In part 11 of this series, Host Michael Lerner talks with author Jeffrey J. Kripal about his book How to Think Impossibly. In this book, a mind-bending invitation to experience the impossible as fundamentally human, Jeffrey asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real. Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Jeffrey interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to foster an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. In this series, Jeffrey talks with Host Michael Lerner about his body of work—more than 13 groundbreaking books about the mystical and the erotic, the relationship of mind and matter, and parapsychological phenomena.

Michael has been reading, talking, and meeting with Jeffrey for more than a year now, immersing himself in the consciousness worldview that Jeffrey presents in his books and teaching. Follow Michael’s journey through these conversations.

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.

"Bicherío, Chi no parakuya, Durga, Farafara, Guruni, Isong, Kasem, Koya, Nanda Devi, Nisarg, Njuzu, Parisara, Paryavaran, Psocodea, Prakriti, Pull of nature, Sankofa, Sango, Sasia, Tekoha, Teguala, Tutulegbte, Ubuntu, Ykua Ñe'e, Zumbani."

These words and phrases are some of the ways that communities across Africa, India, and Latin America speak about nature—gathered by Alejo di Risio, María Belén Felix, and Mauro Fernández through their recent research into narratives of nature and social change.

As part of Commonweal’s Omega Resilience Awards' narrative research initiative, the Ecology Team set out to document emerging stories of resilience grounded in environmental stewardship, land connection, and sustainable practices across the Global South.

Working with a spirit of collaboration, they listened for ecological imagination as a political force, and they documented how people articulate visions of desirable futures and translate local wisdom into movements for change.

In this conversation, Host Susan Grelock-Yusem will talk with Alejo di Risio—journalist, environmental consultant, and cultural strategist—to explore their journey and what they learned about ecological imagination, narrative as resistance, local wisdom at global scale, and the power of community. Following the conversation join us for a live interactive dialogue with the full Ecology Research Team—Alejo, María Belén and Mauro Fernandez. Find out more at tns.commonweal.org.

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.

Bringing with her the traditional Aboriginal practices of dadirri—a sacred practice of deep listening, reflection, stillness, and connection to the land—and yarning—a conversational practice used by indigenous Australians to share knowledge, stories, and culture—Catherine Olweny talks about ways that art and narrative techniques allow difficult experiences to be shared. Catherine has been using narrative therapy with doctors and other healthcare workers to help them describe the unique experiences and challenges faced in remaining empathetic and whole-person focused in today’s healthcare system. In this workshop, Catherine will share the work she is discovering and building upon during a 45-minute lecture. Following that, she leads us in a short experience of narrative therapy, in which we can begin to explore and repair our own stories of illness and healthcare. Find out more about Catherine and her residency at Commonweal New School on our website: tns.commonweal.org.

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.

Known for bringing loneliness and social connection into the national conversation, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy joins host Serena Bian at Commonweal’s New School to reflect on the deeper currents beneath his work. Beginning with his spiritual biography, we explore the questions, traditions, and experiences that shaped his understanding of service, healing, and what it means to belong.

From there, the conversation expands into an exploration and re-imagining of our collective future. How do we nurture meaning and purpose in an age increasingly defined by technology? What new forms of community, institution-building, and collaboration are emerging amid social fragmentation and uncertainty? Through stories, reflection, and imagination, Dr. Murthy will offer insights into how we might become more fully human while building a future rooted in connection, dignity, and care. Find out more on tns.commonweal.org.

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.

Art for Our Common Good: Creativity, Health, and Civic Life - Part Two

Hosted by Lisa Simms Booth

What role can art play in helping us meet this moment? As communities face growing loneliness, burnout, environmental anxiety, and civic division, the arts can create spaces for healing, connection, and hope.

In this podcast, Commonweal Board Member Lisa Simms Booth continues the conversation with the New School’s summer visiting scholar Catherine Olweny. Her many life experiences and training led her to work as a paediatric anaesthetist, and also to work as a therapist helping clinicians develop a greater ability to look and listen closely, to attend to patients and their family, to be curious and attentive, and to be fully present. Cultivating this presence--in part using art, narrative, and imagination--is a gift she found in her own life, one she shares with other clinicians, and one we can learn from as well.

Find out more about Catherine, Lisa, and Commonweal New School at tns.commonweal.org

Co-presented with Visual Thinking Strategies, Collaborations: Teachers and Artists, California for the Arts, Flight School, Fordham University Creative Writing Program, Jasper Inclusion Advisors, Kularts, National Organization for Arts in Health, Panta Rhea, Power of Hope, ILALI, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Stanford Arts, and University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine. | Artwork credit: “River Braid” by Jon Marro.

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The New School is Commonweal's learning community and podcast—we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.

