Episodes
Aug. 6, 2025
832: Robert Fullilove, part 4: Action in the Center of Civil Rights in the 1960s
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 wha...
Aug. 4, 2025
831: Glenn Hubbard: Dean of Columbia Business School on Adam Smith and Leadership
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...
July 29, 2025
830: Jo Nemeth, part 2: Nature improves time with loved ones
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 ex...
July 22, 2025
829: Adam Galinsky, part 1: I love that he wrote the book: Inspire
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...
July 18, 2025
828: Richard Reeves: For Boys and Men: support and love over misunderstanding
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 what...
July 17, 2025
827: Chris Berdik: Scientific American loved his book Clamor (so did I)
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 th...
July 8, 2025
826: Jo Nemeth, part 1: Living without money frees her to do what she loves
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 of...
July 5, 2025
825: Ryan Mandelbaum, part 2: Rising to the challenge of random acts of friendliness
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 ...
July 1, 2025
824: Dr. Rob Reed, part 2: Learning to love leading effectively
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, o...
June 17, 2025
823: Mark Mills, part 5: We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition
Reading Mark's recent piece We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition in Manhattan Institute's City Journal prompted me to write my recent post, When they say “transition fuel,” they mean “more polluting and depleting,” not less ...
June 10, 2025
822: Ryan Mandelbaum, part 1: Wildlife Is Everywhere, Including (especially) NYC (and where you live)
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 came...
May 28, 2025
821: Rob Reed MD, part 1: Learning leadership transforms your life and work
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 ...
May 22, 2025
820: Andy Samuel CBE: From worry before the workshop to Fun and Community during and after
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, whic...
May 12, 2025
819: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 6: Our Brighter Future
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 annual...
May 9, 2025
818: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 5: The Celebrity Opportunities
Look up "Greatest of All Time" on Wikipedia and you'll find Muhammad Ali. This lesson shares how he went from being just the heavyweight champion of the world to the greatest of all time, transcending sport to becoming a stat...
May 8, 2025
817: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 4: The Political Opportunities
Sustainability has become a polarized partisan political issue, despite everyone wanting clean air, land, water, and food. In the US, neither the Democrats nor Republicans have a vision of or plan to sustainability. Both rely...
May 5, 2025
816: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 3: Business/Entrepreneurial Opportunities
The solution in video 3---the Spodek Method---creates a new, more effective situation than anything I know of in sustainability. People act on their own motivation that they felt before I met them. Instead of me motivating th...
May 3, 2025
815: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 2: The Solution
Now that we understand our environmental problems as cultural, proposals based in technology, market incentives, and legislation don't address the problem. They generally won't achieve the desired outcome and will often achie...
May 1, 2025
814: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: 1: The Actual Problem
Do you think our environmental problems are rooted in greenhouse gas levels or emissions? Or biodiversity loss? Or any of what makes the headlines? They are symptoms. They all result from our behavior, which results from our ...
April 29, 2025
813: A Course in Sustainability Leadership: Quick Introduction: Welcome to the Sustainability Simplified community
Many people see whatever part of what I do, think that's everything, and conclude I'm just doing some personal action or other form of spitting into the wind. I don't like wasting my time any more than anyone else does, nor d...
April 19, 2025
812: Robert Fullilove, part 3: Politics, family, race, and sustainability
Our third conversation matches the first two in intrigue and quality. We talk about the things that came up for Dr. Bob that got in the way of his commitment. These issues come up for nearly everyone (implying they aren't per...
April 14, 2025
811: Tina Tombstone: A friend I volunteer delivering food to the needy with
Tina is one of the central characters in that group that everyone knows (another is Kevin Fucillo , also a podcast guest). We go back a few years. She was born in the south in 1933, so you can do the math, but you'd never gue...
March 30, 2025
810: Giora Netzer, part 2: Leadership coaching leads to far more than "just" the C-Suite
In our second conversation, Giora reveals more about his developing as a leader. If you listen for it, you can hear the vision he had for himself and his profession, but also the development he needed to realize it. This podc...
March 28, 2025
809: Alexander Clapp: Waste Wars, how we profit off polluting the world claiming to help them
I found Alex when listeners sent me an opinion piece in the New York Times he wrote, The Story You’ve Been Told About Recycling Is a Lie . Getting to where I take years to fill a load of trash means I've researched waste a lo...