Road to Resilience

After a yearlong hiatus, Road to Resilience returns with a new producer and host. Stephen Calabria is the Director of Podcasting for the Mount Sinai Health System. He comes with a background in print and TV journalism, as well as years of experience in podcast hosting and producing. On this relaunch episode of Road to Resilience, Stephen explores where the show has been in the past several years –...

Road to Resilience host and producer Jon Earle signs off with a few reflections from listeners on the past 75 episodes. Stay subscribed for future updates about the podcast. Check out more episodes of Road to Resilience —as well as guest pictures, transcripts, and more— on the Mount Sinai website . Road to Resilience brings you stories and insights to help you thrive in a challenging world. From f...

After more than 400,000 downloads, Road to Resillience host and producer Jon Earle is saying goodbye. For his final episode, we would like to feature you !  We want to hear about your favorite guest, episode, or resilience insight. What’s one thing you have you learned from the podcast that has helped you to be more resilient? Share your thoughts in a brief (~30 sec) voicemail to (315) 677-1464  (...

Mariana Figueiro, PhD, is director of the Light and Health Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She studies how to use light to improve human health, including for patients with Alzheimer's, cancer, and Parkinson's. On Road to Resilience , Dr. Figueiro explains how to use light to sleep better and feel more alert during the day, including tips on digital device...

Rev. Audrey A. Williamson of Harlem's historic Mother AME Zion Church estimates that up to 15 percent of her congregation succumbed to COVID-19, a burden of grief that weighs heavily on the community. Eager to help, Rev. Williamson recently teamed up with Mount Sinai's Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth to facilitate a series of workshops aimed at helping parishioners pro...

A conversation between Rachel Yehuda, PhD , Director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Bessel van der Kolk, MD , President of the Trauma Research Foundation and author of the No. 1 New York Times bestseller The Body Keeps the Score. Recorded over Zoom on Nov. 18, 2021 as part of the MINDSET lecture series hosted by t...

Sarrah Strimel Bentley has been singing and dancing since she was three years old. “I would spend hours putting on one-woman shows,” she recalls. “I think we all knew pretty early on what I was destined to do.” Sarrah went on to appear in The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and other Broadway shows. Now a yoga instructor, Sarrah faced the greatest challenge of her life this past year—an aggressive...

A ballet dancer's life spirals out of control—to addiction, homelessness, and prison. But with the help of somebody who's walked the road before, Dino is finding his way home. Iris Bowen is a social worker at the Coming Home Program at Mount Sinai Morningside, which provides re-entry support to people returning from incarceration. The program is part of the Mount Sinai Institute for Adva...

There’s no shortage of tools in the resilience toolkit, and yet resilience remains something of a mystery. We still don’t fully understand why some people respond to challenging situations with resilience, or exactly how to prepare for hardship. In his new book, The End of Trauma , resilience researcher George Bonanno, PhD, argues that flexibility is the missing piece. On Road to Resilience , Dr....

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, psychiatrist Sandra Lowe, MD, talks about what she's learned about trauma and resilience from treating responders. Her answers have implications for COVID-19 and beyond. Dr. Lowe is Medical Director at the World Trade Center Mental Health Program Clinical Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai. Links: World Trade Center Health Program at Mount Sinai Mo...

Jordyn Feingold, MD, MSCR, MAPP, shares three evidenced-based techniques for harnessing the power of the positive in bleak times. Dr. Feingold is a PGY1 in psychiatry at Mount Sinai, working on research and interventions aimed at promoting the well-being of medical students, residents, and physicians. A version of this episode originally aired in June 2020. (Click here to view.) The Office of Well...

Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD, is impossible to pigeonhole. She's a psychologist, professor, minister, poet, dancer, podcaster, and more. In every role, she brings a message of relief and empowerment to marginalized people. A trauma survivor and specialist, "Dr. Thema," as she's known, helped pioneer the study of racial trauma. In this conversation, she shares pearls of wisdom from h...

