CIIS Public Programs

Considered one of the leaders of a current generation of Buddhist teachers, Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist minister, author, activist, and an authorized Lama—or Buddhist teacher—in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. Through his writings, teachings, and travels Lama Rod invites everyone into his life intersections as a Black, queer male who was born and raised in the South, and heavily influenced...

Chef extraordinaire and popular TV host Martin Yan has spent decades promoting Chinese and pan-Asian cuisines on his popular TV show Yan Can Cook. Passionate about cooking as well as its benefits for health and wellbeing, Chef Yan is known world-wide for celebrating Chinese and Asian cuisines and cultures, encouraging home cooks to explore these important and delicious foodways. In this episode, c...

Five years ago, author and journalist Lauren Martin had a good job in New York, an apartment in Brooklyn, and a boyfriend she loved, but she was wrestling with feelings of inferiority, anxiety, and irritability. She began to figure out why she was having these negative emotions and how to control them by posting her thoughts and questions online, a project which soon became the popular online plat...

This week, we are revisiting an episode originally recorded early in the COVID-19 pandemic during one of our first live streaming online events on April 23rd, 2020. In this episode, CIIS professor and renowned scholar Richard Tarnas shares astrological insights into the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, which he describes as “a time in which there are volcanically intense evolutionary pressures for t...

This week, we are revisiting an episode from our archives featuring a conversation with neuroscientist Matthew Walker about his groundbreaking exploration of sleep and its transformative power to change our lives for the better. This episode was originally recorded live with an in-person audience on October 9th, 2017. A transcript is available at ciispod.com.

This week, we are revisiting an episode from our archives featuring a conversation with astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo about self-compassion, astrology, and why you should never look at your crush’s chart. This episode was originally recorded live with an in-person audience on March 20th, 2019. A transcript is available at ciispod.com.

This week, we are revisiting an episode from our archives featuring a conversation with journalist Celeste Headlee exploring ways to have meaningful conversations in a politically and socially polarized time. This episode was originally recorded live with an in-person audience on February 22nd, 2018. A transcript is available at ciispod.com.

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through life not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about gender roles, romance and consent, and the pressures of society? In her latest book, Ace, journalist Angela Chen set out to further understand her own asexuality by examining the perspectives of a diverse group of asexual people. In this episode, Angela is joined by journ...

One of the most distinguished voices in American literature, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday has devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially its oral tradition. A member of the Kiowa tribe who was born and grew up on Indian reservations throughout the Southwest, Dr. Momaday has a deep attachment to the land he knows well and...

This week, we are revisiting an episode from our archives featuring a conversation about food, family, and more with author and chef Nik Sharma originally recorded on December 4th, 2018 in front of a live audience at CIIS. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, lan...

Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), has been a relentless advocate for developing legal contexts for the beneficial uses of psychedelics paired with psychotherapy for decades. In this episode, licensed psychotherapist and CIIS assistant professor Gisele Fernandes has a fascinating conversation with Rick about the future o...

As a body justice advocate and leader Dr. Joy Arlene Renee Cox believes that the spaces carved out by third-wave feminism and the fat liberation movement fail at achieving true inclusivity and intersectionality. She believes that fat Black women need to create their own safe spaces and community—instead of tirelessly working to educate, chastise, and strive against dominant groups. Dr. Cox’s lates...

Both science and philosophy have traditionally conceived of the self as though it were separate from the world. Italian philosopher, psychologist, and AI engineer Riccardo Manzotti asks us to consider consciousness in a radical new way: Our conscious experience is actually one and the same with the external world. In this unique conversation, philosopher Abre Fournier joins Riccardo as he offers a...

Shot at by police as an 11-year-old child for playing baseball in the wrong spot, as an adult Larry Ward continued to experience racialized trauma when his home was firebombed by racists. At Plum Village Monastery in France, he found a way to heal with his teacher, Vietnamese peace activist and Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Now a Zen Buddhist teacher and author, Dr. Ward's work examines the causes...

We live in a world where entitlement, incivility, and narcissism are incentivized. How do we learn to negotiate a world that often gaslights us and empowers the loudest and most toxic voices? In this episode, CIIS Community Mental Health professor and psychologist Elizabeth Markle has a conversation with psychologist and narcissism expert Dr. Ramani Durvasula exploring the new normal of narcissism...

In these pandemic times, and times of racial justice uprising and reckoning, the failure of U.S. and global health care systems to meet human need or to even ensure the basic safety of health care providers continues to be revealed. How did we get here? In this episode, CIIS Faculty and multi-sector social justice organizer Mordecai Ettinger offers an exploration of the hidden history of white sup...

Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. In Mikki Kendall's latest book, Hood Feminism, she takes aim at the legitimacy...

We all tell ourselves stories about who we are. Many of these stories are self-critical and disempowering. Through the practice of self-compassion, we can rewrite these stories and become more authentic and powerful versions of ourselves—transforming not only our own lives but also the lives of those around us. For author Marianne Ingheim the practice of self-compassion changed her life in ways bi...

This week, we are showcasing selections from three previous episodes featuring California-based voices for change. We begin with Kazu Haga joined in February 2020 by CIIS professor and restorative justice expert Sonya Shah for a conversation about his life, his experiences utilizing Kingian Nonviolence, and his book, Healing Resistance. The second selection features Boots Riley, the writer and dir...

In this episode Kirah Tabourn, educator, creator, and astrologer of THE STROLOGY, talks with Bay Area astrologer and medium Jessica Lanyadoo about her life and work, her book Astrology for Real Relationships, and how her book—and astrology more broadly—can be applied to a diverse set of relationships and our current times. This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live onli...

Drawing on her decades of clinical experience with couples, and incorporating spiritual practices, social justice perspectives, current news stories, and neuro-scientific findings, Dr. Molly Howes has developed an unsparing, accessible and ultimately optimistic model for apologies. In this episode, Artificial Intelligence scientist and a Buddhist teacher Nikki Mirghafori talks with Dr. Howes about...

Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset) is a Native American attorney, teacher, and award-winning activist who grew up on the Penobscot Indian Reservation (Indian Island), Maine, and is the author of Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. In this episode, she is joined in a conversation with healer and movement builder Brenda Salgado. Together they explore Native Ame...

Whether you consider yourself an artist or not, viewing art is a creative act that can be a catalyst for inquiries into our world. In this episode, writer, artist, and curator Cindy Shearer explains how viewing artworks from the vantage point of its makers allows us to experience art-making from the inside out—drawing from what undergirds art in all forms as information and inspiration. This episo...

Fifty years after meaningful efforts toward civil rights, the US remains overwhelmingly unjust. Our current solutions to make the world more equitable and just—from desegregation to diversity and representation—are not enough. In this episode, somatic psychologist Sherri Taylor talks with author Calvin Baker about his book A More Perfect Reunion, in which he presents a profound, masterful reading...

As the first Latinx person to direct national domestic policy issues, Cecilia Muñoz knows the difficulties of getting ahead without trailblazers to follow. In her latest book, More than Ready, she offers lessons inspired by both the challenges she faced and the victories she achieved in the White House. Cecilia’s own life and work taught her tactical tools, tools that women of color can look to, a...