The New School at Commonweal

Michael Samuels, MD - Demeter, Buddha and the Bears: The Ancient Roots of Contemporary Spiritual Healing

Fri, 16 May 2008 20:05:18 -0700

Michael Samuels is the founder and director of Art As a Healing Force, a project started in 1990 devoted to healing oneself, others, the community and the earth with creativity and art making. Michael teaches Art and Healing at San Francisco State University, Institute of Holistic Studies. He is a bear dancer with the Chumash People. He has used creativity, art and guided imagery with patients with life threatening illness and life crises for over thirty years in private practice and in consultation. He lectures and does workshops nationwide for physicians, nurses, artists, and patients on how to use creativity and spirituality in healing. He has organized many nationwide conferences on creativity and healing and visited and participated in projects in hospitals where creativity, art and music are used with patients. Michael is currently working on a book on Native American Healing and a book on Animals and Spirituality. He is the author of 21 books including the best selling Well Body Book, Well Baby Book, Well Pregnancy Book and Seeing With the Mind's Eye, one of the first books on guided imagery. Seeing With the Mind's Eye was named as one the 10 most influential health books.

The Eleusian Mysteries, the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, was the most important art and healing ritual for consciousness transformation in history. The mysteries were enacted in ancient Greece for 2000 years. The Tibetan Buddha realms provide the technology of guided imagery and were the high point of body, mind and spirit technology for thousands of years. The Bear Dance conducted currently in southern California has healed the Chumash people for thousands of years. These three rituals help us understand how we can heal patients with spiritual tools in present day medicine. Dr. Michael Samuels is currently working with all three forms to develop a contemporary spiritual technology to aid in healing patients today.

Bill Drayton - Everyone A Changemaker

Fri, 09 May 2008 19:03:20 -0700

Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur. He is the founder of Ashoka, Youth Ventures, and Get America Working -- three deeply complementary efforts to make the world a better place. Ashoka, the oldest and larger of these ventures, has created a global community of social entrepreneurs in over 70 countries around the world. Bill talks about these three projects in this extended interview with Michael Lerner.

Bill has been a social entrepreneur since he was a New York City elementary school student. He was born to a mother who emigrated from Australia as a young cellist and an American father who, also unafraid to step into the unknown, became an explorer at an equally young age. Public service and strong values run through the stories of both parents' families. These family influences, the rich diversity and openness of life in Manhattan-as well as America's deep cultural concern with equity, which flourished during the Civil Rights years-all interacted with one another and with Bill's temperament to plant Ashoka's earliest roots.

Annie Leonard - The Story of Stuff

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:27:04 -0700

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world. Coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, a funder collaborative working for a sustainable and just world, Annie communicates worldwide about the impact of consumerism and materialism on global economies and international health.

Geoff Lawton & Penny Livingston-Stark - A Conversation on Permaculture

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:58:04 -0700

Geoff Lawton is a world-renowned permaculture practitioner. He emigrated from England to Australia and studied permaculture with the originator, Bill Mollison, in Tasmania. He founded the Permaculture Research Institute www.permaculture.org.au
on Tagari Farm in New South Wales, Australia, a 147-acre farmstead previously developed by Mollison. Since 1985, Geoff has designed and implemented permaculture projects in 18 countries for private individuals and groups, communities, governments, aid organizations, and multinational corporations. He has taught the Permaculture Design Certificate course in 20 countries.

This program is hosted by Penny Livingston-Stark. Penny is internationally recognized as a prominent permaculture teacher, designer and speaker.

Lloyd Kahn - What Really Happened in the '60s

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:10:34 -0700

Lloyd Kahn creates visually exquisite and conceptually visionary books about the buildings we live in. His most recent book is Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter. A longtime Bolinas resident, Lloyd was living in San Francisco in the 1960s and has a powerful narrative about what he believes really happened between 1963 and 1967. He has some wonderful visual images that capture that iconic moment in time. Lloyd spoke about the decade and shared some slides from Home Work -- evidence that the power of the 1960s lives on in the buildings visionary home builders are still creating today.

Lloyd Kahn is the editor and publisher of Shelter Publications in Bolinas, California. He was formerly the shelter editor for the Whole Earth Catalog, the editor of the 1973 book Shelter. Shelter Publications has been in business for 37 years and has also published the international bestseller Stretching, by Bob Anderson. Their latest book is The Barefoot Architect: A Manual On Green Building.

Binka Le Breton, writer and lecturer on environmental and human rights.

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:09:28 -0800

Binka Le Breton lives on a Brazilian rainforest farm, runs the Iracambi Rainforest Research Center, lectures and broadcasts internationally on rainforest and slavery topics, is president of Amigos de Iracambi, is on the board of directors of the Keystone Center and, in her spare time, writes books. Binka's most recent book, The Greatest Gift: The Courageous Life and Martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang, is based on the 40 years Sister Dorothy Stang spent aiding in the struggle of poor farmers for land rights against logging and development companies in Brazil.

Gary Cohen - Green Chemistry, Green Materials, Green Energy: Recipe for a Toxic Free Future

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:07:59 -0800

Gary Cohen is one of the foremost strategists and activists in the international community of those seeking to move us toward a world free of toxic chemicals. Gary is a Founder and Co-Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm, the international campaign for environmentally responsible healthcare.

Gary is also the Executive Director of the Boston-based Environmental Health Fund, which works on domestic and global chemical safety issues. Gary is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Sambhavna Clinic and Documentation Center in Bhopal, India, which provides free medical care to the survivors of the Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal. He has been working on environmental health issues for twenty years and has published numerous articles on environmental health issues in the United States and India. Gary is an advisor to the John Merck Fund on issues of environmental health and a co-founder of Green Harvest Technologies, a bio-based materials start up. He was awarded the Skoll Global Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006 and the Frank Hatch Award for Enlightened Public Service Award in 2007.

This conversation was recorded in front of a live audience.

Carl Anthony - Thought Leader in Environmental Justice, A Live Community Gathering

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:53:59 -0800

Carl Anthony is one of the preeminent thought leaders in environmental justice in the United States. He is the Founder and was for 12 years was the Executive Director of the Urban Habitat Program, one of the oldest environmental justice organizations in the country. Until recently he was a Ford Foundation Program Officer in the Community and Resource Development unit. He is currently a Visiting Scholar/Ford Foundation Senior Fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of California Berkeley.

The mission of Urban Habitat is to promote multicultural urban environmental leadership for sustainable, socially just communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a colleague, Luke Cole at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, he published and edited the Race, Poverty and Environment Journal, the only environmental justice periodical in the country.

This conversation was recorded before a live audience.

Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D. - The Sacred Depths of Nature

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:33:58 -0800

Ursula Goodenough is Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She is the author of "The Sacred Depths of Nature" (Oxford University Press, 1998), which offers religious perspectives on our scientific understandings of nature, particularly biology at a molecular level.

In 1989, Ursula joined the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) and served continuously on its council and as its president for four years. She has presented papers and seminars on science and religion in numerous arenas, co-chaired five IRAS conferences on Star Island currently serves on the editorial board of Zygon.

As well as her biology courses, Ursula co-teaches The Epic of Evolution, with a physicist and a geologist, for non-science students. Her research has focused on the cell biology and (molecular) genetics of the sexual phase of the life cycle of the unicellular eukaryotic green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and, more recently, on the evolution of the genes governing mating-related traits. Ursula was educated at Radcliffe and Barnard Colleges, Columbia University and Harvard University. She did two years of postdoctoral work at Harvard, and was Assistant and Associate Professor of Biology at Harvard from 1971-1978 before moving to Washington University.

Ursula has written three editions of a widely adopted textbook, Genetics, and has served in numerous capacities in national biomedical arenas, including service on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) review panels, membership on committees of the National Research Council (NRC), editorial boards for several professional journals, and many positions in the American Society for Cell Biology, including the presidency.

Dr. Martha Herbert - Can Autistic Children Recover? The New Paradigm of Autism Research and Treatment

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:53:31 -0800

A pediatric neurologist and a brain development researcher, Dr. Martha Herbert's main focus is autism. She received the first Cure Autism Now Innovator Award and directed the Cure Autism Now Foundation's Brain Development Initiative. She is the Co-Chair of the Environmental Health Advisory Board of the Autism Society of America and directs their Treatment Guided Research Initiative (TGRI). Her research program includes studying what makes some autistic brains unusually large and how the parts of the brain are connected and coordinated with each other. To this end Martha utilizes multimodal imaging techniques including MRI, EEG and MEG, is particularly interested in using imaging, in coordination with clinical observation, metabolic biomarkers and animal studies, in shedding light on the physiological level of changes in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, and on potential domains of plasticity and targets for intervention.

