A year ago, these groups seemed to be at the peak of their influence, needing only the Senate’s approval for a landmark climate-change bill. But they lost that fight, done in by the sluggish economy and opposition from business and fossil-fuel interests.

Now the groups are wondering how they can keep this loss from becoming a rout as their opponents press their advantage and try to undo the Obama administration’s climate efforts.

I agree that the strategy for pushing comprehensive climate change legislation, not to mention changes to the markets or behaviors by human beings that are necessary to see any real shifts occur, needs to change.  The outlook at this point is pretty bleak.

I disagree, however, with the suggestion that the economy and the opposition by business interests are the primary reasons for the lack of success to date.  Very little, I would argue, beyond an increased level of awareness for the need to address climate change, has been achieved.  And that, from my perspective, is both a strategic and tactical failure.  In fact, I am not convinced that the organizations, or individuals, who are pushing for massive changes to our laws - and everything else — have sufficient understanding of what is required to shift the way people think, or act, about climate related issues.  Even if they did possess that level of understanding, I am not confident those folks, from Al Gore on down, would know how to organize and mobilize the base of support that does exist for this kind of change in our society to make anything happen.

There are powerful organizations supporting these climate change advocacy efforts. There are compelling partnerships and effective marketing campaigns flooding our various channels.  And there appears to be momentum, and public support, for real change.  But unless, or until, we move beyond simple awareness raising, nothing will change.  Unless, or until, the environmental movement gains a deeper understanding of what it takes to change people’s minds, and behavior, we aren’t going to see the meaningful, measurable results that are needed.

What will it take?  Better self awareness for starters.  The biggest problem is not the economy.  The better-funded opposition in the business community is not the reason the legislation won’t pass, or the issues haven’t broken through completely.  The problem is the environmental movement itself… the way the people and organizations driving this change think, are structured, promote themselves and more.  That needs to be addressed, and significant shifts in how the movement operates, will be required we want to see anything happen.

When I recorded the podcast I had this idea to launch a LEGO BUILDING CHALLENGE.  I wasn’t able to get things on my end organized when we first recorded. So, instead, I am going to issue the challenge now.

The challenge is simple: build something that you encounter every day in your life.

You can build anything you want — but choose something that is part of your day-to-day life. An object. A place. A person.

It can me metaphorical:

-    Build something that illustrates a good friend
-    Build a representation of an obstacle in your daily life (or work)

Or it can be literal:

- Build a duck
- Build your favorite thing to do on a Saturday

Whatever you encounter in your daily life, build it out of LEGO bricks. If you live in New York you could build a taxi cab. If you drink coffee, maybe your decaf iced skinny vanilla latte will provide you with inspiration.  Look around your home, your office, your school, the route you walk every day with your dog… pick something and build it. Make it big, or small.  Use one color or many colors.  However you do it, have fun.

Here are the rules:

- Build something. If you don’t have LEGO bricks sitting around, I suggest the Large Brick Box — its reasonably priced, offers 405 pieces to work with, comes with its own container, and will provide building opportunities well beyond this challenge.

- Take a bunch of pictures. Some of the guests on the podcast took the challenge — here are some pictures of their LEGO creations.

- Share the pictures and tell me the story behind what you have built. I want to know ‘why’ you chose to build that thing — as well as any details you are willing to share about the actual process of building.  Share the pride, joy, passion — and frustration — you felt working on this challenge.

I will post your pictures and stories, and ask the master builders and LEGO experts I spoke with to share their thoughts on what you built.

Oh, one more thing…

If you need some inspiration, or help to focus, consider what the folks at LEGO headquarters suggested:

“I know it’s probably uncomfortable, but we’re going to ask you to be a child for a few moments and have some fun playing. Use these bricks to build something… there are no instructions, just build.  Do not think too much about it, just let your fingers choose and place bricks in an unedited way.”

The LEGO folks went on to explain that “No two are ever the same, even in a room of a couple hundred people. Lightbulbs go off for everyone that this is a personal experience, and that LEGO is a personal medium, not just a toy. At the same time, they gain comfort in expressing themselves with building, because they’re starting on a level playing field (same bricks, same challenge).

That’s it.  The rest is up to you.  Happy building!

In the meantime, I recorded an episode about LEGO back in July that I want to share:

Episode 10: LEGO

There is so much good stuff in this episode - and related to this episode - I don’t even know how to describe it all:

- I talked with Jonathan Bender, the author of LEGO: A Love Story, about the adult fans of LEGO community and the cult of LEGO (the inside the jacket cover of the book would describe our conversation as “what happens when the imagination of your childhood intersects with the reality of your adult life).

