state at the foothills of the Himalayas, Vandana didn’t start out intending to be an activist. Or an environmental warrior. Or an eco-feminist. Or a thorn in the side of global finance and trade. She started out in quantum physics, something her school didn’t even teach, but which she taught herself well enough to eventually study for a PhD in Canada. Somewhere in there, she met the tree huggers of the Chipko movement in the forests of Uttarakhand, the forests her father worked when she was a child, and it became clear that a life other than the one she intended lay in front of her. The scientist would have to take up the placards. These days she spends her life tr... posted on Aug 23 2021 (4,665 reads)

14 percent of all farms in the country. Now, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), less than one percent of farm owners, and only about two percent of farmers, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), are black. Numerous factors fed into this shift, including discriminatory lending by USDA, the Great Migration of some six million African-Americans from the rural south into northern cities, and mass industrialization that drew black workers into factories. The result is that farming in the U.S.—at least in terms of who owns and profits from it —is essentially a white enterprise. Even the movements to address thes... posted on May 13 2023 (1,609 reads)

for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for optimal performance.) This perceived superiority of those who can get by on less sleep isn’t just something Napoleon shared with dictators like Hitler and Stalin, it’s an enduring attitude woven into our social norms and expectations, from proverbs about early birds to the basic scheduling structure of education and the workplace. But in Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired, a fine addition to these 7 essential books on time, German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg&n... posted on May 20 2012 (17,949 reads)

Tan (widely known as Meng) was among the earliest engineers to be hired at Google. He and his team worked on ways to improve the quality of the site's search results and also played a key role in the launch of mobile search. When Google allowed engineers to spend 20% of their time pursuing their passion, Meng decided to spend his time on a cause dear to his heart: Launching a conspiracy to bring about world peace. The conspirators could well be called the compassionati.  Meng believes that world peace can be achieved -- but only if people cultivate the conditions for inner peace within themselves. Inner peace, in turn, comes from nurturing emotional int... posted on Jul 11 2012 (21,327 reads)

stirring the sea and its fire-breathing head held high in the mysterious clouds that rise like primordial vapor from the coastal mountains. I now make my primary garden at my home a scant mile north of Green Gulch, almost where the dragon's tail lashes the sea. This book is about gardening at the dragon's gate, where every leaf, every big-eyed bug, every rusty wheelbarrow is both utterly familiar and strangely new at the same time. Gardening at the dragon's gate is fundamental work that permeates your entire life. It demands your energy and heart, and it gives you back great treasures as well, like a fortified sense of humor, an appreciation for paradox, and a huge harvest ... posted on Jan 30 2014 (20,765 reads)

26, 2013, a mass movement succeeded in persuading Governor Jerry Brown to sign the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. How did they do it? By inventing a new way of combating injustice. Credit: Maureen Purtill. All rights reserved. Elizabeth Flores leaned forward to the microphone and fixed the crowd with a smile. “Why is it acceptable that dogs are treated with more dignity and respect than I am”, she said, “as an undocumented immigrant domestic worker in America?” Half-laughing, she pulled away to watch the audience react. Her words might suggest a disempowered victim, but her smile and laughter said something more profound. Despite... posted on Jan 9 2014 (15,146 reads)

Tippett, Host: Father Greg Boyle makes amazingly winsome connections between things like service and delight, and compassion and awe. Amazing because he works in an urban setting others describe in terms of crime and despair. He landed as an idealistic young Jesuit in a gang-heavy neighborhood of Los Angeles over two decades ago. Now he heads Homeboy Industries, which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses from screen printing to a farmers market to a bakery. An op-ed in the Los Angeles Timessaid of Homeboy Industries, "How much bleaker and meaner would LA be without it?" Father Greg says service is not an end in itself but a beginning, towards f... posted on May 4 2014 (20,176 reads)

ball rolls back and forth. You couldn’t wish for a better, more condensed illustration of how difficult it is to try not to try. Our lives, Slingerland argues, are often like “a massive game of Mindball,” when we find ourselves continually caught in this loop of trying so hard that we stymie our own efforts. Like in Mindball, where victory only comes when the player relaxes and stops trying to win, we spend our lives “preoccupied with effort, the importance of working, striving, and trying,” only to find that the more we try to will things into manifesting, the more elusive they become. Slingerland writes: Our excessive focus in the modern ... posted on Jun 3 2014 (13,882 reads)

new book applies science to figuring out how to build a place where people actually look forward to work. Many of my friends really dread their jobs. They complain about employers who treat them like machinery—there to churn out whatever is required of them, regardless of the cost to their motivation, creativity or personal health. Their bosses seem to expect that they work long hours and stay glued to cell phones at night, but then show little appreciation or, worse, micromanage them. No one likes it; but what alternatives are there when employers have deadlines to meet or products to develop? Perigree, 2014, 352 pages Plenty, according to psychologist Ron... posted on Apr 21 2015 (192,676 reads)

do answers. We do questions. We deal with discovering and deepening our sense of something that is unknown. But in the spirit of your question and—as an academic thing, and in a good way—when I hear this phrase “the unknown” I think first of all of Immanuel Kant, probably the greatest modern philosopher. He defined something essential about the modern era in the Western world through an extraordinary book called The Critique of Pure Reason. This is a vast, complex work of genius; it’s like walking into a great cathedral because of the immensity of it and the depth of thought and understanding in it. To put it briefly, he argued with unsurpassed persuasive... posted on Jun 11 2016 (17,126 reads)

