The Wonder Dome

Owen Ó Súilleabháin lives the belief that art has the power to awaken the most dynamic and creative aspects of ourselves in the world, regardless of whether or not we identify as “artists.” He's a singer, composer, and a teacher who has collaborated with world-class artists including Steven Spielberg, Russell Crowe, Nigel Kennedy, the Chieftains, and David Whyte. He’s usually found working al...

Do you ever ask yourself, “What can I do in the face of these deep, pervasive social, cultural, and spiritual dilemmas that our species has faced and will continue to face in the decades and centuries to come?” Stephen Cope’s latest work The Dharma in Difficult Times dives deep into this question. He weaves ancient wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita together with an exploration of the lives of eight di...

My guest today is Ariel Burger : scholar, artist, poet, musician, rabbi, professor, nonprofit leader, and former student of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel. Ariel is an incredibly playful, creative, and devoted servant of the public good. He is the author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom . Elie Wiesel was perhaps one of the most important voices fo...

I’m excited to have Sam Chase on the show today. Sam is one of the most gifted mindfulness & meditation practitioners I have ever met. He is the author of a wonderfully rich book called Yoga and the Pursuit of Happiness. It is a deep, dense, and humorous exploration of ancient wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras, paired with the latest research in neurobiology and mindfulness. I...

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “language is fossil poetry.” If that's true, then Báyò Akómoláfé is one of the most remarkable archaeologists and excavators of language's hidden meanings and of our shared human past. What I love about Báyò is his capacity to reformulate, reimagine, reconfigure, and remember. He works with language in a way that deepens our understandings of what's tru...

Ben Preston is an Ulsterman from Northern Ireland who currently lives and works across Australia and New Zealand as a regenerative engineer and designer. Regenerative designers think about what is it to make a space that comes to life and invites people in. One that invites people to name their biggest hopes, dreams, and fears, connect around them, and in the process, take care of and support each...

Those of you who have been listening for a while know that I care deeply about the creative process. About the ways in which insight can come to us from the most unexpected places. One of our opportunities as human beings is to show up for whatever life brings. Carrie Newcomer is someone who embodies that as fully as any of us might hope for. Carrie is a songwriter, a recording artist, a performer...

Allie Middleton is deeply attuned to the future possibilities that might be. She has been meditating and practicing yoga for over 45 years and is the author of Yoga Radicals - a curated set of inspiring stories from 36 pioneers in the field. The book emerged from a conference that brought together a collection of a truly remarkable and diverse set of yoga practitioners from around the world. As a...

In all aspects of her work and life, Tiffany Wen beautifully models the capacity to share our stories with authenticity and vulnerability. As a yoga teacher, as an activist, as a podcast host, as a storyteller. In all of those contexts, she's helping people tap into inner wisdom and actually listen instead of repressing it or ignoring it. She hosts the Alt-Normal , a podcast centering on dive...

Mattias Olsson is a remarkable independent documentary filmmaker and the creator of Campfire Stories , making films that touch the roots of change. His films invite us into the lives of people who are actively imagining and creating a world of ecological balance and human sanity. Campfire Stories ascribes to something called the gift economy, the understanding that the beauty that any one of us ca...

Michael J. Bobbitt is the executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council , working to elevate cultural life across the state with an emphasis on improving arts education, promoting diversity, and encouraging excellence in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences. In our conversation, Michael shares that he is actually moving away from language like “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” because it...

The first time I had the good fortune to meet Lawrence Barriner II , I was so deeply touched and moved that I immediately invited him to come on this podcast. We spent about 45 minutes together and we went deeper in our sharing than I suspect some people get a chance to do in even their most intimate friendships (which is its own kind of tragedy). Lawrence offered the very unique and simple invita...

Robert Hanig is a pioneer in the field of systems thinking and systems sensing. He's been doing this work for decades, helping organizations and groups of people more deeply understand the self-evident interconnectedness of everything that they do. He says at one point in our conversation, if it feels like your system is dysfunctional, you need to start paying closer attention because the sys...

