Grounded in courageous truth-telling and compassionate listening across race, history, and identity, theologian Dr. Catherine Meeks draws on her roots as a Black sharecropper’s daughter and decades of civil rights work. Blending memoir and insight, she explores systemic injustice, calls for inner and collective transformation, and urges a unified, liberatory path beyond division divides. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Catherine Meeks, Ph.D. is a theologian, educator, and activist whose work weaves together racial healing, spirituality, and socio-cultural analysis. She is the founding Executive Director of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta, where she helped create “brave space” for honest conversations, formation, and training around racism, reconciliation, and healing across the Episcopal Church and beyond. She is the founder of Turquoise and Lavender, an institute for transformation and healing and was awarded the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for her decades of work for racial justice. Her many books include:

• Living Into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America (Morehouse Publishing 2016)
• Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Times, (Nibs Stroupe) (Church Publishing 2019)
• A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper’s Daughter (Eerdmans 2024)
• The Night Is Long But Light Comes in the Morning: Meditations for Racial Healing (Morehouse Publishing 2025)
• Bridging the Rivers of Difference: A Proclamation of Unity in Resistance (Morehouse Publishing 2026)
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Interview Date: 7/3/2026 Tags: Catherine Meeks, Racial healing, systemic racism, Jim Crow South, contemplative practice, civil rights, Absalom Jones Center, Turquoise Lavender Institute, social justice, spirituality and activism, Social Change/Politics, Racism, Spirituality

Thanks to cell phones, photography is now the great democratic medium, one of the most important means of communication of the 21st century. This is a new order, in which images are made, seen, and shared immediately and globally without curation or censoring by editors or governments. We can participate in shaping the reality of this order. David Ulrich is a college level professor and co-director of the Pacific New Media Foundation in Honolulu, Hawaii. His photographs have been exhibited internationally in more than 75 one-person and group exhibitions. He is the author of: The Widening Stream: The Seven Stages of Creativity (Beyond Words 2001) and Zen Camera: Creative Awakening With a Daily Practice in Photography (Watson-Guptill 2018)

Tags: David Ulrich, empathy, Paul Strand, movie Harold and Maude, universal love, cell phone camera, visual pollution, Annie Leibovitz, photographing Barack Obama, Zen, Walt Whitman, imagination, Arts & Creativity, Spirituality, Philosophy, Meditation

Mark Nepo invites us to rediscover language as a doorway to the sacred. Tracing words to their roots, he reveals how language shapes awareness, connection, and healing. Through story and insight, he reframes courage, genius, and kinship, showing how words can restore our humanity and make every conversation a spiritual practice.

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher and a most eloquent spiritual teacher. In 2015, he was given a Life-Achievement Award by AgeNation and in 2016 was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the Most Spiritually Influential Living People. He was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014 and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.He is the author of many audio learning projects and over 20 books

Interview Date: 5/22/2026 Tags: Mark Nepo, courage, Joan Borysenko, all my relations, Aladin’s lamp, wholehearted, trust, yugen, intuition, acequia, Personal Transformation, Relationship/Partnership, Spirituality

Our smartphones offer extraordinary benefits, yet many of us sense they have become more than useful tools. Psychotherapist Shannon Algeo explores how attachment theory sheds new light on our relationship with technology and offers compassionate practices for reclaiming our attention, creativity, and human connection.

Shannon Algeo is an American and Irish writer, psychotherapist, researcher, poet, and Yoga Nidra teacher based in California. Shannon is on the faculty of the Esalen Institute and the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, where he leads digital liberation workshops and offline retreats that help participants reclaim their attention, creativity, and relationships in an increasingly digitized world. Named one of Wanderlust's "35 Under 35 in Wellness to Watch," Shannon has spoken at the United Nations and the Museum of Contemporary Art. His work integrates attachment theory, neuroscience, mindfulness, poetry, and depth psychology to help people cultivate greater presence, resilience, and authentic human connection in the digital age. He is the author of:

• Trust Your Truth: Heal Self-Doubt, Awaken to Your Soul’s Purpose, and Live Your Badass Life ( New Harbinger Publications 2021)
• The Power in Your Hands: Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology (Broadleaf Books, 2026)

