As a young child who often found delight in isolation, award-winning writer and cultural critic, Hanif Abdurraqib now regularly curates playlists as a way to connect with others as well as as well as himself. But for Hanif, a playlist is never just a list of songs. It's a carefully constructed narrative, a shared emotional experience, and a "catalog of excitements," creating a sonic world that other people can access. Like a writer weaving together a plot or a pastor crafting a sermon, Hanif sequences his playlists with intention, knowing that when one song is placed next to another, it has the ability to reach deep within the listener and ignite something powerful. As Hanif says, “The playlist [is] a real spiritual practice of generosity.”

On today’s practice episode, Hanif guides Tim through his Spotify playlist, “A Community Compendium of Opening Lyrics,” which he created with the help of his followers on Instagram. They explore the emotional power of music and memory through songs featured on the playlist like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." Together, they dig deep into Hanif’s playlist-making approach and uncover how we all can take part in this spiritual practice, which Hanif believes can help us process the difficult emotions we encounter in our lives. “I know for a fact I'm not going to heal my anxiety with a song, but by using a song as a soundtrack to it, it fleshes it out more,” Hanif explains, “I feel like I'm living alongside of it and not that it's living within me. And if I'm living alongside it, it's easier for me to kind of control it.”

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Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning writer and cultural critic from the east side of Columbus, Ohio. His work has appeared in The Fader, Pitchfork, and The New Yorker, and he's a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Grant. He’s written several books of poetry and essays, including the New York Times bestseller, Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest and his latest book, There’s Always This Year, a mesmerizing memoir on basketball, life, and home.

Learn more about his work on his website, abdurraqib.com. 

Listen to Hanif’s playlist “A Community Compendium of Opening Lyrics,” and check out two songs not featured on the playlist that take Hanif and Tim way back –Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass’ Spanish Flea.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jen Hatmaker was a rockstar in evangelical circles in the late 2000s. She founded and co-led a church with her husband and headlined Christian women’s conferences around the country as a sought after speaker. She ran a popular blog with millions of followers and published several books and Bible studies, coaching women on marriage and family as a wife and mother of five. So when Jen announced that her 26-year marriage had come to an end in September 2020, she sent shockwaves throughout her community.

Forced to rebuild her private life and public image at the same time, Jen came face-to-face with the truth that what she’d been taught to believe, and even teach others, no longer made sense to her. But in her grief and recovery, she discovered a new understanding of her faith, one that holds two simple beliefs: love God and love people. “There's gotta be a ‘we over me,’” Jen tells Tim in this week’s episode “It is good for our souls and our minds and our lives to care about other people and to say…What does the common good look like here? If my neighbor is suffering, then I am suffering. Period.”

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Jen Hatmaker is the New-York Times bestselling author of For The Love, Of Mess and Moxie, Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, and Feed These People, along with 10 other books. She hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast and is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club. She is also the leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. 

Jen is a co-founder of the Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars towards sustainable projects around the world. She is a mom to five kids, and lives just outside Austin, Texas. 

Learn more about her work on her website, jenhatmaker.com

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Football shaped Mike Adams into the man he is today. “The biggest sign in our locker room said ‘Respect Women,’” he tells Tim about his time playing for Ohio State University. His team was the center of his life, connecting him with friends, mentors, and a sense of purpose.

So when Mike retired from the NFL after years of injuries and complications, he lost a community that was important to him. “There's an identity shift that happens when you retire where… overnight, I'm no longer a football player,” Mike says. “Well, who am I going to be?”

For Mike, yoga brought him the answer. It put him in touch with his body in ways football never did, and the people he met through yoga valued him outside of his success in the NFL. Mike’s yoga practice helped him transition into a new sense of purpose, and he became a yoga teacher to provide the same support to others that helped him when he needed it most. “It's given me a way to push myself mentally and spiritually,” he says. “But then also… a way to give back.”

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Mike Adams is a yoga and mindfulness instructor. You can learn more about him and his yoga retreats at his website thehopedealer.yoga and find his virtual classes at stillwavelive.com.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marion Jones is a business mentor and joyful fitness coach of entrepreneurs, sharing the hard-earned lessons from her former life as a professional athlete.

Many of us remember her as the world champion track and field athlete who dominated the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, winning five medals and becoming the first woman to do so at a single Olympic game. Years later, Marion was convicted of lying to prosecutors about her use of performance-enhancing drugs. In the aftermath, she was stripped of all her medals and Olympic track records and sentenced to six months in prison, effectively ending her competitive career. 

