Mozart's Starling
"When beginning a new writing project, naturalist and author Lyanda Lynn Haupt takes her research seriously. For her book, Mozart's Starling, Haupt dutifully traveled to Austria, to see Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthplace and the famed composer's grave. But then she took one big step further. Because her book is inspired by the little-known fact that Mozart kept a pet starling, Haupt decided to a... posted on Jul 5, 2746 reads

Bringing Back the Delight of Poetry
"The American poet William Stafford was often asked by friends, readers, students and colleagues: When did you become a poet? The response he regularly offered was: "The question isn't when I became a poet; the question is when other people stopped." Stafford was articulating what many poets believe: that the roots of poetry (rhythm, form, sound) go far back -- both personally and culturally -- "t... posted on Jul 12, 3002 reads

Wendy Sussman: Painting as a Search
"Just gravitate to the thing you can easily do. Then all that baggage of being the great artist just flies away and you're just doing it! That's really the important thing. But you shouldn't feel ashamed of yourself because you have an image of what you want to be. The thing is to find a way into it. To get in is real important -- not just to stand at the door, over and over, for years and years. ... posted on Jul 20, 1923 reads

Transforming Apocalypse Fatigue into Action
It is possible to transform "apocalypse fatigue," the defenses that keep us from engaging fully in action on global warming, by sharing stories of those who are making real change happen, bringing the issue closer to home, and empowering ourselves to do what we can. In this TED Talk, Norwegian Parliament representative, Per Espen Stoknes, points to a path of re-imagining climate itself as the livi... posted on Jul 22, 1857 reads

The Lost Art of Breathing
"After recovering from pneumonia for the third time, journalist James Nestor took decisive action to improve his lungs. He questioned why so many humans -- and only humans -- have to contend with stuffy noses, snoring, asthma, allergies, sinusitis and sleep apnea, to name but a few. James hears remarkable stories of others who have changed their lives through the power of breath. His deep dive int... posted on Aug 9, 4387 reads

Antidotes to Fear of Death
Rebecca Elson was a Canadian-American poet and astronomer. In the 1990s she was among the first researchers to study images. She passed away at age 39. "A Responsibility to Awe," was published posthumously. It is a volume of Elson's poetry and essays, ranging from her teenage years until shortly before her passing. What follows is, "Antidotes to Fear of Death," a poem from this collection, in whic... posted on Aug 15, 8296 reads

Freestyle Rapper Harry Mack: Living Out My Purpose
"Freestyle rapper Harry Mack has received many kinds of reactions from audiences to his improvisation skills, but they all have one thing in common: utter disbelief. It's not far off from what he thought when he was introduced to freestyle rap as a kid. "What's the trick?" Mack recalls thinking. "I couldn't believe it was real." Freestyle rapping is the art of improvising lyrics and adapting them ... posted on Aug 31, 1337 reads

A Brave and Startling Truth
Science and poetry come together in this moving reading by Astrophysicist Janna Levin of the poem "A Brave and Startling Truth" written by Maya Angelou. The poem, inspired by astronomer Carl Sagan, actually flew into space on the Orion spacecraft. Angelou dedicated the poem to "the hope for peace, which lies, sometimes hidden, within each heart." As she points out the contradictions of our making ... posted on Sep 16, 2178 reads

You Don't Have to Know: Our Dark Materials
"There's a layered quality to suffering and intense emotion. As you become interested, a tiny, elf light appears in the darkest dungeon. That's the gate of emptiness. As you become more interested, you walk deeper into the forest and everything looks different. Sometimes it becomes joyful right away but it doesn't need to. It's become a path and that is enough. So, no first principles, but a few r... posted on Feb 22, 2388 reads

The Ecology of Perception
"In this interview, cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram discusses the animism, power, and potency of the living world. In our current moment of ecological and societal instability he calls on us to remember our inherent participation in the collective, embodied flesh of the Earth."
... posted on Oct 11, 1476 reads

Froebel's Gifts
"In the late 1700s, a young man named Friedrich Froebel was on track to become an architect when a friend convinced him to pursue a path toward education instead. And in changing course, Froebel arguably ended up having more influence on the world of architecture and design than any single architect -- all because Friedrich Froebel created kindergarten. If you've ever looked at a piece of abstract... posted on Oct 15, 1794 reads

How to Grow a Home
"To uproot something is inherently traumatic. It says so on every potted hibiscus and jasmine start Ive put in the ground. The instructions are simple: handle the root system with care, be gentle while arranging it into its new home. Transplanting shocks plants, but with enough care they will adapt. Lately Ive been adapting to my partners home in Southern California. Ive been handling myself with ... posted on Oct 10, 1864 reads

