The Soul in Depression
We're fluent in the languages of psychology and medication, but the word "depression" does not do justice to this human experience. Depression is also spiritual territory. It is a shadow side of human vitality and as such teaches us about vitality. And what if depression is possible for the same reason that love is possible? Dive into this interview from On Being and hear rare, brave, and helpful ... posted on Jun 19, 14661 reads

Rajni Bakshi: Stories of Modern Day Gandhians
Rajni Bakshi is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and storyteller who writes about social and political movements in contemporary India. Two of her well-known books include 'Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi', chronicling the work and lives of activists engaged in social transformation rooted in the philosophy of Gandhi, and 'Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: for a market culture be... posted on Aug 23, 4830 reads

Change the Worldview, Change the World
At the heart of every culture is a story of how the world came to be and what that means for us. Look closer and you'll find many more narratives that comprise our collective consciousness. In the case of the Western world, problems like white supremacy, misogyny, and ecological hostility are all disconnected storylines that have been kept alive year after year. In this compelling essay, author Dr... posted on Sep 19, 11925 reads

How Green Is My Forest
"We are the people of this land. We are nature, human and non-human. These are our bodies. Together we are one body, we are creation, and always will be. We matter. Humus, seed, fruit, tooth, organ, blood and bone. We are root, water, mud, alga and stone. We are the snap of bladderwort. We are buttress-rooted trees. Orchid, fern, dragonfly, elephant, monkey; we are larva, worm, cocoon; creeper, li... posted on Oct 14, 4989 reads

What Does It Mean to Live Wisely and Well?
What does it mean to live wisely and well and what does it take? How can we cultivate qualities such as love, wisdom, kindness, and compassion? Dr. Roger Walsh's lifework, addresses these questions. A man with an eclectic past, Roger has explored contemplative life as a professor, physician, therapist, celebrated author, spouse, spiritual practitioner, and inquisitive human being. He is a for... posted on Jan 17, 6340 reads

In An Unspoken Voice: The Changing Face of Trauma
Peter Levine therapist, best selling author and educator has spent over 40 years understanding and developing treatments for trauma. He is the developer of the Somatic Experiencing technique. He shares from his book "In an Unspoken Voice", how our perspectives on trauma and extreme stress have shifted from acceptance as a part of our biology, a part of every life, to something separate and minimiz... posted on Feb 20, 10407 reads

Trailhead
In their award-winning short film Trailhead, documentary filmmakers Emily Fraser and Henry Weiner offer an exploration of the history and heart behind the creation of hundreds of miles of interconnected wildland trails minutes from downtown Oakland, California. Profiling the volunteer network of hikers, bikers, dog walkers, historians and educators who donate their time to help maintain this cheri... posted on May 15, 2143 reads

Gazing Into The Heart of Perfection
"Getting people to receive...to see the gifts they've been given...life itself! Life along the roadside, with the flowers and the weeds, and the pebbles and the trees, and the sounds of birds! And looking up and seeing the clouds, the light and the shadows. We're surrounded! Were in it! And did you know that the Persian word for paradise means "an enclosed garden?" We're in paradise, and we don't... posted on Dec 14, 9891 reads

My Vision Quest
"I must begin by asking myself, 'What do I want?' What do I want, really -- not because of my background and education, self-image and vanity, but what does this 'I' that I am actually want from this short life? Indeed. What, or who am I? And what for? That stops me. And I begin, in silence, to listen - to look up to what I can see and know about the great Universe..."Jim George was a celebrated C... posted on Feb 16, 3586 reads

Left Behind: Surviving Suicide Loss
In the spring of 2017, Nandini Murali, a South Indian journalist and author, returned from an out-of-town assignment to an eerily quiet home. Typically, her husband would greet her at the front door, but that morning he hadn't answered her phone calls. It was Nandini who discovered his body, and confronted an unfathomable reality. T.R. Murali, one of the most prominent urologists in India, and her... posted on Apr 13, 6931 reads

