Jonathan Foust: Body-Centered Inquiry, by Tami Simon
following is the syndicated transcript of a SoundsTrue Insights at the Edge interview between Tami Simon and Jonathan Foust. You can listen to the audio version of the interview here.  Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Jonathan Foust. Jonathan is a senior teacher and former president of Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, as well as a guiding teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC, and a founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute in Washington, DC. A workshop and retreat leader for more than 20 years, he’s been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journa... posted on Aug 1 2022 (4,373 reads)

The Intelligence in All Kinds of Life, by On Being
with Robin Wall Kimerrer MS. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: “Why is the world so beautiful?” This is a question Robin Wall Kimmerer pursues as a botanist and also as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She writes, “Science polishes the gift of seeing, indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.” An expert in moss — a bryologist — she describes mosses as the “coral reefs of the forest.” She opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life we are used to naming and imagining as inanimate. DR. ROBIN WALL KIMMERER: I can’t think of a single scientific study in the last... posted on Apr 22 2016 (14,831 reads)

Seeking Silence & Stillness in the Rush of Business Life, by Knowledge@Wharton
Iyer -- essayist, author, travel writer and thinker -- has a unique perspective on many things. His physical domain ranges from California (where he lived as a child) and England (where he studied) to Cuba, North Korea and Ethiopia (which he visited) and Japan (where he resides). His mental domain knows no limiting boundaries. In this interview with Wharton associate dean and chief information officer Deirdre Woods and Knowledge@Wharton, Iyer spoke on an unusual topic -- the value of silence and stillness amid the rush of business. If we spend too much time in the MTV rhythm, says Iyer, we won't be able to cultivate the parts of us that need more slowness. Iyer has writ... posted on Jun 19 2012 (20,229 reads)

Daniel Goleman: Emotional Intelligence Now, by Tami Simon
can listen to the audio version of this interview here. Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon. I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools, such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational to... posted on Jun 28 2021 (5,553 reads)

Healthy Neighborhoods, Healthy Kids, by Jill Suttie
Tanenhaus is worried about the future of his hometown. As a fourth generation resident of Binghamton, New York, and executive director of Binghamton’s housing authority, he’s watched his city of 50,000 residents transform from a thriving upstate New York community with a strong manufacturing base to one with a shrinking population and rising crime rates. Like other towns around the U.S. hit by the current economic downturn, Binghamton is experiencing an increase in drug use and delinquency among its youth, which troubles Tanenhaus. “The neighborhoods are deteriorating,” he says. “There are a lot of people working hard to improve the quality of life here. B... posted on Jun 2 2011 (11,585 reads)

Transcript of Awakin Call with Sujatha Baliga, by awakin.org
Baliga: Forgiveness of Unforgivable Acts [To listen to the audio of this conversation, click here.] Preetha: I'm really excited to be having this conversation with my dear friend Sujatha Baliga, who I have every interaction I have had with her, I've learned and grown immensely from every pearl that comes out of her mouth. She’s someone who leaves me always wanting more, and I hope you'll have that experience today.  Sujatha is the Director of the Restorative Justice Project at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, where she helps communities implement restorative justice alternatives to juvenile detention and zero toler... posted on Jan 27 2015 (44,858 reads)

Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, by Tami Simon
Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon, I'm the founder of Sounds True, and I'd love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world, by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools, such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans,... posted on Jan 2 2020 (9,785 reads)

Rachel Callander Sees Superpowers, by Nathan Scolaro
Scolaro speaks with Rachel Callander Rachel Callander has a room of healthcare workers in tears when I hear her speak for the first time. I’m at the Gathering of Kindness—an annual conference founded by Dumbo Feather alumni Catherine Crock about bringing more empathy and compassion into healthcare—and Rachel is sharing the story of her daughter Evie, who was born with a rare chromosomal condition. Named Evie Amour, which for Rachel and her family means, “Life is possible because of love,” Evie was constantly in and out of hospitals for tests and procedures, and Rachel became attuned to the varying ways medical staff communicated her daught... posted on Jan 16 2022 (3,934 reads)

How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times, by Robert Emmons
decade’s worth of research on gratitude has shown me that when life is going well, gratitude allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness. But what about when life goes badly? In the midst of the economic maelstrom that has gripped our country, I have often been asked if people can—or even should—feel grateful under such dire circumstances. This essay is adapted from Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity My response is that not only will a grateful attitude help—it isessential. In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. In the face of demoralizatio... posted on Sep 12 2013 (98,033 reads)

The Art of Stillness, by Pico Iyer
FOR PICO IYER — THE ART OF STILLNESS KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Pico Iyer is not a spiritual teacher or even, he says, a spiritual person per se. But he has become one of our most beloved and eloquent translators of the modern rediscovery of inner life. As a journalist and novelist, he travels the globe from Ethiopia to North Korea, and he lives in Japan. But he also experiences a remote Benedictine hermitage as his second home, retreating there many times each year. In this intimate conversation, we explore the “art of stillness” he practices — not in order to enrich the mountaintop, he writes, “but to bring calm into the motion of the world.&rdq... posted on Jul 10 2015 (20,370 reads)

An Atheist on the Spiritual Transformation of the World, by Leslee Goodman
(“Pancho”) Ramos-Stierle was pursuing his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of California at Berkeley when he learned that the University’s Los Alamos and Livermore Laboratories had contracted with the federal government to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons. The news transformed his life: he “stopped cooperating” with the institution and became a more involved activist. As a result of that decision, he has at times been houseless, living with friends, or in what he calls “the Redwood Cathedral.” For the past three years he has lived in the East Oakland neighborhood known as Fruitvale—a gang-torn and graffiti-tagged ... posted on Aug 23 2016 (17,303 reads)

