Episodes
June 23, 2023
695: Dan Walsh, part 1: Two-time Olympian and Bronze medalist in rowing
If learning what it's like to watch your team win an Olympic gold medal from the sidelines isn't enough, and if learning what it's like to grow up in a family beset with poverty and addiction before reaching Olympic level co…
June 21, 2023
694: Matthew Matern, part 1: Running for President on Sustainability
Matt invited me to his podcast, A Climate Change . We stayed in touch after recording. He shared that he ran for President, including supporting sustainability. A goal of this podcast is to bring elected officials of all str…
June 17, 2023
693: Christopher Ketcham, part 2: The Green Growth Delusion
Christopher may be the most direct, accurate reporter on sustainability. Our last conversation treated his helpful and accurate reporting on the book Limits to Growth . Today we start from his (in my opinion) excellent artic…
June 13, 2023
692: Daniel, host of the "What Is Politics?" videocast, part 2: Is Changing CEOs Possible
The spiciest parts of this conversation come at the end. It's possible listeners may think we were annoying each other, but I think I can speak for both of us that we enjoyed the repartee. Anyone who has talked to me about m…
June 7, 2023
691: Oliver Burkeman, part 1.5: Embracing Our Inevitable Limitations on Time and Energy
I've been recommending Oliver's book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals a lot. When people ask about it, I have a hard time explaining what it says, only that it's valuable. He has a way of communicating import…
June 1, 2023
690: Leah Rothstein: Just Action, a blueprint for concerned citizens and community leaders
This podcast and my mission are about changing culture. The Color of Law compiled our culture's practices that I can only see as cruel and unfair. As long as they're hidden, we can't do much about them. Listen to my episode …
June 1, 2023
689: Workshop results: Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective? Yes!
[Click to watch the video of this post.] Can Learning to Lead Sustainability be fun, inspiring, and effective? Yes! I just finished leading my first workshop in leading oneself and others effectively to act more sustainably:…
May 28, 2023
688: Maya K. van Rossum, part 1: Green Amendments for the Environment (State and Federal)
Some context leading to my conversation with Maya : When I first thought of a constitutional amendment to protect us from pollution, I thought the idea was crazy, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. The more I did, the mo…
May 28, 2023
687: Should We Amend the Constitution for the Environment?: A constitutional scholar (Michael Herz) and American abolition historian (James Oakes)
See the video for this episode here . I speak about the concept of a constitutional amendment on the environment with former guests on the This Sustainable Life podcast: Michael Herz: Constitutional scholar and former lawyer…
May 19, 2023
686: Gautam Mukunda, part 1.5: Is Technology Necessarily Good?
In the first part of our conversation, we start by reviewing Gautam's commitment to sailing, which seemed and still seems a good idea to him. but maybe too much for now. We revisit what motivated him and come up with a new c…
May 16, 2023
685: Chris Bailey, part 3: How to Calm Your Mind: Dropping the latest iPhone for a flip phone and loving it
Chris returns to share his experience with the Spodek Method. He did something different than he committed to: he stopped using his smart phone---the latest Apple iPhone---in favor of a simple flip phone hearkening almost ba…
May 12, 2023
684, Simon Michaux: Do Governments Understand Energy? How Unprepared Are We?
Simon is a mining engineer who both researches the minerals and mining necessary if we were to try powering our culture with various sources. His work has brought him to work with government teams, especially economists and …
May 9, 2023
683: Alan Ereira, part 3: More about Kogi life and culture, contrasting with ours
The more I move toward living sustainably, the more I learn about cultures that haven't become as polluting, depleting, addicted, and imperialist as ours. I grew up thinking they were stuck in the Stone Age, but they aren't.…
April 21, 2023
682: Gautam Mukunda, part 1: Teaching Passion for Leadership at Harvard
I've made it no secret that sustainability lacks leadership and leaders. If you want to help on sustainability, I suggest that the most valuable thing you can do is learn to lead. If you know how to lead, improve it. Nothing…
April 16, 2023
681: Albert Garcia-Romeu, part 1: Psychedelics and Time in Nature
Regular listeners know I've been asking people what the environment means to them as part of the Spodek Method. Many people respond with touching answers that I would call something close to life-altering. Maybe more like li…
April 1, 2023
680: Wolfgang Lutz: A Primer in Demographics and Global Population Projections
Wolfgang Lutz is one of the world's experts in projecting global population levels and demography. I contacted him to help understand the differences between projections based on demography like his and the United Nations' v…
March 25, 2023
679: Alan Ereira, part 2: The world through Kogis' eyes
I was very curious to learn more about the Kogi and Alan's interactions with them. Alan is deeply involved with their joint project to learn to restore nature as they have shown they can. "Restoring nature" doesn't do justic…
March 21, 2023
678: My talk to the International Society of Sustainability Professionals
The International Society of Sustainability Professionals invited me to speak to their New York Chapter. Here is that recording. We "whooshed" out the participants' words, so it's just my speaking. Their mission is "ISSP emp…
March 15, 2023
677: Roz Savage, part 1: It's Doable and You Can Do It. One Oar Stroke at a Time
Roz could have stopped at rowing solo across oceans to world records, awards, and national honors. She didn't. She had done those things for a purpose: helping make our world more livable, less polluted. They gave her greate…
March 12, 2023
676: Paulina Porizkova, part 1: No Filter
One of the most famous supermodels, Paulina needs no introduction. She's here because mutual friends introduced us and her recent book, No Filter , that tells a different story than you'd expect of the once-most-highly-paid …
March 8, 2023
675: Derek Sivers, part 1: Leading versus Exploring Frontiers
I bring leaders from all areas to sustainability. The challenges to changing culture to sustainability aren't in technology, science, journalism, activism, or politics, though all those fields are relevant. Their practitione…
March 4, 2023
674: Oliver Burkeman, part 1: Time Management and Sustainability for Mortals
Oliver's book Four Thousand Weeks deserves the incredible praise it gets. I've recommended it to many friends and can't for the life of me put into words how he refines and changes how I look at time, priorities, how to choo…
March 1, 2023
673: Jim Oakes, part 2: Can We Go From Abolition to Anti-Pollution?
My passion for the possibility of doing for pollution what abolitionists did to slavery: transform it from something normal, as if part of nature, to forever seen as wrong. The more I learn the difficulty of conceiving of th…
Feb. 23, 2023
672: Chris Bailey, part 2: How to Calm Your Mind
Bringing back Chris for first time since five years ago. Since then, his last book got big, as we briefly discussed. We started talking about meditation and at a high level, framed the conversation to come on how the mind wo…