Joshua Spodek PhD MBA is the premier voice in sustainability leadership. He hosts the award-winning This Sustainable Life podcast, bestselling author of Sustainability Simplified, Initiative, and Leadership Step by Step, professor at NYU, and leadership coach.

He holds a PhD in astrophysics and an MBA from Columbia, where he studied under a Nobel Laureate and helped launch a satellite.

He visited North Korea twice, swam across the Hudson River twice, has done burpees daily since 2011 (250,000 and counting), hasn’t filled a load of garbage since 2019, hasn’t flown (by choice) since March 2016, unplugged his refrigerator since September 2021, disconnected his apartment from the electric grid in May 2022, and his carbon footprint is about 1 ton per year. He blogs at joshuaspodek.com.

What is “intimacy?” Is partial intimacy possible? Is “falling in love” really just falling into our own projections? What are we projecting? What are we protecting? Can we truly love without constantly risking the loss of who/what we love? Is it worth the risk?

Marcus grew up in a ghetto in Ohio, moved to Appalachia as a teenager, then to a houseboat among mangroves on Key West til the hurricane hit, stopped for a while in a cave outside of Crestone, and is now building a house for his family here. He’s a success story, if I’ve ever heard one. Dude is full of talent and wisdom, and he makes living in Crestone a lot richer for the rest of us.

Trigger warning. This is a conversation about sexual assault.

The obligatory commentary on the Cornell case. But really, we don’t know the details about that particular case, so it’s more about these kinds of cases. He said, she said, they said, he changed his story, she recanted, they said something else and the lawyers said to say nothing at all.

Originally from South Africa, Spencer has lived around the world. He’s been in Japan long enough to learn the language and get real insight into the cultures. I’ve never been, but I’m fascinated by the place.

Shane has spent the past few years building out a schoolbus, and now he’s taking it out on the road. His first stop was Crestone.

Our previous podconvo was ten years ago.

Follow Shane’s travels on his Instagram.

Is “genocide” the right word? Does it matter? Are our “leaders” psychopaths? Is it possible to do what they do and NOT be psychopathic?Instructions for getting the paid RSS feed in apps is here.

Are we ruled by the Closetocracy? Is Andrew Tate a paragon of unresolved trauma? Would Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton work as national leaders? To what extent does cultural context define our experiences? Are certain experiences universally traumatic, or does it depend on the where, when, and why? What to do about venomous snakes in our midst?