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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

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Latest Episodes:

830: Jo Nemeth, part 2: Nature improves time with loved ones Jul 30, 2025

Show notes

We jumped in to talking about her Spodek Method commitment. She lives in a suburban area. There's a place near her that borders on bush, which I guess is Australian for undeveloped land. This spot with a bench designed for experiencing nature has been a short walk away from her for a long time, yet until now she never experienced it. Even this time, she put off acting on the commitment.

Then she went. You'll hear what it did for her. I had to compare her description to what many people derive from big vacations to Hawaii or Bali, but she spent nothing, didn't have to plan, and didn't pollute or deplete.

Her sharing about her experience recreating a wonderful past experience led to her sharing many unique challenges of living without money. Jo will lead you to think differently about your world and relationships to your loved ones and nature.

Jo's home page, including her post on catatrophism we talked about

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829: Adam Galinsky, part 1: Do you love being inspired? He wrote the book on it. Jul 23, 2025

Show notes

Adam teaches leadership at Columbia Business School, where I learned there were classes in leadership, which changed the direction of my life. Regular listeners know I consider leadership the most important missing element in sustainability. To change the environmental effects we're barreling into, we have to change the causes, which are our behavior, which result from culture.

Changing culture requires leadership, not just management. Effective leadership inspires. Adam's latest book is Inspire.

You can imagine my enthusiasm to talk with a star professor at one of the world's top institutions (to which I'm deeply connected) teaching leadership on the topic of how to inspire and become an inspirational person and leader.

We begin by talking about his background, how he began working in psychology, then moved to teaching at a business school, and the rewards he found there. Of all the departments and schools in a university, I believe business schools' leadership departments provide the most useful and effective tools and people to solve our environmental situation.

In other words, if you are interested in solving our environmental problems, you can learn from Adam. We mostly talk about his book, Inspire, and how to put it into practice.

Adam's home page
Adam's page at Columbia Business School

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828: Richard Reeves: For Boys and Men: support and love over misunderstanding Jul 19, 2025

Show notes

When people talk about helping men, a lot of people think any and maybe every man might just have latent misogyny, so helping him risks augmenting misogyny. Richard Reeves has researched the situation extensively and for whatever advantages they (we) once had in some areas, still have in some of them, society has been kicking us down, especially in education, income, medicine, and law.

A big part of his job is handling preconceptions and objections. In this regard, his work overlaps a lot with sustainability leadership: people's preconceptions override seeing what's happening right in front of them. Listen to him on any other podcast and you hear he has to bend over backward and repeat himself on simple points that I would think should be obvious to clarify that helping men doesn't mean hurting women. His success shows me that we who work on leadership in sustainability can learn a lot from him.

His book Of Boys and Men takes him into challenging territory, but to do important work, sadly difficult. Many of these problems are not caused by boys and men, but boys and men experience them. I found it heavily researched, well researched, and well written. I don't think I'm overstating things, not that I came up with the following observation, but when society disadvantages girls and woman, people tend to say society needs to be fixed but when society disadvantages men, people tend to say men need to be fixed.

We can learn from his leadership.

Richard's home page
The American Institute of Boys and Men

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827: Chris Berdik: Scientific American loved his book Clamor (so did I) Jul 17, 2025

Show notes

Sound pollution is pollution. You know it's been growing for your whole life with little sign of decreasing.

I wish I lived in a world with less sound pollution, but given that I do, I'd rather be aware and conscious of it than not know. Ignorance of how much sound was affecting me wasn't blissful. Noise still affected me. Awareness enables me to act.

But it's not what you think. More decibels doesn't necessarily mean more annoying. Lower decibels doesn't necessarily mean less. Just think of a whiny drone that sounds like a mosquito. I can hear an electric leaf blower as I'm typing these words and while it may be quieter than a two-stroke engine, it's freaking annoying and I can't tune it out.

Chris's book Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back describes more about sound, noise, how they affect us, how our understanding of them change, and new industries developing on sound design. I start by sharing how just the first chapter of his book illuminated elements of sound I hadn't thought of.

We cover in our conversation many of the topics his book does, not only the facts but the emotional and health responses, what we can do, what others are doing.

Chris's home page
Chris's newsletter
Scientific American's review: 4 Books Scientific American Loved

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826: Jo Nemeth, part 1: Living without money frees her to do what she loves Jul 09, 2025

Show notes

Can you imagine living without money? Humans lived without money for 250,000 years, so it's not necessary for life. Money seems like an invention on par with the big ones, like fire, the wheel, writing, and language.

Right off the bat, Jo shares how her life before choosing to live without money was stressful, with less freedom or free time. If you thought having more money would give you more freedom, more free time, and less stress, her experiencing the opposite may prompt you to consider the basics of human interaction. What does it mean about our lifestyles, values, and beliefs that having zero of our culture promotes having more of actually giving us what we want?

In earning a doctorate in experimental science, maybe the most fundamental thing I learned is that no matter what I expect or want, nature is always right. If my theory predicts one thing but nature does something different, nature is right and my theory is wrong. Jo's experience suggests something wrong at the heart of economic theory.

