Episodes
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Richard L. Haight is the founder of the Total Embodiment Method (TEM), which is an awareness training system designed to integrate meditation into one’s daily life. Richard is the author of five bestselling titles, most notably The Warrior’s Meditation, Unshakable Awareness, and The Unbound Soul, and he is a master-level instructor of martial, meditation and healing arts.
Richard began formal martial arts training at age 12 and moved to Japan at the age of 24 to advance his training with master’s of the sword, staff, and aiki-jujutsu. During his 15 years in Japan, Richard was awarded masters licenses in four samurai arts as well as a traditional healing art called sotai-ho. Richard is one of the world’s foremost experts in the traditional Japanese martial arts.
Through his books, his meditation, and martial arts seminars, Richard Haight is helping to ignite a worldwide movement for personal transformation that is free of all constraints and open to anyone of any level. He now lives and teaches in southern Oregon, U.S.A.
To learn more about Richard Haight, go to richardlhaight.com or join his Facebook group.
Please visit our Amazon affiliate link to get your copy of The Warrior’s Meditation.
To learn more about Provocative Enlightenment Radio, go to http://www.provocativeenlightenment.com
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Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that focuses our attention on what is possible and gives us perspective on what is unimportant. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we handle our money in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever we are, Stoicism has something for us–and How to Be a Stoic is the essential guide.
Prof. Pigliucci has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He currently is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of science, the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism.
To learn more about Massimo Pigliucci and his work, go to massimopigliucci.com and twitter.com/mpigliucci
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Berit Brogaard, PhD, and Kristian Marlow, MA, study people with astonishing talents—memory champions, human echolocators, musical virtuosos, math geniuses, and synesthetes who taste colors and hear faces. But as amazing as these abilities are, they are not mysterious. Our brains constantly process a huge amount of information below our awareness, and what these gifted individuals have in common is that through practice, injury, an innate brain disorder, or even more unusual circumstances, they have managed to gain a degree of conscious access to this potent processing power.
The Superhuman Mind takes us inside the lives and brains of geniuses, savants, virtuosos, and a wide variety of ordinary people who have acquired truly extraordinary talents, one way or another. Delving into the neurological underpinnings of these abilities, the authors even reveal how we can acquire some of them ourselves—from perfect pitch and lightning fast math skills to supercharged creativity.
The Superhuman Mind is a book full of the fascinating science readers look for from the likes of Oliver Sacks, combined with the exhilarating promise of Moonwalking with Einstein.
Berit Brogaard is Professor and Cooper Fellow at the University of Miami. Her areas of research include perception, emotions, synesthesia, and savant syndrome. She is the author of Transient Truths (Oxford University Press, 2012), On Romantic Love (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Superhuman Mind (Penguin, 2015), Seeing & Saying (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Hate: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2020).
To learn more about Prof. Berit Brogaard and her work, go to psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind or people.miami.edu/profile/[email protected]
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To learn more about Provocative Enlightenment Radio, go to http://www.provocativeenlightenment.com
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Dr. Lewis obtained his medical degree in 1990 at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where he grew up. He completed specialty training in psychiatry at the University of Toronto in 1996, followed by a two year fellowship in neuroimaging research and a Master of Science in Neuroscience, both at the University of Toronto. He has held his present staff physician appointment at Sunnybrook since 1998.
To learn more about Provocative Enlightenment Radio, go to http://www.provocativeenlightenment.com
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A smart, research-driven case for why optimism, kindness, and strong social networks will help us live to 100.
From the day her daughter was born, science journalist Marta Zaraska fretted about what she and her family were eating. She fasted, considered adopting the keto diet, and ran a half-marathon. She bought goji berries and chia seeds and ate organic food.
But then her research brought her to read countless scientific papers and to interview dozens of experts in various fields of study, including molecular biochemistry, epidemiology and neuroscience. What Marta discovered shattered her long-held beliefs about aging and longevity. A strong support network of family and friends, she learned, lowers mortality risk by about 45 percent, while exercise only lowers it by about 23 percent. Volunteering your free time lowers it by 22 percent or so, while certain health fads like turmeric haven’t been shown to help at all. These revelations led Marta Zaraska to a simple conclusion: In addition to healthy nutrition and physical activity, deepening friendships, practicing empathy and contemplating your purpose in life can improve your lifespan.
Through eleven chapters that take her around the world, from catching wild mice in the woods of central England to flower arranging with octogenarians in Japan, from laboratories to “hugging centres,” Marta embarks on an absorbing, entertaining and insightful journey to determine the habits that will have the greatest impact on our longevity.
Deeply researched and expertly reported, Growing Young will dramatically change the way you seek a longer, happier life.
To learn more about Marta Zaraska and her work, go to growingyoungthebook.com or zaraska.com
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From a leading philosopher of the mind comes this lucid, provocative argument that offers a radically new picture of human consciousness—panpsychism.
