I Heart This

What if the solution to your problem was worked out for you … 500 years ago. This is the story of the Oak Beams of New College, Oxford, and a secret plot that lasted for five centuries. In this episode, I tell you that...

I didn’t think I liked the circus. But one night under a Cirque du Soleil tent changed that. In this episode, I reflect on why — and what it taught me about beauty, teamwork, and the fine line between entertainment and...

Feeling like you’ve got this whole life thing figured out? Yeah, me neither. In this episode . . . lessons learned from trying to live a more appreciative life and screwing it up over and over again. It’s about wonder...

Rocks seem almost like the dictionary example of “boring.” But in 1788, some curious guys standing on a rugged Scottish shoreline saw something entirely different — a revelation that shattered the known timeline of...

What are you thankful for? Take a second to think …  Got it? …  Whatever it is, I’d bet it’s not your ballpoint pen. But maybe it should be.

When Megan fell into QAnon, it nearly cost her everything. This is a story about a conspiracy theory and how one person’s radical listening helped Megan break free. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love.&nbsp...

Back on Wednesday, July 9th.

What does it mean to be free? Sometimes it means two wheels and an open road. This episode is a love song to and a celebration of the bicycle--from a dead-end American suburb, to a trail in Quebec, to a train station in...

How do we live in dark and difficult times? There are lots of places that people look to answer those questions. One place I find wisdom is J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic story, The Lord of the Rings . In today’s episode how...

Look I know what you’re thinking …  You’re thinking, “Are you kidding? Textbooks are the dullest, most lifeless, deepest vortexes of soul-suck known to humankind. Their suck goes down to the sub-atomic level.&nbsp...

Who invented first grade? Or second and third for that matter? Someone had to. Someone had to decide that it was a good idea to put all of the kids of the same age in one room and have one person teach them for a year...

It’s the last place you’d expect to find a library--the long hallway of an old brick warehouse at the sanitation department . . . Long rows of white garbage trucks parked nearby. What the heck? Why put a library there...

This is the story of positive deviance  . . . the story of how a simple, counterintuitive approach transformed the lives of children suffering from malnutrition, empowered their families, and changed the way that...

In 1960, one woman was all that stood between American families and a medical disaster of epidemic proportions. In this episode, the story of how that woman saved untold numbers of children and how all of us today are...

Glowing balls of energy appear out of nowhere only to vanish a few seconds later. Ball lightning is strange, rare, and unexplained. In this episode, we explore the mystery, prod at the boundary between folklore and...