[FOCUS] Living Off The Grid In Manhattan New York by Josh Spodek

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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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LYNN: You've been listening to Karbon

sessions, a podcast with carbon

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conversations for every day, with

everyone from everywhere in the world.

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We'd love you to join the carbon

sessions so YouTube can share your

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perspectives from wherever you are.

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This is a great way for our community

to learn from your ideas and

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experiences, connect and take action.

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If you want to add your voice to

the conversation, go to the carbon.

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Dot org slash podcast and sign up

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This podcast is also part of the

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information, to sign up for the

emails, to join the movement and

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to order your copy of the carbon

Almanac, go to the carbon almanac.org.

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Be sure to subscribe

and join us here again.

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As together we can change the world.