Understanding how brains produce consciousness is one of the great scientific challenges of our age. Some philosophers argue that consciousness is something “extra,” beyond the physical workings of the brain. Others think that if we persist in our standard scientific methods, our questions about consciousness will eventually be answered. And some even suggest that the mystery is so deep, it will never be solved. Decades have been spent trying to explain consciousness from within our current scientific paradigm, but little progress has been made.
Now, Philip Goff offers an exciting alternative that could pave the way forward. Rooted in an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science and based on the early twentieth-century work of Arthur Eddington and Bertrand Russell, Goff makes the case for panpsychism, a theory which posits that consciousness is not confined to biological entities but is a fundamental feature of all physical matter—from subatomic particles to the human brain. In Galileo’s Error, he has provided the first step on a new path to the final theory of human consciousness.
Philip Goff is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. His research focuses on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview. He has authored an academic book with Oxford University Press, called ‘Consciousness and Fundamental Reality’ and a book aimed at a general audience called ‘Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness’. Dr Goff has published over 40 academic articles as well as writing extensively for newspapers and magazines, including Scientific American, The Guardian, and the Times Literary Supplement. Goff’s interview by Pulitzer Prize winning author Gareth Cook was one of the most viewed of the most viewed articles in Scientific American of 2020.
To learn more about Prof. Philip Goff and his work, go to philipgoffphilosophy.com
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To learn more about Provocative Enlightenment Radio, go to http://www.provocativeenlightenment.com
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Mark Wolynn is a leading expert on inherited family trauma. He is the winner of the 2016 Silver Nautilus Award in Psychology. As the director of The Family Constellation Institute in San Francisco, he has trained thousands of clinicians and treated thousands more patients struggling with depression, anxiety, panic disorder, obsessive thoughts, self-injury, pain, and illness.
To learn more about Provocative Enlightenment Radio, go to http://www.provocativeenlightenment.com
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Professor Oakley’s work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Mindshift reveals how we can overcome stereotypes and preconceived ideas about what is possible for us to learn and become. Dr. Oakley shepherds us past simplistic ideas of “aptitude” and “ability,” which provide only a snapshot of who we are now—with little consideration about how we can change.
Dr. Barbara Oakley is a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan and the Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Her books Mindshift and A Mind for Numbers are bestsellers, and she teaches the world’s largest online course, with 2 million students.
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Professor Levine is an internationally recognized expert in Biblical studies, Jewish/Christian relations, and the Bible, gender, and sexuality. She works in biblical studies broadly, with special interest in Jewish-Christian relations, Jesus and the Gospels, the roles of women, gender, and sexuality in biblical texts, and the relationship between history (what happened, as best as events can be reconstructed) and interpretation (how have texts been understood over time).
University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge UK. Dr. Levine is also a co-editor of the Jewish Annotated New Testament. She has recorded three sets of lectures for the Teaching Company’s “Great Lectures” series. Holding the B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, and Christian Theological Seminary. A self-described Yankee Jewish feminist, Professor Levine is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox Synagogue in Nashville, although she is often quite unorthodox.
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Why was the mission to the Moon named after the God of the Sun, and not after a Moon Goddess or God? In this unconventional work, Philippe Sibaud explores the symbolism behind the 1969 landing on the Moon. More than fifty years after this seminal event, and whilst the Moon is attracting renewed interest, the author offers a bold new interpretation of the iconic Apollo mission. Was the Apollo landing the ultimate triumph of solar consciousness over the ancient lunar ways, a concrete enactment of the god Apollo mythically slaying the mother dragon at Delphi, or can the whole venture be seen as the sacred union of Sun and Moon, birthing a new vision at a time of great need? By weaving his own personal story with a greater cultural and symbolic narrative, Philippe Sibaud invites us to reflect on the importance of myths and the power of the Imagination to unlock the deeper meaning of our individual and collective experiences. You will never look at the Moon with the same eyes again.
Philippe is a Trustee and a writer for the Gaia Foundation, an international London-based NGO which has been working for 35 years with indigenous people to uphold Earth-centred perspectives. He co-runs Umunthu Microfinance, an NGO that he set up in 2010 to provide small-scale loans to disadvantaged women in Malawi (currently 1,000 clients). He holds an MA in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred (with Distinction) from Canterbury Christ Church University and has been a dedicated student of astrology for many a solar return. He was born at night under a crisp February Full Moon.