While in prison, Marion spent 49 days in solitary confinement. Away from distractions, the spotlight, her family, and her friends, she came face-to-face with her mistakes and the process of rebuilding her life from the inside out began. “I [refused] to allow this to be the end of my story,” Marion says, “I have a testimony and a story that is so powerful that you cannot even compare [it] to any race.” 

While many have been quick to dismiss her story as a cautionary tale, Marion is resolute in her belief that failure isn’t forever. Marion says, “You don't have to allow all your past mistakes to define who you are…You control who you are and who you can become.”

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Marion Jones is a former world champion track and field athlete. She played two seasons of professional basketball in the Women's National Basketball Association, as point guard for the Tulsa Shock. Marion is also the author of “On the Right Track from Olympic Downfall to Finding Forgiveness and the Strength to Overcome and Succeed.” Learn more about her fitness training and coaching work on her website, marionjones.com. 

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For seven years, Tom Rosshirt lived in fear. He was afraid that chemicals in the air were making him sick and depressed, that mold spores in his walls were making him forgetful and panicky. He cut out different foods that he loved, hoping that might help him feel better. Lights and sounds overwhelmed him and he isolated himself. “My life became smaller and smaller,” he said. “And I was getting worse and worse.”

After countless visits with doctors and specialists, Tom finally realized what was at the root of his illness: his anxiety and fear were causing these physical symptoms. And by continuing to cut more and more out of his life, he was feeding those anxieties, which in turn, made him more sick. While working with a support group which taught him practices based in neuroplasticity, he was able to finally take control of his life again. That experience is the focus of his new book, “Chasing Peace.” As Tom shares with Tim in their conversation,  “...Reducing fear is one of the great ways to ease suffering and one of the great ways to bring peace. [And we] reduce fear by facing it and feeling it.”

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Tom Rosshirt is an author, a co-creator of the Dignity Index, and a former White House speech writer. His new book “Chasing Peace: a story of breakdowns, breakthroughs, and the spiritual power of neuroscience” is out now. You can learn more by following him @tomrosshirt on Instagram or at tomrosshirt.com.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rev. angel Kyodo williams is a Zen Buddhist priest, and she says that her spiritual journey started when she was a child, after someone close to her let her down. In that moment, she realized that she needed to have compassion for this person and, in a way, let them off the hook. “Letting them off the hook is not saying… ‘Oh, it's okay that they did that,’” she tells Tim. “But it is part of the fabric of what it means to be human and alive. And I get to continue to love them, not despite, but because of all of those missteps and mistakes.”

Rev. angel is a spiritual leader and an activist, someone searching for compassion and change at the same time. While working in social movements fighting against homophobia and racism, she noticed that conflict and frustration was eating her comrades alive. “We couldn't get things done because everybody was fighting with each other, because that's what we practiced,” she said. Now, Rev. angel teaches others how to “conflict well,” as she calls it. She thinks we can organize with love, while looking to the future for bigger solutions. 

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Rev. angel Kyodo williams is a Zen Buddhist priest and author of “Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation” and “Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness & Grace.” Her newest project is called the Healing Race Portal, what she calls the culmination of all her work. You can learn more at healingraceportal.com.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“What is our responsibility to one another?”

“How do we create a culture that prioritizes community and the virtues it requires?” 

“What kind of world do we seek to create together, for ourselves and our children?”

These are the fundamental questions Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy poses to all of us in his “Parting Prescription for America,” released publicly yesterday. Motivated by a quest to understand the deeper roots of despair he’s witnessed across America during his nearly 10 years of service, Dr. Murthy outlines four essential components of fulfillment and our overall well-being: relationships, service, purpose, and love. These elements are also core to building community, he shares with Tim in this episode.“If you can help people feel like someone does care about them, that they do belong… If you can give people the opportunity to connect by joint actions of service or by helping one another…[these small things] help us change culture.” 

As Dr. Murthy prepares to leave his role as Surgeon General later this month, his charge to the nation is simple. Focus on the small things. “Make five or 10 minutes to reach out each day to somebody [you] care about…look for one thing [you] can do each day to help somebody in [your life]. These things might seem small, but…for people who are struggling with a sense of despondency and despair, small moments can be lifelines,” Dr. Murthy says. “It's like dropping a pebble in a pond. They generate powerful ripples. Each person that you help is then more likely to go off and help somebody else.”

