Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor

Mark Nepo —

February 17, 2026

Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor

Mark Nepo — February 17, 2026

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What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming brighter—like a meteor that grows more luminous even as it falls through the atmosphere?

Tami Simon speaks with beloved poet-philosopher Mark Nepo about his deeply moving new book, The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life. Drawing from Chinese wisdom traditions and his own journey through chronic pain and back surgery, Mark illuminates aging as the “heavenly pivot” (love that phrase) which is the transformative shift from living outwardly to inhabiting life from the inside out.

Join Mark and Tami for this episode to explore:

The meteor metaphor: how we grow brighter as our outer casing flakes away • “Entering time” versus moving through it—and why slowing down opens the eternal moment • The paradox of limitation: how loss simultaneously deepens and expands us • Breaking through to joy as the depth of being that holds all the waves • Why the heart, not the mind, must lead in the second half of life • Living with chronic pain and learning to let beauty in while suffering • The difference between being victims of life versus initiates into life • How grief changes everything and why we don’t get over it, we get under it • Being swift of heart—living without hesitation from the inside out

Mark’s wisdom arises from decades of spiritual practice, surviving cancer, and facing the inevitable losses that come with a long life—essential listening for anyone navigating aging, chronic pain, loss, or simply seeking to live more fully present to the life they have.

Listen now to discover how the second half of life can be your most luminous yet.

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.

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 40 years. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has published 21 books and recorded 14 audio projects. Mark has been interviewed several times by Oprah Winfrey as part of her Super Soul Sunday TV show, and was interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. For more, see marknepo.com.

Author photo © Brian Bankston

Listen to Tami Simon's in-depth audio podcast interviews with Mark Nepo:
Holding Nothing Back »
Becoming the Poem »
Writing Is Listening with Your Heart and Taking Notes »

Posted February 17, 2026

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Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor

Mark Nepo — February 17, 2026

What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming brighter—like a meteor that grows more luminous even as it falls through the atmosphere?

Join Mark and Tami for this episode to explore:

The meteor metaphor: how we grow brighter as our outer casing flakes away • “Entering time” versus moving through it—and why slowing down opens the eternal moment • The paradox of limitation: how loss simultaneously deepens and expands us • Breaking through to joy as the depth of being that holds all the waves • Why the heart, not the mind, must lead in the second half of life • Living with chronic pain and learning to let beauty in while suffering • The difference between being victims of life versus initiates into life • How grief changes everything and why we don’t get over it, we get under it • Being swift of heart—living without hesitation from the inside out

Listen now to discover how the second half of life can be your most luminous yet.

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Post Views: 13,023

Mark Nepo: The Half-Life of Angels

Mark Nepo — May 9, 2023

How do we know our own authenticity? How can we return to our hearts when we find we’ve left them? As we evolve and change along our journey, how do we relate to the “former selves” in our past? In this podcast, Tami Simon and poet-philosopher Mark Nepo address these questions and more, as they discuss his creative process; his new book, The Half-Life of Angels; and how we can each touch the ever-present and wholly miraculous “spark of becoming” waiting to guide our lives.

Tune in as Tami and Mark talk about the introspective nature of the creative process; the metaphor of the soul as an inlet; congruency; how the heart shatters but inevitably heals; becoming a student to the mystery of life; the meaning of the word “admit,” and the practice of return; seeing through the lens of the miraculous; the intersection of meditation and creativity; the art of re-visioning; how a commitment to truthfulness grows in concentric circles; living from the deep versus diving and coming back up; the shift from being driven to being drawn; impermanence and perseverance; how the life of expression is one of discovery, relationship, and inquiry; why “there’s always a teacher next to you”; “becoming the poem”; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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Mark Nepo: Writing Is Listening with Your Heart and Ta...

Mark Nepo — September 10, 2019

Mark Nepo is a New York Times bestselling author, poet, and philosopher whose many books include The Book of Awakening, Things That Join the Sea and the Sky, and The One Life We’re Given. Most recently, he has partnered with Sounds True to publish Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Mark about about our collective notions around creativity and the societal role of art. Mark details how his own ideas about creative expression have shifted over the decades, as well as why we should try to separate creation from commerce. Mark and Tami talk about the “messy, magnificent journey” of being human and why art must be a “witness to what is.” Finally, they discuss the necessity of holding nothing back during the creative process and why the pursuit of art is also the pursuit of timelessness.(71 minutes)

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Lissa Rankin — October 8, 2026

Physician Lissa Rankin says trauma doesn’t just live in the mind; it can trigger measurable physical disease, from autoimmune conditions to chronic illness that conventional medicine can’t explain. But her most provocative claim is the reverse: that healing the nervous system may be the missing piece in reversing illnesses that have resisted every other treatment.

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In this conversation, Tami and Lissa explore:

Why Dr. Rankin believes trauma and chronic illness are intrinsically connected
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Why “developmental trauma” can affect even people who had privileged childhoods
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This episode is for anyone who has tried everything to heal a chronic or life-threatening illness and wants to understand what role the nervous system might play.

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Lissa Rankin, “Is There a Holy Grail of Healing?”

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Laurel Parnell: “The Evolution from EMDR to Mult...

— October 6, 2026

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What if some of what we’re carrying was never ours to begin with?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Laurel Parnell—psychologist, longtime spiritual practitioner, and a leading innovator in EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). Laurel developed attachment-focused EMDR and resource tapping, and now, in her new book with Sounds True, Releasing What Isn’t Yours: Living from Your True Self Through Multidimensional Integrative Healing, she introduces her most far-reaching approach yet—one born out of the devastating loss of her son.

Join Tami and Laurel to explore:

How EMDR works, and why bilateral stimulation—whether eye movements, tapping, or sound—seems to unlock the brain’s natural healing system
The difference between EMDR and resource tapping, and how each supports transformation
Why Laurel came to believe that trauma work can open a portal to other dimensions
Missing and attached soul parts, spirit release work, and how to sense what isn’t yours
A profound, real-time account of guiding a soul’s crossing at Esalen, and its connection to the region’s Indigenous history
Why Laurel sees Western psychotherapy as, in some ways, colonized—and what other healing traditions have to teach it
The image of a multidimensional mycelium network of light and love that connects all beings

This is a candid, moving conversation about grief, the limits of what evidence-based therapy can explain, and the courage it takes to follow where healing actually leads.

Listen now to explore the evolving edge of trauma healing. →

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 it originally aired on Sounds True One.

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

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Just One Question | Adyashanti: Is It an Awakening If ...

Adyashanti — October 1, 2026

Is a spiritual awakening only real if it completely rearranges your life? That’s the question Tami Simon puts to Adyashanti in this episode, and his answer digs into something a lot of seekers wrestle with: the gap between a powerful glimpse of clarity and the ongoing work of actually living from it.

Adya, the American-born teacher behind books like The End of Your World and Falling into Grace, walks through why those temporary tastes of awakening are real, even when they fade, and offers a surprisingly practical way to hold onto what they revealed without grasping at them. Then he does something rare: he tells the story of his own first major awakening, a moment he describes as feeling like a nuclear explosion going off inside him.

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Why a fleeting shift still counts as a real awakening, even if it doesn’t stick
The two (seemingly contradictory) pieces of advice Adya gives people chasing a past peak experience
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Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor

Mark Nepo: Age Like a Meteor

Mark Nepo — February 17, 2026

900 Episodes and Counting…

Meet Your Host: Tami Simon

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