To contact Philippe Sibaud, email [email protected]
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Did a tiny bird in Texas really communicate with a horse and convince him it was okay to load on a trailer he’d never been on? Did a horse, after a three-year absence, know that its previous owner was present by hearing a harmonica being played? Did a horse, who had never acted up, hurt its owner on purpose so she would go to the doctor, where she discovered cancer had returned? Richard D. Rowland seeks the answer to fascinating questions as he explores the connection between humans and animals. As someone who was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer and given three years to live (more than twelve years ago), the human-animal bond is a subject he knows well. Animals caused him to rethink life and showed him things he never thought possible-and they led him to write his previous book, Unspoken Messages: Spiritual Lessons I learned from Horses and Other Earthbound Souls. Based on his interviews with people throughout the world, this book expands on how animals are misunderstood-and how they’re much smarter than most people believe.
To learn more about Richard Rowland and his work, go to www.richarddrowlandbooks.com
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The gap between the state of fusion energy research and public understanding is vast. In an entertaining and engaging narrative, this popular science book gives readers the basic tools to understand how fusion works, its potential, and contemporary research problems. Written by two young researchers in the field, The Future of Fusion Energy explains how physical laws and the Earth’s energy resources motivate the current fusion program — a program that is approaching a critical point. The world’s largest science project and biggest ever fusion reactor, ITER, is nearing completion. Its success could trigger a worldwide race to build a power plant, but failure could delay fusion by decades. To these ends, this book details how ITER’s results could be used to design an economically competitive power plant as well as some of the many alternative fusion concepts.
Jason Parisi is a theoretical physicist studying turbulence in fusion plasmas at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, a fusion laboratory in the UK. He obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2020, and his undergraduate degree from Yale University in 2016. As well as fusion energy, Jason also has interests in general relativity and cosmology. In his spare time, he enjoys triathlon and gliding.
Justin Ball is an American scientist studying theoretical plasma physics and nuclear fusion energy. He works at the Swiss Plasma Center, a fusion laboratory in Switzerland, where he researches turbulence in tokamak plasmas. Justin holds a Master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford. He has a broad interest in all things nuclear, having previously worked at a nuclear power plant, a nuclear navy research laboratory, and a nuclear weapons laboratory.
To learn more about Jason Parisi, PhD go to jfparisi.github.io
To learn more about Justin Ball, PhD go to justin-ball.com
Please visit our Amazon Affiliate link to get your copy of The Future of Fusion Energy
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We are bombarded every day by reports of bad behavior, from sexual harassment to political corruption and bullying belligerence. It’s tempting to blame evil acts on evil people, but that leaves the rest us off the hook. Silence, after all, can perpetuate cruelty. Why We Act draws on the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience to tackle an urgent question: Why do so many of us fail to intervene when we’re needed―and what would it take to make us step up?
A renowned psychologist who has done pioneering research on social norms, Catherine Sanderson was inspired to write this book when a freshman in her son’s dorm died twenty hours after a bad fall while drinking. There were many points along the way when a decision to seek help could have saved his life. Why did no one act sooner?
Cutting-edge neuroscience offers part of the answer, showing how deviating from the group activates the same receptors in the brain that are triggered by pain. But Sanderson also points to many ways in which our faulty assumptions about what other people are thinking can paralyze us. And she shares surprisingly effective and simple strategies for resisting the pressure to conform. Moral courage, it turns out, is not innate. Small details and the right training can make a big difference. Inspiring and potentially life transforming, Why We Act reveals that while the urge to do nothing is deeply ingrained, even the most hesitant would-be bystander can learn to be a moral rebel.
To learn more about Catherine A. Sanderson and her work, go to www.sandersonspeaking.com
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You care about the greater good, but you want to define it for yourself. What if you disagree with the politically correct view? You fear ridicule, shunning and attack, so you tell yourself it’s not worth it and find a way to conform. Until one day you can’t.
I was politically correct until the day I heard myself lie about a simple fact because the truth didn’t sound progressive. I froze– in the middle of a lecture to 150 students. Enough! I decided to take back my brain. I gave myself permission to see what I see and know what I know instead of living in fear. It cost me, but the benefits outweighed the costs. Here is the story of my transition. You can do it too.
To learn more about Loretta Breuning, PhD and her work, go to www.innermammalinstitute.org
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What does President George Washington have in common with the Buddha, Sakyamuni? Author and teacher, Robert Sachs, brings together the lessons and teachings of these two great men; one an exemplary political figure, the other, the founder of one of the world’s great wisdom traditions. The result is a guidebook to study, carry with you, and apply to cultivate healthy, intelligent, and communication and action inspired by and rooted in civility.
Robert Sachs received his B.A. in comparative religion and sociology at the University of Lancaster and then moved to London, where he studied Macrobiotics with Michio Kushi and Rex Lassalle at the Kushi Institute and hatha yoga under the guidance of Jonathan O’Dell and Johanna Auld whilst also being trained as a mental health counselor with the Richmond Fellowship. Of particular interest to Robert since the late seventies has been the practical preventive health care aspects of Tibetan medicine, which he studied under the guidance of Dr. Lobsang Rapgay. Robert also focused on the healing meditations of Tibetan Buddhism, including those practices that prepare one for the time of death under Ven. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, Lama Ole Nydahl, and other Buddhist masters. Currently, Robert continues to study under the guidance of Tibetan Buddhist master, Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche.