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing the power duo of Shannon Lucas and Tracey Lovejoy , co-founders of Catalyst Constellations. These two are true forces of nature. Catalysts are the kind of people who have a vision and also have the energy, skill, and persistence to bring that vision to life - often at a pace that can leave other people spinning if they’re not careful.  Catalyst Constellati...

Robert Stephenson is a coach, trainer, mentor, and inspirational speaker. For a number of years, he was the director for coaching at Animas , one of the most diversified and impactful coaching schools in UK and Europe. He has a deeply humanistic approach to his work that's grounded in his clear love of human beings and the ways in which we can engage with all aspects of ourselves to write and...

Dorie Clark is seemingly unstoppable. She's been named one of the top 50 business thinkers in the world. She's been recognized as the number one communication coach in the world. She's a consultant, a keynote speaker. She teaches Exec Ed at Duke University and Columbia Business School. She's authored multiple books, including Entrepreneurial You (which, in part, inspired this p...

My guest today is the wise, generous, courageous soul, Parker Palmer.   You'll hear him touch into his sense of how he was born into the world and how that shaped him moving through life. And how, at age 82, he continues to reckon with the big questions of who we are as a people and what it is to take a stand for what you believe in. As he says in his most recent book, “Old is just another wo...

Elizabeth Segran is a senior staff writer at Fast Company, and her work has appeared in a broad range of publications, including The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Salon. We focus the bulk of our conversation on her fantastic book, The Rocket Years , which explores the impact that choices we make in our 20s have through the rest of our life. Havin...

I feel really lucky that Schuyler Brown and I found our way to each other through some beautiful synergies. She is a dear friend of David Sauvage (Episode #52) , and she co-facilitated a sacred ceremony for one of my dear friends, Elizabeth, daughter of Azima Jackson (Episode #67) . Realizing this, we touched on the power of synergies and paying attention to what’s emerging in each moment to shape...

I found my way to Azima Jackson through a dear friend of mine, Elizabeth, who reached out and said, Hey, I love what you're doing with the podcast. You've got to talk to my mom. And she was right! Her mom, Azima, is a remarkable soul who has evolved into an elder committed to questions of identity and purpose. She is an interfaith minister who explores the pains that life brings us and t...

Dr. Irle Goldman is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has been teaching students at Lesley University and Cambridge College for 50+ years. He brings to his work - and to this conversation - a gift of loving presence. This gift of being curious about what's arising in the moment in a way that allows all of us to see new possibilities in our lives. But what was really fun...

As a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University's School of Medicine, Dr. Brian Dias seeks to understand how our neurobiology, physiology, and our psyches are impacted by stress and trauma, and how parental legacies of stress and trauma influence future generations. Today, we focus on the research that Brian and his team are doing around the remarkable field of epigen...

Elizabeth Markle is the co-founder and executive director of Open Source Wellness , bringing the ethos of ‘community as medicine’ into the modern healthcare system. She's a licensed psychologist, Ph. D., and researcher who's devoted her attention to understanding what makes communities thrive . She is also a teacher at the California Institute of Integral Studies, focusing on community m...

Richard Barrett is a provocateur of human potential. He has committed his life to helping the human species evolve. And, if I’m honest with myself, I expected him to be a solemn elder espousing wisdom from up on high. But he surprised me by bringing a lovely joie de vivre to our conversation, spiced with a dash of "the devil may care" attitude. As I reflect back, it’s clear to me that th...

My conversation with Netaly Ophir Flint was an exciting meeting of multiple worlds. She and I have worked together as part of a leadership development organization called KONU that she helps to lead. She's an amazing consultant, coach, teacher, and entrepreneur, and she also has an incredible personal journey. Our conversation centers around our shared passion for adaptive leadership, a revol...