How to Stay Open and Curious in Hard Conversations
"To have a chance at really hearing other beliefs, philosopher David Smith teaches, you have to value truth more than your own opinion, and you have to come in with a measure of humility. With nothing more than these two questions, we can help our minds move from certainty to uncertainty, finding gaps in understanding that help our curiosity catch on." The following piece shares eight tips for hav... posted on Apr 30, 9185 reads

A New Hotline for a Pep Talk from Kindergartners
"Amid a crush of heavy news from around the world, who couldn't use some sage advice right now? Call a new hotline, and you'll get just that -- encouraging words from a resilient group of kindergartners. Kids' voices will prompt you with a menu of options: If you're feeling mad, frustrated or nervous, press 1. If you need words of encouragement and life advice, press 2. If you need a pep talk from... posted on May 1, 5673 reads

Solving Complex Problems Relying on Diversity and Inclusion
"This five-stage process originated in ancient Tibet as the Four Karmas (actions). It demands
deep inquiry: we rely on differences of experience and perception in order to discern actions
that might bring sanity to addressing the issue. It requires humility: we honor the fact that no
one person or group has the answer (not even me). It requires appreciation: the experiences of... posted on May 3, 1966 reads

Prophets Without Robes or Staffs
"Today and always, the prophet confronts a dark object, a menacing, enigmatic, obdurate reality affecting the entire community. How to grasp that dark object? Where are the handholds? What approach would permit one to slow the dark object, to interrogate it, to bring it to light, to dispel and transform its menace?"... posted on May 21, 2199 reads

Meet the Four Characters of Your Brain
"I am a brain enthusiast. (I'm sure you have picked up on that by now.) But, beyond the beauty of this amazing organ we all have inside our heads, it is our remarkable brain cells that manifest our choices and abilities. When we understand which cells manifest which of our abilities, the more power we have to choose who and how we want to be in any moment. I consider my new book, Whole Brain Livin... posted on May 22, 4686 reads

Suzanne Simard: Forests are Wired for Wisdom
"Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who has proven, beyond doubt, that trees communicate with each other that a forest is a single organism wired for wisdom and care. Simard found that the processes that make for a high-functioning forest mirror the maps of the human brain that were also just now drawing. All of this turns out to be catching up with intelligence long held in aboriginal scienc... posted on Jun 1, 4088 reads

The Age of the Possible
"...the octopus

with her body-shaped mind
and her eight-arm embrace
of alien realities,
with her colorblind vision
sightful of polarized light
and her perpetually awestruck
lidless eye

can see


shades of blue we cannot conceive."...

In this hypnotic poem Maria Popova views the age of the A... posted on Jun 5, 1478 reads

Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild
When Kathy Fish was asked, in 2017, to contribute to the online journal, Jellyfish Review, she had a piece all cued up-- but then something happened in Las Vegas, that shook the nation, and Fish found herself writing a different piece for the platform instead. It went viral. It was titled, "Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild." In Fish's words, "It weighs in at under 150 words and I've seen pe... posted on Jun 6, 3959 reads

Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Health Issues
"A recent study published in December by the JAMA Network Open suggests that things may finally be starting to change. But the picture is complicated: Some kinds of illness are becoming less stigmatized, true, but people still want to keep distance from other forms. The good news is that young people are much less likely to stigmatize mental illness than older generations, and that there are speci... posted on Jun 14, 2837 reads

The Night Is Just Beginning
Vocal artist Mariana Sadovska traveled along the front lines of the first invasion of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2016, giving benefit concerts and meeting people in the war-ravaged area. Based on her journey, she created a unique musical story - The Night Is Just Beginning - that is all too relevant today. This excerpt of the performance, called "Tovye Imya" (Your Name), beg... posted on Jun 24, 1543 reads

Anatomy of a Wave: A Triptych
"We like to imagine --in our humanness-- waves as traveling water bodies. But that isn't quite accurate. Waves are kinetic energy from vibrating water particles interacting through seawater. The particles move perpendicularly back and forth to create energy, the water forms a circular motion in relation to the seafloor and wind, an orbital rotation is born. The water itself doesn't travel very far... posted on Jul 6, 1753 reads

