Meditative Story

On the Mexican holiday Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, we allow ourselves space for our memories and our grief about those we’ve lost — as well as for joy, and even humor, around the continuity between life and death. While many cultures try to tiptoe around death, the rituals of Día de Muertos ask us to look clearly at it, recognize death’s place in our lives, and honor both its everyday-ness...

As an actor and a new mom, Catherine Reitman felt pulled between two competing identities. To capture her frustration, her sadness, her truth, she wrote it all down. In sharing her darkness, she found a way to turn a light on for someone else. If this episode resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Please take a moment to share your reflections by rating and reviewing Meditative Story in y...

Jackals and leopards in the fields. The sound of a lion’s roar. Majestic African bush elephants outside the front door. This is childhood for Forrest Galante as a kid growing up on a farm in Zimbabwe. He’s adventurous and instinctive and connected to the living earth. But a sudden move to the U.S. puts him in a completely new territory. In discovering this new urban world in front of him, Forrest...

In precisely chosen words, the writer, artist and Zen priest Zenju Earthlyn Manuel tells a story from her girlhood, a road trip from LA to Louisiana in 1957. While five-year-old Zenju sits in the back seat dreaming of cowboys, her parents navigate an altogether different landscape. From them, from the trip, Zenju now believes she’s learned how to find her way in the world, in her skin. If this epi...

Host of NPR’s Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me!, Peter Sagal is wrecked and stuck in the wake of a divorce. Suddenly, he finds himself with two free weeks. In need of a healthy distraction, Peter jumps on his Harley for a long solo trip out west. Though he has a destination in mind, what he finds on those quiet, desolate, curvy roads is a new focus, a new voice. And though his aim was to fill his time,...

What's is like to be an identical twin? Game designer Jane McGonigal tells a story of similarity and divergence as she explores the magic of sharing DNA while becoming an individual. If this episode resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Please take a moment to share your reflections by rating and reviewing Meditative Story in your podcast player. It helps other listeners find their way t...

We’re excited to launch WaitWhat's newest weekly series, Pioneers of AI — your guide to the latest technological frontier. Hosted by AI thought leader, scientist, and investor Rana el Kaliouby, tune in for insights from industry trailblazers, explore the ethical considerations of AI, and get ahead of what’s to come as the technology continues to develop. Head to the Pioneers of AI feed now to hear...

While filming one day in the Congo Rainforest, legendary photojournalist John Moore pursued the vision of a perfect photograph — a vision that literally brought him to his knees. He shares the magic that can occur when you let go of the desire to control the outcome. If this episode resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Please take a moment to share your reflections by rating and reviewi...

How to teach a classroom full of "difficult" kids? By meeting them where they are, and finding a way in. This is something that Sinéad Burke sees every day in her teaching career. Her own life experience has taught her how to turn everything that excludes someone into something that includes, by looking for that common ground we all have with one another. What can you do to build a way in for some...

Best-selling author Isabel Allende has led an extraordinary life marked by moments of tragic loss. A coup in her home country of Chile forces her family into exile, and an unexpected illness takes away one of the most important people in her life. And yet, at 80 years old, Isabel feels a lightness that contradicts the attachment she felt in her youth. In this episode, Isabel teaches us how the mos...

On his podcast and TV show Song Exploder, Hrishikesh Hirway digs deep into the creative process of legendary songwriters. But before Hrishikesh becomes a podcast creator, he's a working musician himself … who finds his ability to create being slowly drained away by self-doubt. He stumbles into a case of songwriter’s block that lasts him nearly seven years. Today, Hrishikesh shares the story o...

Tuxedo-clad, face covered in makeup, hair slicked and parted in the middle, jumping around a creaky stage, teenage Josh Radnor (now an actor, producer and director) makes a life-changing discovery: He can act. And he loves it. But what to do now? At 16 years old, all Josh knows is that his ambition to act is at odds with everything that surrounds him, and with what he thinks his family expects of...

