The Biology of Wonder: Finding the Human in Nature, by Andreas Weber
Feeling as the Moving Force in All Life For 150 years, biology, the ‘science of life,’ made no great effort to answer the question of what life really is. Biologists had a concept they thought to be sufficient for their research: Most of them assumed organisms to be tiny machines. Today, this belief has been shaken. Only a few years ago we witnessed researchers celebrating the ‘decoding’ of the human genome as a secular breakthrough. They seemed to be on the verge of unraveling the mechanics of life. But not much has happened since then. The boom has come to a standstill. We don’t hear much from geneticists these days. Certainly, they have been ... posted on Jun 29 2021 (4,002 reads)

Letters to a Young Poet: Communing with Rilke's Prophetic Musings , by On Being
follows is the transcript syndicated from an OnBeing interview between Krista Tippett, Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. You can listen to the audio version of the interview here.  Krista Tippett: If you have listened to On Being for any period of time, you have probably heard me invoke Rainer Maria Rilke. His works of prose and poetry are enduringly beloved — the Sonnets to Orpheus; the Duino Elegies; the Book of Hours. But none of his words have carried more persistently across time than his Letters to a Young Poet. It’s a small volume of ten letters Rilke wrote between 1903 and 1908 to a young military cadet and would-be poet, named ... posted on Jul 9 2021 (4,550 reads)

Indigenous Knowledge and Gift Giving, by Jeanette Armstrong
would like to share my language with you, and give you greetings from all of my family and my community and my people, the Syilx. I give thanks that I am able to share some words with you. I’m from an oral culture, and so that’s how in this article, I share some of my ideas about giving—the concept of gift—and some ideas about my own people’s understanding of giving, in terms of land, community and family, as well as the individual, because I believe something is really wrong in the world today. The only thing that I can offer is my thinking. How it might be put to work, how it might be incorporated, or how it might be thought of in terms of the change that... posted on Jul 13 2021 (9,026 reads)

Singing: Most Companionable of Arts, by On Being
follows is the syndicated transcript of an On Being interview between Krista Tippett and Alice Parker MS. TIPPETT:I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. [music: “Adeste Fidelis” by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw & Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus] MS. TIPPETT:Alice Parker has composed operas, cantatas, and suites for chamber ensembles, as well as hundreds of anthems and songs. She is Artistic Director of the non-profit Melodious Accord. She was born in 1925 in Boston, Massachusetts. MS. TIPPETT:I just want to say before we start that although you are all about music, and composing, and singing, and conducting, you write beautifully a... posted on Oct 24 2021 (3,622 reads)

Designing & Supporting Peer-Driven Change, by Ashoka.org
a novel approach to addressing poverty, Maurice Lim Miller shifts ownership and priority-setting to low-income working families through an approach that enables families to self-organize, support each other as they gain fiscal independence and confidence, and move into roles as active consumers of social services who deliver feedback, not passive beneficiaries. The New Idea Having advanced more traditional anti-poverty and job training efforts in the 1980s and 1990s, Maurice saw that progress was slow and, more worrying, that the funding and incentive structures to aid the transition of low-income Americans into the middle-class were misaligned with desired outcomes. He found that p... posted on Feb 23 2022 (2,367 reads)

Our Evolutionary Leap, by Tami Simon
follows is the transcript of an interview between Tami Simon and Lynne Twist syndicate from SoundsTrue. You can listen to the audio recording of the interview here. Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True. 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 phys... posted on Mar 12 2022 (3,025 reads)

In Praise of Black Capped Chickadees, by Bill Sherwonit
like to offer some words in praise of chickadees. Though seven different species inhabit North America, four of them in Alaska, here I will focus on the black-capped chickadee, the bird that transformed my life nearly three decades ago. Because they’re among the most common birds to inhabit the Anchorage area—and much of our continent—nearly everyone can recognize black-capped chickadees (which I sometimes simply call black-caps) and their familiar chick-a-dee-dee calls. At the same time, I suspect that most people largely ignore black-caps, don’t give them much thought, simply because they are so common (those who put out bird feeders being exceptions... posted on Oct 18 2022 (7,463 reads)

