Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Join Host Steve Heilig as we bring back author, actor, and local celebrity Peter Coyote to The New School. They talk about Peter’s recent books—Zen in the Vernacular: Things As It Is, and Tongue of A Crow—and ramble across many other topics. Peter Coyote Peter has written five books including the international bestseller Sleeping Where I Fall and_The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education,_ which reached second on the Marin County bestseller list. His third book, entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet the Buddha, outlines a long-standing series of classes he runs using acting, improvisation and masks to induce temporary ego-free states and is based on Peter’s work as a Zen Buddhist student of more than 40 years. As an actor, he has performed for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Sidney Pollack and Jean Paul Rappeneau. He was the co-host of the Academy Award show with Billy Crystal in 2020. He is a double Emmy-Award winning narrator of more than 160 documentary films, including Ken Burns acclaimed The Roosevelts, for which he received his second Emmy nomination in July 2015. Steve Heilig Steve is director of Public Health and Education for the San Francisco Medical Society and the Collaborative for Health and Environment at Commonweal, co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and a clinical ethicist at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He is also a trained hospice worker and former volunteer and director of the Zen Hospice Project. A longtime book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, he has authored more than 400 pieces on a wide range of medical, public health, ecological, literary, and other topics. #petercoyote #coyote #commonweal #newschoolcommonweal #conversationsthatmatter #tongueofacrow #poetry #zen #buddhism

Manisha Gupta and Host Michael Lerner These are wild times to be alive. From the local to the global, we are facing complex, interlocked crises. Yet, around the world people are responding in creative, dynamic, grounded ways to adapt and emerge. Omega Resilience Awards, a new program of Commonweal, was created to gather a community of people interested in resilient strategies. Collectively, we strengthen generative connections and share narratives of resilience. What will emerge? What will coalesce? Join The New School co-host Michael Lerner in conversation with three of the co-creators of this dynamic global resilience community. In this session number two, Michael speaks with Manisha Gupta from StartUp! in India. In June, join us for conversation with Anabella Museri and Sofia Nemenmann from Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas/Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial in Argentina. Find recordings from our first conversation with Nnimmo Bassey from Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria on our website and all our media sites. Manisha Gupta Manisha was a journalist before she joined the social entrepreneurship sector. For 27 years, she has worked to build the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in India. Manisha worked with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public for nine years as the India Country Representative and International Director for Ashoka’s youth programs. In 2009, she founded Start Up! – an incubator, impact accelerator and leadership springboard for social entrepreneurs. Under her leadership, Start Up! has seeded and scaled more than 100 social ventures across 17 states. It has trained 500+ early-stage social and cultural entrepreneurs to build high-impact change models. Manisha has co-authored two books, 1098-Childline Calling and Opening Doors: Ten Years of Ford Foundation’s International Fellowships in India. She is a passionate believer of creating deep impact through collaborations with communities on the ground. Michael Lerner Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press). #commonweal #omega #resilience #ashoka #collaborativeimpact

