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 (2,752 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 (51,284 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 (2,689 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)

Discovering My Own Values, by Leah Perlman
the end of your life” a friend once asked,  “What do you hope to have happened?” I thought it a great question and decided to give him a thoughtful answer, so I pocketed it for later and bought myself a month for the assignment. For a while my mind flooded with questions of plot. Will I fall in love? Will I have kids? Will I know passion in my work? Will I touch lives? Will I change the world? For the better? What will my regrets be? Where will I have traveled? Where will I have lived? Will I have really traveled? Will I have really lived? When I was a kid watching movies, I used to shout during tense scenes, “Ah! What’s gonna happen!?”&nbs... posted on Nov 8 2011 (38,905 reads)

27 Non-School Skills Children Need, by Leo Babauta
knows that our school system, in general, is not giving our kids the basic reading, writing, ‘rithmatic and science skills needed to be competitive in the high-tech workforce of the upcoming generation (at least, that’s the general assumption, and we won’t argue it here). But there’s much more to life than those basic subjects, and unless you have an exceptional teacher who is willing to break out of the mold, your child isn’t learning the crucial things he or she needs to learn in life. Think about your own experience for a moment. When you got out of high school, did you know everything you needed in order to survive in life, let alone... posted on Aug 28 2012 (116,505 reads)

7 Ways To Change Negative Beliefs About Yourself, by Michele Rosenthal
simple daily practices can alter the neural pathways in your brain and help you turn your thinking around In fourth grade I was placed in an advanced math group with four other students. Every day we gathered around a circular table at the back of the classroom and learned algebra. Being part of this special group felt good; when it came to math I was calm, confident, and competent. One day the teacher announced a math quiz: 12 addition problems (simple equations containing four numbers each) to be done in 6 minutes. “These are very easy,” the teacher explained. “If you can’t get all twelve correct, then you’re just plain stupid.” Stupid?... posted on Sep 26 2014 (111,243 reads)

James Doty's Helper's High, by Bonnie Tsui
Doty is not a subject under study at the altruism research center that he founded at Stanford in 2008, but he could be.  In 2000, after building a fortune as a neurosurgeon and biotech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, he lost it all in the dotcom crash: $75 million gone in six weeks.  Goodbye villa in Tuscany, private island in New Zealand, penthouse in San Francisco.  His final asset was stock in a medical-device company he’d once run called Accuray.  But it was stock he’d committed to a trust that would benefit the universities he’d attended and programs for AIDS, family, and global health.  Doty was $3 million in the hole.  Everyone tol... posted on Aug 22 2014 (24,002 reads)

The Crossroads of Should and Must: An Intelligent Illustrated Field Guide to Finding Your Bliss, by Maria Popova
is how other people want us to live our lives… Choosing Must is the greatest thing we can do with our lives.” “Does what goes on inside show on the outside?,” young Vincent van Gogh despaired in a moving letter to his brother while floundering to find his purpose. “Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.” A century later, Joseph Campbell stoked that hearth of the soul with his foundational treatise on finding your bliss. And yet every day, countless hearths and hearts grow ashen in cubicles around the world as we... posted on Jul 1 2015 (15,635 reads)

The Crossroads of Should & Must, by Maria Popova
is how other people want us to live our lives… Choosing Must is the greatest thing we can do with our lives.” “Does what goes on inside show on the outside?,” young Vincent van Gogh despaired in a moving letter to his brother while floundering to find his purpose. “Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.” A century later, Joseph Campbell stoked that hearth of the soul with his foundational treatise on finding your bliss. And yet every day, countless hearths and hearts grow ashen in cubicles ar... posted on Oct 6 2016 (17,350 reads)

How to Be a Lifelong Learner, by Kira M. Newman
instructor of the world’s most popular MOOC explores how to change your life through the power of learning—and why you have more potential than you think. People around the world are hungry to learn. Instructor Barbara Oakley discovered this when her online course “Learning How to Learn”—filmed in her basement in front of a green screen—attracted more than 1.5 million students. Part of the goal of her course—and her new book, Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential—is to debunk some of the myths that get in the way of learning, like the belief that we’re bad at math or too old to change ... posted on Jul 4 2017 (15,982 reads)

Repairing the Fabric of the World, by Parabola Editors
met Jonathan F.P. Rose in Manhattan, the week a snow storm knocked out power in much of the Northeast. Heating by woodstove and carrying water home from the local fire station for five long, cold days left me feeling a bit rough and smoky, not to mention unprepared, to be sitting in the comfortable offices of his company in a historic old building near Grand Central Station. Yet the moment I met Rose, a tall, friendly man who met me talking and moving at a confident stride, I realized that my days as a kind of suburban pioneer woman, muddling along in a harsh new world that everyone blamed on global warming and our decaying infrastructure, was the best possible situation to meet a new ... posted on Jul 14 2018 (9,369 reads)

Rachel Callender Sees Superpowers, by Nathan Scolaro
SCOLARO: So let’s talk about the work you’re doing now and then journey back through your story. RACHEL CALLANDER: Okay cool. My work involves speaking to health professionals about the need to communicate with patients using openhearted language, especially at diagnosis. I teach how the first words used at diagnosis critically shape how a patient or parent or family member perceives the present and navigates their future. These words can either help the individual be their best self through this challenging time and find meaning even in pain, or they can create anger, mistrust, frustration, and break down the crucial relationship between with the health profe... posted on Aug 27 2018 (8,977 reads)

War No More: David Swanson, by Leslee Goodman
Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. A prolific writer, his books include War Is a Lie, When the World Outlawed War, War No More: The Case for Abolition, War Is Never Just, A Global Security System: An Alternative to War, and his most recent, Curing Exceptionalism: What’s wrong with how we think about the United States? What can we do about it? All are available on his website. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio and is a three-time Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.&... posted on Jan 28 2019 (6,188 reads)