The Garrison Institute Presents: The Common Good

In this rich and inspiring conversation, meditation pioneer Sharon Salzberg explores how we move from the “three S’s” of modern life—separate, scared, and selfish—to the “three C’s”: connected, compassionate, and courageous. Sharon shares practical tools from her Real Happiness framework, the annual 28-day meditation challenge, and her decades of work with caregivers, frontline workers, and trauma survivors. She and host Jonathan Rose discuss building a genuine culture of wellness, transforming empathy into sustainable compassion, and understanding our deep interdependence in everyday life. Sharon also offers a glimpse into her upcoming projects, including a children’s book and a new play based on her spiritual journey. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

Visionary activist and spiritual teacher Konda Mason joins The Common Good to explore how healing the land is inseparable from healing ourselves. In this powerful conversation with Jonathan F.P. Rose, Konda shares the story of Jubilee Justice, a cooperative reclaiming Black agricultural wisdom through regenerative rice farming and community ownership across the American South. She traces rice’s deep African roots, the resilience of its farmers, and how cooperative economics can restore both soil and spirit. Konda also introduces her transformative Journeys Program, where truth-telling, ancestry, and compassion bridge divides of race, land, money, and faith. The episode closes with a grounding practice of ancestral connection—reminding us that joy and reverence are essential tools for justice. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

In this five-minute guided meditation, Sharon invites you to tune into the sounds around you. Perfect for a quick reset during a busy day or as part of your regular mindfulness routine, this practice helps you use everyday sounds as gentle anchors to return to the present moment, wherever you are. You can find more meditations and contemplative resources like this at GarrisonInstitute.org, along with information about our Contemplative-Based Resilience initiative and other programs supporting those who serve our communities.

In this illuminating conversation, science writer and Biomimicry Institute co-founder Janine Benyus joins Jonathan F.P. Rose to explore nature’s universals—the deep design patterns that guide all living systems. Benyus, known worldwide for pioneering biomimicry, reveals how life creates the conditions conducive to life through cooperation, self-organization, and elegant networked intelligence. From coral reefs and forests to economic and social systems, she shows how natural principles such as right-sizing and distributed abundance can guide human innovation and ethics. Together, they examine how re-embracing our biological literacy can reshape industry, culture, and Western spirituality—inviting us to see the world not as a collection of parts, but as a living, interdependent whole.  We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

In this episode, Jonathan FP Rose, co-founder of the Garrison Institute, hosts Dr. Dan Siegel, Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute and renowned Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA. Dr. Siegel is celebrated for his pioneering work in interpersonal neurobiology and is the author of numerous bestsellers, including his most recent book, Personality and Wholeness in Therapy. Together, Rose and Siegel explore how our minds are shaped by embodied and relational energy flow, drawing on Dr. Siegel’s groundbreaking research in neuroscience, mindfulness, and personality development. The discussion journeys from ancestral roots to quantum social change, highlighting practices and insights that help us move from individual “me” to collective “we.” Listeners glimpse how this shift in self-understanding inspires healing, hope, and meaningful action in these times. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

This episode features Dr. Monica Gagliano, pioneering researcher in plant acoustics and author of Thus Spoke the Plant. Recognized alongside Jane Goodall and Rachel Carson as one of the world’s most inspiring women in science, Gagliano challenges us to reconsider plants as sentient, intelligent beings. From her early work on the Great Barrier Reef to groundbreaking experiments showing that plants can learn, remember, and respond with discernment, she invites us to imagine science not as a tool to control the world around us, but as a forum for dialogue with it. Gagliano reflects on animism, relational science, and how ecosystems self-organize for resilience—even in the face of climate change. The conversation calls us to trust life’s intelligence and embrace a perspective that honors the deep connections among all living systems. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by ⁠The Garrison Institute⁠ and ⁠The Podglomerate⁠.

What do emotions such as joy or anger feel like in the moment? Where do they live in the body? And how do they change? Learn how to stay present with emotions as they change in this guided meditation with Sharon Salzberg.This meditation was originally recorded for The Garrison Institute's Contemplative-Based Resilience initiative. We will be bringing you smaller practices each month in your podcast feed. You can find more meditations and contemplative resources like this at GarrisonInstitute.org, along with information about our Contemplative-Based Resilience initiative and other programs supporting those who serve our communities. Follow the podcast at https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/podcasts/ Sign up for the newsletter to receive upcoming show previews and special resources heard on the podcast here.

Join a fascinating discussion with Suzanne Simard, visionary forest ecologist and author of Finding the Mother Tree. Simard reveals how forests thrive not as plantations but as diverse, interdependent communities. From the “wood wide web” of fungi communicating underground, to mother trees nurturing their kin, her research shows that cooperation, not just competition, sustains forest resilience. We explore how Indigenous management practices once aligned with ecological cycles, and how today’s clearcuts and monocultures leave forests vulnerable to disease and wildfire. Drawing, too, on her family’s century-long history of responsible woodcutting in British Columbia, Simard offers hope: ecosystems are regenerative. By restoring reciprocity with the land through forest management or even balcony gardens, individuals and communities can participate in the ongoing global reorganization of the human relationship to the earth. This episode calls us to reimagine our relationship with nature as one of kinship and mutual care.  We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

Dive into a captivating conversation with environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of Third Act and author of The End of Nature and Here Comes the Sun, as we explore the emerging potential of sustainable economics. Bill explains how the global economy must adapt to renewable energy, and why rapid solar expansion in places like California and China signals a pivotal moment in our energy systems. We discover how climate solutions can support both economic growth and sustainability, while also recognizing that the window to act is closing. This conversation offers both practical insights and a grounded sense of hope for how communities, nations, and economies can transition toward a sustainable, equitable future through regenerative energy solutions. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

Join us for a transformative conversation with Paul Hawken, visionary environmental thinker, author of Carbon: The Book of Life, and co-founder of Project Drawdown. Together we learn how stepping beyond a human-centered perspective can reveal the profound interconnections that bind all living systems. Along the way, Paul invites us into a richer awareness of complexity, carbon, and consciousness, and explores how life and mind are deeply entwined. What emerges is a call to unlearn outdated ways of knowing and to cultivate new practices of attuning to the intelligence of nature. This episode offers profound insights into regenerative action, ecological resilience, and how shifting our perception can help us live in reciprocity with the planet and one another. We’d love to hear your thoughts about the podcast, please send us a note at podcasts@garrisoninstitute.org to let us know what you think. Produced by The Garrison Institute and The Podglomerate.

What does it mean to live for the common good? To explore the threads that bind us all, the ⁠Garrison Institute⁠, a non-profit organization exploring the intersection of contemplation and engaged action in the world, offers the new podcast series, The Garrison Institute Presents. Hosted by Garrison Institute co-founder, urban visionary and award-winning author ⁠Jonathan F.P. Rose⁠, the show’s debut season, titled The Common Good, journeys into the nature of life, mind, and compassionate action. The show focuses on integrating the interdependent nature of life, the nature of the mind, and compassion in action.