Shelter for the Heart and Mind, by On Being
follows is the transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett and Sharon Salzburg. You can listen to the audio version of the interview here. Krista Tippett, host:How to keep walking forward, and even find renewal along the way, in this year of things blown apart? What sustains us? How to hold on to our sense of what is whole and true and undamaged, even in the face of loss? These questions of Sharon Salzberg anchor a virtual retreat I signed up for with her on one of this year’s many bad days. It was called “Shelter for the Heart and Mind.” And she has created some shelter for me, at once grounding and energizing, through all of the highs and lows that ... posted on Oct 24 2020 (7,766 reads)

Suzanne Simard: Forests are Wired for Wisdom, by On Being
follows is the syndicated transcript  of an On Being interview bewteen Krista Tippett and Suzanne Simard. You can listen to the audio of the interview here. Krista Tippett, host:She is the forest ecologist who has proven beyond doubt that trees communicate with each other, that a forest is a single organism, “wired,” Suzanne Simard says, “for wisdom” and for what it is hard to call anything other than care. She has shifted her field of science on its axis and was an inspiration for the central character in Richard Powers’s celebrated novel The Overstory. But it’s the understory of a forest that Suzanne Simard brought into the light. M... posted on Jun 1 2022 (3,956 reads)

The Myth of Normal, by Travis Lupick
typical American life in 2022 might include spending 50 hours a week mostly alone in a cubicle, riddled with chronic stress but on track for a promotion. Evenings pass isolated in a tower, where a doorman ensures strangers and even neighbors are kept at bay. You swipe down into the bowels of Instagram until you fall asleep. Something on Netflix plays in the background, but only so you don’t have to listen to your own thoughts. Typical, perhaps. But none of that should be accepted as natural, argues Dr. Gabor Maté in his new book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. Our cardiovascular systems were not built for the stress of a Wall Street... posted on Oct 2 2022 (6,226 reads)

Why to Get Published, by Mick Cochrane
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, and told me he wondered if writers believed that there might be a magic font—Garamond 12.5!—that hypnotized acquisition editors into saying yes.             It’s a simple question to ask but not easy to answe... posted on Nov 29 2023 (2,712 reads)

Transcript For Maria Popova - Cartographer Of Meaning In A Digital Age, by Krista Tippet
by Anna Wolf for Dumbo Feather KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Maria Popova has called Brain Pickings, her invention and labor of love, a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.” What she really delivers to hundreds of thousands of people each day is wisdom of the old-fashioned sort, presented in new-fashioned digital ways. She doesn’t merely curate, she cross-pollinates — between philosophy and design, physics and poetry, the scholarly and the experiential. We meet Maria Popova at 30, and explore her gleanings, thus far, on what it means to lead a good life — intellectually, creatively, and spiritually. MARIA POPOVA: You know,... posted on Jul 15 2015 (11,790 reads)

The Man Who Planted Trees: A Conversation with David Milarch, by Awakin Call Editors
some years ago David Milarch hovered above the bed, looking down at his motionless body. Years of alcoholism had booted him out of his life. An inexplicable cosmic commandment would return him to it. His improbable charge? To clone the world's champion trees - the giants that had survived millennia and would be unvanquished by climate change. Experts said it couldn't be done. Fast-forward to today, and Milarch is now the keeper of a Noah's Ark filled with the genetics for repopulating the world's most ancient trees. Founder of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive he is on a mission to restore the lungs of the planet -- a mission that now reaches close to 300 mi... posted on Mar 23 2017 (29,044 reads)

Thomas Ponce: On Behalf of All Living Beings, by Awakin Call Editors
Ponce is a 16-year-old animal rights advocate and a citizen lobbyist from Casselberry, Florida. He is the founder of Lobby For Animals, the Coordinator for Fin Free FL, and founder of Harley’s Home, which is used as his school-based animal rights club. A vegetarian at age of 4, he began writing about animal rights at the age of 5.  Soon after, Thomas’s parents realized that his advocacy for animals was not a phase, but a way of life. “I feel that it is our responsibility as both citizens and human beings to use our minds, hearts and voices to speak up against the injustices we see in the world,” explains Thomas. What foll... posted on May 22 2017 (18,525 reads)

