I Heart This

The Monk, The Dynamo, and John McPhee

I Heart This — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 16:08:58 +0000

Chapter 1: The Picnic Table John McPhee I’ve been thinking about John McPhee lately. In case you don’t know, he is one of most venerated American essayists … Pulitzer prize, national book award nominations, staff writer at the New Yorker for over half a century … widely considered the master of longform literary non-fiction. In …

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The Case for Smiling at Strangers

I Heart This — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 18:35:48 +0000

“When a stranger on the street smiles at you, you assume that he is either a.) drunk, b.) insane, or c.) American.” At least, that’s how one guy from Finland put it. Americans have a reputation around the world for being loud, outgoing, and overly friendly. And not everyone loves it. To many, that mega-watt …

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Death in Every Bite: Eating Gently in a World of Pain

I Heart This — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 18:02:35 +0000

Intro “I’d been a vegetarian for over a decade, when a desert survival trip changed how I thought about food. This episode explores the hidden costs behind everything we eat and asks, “If we must kill to live, how should we live in return?” Welcome to “I Heart This,” my friends. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s …

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The Astonishing Luck of Earth’s Moon

I Heart This — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 12:40:33 +0000

You know what’s awesome? The moon. And I’m gonna tell you why. Of the other rocky planets in our solar system, two don’t have moons at all, and the other, Mars, has two little rocks that are so small that you could walk around the small one, Deimos, in less than a day. An elite …

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“You Don’t Cut Them Oaks: Keeping a 500-Year Promise”

I Heart This — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 02:57:23 +0000

The story that I’m about to tell is a legend. And also it is true. I first read it in the Next Whole Earth Catalog in one of the giant chairs of my college’s library, the ones by the great windows that looked out over Frenchman’s Bay even when the ice was thick on the …

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What the Circus Taught Me About Art

I Heart This — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 13:26:19 +0000

Gotta admit … I didn’t expect to love the circus. When I thought of them I thought of … squirm-inducing “freak shows” where people gawked at women with facial hair or conjoined twins … or 19th century fraudsters passing off some construction of fish bones and papier mache as a mermaid. I have this thing …

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On Wonder, the Hedonic Treadmill, and a Canoe I Haven’t Fixed

I Heart This — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 02:24:42 +0000

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, ritual, letting go of perfection, and three magic words that actually did change my life. …

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How One Boring Rock Broke All of Time

I Heart This — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 03:02:04 +0000

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 Earth and made them physically dizzy with wonder. In this episode, we follow those guys to one of science’s greatest discoveries …

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The Unexpected Genius of Writing by Hand

I Heart This — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 03:26:40 +0000

Intro 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. It’s an I Heart This mini-episode this week. I’m Ben Lord. Let’s talk about what we love. Counterargument As a guy who’s work focuses on …

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Escaping QAnon: The Power of Radical Listening

I Heart This — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 03:40:45 +0000

Intro 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. Story In June of 2020, Megan opened a text with a link to a video that would …

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