This Sustainable Life Joshua Spodek: Author, Speaker, Professor

I start my conversation with Andy with what brought me to him: the meal after recording with the guy who hired him, podcast guest Sven Gierlinger, and the Washington Post article that read like a paid ad for their food, Hospital food is a punchline. These chefs are redefining it. I didn't record in my conversation with Sven how off-the-charts the food was because I at it after recording.
Andy was the Executive Chef at the hospital where we met who prepared that food. It was amazing. It would have been amazing in any restaurant, let alone a hospital.
We talk about two main things. One was the art of food preparation. Andy shared his path there from washing dishes through working with chef Raymond Blanc, chef Daniel Boulud, and the restaurant Rouge Tomate. At each stage he learned appreciation for ingredients and honed his craft.
The other was changing culture. Regular listeners know my goal in sustainability is changing culture. Nearly all attempts to change how our culture impacts Earth's biosphere use technology, market reforms, and legislation. Those things don't change culture.
Northwell Health is deliberately changing their culture around food. They've come a long way, but can still go a long way. Changing culture means resistance, including from the people it would help. It's hard and takes a long time. In the case of Northwell, I hear that despite the challenges, nobody wants to go back.
We living in unsustainable cultures could benefit from learning what Northwell achieved.
Here's the picture Andy mentioned:


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This conversation was brief, but covered the important points, particularly the challenges of changing habits. Dave didn't do everything he intended, though I thought he succeeded more than he did. The goal of the Spodek Method isn't to make big changes, though some do, but to share and act on intrinsic motivation relevant to nature and the environment. Just accessing intrinsic motivation at all can be a challenge in a world where most messages on the environment are based in lecture and telling people what to do.
Yet we care about the environment. If we expect to be told what to or lectured at, we hold back from sharing. Dave seemed partly to hold back, but he also works in leadership so overcame the inhibition and shared.
He didn't do as much as he hoped, but the parts he did he enjoyed. If you're concerned about acting yourself, you might appreciate Dave's experience. Starting new habits or even just acting once or twice for the first time can be challenging. When done for intrinsic motivation, you'll feel meaning and want to continue. Dave also skipped some Dunkin' Donuts, which seems like a big success to me.

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Adam treats dependence and addiction in some ways different and unique than past guests who have covered addiction. One way is the business side. For example, early in this conversation, he talks about how people at companies that create products designed to addict, like cell phones, tablets, and the apps and games on them, don't allow their children to use them. Yet they gleefully reach trillion-dollar valuations based on making it difficult for children or anyone to stop using their products.
Is this pattern not outrageous? Adam reinforces about how widespread the patterns are.
The result is growth in addiction beyond anything before and people keep finding more ways to addict. People often feel isolated and helpless. Addiction wrecks your self-esteem. We miss that our culture supports it. Adam shares how they keep us coming back for things we don't even like.
Adam teaches at one of the world's top business schools. He doesn't oppose business, but he explores our culture's addiction problems. He elaborates on the problems, research, and possible solutions.
At the end, I ask him his thoughts about the viability of contracts and society when people can control others as predictably and effectively as by coercing through threat or violence. We as individuals are outmatched by corporations and institutions able to control people this effectively with big, long-term consequences.
Adam's home pageHis book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
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I start by describing how podcast guest Carl Erik Fisher, author of bestseller The Urge, reviewed my upcoming book Sustainability Simplified as a subject matter expert on addiction. Carl mentioned how my book suffered from what Bruce describes as the demon drug myth. He pointed to Bruce's work as seminal, so I started reading it.
I'd heard of Rat Park and later remembered Johan Hari mentioning Bruce in his TED talk where he said "the opposite of addiction is community". I couldn't wait to talk to Bruce. Carl introduced us. We spoke. Bruce clarified the demon drug myth. I described how addiction and doof figure in my sustainability leadership work.
In our conversation, Bruce described how working with self-described junkies in the early 1950s led him to reinterpret the common wisdom "proved" by experiments that some chemicals addicted people, end of story. He then described how he created Rat Park, which showed a lot more nuance and alternative explanations. You can read about Rat Park on Bruce's page or this comic book version, but his description in our conversation is engaging and thorough.
Then he shares how people continue to stick with the old view of addiction and drugs. It's easy. It takes parents and others off the hook.
He describes new views of addiction. You won't see addiction the same after. If you want to stop polluting and depleting yourself and help people you know and communities you are a member of, this conversation will change how you view it forever. You'll approach it with more understanding, empathy, and compassion.
Bruce's home page, aka Bruce K. Alexander's Globalization of Addiction Website
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I started by sharing my experience giving after reading Peter's book The Life You Can Save. I confess I only read it after our first conversation, but loved it. I feared reading a book by an academic philosopher arguing a point would be dry and boring. Instead it led me to donate to causes. Then, even though I didn't donate for recognition or personal benefit, the organizations I donated to contacted me with gratitude, connected to me, and one even invited me to its annual dinner.
Then we talk more about flying, following up our last conversation. From Peter's perspective, I view flying too black-and-white, not considering someone's reason for flying or what benefit it might provide. I don't challenge that perspective. I'm just looking to learn from my guest. My book treats that perspective.
Then I share my new take on his drowning child analogy as it relates to sustainability.
Other topics too, but we close with our mutual appreciation for calm conversation and democracy, both lacking these days.
Peter's home page
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Regular listeners know I see our relationships with many activities that are enabled by pollution as behavioral addictions like gambling or playing video games. Thus, I bring experts in addiction.
Anna's book Dopamine Nation is one of the most accessible I've read. She covers the scale of addiction, how much it's increasing, how it works, her personal history with her own addiction, and the stories of several of her patients.
After she describes her background, we start by talking about the shame that accompanies addiction and makes it hard to share about, including our personal experiences of it. We cover how much our culture and economy have embraced addiction. It's profitable, after all.
She describes in lay terms how addiction works, how it disrupts homeostasis and the results, for example tolerance. She talks about the paradox that as we create more material abundance, we see more anxiety, depression, and other problems. We find addictive things lead us to feel we're treating our problems, but more often add to them.
She asked me about avoiding packaged food, doof, and other sustainability experiments. I read she asked out of genuine curiosity, recognizing I'm not just doing it for myself. I think she wants to practice sustainability more and is looking to learn how.
We talk about our culture. She identifies commercially-driven epidemics for profit. You can tell I enjoyed this conversation.
Selected publications
Lembke, A., Digital Addictions Are Drowning Us in Dopamine, The Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2021Lembke, A., Eyal, N. Is Social Media Hijacking our Minds?, Pairagraph: A hub of discourse between pairs of notable individuals, 2021Lembke, A. Unsafe Supply: Why Making Controlled Prescription Drugs Available for Unsupervised Use Will Not Target the Syndemic of HIV, Hepatitis C, Overdose, and COVID-19, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 2020 Sep;81(5):564-565.Lembke, A. Purdue Pharma is Done Promoting Opioids: Here’s Why It’s a Big Deal, Fortune Magazine, Feb 2018Lembke, A., Papac, J., Humphreys, K. Our Other Prescription Drug Problem, NEJM, 2018; 378(8):693-695.
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