Martha is a member of the MGH Center for Morphometric Analysis, and an affiliate of the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. She is director of the TRANSCEND Research Program, Treatment Research and Neuroscience Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Martha earned her medical degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Prior to her medical training she obtained a doctoral degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying evolution and development of learning processes in biology and culture in the History of Consciousness program, and then did postdoctoral work in the philosophy and history of science. Martha trained in pediatrics at Cornell University Medical Center and in neurology and child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has remained.

Paul J. Growald - The Way of the Bees (and Other Pollinators)

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:15:35 -0800

Investor, venture philanthropist and beekeeper, Paul Growald, is Chairman and Founder of the Coevolution Institute and its Pollinator Partnership including the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, a collaboration of more than 120 groups that is the principal center of work to protect pollinating animals throughout the Americas. He is also a Trustee of the Rockefeller Family Fund and donor/advisor to the Growald Family Fund. His main philanthropic interests are in the conservation of ecosystem services as exemplified by pollinators, in the minimization, mitigation and management of climate change, and in policies and politics that impact conservation.

Virginia Veach, Ph.D. - A Life Exploring Healing

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:58:56 -0700

Virginia Veach is a physical therapist and psychotherapist who has worked extensively with people with cancer and many other life-threatening diseases. In this conversation with Michael Lerner, she describes how she does her work and some of the major influences on the development of her unique approach to healing.

Nancy E. Adler, PhD - How Increasing Income Disparities Affect Health

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:43:04 -0800

Nancy Adler is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Vice-Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, and Director of the Center for Health and Community. Nancy came to UCSF to initiate a graduate program in Health Psychology. She has served as director of that program, an NIMH-sponsored postdoctoral program in "Psychology and Medicine: An Integrative Research Approach," and a new postdoctoral "Health and Society Scholars Program" funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Nancy has been awarded the UCSF Chancellor's Award for Advancement of Women and the George Sarlo Prize for excellence in Teaching, and the Outstanding Contribution to Health Psychology award from the American Psychological Association, Division of Health Psychology. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and is currently the Chair of an IOM committee on psychosocial services for cancer survivors.

Nancy's earlier research examined the utility of decision models for understanding health behaviors with particular focus on reproductive health. This work identified determinants of consequences of unwanted pregnancy. Her current work examines the pathways from socioeconomic status (SES) to health. As director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on SES and Health, she coordinates research spanning social, psychological and biological mechanisms by which SES influences health. Within the network she has focused on the role of subjective social status in health.

Krista Tippett - Speaking of Faith

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:54:29 -0700

"Speaking of Faith," with Krista Tippett, host of the radio program Speaking of Faith, October 11th, 2007. Michael Lerner conducted this interview.

Krista Tippett

A journalist and former diplomat, Krista Tippett came up with the idea for Speaking of Faith while consulting for the internationally renowned Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at Saint John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota. She has hosted and produced the program since the Speaking of Faith project began as an occasional feature in 2000, before taking on its current form as a national weekly program in 2003.

Tippett is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and a former Fulbright Scholar. She has reported and written for The New York Times, Newsweek, the BBC, and other international news organizations. Tippett also served as special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to West Germany. In 2007, Viking published her first book, Speaking of Faith—Why Religion Matters, and How to Talk About It. Of that book and her program, journalist and author Yossi Klein Halevi has written, "there is no more trustworthy guide to the challenges of faith in a dangerous world than Krista Tippett."

Paul Gorman - Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) : Part 1

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:29:17 -0700

Part 1: Paul Gorman, founder and Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment since 1993, received the Heinz Award for the Environment in 1999. Mr. Gorman, a graduate of Yale and Oxford University, worked in the U.S. Congress and served as press secretary and speechwriter to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He taught at the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College and Adelphi University, hosted a public radio program for 29 years and co-authored How Can I Help? From 1985-91, Mr. Gorman served as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's Vice President for Program, overseeing community-based initiatives and helping organize international conferences on religion and environment in Assisi, Oxford and Moscow.

