Episodes
May 1, 2021
455: J. B. MacKinnon, part 2: What happens when you pay for quality?
Our world values cheap and disposable---in food and doof packaging, furniture, cars , and near the top of the list, clothes, especially fast fashion . The world is paying for it in the sense of overfilled landfills, plastic …
April 29, 2021
454: Richard Rothstein: Racial segregation in generations of U.S. law
Today’s guest, Richard Rothstein, is one of the experts on how the law has clearly and explicitly kept freedom, prosperity, longevity, opportunity, and more from people based on their skin color. This is no hard-to-believe c…
April 26, 2021
453: Bill Ryerson, part 2: How can we talk about population? What can we do?
What's the Earth's carrying capacity? If we're above it and we choose to lower it, what happens to the economy? I've wondered these questions. I know the mainstream view gets it wrong because humans have lived sustainably. T…
April 19, 2021
452: Book Update #1
Started thinking of book when I worked on initiative but put in background, expecting podcast to improve That's been the case. Started getting serious about a year ago. You may have noticed a lot of guests with backgrounds i…
April 17, 2021
451: Alexandra Paul, part 1: A Genuine Celebrity Role Model
I saw a TEDx talk on population where the speaker spoke thoughtfully and persuasively on overpopulation. I consider the topic among the most important on the environment, yet nearly no one talks about it, so I had to find ou…
April 8, 2021
450: Brian Keating, Losing the Nobel Prize
Though I haven't actively practiced physics since defending my thesis in 1999, it felt great to talk science with the author of a book named one of the best non-fiction books of all time. The conversation stayed where nonsci…
March 23, 2021
449: Chad E. Foster: How Do You Handle Huge Challenges? Not Big. Huge.
How do you face challenges? Not little ones like a pandemic lockdown for a year. Big ones. Regular listeners hear me talk about role models like Viktor Frankl and Nelson Mandela in the context of handling life challenges. Du…
March 20, 2021
448: Robert Bilott: The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare
Your blood contains PFOA, also known as forever chemicals. They cause cancer of several types, birth defects, and more. Dupont and other companies produced this stuff after learning it caused harm and dumped it into our envi…
March 19, 2021
447: Kathryn Garcia, part 1: Candidate for New York City Mayor
Kathryn Garcia, candidate for Mayor of New York City joined. No matter where you live, the mayor here matters. Many national trends in politics, business, culture, education, sports, and more start here. Our output in entert…
March 16, 2021
446: Wondering how you can make a difference? Action begets action.
I noticed a trend among podcast guests that the people who have already acted the most on sustainability find new things fastest. By contrast, people who do less say they're already doing all they can, or at least all they c…
March 13, 2021
445: Rabbi Yonatan Neril, part 2: Religion, Interpreting the Torah, and Nature
We got into territory I'd wanted to talk to a religious scholar about. I would have expected being recorded would make us more tentative, but I found the opposite. I didn't keep track, but several times I said feel free not …
March 6, 2021
444: Dar-Lon Chang, part 1: The engineer who made headlines for quitting ExxonMobil
Do you know anyone whose company pollutes more than they'd like, who wants to change things, but whose company keeps not acting? I think that situation describes almost everyone. Even the most sustainably companies aren't cl…
March 4, 2021
443: Nobody understands what's so bad with climate change
Here are my notes I read from for this episode ------ It hit me recently that nearly nobody knows what's so bad about climate change. I've started asking people and nobody knows. Actually, of the dozens I've asked, one knew,…
Feb. 27, 2021
442: Jonathan Hardesty, part 1: The Journey from Absolute Rookie to Mastery
Longtime listeners and readers of my books and podcast know I draw the analogy to learning and mastering a skill to learning to play piano or a sport. You start by playing scales or practicing groundstrokes. Likewise with le…
Feb. 24, 2021
441: John Sargent, part 1: The CEO who reduced a Big Five publisher's footprint
I learned of John's work through his statement at Macmillan's Sustainability page while researching Ray Anderson : In 2009, after reading Ray Anderson’s “ Confessions of a Radical Industrialist ,” I decided it was Macmillan’…
Feb. 20, 2021
440: Andrés Reséndez: The Other Slavery
About six months ago the parallels started forming for me between our global economic system today that creates great suffering on the scale of hundreds of millions of people with nightmarish cruelty, but also people benefit…
Feb. 17, 2021
439: How to Fix Texas
Here are the notes I read from for this episode How to fix Texas Just got off conference call a Texas attendee couldn't attend because her power was out. There are helpless people suffering. I empathize with them and feel co…
Feb. 14, 2021
438: Avoiding Creating Trash, Advanced Edition
When they hear I take two years to fill a load of trash, people ask how I do it, what's in my trash. In this episode I share a couple stories from last week of facing things entering my life that would result in my having to…
Feb. 10, 2021
437: Bill Ryerson, part 1: Population matters
No matter what you think we should do, everyone gets that there is some connection between population and sustainability. Everyone knows our population is increasing. We're consuming more than ever. How do we talk about this…
Feb. 7, 2021
436: You're right, it's not fair!
The notes I read from for this episode: It's not fair! Back from picking up litter Forecast, a few inches of snow Just want coffee, not to dispose. Ancestors could Just want to travel, not pollute. Don't want to think about …
Feb. 6, 2021
435: Etienne Stott MBE, part 1: Olympic gold medalist climate activist
I met Etienne on a holiday conference call of Flight Free UK , which celebrates what life brings when we enjoy people, culture, cuisine, and so forth around us, not flying all over. The concept would have sounded crazy to me…
Jan. 27, 2021
434: Manisha Sinha: The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition
You've heard me speak and bring guests who are experts in the history of abolition and slavery, particularly in England. I learned about well-known abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. Manisha Sinha, t…
Jan. 25, 2021
433: Adam Hochschild, part 2: Abolition then and pollution today
If you've followed my development on how to view acting on sustainability, you've seen a marked change when I learned about the British abolition movement of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Today's guest, Adam Hochschild, wr…
Jan. 22, 2021
432: Matthew Stevenson, part 2: What can environmentalists learn from disarming racism?
Many people talk about responding to threats or people they disagree with with empathy, compassion, treating everyone with respect. In practice, I see people doing the opposite. They don't feel, "I'm right, you're wrong." Th…