- I recorded a commentary about how LEGO bricks are timeless… and what that might mean for our future, and how we approach the challenges that exist in society.

- And, I invited a group of LEGO enthusiasts, some more accomplished in the art of brick building than others, to talk about how LEGO stacks up against other toys – past and present.  The roundtable included Elizabeth Chuck (@echuckles), Julie Salganik, David Millar, Elam Birnbaum and Nathan Sawaya - LEGO artist and brick building genius (his website is http://www.brickartist.com).

If you listen closely to our roundtable discussion, you’ll hear the familiar sound of LEGO bricks in the background.  The generous folks at LEGO provided sets of bricks to help launch our LEGO building challenge Each of our aspiring master builders received a set as well and spent time during the recording of the podcast building.  Here are some pictures of their LEGO creations.

Also, before he joined us for the roundtable discussion, Nathan Sawaya invited me to visit his studio and workshop in New York City.  I asked him about some of his LEGO creations and the process of building.  You can watch a few clips of our conversation.

There is so much more to, and share, about this podcast - and LEGOs generally.  I will post as much as I can going forward.  In the meantime, listen to the podcast, take a look at the pictures and video… and of course, send me thoughts on your favorite LEGO creations.

In the meantime, I recorded an episode about baseball cards back in July that I want to share:

Episode 9: Baseball Cards

On this week’s episode:

- I talk with Dave Jamieson, author of Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became An American Obsession about the rise and fall of the baseball card industry, and the impact that has had on the sport, and our society.

- I was joined by Will Leitch, editor of Deadspin and author (most recently) of Are We Winning?, and Josh Wilker, the author/edit or Cardboard Gods, for a roundtable discussion about what role – if any – baseball cards still have in modern day sports culture, and what impact baseball cards have had on our lives.

- I offer some thoughts about how baseball cards are actually bad for us.

- And my good friend, Bill Chuck (aka Billy Ball) offers some of his unique insights on baseball cards.

The podcast was posted weeks ago but I failed to properly promote it.  So, here’s your chance now to listen, share your thoughts and memories about baseball cards (I collected a few from friends and hope to share them here in the coming days), and hear the incredible contributions of my guests to what I think is a fascinating — and important — topic.

Let me know what you think.

GROSS: Through all your career as a reporter, you tried to keep yourself out of the story. And as an analyst, I mean, your thoughts are the story. Your analysis is the story.

SCHORR: But not my emotions.

GROSS: But not your emotions. Right. Right.

SCHORR: And I think that, to sort of anticipate your question, but if I haven’t anticipated it right you’ll tell me, I think that news analysis goes along with objective journalism.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

SCHORR: As long as you say the way you think things are instead of the way you want things to be. Information has become something altogether too complex for people to be able to understand without some help from people with background. So I dont regard news analysis on NPR or anywhere as being different from what I consider to be the objective journalism, which has been my idol.

GROSS: So in other words, youre saying that you see analysis as being in part about synthesis, so that to help people make sense of a lot of facts and put them into some kind of context?

SCHORR: That’s right. In CNN age - in the age of CNN, where things are brought to you live, you can see happening everything that’s happening and have everything there except understanding what it means. And I think the more live news people get, the more they need help in understanding it.

Pretty interesting to think that we are still having the same discussion today… almost two decades later.

Actually, its not as weird as it sounds.  I was a baseball card collector.  I had thousands of cards, tens of thousands even.  I spent hours sorting and organizing them — in alphabetic order, by player and team.  My cards were kept in waterproof boxes.  More valuable cards were placed in plastic sleeves or covers.  For a couple of years, I was even part of the sports memorabilia circuit — visiting shows, displaying and selling my stuff.

Then I moved.  My cards — dozens of boxes, weighing thousands of pounds — were stored away in the basement of my grandfather’s house in Connecticut. I attended high school in Seattle, then college in Michigan, took a job in DC and then moved to New York.  The cards sat.  Every few months I would visit home and spend a few hours thumb through the piles of cards, review the meticulous notes that I had kept on each set I had created, and remembering.

My grandfather’s basement flooded a few years back and some of the cards were destroyed.  By this point the baseball card market was pretty flat so I didn’t lose much in terms of dollar value.  And my attempts to sell the thousands of cards that weren’t damaged were mostly ignored by serious collectors.  I ended up donating a lot of cards to charity.  I kept my memories.

Fast forward to the present… and I will be recording an episode for my weekly podcast about baseball cards.  I’ll share some more of my stories on the show, and talk to experts about the business of baseball cards.  I have also found a few must-reads about baseball cards that I will share.