The subject tonight is Love And for tomorrow night as well, As a matter of fact I know of no better topic For us to discuss Until we all Die! - Hafiz Crisis, war, injustice, and violence have a certain logic—and social change processes working to address these challenges carry a similar, reactionary logic. How can love help us to step out of the perceived reality of “what is possible” in building peace during conflict? Turning points in conflicts and crises are often mysterious, require acts of enormous creativity, and a willingness to risk. Social change is an artistic act, mobilizing love and prophetic imagination–and it requires us to step into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence. In this series, join Host Serena Bian in speaking with three people who bear witness to the best and worst of humanity, holding a courageous moral imagination. Working and witnessing the front lines of injustice, war, climate change, these peacebuilders, mystics, storytellers hold space for the miraculous to emerge, refusing to be bound by a perceived reality of “what is possible.” Events in the serves Monday, April 29 | Deepa Patel Weds, May 29 | Aljosie Aldrich Harding Tues, June 25 | Kalyanee Mam Aljosie Aldrich Harding Reared in segregated North Carolina, Aljosie began learning, teaching, and building social justice skills along with organizing in the 1960s as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lome, Togo, West Africa. She has been a servant-leader at the Institute of the Black World (Atlanta), a think tank and advocacy organization, and the Learning House (Atlanta) an independent Afrocentric freedom school. She has worked in community organizing in several southern and northern cities and in empowerment building with women’s circles, organizations, and colleges. With her co-worker, partner, and late husband, Vincent Harding, she built intergenerational relationships with social justice and peace organizations across the United States and abroad. Her organizational links have included the Bruderhof, Soka Gakkai International, Young Adult Quakers, the Dorothy Cotton Institute, the Walter Rodney Symposium and Foundation, Tewa Women United, Kid Cultivators, and the Yale-National University of Singapore. As a spiritual guide (director) she shares healing justice practices in all her organizational work. Serena Bian Serena is pursuing a life that remains attentive to the tenderness of a snail’s soft body and reverent to the miracle of its spiraled shell. Working with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Serena serves as a Special Advisor and brings a spiritual and systemic understanding to the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation. As a chaplain-in-training, Serena is pursuing questions of how we chaplain the end of extractive systems that isolate communities from themselves and one another. She is involved with multi-generational, multi-spiritual communities like the Nuns and Nones, devoted to courage, peacebuilding, and love. She participates on the Board of Commonweal and CoGenerate. #newschoolcommonweal #commonweal #interfaith #peacebuilding #peace

The subject tonight is Love And for tomorrow night as well, As a matter of fact I know of no better topic For us to discuss Until we all Die! - Hafiz Crisis, war, injustice, and violence have a certain logic—and social change processes working to address these challenges carry a similar, reactionary logic. How can love help us to step out of the perceived reality of “what is possible” in building peace during conflict? Turning points in conflicts and crises are often mysterious, require acts of enormous creativity, and a willingness to risk. Social change is an artistic act, mobilizing love and prophetic imagination–and it requires us to step into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence. In this series, join Host Serena Bian in speaking with three people who bear witness to the best and worst of humanity, holding a courageous moral imagination. Working and witnessing the front lines of injustice, war, climate change, these peacebuilders, mystics, storytellers hold space for the miraculous to emerge, refusing to be bound by a perceived reality of “what is possible.” Weds, May 29 10am Pacific Time | Aljosie Aldrich Harding Tues, June 25, 10am Pacific Time | Kalyanee Mam Deepa Patel Deepa is a facilitator with a specialism in interdisciplinary collaboration and a passion for the arts, social justice, conversation, and living a contemplative life. She was born in Kenya to Indian parents and lives in England. This experience has shaped both her professional and personal life. Deepa has worked as a youth worker, in the field of cultural diversity, as a Live Music producer, and in music education with the BBC. Her current work is with The London College of Fashion, UNHCR, and the University of Sheffield in refugee camps in Jordan and Africa and with the Fetzer Institute on two projects, one on creating sacred space in the virtual world and the other on their shared spiritual heritage project. Deepa is a guide and teacher in the Inayatiyya (a Sufi lineage) and co-chair of the Inayatiyya International Board. She is also the chair of the Tamasha Theatre Company, an advisor to the Loss Foundation, a cancer and COVID bereavement support service, and to the Charis Foundation for New Monasticism and Interspirituality on their interfaith dialogue projects. Serena Bian Serena is pursuing a life that remains attentive to the tenderness of a snail’s soft body and reverent to the miracle of its spiraled shell. Working with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Serena serves as a Special Advisor and brings a spiritual and systemic understanding to the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation. As a chaplain-in-training, Serena is pursuing questions of how we chaplain the end of extractive systems that isolate communities from themselves and one another. She is involved with multi-generational, multi-spiritual communities like the Nuns and Nones, devoted to courage, peacebuilding, and love. She participates on the Board of Commonweal and CoGenerate. #newschoolcommonweal #commonweal #interfaith #peacebuilding #peace #

