Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with David Smith, co-founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco on Haight Street. David served as medical director at the clinic for 39 years, which was originally founded as a response to the medical needs of thousands of young people who descended upon San Francisco for the Summer of Love. The clinic was initially funded through proceeds of benefit concerts, many of which were organized by Bill Graham, with bands such as Big Brother and the Holding Company, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ravi Shankar, and George Harrison. David Smith, MD is a medical doctor specializing in addiction medicine, the psycho-pharmacology of drugs, new research strategies in the management of drug abuse problems, and proper prescribing practices for physicians. He is the founder of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics of San Francisco, a fellow and past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, past president of the California Society of Addiction Medicine, past medical director for the California State Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, past medical director for the California Collaborative Center for Substance Abuse Policy Research, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. David is also an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Francisco and the founder and publisher of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

Love Heals: A Talk at the Intergral Yoga Institute in San Francisco Michael talks about the healing power of love, the different fates of romantic love and friendship, the question of whether the universe is a living creative force, and the play of archetypes in love. He reads love poems from Rilke, Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver and others.

High John Eve-holiest day in New Orleans – with Amikaeyla Gaston drumming, singing, and calling in the spirits. Cahoot with Caroline Casey as she presents astro*politico*mytho*ritual navigational guidance for the wild ride ahead. Caroline Casey Caroline is the host-creator and weaver of context for The Visionary Activist Show on Pacifica Radio Network Pacifica station KPFA (94.1) in Northern California, replayed on Los Angeles’ KPFK (and can be heard live on the web at 2pm PT on Thursdays, and by pod-cast subscription.) The show is dedicated to: anything we need to know to have a democracy; critique and solution; and the acknowledgement that we humans cannot solve the innumerable rude crises we’ve imposed on our planetary kin by ourselves—but only by humbly partnering with Nature’s evolutionary Ingenuity, aka Trickster. Her guests are leading contributors to a culture of reverent ingenuity, all teased into pertinence, and has been called “one of the best radio shows in America.”

Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with Don Lattin, award-winning journalist and author of Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy. There’s a quiet revolution underway in our understanding of how psychedelic drugs work and how they can be used to treat depression, addiction and other disease. In his new book, Don offers an engaging look at the recent history and credible prospects for using MDMA, psilocybin, and ayahuasca to treat mood disorders and promote spiritual well‐being. Don Lattin is an award‐winning author and journalist. His five previously published books include The Harvard Psychedelic Club, a national bestseller that was awarded the California Book Award, Silver Medal, for nonfiction. His feature articles have been published in dozens of leading magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, where Lattin worked as a staff writer for 20 years.

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in conversation with Lynn Getz, therapist, social worker, and founder of Portland-based organization AEIOU&Y. Lynn is multi-disciplinary therapist and classically trained social worker. She understands the inner connectedness of dynamic relationship. She has focused on cultivating the union between experience and perception. Her work grows out of the earliest traditional medicines that use one's innate healing capacities. Lynn uses the five senses to activate a deeper connection with the intellect and sensorial experience. She works extensively with colors, scents, herbal essences, and crystals to help us understand our potential to restore and expand our well being. She believes that coming in contact and working with our core essence is our most important endeavor as human beings. Lynn is based in Portland, Oregon. Find out more about her on her website. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal at tns.commonweal.org

Join TNS Host Steve Heilig for a conversation with Frank Ostaseski—Buddhist teacher, international lecturer, and a leading voice in contemplative end-of-life care—about his new book: The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. The profundity of the dying process is so powerful any notion we have of managing or controlling this experience is naïve. To imagine that at the time of our dying we will have the physical strength, emotional stability, and mental clarity to do the work of a lifetime is a ridiculous gamble. Yet Frank wants to extend us an invitation—five invitations, actually—to sit down with death, to have a cup of tea with her, to let her guide you toward living a more meaningful and loving life. Frank Ostaseski is an internationally respected Buddhist teacher, the visionary co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder of the Metta Institute. He has lectured at Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, Wisdom.2.0, and teaches at major spiritual centers around the globe. His groundbreaking work has been featured on the Bill Moyers PBS series On Our Own Terms, highlighted on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and honored by H.H. the Dalai Lama. He is the author of "The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully."

Join Commonweal Co-Founder and TNS Host Michael Lerner in a new series of community conversations drawing on 40 years of Commonweal work and his diverse interests outside Commonweal. “I take the title from Carl Jung’s autobiography. This new series is an exercise in personal freedom for me. I hope you will join us for a new chapter at The New School, an experiment in the emergent.” Michael Lerner is president and co-founder of Commonweal. He is president emeritus and co-founder of Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles, Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).

Join us for a conversation with Elise Miller, long time director of CHE, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment and Michael Lerner.

Alison Luterman The Largest Possible Life Join New School host Irwin Keller for an evening of talk with poet and playwright Alison Luterman about how we live our lives to the fullest, and how we tell our stories – turning our days into poetry, written sometimes in ink and sometimes in flesh and blood, breath, and action. Alison Luterman is a poet, essayist and playwright. Her books include the poetry collections Desire Zoo, The Largest Possible Life, and See How We Almost Fly; and a collection of essays, Feral City. Luterman’s plays include Saying Kaddish With My Sister, Hot Water, Glitter and Spew, Oasis, and The Recruiter, and a musical, The Chain. Her writings have been published in many journals and anthologies. She has taught writing at The Writing Salon in Berkeley, the Esalen Institute, and the Omega Institute, as well as at high schools, juvenile halls, and poetry festivals. She is a political activist and a homebody and a dog person who fell in love with a cat. She lives in a rambling old house in Oakland with her musician husband and the aforementioned cat, dividing her time between writing and looking for her keys.

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner with Walter Murch for conversation and discussion from the new book about Walter’s astrophysics work, Waves Passing in the Night: Walter Murch in the Land of the Astrophysicists. Written by Pulitzer Prize nominee Lawrence Weschler, the book is a profile of Walter Murch—a film legend and amateur astrophysicist whose investigations could reshape our understanding of the universe. The book was based on work presented at The New School in March of 2015. Walter Murch For film aficionados, Walter Murch is legendary: a three-time Academy Award winner, arguably the most admired sound and film editor in the world for his work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather trilogy, The English Patient, and many others. Outside of the studio, his mind is wide-ranging; his passion, pursued for several decades, has been astrophysics, in particular the rehabilitation of Titius-Bode, a long-discredited 18th century theory regarding the patterns by which planets and moons array themselves in gravitational systems across the universe. Though as a consummate outsider he’s had a hard time attracting any sort of comprehensive hearing from professional astrophysicists, Murch has made advances that even some of them find intriguing, including a connection between Titius Bode and earlier notions—going back past Kepler and Pythagorus—of musical harmony in the heavens. Unfazed by rejection, ever probing, Murch perseveres in the highest traditions of outsider science.