Grateful Parenting, by Anne Dunlea
Kinds of Grateful Parenting Grateful Parenting invokes two complementary ideas for me. On the one hand, it suggests being a parent who practices gratefulness, who lives gratefully; including being grateful to parent, to lovingly care for a child. Such a parent would then, hopefully, role model gratefulness and infuse the home with grateful practices. On the other hand, grateful parenting also suggests being grateful for one’s particular child, being aware and appreciative of the gifts and qualities that child has. It suggests respecting one’s child as a person, and all that ensues from such an open positive attitude. As a developmental scientist and a pers... posted on Jul 1 2018 (17,316 reads)

Giang Dang: A Happy Soul Serves Happily, by Awakin Call Editors
resident of Vietnam, Giang Dang came from a traditional background in development.  After some years of working in a multi-national aid organization, she started to notice a need for depth of local connections and started Action for the City in Hanoi.  Showing how small scale actions can affect change through community's inter-connections, Giang is a champion of minimizing consumption of resources, reducing transportation emissions, and promoting green spaces and organic urban agriculture.What follows is the edited transcript of an Awakin Call with Giang. You can listen to the recording here. Xiao: Today I'm very excited to be moderating this phone ca... posted on Sep 5 2018 (3,760 reads)

How Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?, by On Being
follows is the transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett, Abraham Verghese and Denise Pope. Republished here with permission.  Krista Tippett, host:I spend a good deal of time speaking on college campuses and hearing how new generations want to balance the question they’ve grown up hearing — “What do they want to do when they grow up?” — with the question of who and how they will be in the world. At Stanford University this year, I was part of a searching conversation about this. I found faculty as well as students eager to join me. How we educate for success is strangely at odds with what we’re learning on our sci... posted on Jun 7 2019 (6,190 reads)

How Cultural Differences Shape Gratitude, by Kira M. Newman
you’re trying to become happier, you’ve probably heard the advice to practice gratitude. “Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change people’s lives,” writes pioneering researcher Robert Emmons in his book Thanks! His studies suggest that gratitude can improve our health and relationships—making it one of the most well-studied and effective ways to increase our well-being in life. But prescribing gratitude to everyone is a problem: Most of what we know about it comes from studying Americans—and, specifically, the mainly white American college students from the campuses where researchers work. That crea... posted on Aug 11 2019 (10,094 reads)

What Is Your Hearth of Hearths?, by Jenna McGuiggan
A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place Edited by Annick Smith and Susan O'Connor Where—or what—is your hearth of hearths? Where is the place you feel most alive or connected? What is the thing that reminds you who you are and to what (or whom) you belong? In all the world, what do you call home? These are some of the questions that Annick Smith and Susan O’Connor pondered as they edited Hearth: A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place. In the preface, they describe how the “idea for a book about hearth started on the rim of the Kilauea Volcano on Hawai’i’s Big Island” when author, revered ... posted on Oct 5 2019 (4,948 reads)

Overcoming the Brain's Negativity Bias, by Jill Suttie
can’t we pull our attention away from a traffic accident or stop watching news about the latest viral outbreak? Why are we waylaid by criticism or unable to get past a minor snub from our best friend? That’s our negativity bias. We humans have a propensity to give more weight in our minds to things that go wrong than to things that go right—so much so that just one negative event can hijack our minds in ways that can be detrimental to our work, relationships, health, and happiness. Overcoming our negativity bias is not easy to do. But a new book, The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It, coauthored by social psychologist Roy... posted on Jan 17 2020 (15,777 reads)

The Dragonfly Incident, by Bill Sherwonit
suppose this could be considered a “wildlife encounter” story of sorts, though it presents some unusual twists. For one thing, the animal at the heart of this tale is a subarctic insect (and yet has nothing to do with the region’s legendary mosquitoes). For another, odd things happen that aren’t easily explained by either reason or chance. There are other curious turns, as well ... The story begins with a man sitting on the front steps of a lakeside cabin, feeling contented and thankful to be part of such a beautiful, softly shimmering summer day. He’d brought a mug of coffee out to the porch, plus binoculars and a journal in which he planned to rec... posted on Apr 6 2023 (5,393 reads)

