I love alien invasion movies. I love the cuts to scenes from around the world where we come together as a species regardless of race, religion, ideology, and nationality, to confront a common enemy. The poor Eiffel Tower, pyramids, Golden Gate Bridge, Sydney Opera House are the first to go. If you find yourself in an Alien Apocalypse movie, steer clear of major landmarks. But when they are shown exploding, they aren’t Egypt’s pyramids, or France’s Eiffel Tower, they are ours. Faced with human extinction, suddenly all that divides us fades away and what connects us is all that matters.
I’ve always felt like peace on earth was just one good alien invasion away.
Live from Patagonia! In this episode Jay and I discuss my experiences visiting with the Arhuaco, an indigenous group in Colombia. This is our first attempt from a show on the road while researching my new book about regenerative agriculture.
This was recorded pre-Covid-19 shutdown. I made it back from South American about one week before the global chaos began. Obviously, the future travels I discuss in the episode are delayed. I should be in Hawaii right now, for instance. But alas, I’m in my basement in Indiana. …
During this time of self-isolating, curve-flattening, and social-distancing, we find ourselves removed from the comforts and relationships of our normal world. We may feel alone, isolated, distant, afraid, and flattened.
COVID-19 is a reminder that we are part of nature whether we understand that or not. A tiny little life-form previously unknown to us has brought our world to a stop. I have friends in Kenya that are bracing for the impact. My friend in Colombia, Maria, is on lockdown and playing Scrabble with her roommates. And here in Indiana and across the United States we are half-heartedly hunkering while the virus closes in around us.
Nature Therapy
But removed from our day-to-day world, and as disjointed as that…
Why we’re canceling our trip to Kauai: an exponential essay
Today
I cancelled
My trip to Hawaii.
I was leaving next week. My wife, too.
She was joining me the first week of a three-week research trip for my next book.
We never really had a honeymoon. Unless you count another book-trip stopping at a garment factory in Perry, New York, and then going to Niagara Falls, Canada, for a day. She doesn’t.
I first visited Kauai nearly 20 years ago. Since I hiked her trails, paddled her waters, ate her wild…
Drop a quarter into a turnstile and you can cross from the U.S. into Mexico. Easy. The reverse journey is much more difficult, especially for immigrants searching for a better life.
On this episode of Good People, Jay and I chat with my friend Scott Truex, who has spent his career learning and teaching about sustainability and community development. Scott talks about his recent experience visiting the Mexican border and the infamous wall.
To be good you have to feel small. On the latest episode of the Good People podcast Kelsey and Jay discuss transcendent moments and what astronauts, meditators, and monks can teach us.
Give a man a fish? Teach a man to fish? But what if he doesn’t want to fish? Joe Huston, The CFO of Give Directly, joins Kelsey and Jay to discuss giving money to the poor and the positive ripple effects it makes in a community.
I laid on the bottom of the ocean and stared into space.
The surface of the water was so still and flat that it ceased to exist. The light of the stars traveled unimpeded trillions of miles, through the Earth’s atmosphere and 20 feet of water.
I held my breath, the sound of my heartbeat joining the primordial hum of the Atlantic.
I pushed off the bottom. Underwater like in space one is weightless.
That night off the coast of Key West, I slowly kicked towards constellations, no difference between air and space. I swam into eons and lightyears, not an observer of the universe but part of it.
I first saw microlending in action while traveling with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 2007. Then it was being sold as a silver bullet solution to ending poverty. I wrote about the experience in WHERE AM I WEARING and dedicate a whole chapter to examining microlending champion Kiva.org in WHERE AM I GIVING.
I shared my experiences in a chat with Jay on the Good People podcast. Listen, rate, subscribe.
Why we’re canceling our trip to Kauai: an exponential essay