the middle school she brought 200 handmade gratitude cards, she spent the whole week before, cutting each one, stamping it, tying a ribbon around it and doing all this beautiful stuff. And that's kind of the way she is, that sense of wanting to offer herself; wanting to give of herself above and beyond in so many ways. She's an artist, she's an art curator, she's a wife, and the mother of two beautiful children, and she's also a speaker. She interviews beautiful souls for works & conversations magazine and also for these Awakin calls. She bakes amazing brownies and banana bread in bulk. She puts it on a beautiful plate -- always arranges things so perfectly. You ca... posted on Aug 18 2016 (13,833 reads)

created a standalone basketball court in his backyard. The next day, he waited for them to show up. Around 2:00-3:00, Tommy noticed the kids coming in and started to play basketball by himself. Noticing the kids were starting to pick up stones and throw them at him, Tommy continued to play, dribbling the ball by himself. Finally, one of the kids started to play with him and the rest soon decided to join in. That day they played a game against him and he let them win. “The purpose was working together as a team…although I am bigger and stronger, they can do it, too”, Tommy told me. From that day, a mentoring program grew. The boys started to ask “Brother Tommy... posted on May 8 2017 (9,322 reads)

Rosenberg's landmark book Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life. "By the time I read Chapter 1, it hit me that I had found what I was looking for...A set of concepts and ideas to be able to move through conflict." Thom realized instinctively that he'd found a new technology -- one that was human-oriented as opposed to building-oriented that would allow for more effective and harmonious use of energy. "I think Marshall Rosenberg's work may be the single most important discovery of the 20th century, his discovery that when we bring our attention to our universal human needs, it changes what we focus on, it changes ... posted on Jul 9 2017 (20,548 reads)

north central Washington who has been volunteering for humanitarian medical missions since 1982, when he was a young man in medical school. His first experience profoundly changed his life and he was “hooked,” he says, volunteering repeatedly for medical exchange programs in Veracruz, Mexico, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Most recently he served as the medical coordinator for Salaam Cultural Museum (SCM), a Seattle-based nonprofit conducting humanitarian and medical relief work with refugee populations in Jordan, Lebanon and Greece. After volunteering among Syrian refugees in Greece, Dienst and his fellow volunteers collaborated on a book about the experience. He is... posted on Jan 6 2018 (9,017 reads)

that cannot even be enumerated. As I slowly started to accept the truth of this assertion on counting, I found myself questioning the prevalent worldviews on profit and impact. What follows are two conversations that explore both profit and impact as metrics that are only useful if they drive productive action. “The purpose of our business is really to make money.” My friend, who I will call Scott, said this to me with a deadpan expression. I knew that Scott loved his work. He was intellectually inclined, passionate about probability theory and business economics, and a great consultant due to his attitude of service. I decided to challenge him, and said, “Re... posted on Oct 17 2017 (14,252 reads)

between Krista Tippett and Bessel van der Kolk. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences on people and society. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments, including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy. He’s been a leading researcher of traumatic stress since it first became a diagnosis in the wake of the Vietnam War, and from there, was applied to ot... posted on Oct 20 2017 (66,350 reads)

van der Kolk and On Being's Krista Tippett KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences on people and society. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments, including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy. He’s been a leading researcher of traumatic stress since it first became a diagnosis in the wake of the Vietnam War, and from there, was applied to ot... posted on Oct 20 2017 (1,327 reads)

divorced. Then twenty years later, it dawned on me that I was well past the midpoint of life, and I realized I was afraid. I'm kind of a bull-by-the-horns kind of person, so the catalyst for the project was a comment of my partner's mother when she was in her eighties. She and her husband are booksellers. She said, "People are always asking us when are you going to retire." I liked the idea. It was very tangible and upbeat, and I started interviewing people over eighty who worked. Everything I learned about these remarkable people I was meeting and from my own research completely contradicted all these notions I had about what it would like to be that old, about immobil... posted on Feb 22 2018 (13,474 reads)

Harrod Buhner is an award-winning author of 22 books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal medicine. He comes from a long line of healers that include Leroy Burney, Surgeon General of the United States under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, and Elizabeth Lusterheide, a midwife and herbalist who worked in rural Indiana in the early nineteenth century. He says that the greatest influence on his work, however, has been his great-grandfather, C.G. Harrod, who primarily used botanical medicines, also in rural Indiana, when he began his work as a physician in 1911. Buhner, who says his DNA prevents him from working for others, has been a fulltime therapist in pri... posted on Mar 9 2018 (24,442 reads)

a life as they come,” she says. Then her brother-in-law, the CEO of Monsanto at the time, gave her a gift that would transform her life: $5,000 to use as she pleased. She had always been interested in personal development and human consciousness, so when he made the suggestion that she use the money to learn from the best coaches he knew, psychologists Gay and Katie Hendricks, she jumped on the opportunity. After studying with the Hendrickses for a decade and taking their work into a business context, Chapman is now one of the world’s foremost experts on conscious leadership. In 2014, she co-authored the influential book “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Lea... posted on Feb 13 2019 (8,338 reads)