Paul Gorman - Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE) : Part 2

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:25:19 -0700

Part 2: Paul Gorman, founder and Executive Director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment since 1993, received the Heinz Award for the Environment in 1999. Mr. Gorman, a graduate of Yale and Oxford University, worked in the U.S. Congress and served as press secretary and speechwriter to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He taught at the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College and Adelphi University, hosted a public radio program for 29 years and co-authored How Can I Help? From 1985-91, Mr. Gorman served as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's Vice President for Program, overseeing community-based initiatives and helping organize international conferences on religion and environment in Assisi, Oxford and Moscow.

David Bonbright - Saving the World? What International Philanthropy Can and Cannot Do

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:20:51 -0700

A New School conversation with David Bonbright, Director of Keystone Accountability, recorded September, 20th, 2007. Michael Lerner conducted this interview.

David Bonbright has been an international grantmaker with the Ford Foundation in Africa during the end of apartheid and with the Aga Khan Development Network in pre- to post-911 Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Originally from Ross, California, David is based in London with his talented South African filmmaker wife, Elaine Proctor. His mission in recent years, through a project he calls Keystone Accountability, has been to create a better way for foundations, non-governmental organizations, philanthropists and other civil society actors to evaluate the actual effectiveness of third sector projects.

Richard Tarnas, Ph.D. - Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 13:13:46 -0700

Richard Tarnas, is a professor of philosophy and cultural history at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He also teaches psychology and cultural history at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. A graduate of Harvard University and Saybrook Institute, and formerly the director of programs at Esalen Institute, he is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern that became both a best seller and a required text in many universities. His most recent book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network. It has just been released in paperback by Penguin Putnam.

Rachel Kyte - Investing in Women, Equity and Sustainability—a World Bank Perspective

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:33:20 -0700

Rachel Kyte, a British national, became Director of the Environment and Social Development Department at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in January 2004. Since joining the department she has stewarded the development and adoption of the new sustainability policy, performance standards and disclosure policy for IFC and overseen an overhaul in internal systems and procedures to support the strategic importance IFC places on environmental and social sustainability. The IFC's new Performance Standards serve as a basis for Equator Principles which have now been adopted by over 50 financial institutions.

Michael Lerner conducted this interview.

Teddy Cruz - Beyond Borders: Local Architectural and Urban Planning Solutions for Global Political and Social Problems

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:05:02 -0700

Recorded July 26th, 2007. Chris Desser conducted this interview.

California architect Teddy Cruz's work dwells at the border between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, inspiring a practice and pedagogy that emerges out of the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research and design production. He has taught and lectured in various universities in the U.S. and Latin America, and in 1994 he conceived and began the LA/LA Latin America / Los Angeles studio, an experimental summer workshop at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. During 2000-05, he was associate professor in the school of architecture at Woodbury University in San Diego where he began Border Institute (BI) to further research the urban phenomena at the border between the US and Mexico. He has been recently appointed associate professor in Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. His firm, Estudio Teddy Cruz, was selected among eight other firms as one of the national "Emergent Voices" in architecture by the Urban League in New York City.

Chris Desser is a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute, a think tank focused on developing the concept of The Commons as an overarching analytical structure organizing across sectors and disciplines. She served on the California Coastal Commission and the San Francisco Commission for the Environment. In 2003, she co-founded Women's Voices, Women Vote, a project that successfully increased the participation of single women in the electoral process. Chris was the director of the Funder's Working Group on New Technology, an association of foundations concerned with the environmental, cultural and political implications of emerging technologies such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. She was co-editor of Living with the Genie: Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery (Island Press, 2003).

Arisika Razak and Carol Densmore - Birth and the Healing Wisdom of Earth-Based Traditions

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:41:03 -0700

Arisika Razak, RN, CNM (Certified Nurse Midwife), MPH, Program Director, Integrative Health Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and Carol Densmore, CNM, MPH, Director of the Cambridge Health Alliance Doula Program, July 20th, 2007

Arisika Razak's work integrates the disciplines of Women's Studies/ Women's Spirituality, and Women's Health and Spiritual Dance, through the incorporation of the teachings of earth-based spiritual traditions, women's spirituality, and women's health into the language of movement and dance.

She has worked as a nurse midwife, health care provider, and health care administrator for over 25 years, serving as staff nurse-midwife and director of the Nurse-Midwife Service at Highland Hospital in Oakland; director of the Alameda County Pre-term Delivery Prevention Project, and Assistant Administrator for Ancillary services at Cowell Hospital, UC Berkeley.

