Jennifer Senior On: Grief, Happiness, Friendship Breakups, and Why We Feel Younger Than Our Actual Age

Jennifer Senior On: Grief, Happiness, Friendship Breakups, and Why We Feel Younger Than Our Actual Age

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.

---


It’s likely uncontroversial to assert that Jennifer Senior is one of our finest living journalists. She’s currently a staff writer at The Atlantic and before that she spent many years at the New York Times and New York magazine. Jennifer’s written on a vast array of topics, but she has a special knack for writing articles about the human condition that go massively, massively, viral. One such hit was a lengthy and extremely moving piece for The Atlantic that won a Pulitzer Prize. It was about a young man who died on 9/11, and the wildly varying ways in which his loved ones experienced grief. That article, called “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” has now been turned into a book called, On Grief: Love, Loss, Memory.


In this interview, we spend a lot of time talking about this truly fascinating yarn, but we also talk about her other articles: one about an eminent happiness researcher who died by suicide, another about why friendships often break up, and a truly delightful recent piece about the puzzling gap between how old we are and how old we think we are. Jennifer has also written a book about parenting, called All Joy and No Fun which we also reference a few times throughout.


In this episode we talk about:

  • Jennifer’s perspective on the Bobby McIlvaine story
  • Lesser known theories of grieving from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
  • The work involved in finding meaning in loss
  • Why – from an evolutionary standpoint – we hurt so badly when we lose someone we love
  • Commitment and sacrifice
  • The puzzling gap between how old you are and how old you think you are
  • The power and perils of friendship
  • Why Jennifer has chosen to focus so much of her writing on relationships



Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jennifer-senior-583

Jaksot(927)

Hansa Bergwall, Reminding Us That We Die So That We Live

Hansa Bergwall, Reminding Us That We Die So That We Live

The WeCroak app, which sends reminders that you're going to die -- five times a day, is not meant to be morbid, founder Hansa Bergwall said, but to make us stop and appreciate the moment we're living in. "Remembering that you're going to die is really important," said Bergwall, a publicist, writer and meditation teacher in Brooklyn, who was 11 years old when his mother died. "Sometimes that's all it takes to take a deep breath, change the program and do something different, feel something different."

14 Maalis 201846min

Lt. Col. Jannell MacAulay, Teaching 'Mental Push-ups' in US Air Force

Lt. Col. Jannell MacAulay, Teaching 'Mental Push-ups' in US Air Force

Dr. Jannell MacAulay, a lieutenant colonel and flight instructor in the United States Air Force with over 3,000 flying hours as a combat veteran, sees mindfulness meditation as national security asset. A former commander of the 400-member joint 305th Operations Support Squadron, MacAulay teaches mindfulness to her fellow commanders and other Airmen in order to improve their leadership and mission-focused performance, as well as change the culture within a high-stress military organization.

7 Maalis 201849min

Rhonda Magee, Law Professor Using Mindfulness to Defeat Bias

Rhonda Magee, Law Professor Using Mindfulness to Defeat Bias

"Part of what I have decided for myself - it's a decision - I don't want to be part of the pain, creating more pain in the world, for myself or for others," said Rhonda Magee, a law professor at University of San Francisco. "So it's that capacity with mindfulness to get a sense into ... what my own experience of feeling vulnerable, feeling afraid, what it does to me, how I start to look at the world through the lens of that ... now [I'm] at a place where I'm not reacting from a place of fear." A law professor for 20 years and a mindfulness teacher for lawyers and law students, Magee argues that mindfulness can be a solution to combating bias and discrimination.

28 Helmi 20181h 5min

Brad Katsuyama, Wall Street Reformer

Brad Katsuyama, Wall Street Reformer

Brad Katsuyama's blood pressure levels were "out of control" and he decided to make a significant change in his life. The Canada native left his job at Royal Bank of Canada, began a regular meditation practice and started IEX, a stock exchange that took on predatory high-speed trading and was the subject of Michael Lewis' best-selling book, "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt."

21 Helmi 201859min

Bob Roth, Meditation Teacher to the Stars

Bob Roth, Meditation Teacher to the Stars

Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and David Letterman are just some of the dozens of celebrities who sought out Bob Roth to learn Transcendental Meditation (TM), a mantra-focused meditation practice. Roth, who has been a meditation teacher for over 40 years and has a new book out called, "Strength in Stillness," talks about how he found TM and addresses the criticism and suspicions some former members have raised around TM.

14 Helmi 20181h 4min

Susan Kaiser Greenland and Annaka Harris, Teaching Mindfulness to Kids

Susan Kaiser Greenland and Annaka Harris, Teaching Mindfulness to Kids

Susan Kaiser Greenland, an author and former corporate attorney, and Annaka Harris, an author and editor, work together to teach mindfulness meditation to children and their families through Greenland's Inner Kids Foundation. They offer advice for parents on introducing meditation to their kids and starting group sessions with other families, but they also share their views on the controversial topic of teaching meditation in schools and how they tackle concerns many parents have about teaching kids a practice that evolved from Eastern spiritual traditions.

7 Helmi 201855min

Tim Ferriss, Host of 'The Tim Ferriss Show,' Author

Tim Ferriss, Host of 'The Tim Ferriss Show,' Author

Tim Ferriss, the host of "The Tim Ferriss Show" podcast and the author of several best-selling books, including "The 4-Hour Workweek" and "Tribe of Mentors," has built an entire empire around offering life-hacking advice, but when someone suggested he try meditation, he resisted for a while. He tried various forms, then eventually dove head first into doing a 10-day silent retreat, where he came face-to-face with a long-buried childhood trauma that made him re-evaluate how he cared for himself.

31 Tammi 20181h 5min

Yael Shy, Helping College Students Fight Stress and FOMO

Yael Shy, Helping College Students Fight Stress and FOMO

Yael Shy, the author of "What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond," says she came to meditation from "a lot of suffering" as a student at New York University in 2001 -- the same year the World Trade Center towers fell near her New York City dorm during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Today, Shy helps college students tackle stress, anger and FOMO (fear of missing out) around academics, relationships, sex and social media in her role as the senior director of NYU Global Spiritual Life and the founder and director of MindfulNYU.

24 Tammi 20181h 8min

Suosittua kategoriassa Terveys ja hyvinvointi

unicast
tiedenaiset-podcast
psykopodiaa-podcast
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
vakeva-elama-viisaampi-mieli-vahvempi-keho
rss-pitaisko-erota
fitnessvastaanotto
meditaatiot-suomeksi
terapiassa
rss-mighty-finland-podcast
rss-narsisti
selviytyjat-tarinoita-elamasta
rss-uplevel-by-sonja-hannus
selvin-pain
rss-rentoudu-podcast-rentoutumiseen-hanna-viljanmaa
rss-kuumilla-aalloilla
rakkaudella-karita
rss-nautinto
aamukahvilla
paritellen