School for Good Living Podcasts

Tony Bartelme is a Three-Time Pulitzer Prize nominee, narrative storyteller, and investigative journalist. He has recently spent five months in Tanzania in order to capture and tell the story of brilliant brain surgeon Dilan Ellegala, which began with a post-residency vacation and ended with a revolution of Tanzania’s medical training programs. Tony documented Dilan’s story in a book which he titl...

Oren Jay Sofer is a long-time mindfulness teacher, coach, and author of Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach To Nonviolent Communication. Oren has spent many years studying and practicing Buddhism, Yoga, and Mindfulness. He has since used those skills to lead trainings in various companies on a wide range of mindfulness topics. Oren joins me today to discuss communication and the significant powe...

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr is the author of five books, including his latest publication The Seven Secrets To Healthy Happy Relationships. Don belongs to a family with a rich heritage in the Mexican Toltec tradition. Having learned the tradition from the teachings and preachings of his grandmother, Don now dedicates his life to helping others heal from the wounds that conditional love inflicted upon them....

Michael Moss is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter and author of Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. Michael is known for his work as an investigative reporter and his time spent digging into the food industry and their questionable tactics. He has been a reporter for the Wall Street Journal before joining the New York Times in 2000. He has been a guest on vario...

Boyd Varty is an experienced tracker, a skill he gained from a growing up on the Londolozi Wild Game Reserve in South Africa. He spent his early years exploring the terrain and learning the trade of a tracker, before taking over the reserve that his grandfather started. It was there that he met a particular woman who opened his eyes to the more important things in life. He has since ventured to do...

Edward Creagan is a two-time author, and the Mayo Clinic’s first provider to be board certified in hospice and palliative medicine. He has written over 500 scientific papers and has spoken at more than 1000 presentations around the world. Doctor Ed began his interest and journey toward hospice care at the early age of eight years old. He has since grown in his passion for end-of-life care and is d...

Pam as worn many hats in her time, but above all she is a traveler and a writer. Pam has lived a very eventful life, starting with her senior year trip to Israel just as they entered a war. She has hiked across the Middle East, relying heavily on the help and kindness of strangers. She has survived abusive relationships and talks heavily to the value of being listened to. She shares all these less...

Jim Davidson is a lifetime climber and expedition leader, spending over thirty years of his life pursuing the tallest peaks this Earth has to offer. Jim has summited Mount Everest, where he survived earthquakes, avalanches, and he’s even escaped alone from an 80 foot deep glacial crevasse. He was hiking Everest in 2015, when a record-setting earthquake shook the mountain, trapping dozens of hikers...

As the TIME’s magazine “most influential person in space”, Avi Loeb is at the forefront of all things interstellar. Avi is the longest standing chairman over the Harvard Black Hole Initiative, and has served as the lead advisor for space at the White House. Avi has spent the vast majority of his life studying the stars and pioneered research into the first stars that came into existence in our uni...

Roman Krznaric is the author of the book The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking , which shares six practical ways we can retrain our brains to be future-focused. He guides us on how we might shift our priorities to saving our planet and the quality of humanity beyond ourselves now. Roman is also the founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum , a founding faculty member a...

I lived in Japan for a period and love the country, culture, and language. It is what drew me to read Héctor García’s book, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life , co-authored with Francesc Miralles. In my conversation with Héctor, we discuss how the book takes some Japanese concepts and combines them with other Eastern thought, Western philosophy, and practical philosophy.  Perhaps...

My guest today joined the Stanford Design Division faculty in 1962. He was the youngest member of the university faculty and now decades later, he’s the oldest faculty member.  His name is Bernard (Bernie) Roth and he is the author of The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life . As one of the founders of Stanford’s d.school , he remains active in the d.school’s...

This week my guest is Jeff Speck, a city planner and urban designer who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. His book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time was written not just for designers, but to also convert generalists to his cause. Walkability doesn’t just impact city planning; it has huge effects on economics, health, and the environment. Jeff’s TE...

Dr. Antonio Zadra is the author of When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep alongside co-author Robert Strickgold, they detail a new theory on why we dream and call it the NEXTUP model. Antonio is a researcher who focuses on the scientific study of dreams, including everyday dreams, nightmares, lucid dreams, sleep terrors, and sleep walking. Together with his students and coll...

One of the questions I always ask guests is, “What does it mean to live a good life?”  For the first time, however, a guest has left me thinking about changing that question to, “What does it mean to die a good death?”  This guest is Eve Joseph, an award-winning poet, incredible storyteller, and the author of a book about death and dying (which also happens to be her memoir) entitled In the Slende...

All people have passion and curiosity, but Matthew Gavin Frank is notable for pushing these to the point of obsession – a creative, productive, compelling obsession.  He is the author of Preparing the Ghost and Flight of the Diamond Smugglers , among other works, and is a creative writing professor in the MFA program at Northern Michigan University .  Matthew’s work has appeared widely in journals...

Stephan Aarstol is the author of the book Five-Hour Workday: Live Differently, Unlock Productivity, and Find Happiness , which gives advice on how to live life to the fullest by cultivating more efficiency in fewer work hours. Stephan’s ideas have been shared in Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and he’s also presented at Harvard Business School. Stephan holds an MBA in New Venture Management, w...

Marcus Whitney is the author of Amazon bestseller Create and Orchestrate: The Path to Claiming Your Creative Power from an Unlikely Entrepreneur .  Early in his professional career, Marcus was a college dropout waiting tables seven days a week, but he taught himself to code, became an entrepreneur, and eventually became a venture capitalist.  He is co-founder and partner at Jumpstart Health Invest...

Stephen Cope’s training, career, and beliefs have gone through a vast array of changes: he was a psychotherapist, pianist, and professional dancer. He was at different times a Protestant, a Presbyterian, a Quaker, and a Buddhist. When he took what he had planned to be a three-month sabbatical from his psychotherapy practice to immerse himself in yoga, he discovered that he wanted to stay. Less tha...

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. He is the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, as well as the co-host of a podcast by the same name. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance and has appeared in over 100 publications. In addition, he has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. In his latest book, The Art of Im...

Peter McGraw is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, but he’s also been a stand-up comedian, humorist, adventurer, game show host, and author. All this came about when he developed an itch to solve the age-old question: Why is comedy funny? He found the age-old answers problematic, and so embarked on a journey to discover the true answer that entailed traveling 91,000 miles, trying h...

Max Frenzel is the Co-founder of Time Off, a platform to help people and companies deliberately practice time off so they can be their most successful and creative self. He is an AI researcher with Bespoke Inc, an AI Engagement Platform based in Tokyo providing multilingual solutions to hotels, airports and train stations. He earned a PhD in Quantum Information Theory from the Imperial College of...

Chris Bailey is the creator of the blog, A Life of Productivity, a platform he launched straight out of graduating from business school. He was on a mission to follow his passion and devour everything he could get his hands on the subject of productivity. By the time he finished his yearlong experiment, his work had been read over one million times by people from almost every country around the wo...

Captain Charles Moore is an oceanographer and captain of the research vessel Algalita. He is known for articles that recently brought attention to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – an area of the Pacific Ocean strewn with floating plastic debris caught in a gyre. Charles is the founder of Algalita Marine Research Institute where he currently works, and the founder of Long Beach Organic, a non-prof...

Brian C. Wilson is a Professor of American Religious History in the Department of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University. He has a BSc in Medical Microbiology from Stanford University, an MA in Hispanic Studies from Monterey Institute of International Studies, and an MA and a PhD in Religious Studies with the University of California. Brian is also the award-winning author of Dr. John...