Carol Densmore brings 25 years of experience in education, program development, and clinical care to her current position as the Director of the Cambridge Health Alliance Doula Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This unique, multicultural program offers emotional, social, and educational support for childbearing women at the Cambridge Birth Center and Cambridge Hospital. She has attended births in Boston area hospitals and homes, a Mexican border birth center and an Indian desert village. In India, she traveled extensively and researched the training of village health workers and traditional midwives. Carol is interested in the impact of culturally sensitive social support on women's access to their own healing resources and existing health services, as well as the power of support to affect the success of health promotion measures and outcomes. She holds Master's Degrees in Education and in Public Health from Boston University and is a Certified Nurse Midwife.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim - Living Cosmologies: Nature and Spirit Converging

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:43:29 -0700

Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. She is a co-founder and co-director with John Grim of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Together they organized a series of ten conferences on World Religions and Ecology at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003) and many other books.

As a professor of religion John Grim taught courses in Native American and Indigenous religions, religion and ecology, ritual, and mysticism in the world's religions. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Institution of Social and Policy Studies, Yale University and President of the American Teilhard Association. His published works include: The Shaman: Patterns of Religious Healing Among the Ojibway Indians (University of Oklahoma Press, 1983) and, with Mary Evelyn Tucker, a co-edited volume entitled Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994, 5th printing 2000).

Peter Kingsley - Finding What Is Real

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 21:49:12 -0700

Peter Kingsley is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on the origins of western spirituality, philosophy and culture. He is the author of the books "Ancient Philosophy Mystery and Magic": "Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition", "In the Dark Places of Wisdom", and "Reality".

Jacob Needleman - Why Can't We Be Good?: Overcoming Obstacles To Our Higher Ideals

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Jacob Needleman is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and the author of many books, including The American Soul, The Wisdom of Love, Time and the Soul, The Heart of Philosophy, Lost Christianity, and Money and The Meaning of Life. In addition to his teaching and writing, he serves as a consultant in the fields of psychology, education, medical ethics, philanthropy, and business, and has been featured on Bill Moyers's acclaimed PBS series A World of Ideas. Steve Heilig conducted this interview. Steve Heilig is the Director of Public Health and Education for The San Francisco Medical Society and a Research Associate for The Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) at Commonweal.

Parker Palmer - The Politics of the Brokenhearted: On Holding the Tensions of Democracy

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Parker Palmer, Founder and Senior Advisor of the Center for Courage & Renewal and author of several books including, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation and A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, served for fifteen years as Senior Associate of the American Association of Higher Education. He now serves as Senior Advisor to the Fetzer Institute. He founded the Center for Courage & Renewal, which oversees the "Courage to Teach" program for K-12 educators across the country and parallel programs for people in other professions, including medicine, law, ministry and philanthropy.

Charlotte Brody, RN And Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen - Making Change as Treatment for Despair

Thu, 31 May 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Charlotte Brody, RN, is Executive Director of Commonweal, and a founder and former Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm, an international coalition of 443 organizations in 52 countries working to make health care more environmentally responsible and sustainable. She is also on the Steering Committee of the Safe Cosmetics Campaign. A registered nurse and mother of two, Charlotte has served as the Organizing Director for the Center for Health, Environment and Justice in Falls Church, Virginia, the Executive Director of a Planned Parenthood affiliate in North Carolina and the Coordinator of the Carolina Brown Lung Association, an occupational safety and health organization focused on cotton textile workers.

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, is Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal and Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She is Founder and Director of The Healer's Art Curriculum, which was featured in US News & World Report in 2002 and 2005 and is presently taught in 54 medical schools here and abroad. Her intensive CME programs have enabled thousands of physicians to deepen their sense of calling and service. Dr. Remen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal (Riverhead Books, 1996) and the national bestseller, My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge and Belonging (Riverhead Books, 2000).

Sandra Steingraber - Healing Inside Out: A Poet's Quest, A Mother's Journey

Mon, 14 May 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D., ecologist, cancer survivor, and author of Living Downstream and Having Faith, received her doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan and master's degree in English from Illinois State University. She is the author of Post-Diagnosis, a volume of poetry, and coauthor of a book on ecology and human rights in Africa, The Spoils of Famine. She has taught biology at Columbia College, Chicago, held visiting fellowships at the University of Illinois, Radcliffe/Harvard, and Northeastern University, and served on President Clinton's National Action Plan on Breast Cancer.

