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PODCAST

This Sustainable Life

Joshua Spodek: Author, Speaker, Professor

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

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All Episodes

57:13

798: Nick Romeo: The Alternative: How to Build a Just...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/25

Regular listeners and readers of my podcast and blog know I grew up with parents who helped form a grocery buying group which folded into a food co-op. Different co-ops work differently, but the general idea is that shoppers co-own the business. There's less motivation to stock doof and more to source local, fresh produce and keep money in the community. While we still shopped at supermarkets, we favored the co-op for having greater selection of produce that was fresher and tasted better. It was

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39:24

797: Alden Wicker, part 2: Try and Try Again:...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/20

Many people think sustainability requires fixing everything or else we'll collapse. The Spodek Method creates a mindset shift followed by continual improvement, not, as they might hope, a mindset shift followed by perfection.Alden has had her electronic bike in Vermont for some time but hasn't ridden it. She's used doing the Spodek Method as her excuse to ride it, but it's taken time. This time she used it and you'll hear both how she got it working as well as the challenges. As tends to happen with

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44:45

796: Jack Spencer, part 3: Authenticity on Acting on...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/18

We start by talking about the internal challenges Jack felt about acting to do something he wouldn't have otherwise. He cares about the environment and lives accordingly. Still, he wouldn't have done what he committed to when we spoke. Does that mean what we would do is inauthentic?Then we talk about nuclear and other policy issues. Heritage's Project 2025 came up so he shared some back story the news doesn't cover about it.Then we return to acting. On my suggestion, he invites me to visit and fish

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1:17:35

795: Lorraine Smith, part 1: Leaving mainstream...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/14

Lorraine is one of the few people I know who saw mainstream sustainability efforts for what they are: ineffective and often counterproductive but self-congratulatory. I call most of them "stepping on the gas, thinking it's the brake, wanting congratulations."Unlike most others, once she saw their counterproductivity, if not outright lies, she left. She works to promote an "economy in service of life." I think it's easy to see that our current global economy is not serving life. The amount of life on

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53:53

794: Lorna Davis, part 3: Before taking the...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/12

Lorna first appeared on this podcast in 2021. We became friends and remained so, though we challenge each other, as you'll hear in this conversation. We don't try to. Just things about the other annoy us. But how much we respect and learn from each other outshines that annoyance.Lorna knew about the Spodek Method and workshops for years. I don't know why she didn't join one until now, but something clicked and she decided to. I think meeting Evelyn led her to see the technique appealed to people

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49:47

793: Nick Loris, part 1.5: Heartwarming nature,...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/10

People I talk to on the political left who care about the environment see people on the political right as opponents to defeat. When I share that I talk to people from Heritage Foundation, where Nick worked, they sound skeptical at best, more commonly incredulous and fearful.In this episode, you'll hear heartwarming stories of Nick's childhood with his father, then Nick today finding a way to manifest what he experienced then. You'll also hear he just got married, so I predict the commitment he made

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1:16:20

792: Travis Fisher, part 2: The spirit that America...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/12/07

We recorded this conversation just after the election. We talked about it, especially Travis's and the Cato Institute's views. One of his main views is that the US puts too much executive authority in the president. I'm alsoWe shared our concerns about the Inflation Reduction Act coming from different standpoints, but agreeing with each other.Our main conversation was about approaching sustainability from a view of freedom, not coercion or imposing values. I share my view thatIf you think living

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1:06:59

791: Sustainability Leadership Is a Performance Art

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/11/19

I'm following up my recent solo post, 790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk, with another extemporaneous one. This one is also with a former podcast guest and fellow teacher of our sustainability leadership workshop, Evelyn Wallace.This episode gives an inside view of how I develop ideas in our entrepreneurial team. In particular, I share a few insights into what I offer in the workshops. I've long known to avoid facts, numbers, and lecture. I avoid convincing, cajoling, and coercing,

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47:59

790: Talking to a guy injecting on the sidewalk

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/11/16

On a beautiful sunny Saturday, 9:50am, I was walking to Washington Square Park to charge my battery and talk at 10am to my friend Dan McPherson (he's been on the podcast, where he shared about his heart attack at age 46 the week before we recorded). I saw the guy in the picture injecting. I asked if I could take his picture and a brief conversation ensued.Instead of my planned conversation with Dan, we recorded my experience and thoughts about the conversation with the guy injecting on the sidewalk

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53:40

789: Solomon Schmidt: Author of Legal Gladiator, on...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/11/14

As a podcast host, I get pitched a lot of authors, books, and more. Most aren't relevant or are counterproductive to sustainability. I received an email promoting the author of Legal Gladiator, a biography of Alan Dershowitz. I knew the name from the news, but didn't know more than the name, maybe a whiff of his being controversial.I looked up the book and author and found both fascinating. I scheduled talking to Solomon unrecorded to meet him and see if the connection would fit. I like bringing

