Episodes
May 7, 2024
754: (Aunt) Trish Ellis and (Niece) Evelyn Wallace, part 1: Not Even Cancer Holds Her Back
"What I do doesn't matter" is one of the more common sentiments of our time. We use it to avoid acting when we see problems. A similar rationalization not to act: "I have faith that younger people will solve our environmenta…
April 18, 2024
753: Martin Doblmeier, part 2: Sabbath and Sustainablity
A blackout struck New York City and a large part of the U.S. northeast in 2003. It happened only two years after 9/11. How could we not first wonder if it was terrorism. I had been at work at the time. After waiting maybe an…
April 16, 2024
752: Dave Kerpen, part 1: Delegation for leaders and entrepreneurs
Dave and I go back years, to when we both wrote columns at Inc. I'm surprised I didn't bring him on before. He helps entrepreneurs, leaders, and aspiring leaders develop social and emotional skills, as well as college studen…
April 11, 2024
751: Erica Frank, part 1: Living More Joyfully Sustainably for Decades
I met Erica in a online meeting of academics who promote avoiding flying. A major perk for many academics is that universities pay for flying to academic conferences, for research, and for other academic reasons, of where th…
March 21, 2024
750: Alden Wicker: To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Poisoning Us. You'll Be Shocked
Since recording this conversation, I've mentioned to a lot of people, "you wouldn't believe the situation with dyes and poisons in our clothes." The most common response has been something like, "Oh yeah, I've heard. It's te…
March 15, 2024
749: Sven Gierlinger, part 1: Transforming the Culture of a New York Hospital Chain as a Chief Experience Officer
I heard about Sven through the articles below about the cultural change at Northwell, a chain of hospitals around New York City. I recommend reading the Post article before listening to this episode. It may read overly posit…
March 13, 2024
748: Stephen Broyles, part 2: A Calming, Life Change From One Small Commitment
About fifteen minutes into this conversation, it hit me how powerfully Stephen's commitment affected him. (Sorry I took so long to catch on, Stephen!) All he had to do was volunteer around a body of water. His experience sho…
Feb. 17, 2024
747: Go Alan Go!, part 1: The drummer rocking Washington Square Park
Regular listeners and blog readers know I talk about litter and how much we wreck nature, especially my neighborhood's back yard, Washington Square Park. Click the links below to see some of the worst litter you've seen, in …
Feb. 15, 2024
746: Martin Doblmeier, part 1: What We Can Learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I'm searching for role models including people who changed cultures and undid dominance hierarchies, particularly people who came from status. I can think of many who came from subjugated classes, but not many who could have…
Feb. 4, 2024
745: Mattan Griffel, part 2: Is our dependence on polluting behavior "addiction"?
I have spoken and written at length how I see our relationship with polluting behavior as qualifying as addiction, a view that I think helps frame the challenge of sustainability. Overcoming addiction is harder than creating…
Jan. 25, 2024
744: Stephen Broyles, part 1: What Is Social Work and How Does It Relate to Leadership and Action?
Regular listeners and readers of my blog will know my sustainability leadership workshops and one of the participants of the first, Evelyn (she's in the video on that link). After being the teaching assistant for a couple co…
Jan. 22, 2024
743: Benjamin Hett: The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic
Regular listeners know how I look for role models in similar situations to ours regarding the environment. We know our polluting and depleting are bringing us toward collapse, but instead of acting, we procrastinate on actin…
Jan. 20, 2024
742: John Brooke, part 2: American slavery transformed to today's industry and anti-stewardship of our environment
If John's specialty in deep history weren't valuable enough to understand how our culture's dominance hierarchy formed from the material conditions of the dawn of agriculture, he also specializes in American history, includi…
Jan. 10, 2024
741: Tony Hansen, part 2: Volunteering hard labor creating meaning and generosity
You'll hear Tony's story of rolling up his sleeves and doing some hard labor. You'll also hear the labor being just the start of the reward. He shares about the less tangible but not lesser results in community, emotional re…
Jan. 6, 2024
740: Christopher Ketcham, part 3: Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”
I was reading Harper's magazine and Christopher's story was on the cover: Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”! It begins In the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainfore…
Dec. 24, 2023
739: John Brooke, part 1: Deep history and how our culture formed
Greenhouse gas and ocean plastic levels don't rise on their own. The cause of our environmental problems is our behavior, which results from our culture. The world's dominant culture pollutes, depletes, addicts, and imperial…
Dec. 20, 2023
738: Jacqueline Bicanic, part 2: Sustainability doesn't cost time and energy, it gives it
People complain they don't have time, money, or energy to live more sustainably, I think because marketers see the demand so come up with things to sell people to address the demand. Since neither buyer nor seller understand…
Dec. 15, 2023
737: Michael Gerrard: Considering a stewardship amendment with a foremost environmental lawyer
I follow podcast guest Maya Van Rossum on her work on constitutional amendments protecting a clean environment. You may have heard of the legal victory in Montana, Held versus Montana , earlier this year (yay!), Montana bein…
Dec. 6, 2023
736: Mattan Griffel, part 1: Online opioid addiction treatment that (actually) works
Regular listeners know I focus on understanding addiction. I see people in my neighborhood and in headlines nearly daily addicted to heroin, fentanyl, meth, and crack. Since our culture promotes craving and dependence as wha…
Dec. 3, 2023
735: Casey Mahoney, part 1: A Jazz Musician Lowering His Impact to 3 Tons CO2/Year in L.A.
Casey is a longtime friend. One day a few months ago he mentioned in a call he was choosing to lower his carbon footprint to a few tons of CO2 per year. I hadn't been trying to lead or persuade him, so I started asking him w…
Nov. 29, 2023
734: Alon Tal, part 1: Israel, Hamas, and overpopulation from a former Knesset member
Last month I read Hamas-Israel story from an angle few will touch, but is critical: overpopulation, which I wrote about in my post Overpopulation in Israel and Gaza . The population in Israel and Palestine have both more tha…
Nov. 25, 2023
733: Jacqueline Bicanic, part 1: Listener as Guest: Australian University Student, Very Active in Sustainability
Jacquie emailed me that this podcast is inspiring her. She wrote that she'd "always had a spark of interest in sustainability, but I mostly followed the herd mentality and went about my life not really making a conscious eff…
Nov. 21, 2023
732: Siddharth Kara, part 1: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
Living unsustainably means you need resources beyond your immediate environment. It requires you take from others. When done on a cultural level, it's known as imperialism. When we take their land too, it's colonialism. When…
Nov. 18, 2023
731: Debate and Understanding on Population Projections with Wolfgang Lutz and Chris Bystroff
I hosted two professionals who model population growth with different views, some complementary, some conflicting: Wolfgang Lutz and Chris Bystroff . I learned from both and recommend listening to their episodes first. I've …