Rachel Kessler and Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen - Nurturing the Inner Life in Education

Thu, 17 May 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Rachael Kessler is recognized by Daniel Goleman as a "leader in a new movement for emotional literacy," and has developed a framework for nurturing the inner life of students and teachers that honors the interests of educators, parents, and policy-makers. Her groundbreaking book, The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School (ASCD 2000), was distributed to over 110,000 educators worldwide. Her work has been endorsed by educators across the spectrum of religious and political belief, progressive to conservative, fundamentalist to agnostic. Howard Gardner wrote that her "examination of the quest for meaning among today's adolescents is both daring and needed."

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, is Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal and Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She is Founder and Director of The Healer's Art Curriculum, which was featured in US News & World Report in 2002 and 2005 and is presently taught in 54 medical schools here and abroad. Her intensive CME programs have enabled thousands of physicians to deepen their sense of calling and service.

Pete Myers, Ph.D. - Environmental Health Science: Human and Ecosystem Health

Mon, 07 May 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Pete Myers, Ph.D. is founder, CEO, and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is also coauthor of Our Stolen Future (1996), which explores the threats posed by man-made chemical contaminants to fetal development and human health, and he is Senior Advisor to the United Nations Foundation (Washington, DC). From 1990-2002 Myers was director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, a private foundation supporting efforts to protect the global environment and to prevent nuclear war. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Virginia.

Rick Ingrasci, M.D., M.P.H. - Joy, Social Intelligence & the Ethical Imagination, A New School Event

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Rick Ingrasci, M.D., M.P.H., is a healer and activist who has been involved in consciousness exploration and social transformation since the mid 60s. Ingrasci has a strong background in psychiatry, holistic medicine, and community development. He co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility, the American Holistic Medical Association, Interface, and Hollyhock, a retreat center in British Columbia. He is the co-author of "Chop Wood, Carry Water: A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Daily Life."

Nipun Mehta - Invisible Revolution of the Inner-net

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Nipun Mehta, Co-founder of CharityFocus.org on the "Invisible Revolution of the Inner-net."

CharityFocus is an all volunteer run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that endeavors to leverage technology for inspiring greater volunteerism and providing meaningful volunteer opportunities for all who want them.

In January 2005, he and his wife, Guri, anteed-up. They left everything to head on an open-ended, unscripted walking pilgrimage across India to "use our hands to do random acts of kindness, use our heads to profile inspiring people, and use our hearts to cultivate truth."

Idelisse Malavé and Gihan Perera - Race, Justice And The American Dream

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Idelisse Malavé, Executive Director of the Tides Foundation and Gihan Perera, Executive Director of the Miami Workers Center on "Race, Justice, and the American Dream."

Responsible for the overall management of the Tides Foundation since 1996, Idelisse Malavé works with Tides staff to deliver excellent service and create opportunities for donors to increase the impact of their grantmaking. Over a twenty-five-year career dedicated to social justice, Idelisse litigated civil rights cases with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, represented women in family law matters, and co-authored a bestseller, Mother Daughter Revolution. She was a founding board member of the New York Women's Foundation and served as Vice President of the Ms. Foundation for Women for six years before coming to Tides.

Gihan Perera co-founded the Miami Workers Center together with Tony Romano in 1999. Gihan is a native of Sri Lanka and grew up in South Los Angeles. He is a strategist, published writer, and public speaker. Prior to founding the Center, Gihan was a union organizer, leading union recognition and contract agreement campaigns in Miami, South, and North Carolina. He began his activism at an early age and became a trainer and recruitment director for the AFL-CIO's Organizing Institute before completing college work. Gihan serves on the board of the local ACLU, PRE (Philanthropy for Racial Equality), and the Miami Light Project. He holds a bachelor's degree in International Development Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Chris Desser - Commons And Consciousness

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:00:00 -0700

Chris Desser is a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute, a think tank focused on developing the concept of The Commons as an overarching analytical structure organizing across sectors and disciplines. She served on the California Coastal Commission and the San Francisco Commission for the Environment. In 2003, she co-founded Women's Voices, Women Vote, a project that successfully increased the participation of single women in the electoral process. Chris was the director of the Funder's Working Group on New Technology, an association of foundations concerned with the environmental, cultural and political implications of emerging technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology. She was co-editor of Living with the Genie: Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery (Island Press, 2003).

