x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

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

society & culture nature

All Episodes

1:03:40

837: Zach Rabinor, part 1: Getting serious about...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/09/26

I met Zach at an event I spoke at sponsored by the Young Presidents Organization, whose members tend to be successful in business. The criteria to join require it. I knew the people would be friendly, but suspected they would pollute and deplete more than most without realizing it.Zach plays a leadership role in the local chapter and was one of the organizers for this event so we interacted more. He was open and sincere about learning about my work and sustainability leadership. As you'll hear, he

en

1:01:27

837: Zach Rabinor, part 2: What if your business and...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/09/26

Zach and I got so into our first conversation that we had to take a second one to get to the Spodek Method.Listen for yourself, but I hear Zach working with three motivations:His surfer, outdoors self wants to conserve, protect, and enjoy nature and enable others to do the same by experiencing it.His CEO self wants to deliver what his customers want, despite what they want including polluting and depleting---that is, hurting people and wildlife---beyond what nearly anyone who ever lived has. They

en

1:34:47

836 Dr. Robert Fullilove, part 5: Unsustainability is...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/09/24

Since our fourth recording, Dr. Bob and I spoke at length about what's driving me and keeping me going beyond where nearly anyone else does on sustainability leadership. We cover in this recording most of that conversation, plus we go in other directions.He shares the commonalities of what he sees in me and my work with the people he's known and worked with who are also working or worked to change the world, including Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, John Lewis, and his wife, Mindy Fullilove

en

30:21

835: At last! I can access my roof to charge solar...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/09/12

This week, I charged my solar panel and battery on my roof for the first time for over 18 months. My building had to do maintenance during which no residents could access the roof. They told us the job would take 5 months, but it took over 18. They also didn't say exactly when it would start until one day I got an email that said I couldn't access the roof until they finished the job.What a relief! This episode shares some of my experiences. Some I liked, like that it helped me develop resilience,

en

14:10

834: Do Americans Know How to Prepare Food From Scratch?

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/08/25

Late summer means produce at peak ripeness, especially peaches and heirloom tomatoes. Regular readers of my blog and subscribers to my newsletter have read of how my volunteering to bring overstock food from stores to places that give it to anyone for free has led to my getting for free amounts I can barely keep up eatingthat people turn down.This episode shares a saga of my confusion and exasperation at people throwing away and not accepting perfectly good food. I don't want to take it but the

en

1:06:47

833: Aaron Blaise: A Master Disney Director and...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/08/15

Aaron and I met after I got to see a screening of his recent short animated film Snow Bear.I knew about Aaron's achievements from participating in some of the biggest animated movies of all time. I expected to talk about art, creativity, and expression, topics I love. We did, after first hitting on leadership, especially empathy.He started by sharing his growth as an animator and director at Disney. Soon enough we dove into talking about the overlap between leadership and things he loved about his

en

1:06:21

832: Robert Fullilove, part 4: Action in the Center...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/08/07

Dr. Bob worked in the heart of the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. He shares stories of his interactions with Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), John Lewis, and more.In earlier conversations with him, I shared what brought me to him. I had been telling people who acted as if acting on sustainability was a burden. I pointed out that people who acted in the Civil Rights movement took greater risks and undertook more challenging work, risking jail, risking physical injury, going to jail,

en

36:31

831: Glenn Hubbard: Dean of Columbia Business School...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/08/05

I can't help but call Glenn "Dean Hubbard" since I met him as a student at Columbia Business School. That was 2005, making him one of the guests I've known the longest.I invited him to the podcast after seeing a talk he gave on the 300th birthday of Adam Smith. My recent learning more about Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers led me to find relevance between their thinking about how to live together without hurting each other and how we handle polluting and depleting today. I knew Glenn studied

en

58:20

830: Jo Nemeth, part 2: Nature improves time with...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/30

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

en

55:18

829: Adam Galinsky, part 1: Do you love being...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/23

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 isInspire.You

en

48:07

828: Richard Reeves: For Boys and Men: support and...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/19

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

en

48:44

827: Chris Berdik: Scientific American loved his book...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/17

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

en

48:28

826: Jo Nemeth, part 1: Living without money frees...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/09

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

en

27:19

825: Ryan Mandelbaum, part 2: Rising to the challenge...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/06

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

en

41:39

824: Dr. Rob Reed, part 2: Learning to love leading...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/07/02

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

en

1:06:42

823: Mark Mills, part 5: We’ll Never Have an Energy...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/06/18

Reading Mark's recent pieceWe’ll Never Have an Energy Transition in Manhattan Institute'sCity 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

en

56:05

822: Ryan Mandelbaum, part 1: Wildlife Is Everywhere,...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/06/11

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

en

1:01:02

821: Rob Reed MD, part 1: Learning leadership...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/05/29

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

en

56:26

820: Andy Samuel CBE: From worry before the workshop...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/05/23

Are you thinking about acting more but concerned about feeling guilty or judged that you aren't doing enough? If so, you'll love this conversation.I feel honored to work with people with Andy's background and community, which you'll hear about in our conversation.Despite his working with prime ministers and across Europe and the world, and acting in many ways already in his life, he was also worried about feeling judged or guilty.As he learned more about the Workshop, especially listening to Lorna's

en

11:44

819: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 6: Our...

This Sustainable Life ·

2025/05/12

This last recording in the series brings together the opportunities. We can't fix all the world's problems or to go back in time and change history. We can't change that people are already dying by the tens of millions annually from environmental problems, a number projected to increase by factors of ten or more.But we can do the best we can. The best we can is all we ever could do. Even if our culture weren't creating all these environmental problems, conflict would always exist. Restoring lost

en

846 results

Similar Podcasts

The Daily Horoscope

The Daily Horoscope

The Michael Decon Program

Michael Decon

Kalimera Koveos

Andrea Koveos

The Documentary Podcast

BBC World Service

Smarter leben

DER SPIEGEL