The Wisdom & Action Podcast

You might have noticed a recent run of incredible female leaders on the show – well, they keep coming! This episode Berry sits with one of the world’s leading teachers of mindfulness meditation – Sylvia Boorstein. Sylvia is one of the people who literally brought buddhism to the West in the 1970s, and like many of them is Jewish. She is a mother, a grandmother, a psychotherapist, and a founding teacher of Spirit Rock, a world-renowned Buddhist meditation centre in Woodacre, California. The titles of Sylvia’s books are telling of her good humour and simple wisdom, among them including “Happiness is an inside job,” Road Sage, It’s Easier than you think, “That’s funny, You Don’t look Buddhist,” and our favourite, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” It was an honour for us to have this time with Sylvia, and to hear her reflections and hopes in the latter stages of her life.Sylvia will feature in our upcoming issue of Dumbo Feather magazine, if you’re not already a subscriber, go to dumbofeather.com and soak up more goodness like this in print.

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Gayle is co-founder of Melbourne-based Global Leadership Foundation, and she works with boards and senior leaders all over the world in raising emotional health, building resilience, and transforming leaders and organisations. Gayle is one of our guest facilitators on the Small Giants Academy Mastery of Business and Empathy program, which is currently open for 2023 expressions of interest.

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Kemi Nekvapil is one of Australia’s leading coaches for female executives and entrepreneurs, as well as an author and a highly sought-after international speaker.Her latest book is Power: a woman’s guide to living and leading without apology, and in this chat with our editor Kirsty, she talks about some of the stories and ideas behind writing it.

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Jamie Wheal is the founder of the Flow Genome Project and an expert in the neurophysiology of human performance. His latest book is "Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex and Death In a World That's Lost Its Mind."In this conversation with Berry, he posits solutions for the crisis of meaning many of us face today, and guides us towards a new (old) frontier that he calls "Meaning 3.0".

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In celebration of Issue 70 of Dumbo Feather magazine, all about a Meaningful Life, Berry sat down with one of the greatest living thinkers of our time: Professor A C Grayling.

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This week we’re sharing a conversation we had with waste queen Veena Sahajwalla as part of Vivid Festival 2022. Veena is a trailblazer in the field of recycling science. She heads up the SMaRT Centre at UNSW, and among her epic scientific breakthroughs include perfecting a technique that brings together waste tyres and waste plastic in the production of steel, and waste textiles and waste glass in the manufacturing of ceramics. We love Veena's story and ability to offer very practical solutions to the waste crisis. Her work leads us away from the current take-make-waste industrial towards more circular economies. Big thanks to Vivid for hosting this conversation.

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Our much-loved contributor Lydia Fairhall sits down with a hero of hers, the Worimi storyteller, Paul Callaghan. Paul is an author and consultant who specialises in leadership development and wellbeing. In his mid-30s, he encountered a period of depression, after realising the success he had been striving for didn’t match up with his internal measure. Drawing on a variety of tools, including Indigenous teachings, he was able to navigate his way to a truer, more whole embodiment of himself. In 2022, Paul released a book with his friend Uncle Paul Gordon, entitled, The Dreaming Path: Indigenous Thinking to Change your Life.

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Peter Garrett is a member of one of Australia's most successful bands, Midnight Oil. He’s also served as environment minister in the Rudd-Labor government, and been a long-time advocate and campaigner on a range of issues, including human rights and climate change. In this chat with contributor Myke Bartlett, he talked about the role of culture and the arts in enacting change, and how we can infuse our systems with integrity.

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Roman Krznaric is an internationally renowned public philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change society. Born in Sydney, he now lives in Oxford with his kids and wife Kate Raworth, who many of you will know as the designer and thinker behind Donut Economics. Roman is the founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum and Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation, a long-term cultural institution promoting “slower/better” thinking. Roman’s most recent book is The Good Ancestor, which calmly calls for a reorientation towards the future, inviting us to consider the legacy we leave, for the benefit of our far-off descendants. He spoke with our contributor Sarah Darmody in September 2020.

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Elizabeth Sawin is unlocking the power of multi-solving for people and planet. A student of biology, she became fascinated with the interconnectedness of all things, in a world that is often ready to simplify and seperate. Climate change sat at the heart of those connections, leading her on a path to activism and the co-founding of Climate Interactive, a group that uses system dynamics — an approach to understand the behaviour of complex systems — to drive meaningful and equitable climate action. This year, Elizabeth has moved on to a new role as director of the Multisolving Institute, which focuses on solutions that address the climate emergency while also improving health, well-being, equity, and economic vitality. Elizabeth developed the idea of ‘multisolving’ to help people see and create conditions for these win-win-win solutions. Earlier this year, she spoke with our contributor Myke Bartlett for our systems change of issue of Dumbo Feather magazine.

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