Where Genius Grows

"Exercise your witnessing muscle: Go find a good photography book and look at it long and hard. Look at the pictures and practice empathy. Practice witnessing a story that you weren't there to see and I promise you will find yourself moved. And whatever the source of that empathy is, see if you can't direct it to someone in your own sphere, someone physically in your own sphere — someone that you can witness, you might never thought needed to be looked at, or maybe you thought it was inappropriate to look."

— Katie Jett Walls

Documentary photographer Katie Jett Walls talks about how she has found her voice as a photographer, capturing images of the world's rapid evolution around us. We speak about the power of bearing witness, which Katie defines as being unafraid to be with someone.

Please explore Katie's work at http://www.katiejettwallsphotography.com.

If you love this conversation, you will find episode 51 with Sara Taber captivating.

"We live in a world where your attention is the most valuable thing you have to offer. It's in some ways even more valuable even than the money in your pocket, or even more valuable than your vote. The things you choose to allocate your attention to — the shows you watch, the news you consume, the social media platforms that you engage on and the conversations that you take part in there — those are going to be the things that shape the world around us."

— Arik Ben-Zvi Arik Ben-Zvi is the executive managing director of the Glover Park Group, a strategic communications and government affairs firm with a global presence. In this conversation we discuss the critical faculties and the moral compass we must cultivate to navigate an increasingly complex mass media and social media landscape.

"We're really interested in the plot of our lives, but we're not as interested in the way the plot unfolds — the meaning underneath the plot. And if we were to get more interested collectively in not just what's happening to me but making sense of what's happening to me, that is a question that can keep you engaged forever. That question never gets old. You can ask it about anybody else in your life and it brings you closer."

— Jennifer Garvey Berger

Psychologists long assumed that our minds stopped growing after post-adolescence. Over the past four decades the field of adult developmental psychology has shifted this paradigm by mapping out how our minds continue to develop in complexity over the course of our entire lives. This is a conversation with leading theorist and practitioner Jennifer Garvey Berger about what we can do to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex world by actively developing sufficiently complex habits of mind.

Jennifer's books: Changing on the Job: https://amzn.to/2C5FLxn Simple Habits for Complex Times: https://amzn.to/2wu8iqW

If you love this conversation, you will find episode 46 with Bob Anderson fascinating.

"How do we change our economic thinking so that we start to become people who are living in a way that's compatible with a sustainable planet?"

— Gray Cox

To look at the world and everywhere see strife and material consumption that our planet is unable to sustain can be demoralizing. But particularly as we stare at the prospect of likely peril, College of the Atlantic professor Gray Cox asks us to take heart and consider the simple habits of mind that are drawing us toward the brink of ecological collapse. How can we make subtle shifts in our very rationality — one person at a time — and thereby transform, and increase the odds of, continued life on earth?

"Listen and do your best to put yourself in someone else's shoes. That trait is the thing that has saved lives. It's when people cut themselves off from that recognition of the other person as a human being — that is what gets degraded when we move toward mass atrocities: one of the first steps is to remove the humanity of the other person. And so that's a little act of resistance right there . . . to look across and see that humanity in the people around you."

— Kate English

Kate English is the executive director of the Educators Institute for Human Rights. EIHR is an organization made up of teachers, most of whom are in the classroom full-time, who work to heal communities such as Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia in the wake of mass atrocities. Learn in this episode how we all benefit from teachers focusing on human rights, genocide prevention and holocaust education.

"It's important to listen both to understand the details of what happened, because remembering the victims and accepting the truth is important to survivor communities, and it's also important just to make sure people feel heard. Sometimes it's important for closure, sometimes it's important as part of a process, sometimes it's important for reasons that I'm not really sure of. But it is a very small thing we can do and it is meaningful."

— Arthur Traldi

Arthur is a war crimes prosecutor who has worked on the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In November of 2017 the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia obtained a conviction for war crimes and genocide case against Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić. In this conversation you will learn how a genocide case is built and why it matters that we prosecute them.

"What people need to do is look at their lives through that lens 'How much of what I do is intentional and how much of what I do is routine? How much of what I do is considered and how much of what I do is simply a function of I did it that way yesterday, I did it again today, and likely I'll do it tomorrow?'"

— Jerry Johnson

Jerry Johnson manages relevance research at Brodeur Partners. His team helps organizations stay relevant in people's lives. In this episode Jerry discusses how to evaluate the many messages that every day appeal to our attention and our wallets. Learn how being aware and intentional about what matters to us can affect our lives.

"Anybody offering their truth to the world is a generous act. It doesn't have to be perfectly wrought or perfectly abstractly conceptualized. But offering your authentic take on the world is just a gift, really. We don't get a lot of honesty in the world. And emotional honesty is even rarer."

— Sara Mansfield Taber

Sara Mansfield Taber is a writer and a teacher of writing. She has a lucid understanding of what gets in the way of people writing well. Sara has released a book called Chance Particulars that swiftly moves us past our blocks by training our attention on the concrete details of the beautiful world around us.

Chance Particulars: https://amzn.to/2NhhZzc

"Life is filled with great diversity. You see it all through nature. When we as people take the opportunity to respect and appreciate the diversity that we have as humans, we have the power to build a better and more just society."

— Angela Hayes

Angela Hayes is the owner of Collins Hayes Management and Consulting. As the communities we live in grow increasingly diverse, what can companies do to make sure they resonate with every customer they're trying to reach? In this conversation, we discuss what steps companies can take to avoid embarrassing and costly missteps, as well as how we all benefit from a focus on inclusion.

"I always like to say 'Stay vocal, stay local,' that focusing on the issues in your most immediate community . . . it never seems to get the recognition it deserves but it's always the most transformative role that we can play in our society."

—Albert Cahn

Albert Cahn serves as the legal director for the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Albert's work recently resulted in his being barred from speaking at the temple his family has belonged to for generations. In this conversation, we speak about why it matters to civil society that interfaith relations make an effort to stretch well beyond what most people consider safe.