Creatures that Don't Conform, by Lucy Jones
the woods near her home, Lucy Jones discovers the magic of slime molds and becomes entangled in their fluid, nonbinary way of being. Lying at the edge of our understanding, slime molds invite us into their mystery and remind us of the vast possibilities of life on Earth. THE EARTH IS STITCHED together with slime mold, and we are stitched with slime, too. But we have overlooked this fact of life. My own creeping awareness of this began with a photograph. I was reading a copy of New Scientist magazine in October 2021 when I turned the page and paused. What on earth was that? It looked like a gelatinous raspberry, but each drupelet was elongated and stood erect on i... posted on Feb 5 2023 (4,374 reads)

Our Tenuous Boundaries: A Life in 10 Sea Creatures, by Ashia Ajani
Sabrina Imbler was in college, they enrolled in a class they thought was about whales, but which turned out to be about whaling. In one of 10 brilliant essays in their new book, Imbler recalls the class, which focused on “the systematic hunting and harvesting of the animals that brought human populations to the verge of unimaginable prosperity and whale populations to the brink of extinction,” with their ex, during the denouement of their relationship. Contemplating the necropsy of a whale and how this might be a way to analyze the death of a relationship, Imbler was reminded of “all the ways we shoehorn distinctions between ourselves and other animals, often harming b... posted on Mar 30 2023 (1,875 reads)

How to Grow Re-Enchanted with the World , by Maria Popova
are seasons of being when a cloak of meaninglessness seems to slip over you, over everything, muffling the song of life. It is not depression exactly, though the two conditions make eager bedfellows. Rather, it is a great hollowing that empties you of that vital force necessary for moving through the world wonder-smitten by reality, that glint of gladness at the mundane miracle of existence. A disenchantment we may call by many names — burnout, apathy, alienation — but one that visits upon every life in one form or another, at one time or another, pulsating with the unmet longing for something elemental and ancient, with the yearning to see the world as beautiful again and ... posted on Apr 25 2023 (3,987 reads)

Three Black Men, by Tami Simon
follows is the syndicated transcript of a SoundsTrue Insights at the Edge podcast, with Tami Simon, Resmaa Menakem, Bayo Akomalafe and Orland Bishop. You can listen to the audio version of the conversation here.  Tami Simon: Hello, friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guests are Resmaa Menakem, he’s joining us from Minneapolis; Bayo Akomolafe, joining us from India; and Orland Bishop from Los Angeles. These are three Black men who have joined together, and we’re going to be hearing more abo... posted on Jul 3 2023 (2,199 reads)

David George Haskell: Songs of Trees, by Preeta Bansal
while back, Pavi and I had the privilege of hosting an Awakin Call with David George Haskell. I was recently reviewing this beautiful call, rich with insights and poetic wisdom, and wanted to draw out some of his excerpts from it. David George Haskell is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist whose work is located at the throbbing intersection between science and poetry. He integrates rigorous research with a deeply contemplative immersive approach. His subjects are unexpected and unexpectedly revelatory. His widely acclaimed book, the Pulitzer finalist The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (Viking 2012), chronicles the story of the universe in one squ... posted on Jan 7 2024 (5,384 reads)

The Emerging Global Mind, by Tiffany Shlain
years ago I founded the Webby Awards. I was fascinated by how the Internet was connecting people all over the world in new and unexpected ways. I have also been struck by the many conversations about the problems of our day that view them as separate challenges—whether the environment, women’s rights, poverty, or social justice. It has become increasingly apparent to me that when you perceive everything as connected, it radically shapes your perspective. The concept of interdependence isn’t new; it’s been around since the dawn of humanity. For two-hundred-thousand years, we’ve been connecting through networks both natural and technological. Interde... posted on Oct 3 2011 (21,384 reads)

