Episode Highlights "When we laugh, when we are sitting in delight, it expands–It not only keeps us in our window of tolerance, but it expands our window of tolerance." "We also know that play is just a huge protective factor. It allows people to process their experiences, but also build skills for the future." "Play is really about doing something for the enjoyment of it, for no other reason, but for the enjoyment." "The more stress you have, the more play you need." "To hold multiple emotions t...
Jul 07, 2025•26 min
How can we grow into our full potential?—living up to what we know is the best version of ourselves, actualizing our goals, and expressing our deepest purpose in a life of impact and love? Grounded in cognitive science and psychology, best-selling author, podcaster, educator and researcher Scott Barry Kaufman believes that we need to redefine our understanding of greatness and excellence to include our whole selves—our emotions, dreams, failures, and gifts—all to live a life that is fully human,...
Jun 23, 2025•45 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Meaningful relationships are mutual. Balanced with give and take, equal influence between partners, and a vibrant dance of loving responsiveness and caring attention. Marriage and Family Therapist and professor Dr. Jessica ChenFeng is calling us toward a more justice-oriented approach to relationships and to mental health and well-being, She invites us to open-hearted and empathic perspective taking, and seeking an integrated wholeness that incorporates all of who we are—highlighting the gift of...
Jun 09, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Romantic relationships are sacred, powerful, and life-giving. But I don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to love and let yourself be loved. Marriage and family therapist Dr. Terry Hargrave has been helping couples in crisis restore broken relationships for decades, teaching them how to get unstuck, improve communication, and move beyond destructive coping mechanisms—to find reciprocity, self-affirming confidence, emotional regulation, and a joyful, lasting love. In a world marked by loneli...
May 26, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 11
You can’t be moral on your own. That’s a radical idea in this time of moral outrage, but thriving in public life requires a sense of mutual accountability, belonging, and hospitality for each other. Mona Siddiqui is a professor of religion and society, an author, commentator, and public intellectual, and she suggests that the virtues of loyalty, gratitude, hospitality, and hope can lead us through the common struggle of being human together, living forward into a thriving life of public faith an...
May 12, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Applying neuroscience and psychology to education and formation, pioneering researcher Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang draws connections between emotions, relationships, brains, stories, meaning, and purpose to shed light on how we learn, grow, and thrive. Her research on the brain shows how we’re woven together in an intricate and glorious network of life, and when we synthesize the neurological, the psychological, the physical, and the social, we’re able to come to a deeper and more impactful un...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 9
"Beholding is a countercultural act—it requires us to stop, to receive, and to fully see.” — Makoto Fujimura "Slow art is an invitation to linger, to notice, and to let the world unfold before us." — Makoto Fujimura You are a beautiful masterpiece. But the practice of living artfully comes slowly, often through brokenness, weakness, or failure. Contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura integrates traditional Japanese styles with abstract expressionism and Christian theology, to explore the beauty that...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 8
"Spirituality is like nuclear fission—it has the power to illuminate and energize but also to destroy when mishandled." — Dan Koch "Thriving isn't about a perfect life; it's about alignment between our deepest values and our lived reality." — Dan Koch On our path to spiritual health, we need to keep our eyes open to the ways religion and spirituality have been exploited to coerce, control, and create chaos. Focusing on the intersection of religion and psychology, licensed therapist, researcher, ...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 32 min•Season 2Ep. 7
We need a recovery of the sacred in our secular world. Because the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles haunting society right now can’t be solved without addressing meaning, purpose, and the longing for connection to something beyond ourselves. In other words, spiritual health is an essential part of mental health. An attorney, religious scholar, and university chaplain, Dr. Varun Soni is Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, and is leading us back to our tr...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In our world of urgency, certitudes, and immediate access to a flood of information, could it be that a humble curiosity, inspired awe, and delightful wonder might give us the strength to heal and thrive? Using an expansive emotional vocabulary matched with wit and care, TV host, podcaster, and author Kelly Corrigan is inviting the world to relational vulnerability, compassionate curiosity, and stalwart bravery to face our biggest problems through listening and loving wonder. In this conversatio...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Emotional health is deeply intertwined in an ongoing journey with spiritual health. This involves opening to our pain, grieving our trauma, and patiently cultivating a resilience that stabilizes and secures our relationships and our sense of self. With compassion, pastoral presence, and emotional attunement, psychologist Dr. David Wang is using psychological and theological tools to help us understand and adapt to emotional realities, explore the wounds of our past, and find healing and strength...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 4
“Meaning making is so fundamental to who we are as humans, and when that’s ruptured, it’s devastating.” (Dr. Pam King, from this episode) “Spiritual fortitude is different from resilience … it helps us to realize that we still learn to live in the midst of suffering. … It helps us metabolize our suffering.” (Dr. Jamie Aten, from this episode) One of the hopeful things in the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires is how I have seen people within L.A. show up with and for each other. And I'm especial...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Our brains hold our relational history—all the joys, all the ruptures, all the repairs. And even in the most difficult childhood or parenting circumstances, the science of relationships and connection can give us hope for whole-brain and whole-life transformation. Therapist, bestselling author, and mom—Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is seeking a connection revolution that brings neurobiology and practical relational wisdom to bear on both how we were parented, how we parent, and how we relate throughout ...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 3
To realize MLK’s vision of a Beloved Community, we’re all called to live from a moral conscience that interconnects and permeates society with justice and peace. Working at the intersection of politics, religion, and education, Dr. Lerone Martin of Stanford University is carrying forward the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a social and historical context desperately in need of renewed moral imagination, connection across racial and economic divides, and the transformative power ...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 2
Science can change your life. The more we study what makes people develop, grow, learn, and flourish—the more we see how the practical application of scientific findings can help us transform our life and experience—into a life of value, meaning, purpose and true thriving. Yale psychologist Laurie Santos has spent her career investigating the human brain and how it thrives. From her popular Yale course to her podcast, The Happiness Lab, she’s communicating actionable and hopeful lessons for how ...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Christmas is about the love of God given to us in Christ. Love compels us forward through darkness and light—enabling us to grow and change, connect and relate, forgive and let go, and make a difference and seek justice. This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year. We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end givi...
