Episode Summary: Joshua Spodek discusses sustainability leadership, intrinsic motivation and systemic change

As we step into the festive holiday season, we've decided to revisit some of our most inspiring and thought-provoking episodes from the past. Today, we're rebroadcasting the first part of a conversation that Olabanji and Brian had with Joshua Spodek, host of the award-winning 'This Sustainable Life' podcast, and a four-TEDx speaker.

Josh is not only a bestselling author but also a professor at NYU, a leadership coach, and a passionate advocate for environmental stewardship.

You'll hear Josh delve into his personal missions and projects that contribute to positive change in the world. He shares his experience of living off the grid in Manhattan.

This truly original, unusual and radical endeavour even landed him a segment on The Daily Show last November.

This episode was originally aired in 2022. Follow the link to listen to the full episode

Want to join in the conversation?

Visit thecarbonalmanac.org/podcasts and send us a voice message on this episode or any other climate-related ideas and perspectives.

Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Brian D Tormey and Olabanji Stephen

Brian is a Real Estate Title Insurance Professional and Goat Farmer in the US.

Olabanji is from Lagos Nigeria, he’s a Creative Director and visual designer that helps brands gain clarity, deliver meaningful experiences and build tribes through Design & Strategy. He founded Jorney - a community designed to help people stay productive, accountable, and do their best work. 

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

Welcome to common sessions.

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Um, Lee Kee one of your regular host.

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As we step into the festive holiday

season, we've decided to revisit one of

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the most inspiring and full provocating.

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Episodes from the past.

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And today we are rubric casting.

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The first part of a conversation that all

of Benji N Brian had with Josh Spodek.

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Hosts of the award-winning

this sustainable life podcast.

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And the four times TEDx speaker.

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Josh is not only a bestselling

offer, but also a professor at NYU,

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a leadership coach and the passionate

advocate for environmental stewardship.

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You'll hear Josh delve into his personal

missions and projects that contribute

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to positive change in the world.

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He shares his experience of

living off the grid in Manhattan.

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This truly . Unusual and radical, and

they were even lended him a segment.

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On the daily show last November.

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This episode was originally ed in 2022,

and it feels particularly relevant

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during this time of reflection and hope.

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So sit back, relax.

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And let's dive into this.

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Enlightening conversation.

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Hello everyone.

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This is Brian Tomi and I'm here with

Joshua Spodak, PhD, mba and host of

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the award-winning this Sustainable Life

podcast and a four-time TEDx speaker,

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a bestselling author of initiative and

the other book leadership step by step,

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a professor at NYU published in the New

Yorker, and an amazing leadership coach.

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And he is here with us to talk about his

projects and missions that he's doing

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to help make a change in the world.

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And myself, as well as my co-host,

Olivan, are very excited to chat with him.

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Olivan, why don't you tell us a

short bit about yourself and your

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engagement with the Carbon Almanac?

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Sure.

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Thank you and thanks Josh.

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It's good to talk to you today.

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Yeah, the Carbon NOAC is an initiative.

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Empowers everyone to be able to have

conversations about climate change.

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With the carbon amac, what it does

is you are suddenly empowered, right?

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You can go from zero to a hundred by just

reading the first chapter of the Almanac.

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It's a collection of truths, data

charts, and amazing stuff that allows

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you to understand, first of all

what climate change is all about.

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Where we are at the world, you know, right

now, and what you can do to make a change.

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So it's an amazing tool.

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I'm a contributor in the Carbon Armac

I podcast here with some of the amazing

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people, you know, Brian, leaky Jen, and

some of the, you know, some of the best

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people in the world that I've ever met.

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So, yeah, that's it for sure.

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Okay.

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Well speaking of doing podcasts,

let's dive into today's with

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our fabulous guests, Josh.

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So Josh, you know, thank

you for joining us.

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We're really appreciative of your

time and I know you know, one of the

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interesting things that's already

arisen in our conversation this morning

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is in order to help conserve power.

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You were like, Hey, let me May,

is it okay if I go off video?

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Cuz that's gonna help me conserve power.

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Can you tell us a little bit why,

you know, what brings that about?

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It's this, this journey you've been on for

the last six months and our listeners and

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myself and Allon are excited to hear what

you've been up to these past six months.

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Well, yeah.

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It's hard to figure out where to begin.

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I'll, I'll start at the end, but, but I'll

note that there's a lot leading up to it.

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I didn't just decide to

disconnect outta the blue.

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, but six months ago, no.

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I have to go back to, do you mind

if I take a bit of a longer story

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because uh, yeah, please tell us.

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If you had asked me 10, 15 years

ago about the environment, I'd say,

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yeah, it sounds pretty serious and

someone should do something about it.

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Of course, my personal actions

wouldn't make a difference, and

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only governments and corporations

can act on the scale that we need.

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But I have faith that, you know, people

figured out maybe I could work on some

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invention that might have some impact.

