Life Examined

This week clinical psychologist and author Dacher Keltner delves into the science and mysteries surrounding awe and shares that awe is not just found in nature or music but most often in the moral beauty of other people.

​This episode with Dacher Keltner was originally broadcast, February 4th, 2023

The plight of Black farmers in America has a dark history. The trauma of stolen lands and exploited labor may explain why there are now relatively few Black and Indigenous people in farming, agriculture, or even within environmental activism. 

Leah Penniman is one farmer fighting to change that. Penniman explains that there’s a rising generation of Black and brown farmers reexamining their relationship to the land and reclaiming the farming and agricultural practices once held by their ancestors.  

Penniman, who is the co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, says that “Black farmers had already declined from 14% of the nation's farmers in the early 1900s to just about 1% today.”  As a result of racism and discrimination Penniman says, “millions of acres of land were lost out of the Black community, and with that so much intergenerational wealth and knowledge.” 

Penniman says her mission with Soul Fire Farms was to help end racism and injustice in the food system and explore and embrace of her own ancestral heritage to the land and agriculture; “nature as a source of spiritual connection permeates African diasporic thinking and very much informs the way we [operate] at Soul Fire, but also [how] the broader rising generation are conceptualizing our relationship to the land.”  

“The food system pertains to all of us. All of us eat, so all of us are connected. All of us are complicit, but also all of us have these immense opportunities to contribute to change as consumers in the food system.”

For over 20 years the Reverend Lennox Yearwood has also been fighting for racial and environmental justice. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Rev. Yearwood has always had a strong affinity for music; “all music, particularly hip-hop and jazz. R&B, the Blues… for me, music was really more a pathway to the soul, just a way to escape. Music is so uplifting, it's so encouraging, it's just so beautiful — particularly with instruments and singing.”  

Rev. Yearwood is President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus — a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization which began in 2004 and leverages hip-hop culture to encourage young people to vote and participate in the democratic process. Rev. Yearwood’s passion for music ties into his environmental activism and his work on human rights issues in the Gulf Coast region after Hurricane Katrina. 

“Hip-hop’s roots are based in people who have been put in sometimes very difficult situations. They're using their cultural expression to shape their political experience. They’re talking about what they're going through, and they're trying to use music and culture to explain and sometimes bring light to situations.”  

“Chuck D said that [hip-hop] ‘became the CNN for those communities.’ And so … listening to that, hearing that music, and hearing the power behind it definitely drew me into wanting to be a part of it.” 

More: Chuck D on creating ‘naphic grovels,’ embracing mistakes (Press Play, 2023)

Rev. Yearwood is actively involved in seeking environmental justice.  He continually highlights racial disparities and heightens awareness of the social and economic issues that negatively impact Black people.  The Hip Hop Caucus’ short film Underwater Projects sheds light on the coastal urban flooding happening in Norfolk, Virginia — including its effects on a historically Black public housing community.  

Eternally hopeful and with a strong sense of faith, Rev. Yearwood is optimistic that things can be done to make life better: “When we come together, we do well. That's my prayer, that's what keeps me excited, motivated, and lets me know that at some point in time… That the power of humanity is just an amazing, beautiful thing.” 

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week clinical psychologist George Bonanno at Columbia University explores resilience and challenges some traditional notions about trauma and says that humans are far better at confronting and coping with adversity than we think.  

​This episode with George Bonanno was originally broadcast September 17th, 2023

Throughout our lives we face situations that require a response. While events unfold around us, how we choose to react — or whether we choose to react at all — is entirely within our control.

The concepts of justice and virtue are central to author Ryan Holiday’s latest book, Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds. Holiday explores how the ancient Greek philosophers Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and Seneca sought to provide a more pragmatic approach to happiness and virtue… And whether those same principles can impact how we live today. “The Stoics,” Holiday says, “are all about focusing on what's in your control.”

With the U.S. election just days away there’s a palpable sense that with whichever candidate emerges victorious, it could signal the beginning of the end for their opponents.  

Whether this election is truly different from those of the past, or simply a byproduct of hyperfocus from the media — voters shouldn’t throw their hands up in despair. Throughout American history, everyday people have driven change in small and incremental steps. And these steps are largely unseen and unheralded.  

In her book The Small and the Mighty; Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, author and former high school teacher Sharon McMahon emphasizes that now is not the time for apathy: “We get so caught up in Trump vs. Harris, that it's easy to forget that our real lives are being deeply impacted by the people who literally work on the other side of town. … We do not have to wait for the right leader to win an election.”

McMahon says hope is a key element in fighting any anxiety we may have about the election. “Hope is not a feeling that you wait to experience,” McMahon tells us. “Hope is not attached to an individual. It is not attached to the outcome of an election.”  