Dec 22, 2024•13 min
Joy is more than a feeling. It’s a virtue. And it’s something we can cultivate. We live into joy when we encounter who or what matters most to us. It’s associated with our life's deepest yearnings and connection. This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year. We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To m...
Dec 15, 2024•11 min
Peace can be elusive, but if set an intention to be instruments of peace—both in offering it and experiencing it—it has the power to transform us. Peace is often an indication that life is in balance and going well, either in the immediate or the eternal sense. This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year. We’d be grateful if you considere...
Dec 08, 2024•12 min
Hope is powerful. It’s more than a feeling. It’s a foundation for getting us through even the darkest of times. The season of Advent provides the opportunity to attune to hope, become aware of our deepest hopes and desires, and then align our lives to hope. This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year. We’d be grateful if you considered th...
Dec 01, 2024•10 min
SEASON 2 is launching January 6, 2025! Subscribe to With & For today! How can we reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world? We need grounded scientific insight that we connect us with what is good, true, and beautiful. We need wider perspective that guides us toward purpose, community, wisdom, and spiritual health. Developmental psychologist, ordained minister, and professor, Dr. Pam King introduces Season 2 of With & For, which launches on January 6, 2025. Inviting guests with ...
Nov 25, 2024•5 min
Dr. Pam King joins longtime friend, entrepreneur, and inspiring podcast host Nada Jones on for a conversation on thriving and self-discovery in mid-life. Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. She has a regular podcast where women in the middle third of their lives share their journeys of self-discovery. Together they discuss Pam’s approach to thriving as a developmen...
Nov 18, 2024•47 min
“How do I grow as a fully differentiated person in relationship and increasing intimacy, increasing contribution with the world around me?” (Dr. Pam King, from the episode) Dr. Pam King joins the Yale Center for Faith & Culture podcast, For the Life of the World, for a discussion of human development, purpose, relational intimacy, and spiritual connection—all through the integration of developmental psychology and theology. With host Evan Rosa (Yale Center for Faith & Culture), she refle...
Nov 11, 2024•1 hr 8 min
If we want to bear good fruit in our lives, we must have strong roots. Good fruit must lead to love. As the Rev. Dr. Pam King offers in this episode, “Root into love so that you can live out love.” Speaking on Jesus’s parable of the Tree and Its Fruits in Luke 6, she draws on theological and psychological resources to reflect on the role of active and intentional love in a thriving life. Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is know...
Nov 04, 2024•23 min
“How did it go?” As we pursue purpose and spiritual health, we need regular opportunities to take stock and understand how our efforts are making an impact in our lives and in the lives of others. In the process of pursuing purpose, cultivating joy, and connecting more deeply to ourselves, we need to learn how to audit and assess how its going as we live out our spirituality and refine our values. In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains assessment—the final (and absolutely essential) step in the ...
Oct 28, 2024•8 min
“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.” Activation is the practical step in the cycle of 5 A’s for Agility in Spiritual Health—where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow. In this episode, Dr. Pam King walks through the fourth step of the 5 A’s: Activate. This step in the cycle draws from each previous step, going from non-judgmental observation, internally connecting to our values, and then...
Oct 21, 2024•7 min
“When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.” In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains the 3rd step in the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. Alignment is the process of becoming more reflective, drawing connections between our thoughts and emotions—and our beliefs, values, habits, and the experiences that shape us. This is the step where we look for our intentions and expectations and hold them up to our raw experiences and the possible me...
Oct 14, 2024•8 min
It’s not easy to reflect on our emotions without judging them or running away from them. It’s difficult to stay with challenging or frightening feelings and thoughts. But to cultivate awareness means taking an open, curious, and non-judgmental approach to observing our minds. More than simple or immediate observation (like Attunement), awareness asks us to get curious and reflect on our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the landscape of experience we discovered in step one of attunement. What em...
Oct 07, 2024•11 min•Season 1Ep. 14
What’s happening right now? What do you feel? What physical sensations are present from head to toe? The first step in practicing the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health is Attunement—a simple, direct process of connecting to reality, perceiving your experience of the present moment, and paying attention to our physical sensations. It’s as simple as a clear-eyed consciousness: listening, feeling, acknowledging, being aware of basic sensations. In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains attunement and the foun...
Sep 30, 2024•8 min
How can we cultivate agility and adaptivity in our chaotic, shifting times? Dr. Pam King offers a research-backed cycle of practices to incorporate into the rhythms of your daily life—helping you navigate change and work through life’s obstacles. She calls them the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health: Attunement, Awareness, Alignment, Activation, and Assessment. In this episode, she introduces the 5 A’s, explaining the context, process, and benefits. She comments on the contemplative practices and psychol...
Sep 23, 2024•9 min
“Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.” The precarious times we live in fill us with anxiety. The rifts and shifts of culture, politics, and religion are leaving us feeling unmoored, disconnected, and alienated from ourselves and each other. And a psychologically informed approach to spirituality is the antidote. In this episode, Dr. Pam King discusses why spirituali...
Sep 16, 2024•37 min
