Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Emma Venarde is a college sophomore at Brown. Joellen Russell is a climate scientist in Arizona. They are leaders in a growing army of earnest, endearing women inspiring growth in understanding, behavior, policy and legislation to protect our planet. Here we talk about their best and worst moves on the road to change. Sign up for the free 2x monthly nonpartisan newsletter at ScienceMoms.com to sta...

High school junior Clare Murphy wrote this touching, personal and evocative essay for a school assignment. It conveys incredible warmth and deep affection for a very special lake house and also the large, loving family that inhabits it each summer. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit htt...

Based on a week’s worth of conversations with friends who are parenting hard and losing sleep because of it, I turned to my neuroscientist friend, Lisa Feldman Barrett, who gave me a validating thought. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What do college freshman Malia Honda and deep sea oceanographer Claudia Benitez-Nelson have in common? They both believe that they can change the story of Planet Earth. Here’s a lively, endearing conversation between people who care and have successes to show us. To keep in touch on this issue, join Kelly and sign up for the free, occasional newsletter from Science Moms. To learn more about listen...

Today’s Thanks For Being Here is the first episode since we here at Kelly Corrigan Wonders made the decision to include many different types of special tributes besides eulogies. We believe sharing tributes of all kinds is the loveliest way to tap into our better selves and remember our highest values. This episode features a beautiful Bar Mitzvah blessing. It was written and submitted by Kelly’s...

If you’ve been listening to our recent climate series, “All Together Now”, you’ve heard from some pretty impressive teens. For those of us listening to their incredible achievements and lovingly wondering about the drive of our own kids, we offer a delightful and hilarious poem by Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States called, “To My Favorite 17 year-old High School Girl”. To lea...

Join us as we marvel at the work of a young activist who reminds us that the movement cannot be stopped. Rahul Durai, a junior in high school, is working hard and smart to help Indiana pass a piece of legislation that could turn the tide in coal country. Katharine Hayhoe (professor, evangelical, science mom and bestselling author) says he’s right on the money. To stay informed as we move forward,...

Once in a great while, maybe even just once in a lifetime, a person comes along who totally changes your perspective, teaches you what matters and gives you an example of what loving your fellow man is supposed to look like. Avery Anderson was that person. She affected people near and far and people around the world showed their love and support of her by wearing rubber bracelets in Avery’s favori...

Thanks to a brilliant TED talk by Baratunde Thurston, I’m thinking about how people tell the story of what’s happened. I also reached out to my neuroscientist friend Lisa Feldman Barrett to ask her about how the brain processes language. It all sounds very heady and it is, a little, but it’s also something worth thinking about since we live in language. To learn more about listener data and our pr...

Yllka Gashi is Kosovo’s answer to Jennifer Aniston. After years starring in the nation’s most adored sit-com, she left her war torn country to raise her daughter in the US. But a certain story stuck with her: a war widow who eked out a living selling honey from her husband’s beehives. 8 years in the making, HIVE won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance and was Kosovo’s official Oscar submission, makin...

12 year-old Jack was an artist, a brilliant reader, a mathematician, a serious student of the Bible and a lover of Legos, baseball and his family. Always conscious of doing the right thing, Jack was the kid you’d want your kids to hang around with to keep them on the straight and narrow. His school friends remember him as smart, kind, funny and the life of the party. Jack was able to take on the j...

Coming off a family wedding, I dug out a copy of The Middle Place to share a passage about learning that my fertility was a casualty of the cancer war and why I had become so convinced that I was meant to have “four by forty.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.co...

The worst thing that can happen to a mother happened to Cherylann Gengel. And it has changed every moment since. She is one of those high purpose people who makes you question your vocational certainty and wonder what might you be capable of. She is also a living reminder that loss is a territory with many eco-systems and singular viewpoints. If you feel so moved, her organization will put any gif...

Kirsten’s dad Tom was beloved by his kids and grandkids (one of whom couldn’t pronounce the letter “T”, resulting in the nickname Papa Fom). Tom was a man who loved the simple pleasures in life: playing and winning various games, flying balsa wood planes with his family, joking around, drawing and painting, eating candy, playing “house” and “school” with his grandkids or letting them climb all the...

Here’s a word that everyone is saying these days: mindfulness. I don’t totally know what it means, officially, but I have jerry-rigged a little process to help me mind the moment, to see the day for the small miracle that it is and enter it with intention — and it’s working for me. So, see what you think. And let me know if you have ideas or tweaks on Instagram. To learn more about listener data a...

As a 19 year old, Letitia Hanke took a job as a receptionist at the local roofing company. Within 10 years, she bought the business she has now been running (and growing) for 18 years. If you want to remember that anything is possible, this conversation will wake you up to the possibilities. Part 2 of the How’d You Do That? series. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit:...

The only person who didn’t know how truly special Ellie O’Connor was, was Ellie O’Connor. A woman of action, not words she was pure magic - able to make everyone’s wishes come true, quietly, humbly. Whether it was sending a letter every single week for 5 years to her grandson who was away at college, helping with family gatherings, cooking, cleaning or giving the perfect gift, Little Ellie’s gener...

It’s a small but life changing miracle when someone tells you about their harder days. This is for anyone who needs a reminder that everyone, even the most famous people in the country, have heartaches, losses, lingering areas of shame and anxieties. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit h...

With the demand for excellent mental health care at its all time peak, it’s a good thing people like Tracy Defina dared to go back to school — for many years — to get a PhD in counseling. This is the story of how she pulled off this enormous achievement in the middle of life already teeming with to dos. My conversation with Tracy is the first of a 4-part series called How’d You Do That? with women...

Moira O’Connor submitted this 2-part eulogy written and originally read by her nephews Jonathan and Jamie to honor her dad/their grandfather, George Hebbel. George was the father of 5, grandfather of 13, and great grandfather of 14. He was a man who was larger than life: a fighter pilot, a water skier who skied with a pipe casually clenched in his teeth, an ocean kayaker able to hoist his kayak on...

For anyone who has ever caught themselves turning away from feedback, this one’s for you. And if you find it hard to learn from your children or their friends, this might particularly resonate! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthony Ray Hinton has been on the pod before. In fact, our listeners chose him for the 2021 Episode of the Year. Recently, Kelly and Ray met up on stage at St. Joe’s in Philly, together in person for the first time, to talk about — well — love, which guided Ray through an unjust 30 year sentence on Alabama’s death row. Nothing we tell you here can prepare you for his story and insights. Just know...

Shawn eulogizes her parents Bobbie and Roy Gomer who she lost to Covid within a day of one another in May 2020. She talks lovingly of her stoic, humble, 5’2” father who beamed with pride over his children and grandchildren and her dynamo, firecracker, renowned bridge player of a mom, who was Shawn’s everything. These two incredible people who always wanted more for their children and grandchildren...

Our greatest act of agency is the minute by minute choice of where we place our attention. Here’s a thought for all of us who feel so damn out of control. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you need proof that nothing is quite as endearing as honesty, meet Lilly Singh. She is a smart, funny millennial whose YouTube sketch comedy videos are as brilliant as they are beloved: 3 billion combined views. This is a conversation worth your time, both for yourself and any young adult in your life who would benefit from your expanded understanding of the pressures of modern life. You can wa...