Our era is defined by trauma — from COVID-19 to climate change, divisive politics to economic pressures, gun violence and generational upheavals. And the collective effect of all these traumas can make it pretty hard to face the day.

Robert J. Lifton, my guest on this week’sWhoWhatWhy podcast, has inspiring and realistic ideas for coping with it all, as suggested by the title of his latest book, Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to COVID-19.   

The 97-year-old Lifton, a renowned psychiatrist, is also the author of the National Book Award–winning Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima and Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry.