I love big questions. Questions about meaning, existence, purpose. I love big questions. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I believe I can answer them, just that I love struggling with them. 🙂 That wasn’t always the case, though. When I was a freshman in college and looking at required courses, I shied away from the intro. to philosophy course because I couldn’t imagine spending all my time trying to answer questions to which there are no answers. As a tribute – or, I suppose, a critique, depending on your point of view (though I mean it as a tribute 🙂 ) – to my liberal arts education at Franklin & Marshall College,...

Just five and a half minutes. That’s all you’ll need to take a brief mental health break from wherever you are or whatever you’re doing to be astonished by the treasures of the ocean that David Gallo shows us in this remarkable TED Talk. Gallo, who has led expeditions exploring the remains of the RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, lends animated narration to riveting footage. Go ahead, you can afford it, take the 5:20 this Talk requires. You won’t regret it. Notes: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click the title at the top of the post in order to watch the video. 2) The...

Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk on what she calls her “stroke of insight” is one of the top two or three most viewed Talks of all time. And for good reason. A brain scientist, Dr. Taylor suffered a stroke and immediately became aware of, and an informed witness to, what was going on in her brain as her brain-controlled abilities to speak, move, and ultimately be consciously aware shut down one by one. What she learned, how that experience changed her life, and what she invites us to consider, is well worth the eighteen minutes of this talk. (And if you enjoy the Talk, you may be interested in her book about her experience: My Stroke of...

Every once in a while during our decade-plus sojourn in the Upper Midwest, I’d wonder where all the fireflies were. Because it always seemed that I rarely saw them. I don’t know if that’s peculiar to the Twin Cities area, or Minnesota, or the Upper Midwest more generally, but it just seemed like there were very few fireflies (or, as we called them as kids, lightning bugs). I’d assume that I was imagining that phenomenon (or lack of one, I suppose), except that on moving back to Pennsylvania I was struck once again by how we can watch the fireflies dance every summer evening. They’re everywhere and always something of a mystery and...