Complement with pioneering psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the conciliation of our inner conflicts , then revisit Lawrence on , composed as he lay dying from tuberculosis in a sanatorium, not yet midway through his forties. and Scottish philosopher John Macmurray on ..read more

Emerging from the various entries is a reminder, both haunting and comforting, that despite how singular our experience feels, we are all grappling with just about the same core concerns; that our time is short and precious; that all of our confusions are a single question, the best answer to which is love. the magic of real human conversation , living with only marginal and mostly illusory control over the circumstances of our lives and other people’s choices, forever vulnerable to the accidents of a universe insentient to our hopes. — poet and philosopher David Whyte’s lovely meditations on ..read more

What emerges is a dazzling testament to naturalist Sy Montgomery’s poetic observation that in the termite cathedral, built by millions of blind insects with no leader and no blueprint. There is an affirmation of poet and potter M.C. Potter’s credo that — Simler’s breathtaking celebration of nature’s rarest color — then revisit the sapiens counterpart to these creaturely dwellings in Carson Ellis’s of the satin bowerbird ( ), the “lace citadel” of the cross orbweaver spider ( ), the “silky apartment” of the comet moth ( ), the “mossy miniature home” of the hummingbird ( ), the “cactus cabin” of ..read more

Because it is so rooted in our grasp of reality, the shame of having misjudged a situation, misplaced an expectation, miscalculated one’s own merits, is a profound unmooring of the psyche: , Lynd goes on to explore examples of shame and its conciliation across the canon of Western literature, then examines the two natures of shame, what it offers in confronting the tragedy of life, and how to think from parts to wholes. Couple it with Lynd’s contemporary Karen Horney on , then revisit Ellen Bass’s magnificent poem the conciliation of our inner conflicts ) — an investigation of the disconnect b ..read more

Lensing Jung’s legacy through the light of thinkers as varied as Hannah Arendt, William James, Yuval Harari, and Oliver Sacks, Slater goes on to explore and celebrate the countercultural movement in the margins of this techno-trance — ways of seeing and of being that, unlike posthumanism, refuse to exclude beauty, eros, and transcendence from the human story, a story told in the language of the soul, irreducible to data. Complement with Iain McGilchrist on “it is necessary… to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light,” and that “everything in our lives depends on how we bear ..read more

Complement with Marie Howe’s stunning poem honoring Stephen Hawking, then revisit the poetic physicist Alan Lightman on laid the foundation of Western music ) and animated here by the talented (who has previously animated Joan as Police Woman singing Emily Dickinson ), the poem is an “Ode to Joy” for our own time and for the epochs to come, sonorous with what is best in us, sounding through the possible ..read more

Complement with Kahlil Gibran on and Christian Wiman on “a knot made of two intertwined freedoms,” ) — the 1902 masterwork based on his Gifford Lectures about science, spirituality, and the human search for meaning , which also gave us James on the four features of transcendent experiences the courage to weather the uncertainties of love , then revisit William James on (because, lest we forget, love is “the quality of attention we pay to things ..read more

from a previous season of Couple with Daniel Bruson’s breathtaking animation of former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s poem , then revisit Nick Cave on on an animated poem reckoning with this central question of being alive. “My God, It’s Full of Stars” the antidote to our existential helplessness ..read more

Because the marks left on leaf veins by these death-bites are so distinct, evidence of them can be found in the fossil record as far back as the Eocene, nearly fifty million years ago — the dawn of modern fauna, a time when forests covered the Earth from pole to pole. Sheldrake reflects: seems to manipulate the mind through the backdoor of the body: Research indicates that the fungus may not have a physical presence in the ant’s brain, instead secreting chemicals that activate the ant’s muscles and steer its central nervous system (which we now know is ), mycologist Merlin Sheldrake details th ..read more

Less than a year after reports her boss deemed far too lyrical with the animated story of earned her the National Book Award as “a work of scientific accuracy presented with poetic imagination,” the television program , then revisit Carson on approached her to write “something about the sky,” in response to a request from a young viewer. how the clouds got their names writing and the loneliness of creative work the ocean and the meaning of life ..read more