The Paradoxes of Healing
Lissa Rankin, MD, describes herself as a skeptic. She is a Western-trained ob-gyn, linear thinker, and evidence-informed scientist. In the same breath, however, she also describes herself as a mystic an open-hearted, spiritually alive, empathic healer who has witnessed countless miracles of healing and has also experienced them firsthand herself. What follows is an excerpt from her book, "Sacred ... posted on Jul 7, 7506 reads

Grateful Voices
"Grateful Voices is a video project highlighting the stories of seven individuals with seven different life stories, each of whom finds gratefulness amidst pain, suffering and all of life's challenges. For one participant, gratefulness is "like a friend sitting next to me." Whether it be through loss or the acceptance of a disability, they express the gift that it is to be alive in any given momen... posted on Jul 8, 1901 reads

An Immense World
"Made famous by zoologist Jakob von Uexkull in 1909, the term Umwelt refers to the perceptual world experienced by each animal, a highly specific kind of "sensory bubble." When we walk our dog and she stops to smell every other bush or car tire, she's taking in through her acutely sensitive nose smells that we take in faintly or not at all. That's because humans and dogs have two different sensory... posted on Jul 21, 2443 reads

How Do You Know If You Are Actually Humble?
"Despite intellectual humility being the subject of intense scientific study in recent years, there remains debate among scientists on how best to measure it. That debate begins with a basic question: What is intellectual humility? Most scientists agree that being aware of your intellectual limitations and the fallibility of your beliefs is an important part of intellectual humility, but beyond th... posted on Jul 24, 4590 reads

East Hill Farm: A Leap of Faith
"Once upon a time...many years ago, when a now very old man was but a youth, he felt something was mysteriously missing in his life, but he didn't know what it was or where to find it. He wasn't even sure how to begin looking for it. "Go find Truth and Knowledge," he was told. "When you find them, you'll know what's missing and how to find it." What follows is an excerpt from Jonathan James's book... posted on Aug 5, 2633 reads

Cooking in the Ainu Way
"Eiko Soga is a Japanese-born artist and teacher who has had a long-term interest in exploring new forms of relationship with the natural world.She has just completed a PhD research project at the University of Oxford which involved living with a community of Ainu people in Northern Japan. In this interview she speaks about what her experience with the Ainu taught her about ecologically-aware way... posted on Aug 11, 2200 reads

robert wolff: Original Wisdom
"I have known truly free humans... As all First People they lived far away from roads, it required walking through jungle to reach them. I did not know a word of their language, but there was usually at least one person in the small groups of nomads who understood some words of the language of the country. But our communication was as much through touch, smiles, laughter, and something inside that... posted on Aug 17, 3939 reads

When I Die Recompose Me
What if our bodies could help grow new life after we die, instead of being embalmed and buried or turned to ash? Join Katrina Spade as she discusses "recomposition" -- a system that uses the natural decomposition process to turn our deceased into life-giving soil, honoring both the earth and the departed.... posted on Aug 20, 3199 reads

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Returning the Gift
"Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions and an economy that relentlessly asks, What more can we take from the Earth? This worldview of unbridled exploitation is to my mind the greatest threat to the life that surrounds us. Even our definitions of sustainability revolve around trying to find the formula to ensure that we can keep on taking, far into the... posted on Aug 27, 2286 reads

You Have to Raise the Sails
When Richard Whittaker received an email from a friend about a 'Beginning Acting for Adults,' class she was teaching, it gave him pause. Richard is founding editor of works&conversations magazine. He's been conducting deep-dive interviews with artists for over three decades."I'd never taken an acting class. And at 79 years old, why would I? It seemed a crazy idea. But on the other hand, why not? A... posted on Sep 7, 1794 reads

How Drawing Helps You Think
You don't have to be an artist to draw! Drawing is something all of us have successfully used with a pen or pencil on paper to plan, show or imagine what we are thinking. Being good art doesnt really matter as long as ideas are being shared. In this beautifully illustrated talk, Ralph Ammer shows how drawing your thoughts can be a powerful tool for improving your thinking, creativity and communica... posted on Sep 9, 2833 reads

Make Like A Neuron, Be As Connected As Possible
There are more neurons packed into the expansive confines of a human skull than there are human bodies jostling together on this swirling sphere we call Earth. How many neurons is that exactly? Dedicate a few billion of your own brain cells, if you will, to imagining the colorful millions of Calcutta; add to them the commuters careening through Bangkok, the campesinos picking coffee in Guatemala, ... posted on Sep 13, 1671 reads

