New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Did you know that just 20 minutes of art a day is as beneficial as exercise and mindfulness? Or that participating in one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years? Our guests Ivy Ross and Susan Magsamen talk about their new book, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us . Together they explore the new science of neuroaesthetics, which explains how the a...
Jul 31, 2023•1 hr 5 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Our guests today trained an AI on the world’s most beloved texts, from the Bible to the Koran to the words of Marcus Aurelius, Maya Angelou, and Leonard Cohen. Then, they asked the AI life’s hardest questions. The AI’s answers ranged from strange to surprising to transcendent. Jasmine Wang, a technologist, and Iain S. Thomas, a poet, join us to talk about not only the answer...
Jul 26, 2023•59 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Jennifer Egan is not only a novelist, she's also written short stories and award-winning magazine journalism. She's one of those writers who can both spin a fascinating yarn and load it up with insights into everything from human nature to the future of technology, all while pulling off bewitching turns of phrase; what the writer Jonathan Franzen has called “micro felicities...
Jul 24, 2023•1 hr 16 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Today’s episode is a wide-ranging Interview with Zach Braff, one of those rare famous people who’s really willing to go there. You may know Braff from the TV show Scrubs or the movie Garden State but Braff is actually a genuine multi-hyphenate; a true triple threat. He acts, writes and directs his own movies and other people’s TV shows including Ted Lasso on Apple TV. Relati...
Jul 21, 2023•47 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- In today’s episode, Dr. Donn Posner proposes a whole new way of thinking about sleep. First, he normalizes the sleep problems many of us experience. If you’re sleeping poorly right now, he says, don’t freak out; it’s natural and normal. Second, he has a bunch of tips for how to deal with insomnia, some of which you may have never heard before. Dr. Donn Posner is one of the l...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 268
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- If you're not sleeping well, it's harder to do anything you care about. It's harder to get healthier, to be more focused and productive, to be happier, to be more successful, to have good relationships—all of it. Sleep may be the apex predator of healthy habits, and yet so many of us are getting terrible sleep because we don't prioritize it or because we've told ourselves a ...
Jul 17, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 444
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Every year, Joseph Goldstein does a three month silent meditation retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. In this conversation you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one such retreat with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies or three papañca to use the ancient Pali term. These are three ways in which we perpetuate an ...
Jul 12, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 364
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- These days, the word mindfulness has become a buzz phrase but very often people don’t know what the word actually means, much less how to practice it. One simple definition of mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening in your mind without getting carried away by it. The benefits of doing so are vast and profound— from decreased emotional reactivity to being more awa...
Jul 10, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 483
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- This is a fun, weird, extremely interesting and inspiring episode. It’s about lucid dreaming, something that people might perceive as hippie nonsense, but is actually deeply woven into ancient and time-tested Buddhist traditions. Our guest today has been studying and practicing Buddhism and what he calls nocturnal meditations for more than four decades. And he has remarkably...
Jul 05, 2023•54 min•Ep. 620
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- There seems to be one clear bug in the human operating system — most of us do not like talking about death. Yet when we do talk about it, it can genuinely upgrade the quality of our lives. Our guest today is Alua Arthur, a former attorney who is now what’s called a death doula, which is someone who helps guide people through the end of their lives. Through this work, she has...
Jul 03, 2023•52 min•Ep. 619
Check out our friends at How to Be a Better Human podcast, as we take a look within and beyond ourselves. How to Be a Better Human isn’t your average self-improvement podcast. It’s a show that understands that being a human is hard -- because no one tells you how to do it well! Join comedian Chris Duffy as he has conversations with the kind of brilliant experts you see giving TED Talks. Listen as they share how anyone can put big ideas into practice in their own lives, and make them a little les...
Jun 30, 2023•5 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Our relationships are the most important variable in our health and happiness, but they may also be the most difficult. This is especially true when those closest to us turn out to be emotionally immature people. Lindsay C. Gibson is a clinical psychologist and bestselling author who specializes in helping people identify and deal with emotionally immature people, or EIP’s. ...
Jun 28, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 617
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- “Mindfulness” has become a buzz phrase. There are books on mindful parenting, mindful lawyering, even mindful sex. But what does the word even mean? And how do you actually do it? In one of his most famous and foundational discourses, the Buddha was said to have laid out, in great detail, four ways to establish mindfulness. In today’s episode we’re going to walk through thes...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 263
Have you ever noticed that no matter how much shit you buy, it never really does it for you? There’s always that next purchase. I’m no anti-capitalist, but I don’t think it hurts to acknowledge the lie—or if you want to be generous, misunderstanding—at the core of the enterprise: that somehow acquisition will lead to lasting satisfaction. This insight about the limits of materialism is what animates my friends Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, who together, are known as the Minimalists ...
Jun 23, 2023•41 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- If you want to opt out of diet culture, then what should you actually eat? Today’s guest is endeavoring to answer this question. Rachel Hartley is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and the author of a book called Gentle Nutrition: A Non-Diet Approach to Healthy Eating. In this episode we talk about: The basics of intuitive eating Her thoughts on whether or not we should...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 615
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Most of us have an intuitive sense that there’s a pretty serious link between what we eat and how we feel. Today’s guest is here to explain the science behind that relationship. Dr. Uma Naidoo is a pioneer in the field of nutritional psychiatry and an expert on both the gut-brain connection and the food-mood connection. She is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, a professional c...
