How the Jump Rope Got Its Rhythm
The jump rope may be a simple object but for countless generations it has served as a powerful symbol of culture and identity for African American girls and women. The skipping rope is a steady timeline upon which girls add rhymes, rhythms and chants, creating a space that is uniquely their own. It is a word of mouth and word of body treasure passed down from one generation to the next, with influ... posted on Feb 26 2020, 2,007 reads

Accepting What Is
"When the word acceptance enters a room, but is never far behind. But what about suffering and injustice? What about the pursuit of our personal goals? What about our individual and collective potential? As soon as the idea of acceptance surfaces, we seem to, ironically, brace ourselves against it as though it will render us incapable of anything other than complacency and apathy." This thoughtful... posted on Feb 25 2020, 13,425 reads

How Craving Attention Makes You Less Creative
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gotten more than his fair share of attention from his acting career. But as social media exploded over the past decade, he got addicted like the rest of us -- trying to gain followers and likes only to be left feeling inadequate and less creative. In a refreshingly honest talk, he explores how the attention-driven model of big tech companies impacts our creativity -- and s... posted on Feb 24 2020, 5,945 reads

First Aid for Spiritual Seekers
Forms of religious devotion are shifting and theres a new world of creativity toward crafting spiritual life while exploring the depths of tradition. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a fun and forceful embodiment of this evolution. Born into an eminent and ancient rabbinical lineage, as a young adult he moved away from religion towards storytelling, theater, and drag. Today he leads a pop-up synagogue ... posted on Feb 23 2020, 4,407 reads

Refugee Docents Bring a Global Museum to Life
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology -- known as The Penn Museum -- has hired refugees and immigrants from the Middle East, Africa and Central America as part of their "Global Guides" program. More in this story by NPR.... posted on Feb 22 2020, 2,698 reads

The Soul of Care
Arthur Kleinman's wife, Joan, began to struggle with a rare form of early Alzheimer's disease at 59. Eight years after losing her, the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of psychiatry and of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School chronicles their journey in "The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor." The... posted on Feb 21 2020, 5,124 reads

Learning to Move from Strength Instead of Strain
As a young man he trained for a decade in the classical dance form of bharatanatyam. As an adult he studied yoga, and ran a studio of his own. One day he announced he was going to observe his students in silence, and see what arose. It was a radical decision, and for Gert van Leeuwen, it led to the birth of Critical Alignment Yoga and Therapy - a precise, slow, and uniquely rigorous practice that ... posted on Feb 20 2020, 5,154 reads

111 Trees
When a marble mine began to strip a village of its forests, the people of Piplantri, India, developed a tree-planting project that reclaims a vital and ancient relationship between trees and women.... posted on Feb 19 2020, 431,537 reads

Jane Rosen: Stay Here. Tell My Story.
"When I arrived from New York and got planted on this horse ranch where I was renting a house, I was supposed to go back to New York, which is my home. I couldnt quite make up my mind what I wanted to do. Then one day I was walking and something called me. I looked up and there was a red-tailed hawk circling over my head. I heard a voice say, clear as day, 'Stay here. Tell my story.'" Artist Jane ... posted on Feb 18 2020, 2,718 reads

Justin Michael Williams: Stay Woke
"Justin Michael Williams is a meditation teacher and personal coach who is also a Billboard top 20 recording artist. With Sounds True, he has published Stay Woke: A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us. In this special video episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Justin about his upcoming "Stay Woke, Give Back" tour, in which he will explain his unique approach to meditation and gi... posted on Feb 17 2020, 6,590 reads