David Whyte: On Seeking Language Large Enough, by On Being
Tippett, host:It has ever and always been true, as David Whyte reminds us, that so much of human experience is a conversation between loss and celebration. This “conversational nature of reality” — indeed, this drama of vitality  — is something we have all been shown, willing or unwilling, in these years. Many have turned to David Whyte for his gorgeous, life-giving poetry and his wisdom at the interplay of theology, psychology, and leadership, his insistence on the power of a “beautiful question” and of everyday words amidst the drama of work, as well as the drama of life. The notion of “frontier” — inner frontiers, oute... posted on Jun 18 2023 (4,269 reads)

IntraConnected: Discovering MWe (Me + We), by Tami Simon
Simon: In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Dan Siegel. Dan is a friend to me, to Sounds True, and quite honestly, he has the qualities of what I would call a universal friend. He leads with openness, curiosity, and an interest in connecting. Dan is a hugely accomplished person. He’s a graduate of Harvard Medical School and clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine. He’s the executive director of the Mindsight Institute and founding codirector of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Dan is someone who I would describe as a visionary creative thinker. He’s able to see commonalities in the meeting ground between differ... posted on Mar 10 2023 (2,417 reads)

How to Think Like an Ecosystem, by Frances Moore Lappe
it’s dawned on me: We humans are creatures of the mind. We perceive the world according to our core, often unacknowledged, assumptions. They determine, literally, what we can see and what we cannot. Nothing so wrong with that, perhaps—except that, in this crucial do-or-die moment, we’re stuck with a mental map that is life-destroying. And the premise of this map is lack—not enough of anything, from energy to food to parking spots; not enough goods and not enough goodness. In such a world, we come to believe, it’s compete or die. The popular British writer Philip Pullman says, “we evolved to suit a way of life which is acquisitive, territor... posted on Apr 10 2012 (28,366 reads)

On Exoplanets and Love, by On Being
for On Exoplanets and Love: Natalie Batalha on Science That Connects Us to One Another February 14, 2013 Krista Tippett, Host: Natalie Batalha hunts for "exoplanets" — Earth-sized planets beyond our own solar system — that might have liquid water and harbor life. She works with the Kepler Mission at NASA, searching among millions of stars that emit "compelling signals" in the range of Kepler's space telescope. For her, it's only a matter of time — a when, not an if — that we discover planets where we know life exists. And, I've never met anyone who speaks more intriguingly than Natalie Batalha about the connection be... posted on Jan 29 2014 (26,734 reads)

Slow Medicine: An Interview With Victoria Sweet, by Mary Stein
would it look like—an intimate, intuitive, deeply skilled medicine, focused on continuing care and observation of the patient, minus computers? It’s not a question that most of us can think about in any great detail these days. In her book God’s Hotel, Dr. Victoria Sweet writes about an unusual hospital where she found amazing insights to the question. Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco was, as far as anyone knows, the last almshouse, or Hotel-Dieu, in this country—a hospital for the sick and poor. Dr. Sweet took a position there, expecting it to be temporary, then stayed for more than twenty years in a place where she and other physicians cou... posted on Oct 8 2014 (22,474 reads)

5 Ways to Kill Your Dreams, by Bel Pesce
dedicated the past two years to understanding how people achieve their dreams. When we think about the dreams we have, and the dent we want to leave in the universe, it is striking to see how big of an overlap there is between the dreams that we have and projects that never happen. (Laughter) So I'm here to talk to you today about five ways how not to follow your dreams. One: Believe in overnight success. You know the story, right? The tech guy built a mobile app and sold it very fast for a lot of money. You know, the story may seem real, but I bet it's incomplete. If you go investigate further, the guy has done 30 apps before and he has done a master's on t... posted on May 13 2015 (34,929 reads)