This Sustainable Life

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, being beaten, and worse, compared to eating fresh, local fruits and vegetables. I continued that I bet they would consider those experiences high points in their lives, ones they wouldn't take back or trade for anything.Then I saw him speak on a panel and heard him describe his experiences. I invited him to the podcast and he shared some experiences relevant to acting on sustainability, as well as on education, leadership, and more.In this episode, he speaks in more detail, including about big challenges they faced: should they continue with nonviolence or adopt violence? He shares the emotional tenor of conversations of people living through history, not knowing answers.First, we talk about fishing, family, and disappearing nature. I'll cherish this conversation. I think you'll value it too.

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 Smith for longer and in more depth than I have so I invited him to share about Smith.We started with his background, having worked with the White House. He then shared about Smith, in particular not seeing just his economics in Wealth of Nations, also his philosophy in Theory of Moral Sentiments.I shared some of the views I've been developing, though not comprehensively. He responded, politely and informatively, considering my inexperience expressing my ideas. He pushed back and educated.I couldn't help also sharing how much I'd learned at business school that was relevant to sustainability and I found little elsewhere, especially the social and emotional skills of leadership. I couldn't help building up my alma mater and the value of leadership in the task of changing culture.Glenn's home page at Columbia Business School

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

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 pageAdam's page at Columbia Business School

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 pageThe American Institute of Boys and Men

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 pageChris's newsletterScientific American's review: 4 Books Scientific American Loved

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

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

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.