Now I want to hear from you.  Do you have a baseball card story?  Were you a collector?  Did your mother give your baseball cards away without permission?  Did your grandfather’s basement flood and ruin your collection?  Post your own baseball card memories here, in the comments, or email them to me breich [at] gmail dot com. I’ll include some on the show, post the rest here.

This week on the show:

-    I talk with Laura Vanderkam, author of the new book: 168 Hours, about the strategies that different people use to manage their time, and what that has to do with happiness.

-    Our roundtable, features Michael Bassik - a self-described gouda-eating political junkie and the Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy at Global Strategy Group, and Remy Peritz - the Post-Production Manager of TEDx, who among her many other talents, who is spending a lot of her time now biking to/from work each day.  Together we break down the whole idea of time management to its component parts: work, and everything else, before realizing we don’t quite know how to put it back together the way we found it in the first place.

-    I explain how I decided to stop worrying about how I spend my time, and to stop trying to plan every minute and structure every activity – only to realize that I am incapable of actually doing that when pressed.

-    And I share some of the responses we received from listeners when asked to log the time they spent during a day.

Click here to listen.

—–
Here is some more info about the show:

Must-Reads: Each week on the show we suggest a list of must-reads, based on the topic of conversation and drawn from the people who participate in the show.  A must-read could be an article or a book, a movie, television show, podcast, or even an event.  The point of a ‘must-read’ is simply that that it is relevant, timely, compelling, interesting, fun, or just worth thinking about. I will post some must-reads shortly (I promise, really).

About the Show: Thinking About Everything explores what’s happening in our society – and attempts to figure out what it all means. The goal each week is simple: we want to have a really smart discussion about something.  To have an interesting conversation about something, we try to think about everything.  Our topic might be related to politics, business, education, culture or sports – or we might find an issue or idea that seems relevant or interesting and see where it goes.  We consider how our lives, our work, and what is happening in the world around us might be impacted by the issue.  We explore the role that media and technology play in how we get and share information about a topic and how that changes what we know, or think we know, about the issue.  And most importantly, we try to have fun and share some new ways of thinking about an issue that you hopefully find interesting as well.

Feedback, Ideas, Comments: Do you have a topic you think we should discuss on the show, or suggestions on how to improve the show generally?  Are there things on your must-read list that we should know about?  Do you have thoughts or ideas that you want to add to the mix?  Leave a comment here.  Send your feedback via email to ThinkingCast [at] gmail.com.  Or, post your ideas and thoughts via twitter - the handle for the show is @thinkingcast.

Thanks for listening.

This week’s episode included:

- An interview with Geoffrey Wawro, the author of QUICKSAND: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East, about what the history of American Foreign policy might teach us about what the future holds.

- A roundtable discussion featuring Joel Rubin — the Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the National Security Network, Jim Arkedis — the Director of the National Security Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, and Frankie Sturm — the communications director at the Truman National Security Project.  All three are foreign policy experts, with first-hand experience relating to how the intelligence community works, so we had a good discussion about how American (and other) foreign policy is shaped – and how that process is, or is not, changing, because of the influence of technology and the internet on our society.

- And, some thoughts from me about the opportunities – and challenges – that a hyper-connected, digitally fueled foreign policy process might offer to the people shaping our foreign policy.

Click here to listen.

—–

Here is some more info about the show:

Must-Reads: Each week on the show we suggest a list of must-reads, based on the topic of conversation and drawn from the people who participate in the show.  A must-read could be an article or a book, a movie, television show, podcast, or even an event.  The point of a ‘must-read’ is simply that that it is relevant, timely, compelling, interesting, fun, or just worth thinking about. I will post some must-reads shortly (I promise, really).

About the Show: Thinking About Everything explores what’s happening in our society – and attempts to figure out what it all means. The goal each week is simple: we want to have a really smart discussion about something.  To have an interesting conversation about something, we try to think about everything.  Our topic might be related to politics, business, education, culture or sports – or we might find an issue or idea that seems relevant or interesting and see where it goes.  We consider how our lives, our work, and what is happening in the world around us might be impacted by the issue.  We explore the role that media and technology play in how we get and share information about a topic and how that changes what we know, or think we know, about the issue.  And most importantly, we try to have fun and share some new ways of thinking about an issue that you hopefully find interesting as well.

Feedback, Ideas, Comments: Do you have a topic you think we should discuss on the show, or suggestions on how to improve the show generally?  Are there things on your must-read list that we should know about?  Do you have thoughts or ideas that you want to add to the mix?  Leave a comment here.  Send your feedback via email to ThinkingCast [at] gmail.com.  Or, post your ideas and thoughts via twitter - the handle for the show is @thinkingcast.