Ama Torrance: Without a Recipe
"I'm not a traditionalist. I don't really stick with the rules of anything. I can't follow a recipe in a recipe book. I have to do it my way. So I get the basic tenets of how things work, you know. If you want to make banana bread you look at a bunch of recipes and figure out how everything works together and then you make it however you want to make it." Richard Whittaker's curiosity was piqued w... posted on Sep 26, 1433 reads

Tsunamika: The Little Doll Changing the World
"Fashion designer Uma Prajapati was sifting through emails at her office desk one sun-streaked afternoon in 2005, when a particular note caught her eye. It was from a young woman in Mumbai, India, who described her struggles with depression. At her lowest, she'd decided to end her life. The letter writer explained that as she was leaving her office for the last time, her eyes fell on a small scrap... posted on Sep 29, 2221 reads

Widening Circles: An Interview with Joanna Macy
"In this interview, Buddhist eco-philosopher and author Joanna Macy discusses her life and work. From her anti-nuclear activism in the late 60s to her work with deep ecology, Joanna expresses the need to live within an ethic of care for the earth."... posted on Sep 30, 1920 reads

The Value of Rethinking Our Deeply Held Beliefs
"Organizational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant examines the value of rethinking deeply-held beliefs in an ever-changing world. He discusses how that approach could reshape our work, politics, and daily discourse for the better." More from Grant in this interview with PBS.... posted on Oct 9, 2624 reads

A Country Called Childhood
"Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lorde remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the cracks in paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing ... posted on Oct 6, 1791 reads

Beyond the Words
"This short film by Nic Askew of Soul Biographies has been called "the epitome of joy." Through the delightful presence of Feliciano Pop from Guatemala, we are asked to consider what language is beyond our simple understanding of words. Is there a language that we can all understand if we choose to listen and notice what is happening; if we pay attention with our heart? Prepare to smile and to sin... posted on Oct 14, 2078 reads

The Silent Pulse of the Universe
"Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge in 1967 when she pushed through the skepticism from her superiors to make one of the greatest astrophysical discoveries of the twentieth century. While Jocelyn was belittled and sexually harassed by the media, the Nobel Prize was awarded to her professor and his boss. However, that's only the beginning of the story."... posted on Oct 21, 3014 reads

Water of Life
"In a landscape where nothing is certain and old patterns of control tighten their grip, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee urges us to leave behind that which no longer nourishes us and work with the Earth toward a living future."... posted on Oct 22, 2214 reads

Dear Vaccine: Pandemic Poetry
"A new poetry anthology called Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic illuminates how people around the world have experienced COVID-19. Jeffrey Brown sits down with Naomi Shihab Nye, an author, editor and current Young Peoples Poet Laureate, to talk about shaping the book and the outpouring of interest from people who dont necessarily identify as poets."... posted on Oct 24, 2017 reads

The Art of Life: A Documentary
"The Art of Life is a documentary about the art of living outside of conventions, in deep integrity with one's essence. As a rising star in the field of abstract mathematics, Michael Behrens discovered that he could see beauty and pattern where others could not. But his path was not to be inside academia, or even inside society. He went on a grand adventure to unify his Buddhism with his ability t... posted on Oct 25, 3664 reads

Love Song
"Whether we accept it or not, the land itself is our earliest predecessor, the main character of all our stories, and listening to it, after all, is not a onetime undertaking but a practice." Chris Dombrowski's book, "The River You Touch," begins with a profound and timely question, "What does a meaningful, mindful, sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropocene? What f... posted on Nov 2, 1985 reads

The Woman Who Saved Native Song
"In the early twentieth century, the U.S. government continued its assault on Native Americans by demanding they relinquish their tribal languages and belief systems, teach their children English, and enter the American mainstream. As a result of this concerted erasure campaign, the average American came to see indigenous peoples as living fossils on the brink of cultural extinction. Frances Densm... posted on Nov 10, 3772 reads

Why You Should Write That Thank You Note
"Students of mine in a political philosophy course at Indiana University are reading Daniel Defoe's 300-year-old Robinson Crusoe, often regarded as the first novel published in English. Marooned alone on an unknown island with no apparent prospect of rescue or escape, Crusoe has much to lament. But instead of giving in to despair, he makes a list of things for which he is grateful, including the f... posted on Nov 13, 5179 reads

