Samuel Lupin was nearly halfway through the 45-mile commute from his home in Rockland County, NY, to his medical office in Brooklyn when his cell phone rang. Lupin's critically-ill daughter Lois, who lived in his home, needed him. Something was wrong with her ventilator, and he had to turn back. Caught between the emotional demands of caregiving and his deep commitment to his patients, Lupin realized his life had to change. It was 2004. No one would have faulted Lupin, then 66, for retiring. But instead, he moved into a high-touch, low-tech practice model that gave him flexibility: House calls, instead of office hours. Lois died a year later. Lupin was devas... posted on Jun 18 2016 (35,912 reads)

do you explain when things don't go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example: Why is Apple so innovative? Year after year, after year, they're more innovative than all their competition. And yet, they're just a computer company. They're just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent,the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media. Then why is it that they seem to have something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement? He wasn't the only man wh... posted on Jun 20 2016 (23,000 reads)

up, Jim Doty had many strikes against him: an alcoholic father, a mother with depression, a family living in poverty. But somehow—in a journey he recounts in his new book, Into the Magic Shop—he managed to overcome them. Dr. Doty is now a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University. He founded and directs the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), where the Dalai Lama was a founding benefactor. As a philanthropist, he has given millions of dollars to support health care and educational charities around the world. He attributes his success partly to a kind woman named Ruth, who took 12-year-old Doty under her w... posted on Jul 5 2016 (56,869 reads)

Moon Water Ceremony at Standing Rock: Elder Beatrice Menase Kwe Jackson leads water protectors in prayer on the shores of the Cannonball River. Photo courtesy of Shannon Kring. Filmmaker Shannon Kring headed to Standing Rock with an idea for a documentary—and left with a powerful vision of female strength.  For months, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota has become ground for resistance against the construction of a crude-oil pipeline that desecrated sacred burial and prayer sites and threatens the water supply of the surrounding Native American community. The growing encampment of water protectors at Standing Rock has drawn supporters... posted on Dec 5 2016 (41,039 reads)

an effort to shop from socially-conscious brands this holiday season, I came across an interesting startup that caught my eye. Two Blind Brothers is a cause-driven clothing brand that sells luxury causal wear and gives 100% of its net profits to medical research to cure blindness. Read on. The line was founded by Bradford and Bryan Manning, two brothers affected by a macular degeneration disease known as Stargardt. The disease causes progressive damage to the center retina causing a loss of central vision. The National Eye Institute estimates that one in 10,000 people are affected by the disease. Since being diagnosed at age six, both brothers have progressively l... posted on Dec 30 2016 (12,509 reads)

the recent Thanksgiving break, I had the opportunity to meet with friends of extended family members, a couple who are engaged in both disaster relief and community planning work. She is from Nepal and he is from the U.S., and together they relayed a story about their time visiting Nepal during the devastating earthquake of 2015. The two of them were hiking in the mountains when the 7.8 magnitude quake struck. Shaken but not hurt, they made their way back to Katmandu as quickly as possible to check in on family members and then to offer their assistance to others. Originally assigned the task of loading water jugs on trucks, they then volunteered and were enlisted for their... posted on Feb 4 2017 (25,395 reads)

by Benjamin Baláz My daughter Alex once put her bike out on our Brooklyn street for any stranger to take. She made a sign saying “Free bike! Please enjoy!” in purple crayon, adding a bold smiley face. I helped her carry the bike down the steep steps of our brownstone and place it under the streetlight, the sign taped to the seat. Lying in bed that night, her face shone with happy anticipation. Things appeared and disappeared on the street all the time, but it was different being part of it. In a way, this was what I wanted her to understand: meaning is an action; we make meaning through our actions. You exist in a web of life: this was the message. Yo... posted on Feb 18 2017 (20,444 reads)

can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire,” Adrienne Rich wrote in contemplating the cultural power of poetry. But what is a poem, really, and what exactly is its use? Every once in a while, you stumble upon something so lovely, so unpretentiously beautiful and quietly profound, that you feel like the lungs of your soul have been pumped with a mighty gasp of Alpine air. This Is a Poem That Heals Fish (public library) is one such vitalizing gasp of loveliness — a lyrical picture-book that offers a playful and penetrating answer to the question of what a poem is and what it does. And as it do... posted on Apr 12 2017 (17,980 reads)

leaders can find lessons even from unlikely sources such as mountain guides, who follow principles that apply in business settings, says Christopher I. Maxwell. He is a senior fellow at the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management and an adjunct professor at the school. Maxwell, an avid mountain climber, found that guides display six leadership traits — such as social intelligence and adaptability — that empower other climbers. He distilled these lessons in a new book, Lead Like a Guide: How World-Class Mountain Guides Inspire Us to Be Better Leaders. He discussed the main takeaways of his book on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio ... posted on May 5 2017 (12,717 reads)

following is an article based on an Awakin Call interview with Slobodan Dan Paich. You can listen to the full recording here. Slobodan Dan Paich is a man with a big heart, really connected to the inspiration behind life.  So much so that one of this summer’s Service Space interns remembers comparing Slobodan to Santa Claus as a young boy.  We had a chance to engage with Slobodan on last Saturday’s Awakin Call, where seemingly disparate aspects of his remarkable life softly emerged.  His voice trailed off at times, as he searched for words that could capture the wordless essence of his transcendent views. Slobodan is an artist, and harnesses his gif... posted on May 11 2017 (8,569 reads)