To learn more about Robert Sachs and his work, visit ThePathofCivility.com and DiamondWayAyurveda.com
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Plenty of research has been done on why companies go terribly wrong, but what makes companies go spectacularly right? That’s the question that Kim Cameron asked over a decade ago. Since then, Cameron and his colleagues have uncovered the principles and practices that set extraordinarily effective organizations apart from the merely successful.
In his previous book, Positive Leadership, Cameron identified four strategies that enable these organizations, and the individuals within them, to flourish: creating a positive climate, positive relationships, positive communication, and positive meaning. Here he lays out specific tactics for implementing them. These are not feel-good nostrums—study after study (some cited in this book) have proven positive leadership delivers breakthrough bottom-line results. Thanks to Cameron’s concise how-to guide, now any organization can be “positively deviant,” achieving outcomes that far surpass the norm.
To learn more about Kim Cameron and his work, visit michiganross.umich.edu/faculty-research/faculty/kim-cameron or the Center for Positive Organizations Website: www.centerforpos.com
Please visit our Amazon affiliate links to get your copy of Practicing Positive Leadership and Making the Impossible Possible.
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How much is a human life worth? Individuals, families, companies, and governments routinely place a price on human life. The calculations that underlie these price tags are often buried in technical language, yet they influence our economy, laws, behaviors, policies, health, and safety.
These price tags are often unfair, infused as they are with gender, racial, national, and cultural biases that often result in valuing the lives of the young more than the old, the rich more than the poor, whites more than blacks, Americans more than foreigners, and relatives more than strangers. This is critical since undervalued lives are left less-protected and more exposed to risk.
Howard Steven Friedman explains in simple terms how economists and data scientists at corporations, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies develop and use these price tags and points a spotlight at their logical flaws and limitations. He then forcefully argues against the rampant unfairness in the system. Readers will be enlightened, shocked, and, ultimately, empowered to confront the price tags we assign to human lives and understand why such calculations matter.
Howard Steven Friedman is a data scientist, health economist, writer and artist. He teaches at Columbia University. Friedman received his Bachelor’s degree from Binghamton University in Applied Physics. He earned a Masters in Statistics and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Friedman took a position as a director at Capital One where he led teams of data scientists, statisticians, analysts and programmers in various areas of operations and marketing. He later formed companies that provided consulting services in areas of designing, developing and modeling data.
To learn more about Howard Steven Friedman and his work, go to www.howard-friedman.com
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It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream.
But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes.
This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.
To learn more about Prof. Daniel Markovits and his work, visit www.themeritocracytrap.com and follow him on Twitter @dsmarkovits
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Burnout is on the rise. This is a problem we cannot afford to ignore. The rising costs of burnout are staggering. Health care professionals sacrifice their health, happiness, and relationships. Fortunately, there is a solution. Dr. Greg Hammer created GAIN Without Pain so that health care professionals can prevent burnout and reclaim happiness.
This proven path toward personal resilience can be implemented by anyone, anywhere, in just a few minutes a day. Increased resilience could save your practice, your patients, your marriage – or even your life. GAIN Without Pain is a four-step process toward happiness. GAIN is an acronym for Gratitude, Acceptance, Intention, and Nonjudgment.
Greg Hammer, MD, is a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. As a pediatric anesthesiologist and an intensive care physician he cares for children and their families during very stressful times.
To learn more about Dr. Greg Hammer and his work, go to www.GregHammerMD.com
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To go beyond is to move into a higher state of consciousness, to a place of bliss, greater understanding, love, and deep connectedness, a realm where we finally find life’s meaning.
Scientist and spiritual explorer Rupert Sheldrake looks at seven spiritual practices that are personally transformative and have scientifically measurable effects. He combines the latest scientific research with his extensive knowledge of mystical traditions to show how we may tune into more-than-human realms of consciousness through psychedelics such as ayahuasca, and how everyday activities can have mystical dimensions, including sports and learning from animals. He discusses traditional religious practices such as fasting, prayer, and the celebration of festivals and holy days.
Why do these practices work? Are their effects solely inside our brains and essentially illusory? Or can we really make contact with forms of consciousness greater than our own?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and the author of more than ninety technical papers and fourteen books, including Science Set Free. After studying at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, he worked in Hyderabad, India, as principal plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, and lived for two years in the Benedictine ashram of Father Bede Griffiths. From 2005 to 2010, he was director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for the study of unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge.
He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California, and of Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon, UK. He lives in London with his wife Jill Purce, with whom he has two sons.
To learn more about Rupert Sheldrake and his work, visit www.sheldrake.org
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