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Tami Simon speaks with Parker J. Palmer, author of the bestseller The Courage to Teach and Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, as well as being the founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal. They discuss Parker’s perspectives about what he calls “an undivided life: seeking wholeness in ourselves, our work, and our world.” (79 minutes)
Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker and activist, as well as founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His wisdom has reached millions worldwide through his eight books, including Healing the Heart of Democracy, A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, The Active Life, To Know as We Are Known, The Company of Strangers and The Promise of Paradox. He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, along with ten honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press, and major grants from the Danforth Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, and the Fetzer Institute. In 2011, Palmer was named an Utne Reader Visionary, one of “25 people who are changing your world.” To learn more, visit www.CourageRenewal.org.
Author photo © Dan Kowalski Rollingbay Works
Subscribe to Insights at the Edge to hear all of Tami’s interviews (transcripts available too!), featuring Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Adyashanti, and many more.
Each week on Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon interviews leading voices in the Mind/Body/Spirit space about a vast spectrum of fascinating ideas. Since 2009, Tami and her guests have been exploring the edge of understanding, nearly 1,000 episodes on the honest work of change, including spiritual discovery, awakening, intuition, purpose, trauma, and grief.
Photo © Jason Elias
Why is depression so hard for us to bring out into the open? Why does it stir up so much shame and fear? How can we shift our view of depression from a problem that needs to be fixed to a gateway to empathy, courage, wholeness, and belonging? These are the profound questions explored by Tami Simon and Parker Palmer in this incisive, insightful podcast.
Join Tami and Parker as they discuss: Being present for those in depression; suffering and empathy; courage and resilience; integrating (rather than disowning) experiences of depression; showing up in the world as who you really are; the vast intelligence of life—and the weaving of shadow and light; embracing paradox; Parker’s metaphor of “living at altitude” (or the level of ego) vs. living from one’s soul; depression as a befriending, grounding energy; how Abraham Lincoln’s depression served as a force of reconciliation for a nation at war with itself; learning to be “hallowed by our diminishments”; and more.
Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker, and activist who is world-renowned for his many insightful books, including Let Your Life Speak and Healing the Heart of Democracy. With Sounds True, he has most recently contributed to the anthology Darkness Before Dawn: Redefining the Journey Through Depression. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Parker discuss his own passages through clinical depression and the meaning he derived from them. They also speak on the modern cultural taboo surrounding depression, and how depression is actually an innate part of the life journey. Finally, Parker and Tami talk about how depression can act as “a befriending force pushing you down onto safe ground”—an agent that can help course-correct a life lived “at altitude.” (86 minutes)
Tami Simon speaks with Parker J. Palmer, author of the bestseller The Courage to Teach and Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, as well as being the founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal. They discuss Parker’s perspectives about what he calls “an undivided life: seeking wholeness in ourselves, our work, and our world.” (79 minutes)
“Is it okay that we are hurting people in order to make money?”
That’s the question Raj Sisodia has been putting to business leaders for two decades—and he isn’t asking rhetorically. This week, Tami Simon speaks with the prolific author, professor, and cofounder of the conscious capitalism movement about his new book, Healing Leaders, and the seven-step spiral that took him from a successful academic career into the deepest healing work of his life at age 60.
Join Tami and Raj to explore:
Whether you lead a team of three or three thousand, Raj offers a bracing case that the inner work you keep postponing is the most generous thing you can do for the people who depend on you.
Raj Sisodia is guest faculty for Sounds True’s Inner MBA®, a six-month immersion program created in collaboration with the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Learn more at innermba.soundstrue.com. →
This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and originally aired on Sounds True One.
What if the bravest thing you can do right now is refusing to close your heart?
This week, Tami Simon speaks with Tara Brach—beloved meditation teacher, clinical psychologist, and bestselling author of Radical Acceptance and Trusting the Gold—about her new inner workbook with Sounds True, The Courageous Heart: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times. At a moment when so many people feel pulled between despair and action, Tara offers a grounded path through both.
Join Tami and Tara to explore:
Whether you’re overwhelmed by current events or searching for a more engaged and openhearted way to meet this moment, Tara Brach offers both the courage and the practical tools to begin.
Listen now and choose to love. →
This conversation offers genuine transmission—not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together. Originally aired on Sounds True One.
Enter for a chance to win the Monthly Magic Subscription Journey. It includes 12 months of tea, a loose leaf starter kit, monthly virtual classes, and free shipping worth $673. Learn more at ClubMagicHour.com/TRUE (no purchase required). Get 20% off your first order of Magic Hour tea at ClubMagicHour.com with the code TRUE.
What if the root cause of every social problem — starvation, ecological destruction, violence — wasn’t a broken system or a corrupt institution, but a collective state of unawareness? And what if the most powerful act of social change available to you today happened in your own mind?
That’s the territory Tami Simon explores in this remarkable exchange with Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master who founded Plum Village, pioneered engaged Buddhism, and became one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Recorded more than two decades ago beneath a willow tree, this conversation feels astonishingly present.
Thích Nhất Hạnh’s answer to Tami’s question doesn’t point outward to policy or protest — it points inward, then ripples out. Individual awakening, he says, is collective awakening. Your practice is social action. Your light is contagious.
What you’ll hear in this exchange:
This is a short clip, but it carries the full weight of a lifetime of practice and teaching. It may change how you think about what you’re doing every time you sit down to meditate.
This clip is taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Thích Nhất Hạnh. Find the complete interview in this feed or at soundstrue.com.
This episode is sponsored by Omega Institute, a global gathering hub for lifelong learning and spiritual exploration. Omega offers weekend workshops, special events, rest and rejuvenation retreats, professional training, online learning, and more. Discover what calls to you at eomega.org/true.
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