An alarming number of Americans are lonely. Recent estimates range from 22 percent to as high as 61 percent , and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic made "social distancing" a household term. According to Louise Hawkley, PhD , an expert on loneliness and social isolation, the loneliness "epidemic" has serious consequences for our health as individuals and as a society. On Ro...

For the estimated 2.8 million Americans suffering from treatment-resistant depression (TRD), the arrival of esketamine nasal spray in 2019 couldn’t come soon enough. The FDA’s decision to approve the drug, the first ketamine-based antidepressant, was the latest chapter in ketamine’s journey from anesthetic to club drug to antidepressant. It was also the result of two decades of research, including...

Anu’s story begins with a pulse. She’s 12 years old, holding her grandmother’s wrist, feeling the heartbeat’s rhythm—bounding or thready, slow or fast. “I was so taken by how much you could learn from touching someone, feeling the rhythm of their life, literally,” she recalls. Now a cardiologist at Mount Sinai, Anu Lala, MD, cares for patients with heart failure. Her work often places her at the b...

Is it better to be self-critical or self-compassionate? Until 20 years ago, when Kristin Neff, PhD , began pioneering the empirical study of self-compassion, most high-achievers would likely have answered “self-critical.” Indeed, being hard on yourself can seem like the path to success. But Dr. Neff’s research has shown that self-compassion is actually the surer and healthier road. In this intervi...

Like exercise and nutrition, sleep is central to good health. And yet, so many of us— Road to Resilience producers included—don’t get enough high-quality sleep. So we called sleep expert Rafael Pelayo, MD, for advice. Dr. Pelayo is the author of “How to Sleep: The New Science-Based Solutions for Sleeping through the Night." In this episode, he explains how sleep keeps us resilient and offers...

Sociologist Monika Ardelt, PhD, has spent her career studying an ideal that’s as universal as it is elusive: wisdom. And like many wisdom researchers, she’s concluded that we don’t necessarily become wiser as we age. Many people even become less wise. It’s a troubling thought, not only because wisdom is associated with resilience and life satisfaction, but also because if we’re not becoming wiser,...

We’re in the midst of a fertility crisis. Worldwide fertility has dropped more than 50 percent in the past 50 years, and the decline shows no sign of slowing. Shanna H. Swan, PhD, a leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist, has spent more than two decades studying the impact of environmental chemicals and pharmaceuticals on reproductive tract development and neurodevelopment. In this...

If you live in a WEIRD society—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—chances are you aren't getting enough exercise. And it's not because you're bad or lazy; it's because you're normal. On this episode, Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel E. Lieberman, PhD, explains how evolution designed humans to avoid unnecessary physical activity, i.e. "exercise&q...

Ted Bunch is co-founder of A Call to Men, an organization dedicated to preventing violence against women and promoting healthy manhood. Mr. Bunch is also co-author of "The Book of Dares," which contains 100 challenges for boys based on the work of A Call to Men. Help shape the future of Road to Resilience by taking our listener survey . Links: A Call to Men "The Book of Dares"...

Author, speaker and podcast host Luvvie Ajayi Jones shares tips for conquering fear and making good trouble. “Facing fear is absolutely a muscle,” Ms. Ajayi Jones says. “Being courageous is literally a moment-by-moment decision.” Her new book is "Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual." Help shape the future of Road to Resilience by taking our listener survey . For more on fa...

Yvette Calderon, MD, MS, understands why vaccine hesitancy remains stubbornly high in communities of color. Growing up in New York City public housing, she heard stories of forced sterilization in Puerto Rico and saw the medical system put other families first. Now Dr. Calderon finds herself on the flip side of the coin, trying to persuade reluctant colleagues and community members to take the COV...

Sharon Salzberg was one of the first to bring meditation and mindfulness into mainstream American culture beginning in the 1970s. She's a co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness . Her podcast The Metta Hour , features interviews with leaders in the mindfulness movement. She recently rele...

Rachel Yehuda, PhD, has been at the forefront of trauma research and treatment for three decades. Her pioneering work with populations including military veterans and Holocaust survivors has illuminated the biology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite scientific advances, PTSD remains difficult to treat. Even “gold standard” cognitive-behavior approaches are ineffective for too many p...