How This Plague Ends (and What It Tells Us About Human Nature) | Nicholas Christakis

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Many of us may have a reflexive reaction when we notice we’re feeling down: we want it to go away. Maybe we think something is wrong with us and we automatically self medicate in any number of ways. But how do we square this with the fact that many of us may also really like sad movies and music? And making things even more complex, how do we compute the fact that the universe is constantly handing us opportunities to feel awe, gratitude, and joy, often at the exact same moment that sadness arises? What’s going on with this complex and conflicted relationship we have with a perfectly normal human emotion? Our guest today Susan Cain has written a whole book about this called Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. In this book, she explores how the capacity to tune in to the inherent joy and sadness of the human situation can be a superpower for connection. In this episode we talk about: Whether bittersweetness is a skill you can hone The relationship between bittersweetness and the Buddhist concept of impermanence Why we feel embarrassed about discussing sorrow and longing  How sadness can be transmuted into creativity, and how that creativity can lead us out of sadness And how America, a country founded on so much heartache, turned into, in her words, “a culture of normative smiles” Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/susan-cain-480

25 Juli 202258min

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Sit in meditation for a few minutes and you’re likely to experience pain, either physical or psychological. Hang around the meditation scene for very long, and you are likely to hear the expression, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”  And that’s what this episode is all about— boosting your pain tolerance through meditation. Because pain really is inevitable, but can you reduce your suffering through mindfulness and compassion?  Our guest today, Christiane Wolf, argues ‘yes’. She is a physician turned mindfulness and compassion teacher and teacher trainer. She is an authorized Buddhist teacher in the Insight (Vipassana) meditation tradition, teaching classes and retreats worldwide, and she’s also the author of ​Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind. In this episode we talk about: Meditation techniques that offer us a better relationship to pain How to work with the physicality of pain The stories we tell ourselves about our pain And seeing pain as an opportunity Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/christiane-wolf-rerun

20 Juli 202250min

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- We all have long-standing painful patterns of behavior or inner storylines that can cause us to react disproportionately or inappropriately to everyday events.   Today's guest, Dr. Radhule Weininger, has a term for this. She calls them longstanding recurrent painful patterns or LRPPs.  Weininger is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and teacher of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist psychology. She has a new book, Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom—at Last  In this episode we talk about: How to recognize a problematic pattern or when you’ve been “lrpp-ed” Why Dr. Weininger believes that Buddhism and western psychology, when practiced together, can help us deal with these recurring patterns Unpacking the word trauma The psychological term “mismatch” and how it relates to childhood trauma or hurt How to practice meditation in order to tolerate discomfort Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/radhule-weininger-478

18 Juli 20221h 5min

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Today we’re gonna tackle one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and inhabiting the now. The present moment seems to be a state we aspire towards, but are rarely given practical information about how to actually achieve. But today’s guest, Matthew Brensilver offers just that— practical information on how to achieve being present. We also explore his argument that when painful memories surface in meditation, it acts as a kind of exposure therapy that acclimates us to the things we may not want to face. This is Matthew Brensilver‘s second appearance on the show. He teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Matthew is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence and continues to be interested in the unfolding dialogue between Buddhism and science.  In this episode we talk about: What “be present” actually means What to do when Buddhist teachings or meditation instructions feel out of reach and when we start compulsively self-assessing against them What to do when a memory arises in meditation, especially a difficult memory The brain’s tendency toward constant prediction The benefits of meditation retreat And distinguishing between true alarms and false alarms Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/matthew-brensilver-476

13 Juli 20221h 6min

Often, when you’re afraid of something, the best advice is deeply counterintuitive, not to mention inconvenient: to turn toward the source of your fear. Today we’re going to talk about the fear of confronting your own past with our guest Sarah Polley.  Polley is an Oscar nominated filmmaker and actress who recently wrote a new book, called Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory. In her book, she explores the relationship between her past and present and how the two are in constant dialogue.  In this episode we talk about:  The story of her concussion and the unusual advice she got from a specialist that became not just a path to recovery, but a sort of personal credo, “run toward the danger” What we often do with our stories of childhood shame, and the immense power of talking about it How she has come to stop seeing her anxiety as a stop sign Her argument that the advice to “listen to your body” is not always the best advice The liberating potential of intentionally making uncharacteristic decisions Her path to meditation and her current practice And the limits of her own “run towards the danger” mantra Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sarah-polley-475

11 Juli 20221h 4min

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. Depression is a debilitating problem both on an individual and a societal level and it has only gotten worse during the pandemic. According to the World Health Organization, depression is now one of the leading causes of disability on the planet.  Our guest today Dr. Samantha Boardman is going to talk about what she calls the opposite of depression— something called positive psychiatry. This approach focuses on the positive things in the lives of her patients rather than just the pathologies.  Boardman is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, which is also where she went to medical school and did her four year residency program. She later went back and got a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently put out a book called Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength In this episode we talked about: The 3 C’s (factors contributing to vitality) The notion that our understanding of happiness does not have to be internally oriented How not all socializing is created equal Why identifying your values is important   The value of hobbies The flake factor And the value of failure  Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/samantha-boardman-473

6 Juli 202239min

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. Anxiety has long been a massive societal issue that has spiked during the pandemic. In this episode, renowned Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche talks in detail about how he personally works with anxiety and panic and the practices he draws upon when dealing with these states.  Mingyur began doing long retreats in his teens and now teaches all over the world. He’s written the books The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness and In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying. He also oversees the Tergar Meditation Community, a global network of Buddhist meditation centers.   In this episode we talk about:  Working with strong emotions using sound and the breath Deconstructing your reality to make it workable Understanding what awareness is in a Buddhist sense  How to make meditation free-range and available to you all times  The simple but also tricky advice of, “stop doing and just be”  When to take a step back or even take a break from meditation What Mingyur Rinpoche says is the true purpose of the practice. This interview was recorded in person at the TED conference in April of 2022, where both Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Dan Harris spoke. Full Shownotes:  https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/yongey-mingyur-rinpoche-472

4 Juli 202254min

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- In this episode, the social justice educator and activist Jacoby Ballard talks about a universal, or near universal, issue: anger. And, he offers us two mental skills that can help channel anger into something even more powerful and effective. Those skills are forgiveness and equanimity.  Ballard is a meditation and yoga teacher and the author of a new book called, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation Content Warnings: There are some brief references to sensitive topics, including trauma and suicide.  In this episode we talk about:  How he went from an activist largely fueled by anger to a dharma teacher with a very different approach The sometimes useful role of anger in activism and the danger of being stuck in anger mode The subtle but powerful move of getting in touch with what is beneath our anger Using annoyance as a jumping off point for inner investigation Ways to work with anger and learning to discharge the energy in our body  Forgiveness, including forgiving ourselves Getting over our need to be right Equanimity, or as Jacoby calls it, his “tussle with equanimity” Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jacoby-ballard-470

29 Juni 20221h 10min