Thanks for listening.

I am scheduled to talk with Laura Vanderkam, author of a new book about time management (168 Hours).  In addition to the media buzz about the book, Laura has been using her blog in some really interesting ways to track her own personal time management.  This week’s roundtable discussion will explore, in practical terms, why we make certain choices about how we spend our time (and why).

The podcast is designed to be a discussion - and not just in the studio.  So, I want your input on this topic as well.  Specifically, I want to hear about your time management.  How do you spend your time - and why?  How you would spend your time, if you could — and why don’t you?  With that, let me ask a couple of questions (in the form of a little challenge):

1. One Extra Hour. If you had one more hour each day — a 25th hour — what would you do?  Would you read more, watch more TV, spend more time asleep, take time to relax or meditate, play with your kids, etc?  Why would you choose to do that?  Would spending one extra hour on something help you do everything else better or differently? Is there something you always want to do, but never have that extra hour to devote?

2. 1 Hour Challenge. How do you actually spend your time?  Laura Vanderkam issued a 168-hour challenge on her blog recently, inviting readers to track and share how they spent their time.  I want you to take a one hour challenge.  Pick any hour and log your activity.  Write down how all 60 minutes are spent.  Are you working, at school, at home, in transit?  How many emails do you send?  How many pages do you read?  How many miles do you run?  How many people do you speak with (and do you talk to them on the phone, by text, over email, in person)?  How far do you travel?  How many times do you think about something you should be doing, but aren’t?   Pick an hour, at any time during your day, and track how you spend your time.  Then look at the log and reflect on what you see.

I want to include your answers and thoughts in this week’s episode.  In order to do that, I need to receive your responses before we start recording.  Your deadline is Thursday at 4:00pm EST.  You can post a comment here, or send me an email with your information (that address is thinkingcast [at] gmail dot com).  I will read some on the air and post the rest  next week when the show does online.

This week’s episode included:

- A conversation with Franklin Foer (@franklinfoer), the editor of The New Republic and author of How Soccer Explains The World.  Mr. Foer shared some updated thoughts on globalization through the lens of sports, compared baseball and soccer (based on a post that he wrote for TNR’s Goal Post blog), and offered his predictions for how the World Cup will re-shape global politics in the future.

- A roundtable discussion about how people watch The World Cup — and what to watch for during the month-long tournament — featuring Amanda Rykoff (@amandarykoff) - uber-sports fan, social media superstar, and author/editor of the blog, The OCD Chick. Tim Karr (@TimKarr) — the Campaign Director for Free Press, and Kai MacMahon (@kaimac) - the Online Fundraising Director for Autism Speaks, and for whatever reason, a fan of England.  We talked about the multi-screen World Cup watching opportunities — and how the global audience will test the telecommunications infrastructure that exists around the world — and much more.

- And some thoughts from me about what the World Cup viewing/fan experience should look like, and what I hope that ESPN and the other broadcast partners learned from the presentation of the Winter Olympics.

Click here to listen.

—–

Here is some more info about the show:

Must-Reads: Each week on the show we suggest a list of must-reads, based on the topic of conversation and drawn from the people who participate in the show.  A must-read could be an article or a book, a movie, television show, podcast, or even an event.  The point of a ‘must-read’ is simply that that it is relevant, timely, compelling, interesting, fun, or just worth thinking about. Starting this week, we will be posting all the must-reads online.  Stay tuned.

About the Show: Thinking About Everything explores what’s happening in our society – and attempts to figure out what it all means. The goal each week is simple: we want to have a really smart discussion about something.  To have an interesting conversation about something, we try to think about everything.  Our topic might be related to politics, business, education, culture or sports – or we might find an issue or idea that seems relevant or interesting and see where it goes.  We consider how our lives, our work, and what is happening in the world around us might be impacted by the issue.  We explore the role that media and technology play in how we get and share information about a topic and how that changes what we know, or think we know, about the issue.  And most importantly, we try to have fun and share some new ways of thinking about an issue that you hopefully find interesting as well.

Feedback, Ideas, Comments: Do you have a topic you think we should discuss on the show, or suggestions on how to improve the show generally?  Are there things on your must-read list that we should know about?  Do you have thoughts or ideas that you want to add to the mix?  Leave a comment here.  Send your feedback via email to ThinkingCast [at] gmail.com.  Or, post your ideas and thoughts via twitter - the handle for the show is @thinkingcast.

Thanks for listening.