Anyway, you'll hear how she learned of the possibility of living without money and acted on it. You'll also hear our mutual appreciation and admiration of our living without things society teaches us we can't live without. We're not extreme. More like we're conservative and loving.

Jo's page: Jolowimpact Moneyless Low Impact Living

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825: Ryan Mandelbaum, part 2: Rising to the challenge of random acts of friendliness Jul 06, 2025

Show notes

Ryan shares his experience approaching people to share in his joy. The task is not easy anywhere, least of all the Bronx, where he doesn't live but was visiting.

Do people in the big city want to hear why some guy is walking around looking at trees and the sky? They wouldn't know he was bird watching until he told them. Do you think they'd welcome him or consider some guy with big binoculars too odd?

I don't think I'll spoil anything by giving away that the several conversations he initiated went well because the issue is how they went well and how it led him to feel and act the next day and after.

Aren't we all looking for ways to talk about the environment and sustainability that bring joy, affect people, and result in them expressing gratitude?

Ryan's home page

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824: Dr. Rob Reed, part 2: Learning to love leading effectively Jul 02, 2025

Show notes

Rob starts by sharing his experience from leadership coaching in the context of a hospital with people in intensive care as well as their families. Situations are often emotionally intense. Treating just facts doesn't work, or can work against you. It can be "terribly ineffective" (not unique to medicine).

He recounts learning to lead through emotional awareness, using social and emotional skills he developed through practice in our coaching. He connects with people meaningfully: patients, their families, the other members of his team, everyone.

He talks about not telling people what to do but to listen and act with empathy and compassion, that he's developing through deliberate practice.

Maybe the most heartfelt part of our conversation comes at the end where he speaks about his longtime vision and dreams for being a doctor. As much as he wanted to care for patients and their families, now he sees how much the skills of leadership enable him to help far more people by leading others to care more effectively.

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823: Mark Mills, part 5: We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition Jun 18, 2025

Show notes

Reading Mark's recent piece We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition in Manhattan Institute's City Journal prompted me to write my recent post, When they say “transition fuel,” they mean “more polluting and depleting,” not less pollution or depletion.

Read them both and you'll see he inspired what I wrote and he wrote a lot more, with more research and editing. I recommend reading it and listening to his podcast episode there, but I'd start with this one. In our conversation, you'll hear more details and back story.

The core idea of his piece: Every fuel we’ve ever used, we still use, and more than ever. If you think that by ramping up solar and wind that in any way that new energy availability will decrease our use of old energy, you’re dreaming. More likely you’re lying to yourself.

That idea is hard for people to swallow if they think humanity's best hope for survival is what they call "clean," "green," or "renewable" energy and learn that those sources aren't clean, green, or renewable. It matters to do the numbers. Mark does.

For the record, I come to different strategies than Mark, but I agree with his starting point in the article. I don't think we should start from denying the numbers.

Mark's home page
His recent article in City Journal that prompted me to invite him back: We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition
His appearance on the City Journal podcast on that piece: Green Energy Fallacies

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822: Ryan Mandelbaum, part 1: Wildlife Is Everywhere, Including (especially) NYC (and where you live) Jun 11, 2025

Show notes

This recording went far beyond my usual preference for recording with guests in person when I can.

We met in Prospect Park on one of the peak birding days of the year. Tons of people were out with powerful binoculars and cameras. You'll hear lots of birds chirping in th background and even people who knew Ryan coming up to talk to him.

Nature is everywhere. We can enjoy it where we are when we want.

You'll pick up how much fun we were having, wonder we were experiencing, and community we were connecting with. Nature makes such experiences happen.

Have fun listening to us in nature watching and listening to birds and birders. Keep in mind: the point is only superficially birds and birders, as important as they are. The point is that you can access nature and create moments. It doesn't hurt to have an expert who wrote the book on local wildlife, but it's not necessary. As I mention in the recording, if you plan to visit New York City and want to explore, I'd recommend Wild NYC over nearly any guidebook.

Ryan's home page, which links to his book Wild NYC: Experience the Amazing Nature in and around New York City

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821: Rob Reed MD, part 1: Learning leadership transforms your life and work May 29, 2025

Show notes

Rob is one of my coaching clients. I asked him to be a guest here since many people perceive leadership and learning it as different than I mean. His work in medicine may not be at the center of sustainability, but I work in leadership, which I apply to sustainability. Listen to this episode to learn what changes to your life you can expect when you take my workshops. Listen to him for the full picture, but I think you'll hear profound and enduring personal growth, professional growth, improved relationships with spouse, children, and coworkers, promotion, security, connecting with your passions and realizing them, and more.

It seems an overwhelming majority of people I talk to who haven't explicitly learned leadership associate leadership with the opposite of what I mean when I talk about leadership. They think of it as imposing authority, manipulating, convincing, telling people what to do, and the like.

My definition of leadership is helping people do what they already want but haven't figured out how. Rob shares how he is learning and improving his leadership. People in sustainability can learn a lot from his fast and significant learning.

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