Jun 19, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 614
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It’s an urgent question for so many of us: Can we exercise, can we take care of our bodies, without being driven by shame, self-loathing, or noxious comparison to other people? Our guest today has a unique perspective on this. Cara Lai is a former social worker and psychotherapist who is now a Buddhist teacher. She also used to be a marathoner. But in the last few years, her...
Jun 14, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 612
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- From the way we sit while watching TV to the way we put on our shoes, our days are filled with opportunities to improve our mobility–without getting all sweaty. That’s according to today’s guests, who are here to teach us about some simple ways to keep our bodies durable for as long as possible. Kelly and Juliet Starrett are the authors of the new book Built to Move: The 10 ...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 611
Starting next week, we’re launching a six part series where we’re going to talk to a vast array of experts on longevity, exercise, and diet — we’re calling it Get Fit Sanely. To kick the series off, I wanted to have our senior producer DJ Cashmere on, who’s the architect behind this project. You’re gonna hear him get really personal about how these issues have affected his own psychology, and you’ll hear a very thoughtful person talk about what he’s taken away from the months of research he’s do...
Jun 09, 2023•33 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Everyone from the Buddha to the Stoics have exhorted us to remember that we’re going to die. So what are we to make of Dr. Mark Hyman? He’s a physician and a student of Buddhism who is just out with a new book, called, “Young Forever.” In it, he argues that your biological age can be reversed even as you grow chronologically older. So we decided to have him on, learn about h...
Jun 07, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 609
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Most of us want to stay alive — and healthy — for as long as possible. But how to actually do that, given all the obstacles? What advice should we listen to? How do we find the time and motivation to follow it? And how do we do so without succumbing to what has been called the “subtle aggression of self improvement”? Today, we are launching an ambitious three-week series to ...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 608
As you might already know, May is Mental Health Awareness Month – and, while mental health is important every month, it’s an important opportunity to share resources that can help one another. So, in that spirit – we’re going to bring you a bonus episode from a podcast we love called Meditative Story. We’re going to share my episode of Meditative Story with you, where I tell a personal story about a father-son trip that I went on with my son, Alexander, when he was four years old. And how this t...
May 31, 2023•28 min
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It’s hard to be a human. No matter how good things are for you, being alive is still hard. Whatever your life circumstances are, we’re all subject to impermanence and entropy. This episode dives into a five-part Buddhist list for being stronger in the face of whatever life throws at you. Sister Dang Nghiem, who goes by Sister D, is a nun in the Plum Village tradition and a d...
May 31, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 403
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- So many of us suffer over the issue of time management. Our guest today approaches the topic from research and personal experience and dives into how we can think more strategically about our time and aspire to build resilient schedules, rather than perfect ones. Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books. Her latest is Tranquility by Tue...
May 29, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 606
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- The notion of “being your authentic self” might sound like too much of a tired trope, but getting real and stripping away your fears and hang-ups can help you live a more meaningful life. In her new book, “Bold Move: A 3-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power” , Dr. Luana Marques shares her story about growing up in chaos and learning early skills of cognitive behavioral ...
May 24, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 604
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Why, you might fairly ask, am I interviewing Rainn Wilson, best known for his star turn on the sitcom The Office playing Dwight Schrute, the hilariously dysregulated paper salesman with a lust for power and a tragic haircut? Why, you may ask, am I interviewing that dude about mental health and spirituality? Because in real life, Rainn Wilson has spent many, many years wrestl...
May 22, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 603
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. We’re going to start experimenting with these Friday episodes. Historically on Fridays, we’ve dropped guided meditations – and we will still do that – but we’re also going to try some different formats, including some shorter episodes with guests that might not be a fit for our traditional Monday and Wednesday shows. Today we’ve got Dan’s new friend Geena Rocero. She has an incr...
May 19, 2023•33 min•Ep. 602
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Welcome to Round II of the Meditation Party. The feedback we got from our first episode was overwhelmingly positive, so we’re going for it again. Meditation Party is an experiment we’re running with a chattier format – more of a morning zoo vibe, but way deeper, of course. The real agenda here is to show that meditation doesn’t have to be a solo death march; it is vastly enh...
May 17, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 601
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Historically on this show, we want guests who either have skills that they can teach us (i.e. meditation teachers or happiness researchers) or we want people who are willing to get super personal about their interior lives—and today you're gonna meet a bold-faced name who happens to have both qualifications in spades. Mayim Bialik burst onto the scene in the 1990s as the sta...
May 15, 2023•59 min•Ep. 600
New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- It's always a big deal when we get the maestro Joseph Goldstein on the show. He's one of the greatest living meditation teachers—and we cover a lot of ground in this conversation both related to meditation and to life. This is the third installment in a series we've been running this month on the Eightfold Path. If you missed the first two episodes, don't worry. Joseph start...
May 10, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 598