Melting Away: A Conversation with Camille Seaman
Camille Seaman's journey to becoming a pre-eminent photographer and environmental activist is remarkable and inspiring in equal parts. "Why is my picture of an iceberg resonating with you in a way that someone else's picture of an iceberg didn't? I can only answer personally that I think my intention of looking at this thing as a living creature, as a being unto itself, an ancient being, and honor... posted on Apr 21, 2026 reads

Radical Joy For Hard Times
"Radical Joy for Hard Times is a worldwide community of people dedicated to bringing meaning, beauty, and value to places that have been damaged by human or natural acts. Through its online community and annual Global Earth Exchange event, Radical Joy uplifts and inspires values of relationship, community, ARTivism, and presence. Anyone can do the Radical Joy practice, which at its core invites us... posted on Apr 26, 5057 reads

Tapping into the Wisdom of the Gut
"Even though Ive long held a holistic view of life, my scientific career has ultimately taken me full circle, from a reductionistic focus on the biology of brain-gut interactions required for succeeding in my career as a neuroscientist, back to the concept of the interconnectedness of the health of humans and of the environment, and the microbiome, with diet and the mind playing the key role in th... posted on May 12, 5222 reads

Lament for Syria: A Young Poet Looks Back
"I wrote about all my memories: how I woke up in the morning to my grandmother drinking coffee next to the jasmine tree listening to the music of the Lebanese singer Fairuz. I wrote about how my siblings and I walked to school with our neighbors and how we saw a boy smoking and then hiding the cigarette from his older brother.
I didn't want Syria to be known just for its war. I wanted to co... posted on Jun 24, 3558 reads

Indigenous Knowledge and Gift Giving
"In our way we are always told not to ask for anything. We are always told in our community, as a practice, that when we have to start asking for something, that's when we're agreeing that people be irresponsible. Irresponsible in not understanding what we're needing, irresponsible in not seeing what's needed, and irresponsible in not having moved our resources and our actions to make sure that ne... posted on Jul 13, 8781 reads

Rising from the Fire
"How can we reconcile the immensely destructive force of fire with its equally limitless creative potential? Forest managers light intentional blazes to clear overgrowth and begin anew the cycle of life. A fireplace becomes a hearth, offering heat, light, and survival for the homes residents. And fiery volcanic activity can obliterate what stands in its path all the while creating new land in a ma... posted on Aug 10, 2856 reads

Threshold Choir: An Interview with Kate Munger
"In November of 1990 I was invited to spend a day with a friend of mine who was dying of HIV AIDS. He was comatose, but very agitated. There were chores I had to do in the morning, dishwashing and gardening. And he was a quilt maker so I organized his quilts fabric. When the work was done, I sat down by his bedside and didn't know what to do. I waited and waited. All I knew to do, to calm myself, ... posted on Oct 6, 6956 reads

Inhabiting the Ground of Being
"The Realization Process is a way of uncovering an experience of this very subtle consciousness that we actually can experience pervading our whole body. We experience that and we transcend that individuality at the same time. We experience oneness, this ground of being, pervading our own body, and everything around us. So, in other words, our consciousness becomes subtle enough to pervade all of ... posted on Oct 19, 3093 reads

A Portal to Presence
"A 'Portal to Presence' is exactly what it says: a simple doorway or entrance to the field of Consciousness or Presence. It would be stretching the meaning of the word "technique" or "method" to apply it to this idea. One just walks through the portal as one becomes aware of its existence. There is no effort involved such as a decision to remain in the doorway, or to walk through on one's hands an... posted on Nov 9, 4612 reads

Consciousness as the Ground of Being
"I woke in the night and suddenly, to put it very briefly, I experienced myself as love. It felt like an unbelievably strong and powerful love an energy which was both scintillating white and self-knowing -- and it was coming from me. This I found extraordinary, because I didn't know then that such love could emerge from me, or from anybody. And so I was stunned. Then this energy exploded, and I ... posted on Jan 17, 8772 reads