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1:11:19

788: Susan Liebell: John Locke, Stewardship, and the...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/11/13

I quote Susan in my book, Sustainability Simplified. In it you'll see how much John Locke influenced my long-term vision for the US to understand and solve our environmental problems. Learning about the Thirteenth Amendment, which (mostly) banned slavery, and its improbable path to passage and ratification led me to think about solving our environmental problems similarly.I learned that many people working to abolish slavery worked hard when drafting the US Constitution to make it able to support

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46:26

787: Travis Fisher, part 1: A nonpartisan,...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/11/11

I've been curious in what ways libertarian views on the environment and sustainability differ from conservative views. Travis worked at the Heritage Foundation, which is more conservative, and now works at the Cato Institute, which is more libertarian. Since I haven't spoken to many libertarians directly, I'm interested in this conversation to learn, so it's a conversation, not a debate.Early in our conversation, he describes some of their differences and similarities, and why he chose Cato. He

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31:32

786: Jan Mulder, part 2: The joy of finding and...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/11/08

Usually when someone does their commitment with the Spodek Method, they enjoy it. Nearly always they do more than they commit to. Sometimes someone really enjoys it.Jan went to town on his commitment. You might wonder if there's any appeal to picking up litter. Is it worth the effort? Who cares, anyway? After all, more people litter than pick it up, as anyone can tell by how much litter there is and how much it's growing.Yet the pattern I've discovered keeps happening. On the other side of working

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1:20:20

785: Josh Bandoch, part 1: Teaching persuasion and...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/10/30

I participated in an online workshop in influence and persuasion that Josh led. We got in touch afterward and found our approaches to the practices and how to learn them overlap. We start this episode talking about his background and what led him to learning and training others in the practices. Then we talk about what we like about learning and practicing them, what works, what doesn't, misconceptions, and other aspects. Some related subjects include authority, extrinsic emotions, management, and

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14:42

784: Serving in Uniform on September 11, 2024

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/10/11

If you haven't listened to episode 781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community Project, four years in the making, listen to it first for context.That episode describes my journey to start volunteering as an auxiliary police officer and the background to it. Depending on how well you know me or not, you may find the activity as surprising as I do, though I seem to be a minority in that regard. Everyone else congratulates me. I remark on how different this part of my identity seems compared to the

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1:11:03

783: Jan Mulder, part 1: Listening to every episode...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/10/09

Jan is a listener of this podcast who contacted me about how it changed his life. He is listening to each episode, starting from the beginning. I invited him to be a guest and he accepted. We've also crossed paths through working with podcast guest Dave Gardner, and his work in Growthbusters and running for President of the United States.Jan is Dutch, living in Germany, so can't vote in the US, but acts on sustainability locally. He told me he found my podcast made him feel empowered to act in a

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43:39

782: Jane Muncke PhD MSc: Toxins in your food from...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/09/17

Toxic chemicals leach from food packaging into your food. Some of these chemicals disrupt your hormones. Some cause cancer. Some affect your children more. Some disperse into the environment and harm wildlife.For 300,000 years, humans lived without plastic. We created this system, maybe thinking only of the effects we wanted, imagining these toxic effects wouldn't happen. Maybe we didn't imagine they could happen. We don't have to create these materials or use them. We are creating more all the

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44:33

781: My New Major Life Volunteering Community...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/09/13

I started a new project volunteering in my community that is also a big life change I wouldn't believe I'm doing except that I am. In a sense I started the project over four years ago and it's only seeing the light of day now.Sorry I'm writing little about and the episode is long, but for now I wanted only those interested to learn in so you have to listen all the way through to hear the full scope and details.The episode I quoted in this one: 366: The Cops, Jocko Willink, and Joe RoganAnother

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52:41

780: Jack Spencer, part 2: Policy and the Individual...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/09/05

Jack shares his love for nature and passion to care for it, how central it is to his life, how much of his time and focus he devotes to it. He shares his principles of individual choice over top-down regulation. He especially opposes government subsidy for squashing innovation, including industries he prefers, like nuclear. He's not anti-government.Listen to the episode for his views in more detail. He is as sincere as they come and has thought the issues through.I couldn't help wonder how many

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1:03:58

779: Nick Loris, part 2: Freedom to Explore, Freedom...

This Sustainable Life ·

2024/09/02

Nick and I talk about freedom, liberty, personal action and, however paradoxical to most people, how important personal behavior is in changing systems. Then we talk about markets, regulation, and democracy and how they interact with community norms. Looking at the words markets, regulation, and democracy, they may look academic or abstract, but I think you'll find the conversation fun because it's personal. We don't talk theory. We're talking about how we live and work.A core of our conversation is

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