Art for Our Common Good: Creativity, Health, and Civic Life - Part One

Hosted by Lisa Simms Booth

What role can art play in helping us meet this moment? As communities face growing loneliness, burnout, environmental anxiety, and civic division, the arts can create spaces for healing, connection, and hope.

In part 1 of this podcast, Commonweal Board Member Lisa Simms Booth opens the conversation with Former National Endowment of the Arts Chair Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson and Stanford Arts Director Deborah Cullinan. Together, they explore how creativity can strengthen wellbeing, respond to environmental challenges, and help rebuild trust and participation in public life. Watch or listen to hear their thoughts on how the arts can help solve some of the most urgent challenges of our time by bringing people together, restoring meaning, and imagining new possibilities. Find out more at tns.commonweal.org.

Co-presented with Visual Thinking Strategies, Collaborations: Teachers and Artists, California for the Arts, Flight School, Fordham University Creative Writing Program, Jasper Inclusion Advisors, Kularts, National Organization for Arts in Health, Panta Rhea, Power of Hope, ILALI, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Stanford Arts, and University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine. | Artwork credit: “River Braid” by Jon Marro.

***The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our soundcloud channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.

In part 10 of the Secret Body series of conversations, Michael Lerner talks with author Jeffrey Kripal about his book, The Superhumanities.

What would happen, Jeffrey asks, if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey’s vision for the future—to revive the suppressed dimension of the superhumanities, which consists of rare but real altered states of knowledge that have driven the creative processes of many of our most revered authors, artists, and activists.

Michael has been reading, talking, and meeting with Jeffrey for more than a year now, immersing himself in the consciousness worldview that Jeffrey presents in his books and teaching. Follow Michael's journey through these conversations, and share your thoughts in the comments.

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our soundcloud channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts. tns.commonweal.org

Michael Lerner with Moderator Katherine Fulton, and introductory remarks by Oren Slozberg.

Exploring the Forces Changing What it Means to Be Human

Join us for a day of reflection and conversation exploring healing at a time of transformation—contemplating what Michael Lerner points to as the coming revolution in human consciousness and what it means for all of us as individuals, communities, and as a planetary species.

This event is part of our 50th anniversary celebrations this year at Commonweal. Michael’s founding vision of Commonweal was as a center for healing ourselves and healing the earth. His understanding of healing has been transformed by more than 230 week-long Cancer Help Programs, by Healing Circles, and by many other experiences with personal healing, as well as by the emergence of the global polycrisis and what it signifies for planetary healing. He brings these threads together in the light of new research on what is known as “the hard problem of consciousness.”

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our soundcloud channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts. tns.commonweal.org

Co-presented with Pt Reyes Books

Join Host Susan Grelock Yusem in conversation with David George Haskell to talk about his new book, How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature's Revolutionaries (Viking). In this exquisite exploration of the role flowers played in creating the world we know today, David observes, smells, and studies flowers such as magnolias, orchids, and roses, as well as fascinating but less celebrated flowers such as seagrasses and tea. Through radical genetic flexibility, flowers turned past environmental upheavals into opportunities for renewal. This inventiveness allowed them to build and sustain rainforests, savannahs, prairies, and even ocean shores.

Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. We need floral creativity, beauty, and joy more than ever. How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing, sensual exploration, and the latest in scientific research to explore some of the most consequential life forms ever to have evolved, showing how our planet came to be and how it thrives today.

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our soundcloud channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts. tns.commonweal.org

What becomes possible when we understand social and political harm not only as injustice, but as expressions of collective trauma? In this conversation, Kazu Haga—activist, trainer, and author of Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging Through Collapse—joins host Serena Bian to explore why healing is so essential to radically reimagining the worlds we wish to build in the midst of collapse.

This conversation explores the possibility that the work of social transformation cannot be separated from the work of inner transformation. Rather than reinforcing the familiar patterns of opposition of “us and them,” “right and wrong," Kazu invites us to consider pathways of change that are rooted in relationship, spiritual practice, and the long arc of healing.

Drawing from decades of work in nonviolence, restorative justice, and Buddhist practice, Kazu reflects on the limitations of movement strategies that mirror the very dynamics they seek to transform. What might it mean to respond to harm in ways that do not escalate division, but instead create the conditions for healing, within ourselves, our communities, and the larger body politic?

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The New School is Commonweal’s learning community and podcast — we offer conversations, workshops, and other events in areas that Commonweal champions: finding meaning, growing health and resilience, advocating for justice, and stewarding the natural world. We make our conversations into podcasts for listeners world wide and have been doing this since 2007. Please like/follow our SoundCloud channel for access to our library of more than 400 great podcasts.