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Not much would make much of a difference.

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And I looked down one day at my

garbage in my kitchen and realized

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I was producing a lot of garbage.

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I probably empty at least once a week, and

I thought, well, maybe I can't change the

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whole world, but I mean this garbage, no

one else can take responsibility for it.

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I am the only one who can,

and I feel responsible to.

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You know, it took me like six months

to implement the following idea.

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I thought, I wonder if I could go for one

week without buying any packaged food.

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Cause most of the garbage

was from food packaging.

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And it took me six months to finally

say, to go from analyzing and

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planning and thinking like, what do

I do day one, day two, day three.

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Eventually just saying,

look, I'm not gonna die.

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I'll just start right now.

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And all these little questions of

like, do I count food in my pantry?

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Can I eat that if it's packaged or not?

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And all these little things that, like

once I actually started doing it, then

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I had to solve all these problems.

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And I thought that living in Manhattan

with all these restaurants around

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that I'd be depriving myself and I.

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I found that, well, it

took me, I mean, I made it.

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I made it actually two and a

half weeks before I bought my

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first packaged food, which was

surprisingly longer than I expected.

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I didn't know if I would make the

week, and then over the next couple

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months I thought, you know, maybe I

can't keep quite to zero for the whole

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time, but I'll do my best to, you know,

get less packaging than I used to.

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And this led to getting a lot more

fresh fruits and vegetables and getting

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from bulk, bringing my own bags.

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You know, this was the first time in

my life that I boiled dried beans on

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the stove, which I'd never done before.

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So I'm, I'm not proud that I made

it to my forties before doing that.

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But as I cooked more and more with

more and more fresh stuff, I went

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from just having seen vegetables all

the time to making really good food.

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And I found that contrary to

my expectations, I was spending

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less money when I was in a hurry.

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I could make food faster.

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It tasted better.

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I started in workshops up in the

Bronx and in food deserts to help

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bring farmer's markets to other

places, cuz I have easy access here.

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And it was just a pure positive in

my life, not just a net positive.

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There were no downsides.

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I mean, except for that six

months of really bland stuff.

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But that was kind of like my training.

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And I should also mention that

that was eight, nine years ago.

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And along the way, I've emptied

my garbage less and less.

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So my garbage today is I'm just about

three years on one load, and it, it,

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it feels, even that feels like a lot

to me because it's less and less.

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So most of that is from two,

two and a half years ago.

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And again, this is just pure

improvement to my life that I

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would've thought would've been a loss.

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And as much as the physical change is

meaningful, my impact is just one person.

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Emotional and mental shift.

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That was the big thing because I

started thinking, why did I think

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that this was gonna be so awful?

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What else in my life have I come to

believe through cultural whatever would

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be awful, but might also be awesome.

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So a couple of years later, I challenged

myself to go for a year without flying.

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This was after watching a video

where I learned that flying.

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The guy speaking was British, so

he said flying London to LA and

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back was a year's worth of driving.

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And I thought, again, I can't fix

the whole world, but I can take

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responsibility for my stuff and

I don't wanna pollute the world.

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I know that people are gonna be

breathing in those fumes and people

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are displaced from the land to get

that oil, building the plane, all

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the embedded pollution in that.

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And so I thought, I wonder if I could go

for, you know, a week wouldn't be enough.

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I eventually settled on a year without.

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Again, same thing.

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I thought this was gonna be

the worst year of my life.

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I thought, you know, family work, all

these commitments, what am I gonna do?

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And I just saw everything as it came.

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And that was 2016 and

I haven't flown since.

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And the longer I go without flying, the

more flying just, it's just wretched to

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me, it just sounds like a terrible idea.

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Not just for the pollution, but for

what, what it does to our culture.

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Anyway, that led a

while later to, oh yeah.

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I was reading this article on how

much, much of the world doesn't

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refrigerate like we do, they ferment

and have different food systems.

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And I looked at my fridge and

I thought, that's my biggest

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source of pollution right now.

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And I started thinking, I wonder how

long I could go without using the fridge.

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What would I do?

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Do I have to learn to ferment and

part of me something in my mind?

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That's that analyzing planning that

takes a long time that just do it.

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So before I could stop myself, I

went over and unplugged the fridge.

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And the first time I made it three

months, then six and a half months.

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And now I'm in my second year.

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And I, I now, having made it a full

calendar year, I'll probably, I

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may never plug the fridge in again.

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I'm not sure.

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And Oh, wow.

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Once my bills started coming down

to my electric bill, there's 18

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to $20 that I can't do anything.

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That's just being connected.

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I guess I could completely just like

tell ConEd to close the account,

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but I haven't done that yet.

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But as my bill started getting to like

a dollar, $2 a month for the power that

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I was using, I started thinking and I

put up a blog post a couple years ago.

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I wonder if I could get to zero.

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Could I go for one month without

using any electrical power from the.

