What are words worth?

A downside of the academic life is that it’s hard to make time for the things you enjoy watching, listening to, or reading. There seems to be always so much work-related reading and watching to catch up on (particularly in these times when research output seems to come out of a fire hose). When you’re at work the meetings and paper pushing take up all one’s hours. And so you lug the assignments home and open up your laptop in the quiet after-dinner hours for the unending catch-up. There is a space, though, where work cannot reach me…yet. It’s when my hands are tied to the steering wheel or my eyes need to focus on the pressure cooker and boiling milk. It’s a space that envelops me when I take that occasional walk and turn my ringer off. That’s when I am able to immerse myself in things that do one of several things: make me wonder and laugh, give me a small sense of understanding of this complex world, or allow me to escape into the stories of lives so unlike my own that I cannot ...

--> Each Monday, I round up some of my favorite listening moments from the week and present them here—suggestions and feedback welcome! Young people never cease to amaze me with the things they do, the courage they have to pursue what matters to them, creating waves that carry the rest of us, like foam, towards a shore we can only imagine. This past year, and particularly this past week, has belonged to Greta Thunberg, with her calm face and forceful words that tell us we need to act, now. We sit on the wisdom of our years accepting that the earth will revolt, but she sees the possibility of change simply because her generation will be the one to live through the horror of what will happen if it is business as usual. Her passion and belief that change is possible through collective action makes me wonder why we never thought of it. Or more correctly, when we stopped believing it all the way inside ourselves and instead started acting like we believed it—carrying candl...