Technology is Not the Answer, by Kentaro Toyama
is not the answer. That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development. I was the co-founder and assistant director of Microsoft Research India, a Bangalore computer-science lab, where one of our objectives was to research ways in which information and communication technologies could support the socio-economic development of poor communities, both rural and urban. (By the way, I'm grateful to Jim Fallows for the opportunity to guest post! It was in Bangalore that I met Jim, thanks to an introduction through a good mutual friend, The Atlantic's deputy editor Scott Stossel.) In&... posted on Oct 15 2011 (17,049 reads)

The Power of Metaphors, by Michael Michalko
and metaphorical questions to spark your imagination. When Pablo Picasso, the Spanish artist, was a schoolboy, he was terrible at math because whenever the teacher had him write a number on the chalkboard, he saw something different. The number four looked like a nose to him and he kept doodling until he filled in the rest of the face. The number 1 looked like a tree, 9 looked like a person walking against the wind, and 8 resembled an angel. Everyone else in the classroom saw numbers on the chalkboard; Picasso perceived a variety of different images. The connection between perspective and creative thinking has to do with habituation and over-familiarization. Over-familia... posted on Mar 4 2012 (49,339 reads)

Awakening Our Collaborative Spirit, by Michael Michalko
physicist, David Bohm, while researching the lives of Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli and Bohr, made a remarkable observation. Bohm noticed that their incredible breakthroughs took place through simple, open and honest conversation. He observed, for instance, that Einstein and his colleagues spent years freely meeting and conversing with each other. During these interactions, they exchanged and dialogued about ideas which later became the foundations of modern physics. They exchanged ideas without trying to change the other's mind and without bitter argument. They felt free to propose whatever was on their mind. They always paid attention to each other's views and established an e... posted on Jul 17 2012 (22,809 reads)

Designing From Nature Could Solve Our Biggest Challenges, by Sven Eberlein
this assignment, says Bill McDonough in a recent TED talk: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, converts nitrogen into ammonia, distills water, stores solar energy as fuel, builds complex sugars, creates microclimates, changes color with the seasons, and self-replicates. Sound impossible? Well, nature’s already completed this one. It’s called 
a plant. And the fact that it does these things safely and efficiently is inspiring engineers and designers to reconceive the ways we manufacture such basics as soap bottles, raincoats, and wall-to-wall carpeting. The trio wrote two pivotal books—Benyus’ Biomimicry: ... posted on Feb 27 2013 (12,400 reads)

Julia Cameron on the Creative Life, by Tami Simon
Simon (on Insights at the Edge) Today, I speak with Julia Cameron. Julia Cameron is an award-winning writer and director. She has created feature films, movies of the week and episodic television, six full-length plays, and hundreds of articles and stories for national publications ranging from Rolling Stone to Vogue to the New York Times. She is the author of the national bestselling book The Artist's Way. With Sounds True, Julia has released Reflections on the Artist's Way, a teaching program on many of the key themes introduced in The Artist's Way, and also, along with writer Natalie Goldberg, a program called&nb... posted on May 7 2013 (26,840 reads)

The Power of Creative Constraints, by Pavithra Mehta & Suchitra Shenoy
almost incomprehensively ambitious vision unsupported by any sort of business plan may sound like a vision doomed to fail. Yet more than 35 years after the first Aravind Eye Clinic was set up in South India, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy’s (Dr. V) mission to eliminate curable blindness in the country is surpassing even the most optimistic expectations. This excerpt from Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion describes how a precisely defined set of creative constraints, including never refusing to provide care, never compromising on quality, and never relying on outside funding for patient services, became t... posted on Jun 10 2013 (48,592 reads)

The Man With 10,000 Tales, by Tim McDonnell
Scheub spent his career trekking across Africa and recording village storytellers of all stripes. Now, the octogenarian professor reveals how those foreign tales connect us, and why it's so vital to preserve them. Harold Scheub first went to South Africa on a safari of sorts. In 1967, at the height of apartheid, Scheub—an earnest Midwestern twenty-something with a stint in the Air Force under his belt and a freshly awarded Master’s degree in English—packed a rucksack and hopped a bus for the backcountry. But instead of guns and ammo, he was armed with a bulky tape recorder and D batteries. Scheub wasn't after big game trophies... posted on Jun 25 2013 (13,719 reads)