The Privilege of Living What Is:, by Pavithra Mehta
Privilege of Living: A Conversation with Viral Mehta, by Pavithra Mehta August 1, 2016 Viral Mehta In mid-August 2015, Viral Mehta, a co-founder of ServiceSpace.org, was diagnosed with an acute form of bone marrow suppression. In the passages below, written half a year into the diagnosishis wife, Pavithra. “Pavi” Mehta, offers an update on Viral’s condition and speaks with him about his challenges and recovery.  -The Editors (Parabola magazine) Pavi’s Update Viral’s recovery is continuing slowly, at its own secret pace. Things are stable overall, though there have been fluctuations with his blood counts…. But the fact that h... posted on Dec 31 1969 (2,750 reads)

The Urgency of Slowing Down, by On Being
episode originally aired on June 4, 2015.  Krista Tippett, host:Pico Iyer is not a spiritual teacher or even, he says, a spiritual person per se. But he has become one of our most beloved and eloquent translators of the modern rediscovery of inner life. As a journalist and novelist, he travels the globe from Ethiopia to North Korea, and he lives in Japan. But he also experiences a remote Benedictine hermitage as his second home, retreating there many times each year. In this intimate conversation, we explore the “art of stillness” he practices — not in order to enrich the mountaintop, he writes, “but to bring calm into the motion of the world.&r... posted on Feb 5 2019 (8,500 reads)

Desmond Tutu: On Why We Forgive, by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
letting go of past hurts, we can heal not only ourselves, but our families, our communities, and our world. There were so many nights when I, as a young boy, had to watch helplessly as my father verbally and physically abused my mother. I can still recall the smell of alcohol, see the fear in my mother’s eyes, and feel the hopeless despair that comes when we see people we love hurting each other in incomprehensible ways. If I dwell in those memories, I can feel myself wanting to hurt my father back, in the same ways he hurt my mother, and in ways of which I was incapable as a small boy. I see my mother’s face and I see this gentle human being whom I loved so very much a... posted on May 6 2014 (51,281 reads)

How To Cultivate Practical Wisdom , by Maria Popova
psychology of how we use frames, categories, and storytelling to make sense of the world. “It’s insulting to imply that only a system of rewards and punishments can keep you a decent human being,” Isaac Asimov told Bill Moyers in their magnificent 1988 conversation on science and religion. And yet ours is a culture that frequently turns to rigid external rules — be they of religion or of legislature or of social conduct — as a substitute for the inner moral compass that a truly “decent human being” uses to steer behavior. So what can we do, as a society and as individual humans aspiring to be good, to cultivate that deeper sense of right and w... posted on Jun 13 2014 (17,919 reads)

Are Some Social Ties Better Than Others?, by Juliana Breines
is more important: your spouse or your Facebook friends? A social psychologist says we need both, for weak ties can make us strong—and sometimes strong ties can make us weak. Do we live in an age of superficial social ties, incapable of genuine human connection? Our Facebook friends may seem to do little more than bombard us with trivial status updates. Texting, chatting, and tweeting appear to have dumbed down our conversations to quick, shallow exchanges. There’s no question that the digital age has changed the way we relate to one another, sometimes to our detriment, as MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle has argued in her book Alone Together. Though many of us can coun... posted on Sep 6 2017 (7,420 reads)

Maira Kalman: Daily Things to Fall in Love With, by Maria Popova
following is a transcript of an interview between Krista Tippett and Maira Kalman syndicated from On Being. Krista Tippett, host:“The subject of my work,” Maira Kalman says, is “the normal, daily things that people fall in love with.” She is a visual storyteller, and to be in conversation with her is a little like wandering into one of the cartoons you might see in The New Yorker and which she might have drawn. Millions of us have been prompted to smile and think by Maira Kalman’s work in a museum or the recent illustrated revision of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style or a New York Times blog or her lovel... posted on Feb 14 2019 (6,661 reads)

Esther Perel: The Constant Dance Between Me and You, by On Being
follows is the syndicated transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett and Esther Perel. Krista Tippett, host: Esther Perel has changed our discourse about sexuality and coupledom with her TED talks, her books, and her singular podcast, Where Should We Begin? There, listeners are invited into emotionally raw therapy sessions she conducts with couples she’s never met before. Episode after episode lays bare the theater of relationship, which is also the drama of being human. And that’s what I take up with her this hour. What does “erotic intelligence,” one of her terms, have to do with the human condition writ large and t... posted on Dec 18 2019 (10,792 reads)

Black Joy in Pursuit of Racial Justice, by Tracey Michae'l Lewis-Giggetts
decided that 2020 was a great year for me. It was filled with so many tremendous professional and personal wins. Wait… scratch that. Actually, 2020 was a horrible year. It was filled with tragic losses and enormous amounts of rage and grief. I have to choose one or the other, right? Surely our capacity for joy and pleasure is contingent on how much sorrow and anger is held at any given moment, right?  Actually, no. I don’t think it is. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It’s always both/and. I’ve been longing to talk about all the ways in which these last couple of years have been so much of a gift for me. And yet I struggle wit... posted on Jun 8 2022 (2,688 reads)

What Is Wanting to Find Expression Through You?, by Tami Simon
follows is the transcript of an interview between Tami Simon of SoundsTrue and James Hollis. You can listen to the audio version of the interview here. Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges... posted on Oct 1 2022 (4,453 reads)