I Heart This

Today I’m delighted to talk to poet and artist, Bianca Stone. Stone is the author of a number of poetry collections including Someone Else’s Wedding Vows , The Moebius Strip Club of Grief , and What is Otherwise Infinite , which won the Vermont Book Award in 2022. She is also a poetry comic artist who uses illustration to illuminate her own poetry and the poetry of others. Stone is the editor-at-l...

What makes a successful life? Whether we think about it or not, every day, we live out our answer to that question. Our choices become a story about what we value. Together, they make us who we are. In today’s episode, one poet’s iconoclastic answer to that question, and what you and I might learn from it about what it takes to live a good life.

Poems are just arrangements of sounds, marks on a page. But the right one can change history, outlast civilizations, and turn a respectable men into wandering vagabonds.  In this episode: poetry, why we need it, and how a 13th century love affair changed it forever. Ten Life-changing Poems (For People Who Don't Read Poetry) "A Brief for the Defense" Jack Gilbert "I Imagine the Gods" Jack Gilb...

What do lovers of a democracy do when they share a country with people who are explicitly anti-democratic? How does a divided people build a government based on compromise when they won’t even listen to each other. Today, we put questions like these to Vermont State Representative, Mike Mrowicki. Mike shares his hopeful take on democracy, lessons learned from his service, stories of a fascist radi...

What can we possibly do to defend democracy when such powerful people are acting with such impunity? In this episode ... three things you could do today, an honest look at whether they'll make a difference, and some thoughts on dedication from someone who's been there before. Check out these leaders mobilizing people across the country: --50501: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/ --Indivisible: https://i...

Democracy may be one of the best things that humans have ever done, but what are our chances of keeping it? In today’s episode we’ll watch Plato go head-to-head with Norman Rockwell, analyze a graph, check in with Barbara Kingsolver and a Martian, and … learn what hope there is for our beleaguered democracies. This is episode two of our four-part series on democracy. I Heart This, everybody. I’m B...

Autocrats want you to think that democracy is a failed experiment, that democracies have lost their way. But they are wrong. And if we're going to get beyond the fear and overwhelm, we're going to have to hold in our minds why democracy is worth fighting for.

This month, we’re trying something different. Instead of our usual audio essay, we’re bringing you an appreciation collage from southern VT, made up of a whole bunch of "man on the street" interviews.

We live in a world buried under an avalanche of content. More than 720,000 hours of new video are uploaded to YouTube every day. A new book is published every eight seconds. There are so many posts and tweets and comments that they seem to be unraveling our very ability to focus. Will making something new do anything but add to the noise? 

Ask around and you’ll find plenty of people who hate to run. It’s hard. It’s hot. It’s sweaty. You feel like you’re doing it wrong. And, man, it’s just boring. Who wants to just swing their legs for an hour? For much of my life, I never thought of myself as a runner. In this episode, a story about how I fell in love with it.

There can be miracles when you believe … but today … an ode to doubt. Here’s a look at the virtues of not knowing, of questioning what you know, of second-guessing. And how they make us better. 

In this episode, Ben makes the case that despite its poor reputation, humanity does not suck.  In thirty-five minutes, Ben outlines why people think humans are terrible, deliver a scathing rebuttal, point out why humans are his favorite species, and hopefully convince you to look at Homo sapiens in whole new ways.

“If you like nerds, raise your hand. If you don’t raise your standards.” Today's episode, like vertebrate lungs, comes to you in two parts. The first is a celebration of the joy of finding people who share your love of something, no matter how unusual it is. The second is a celebration of the joy I’ve found with people who love science in particular. So grab your pocket protectors and push your gl...

The world is on fire both figuratively and literally. How do we deal? In this episode, delivered as a live talk for UCONN chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Ben draws on poetry, science, history, and philosophy to explore how we all might live in a world where we have no idea what is going on.

Many of us enjoy talking about politics about as much as we enjoy paying taxes or going to the dentist. But this month on I Heart This,  I suggest that we have good reasons to feel grateful for political disagreements. References Green, T. V. (2021, November 23). Republicans and Democrats alike say it’s stressful to talk politics with people who disagree . Pew Research Center. https://www.pew...

Bread might seem like the boring food, the backdrop for the stuff you put in the sandwich. But actually, in a world of strange foods, bread may be the strangest, most unlikely substance that humans have ever ingested. The story of what bread is and how we came to eat it, is one of alien biology and lost civilizations. It turns out that we only have bread because of a long chain of bizarre and unli...

Thanksgiving: An “I Heart This Manifesto” Introduction In October of 2022, I decided to start a podcast about things that I loved. At the time, this seemed like a not-terrible idea. It turns out that I am the world’s foremost authority on things that I love, so I was actually somewhat qualified to speak on the subject. And seeing how it was focused on my own obsessions,it was also pretty much guar...

Colin Tudge's amazing book, The Variety of Life is not a field guide, but it is a survey and celebration of all the things that have ever lived. I cannot recommend this book enough. Newcomb's Wildflower Guide truly is the most effective key that I have ever used. Positively genius. A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs by George Petrides is the best guide to woody plants in my region. Jean-Baptiste La...

IHT Ep 010 School Fresh Notebooks When I was a kid, the best thing about school was getting new notebooks. Man, I loved ‘em. All those crisp, blank pages just called out to be filled. Some kids like to draw, and yeah, I had a fair number of doodles in the lined leaves of my Steno 5-subject, but that wasn't the real reason I loved all that fresh paper. And, yeah, I also wrote the occasional story i...

Robin Hood: I cannot find the version of the legend of Robin Hood that I read on my grandfather's shelves when I was young. The book was old, maybe over a hundred years. The glue in the binding had long since crumbled. I remember that the one that I read was written in verse. But you know how memory is. All of this information is suspect. Anyway, if you're interested in this older version of the s...

Coming Soon

Voicemail Special thanks to my daughter, Eva Lord, for providing the voice of America's voicemail message. Tisallee Actually, this is my wife, Laura's, story. She went for years believing that Tisallee was America's other name before someone straightened her out in the third grade. Mountains of California When I was 15, I got to fly across the country to work in the backcountry of the Sierra Natio...

We are surrounded by a force of remarkable power, by a substances that pervades us and every living thing, by inspiration itself ... and nobody can see it. In this episode we explore why every breath you take is truly remarkable. Check out: some video footage of an imploding tanker car . this famous illustration of Otto Von Guericke's magical Magdeburg sphere.

Check out the theatrical trailer for Captain Fantastic. You can watch Captain Fantastic on Amazon Prime Video if you already subscribe. Or you can rent or buy it on iTunes or Google Play . I owe a great debt to Sheila O'Malley. Her review led to so many insights about art. story, politics, the way we think about "raising" children, and the way we think about movies. You can read her review of Capt...

Send me a message at ben@iheartthispodcast.com . Tell me about your favorite walks in the woods. Visit iheartthispodcast.com to find more things to love. This story about John Muir can be found in many sources, but my favorite is the one as told by Lee Stetson in his Evening with John Muir one-man stage production that I first saw in Yosemite Valley when I was 12 years old. Carlos Castaneda, for t...