Sushmita Ghosh - Changemakers

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:27:56 -0700

Sushmita Ghosh, Past President and current member of Ashoka's Leadership Team talks about "Changemakers."

Born in India, Sushmita Ghosh was a journalist who rose through the ranks to become President Emeritus of Ashoka, the global network of social entrepreneurs. In this conversation she describes Ashoka and her new work with Changemakers, an Ashoka program that extends social entrepreneurship to a wider global community.

Chet Tchozewski - Intuition and Grantmaking

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 12:00:00 -0700

In this conversation, Chet describes the critical role intuition plays if you want to distribute small grants to thousands of grassroots organizations in over one hundred countries.

Chet Tchozewski is the founder and Executive Director of the Global Greengrants Fund, an international environmental foundation that makes small grants to grassroots environmental groups in developing nations around the globe. Since 1993 Greengrants has made in excess of 3000 grants, in over 100 countries, totaling about $10 million.

He was awarded the prestigious Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Philanthropy by the Council on Foundation, an award that honors grantmakers who "possess a combination of vision, principle and personal commitment to making a difference in a creative way through grantmaking."

Thomas Yeomans, Ph.D. - The Embodied Soul

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 10:06:03 -0700

Thomas Yeomans' education was first in Music, Classics, and Comparative Literature, particularly poetry, and then a sharp turn, with the advent of Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology in the 60's in Education and Psychology.
In 1990 he founded the Concord Institute, in Concord, MA, and shifted his focus gradually from Psychosynthesis to formulating and developing Spiritual/Global Psychology. He has pursued this endeavor in the last decade and a half through teaching, training professionals, writing, and consulting to individuals and organizations. During this time he worked in various European countries as well as throughout North America, and in the 90's he helped a group of Russian doctors and psychologists from the Harmony Institute in St. Petersburg found a post-graduate training institute called the International School for Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Group Leadership.

Peter Warshall - The Spiritual Labor of Earth Healing, A New School Event

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:00:00 -0800

Peter Warshall is the Editor-At-Large for the Whole Earth Magazine and is the founder of Peter Warshall and Associates. This gathering was about "The Spiritual Labor of Earth Healing." This event was held at Commonweal on February 27th, 2007.

Peter Warshall has worked for thirty years to improve governance and effective citizen participation within local communities, balance conservation and development (especially water resources, ranching and forestry, and biodiversity), as well as teach, guide and write on natural and cultural history and what is now called sustainability. Trained as both biologist and anthropologist, Peter has taken a broad view of the complexity of societal change. While others may work as a scientist or politician, Peter has tried to bridge these realms as scientist/essayist with years of public service. He works on all socio-economic levels and with highly diverse peoples and ecosystems, believing that important beneficial change can come from many unexpected and imaginative human sources. The diverse ecosystems of northern Mexico and southern Arizona and New Mexico presently define his bi-national sense of home. He owns and runs his own small consulting group.

Dean Radin, Ph.D. - Entangled Minds

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 12:00:00 -0800

Dean Radin, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences discusses his book "Entangled Minds," March 5th, 2007.

In this conversation, Radin describes the surprising reach of the substantial scientific literature on psi phenomena, and wonders whether psi phenomena are not ultimately an example of the universe talking to itself.

"The concept of things being separate doesn't exist at a deep physical level. All that remains are relationships between things."

"[Entangled Minds] reframes the notion of psychic abilities from some magical power that transcends the physical universe to something that is an expected reflection of the interconnectedness of the universe itself."

Fredi Kronenberg, Ph.D - Herbal Therapies and Integrative Approaches to Women's Health

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:00:00 -0800

Dr. Fredi Kronenberg is Professor of Clinical Physiology and Director of the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. She received her B.S. from Cornell University in neurobiology and behavior and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in physiology, where she researched thermoregulatory and reproductive physiology. Her postdoctoral research at Columbia University initiated her work in womenOs health and menopause. She is a leading expert in the endocrinology and thermoregulatory physiology of menopausal hot flashes, and alternative therapies to treat them.

Ram Dass and Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen - Aging & Dying

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:00:00 -0800

Ram Dass is a widely admired American spiritual teacher who suffered a disabling stroke some years ago and wrote about the experience in "Fierce Grace." Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, is Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal and Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. Now living on Maui, Ram Dass talked with Rachel Naomi Remen and Michael Lerner about what his stroke taught him, and how he now works with others around issues of healing, aging and dying.