Agent of Illumination
"Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated with one another, with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy woul... posted on Nov 16, 14366 reads

How to Have a Community Conversation
"A Community Conversation is a form of group dialogue that often addresses issues of local or larger concern. Participation is usually open to all, and may lead to some form of action, consensus or objective by the participants. Regardless of the size of the gathering, when individuals assemble to engage in dialogue related to self-determination, it often becomes a community unto itself. Community... posted on Nov 19, 1482 reads

You Don't Know What Your Future Self Wants
"'You are constantly becoming a new person,' says journalist Shankar Vendantam. In a talk full of beautiful storytelling, he explains the profound impact of something he calls the "illusion of continuity" -- the belief that our future selves will share the same views, perspectives and hopes as our current selves -- and shows how we can more proactively craft the people we are to become." Science w... posted on Dec 3, 2816 reads

Thanksgiving Blessings
From the team at Gratefulness.org comes this rich compilation of, "blessings, prayers, and invocations from diverse traditions, for meal times, gatherings, and Grateful Living." ... posted on Nov 24, 2180 reads

The Queen of Basketball
This amazing film, winner of the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary (short subject), shares the story of Lusia "Lucy" Harris, a pioneer of women's basketball. Harris talks of her love of basketball from childhood with her characteristic good humor and humility. Criticized for her height, basketball helped her to view that as an asset. She led her college team to three national women's basketb... posted on Dec 2, 1376 reads

James Bridle: An Ecological Technology
"In this expansive interview, writer, artist, and technologist James Bridle seeks to widen our thinking beyond humancentric ways of knowing. In questioning our fundamental assumptions about intelligence, they explore how radical technological models can decentralize power and become portals into a deeper relationship with the living world."... posted on Dec 13, 1504 reads

The Heartbeat of Trees
Peter Wohllenben is a forester in the best sense of the word. He is the author of a number of books, including The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate -- Discoveries from a Secret World, which was a New York Times bestseller. His latest book, The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bonds with Forests and Nature, was released in June 2021. In this interview he speaks ab... posted on Dec 18, 2345 reads

Carol Sanford: No More Feedback
"I will admit from the start that this is a contrarian view of a subject that I love to hate: Feedback. People are often shocked that I would critique something that they think must be good for them and certainly good for others, no matter how much they dislike participating in it. After all, without feedback, how would we know how others see us? How would we get better at what we do? My answer to... posted on Dec 20, 2185 reads

Bill Plotkin: The Butterfly and the Cocoon
"'The world is not well tended or engaged with by people who dont know what they are for, who dont know why they were born.' Steve Wheeler speaks with depth psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin about the metamorphoses of the soul in times of ecological crisis."... posted on Dec 21, 2242 reads

New Year Transformation: Resources for the Journey
"The New year often brings with it a welcome sense of possibility as we bid farewell to the old and embrace the potential of what's to come. Even as global challenges continue to contribute to a sense of heightened uncertainty, opportunity awaits when we situate ourselves in gratefulness. May this collection of resources help to support you in welcoming the new year with wholehearted curiosity, hu... posted on Jan 1, 2583 reads

Otto Scharmer on The Four Levels of Listening
"In my years of working with groups and organizations, I have identified four basic types of listening. Ya, I know that already. The first type of listening is downloading: listening by reconfirming habitual judgments. When you are in a situation where everything that happens confirms what you already know, then you are listening by downloading." In this excerpt from his book, "Theory U: Learning ... posted on Jan 5, 2967 reads

Letter to Tomorrow
An egg; a perfect package of hope. Sit down and allow your heart to open; allow your mind to quiet. Then connect with this beautiful poem by Jackie Morris and ponder how to hold your own hope.... posted on Jan 6, 3303 reads

Into the Middle of Nowhere
"This film captures the wonder of childhood as 3 to 5-year-olds explore and test the boundaries of reality through play and imagination at an outdoor nursery in Fife, Scotland."... posted on Jan 11, 2340 reads

Window of Possibility
"We call our galaxy the Milky Way. There are at least 100 billion stars in it and our sun is one of those. A hundred billion is a big number, and humans are not evolved to appreciate numbers like that, but heres a try: If you had a bucket with a thousand marbles in it, you would need to procure 999,999 more of those buckets to get a billion marbles. Then youd have to repeat the process a hundred t... posted on Jan 14, 2129 reads