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This Sustainable Life — Science & Medicine
This Sustainable Life

Do you care about the environment but feel “I want to act, but if no one else does, it won’t make a difference,” and “But if you don’t solve everything, it isn’t worth doing anything”?

We are the antidote! You’re not alone. Hearing role models overcome the same feelings to enjoy acting on their values creates meaning, purpose, community, and emotional reward.

Want to improve as a leader? Bestselling author, 3-time TEDx speaker, leadership speaker, coach, and professor Joshua Spodek, PhD, MBA, brings joy and inspiration to acting on the environment. You’ll learn to lead without relying on authority.

We bring you leaders from many areas — business, politics, sports, arts, education, and more — to share their expertise for you to learn from. We then ask them to share and act on their environmental values. That’s leadership without authority — so they act for their reasons, not out of guilt, blame, doom, gloom, or someone telling them what to do.

Guests include:

Dan Pink, 40+ million TED Talk views

Marshall Goldsmith, #1-ranked leadership guru and author

Frances Hesselbein, Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree, former CEO of the Girl Scouts

Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager

Vincent Stanley, Director of Patagonia

Dorie Clark, bestselling author

Bryan Braman, Super Bowl champion, Philadelphia Eagle

John Lee Dumas, top entrepreneurial podcaster

Alisa Cohn, top 100 speaker and coach

David Biello, Science curator for TED

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Latest Episodes:

550: Rick Ridgeway: A Life Lived Wild: K2, Everest, and places no human had seen Jan 14, 2022

Show notes

Prepare to be awed at Rick's stories of adventure, discovery, nature, and humanity. He has summited K2, Everest, and more. He's visited places possibly no other human has. And he's an experienced, brilliant storyteller, so shares his experiences with a vitality that can only come from living it. Hear what it's like for animals that have never seen humans to approach him.

His interactions with people show up too, including Sir Edmund Hillary, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, and North Face and Esprit founder Dave Tompkins, and more.

He shares what it's like at altitudes where each step requires summoning all the willpower he can just to take the next step.

For background, before recording, I checked with him if we could talk about his thoughts on his role as a role model promoting activities that impact the environment, like all that flying. I was glad to hear he was open to it. It just worked out that the stories he shared were so engaging that we didn't get to the topic, or to do the Spodek Method. I hope in a future episode. Still, he shared plenty on his environmental views and work.

He just published his latest book. As captivating as I found this conversation, the book's stories transcend them. Beyond individual stories, it's composed with threads running in and out that create a greater message than a collection of stories.

Rick's home page, with links to his movies, books, and more
His latest book, Life Lived Wild, with links to his others
One Earth
Tomkins Conservation

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549: Abdal Hakim Murad, part 2: High and low tech in the new green mosque in Cambridge, UK Jan 11, 2022

Show notes

Many people and mainstream society seem to view technology as the solution to our environmental problems---and the more and the newer the better. Abdal Hakim and I agree technology isn't the glowing solution many believe. It can play a role, but as part of a mix, including low-tech and non-tech components.

This topic led to the new green mosque in Cambridge that he helped make happen, how to mix technologies and harmonize with its location. It won awards and created networks and support from the community.

He shared the role of sacred spaces in life, less available now, as well as natural spaces. Nobody dislikes trees, but there are fewer around than ever for many people.

He also shares his commitment on reducing meat with a widespread social and Muslim perspective.

Cambridge Central Mosque
The World Architecture Community article, The UK’s first green mosque: "The Cambridge Mosque", with lots of pictures

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548: Erik Bottcher, part 1: a New York City politician awesome enough to pick up litter Jan 08, 2022

Show notes

Erik Bottcher is my elected legislator. New York City's council presides over a budget bigger than most countries'.

Yet I met him picking up litter. He organized weekly clean-ups when the city dropped its sanitation budget during the pandemic. He also sees the problem not as too little cleaning up but too much supply of packaging that becomes litter.

Let's pause for a moment. How many politicians have you heard of who bend down and pick up litter, week after week? I think the world would benefit from all of them doing it.

We talk about changes to the city we'd like to see. He shares about growing up gay not in Manhattan but the Adirondacks, then coming to the city and how that affects his governing.

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547: Michael Carlino, part 4: What does Christian scripture say about population? Jan 07, 2022

Show notes

Michael is becoming a regular. Would I have expected an extended conversation with a doctoral candidate at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary when I started? I don't think so, and I don't think many environmentalists engage with evangelicals and conservatives. I think you'll hear genuine friendship, mutual respect, and mutual desire to learn from each other. I think you'll hear actual learning.

In this episode we took on a topic we expected to disagree on: population. This time I asked more questions, learning his views and the views of scripture he follows, though I shared my views too.

What does the Bible have to say about population? Where do we agree or disagree? What common ground is there, if any, and what can we do about it?

