This Sustainable Life

Most of the partners I know at the top tier consulting firms have worked there since business school. Tony has a different background, as he describes at the beginning. Because the Firm influences people at high levels of business and government, therefore potentially able to help change culture, I'm very interested in working with them. They are as prone to inertia as any other group, so I'm curi...

If no one is changing culture in your world, it's your opportunity to fill the leadership vacuum, no matter where you are in your organization or communities. Many companies are making strides toward goals for greening their businesses but need to find ways to maintain the momentum now that they have tackled the easiest challenges. Others are about to embark on their sustainability journeys and se...

I first read about Margaret and Irene and their book  Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking in an article on doof in the New Yorker . Then the next week the magazine devoted an article just on them and their approach to avoiding wasting food by eating it all. You might say to me---someone who avoids packaged food, in his fifth year on one load of trash,...

Evelyn joined the first workshop I led in the Spodek Method: practicing it, leading others through it, and how to create a movement. She then became the teaching assistant for the next two workshops. The liberation, fun, and intimacy of sharing one's fears, anxieties, and other vulnerabilities from acting more sustainably in a corrupt culture that makes it hard, all the more so in teaching others...

Amy hosts and produces a lot of podcasts, but Drilled is the big one I've listened to a lot. I listen partly to learn what happens behind the scenes and in the past in the fossil fuel industry. She's also covered how these companies influence the public in what until about World War II was called propaganda but the advertising industry changed to public relations . As a podcaster myself, I wanted...

Gautam and I had a lovely conversation about environmental things. He's become a good friend (we talk outside our recordings). Still, listen to determine for yourself, but I'd say this conversation exhibited a minor mindset shift if any. After we talked about Gautam's experience, we spoke mostly about abstract environmental issues, not personal ones. He spoke about some difference in his views and...

I follow Doctor Greger's newsletter and watch his videos every week. I unsubscribe from nearly everything else. In this episode we get a sneak preview of his next book, How Not to Age . Since he mostly covers diet, I wanted to check how much the book covered. Since my biggest problem with aging is my torn meniscus, I looked it up first, and the book covered torn menisci. Since my diet overlaps so...

I've spoken to several guests about the idea of a constitutional stewardship amendment in the style of the Thirteenth Amendment, complementary to a Green Amendment . Amendments tend to pass in waves so I could see them helping build a movement together. David knows as much about the history of the need for the Thirteenth Amendment, its evolution, and its passing. In this conversation I share some...

When I started business school at Columbia, I hadn't heard of McKinsey. The Firm recruited heavily there, so I found out about them, but little, since they were so secretive. I learned more from my classmates, that the business world held them in high regard. People wanted to work there. I interviewed and learned I got high reviews there, but I had entered business school to improve as an entrepre...

After reading about 34th Avenue in Queens and watching the video linked below, I had to ride to see it. Over a mile of a once congested street was transformed into safer, quieter places people enjoyed, especially kids. There are three schools along the route. The kids can come out and play. I met Jim there, felt inspired to do something similar near me, and invited him to the podcast. He talks abo...

Do you think government should protect people's life, liberty, and property? What if it turned out it didn't, if it said other people could destroy your life, liberty, and property, and would help them do it? That's what pollution does. A lack of a clean environment means that someone polluted it and hurt you, your children, your loved ones. You don't have a right to a clean environment if you are...

Regular listeners and blog readers know my developing abolitionism as a role model for a sustainability movement. I've hosted several top scholars on the history of abolitionism in England and America, as well as the relevant constitutional law. Today's guest is a top historian and I found our conversation fascinating. He knows the history like an encyclopedia and can analyze it to answer my quest...

I couldn't help asking question about the field of psychedelics research beyond our last conversation. He's a professional at the top of the field and well-connected. I started by asking him about comedy and psychedelics, after reading a funny piece in The Onion about it. He responded seriously, after all, there's a lot of humor in psychedelics. Then he shared about the growing communities of prof...

I met Pamela Paul after she mentioned previous guest John Sargent in a piece, There's More Than One Way to Ban a Book . I found her column covered issues others shy away from. I was curious what motivated her. We talked about what motivates her to write, how she chooses her columns, and how she writes. I was looking for encouragement to take on difficult topics with confidence, since I'm doing it...

How do we affect others and how does it relate to what brings meaning to life? I'm surprised it took this long for one of my conversations to cover the meaning of life, but I'm not surprised it came with a fellow physicist. Being able to talk quantitatively about nature comfortably, from lots of practice, lets us understand patterns of what's happening. Arnold can also talk with integrity for livi...

I've written about how people act like food coops don't work for people without resources like time and money or who have kids. It took me a long time to realize they didn't see food coops being started because the people starting them didn't have time or money and had kids. When my parents couldn't make ends meet, then after they divorced and struggled more to make ends meet, forming cooperative...

Adam 's book Bury the Chains inspired me to see British abolitionism as a role model movement for sustainability. The writing was simple and clear. The subject inspirational and relevant. We talked about it in our first episodes , which I recommend. At last I read his most renowned book, King Leopold's Ghost , which we talk about in this episode. I came to it after reading  Heart of Darkness...

Matt and I talk about his commitment and how it affected him. I talk about the Spodek Method in general and other leadership tools like creating role models. Matt talked about his hopes and expectations about technology. When I asked him if he could imagine a world where no one polluted, he shared that he hadn't thought about it, but find the idea almost beyond conception. Think about it: if someo...

Guy is a successful, well-known hedge fund founder. He's famous for paying a lot of money for one meal with Warren Buffet (hundreds of thousands of dollars), which he found worth it. He and I know each other partly through a guest also in finance I did several episodes with, Whitney Tilson , though we emailed before we found Whitney in common. Regular listeners know a strategy of this podcast is t...

I was led to Kate's article Should I Stop Flying? It’s a Difficult Decision to Make. from a newsletter from Flight Free USA . I've read, heard, written, and said a lot about not flying. I found her article the most sensitive, comprehensive, and thoughtful on the internal, personal challenge and gut check of deciding to stop flying. I'll let you read the article to find where she lands on not flyin...

Since our last conversation, check out the reviews that have come in about Home on an Unruly Planet from past guests of this podcast: “With deep, compassionate reporting and elegant prose … Ostrander finds creativity, vital hope, and a sense of home that outlasts any address.”— Michelle Nijhuis , author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction “As each new climate calamity...

What's actually happening with our environmental problems? Scientists predict. Journalists in periodicals tend to write what gets attention and clicks, so we don't know how accurately they represent versus sensationalize. There's plenty to sensationalize after all. Madeline spent time with several communities to find out what problems they faced, how seriously, and what they were doing about it. T...

Talking with Chris has made me more concerned about population projections that only show the possibility of collapse as error bars. I hope to bring him and past guest Wolfgang Lutz on the podcast together to help resolve their disparate views. I see some of humanity's effects on the environment that could affect our population beyond what the UN projections show not as low-probability high-impact...

Do you like my work because of my nearly unique background of a PhD in physics, having cofounded a couple companies, and having an MBA? You're in luck with Arnold, who has done the same. We got our MBAs together at Columbia so inevitably met. He was working on his solar startup then, Skyfuel, which was making news, though I wasn't working on sustainability yet the, still feeling like individual ac...

You've heard me talk sustainability leadership on this podcast and probably others. Have you wondered what I sound like talking to friends unrecorded? A friend who also teaches leadership at NYU knew my background and had talked about climate with her students. She scheduled a call to talk sustainability leadership with me to help prepare. She told me she would record it, but since we were talking...