The Daily Routines of 12 Famous Writers
"We often assume that great things are done by those who were blessed with natural talent, genius, and skill. But how many great things could have been done by people who never fully realized their potential? I think many of us, myself included, are capable of much more than we typically produce -- our best work is often still hiding inside of us. How can you pull that potential out of yourself an... posted on Oct 17, 2952 reads

The Land: An Adventure Playground
"The Land, so named by the children who use it, is an adventure playground in North Wales, one of hundreds of such playgrounds in the United Kingdom and Europe. The United States has only around ten adventure playgrounds, which include adult play workers who manage hazards while the children themselves learn to manage their own risks. Children gain a sense of accomplishment and empowerment while h... posted on Oct 28, 1593 reads

Everything Happens for A Reason & Other Lies I've Loved
"In life's toughest moments, how do you go on living? Kate Bowler has been exploring this question ever since she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35. In a profound, heartbreaking and unexpectedly funny talk, she offers some answers -- challenging the idea that "everything happens for a reason" and sharing hard-won wisdom about how to make sense of the world after your life is suddenly, c... posted on Nov 7, 8141 reads

Thanksgiving Address
Says Robin Wall Kimmerer,"You can't listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desiresThe Thanksgiving Address reminds you that you already hav... posted on Nov 12, 3789 reads

Alison Thompson Responds with Heart
"I first met Dr Alison Thompson in Sri Lanka in 2005, when we were both involved in Sri Lanka's tsunami recovery effort. She immediately struck me as someone down-to-earth and highly motivated to get real, practical work done. Alison wasn't attached to a famous aid organization, let alone staying in a five-star hotel or shuttled around in a huge Land Rover. She wasn't someone interested in having ... posted on Nov 15, 2659 reads

Uncommon Gratitude
"When I receive a gift I am acutely conscious of both the gift and the giver, and gratitude spreads through me. This gratitude coalesces into a wish to give something back. I long to please my giver, endow that generous benefactor with something that will offer comfort, nourishment, and delight equal to what Ive received. When my benefactor is a place rather than a person, however, my role as reci... posted on Nov 25, 1572 reads

The Rights of the Land
"Before first light we board a bus and at last light we return, just as the October hills of central New York shade to burgundy and the lights come on in dairy barns for evening chores. Teachers, students, clan mothers, chiefs, journalists, scientists, activists, and neighbors like me -- I see all our faces reflected in the bus windows. For the Onondaga, this trip to federal court in Albany to def... posted on Nov 30, 1482 reads

Fishing Before You Know How to Fish
"Through the pines and the one maple I hear her.

I shouldn't have gone fishing if I didn't know how to fish.

I shouldn't have gone fishing if I didn't know how to fish."
Author and activist Courtney Martin shares more in this lovely poem on life, love and our human unpreparedness.... posted on Dec 7, 1939 reads

Storytelling & the Art of Tenderness
"Like all orientations of the spirit, tenderness is a story we tell ourselves -- about each other, about the world, about our place in it and our power in it. Like all narratives, the strength of our tenderness reflects the strength and sensitivity of our storytelling. That is what the Polish psychologist turned poet and novelist Olga Tokarczuk explores in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech." Maria... posted on Dec 9, 4095 reads

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
"Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name: 'sonder.' Or maybe you've watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life. Thats called 'lachesism.' Or you were looking... posted on Dec 10, 8341 reads

You Can Grow New Brain Cells
Can we, as adults, grow new neurons? Neuroscientist Sandrine Thuret says that we can, and she offers research and practical advice on how we can help our brains better perform neurogenesisimproving mood, increasing memory formation and preventing the decline associated with aging along the way.... posted on Dec 11, 3833 reads

Suleika Jaouad: Transforming Isolation into Creative Resilience
"According to a recent poll from the American Psychological Association, nearly half of U.S. adults said the pandemic has made planning for their future feel impossible. It makes sense. We can't go back to the lives we had before the coronavirus pandemic, but what lies ahead is murky. Many of us feel frozen, caught in a holding pattern -- in the liminal space between what was and what will be. Sul... posted on Dec 14, 2109 reads

Fishpeople: Lives Transformed By The Sea
This breathtaking film tells the story of people who are dedicating their lives to the sea. From Hawaii, Tahiti, Catalina Island, Antarctica, Australia and San Francisco, we witness spectacular images of the ocean as we are introduced to: a woman spearfisher who expresses compassion for her prey, an endurance swimmer, a photographer who captures the vast expansiveness of the ocean with his camera,... posted on Dec 17, 1627 reads