These are wild times to be alive. From the local to the global, we are facing complex, interlocked crises. Yet, around the world people are responding in creative, dynamic, grounded ways to adapt and emerge. Omega Resilience Awards, a new program of Commonweal, was created to gather a community of people interested in resilient strategies. Collectively, we strengthen generative connections and share narratives of resilience. What will emerge? What will coalesce? We do not know. There are no clear maps, roads, or nautical charts to guide us in these times, but we know we have to move forward and create new narrative byways as we step into the unknown. Join The New School co-host Michael Lerner in conversation with three of the co-creators of this dynamic global resilience community. In this first conversation, Michael speaks with Nnimmo Bassey from Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria. Join us for part 2 and part 3 of the series in May and June, when Michael speaks with Manisha Gupta from StartUp! in India, and Anabella Museri and Sofia Nemenmann from Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas/Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial in Argentina. Nnimmo Bassey Nnimmo is the director of the ecological think-tank Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International. He was chair of Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012) and was named Time magazine’s Hero of the Environment in 2009. He is a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” In 2012, he received the Rafto Human Rights Award and in 2014, Nigeria’s national honour as Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of York, United Kingdom in July 2019. Bassey is a Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and has authored books on the environment, architecture and poetry. His books include We Thought it Was Oil, But It was Blood (Kraft Books, 2002); I will Not Dance to Your Beat (Kraft Books, 2011); To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa (Pambazuka Press, 2012) and Oil Politics – Echoes of Ecological War (Daraja Press, 2016). He is fondly called The Living Ancestor by young activists. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: thenewschool@commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Join Michael Lerner in conversation with storyteller and storycatcher Christina Baldwin. Haunted by the question: “What do we leave in the earth for the future to find?” and having already written eight books that are standing the test of time, Christina set out to write a book of historical fiction that explores foundational human values in story. Our conversation draws on Christina’s lifework and her beautiful forthcoming novel, The Beekeeper's Question. Based on her family’s Montana lineage, the story chronicles life on the Homefront during World War II and the social issues stirred as two Montana families, one white settler, one Blackfeet, make their way through these times. Christina Baldwin Christina has devoted her life to fostering the power of story and facilitating the power of community. As a pioneer in personal writing and teacher of creative nonfiction, Christina has companioned thousands of people to claim their life stories. For twenty-five years, with her partner, Ann Linnea, she taught The Circle Way as collaborative practice, to leaders in education, healthcare, business, government, and community activism. She interacts globally through podcasts, videos, and emeritus mentoring in her bodies of work. Her website and blog is: www.christinabaldwin.com. Host Michael Lerner Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press). #commonweal #newschoolcommonweal #powerofstory #nonfiction #lifestories

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for a reading and conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield. A lay-ordained practitioner of Soto Zen and also the founder, in 2017, of Poets for Science, Jane's newest book holds fifty years of her life and work. The conversation will be similarly ranging, touching on the taproots of creative permeability and attention, the alliance between the seeing of poems and that of science, what poems might bring to addressing our current crises of biosphere and community, and the sense of shared fate and of intimacy with all beings central to finding our way to a viable future. Jane Hirshfield Writing “some of the most important poetry in the world today” (The New York Times Magazine), Jane Hirshfield has become one of American poetry's central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere and interconnection. Her ten poetry books include The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023), holding fifty years of poems, and she is the author also of two now-classic collections of essays on poetry's infrastructure and craft and four books presenting world poets from the deep past. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the Poetry Center Book Award, and the California Book Award. An interactive traveling installation she founded in 2017, Poets For Science, has appeared across the country at universities, museums, research centers, conferences, and the National Academy of Sciences. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Hirshfield was elected in 2019 into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. #commonweal #poetry #newschoolcommonweal #janehirshfield #findingmeaning

Each year, the gas and oil industry produces billions of tons of waste — much of it toxic and radioactive. The fracking boom has only worsened the problem. Where does this waste go? In this webinar, co-presented with the Collaborative for Health and Environment and the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN), Host Kristin Schafer will explore the topic with author Justin Nobel, Dr. Larysa Dyrszka, and James Brugh, a tribal member of Fort Berthold in western North Dakota. To follow along with Dr. Dyrszka’s presentation you can download the slide deck here: https://www.healthandenvironment.org/assets/images/Larysa%20Dyrszka%20slides.pdf Justin Nobel writes on science and environment for United States magazines, literary journals, and investigative sites. His investigation into the radioactivity brought to the surface in oil and gas production was published in 2020 with Rolling Stone Magazine, “America’s Radioactive Secret,” and awarded best long-form narrative by the National Association of Science Writers. Justin’s reports on this in his latest book, Petroleum-238: Big Oil’s Dangerous Secret and the Grassroots Fight to Stop It (Simon & Schuster 2024). Larysa Dyrszka, MD, is a pediatrician and has been a United Nations representative to ECOSOC with the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations, where her work was focused on children’s rights, particularly health. James Brugh is a writer, husband and father, and tribal member of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in western North Dakota. He lives in the community of Four Bears and has advocated tirelessly for the protection of his family, the environment, and his community against rampant and relentless oil and gas development. #commonweal #environmentalhealth #newschoolcommonweal #dirtyoil #radioactiveoilfields #toxicoilfield

