After losing his California home to a wildfire, writer Pico Iyer went on retreat to a hermitage in Big Sur. He’s since made more than 100 retreats to the monastery. He tells us how retreats brought him out of his mind and ‘into his senses.’More
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Interviews By Topic
Plant scientist Monica Gagliano did a series of groundbreaking experiments that suggest plants have intelligence. But she hasn’t talked—until now—about the leap of faith she took when a plant told her to go on a darkness retreat—for 39 days.More
Turns out there is an emerging science of uncertainty — a new frontier in psychology, artificial intelligence, and surgery — where things can go very wrong when people are missing a crucial skill set: being unsure. Maggie Jackson explains.More
Witnessing the beauty of synchronous fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains inspired author Leigh Ann Henion to turn off her porch light and discover the vast natural world that thrives in the darkness.More
The nocturnal songs of nightingales have captivated artists, poets and musicians for generations. Folk singer Sam Lee celebrates their annual return through intimate nighttime duets — performed in total darkness — that blend human voice and nightingale song.More
Flourishing is a skill, and with a few basic mindfulness practices, we can feel better. Now, neuroscientist Richie Davidson wants to scale up human flourishing to boost the well-being of entire cities.More
Dalal Abu Amneh is a Palestinian singer and neuroscientist. She says music has the capacity to heal and engage the entire brain, and the power to bring people together in the midst of political conflicts.More
Talking with a therapist is a proven path to wholeness, but psychotherapy can often drag on too long. Diana Fosha explains why Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy can have quick results for treating trauma.More
Writer Lowry Pressly argues that privacy is more than just about protecting the personal information you generate; it’s also choosing what to generate at all. It’s a fundamental tool for living our best possible lives.More
Before the era of data mining, scientists in the 1960s began a first-of-its kind study of personality — by secretly studying a group of preschoolers. Former test subject Susannah Breslin uncovers the buried secrets of that study.More
There are approximately 1.4 billion iPhone users worldwide and more than 3 billion Facebook users. In the next few decades, many of those users will die, leaving behind vast amounts of precious data. What happens to all of it?More
153 flavors of ice cream. An acre of cold cereals. Why do supermarkets have so many choices? Or do they? Where we might see hundreds of flavors, varieties and brands of food, food journalist Simran Sethi sees a scary kind of sameness.More
Puzzle constructors like Anna Shechtman are pushing to make crosswords more socially and linguistically inclusive. She writes about gender and puzzles in her memoir “The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle.”More
A.J. Jacobs' latest research project turned obsession is puzzles. He goes deep into puzzle history and lore in a new book “The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.”More
Lydia Millet mined Bible stories and parables to write her very contemporary novel about climate change, "A Children’s Bible.” She says that fiction can help us sort through hard feelings about climate change in a way daily news stories can't.More
Lidia Yuknavitch’s apocalyptic novel “The Book of Joan” is one of the most stunning examples of climate fiction. It’s the story of a near-future where Earth is decimated and the last few survivors are stranded out in space.More
British journalist John Lanchester’s recent novel “The Wall” paints a very chilly picture of climate catastrophe. It begins in the future, when rising sea levels and an immigration crisis pit children against parents.More
Clocks control us – but who controls clocks? David Rooney gives us a brief political history of clocks. And a look at their future.More