Interview Date: 6/5/2026 Tags: Shannon Algeo, technology addiction, smartphone addiction, attachment theory, digital wellbeing, digital liberation, attention, creativity, neuroscience, relationships, secure attachment, parenting, nature, mindfulness, social media, presence, inner child, Mary Main, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Anne Lamott, Mark Coleman, David J. Wallin, Paul Hewson, Mary Oliver, Nikki Myers, Marianne Williamson, Seane Corn, Victor Ochen, John Bowlby, Psychology, Personal Transformation, Technology, Relationships, Parenting, Community

Ancient Celtic wisdom-keeper and scientist Diana Beresford-Kroeger reveals how forests regulate climate, oceans, oxygen, and human health. She shares a simple global “bioplan” of tree planting to help heal our warming planet.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Ph.D. is an Irish-born botanist, medical biochemist, and author who bridges cutting-edge science with ancient Celtic wisdom about trees and forests. Orphaned in Ireland and taught by her elders in the Brehon and Druidic traditions, she has become a globally recognized voice for the protection of the world’s forests and an early visionary on climate change. Through her scientific work and her “Bioplan” for replanting the global forest, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger invites ordinary people to enter into a renewed, reciprocal relationship with trees as vital allies in healing the planet. Her Beresford-Kroeger’s books and films include:

Arboretum America (University of Michigan 2003)

The Global Forest: Forty Ways Trees Can Save Us (Penguin Books 2011)

The Sweetness of a Simple Life (Random House 2015)

To Speak for the Trees (Random House Canada 2019)

Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests (Random House Canada 2024)

Her Documentary film: Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees

Interview Date: 6/19/2026 Tags: Diana Beresford-Kroeger, Patrice (Rocky) Donoghue, Sunday’s Well, forest restoration, tree planting, climate change, Irish Penal Laws, Celtic wisdom, bioplan, oxygen production, fulvic acid, algae, Pimachiowin Aki UNESCO World Heritage Site, Bloodvein River, serotonin, glucose, redwoods, sequoias, ancient knowledge, biodiversity, photosynthesis, cancer prevention, environmental sustainability, global forest, silence of the forest, Mother Tree, ancestral knowledge, ocean-forest connection, Ecology/Environment/Nature, Indigenous Wisdom, Science

In this conversation Flowers explores the deep human-dog bond, showing how dogs’ emotional behavior often reflects their human companions. We are connected through a shared energetic field. Beyond the love they shower on us, they give us the gift of getting off our couches and out into the wider world, making us better physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

JJ Flowers is a screenwriter, playwright, and a lifelong yogi who teaches pranayama and Metta meditation, also known as the Loving Kindness meditation. She identifies as an experienced metaphysician, psychic medium, and animal communicator. She is the author of numerous books including Juan Pablo and the Butterflies (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 2017) and The Spiritual Dog: Emissary of Unconditional Love and Healing (Findhorn Press 2026)

Interview Date: 5/6/2026. Tags: JJ Flowers, Metta Meditation, Loving Kindness meditation, aggression in dogs, chakra system, grief, therapy dogs, Bill Phillips , evidentiary medium, Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks, Paul Selig, channeling, Melchizedek, pranayama yoga, breathing exercises, neurotic dogs, love and angelic realms, dogs can smell cancer, Animals, Relationship, Spirituality

In the midst of our present polarization and alienation from one another, Patten exhorts us to understand that “we are in this lifeboat together and the fiercest thing we can do is to say, I’m living in a new republic of the heart. I’m a revolutionary. You are not going to separate yourself from me. I refuse to be in separation from you.”

Tags: Terry Patten, York Center Community Co-op, Church of the Brethren, Adi Da Samraj, Integral Institute, despair, climate change, overshoot, activism, neurocardiology, Candace Pert, human intelligence systems, evolutionary emergence, empathy, fear, anger, tipping point, new tribalism, interdependence, David Bohm, Bohmian dialogue, shared inquiry, imaginal cells, epistemic humility, Psychology, Peace/Nonviolence,Social Change/Politics

This dialogue is filled with practical wisdom to support us in growing calmness and well-being so we may be more effective and resilient in our lives. Hanson assures us that the core of our being is “calm strength.” It is the background of who we are; it is a fundamental quality, the “wallpaper of our mind.”

Tags: MP3, Rick Hanson, resilience, resilient, neuropsychology, resistance, persistence, developmental psychology, calmness, calm, Foundations of Well-Being, desire, neuroscience, brain, motivation, liking something, wanting something, brain science, motivational brain circuit, dopamine, neurochemicals, empathy, mirror neurons, empathic, generosity, Forrest Hanson, Health & Healing, Psychology, Science, Personal Transformation, Self Help