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Dr. Vivek Murthy served as the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States, first under President Obama and later under President Biden, and as Vice Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

He led the nation's response during a number of public health challenges including Ebola, Zika virus, and the opioid crisis where he helped our nation see addiction as a chronic illness instead of as a character flaw. His work challenged us to notice the impact of social isolation and loneliness on America's physical, spiritual, social, and mental wellbeing. Most recently, he made headlines with his research linking alcohol and cancer.

Learn more about Dr. Murthy’s public health initiatives and groundbreaking work on his website, vivekmurthy.com and read his latest report at surgeongeneral.gov/community. 

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Dr. Anita Phillips was a kid, she didn’t understand why God wouldn’t heal her sister’s pain. She didn’t know then, but her sister Valerie had a severe mental illness, one that couldn’t be solved with her family’s prayers alone. Growing up, there was a sharp divide between Dr. Anita’s Christian background and mental health. In her community, “...if you went to therapy, it must mean that you didn't have enough faith,” she told Tim. That tension set her on a path to become a trauma therapist and a minister, someone who can support both our mind and our spirit. “I come alongside people of faith and help them improve their experience with God,” she said. Dr. Anita sees caring for your emotional health as being deeply connected to what we believe about the world and ourselves. And if we neglect our emotions, it can become a kind of “spiritual bypassing” where we try to avoid our feelings, hoping that they will go away, only to have them manifest in other ways. “Emotions don’t last forever, but they will wait forever…eventually that pain will find its way out,” says Dr. Anita. 

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Dr. Anita Phillips is the host of the podcast “In the Light with Dr. Anita Phillips” and the author of “The Garden Within.” You can follow her on social media using the handle @dranitaphillips.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Reverend Jen Bailey comes from a long line of Black women who “made a way out of no way.” As a young girl encouraged by church mothers who “made spiritual work come alive,” Jen discovered God was both a heavenly being to be revered and a confidant she could trust with hard questions about her daily life and reality. 

Today, Jen’s work is grounded in the belief that faith matters for action, and action manifests faith, both in her life as a preacher, a writer, and as an advocate for justice. In 2014, she founded Faith Matters Network, which supports faith leaders, community organizers, and social activists with the tools they need to heal themselves and their communities. And she also serves on the board of several philanthropic foundations and advisory groups helping people with resources invest in the work of spiritual and social change. 

On days when hope is harder to access in her work and in her life, Jen says she considers three important questions, “What is dying in the world?  What wants to emerge? And what is already blooming beautifully?” 

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Reverend Jennifer Bailey is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a public theologian, and a leader in the multi-faith movement for justice. 

She is the founder of Faith Matters Network and a co-founder of The People's Supper. You can learn more about her work and her beautiful book, “To My Beloveds: Letters on Faith, Race, Loss, and Radical Hope” on her website reverendjen.com. 

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Growing up in 1980s New Haven, Connecticut, Lamont Young faced many challenges including poverty, racism, and isolation. Then, at 19-years old, he was shot seven times at point blank range. Miraculously, he survived, but life after the shooting was far from easy. Lamont experienced PTSD, lived in a homeless shelter, lost custody of his kids, and turned to drugs and alcohol. He credits his mother’s unconditional love and faith for helping him release his anger and finally begin the healing process. “She said, ‘It doesn't matter what happened to you in the past, what you did in the past, what anybody ever did to you in the past....Forgive yourself.’” 

Years later when Lamont came face-to-face with his shooter, instead of seeking revenge he chose to forgive him. “Who am I to take your life after God saved my life?... And I hugged him, my mom hugged him, and she prayed for him, and we drove off and that was it.” Lamont eventually attended rehab and after recovery he graduated with a masters in psychology from Fordham University. 

Today, Lamont serves a mix of youth, adults and families in his local community as a licensed mental health clinician, equipping clients with the coping skills he needed as a young man. “[I ask them] ‘How can I help? What can I do to help you?’ And once they start sharing, I’ll give them hope. Let them know no matter what [they’re] going through, this is what we’re going to do together to be able to heal [them].”

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Lamont Young is a licensed mental health clinician specializing in Addiction Psychiatry. Previously, he worked at a middle school as a trauma informed therapist and at Yale Psychiatric Hospital helping transitional youth. Today, he continues to serve his community by working with a mix of young people, adults, and families. 

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.