“Hope is a choice that we can make,” she continues, “Hope is an orientation of the spirit. In the words of Bryan Stevenson: ‘It's an orientation of our spirit, and we do not have the luxury of giving up hope.’ Because hope is our only chance at making positive change in the United States and in the world.”

The deep political divisions in America have fostered a belief that as a nation we have become increasingly tribal. In fact, if you listen to any pundit, “tribalism” is used in a negative way.

In his new book TRIBAL: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, author Michael Morris explains why the words triablism or tribe are not only misused, but also misunderstood. Tribes used to be referred to as “an enduring community,” Morris says. “During the era of colonial expansion and imperialism, tribalism started taking on a negative connotation involving notions of stasis and primitivism.” 

“The distinctive way of social life in our species is living in very large communities that transcend kith and kin, that are that are glued together by shared ideas, by shared beliefs, otherwise known as culture,”  Morris affirms. “And so, large groups held together by cultural glue is the human form of social organization. Otherwise known as tribal living.”

Morris highlights that tribes have played a crucial and positive role in human evolution.  Tribes are, “what enable us to collaborate intellectually. And almost everything impressive that humans have built has come from intellectual collaboration.” 

Tribes also facilitate the sharing of knowledge as Morris further imparts: “Today, 99% of what you and I know is not something that we figured out directly ourselves. It's the knowledge that we inherited. We can not only do impressive things based on other people's knowledge, but we can collaborate with other members of our culture because we have this shared legacy of knowledge in common with them.” 

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week Oliver Burkeman journalist and author of “Meditations for Mortals” discusses the complexities of trying to be perfect in an imperfect world. Accepting our limitations, he says, is a pathway to liberation and happiness. 

​This episode with Oliver Burkeman was originally broadcast October 27, 2024

Journalist and author Oliver Burkeman discusses the complexities of happiness, well-being, and productivity — emphasizing the futility of seeking a single solution. 

Burkeman offers guidance on why we shouldn’t sacrifice the very essence of living in search of perfection and doing it all. Treasuring those simple moments in daily life, which doesn’t mean settling for less, Burkemans says, “is a precondition for a really full life.”

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week Kate Murphy, journalist and author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters,” sheds some light on the value of true friendships, why quality is often more important than quantity and why it is so important to give time and space to the friendships we truly care about. 

​This episode with Kate Murphy was originally broadcast June 5th, 2021

As the years go on and as science and research advances, we’re learning more and more about how animals are able to use sound and vibrations to effectively communicate with each other. Elephants, for example, can communicate through seismic vibrations felt through the pads of their feet. 

So what do we know about the nature of sound? How has it defined who we are and how we live? What role does it play in the lives of hearing individuals, deaf individuals, and everyone in between?  

In his book Experiencing Sound: The Sensation of Being author Lawrence Kramer writes that “sound is an agent of transformation.” Throughout human history, “sound is one of the fundamental phenomena that links us to the sense of inhabiting and sharing a world.” Of all the human senses, contrary to what we might think, sound is “a uniquely empowered form of sensory experience that links us to our lives and our being more intimately than sight does.”  

“Sound is always inside us as well as outside us, and heightened experiences of sound really take that vibratory presence and amplify it so that our most intense experiences of sound are really whole body experiences.” 

Carolyn Korsmeyer, research professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo and author of several books including, Making Sense of Taste; Food and Philosophy explains why there’s so much more to taste than flavor. “Taste,” Korsmeyer says, “deserves greater respect and attention.” In addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in the human experience.   

“One of the prejudices against taste is that it's all in your mouth,” Korsmeyer shares. “It's only about the flavor that is happening in your taste buds right now. But it is usually outer-directed as well. I am not just tasting, I'm tasting a strawberry. I'm not just drinking, I'm drinking a Coca-Cola — or a beer, or a glass of wine, [etc.] So taste, people think of it as being entirely subjective. By that, I think they mean it's just yours, but it really isn't.” 

She also talks about the evocative nature of the human touch. Korsmeyer argues that touch, along with being psychologically beneficial, can offer a deeper and perhaps even spiritual connection. “When you are in the presence of something very old, or very special, or [something] that belonged to someone whom you have an attachment to and you touch it, you are, in a sense, feeling that age. That specialness, that person … There's a proximity and an intimacy that touch permits that I think is often overlooked.”

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week Judson Brewer psychiatrist, neuroscientist at Brown University and author of “Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind” addresses how we can recognize certain behaviors that trigger anxiety disorders. Continually worrying feeds into an anxiety habit loop and the more we worry, the more anxious we become.