Wise Talkers

This 6th Legacy Edition of Wise Talkers features a 1979 radio show in which I was interviewed about meditation on KNCO in Grass Valley, California. I was teaching meditation classes at the time. It’s an interesting look back on how meditation was viewed 45 years ago, and how I taught and practiced it in a practical, ‘demystified’ way. With questions from the host, KNCO’s Mark Johnson, and four callers, we discussed: how meditation compares to day-dreaming; how it can be used for planning...

This 5th Legacy Edition features an interview I conducted in 1981 with Swami Kriyananda, direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and founder of Ananda Village, headquartered in Nevada County, California. Kriyananda was a controversial figure in the world of yoga gurus. He was beloved and even favored by Yogananda, but fell out of favor with the organization Yogananda founded, the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) ten years after Yogananda’s death. Several years after being harshly renou...

This 4th “Legacy Edition” of the Wise Talkers podcast features an interview I conducted in 1996 on KMUD radio in southern Humboldt County, California. In conversation with two doctors from the heart of the famed Emerald Triangle, one of the world’s largest marijuana-producing regions, we discussed the long-term health effects of regular marijuana use. There were very few research studies in the United States on marijuana in 1996, 20 years before it became legal for recreation...

This third full episode of Wise Talkers features an interview with psychotherapist Dr. Ron Mann that I conducted in 1981. Dr. Mann’s life and career was greatly influenced by a workshop he took in Hawaii in 1976 with Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The immediately preceding episode of Wise Talkers featured my 1981 interview with Kübler-Ross – and this 1981 interview with Ron Mann is a natural sequel.In our interview, Ron relates some extraordinary mystical experiences he had during his 1976 ...

This episode features a live radio interview I conducted in 1981 with death and dying pioneer Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The episode begins with an overview of the remarkable life of the late Swiss-American psychiatrist, and the enormous impact her lifework has had on how the medical world and the public at large view and treat the dying process. Hospice, palliative care, end-of-life studies, dying with dignity – we owe a great debt to Kübler-Ross for what we now take for granted as the ideal...

When I got the idea last September to start the Wise Talkers podcast in search of actionable wisdom that can help us navigate today’s turbulent world, I knew just where to start: with an interview I conducted with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder… 45 years ago!Gary’s extensive knowledge of Indigenous cultures and ancient wisdom informs his eloquent advocacy for appropriate technology in a lower-energy future, and living a simpler, more communal lifestyle in harmony with nature.The epis...

On Wise Talkers I engage in one-on-one conversations with guests from a diverse array of backgrounds – teachers and writers, scientists and spiritual teachers, psychologists and philosophers, activists, Indigenous leaders, social entrepreneurs – changemakers and thought leaders who have some valuable wisdom to share. Not just armchair philosophizing, but actionable wisdom that can help us understand and navigate these turbulent times we’re living through.And that’s what Wise Talkers is all ab...