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And this is in Manhattan.

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And so I posted to my

blog, can anyone help me?

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Does anyone know solar?

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I didn't know anything about solar.

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I mean, I knew what solar was and I

have a PhD in physics, so I know power

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and energy and things like that, but I

didn't practically know what devices I

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should buy and how do I connect them?

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And I, I live in a co-op building that's

a big building, so I know that the

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coop isn't gonna let me install stuff.

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I, I get some light through the windows.

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No one answered to my blog post, but

I just started going online and I mean

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Craigslist looking at what's used,

and eventually I found out I should

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get a, a battery and a solar panel,

and I got a portable solar panel and

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a portable battery because I can't do

this a permanently, and I just bought

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them from used and figured I'll try

it out and figure out how it goes.

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And I'm not trying to solve

all the world's problems.

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I'm just trying an experiment

to see if I can go for a month.

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Using the grid.

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So I guess one of 'em broke

and had to get it fixed.

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But eventually on May 22nd, I had

just made my stew with a pressure

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cooker powered from the battery,

which was powered by the solar panel.

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And I was thinking, right, I got

some stew that lost me a few days.

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I got 20% left on the battery.

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I wonder like next, what should I check?

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I don't really know how much

power floor AMP is gonna use.

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I don't really know how

much my computer's gonna.

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and I start thinking maybe I should

wait until the ConEd bill rolls over,

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which is on the seventh of the month.

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And then I realized, oh, this is that

thought that this is that analyzing

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planning that always gets in the way.

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Just, I know I'm not gonna die.

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I know no one's gonna get hurt.

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I'll find stuff out.

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This thought entered my mind, I

guess I just started, so without

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any planning, beyond just getting

the, the panel and the battery.

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I just said, all right, I'll start now.

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And I really had no idea how I'd make

it past when I ran out of the stew.

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I didn't know how, how I'd make it

past a couple days, but my goal was one

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month, and so now I'm in my sixth month

and I had no idea how I would do it.

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I'm ending up going up

and down the stairs.

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It's 11 flights up to the roof and back.

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So I do that twice a day, maybe

three or four days a week.

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Well, the past few days it's

been very rainy, so I haven't

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been able to do it for a while.

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I'm just solving things as they come and

it's turning out as I kind of knew, but

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I knew intellectually, but didn't know

until it actually happened was just fun.

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I'm getting in touch with the seasons and,

and the sunlight and all sorts of things.

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And also, again, I should mention

I am doing it for myself because I

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would like to reduce my pollution.

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I don't wanna hurt people.

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And I wanna clarify here,

there's changing the world.

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But there's my contribution.

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I know that the pollution I cause

is gonna hurt people in wildlife.

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So even if I can't change the

world, I wouldn't wanna hurt people

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even if I can't change the world.

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But the bigger picture is that

this is a leadership exercise.

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I don't believe that anyone can lead

another person to live by values

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that they live the opposite of.

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And so, how else can I learn

to do stuff without doing it?

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I mean, I have to practice.

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So I'm learning a lot of what

works and what doesn't work.

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You know, the big challenges of changing

global culture is not, do people know

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enough of how carbon dioxide traps heat?

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That science is very interesting, but it's

our emotions, our stories, our images,

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our our role models, and that's culture.

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And giving people facts and

numbers doesn't change that.

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Role models is a big thing,

knowing what leads people.

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What leads people to say,

what I do doesn't matter.

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When everyone knows that that's not

the case, what leads people to say only

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governments incorporations can make

a difference when we know that how to

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change governments is we have to act.

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That's like the finish line for

government incorporation to act.

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How do we get there?

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That was a long answer.

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, but, and, and it, and it can

branch in so many great ways

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cuz you've covered so much.

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But first off, thank you for doing all

that leadership activity and it seems that

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you're really an experimental learner,

writer, leader, you know, trying to.

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Take your values and figure

out how to live by them.

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You, you recently interviewed AJ Jacobs,

another, I think you know, famous

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experimental learner writer leader, and

I'd liken some of the things I've seen in

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what you're doing to this other author.

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Gretchen Rubin has these four

motivational tendencies that she

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writes about inhabit formation, and

she breaks the people into four groups

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or your tendencies into four groups.

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And I feel like you fall very squarely

inside her questioner one, which

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is sort of like having questioned

about the world, but then like

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really being internally motivated.

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And I think I'm curious, you know, as

you've been leading in these ways and

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sort of sharing your journey with so

many, Do you have stories and, and sort of

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experiences with other people that you've

interacted with, that they, maybe they're

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not that questioner, they're not the

person who's going to go, just decide to

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unplug their fridge and see what happens,

or just decide, no, let's do it today.

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I'm gonna stop using electricity

today, even though my battery's at 20%.

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You know, they might be people who

fall more into those other categories

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like obliger or upholder, or even

rebel using Gretchen's uh, construct.

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269

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272

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