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546: Maxine Bédat, part 2: Systemic Change Begins With Personal Change Jan 05, 2022

Show notes

Maxine shares her experience with her commitment across the country. She moved partly to enable living by her values. People often suggest it's easier for someone living in New York not to fly since I have access to so much culture here, but access to many cultures only matters if you value it. Not everyone does. I hope you live where you can access things you value. If you don't, no amount of travel will overcome that you live where you don't like.

I mention this because Maxine could live by her values better not in New York. She sounds like she's still flying a bunch, she didn't commit to avoiding flying (yet). As we talk about in our conversation, we build up to bigger changes through smaller ones.

Note how often she describes the discomfort that changing to acting on her values liberates her from. I believe we all feel that discomfort when we know we're acting against our values. We know when we're polluting. No amount of rationalization that "everyone else is doing it", "the plane was going to fly anyway", "what I do doesn't matter", and so on can quiet our consciences.

I heard her composting commitment liberated her from feelings and behavior she didn't like. Not that she couldn't change any time, but the commitment from our conversation kick started a change. I expect she'll keep developing, maybe not monotonically, but steadily.

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545: Jesse Eisinger: Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter for Propublica Dec 28, 2021

Show notes

How do you become one of the premier investigative journalists at one of the premier publishers of investigative journalism? In general, how do you excel in an area with no established path? I consider figuring out how essential in leading others.

I feel sad when I hear people say, "I'd like to help the environment, but there are no jobs in it." Of course not! When culture is the problem, following others won't solve it. Leading others requires leading yourself first.

Jesse and I have known each other since college in the 1980s, so he shares his path from the start. On the surface, you'll hear him describe his failures, yet he kept rising to more responsibilities. Listen between the lines to hear what prompted the rise. I heard integrity, passion, persistence, vision, and intangibles that don't show up on resumes, but lead to success. What do you hear?

After his personal story, Jesse shares his take of American values and culture and how it's changed in his professional lifetime. He hints at what he's working on next.

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544: Michael Carlino, part 3: What would Jesus do with an iPhone? Dec 24, 2021

Show notes

Michael shares about avoiding using a smart phone, or at least using a minimally functional smart phone. Do you remember what life was like without yours? What does solitude mean to you?

How much time do you spend on a smart phone? Would you like to reduce it? What would you do instead? What are we missing? How about emotion, love, freedom, and joy?

He talks about the irony spending money to help us handle our addiction to those who cause the addiction. It sounds like doof. We talk about addiction, our purposes, and being distracted from them.

The above is the starting point of what life is about when not distracted all the time: freedom, family, community, our values, and understanding those things. You'll also hear scripture quoted joyfully than in most conversations.

If you've considered a digital fast, I recommend listening as motivation to do it.

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543: Hilary Link, part 1: a college president leading her school to carbon neutrality Dec 21, 2021

Show notes

Allegheny College was one of the first 10 institutions of higher education in the United States to be declared carbon neutral by an organization called Second Nature. Readers of my blog know my skepticism of claims of "net zero" or "carbon neutral," but I look for people in leadership positions acting genuinely and authentically toward sustainability.

So I bring you Allegheny's president, Dr. Hilary Link. She shares the college's experience starting a decade ago, before her arrival, and its institutional long-term action. She also shares her helping her peers do similar work at other schools.

Allegheny College took on the challenge without a substantial endowment, a large staff, or a big budget. For the last five years, the College's Environmental Science and Sustainability program has been listed among the top five in the U.S. for its interdisciplinary, experiential approach.

Like most guests, she agreed to share her environmental values and commit to live by them personally.

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542: Chad Foster, part 3: Experiencing nature, people, and sex without sight Dec 17, 2021

Show notes

Chad shares his experience motivating his family to try to bring them camping with him. You'll hear they didn't make it easy. I couldn't resist asking questions about his experience of nature, people, and sex without sight. I didn't want to ask questions everyone asks, but he graciously answered.

His mindset also emerged of how to handle life's challenges, which he shared. If I could give people new technologies for sustainability or his attitude, I would pick his attitude, since it would enable others to solve their problems. If losing your sight would be a greater challenge than living sustainably, well, he sounds pretty happy and successful handling a greater challenge.

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541: My "rant" on "People want to act, Josh, but it's hard" Dec 15, 2021

Show notes

"People want to act, but it's hard," my business friend said to me, speaking on the environment. I said it to myself for most of my life before learning that acting on the environment, however hard, was fun. Raising a child is hard too, but people do it.

This time we happened to be speaking over video and recording it. I'm posting what I happened to say extemporaneously. I wouldn't describe it as a rant, but sort of close. I talked about slavery, abolition, learning, doing hard things, and more.

I said what I wish someone had said to me twenty years ago. I would have acted earlier. It also shares how someone who has acted more sustainably for more than a few years thinks.

The video version, so you can see me saying it

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