It's early morning. A hotel room. Wajahat Ali, playwright and author, is traveling for work when he gets a call from his wife – she's sobbing, panicked, heartbroken. Their tiny daughter, Nusayba, has been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. And time stops. What can he do? Rage. Despair. Sob. Fight. Then ... let go. Waj shares the story of how his young daughter's fight with cancer taught him to strike...

Twenty-four long miles into a grueling paddleboard competition, photographer Donald Miralle sights the buoy that tells him he's just a few miles from home. But what should offer a sense of relief provokes a feeling of dread. His body shuts down, his muscles refuse to work, his motivation dwindles. With nothing left to summon, he is desperate to quit. That’s when Donald spots a shadow in the water:...

Gordana Biernat grows up in a household full of mayhem and darkness. But there’s one saving grace: her grandfather, who spins legendary stories of the quirky folkloric magic he sees all around them. In today’s Meditative Story, Gordana talks about reopening herself to the unseen and the “funny rushes of surprise” she encounters all around her when she stops dodging fear and starts seeking new chan...

As the pandemic drags on, Vanessa Hua finds herself in a dark place of panic and doom-scrolling. But that begins to change on one spring day, when she takes a walk outside with her kids – and recognizes a small jewel-green plant growing on the forest floor. Her discovery of wild food foraging helps her tap   into a body of shared, ancient knowledge, one that helps her find steadines...

As a boy in Oxford, Henry Shukman seeks refuge from a painful childhood by disappearing into poetry, immersing himself in nature. But the beauty and clarity he finds there is only fleeting. A series of visits with a mysterious old family friend help him to understand that experiencing beauty — and its extraordinary gifts — doesn’t have to be a chance encounter. In fact, it could become a guiding p...

Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is the first openly lesbian woman to climb the famous Seven Summits, a bucket list of the highest mountain on every continent. But while preparing for the seventh summit, a peak that has eluded her climb after climb, she realizes that she can’t charge forward with the same conquering mentality. Denali — the highest mountain peak in North America — leads her to discover the im...

Jacob Sartorius has been making music and short videos since he was a kid. By age 14, he had millions of social media followers who loved his honest, heartfelt content. But on the flip side of that love, he discovered a darker side to his celebrity — one that took him by surprise and threatened his own well-being. Until a simple technique, and a new friend, helped him find a way back to himself, o...

As the wind howls around his camping caravan on a remote Welsh farm, poet David Whyte sits at a table, trying – and failing – to write. He's worried he has lost his gift. He's worried he never had a gift at all. But just outside, invisible and unexpected, is someone who offers him help – and friendship – at the exact moment he needs it. Their lifelong friendship takes root here, in the magical, wi...

When young Nate Berkus pushes open the door to his new bedroom, an unfinished space in his family home, he doesn’t know it yet – but he’s opening the door to a new vision of what his life can be. A life that he can design for himself. Because sometimes, choosing a new paint color is shorthand for choosing a new path. If this episode resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Please take a mom...

Restaurateur Danny Meyer takes us back to where it all began for him: a family trip to Europe and a simple plate of pasta. That memorable meal sparked a lifetime practice of discovery that continues to feed his creativity and his soul. If this episode resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you. Please take a moment to share your reflections by rating and reviewing Meditative Story in your podc...

Stephen Wilkes has a unique approach to photography that requires a sustained focus to capture subtle changes in light and perspective. The same could be said of the way he cared for his mother, whose resilience and love belied the trauma she experienced as a refugee from the second world war. Though it often falls on young Stephen to manage her spells, he is able to transcend his family’s haunted...

There he is: pacing around the campfire, contemplating, ruminating. Then, with a crooked, mischievous smile, he begins. “Here’s a story…” This is a memory violinist Lindsey Stirling will always carry of her dad, the tireless storyteller, telling the tallest of tales, dreaming the biggest of dreams. But also a man who couldn't quite see his life-changing impact on others because of the disappointme...

Rural California is all Kristin Windbigler knows as a child — its wild, green pastoral landscape, where living off the land and self-sufficiency is a choice to live abundantly. One evening, gathered around the television with her mom and dad, Kristin watches a news report that suggests families like hers, living below the poverty line, are in critical need of help. What the TV journalist miss...