Earwitness to Place
"Seeing is a relatively passive event. Hearing, on the other hand, is almost entirely physical; component parts of our being respond to incoming waves of air pressure, oscillating in cyclical patterns that are transformed into meaningful signals, indicators that are life-affirming and comforting, or irrelevant, or predictive of danger. Every living organism produces some kind of signal. Hearing th... posted on Dec 29, 1448 reads

Doorways to Our Childhood Selves
"At the beginning of each new year, I consider my favorite poets, writers, poems, and stories. They provide ways to claim a voice yet to be discovered. I write about this in an essay, 'Doorways to Our Childhood Selves.' After we published this essay last year, I was deeply touched to hear from many of you who had written to me to share your own relationship to stories and how they continue to impa... posted on Jan 2, 2615 reads

The Best Greater Good Articles of 2022
Here is a fascinating round-up of the most-read Greater Good articles from the past year-- along with favorites picked by their editors. Ranging from ways to stop procrastinating, and how to stay open in difficult conversations, to how to learn from your failures and how to know if you are actually humble-- there is something to intrigue, inspire and illuminate each of us.... posted on Jan 3, 2993 reads

How to Question Your Own Decisions
"When the Nobel Prizewinning physicist Arno Penzias was asked what led to his success, he explained that he made a daily habit of asking what he called "the jugular question." Penzias said, The first thing I do each morning is ask myself, Why do I strongly believe what I believe? Penzias felt it was critical to constantly examine your own assumptions. And this is important to do whenever making de... posted on Jan 12, 2198 reads

The Just Listen Project
Toussaint Bailey, a "husband, father, son, brother, executive and Black man in America," like so many others, has experienced daily the pain of racism. His sense of rage, sadness and confusion became more prominent after overtly racist events of the past few years. Struggling with how to continue to function as a Black CEO in a nearly all white firm, he had for the first time an authentic, raw con... posted on Jan 13, 1765 reads

Two Types of Heartbreak
"A disciple asks the rebbe: Why does Torah tell us to place these words upon your hearts? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts? The rebbe answers: It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in. The following... posted on Jan 15, 3303 reads

The Matter with Things
"Iain McGilchrist is psychiatrist, neurologist, philosopher and writer whose seminal work, The Master and His Emissary (2009) presented the notion that the two hemispheres of the human brain approach the world in two very different ways. He argues passionately for the importance often overlooked in the modern world of the right hemisphere, which sees the world as a unified, living process. In hi... posted on Jan 23, 2048 reads

Meeting Our World Views
"It's common these days to hear calls for new worldviews. These calls are often accompanied by a condemnation of the current ways of thinking, doing, and being. My claim is that every worldview is attempting to take care of something. And if we don't acknowledge and respect these aspects of our current worldviews, then they wont fundamentally change." Alexander Carabi shares more.... posted on Jan 24, 1432 reads

Creativity & Leadership in Learning Communities
"Every living system occasionally encounters points of instability, at which some of its structures break down and new structures, or new forms of behavior, emerge. The spontaneous emergence of order -- of new structures and new forms of behavior--is one of the hallmarks of life. This phenomenon, often simply called emergence, has been recognized as the basis of development, learning, and evolutio... posted on Jan 25, 1229 reads

Putting the Power of Law in People's Hands
What can you do when the wheels of justice don't turn fast enough? Or when they don't turn at all? Vivek Maru is working to transform the relationship between people and law, turning law from an abstraction or threat into something that everyone can understand, use and shape. Instead of relying solely on lawyers, Maru started a global network of community paralegals, or barefoot lawyers, who serve... posted on Jan 26, 1199 reads

The Practice of Story Stewardship
"I'm going to start by acknowledging that I've been wrong about something for years. For two decades, I've said, "We need to understand emotion so we can recognize it in ourselves and others." Without exaggeration, I've said this thousands of times, and I've heard it from other researchers at least that much. Well, let me go on the record right now: I no longer believe that we can recognize emotio... posted on Jan 28, 3484 reads

3 Steps to Build Peace & Create Change
"As the child of Holocaust survivors and a World War II refugee herself, peace builder Georgette Bennett was stunned by the human toll and tragedy of the Syrian civil war. She got to work, bringing together historical enemies to build an aid pipeline from Israel to Syria -- a feat many considered impossible, but has since helped millions. Through this inspiring story of unlikely partnership, Benne... posted on Jan 31, 2784 reads