Neurodiversity and Creativity
"If we put neurodiversity with creativity together, what can we get? At the moment, what is dominant is what we call the deficit approach meaning, that we see neurodivergent processes as problems, disorders and abnomality. We have a medical model. There is a process of diagnosis, and various remedies are prescribed such as special equipment and human support, medication, etc. This essentially put... posted on May 16, 1924 reads

Down By the Riverside
What if we as a society could say we were going to live in the Spirit of Love, cooperation and nonviolence and "study war no more"? This song performed by the Playing For Change organization has inspired many people all around the planet to work together for a better world. Playing For Change (PFC) is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief th... posted on Jun 17, 1652 reads

Returning to the Whole
"What time is it on the clock of the world?" My mentor Grace Lee Boggs used to ask this question all the time, to anyone who came to visit and learn with her, in any meeting she attended, or speech she gave. She wanted us--her students, comrades, and community-- to keep a wide, long lens about our work. To remember, all of the time, that this moment is not the only moment. Human development moves ... posted on Jun 30, 3648 reads

George Lakoff on Language and Climate Action
"Why is it so difficult to act on climate change? Despite growing public awareness of the current climate crisis, the topic of climate change continues to thwart political and social systems across the globe, as it has for over 30 years. The reasons for this vary, but cognitive linguist and philosopher George Lakoff suggests that an inability to act on climate change may be ingrained into our most... posted on Jul 27, 1949 reads

The World's Hidden Harmony
"We've been blind-sided by our top-down approach. If the body is a bell, resonating to the
world around it, it's as though we have stuffed the bell full of cotton balls that stifle its ringing. The present is whispering to us, "Come and play, come and risk," whatever it may be. But we don't notice. We don't feel the present in that way. We don't feel its presence. We feel it as a collection... posted on Aug 8, 1865 reads

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira : Hospicing Modernity
"Within modernity, we are conditioned to want to cover everything with a heavy blanket of fixed meanings, to index reality in language, to word the world. Carl Mika, a Maori philosopher and friend, suggests that instead of "wording the world," when language manifests as an entity, it "worlds the world" and this opens other possibilities for experiencing existence within the world. There are signif... posted on Dec 22, 1221 reads

Gabor Mate: Healing Into Wholeness in a Toxic Culture
"Celebrated author and physician Dr. Gabor Mat has become one of the worlds foremost voices on the journey of healing from traumain large part because it is a path he walks himself. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Mat about his new book, The Myth of Normal, sharing breakthrough insights into the nature of trauma and some of the necessary steps for our personal and collective recovery. ... posted on Feb 26, 7299 reads

Food, Earth, Happiness
Everything about modern, industrial farming as a for-profit system is going in the opposite direction of natural farming which is about working in harmony with the earth and the seasons of life. Ultimately, this disconnection from nature leads to much of the unhappiness we find in modern culture. This film offers an alternative viewpoint for social and environmental justice that begins with how we... posted on Jun 30, 1323 reads

Three Black Men: A Journey Into the Magical Otherwise
"We know that we're living in a critical time in human history. We know that we can no longer say, "It's not my responsibility." What is it that this time begs us to see? Tami Simon joins visionary leaders Bayo Akomolafe, Orland Bishop, and Resmaa Menakem for a compelling conversation about the intersection of past, present, and future and the creation of new rituals and pathways for healing, equi... posted on Jul 3, 2143 reads

Maggie Smith: Writing in a Way that is Brave, Real, and True
"Bestselling poet Maggie Smith has a gift for embracing the complexity of our human experienceand for writing about it with piercing intensity, clarity, and beauty. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Maggie about her approach to her craft and to life, and how writing can serve as a pathway to self-discovery and release. Featuring a reading of the beloved poem "Good Bones," this insightful epi... posted on Aug 10, 3021 reads