the Hood’s mission: Prepare young people of color for rewarding careers in tech. For Zakiya Harris, growing up in East Oakland, Calif., meant navigating between two acutely different worlds every day. “I grew up in the hood, but I went to a very affluent school,” she says. “So I spent my days being one of few black people, and I spent my nights being in a predominantly black neighborhood. I believe that really shapes the work that I do, because I’ve always been a bridge-builder.” Today, Harris is building bridges in the Bay Area as the co-founder of Hack the Hood, an Oakland-based nonprofit that introduces young people of color to career... posted on Jun 18 2017 (6,777 reads)

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 (15,797 reads)

experiencing the beautiful gift of an Awakin Call with Zen monk and Tea Master, Wu De, I never would have understood the magic of tea. Other than being vaguely aware of its medicinal powers and high end varieties, there was little more that I knew and I certainly wouldn’t have equated tea with being “the great human connector”. But the wisdom with which Wu De shared with us how tea connects us back to nature, to each other, and to ourselves opened my heart to more than a different way of starting my day. Journeying from a Rural Ohio to Taiwan Suzanne: How did you find tea, being that you were born in North America? How did you listen to the self and fin... posted on Aug 5 2017 (9,793 reads)

of the great tragedies of modern life is that we live in a culture of death denial. The advertising industry tells us we are forever young, and we retire elders away to care homes, out of sight and mind. As a Western culture, we’ve lost the connection with our mortality our forebears had, when dancing skeletons decorated medieval church walls and people wore skull brooch memento mori (Latin for ‘remember you must die’) as a reminder that death could take them at any moment.  We are constantly dying. The proximity of death propelled our ancestors to live with a radical aliveness that we can hardly imagine in our tech-saturated sedentary present, as we check o... posted on Sep 9 2017 (15,596 reads)

Colier is a psychotherapist, interfaith minister, meditation teacher, and the celebrated author of books such as Inviting a Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind. With Sounds True, Nancy has written a new book called The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Nancy have a frank discussion of the large-scale modern addiction to cell phones, email, and social media. Nancy offers ways one can recognize addictive behavior and how we can break out of compulsive cycles around technology. They also talk about parenting in the digital age and the importance setting appropriate boundaries whe... posted on Feb 8 2018 (18,145 reads)

following is the edited transcript of an Awakin Call with Ulrike Reinhard. You can listen to the full recording of the call here. Preeta Bansal: It's my pleasure to welcome Ulrike Reinhard as our guest this week! Ulrike Reinhard: Yeah, thanks a lot and hello to everyone out there! Preeta: Ulrike is a German publisher, author, a Futurist and she's been involved in a lot of global development efforts throughout her lifetime. Currently, she lives mostly in India, in rural India, where she is the woman behind a skateboard park, that’s in a village; the park has been upending notions of caste and gender, and empowering a community economically. She's been also ... posted on May 18 2019 (3,591 reads)

Episcopalian priest and theologian, Matthew Fox began his career as a member of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church but was expelled in 1993 by Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI. Among Fox’s teachings the Catholic hierarchy found most objectionable was his belief in “original blessing,” which became the title of one of his most popular books. The concept was in direct contravention of the Roman Catholic doctrine that people are born into “original sin.” Fox was also criticized for his embrace of the divine feminine and his acceptance of homosexuality. An early and influential proponent of “Creation Spirituality,” whi... posted on Nov 12 2020 (28,587 reads)

from Detroit. (Applause) A city that in the 1950s was the world's industrial giant, with a population of 1.8 million people and 140 square miles of land and infrastructure, used to support this booming, Midwestern urban center. And now today, just a half a century later, Detroit is the poster child for urban decay. Currently in Detroit, our population is under 700,000, of which 84 percent are African American, and due to decades of disinvestmentand capital flight from the city into the suburbs, there is a scarcity in Detroit. There is a scarcity of retail, more specifically, fresh food retail, resul... posted on May 15 2018 (10,446 reads)

of the Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran. Credit: By Phillip Maiwald (Nikopol) - Own work. I say ‘Allahu akbar’ dozens of times a day. I say it during prayer. I say it as an expression of reaffirmation and gratitude to God. I said it when my daughter was born, and there will be someone to say it over me when I am buried. I say it when I witness beauty. ‘Allahu akbar.’ In 1985, Lutheran Bishop Krister Stendahl, in defending the building of a Mormon temple by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Stockholm, enunciated “Three Rules of Religious Understanding:” “When tryin... posted on Mar 14 2020 (3,649 reads)

Isaacson is a gifted storyteller. A career journalist who has steered both Time magazine and CNN, Isaacson has written biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein. His latest biography, published last year, looks at the life of Leonardo da Vinci. Isaacson, now a history professor at Tulane University, recently visited Wharton to be interviewed by his friend and management professor Adam Grant as part of the Authors@Wharton speakers series. Grant has also written several bestsellers, including Give and Take and Option B, which he co-authored with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Grant and Isaacson shared a lively discussion on topics ranging from ... posted on Apr 6 2018 (12,502 reads)