David Bohm: On Dialog
"Krishnamurti said that to be is to be related. But relationship can be very painful. He said that you have to think/feel out all your mental processes and work them through, and then that will open the way to something else. And I think that is what can happen in the dialogue group. Certain painful things can happen for some people; you have to work it all out. This is part of what I consider dia... posted on Feb 12, 4318 reads

Finding Wonderland
The secret is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile. Its then, only then, that youll find Wonderland. Lize Venter speaks of her lost innocence through abuse that cast a dark line through her childhood, causing fear and nightmares. She shares her current life filled with love of her family and the many animals who are part of that family, as she urges viewers to surround themse... posted on Feb 17, 1806 reads

Young Forever: Why Balance Matters
"The hallmarks of aging are how our biology becomes out of balance. Conventional medicine describes the what: what disease, what pathway is dysfunctional, what drug to take. The model of functional medicine guides us to the why, to the root causes of diseases and aging. Many longevity research efforts focus on just treating the hallmarks of aging, without treating their underlying causes. That's w... posted on Mar 2, 4510 reads

The Seven Types of Rest Everyone Needs
"Have you ever tried to fix an ongoing lack of energy by getting more sleep -- only to do so and still feel exhausted? If that's you, here's the secret: Sleep and rest are not the same thing, although many of us incorrectly confuse the two. We go through life thinking we've rested because we have gotten enough sleep -- but in reality we are missing out on the other types of rest we desperately nee... posted on Mar 21, 15175 reads

A Concerto is a Conversation
When we achieve anything in life, "we" is the operative word. We are supported by the life choices and dreams of others. Kris Bowers, a virtuoso jazz pianist and film composer, recounts the collective story of his family. His 91-year-old grandfather traces their shared choices and dreams from Jim Crow Florida to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.... posted on Mar 31, 1212 reads

Say Wow: A Conversation with Poet Chelan Harkin
At the age of 21, on a pilgrimage to Israel, Chelan Harkin found herself sitting alone in the same cell that some 140 years earlier had confined the founder of the Baha'i faith. The quietude was suddenly broken by a voice she took to be the Persian prophet's spirit saying, "Let us dance." This unexpected invitation cracked her heart wide open and spontaneously led her to fill the resonant chamber ... posted on Apr 1, 5037 reads

The Enneagram: Nine Pathways to Presence
"Russ Hudson is one of the world's foremost teachers and developers of the Enneagram personality typology system, having coauthored (with Don Richard Riso) five bestselling books on the subject...In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Russ about the original purpose of the Enneagram, how our personality types are linked to a deeper level of awareness, and how we can use the Enneagram system to co... posted on Apr 7, 6541 reads

The Art of Lying Fallow
"I suspect our ability to ask the unanswerable questions that Hannah Arendt knew are the heartbeat of civilization is intimately related to our capacity for dwelling in a particular state of being beyond the realm of our compulsive doing. Bertrand Russell called it "fruitful monotony." Adam Phillips called it "fertile solitude." Walt Whitman called it "loafing." The Buddhist tradition describes it... posted on Apr 20, 5206 reads

To Be Made Whole
"Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We've come this far, survived this much.
What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?
What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain <... posted on Apr 22, 3523 reads

How to Grow Re-Enchanted with the World
"Katherine May explores what it takes to shed the cloak of meaninglessness and recover the sparkle of vitality in Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age (public library) a shimmering chronicle of her own quest for a better way to walk through this life, a way that grants us the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it. May ... posted on Apr 25, 4067 reads

The Men of Rice: A Conversation with Eduardo del Conde
"They were working with big baskets. They would cut a few rice plants at a time and hit them on edge of the basket so the rice seeds would shake out. It was like a dance. It was a very beautiful place. It was one of those days when you feel completely overwhelmed." So recounts photographer Eduardo del Conde, telling of his first encounter with field workers harvesting rice south of Mexico City. Li... posted on Apr 27, 1235 reads

Visions of Indigenous Futures
"The project began with a number: 562. It was the number of federally recognized tribes in the United States when photographer Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip) quit her job, packed her camera, and hit the road in 2012 to try to photograph a member of every tribe. A decade later, Wilburs efforts are bearing fruit in the form of a new book, Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America (T... posted on May 7, 1837 reads

Frida Kahlo: The Woman Behind the Legend
"In 1925, Frida Kahlo was on her way home from school in Mexico City when the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. She suffered near-fatal injuries and her disability became a major theme in her paintings. Over the course of her life, she would establish herself as the creator and muse behind extraordinary pieces of art. Iseult Gillespie dives into the life and work of Frida Kahlo in this... posted on May 8, 3000 reads