~Co-presented with Commonweal’s Collaborative for Health and the Environment~ We’re now in the dangerous, uncharted territory climate scientists have been warning about for decades. Meanwhile, biologists and toxicologists are sounding the alarm about surpassing the “planetary boundary” for chemical pollution, beyond which both ecosystems and our health are endangered. We know climate change and chemical pollution are related in ways that can accelerate both crises, but does their interlinked nature also offer opportunities? Join Host Kristin Schafer with biologist and systems thinker Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and chemicals expert and clean production advocate Beverley Thorpe as they explore opportunities to prioritize solutions that concurrently address climate change and the global crisis of chemical contamination — while also improving public health, equity and economic vitality. Multisolving Institute a think-do tank that helps people implement solutions that protect the climate while improving, equity, health, biodiversity, economic vitality, and well-being. Beth writes and speaks about multisolving, climate change, and leadership in complex systems for both national and international audiences. Her work has been published widely, including in Non-Profit Quarterly, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, U.S. News, The Daily Climate, and System Dynamics Review. In 2010, Beth co-founded Climate Interactive, which she co-directed until 2021. Since 2014, Beth has participated in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability. She is a biologist with a PhD from MIT who has been analyzing complex systems related to climate change for 25 years. Beth trained in system dynamics and sustainability with Donella Meadows and worked at Sustainability Institute, the research institute founded by Meadows, for 13 years. Beth has two adult daughters and lives in rural Vermont where she and her husband grow as much of their own food as they can manage. Beverley Thorpe Beverley is Co-Founder of Clean Production Action, and has researched and promoted clean production strategies to advance a non-toxic economy internationally since 1986. She was the first clean production technical expert for Greenpeace International on chemical and waste issues. Bev’s work on alternatives to PVC, organohalogens and hazardous waste incineration helped drive momentum for safer substitution practices in company practices. As the NGO representative in the first United Nations Environment Programme for Cleaner Production, she promoted the value of public participation in industrial policies. Bev received her degree in Geography from Leicester University, UK and is an annual lecturer at Lund University in Sweden on chemicals policy and corporate practices. She is a past Director of Greenpeace International and a founding board member of the Story of Stuff in the US. She lives in Toronto, Canada. Host Kristin Shafer Kristin is director of Commonweal’s Collaborative for Health and the Environment, and three decades of experience in the field of environmental health and justice. After working as a Communications Specialist at EPA and with World Resources Institute in Washington, DC, she moved back to Northern California where she held various roles—including executive director—over her 25-year tenure at Pesticide Action Network (PAN) North America. Kristin holds a Masters in Social Change and Development from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She lives with her husband in downtown San Jose where she loves to bike ride and garden, and currently serves as board co-chair for the community-building urban farm, Veggielution. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

~Co-presented with Point Reyes Books and the Mesa Refuge~ Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in person or via webinar for a reading and conversation with writer, educator, conservationist, and activist Terry Tempest Williams. Terry has been with us at The New School twice before, and you can listen to the podcast of those events on our website or on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Soundcloud, or Amazon music. Terry Tempest Williams Terry is a writer and educator who focuses on our relationship with the natural world, both ecologically, politically, and spiritually. She is the author of more than 20 books, including the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Her most recent books include Erosion: Essays of Undoing; and The Moon Is Behind Us with Fazal Sheikh. She is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School and the 2023 recipient of the Thoreau Prize in Literature. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and divides her time between Utah and Massachusetts with her husband, Brooke Williams. Host Michael Lerner Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies(MIT Press). Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.