a lot. When...

The challenge for habits isn't starting them. It's not stopping them. I've started many. Actually, I've probably started fewer than most. I've stopped fewer. Mistakes: focusing on starting, wondering the value of it to you, they're mostly valuable, the problem isn't that they aren't valuable, it's that they are and that there are too many, asking how to start. To start is simple. Floss your teeth....

Silicon Valley, governments, and lots of people are pushing for efficiency. I do too, but only after changing systemic beliefs and goals . The greatest cause of global warming would have looked like the greenest clean energy innovation ever: the Watt steam engine. It led to our environmental problems today more than anything else. We'd be fools to think today's green clean energy will do any diffe...

Plastic is everywhere -- the oceans, landfills, and for 93% of us, our bloodstreams. Everyone promotes recycling, but it's not happening anywhere near the scale that we're producing it and pumping it into our world. Most people, it seems, are content to hope for the best and hope someone else solves things. In the meantime, they don't change their behavior and the situation nobody wants continues....

In this part of the conversation, Chase and I spoke about the environment. He's very thoughtful about it, though hasn't acted on it, for reasons he eloquently explains. I take the liberty of persisting politely, so if you haven't acted or want to influence others, you'll hear a lot of resistance that many feel but rarely express. If you're interested in developing your environmental leadership ski...

Chase runs GirlsChase , one of the most trafficked sites for dating coaching, which recently celebrated 10 years in business. It sets itself apart from its peers, besides its longevity with basic material, not gimmicks, for men to improve their lives, still getting about 40% traffic from women. The episode is long because Chase shared in depth what I consider valuable for someone wanting to lead i...

When many people enter my apartment for the first time say something about it being minimalist. I feel like I have a lot of stuff because I have many things I don't need, mean to get rid of, but haven't. Apparently, my amount of many things is well below most people's thresholds. I also bristle at people labeling me, so whatever the label, I usually don't like it. But the label minimalist especial...

I love watching Dr. Michael Gregor's videos on nutrition . A common theme of his videos is how medical school barely teach doctors nutrition and exercise despite how important they are for health. He shows how industrial food companies promote profit over healthy diets and expensive, risky medicine over avoiding foods and sedentary lifestyles that cause the problems they purport to solve. He provi...

A lot of people say, "Josh, easy for you to act on the environment. You don't have kids." First, I could point to former guest Bea Johnson , who with her husband and 2 sons, produce less than a mason jar of trash per year, whom I see as role models to aspire to. I could point out former guest Jim Harshaw , who involved his four children and wife in his personal challenge. They loved the process an...

Srini has run his podcast over 10 years, written several books, hundreds of articles, interviewing hundreds of researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, me, and more. His business is helping people develop themselves -- to dream, to play, to create, to go on adventures, to find your path. In this conversation we talk about his development and how he got to help others. It's more on the leadership devel...

As a professor of leadership, host of this podcast, and constant student of acting by my environmental values, I live and work in the intersection of leadership, education, and the environment. Ken Robinson does too, but with a big difference: he's been here for decades longer, actively practicing in each. This episode approaches each of education, leadership, and the environment from several pers...

Business, based growth, loves the ideas of a circular economy and recycling because both promotes more, but may keep us on track to unsustainability, global warming, plastic, etc. I don't know the answer, but the city of Charlotte contacted me about their Envision Charlotte program I told them I'm cautiously optimistic and am not sure what they're doing is in the long run helpful. I'm not saying i...

With some guests I have a hard time finding a quote to start the episode with. With Anand, I had the opposite -- at least half of what he said wowed me. When I first saw him speak and saw the title of his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World , I wondered if someone at the elite event I attended would really challenge a community he was in. He did. You'll hear Anand in th...

I met Colonel Read through Colonel Everett Spain , who has also been a guest of the podcast. Two myths about the military have unraveled in me as a result of seeing West Point from the inside and talking to 4-star Generals and department heads. One is that the military practices command-and-control and that someone of any rank can just order people to do things and get compliance. On the contrary,...

Anna is down to earth for anyone, let alone a gold medalist and Crossfit champion. Watch her videos to see the contrast with what she does, her abilities, and how she doesn't have to be humble. She does something hard, that most can't do, like a clean and jerk or climbing a rope, then does as many as she can in a cycle with other hard things, to past exhaustion. She shows us what people are capabl...

Kevin and I have been friends since we both wrote for Inc, and before I appeared on his podcast , which always opens a conversation. It's two guys talking about leadership and love with examples of hardball football and basketball coaching and the like. That leadership view isn't the only perspective on leadership, but it recalls my blurb that I wrote for his book: If you want to lead so people lo...