Host Michael Lerner joins Commonweal board member Katherine Fulton in conversation with Graham Leicester, who has pioneered new ways to navigate and even thrive in this complex era.

Graham Leicester
Graham is the founding Director of International Futures Forum (IFF), an organization based in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a mission to enable people, communities and organizations to flourish in uncertain and powerful times. He is a former diplomat, now a writer, theorist, and practitioner with over twenty years experience supporting people making a difference in the face of all that stands in the way of making a difference.

‌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.

New School Conversations

2023:11.02 - Graham Leicester - Rising to the Occasion: Practical Hope in a Global Poly

~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.

TNS: Terry Tempest Williams - Rejoice! Our Times Are Intolerable

~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.

2024:01.25 - Elizabeth Sawin & Beverley Thorpe - Multisolving for Climate, Chemicals & Health

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

2024:03.28 - Christina Baldwin - Writing as Legacy

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

2024:05.29 - Aljosie Aldrich Harding - What Does Love Have To Do With It?

Welcome, Wild Times: Conversation with Resilience Leaders in the Global South | Bienvenidos Tiempos turbulentos: conversaciones con líderes de resiliencia en el Sur Global

***
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. 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 three, Michael speaks with Anabella Museri and Sofia Nemenmann from Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas/Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial in Argentina. 
***

Estamos viviendo tiempos turbulentos. A nivel local y global, estamos enfrentando crisis complejas y entrelazadas. Sin embargo, hay personas alrededor del mundo que responden a ellas de forma creativa, dinámica, y con fundamentos que les permiten adaptarse y resurgir. Omega Resilience Awards es un nuevo programa de Commonweal que fue creado para congregar a una comunidad de personas interesadas en estrategias resilientes. Sé parte de estas conversaciones con el coanfitrión de The New School con tres de los cocreadores de esta comunidad dinámica de resiliencia global. En esta tercera edición, Michael tiene una charla con Anabella Museri y Sofia Nemenmann de la Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas.

Anabella Museri has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a postgraduate degree in Sociology of Law. She has 15 years of experience working on research, advocacy and the promotion of human rights (HR) in the public sector and for local and international NGOs. She specialized in criminal justice and the prison system, and throughout her career she has also worked on environment, gender equality,  healthcare and other issues related to the human rights agenda. She is dedicated to the development of projects, networks, and creative strategies to denounce human rights violations, generate empathy and promote social change. And she is also working as project manager on the intersection point of arts and HR, developing projects that seek to generate awareness on social issues.  She enjoys accompanying projects and institutional processes with strategic and creative actions that promote social change, both within organizations and in the communities to which they belong.

Sofia Nemenmann is an ecofeminist activist who lives in Bariloche, Argentina. In 2013, together with a great friend, she co-founded Río Santa Cruz Sin Represas, a socio-environmental project that aims to stop the construction of two mega hydroelectric dams on the Santa Cruz River. Based on this project, she directed a documentary called “El último río de la patagonia” (The Last Free River of Patagonia). She is currently co-director of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers and advisor for Argentina of the Global Greengrants Fund.

2024:06.12 - Sofia Nemenmann & Anabella Museri: Welcome, Wild Times

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.

Kalyanee Mam: In the last conversation in the series, meet Kalyanee Mam, a filmmaker who was born in Cambodia, escaped the Khmer Rouge, and has spent most of her life trying to understand the root cause of war, destruction, and displacement and how we can return home again. Her debut documentary feature, A River Changes Course, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

View Kalyanee’s film “Lost World” (an excerpt is featured in this podcast) at: https://emergencemagazine.org/feature/lost-world/

Kalyanee Mam
Born in Battambang, Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge regime, which claimed the lives of over 2 million people, Kalyanee and her family were displaced from both their land and their home. Kalyanee has spent most of her life trying to understand the root cause of war, destruction, and displacement and how we can return home again. After returning to Cambodia and spending years living with families in the forests, on the Tonle Sap, and in the countryside, she understands how intimately connected their way of life is to the land, forests, and water and the neak ta or land and water spirits that protect them. Her debut documentary feature, A River Changes Course, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Feature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her other works include the documentary shorts Lost World, Fight for Areng Valley, Between Earth & Sky, and Cries of Our Ancestors. She has also worked as a cinematographer and associate producer on the 2011 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job. She is currently working on a new feature documentary, The Fire and the Bird’s Nest.

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

2024:06.25 - Kalyanee Mam - What Does Love Have To Do With It? Bringing Mystery to Peacebuilding

~ Part One of a Two Part Conversation with host Michael Lerner

Join Host Michael Lerner in two conversations with cognitive psychologist, Harvard professor, and author Howard Gardner, who is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences.

Howard Gardner
Howard is John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard University and senior director of Harvard Project Zero. His numerous honors include a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1981, honorary degrees from 26 colleges and universities, and selection by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines as as one of the 100 most influential public intellectuals in the world. The author of 25 books translated into 28 languages, and of several hundred articles, Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists but a single human intelligence that can be adequately assessed by standard psychometric instruments.

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).

The New School at Commonweal is a collaborative learning community offering conversations about nature, culture, and inner life---so that we can all find meaning, meet inspiring people, and explore the beauty and grief of our changing world. 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.

2024:12.09 - Howard Gardner - On Mind

The New School presents conversations, book signings, art, and lectures with thought and action leaders of our time. We are a learning community of 4,000 people in the Bay Area and around the world dedicated to learning what matters. 

TNS focuses on the emergent, seeking out the thought and action leaders who are bringing discussion, beauty, and change to the world. We present events and podcast them in many areas: arts and sciences, health and the environment, and inner life. We follow streams of inquiry, including our End-of-Life Conversations, and series on Resilience, Archetypal Psychology, and Healing Circles.

New tracks tagged #TNSCommonweal