Reconciliation as a Way of Life: White Women & Settler Coloniali
A descendant of White settlers of Indigenous lands, Margaret Jacobs is an award-winning author and professor of history and gender studies who has focused for over two decades on Indigenous child removal and family separation. She studies the history of the American West in a transnational and comparative context with a focus on women, children, and families. Her Bancroft Prize-winning book, White... posted on Nov 28, 1219 reads

Why to Get Published
"Anyone who publishes a book is immediately asked versions of the same question, "How do you get published?"I have been asked by everyone from colleagues and former students to healthcare providers and complete strangers. Behind the question used to be the assumption that the published author has access to some secret, insider knowledge. A former editor of mine spoke occasionally at conferences, a... posted on Nov 29, 2711 reads

How Mindfulness Changes the Emotional Life of our Brains
"Why is it that some people are more vulnerable to life's slings and arrows and others more resilient?" This question has propelled Dr. Richard J. Davidson of University of Wisconsin-Madison along a unique journey that spans hundreds of research articles and multiple books on emotions, mindfulness, and the brain. In 1992, another question directed his trajectory further -- the Dalai Lama asked him... posted on Jan 31, 3581 reads

The Decision to Change
"He looked me in the eyes and said, 'I had that kind of clarity once. I chose to listen to others about what I should do and how I should live my life. I didn't want to go to law school, but I did because of my parents, my scholarship, and a lot of external pressure. It's been ten years, and I am just figuring that out now. Every day that goes by that you don't take a step in the direction of your... posted on Feb 13, 4275 reads

Why Uncertainty Can Lead to Childlike Wonder
Uncertainty is often viewed with uneasiness, yet our capacity to hold this quality can actually lead to remarkable strength and possibility. Neuroscience notes that when you "meet up with something new, you're flooded with neural changes in the brain related to neurotransmitters and stress hormones," explains journalist Maggie Jackson, who's authored an entire book on the topic. "These are stress-... posted on Feb 21, 1671 reads

How Luck and Chance Shape Our Lives
Professor, podcaster, and author Bob McKinnon explores how Mark Robert Rank calls into question some prevalent cultural beliefs. A couple of them are: “the idea of rugged individualism and meritocracy” and the perception that the “world is just, that what we get in life we deserve, either good or bad.” We tend to apply “luck or chance to individuals and randomness to ... posted on May 30, 2451 reads

I Am The Other
Born half Bolivian, half Italian and bred in Switzerland, Denise Zabalaga possesses a unique sensitivity towards "otherness" and an ability to transcend many of the projections of fear and mistrust so commonly associated with strangers. Six months after Septemeber 11, her travels as a photographer and photojournalist took her, a lone woman, to territories of the Middle East and Afghanistan normal... posted on Sep 24, 2527 reads

A Collection Of Free Knowledge
A unique web-based teaching and learning environment is geared to change the way educational materials are developed and used. Connexions is a rapidly growing collection of free scholarly materials and a powerful set of free software tools that helps authors publish and collaborate, instructors rapidly build and share custom courses and learners explore the links among concepts, courses, and disc... posted on Nov 18, 1740 reads

The Bridge-Builder of Hope
He is a man on a mission, building bridges that link places, people and hearts. 62 bridges later, he defines his wealth as the abundant joy and gratitude on the faces of villagers. Girish Bharadwaj and his organization 'Ayasshilpa' construct suspension footbridges over rivers and streams, enabling thousands in remote villages in India to experience a new way of life. Bharadwaj built his first brid... posted on Jan 20, 1001 reads

What Makes Us Laugh & Why?
What does it take to be funny? The question is simple, but the answer is not, as attested to by legions of scientists trying to pinpoint the brain's "laugh zone" and decipher how wit works. Humor research remains a fast-growing area of inquiry, with neurologists mapping areas of the brain that oxygenate to register and respond to puns, slapstick and other forms of wit. The solution potentially car... posted on Jul 15, 2908 reads

Zen and the Art of Law Enforcement
If it had been a different day, just a few weeks earlier, Captain Cheri Maples would have arrested the man without a second thought. He'd already threatened her and was refusing to hand his daughter over to his ex-wife after a weekend visitation. But on this day, shortly after returning home from a meditation retreat, the Wisconsin policewoman tried another tack. "This guy was huge, a lot bigger... posted on Nov 8, 2100 reads

An Upside to the Economic Downturn
With the global finance system imploding, maybe this time of creative destruction offers us the chance for a fresh start. What sort of society do we want to rebuild? What will expand our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness without diminishing the chances for other people, now and in the future, to have the same? Maybe we'll learn to share the work and reclaim time for the aspects of our lives ... posted on Jan 1, 5218 reads

Kitchen Teachings: An Interview with Cherri Farrell
Cherri Farrell teaches Consumer and Family Science, a subject that used to be called Home Economics. Talking with Farrell, it's as if a window opens into the hidden worlds that exist in between the requirements of standard curricula, and to how important these hidden realms really are. These insights come out in her stories, "One time I had a child from Afghanistan whose parents were killed. He ca... posted on Jan 20, 2010 reads

Leadership Lessons from Everyday Life
"Leadership is a capability that each of us has within us. It is formed as we take on the opportunities and challenges of everyday life, and it is measured by our successes and failures. It is my belief and experience that the leadership lessons we learn in our everyday lives can and should be carried with us into our work environments, and that they can help us become better leaders of our people... posted on May 12, 9550 reads

A Roaming Refuge for 1200 Animals
Raymund Wee, a former flight stewart and pet groomer, sold his Singapore-based business and used the proceeds to establish Noah's Ark CARES. What began as a place of refuge for a couple hundred animals grew by leaps and bounds after a severe flood a few years back, and soon the haven was so full of three legged, one-eyed, emotionally wounded dogs and cats that he was forced to move the entire ark ... posted on Oct 11, 14668 reads

The Dash Between The Years
"While busy with work and deadlines and feeling somewhat under pressure, I was sent an advertisement for some inspirational books, one of which included the poem below. When I first glanced at the title, I assumed it was a poem about the race and rush of life, but as I read on it stopped me dead in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes. I had just snapped at a family member and didn't take notice... posted on Mar 26, 11524 reads

Boss Lady's Kindness Escapades
"The owner began mumbling in Korean under her breath. I couldn't get her to look up to me, so I asked the woman at my feet what was going on. She took an extra beat, maybe deciding whether she was going to really tell me, or not. And she said to me, 'That's Boss Lady, and it's Christmas Eve, and everyone going home early until you come in - Manicure Pedicure 45 minutes - so now everyone has to wai... posted on Apr 20, 6080 reads

Humor As Spiritual Practice
"I was going through airport security the other month, participating in the grind of pulling out my laptop and my Ziploc baggie full of plastic bottles, and removing my belt and my shoes and my watch and my jacket and trying to fit them all into the plastic bin in such a way that nothing would fall out as it went through its screening. On the other side, I quickly gathered my belongings so they ... posted on Jun 14, 24264 reads

Transformation By Design: Your Visa Card & Evolution's Plan
Like the familiar phrases yin and yang, work and play, peanut butter and jelly, the term chaordic brings seeming opposites together in harmony. According to Dee Hock, the founder and former CEO of Visa International, the company owes its success to its cha-ordic structure. "Hock coined the term chaordic to describe that perfect balance of chaos and order where evolution is most at home. Yes, that'... posted on May 30, 34879 reads

What School Doesn't Teach You: How To Learn
At school, work, and at home, we are continuously learning. But how do we learn, and are we going about this essential life skill effectively? Educational psychologists are beginning to examine these questions, and the answers that have come up so far may be surprising. It turns out that learning in ways that are engaging and that involve critical thinking are more effective overall compared to te... posted on Dec 10, 21641 reads