1. The One Feeling I Didn’t Allow: When joy feels risky… from Andrea Gibson. “Falsely we believe that if we feel the heights of joy, we will have a longer and harder fall. But joy is not a tall building we can crash from. Joy is the cord of a parachute that can save us.”

2. So, What’s In the eCourse? from Jena Schwartz. “From getting started to getting unstuck, Getting Words on the Page may change the way you relate to your writing practice – and yourself!” This is going to be a great course and Jena is one of the best writers, coaches, teachers, humans out there — so if this calls to you, I wholeheartedly recommended you sign up.

3. American Experience. “For 35 years, American Experience has been television’s most-watched history series, bringing to life the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America’s past and present. American Experience documentaries have been honored with every major broadcast award, including 30 Emmy Awards, five duPont-Columbia Awards and 19 George Foster Peabody Awards. PBS’s signature history series also creates original digital content that innovates new forms of storytelling to connect our collective past with the present.”

4. WORK APPROPRIATE Podcast | My Industry is Failing: Veterinary Medicine Edition with Karen Fine. “For those of us who are pet lovers, a good vet clinic makes all the difference. But for those working in vet clinics, things can be really hard. In fact, veterinarians have a risk of death by suicide at a rate 2-4 times that of the general public. How did things get to be this way, and what hope is there for improvement? Dr. Karen Fine, DVM and author of The Other Family Doctor, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners’ questions about working in the vet industry – and how pet owners can offer support.”

5. My Benihana, Myself. “What learning to flip shrimp tails and build onion volcanoes taught me about the gift of performance, and its emotional toll.”

6. How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education. “It bears repeating that what makes life livable is our ability — our willingness — to move through the world wonder-smitten by reality.”

7. Throwing shade or throwing light? from Seth Godin.

8. When The World Crumbles, I Eat Cereal from Frederick Joseph. “And so, I implore you to find your bowl of cereal. Your symbolic refuge, the simplicity of your past becoming a sanctuary in the complex present. You will find that there is a certain kind of magic in these memories. They do not promise to fix the world, or mend our broken spirits overnight. What they do promise is the strength to carry on. They remind us of our resilience, our capacity to dream, our ability to find joy in the simplest of things, and our inherent knack to defy the darkness and create our own light.”

9. Something Worthy of the Sea from Summer Brennan. “An essay with two poems.”

10. DMs from New York City on The New York Times. “Messages, Graffiti and Hand-Written Notes From Across New York City.”

11. Sigur Rós – Andrá (Official Video). “I wished to show how Sigur Rós is the soundtrack of our lives through happiness, pain, hope, grief, and love. The short documentary, Andrá, celebrates the way in which Sigur Rós captures and channels the humanity that unites us all.”

12. 7 Things To Let Go Of For A Happier Life from Courtney Carver at Be More With Less.

13. Tiny Love Stories: ‘I Left Any Room She Entered’ on The New York Times. “Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.”

14. How to Make the Most of Your Alone Time as an Introvert. All of these make sense to me, but the “take solo trips” for me mostly means “walk the dog” or “go to the grocery store” but I’m also slightly agoraphobic, so…

15. America’s unique, enduring gun problem, explained. “The factors that lead to tragedies like the Philadelphia shooting are deeply ingrained in US politics, culture, and law.” 

16. People Who Take Regular Daytime Naps Tend to Have Bigger, Healthier Brains, Study Finds. Have you noticed my big, healthy brain?

17. Toni Morrison Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Countries to Fascism (1995).

18. New Interactive Fort Collins Colorado Mural Is Stunning and Promotes Mental Health. I shared a picture of this last week but didn’t know its story.

19. What’s a Luddite? An expert on technology and society explains.

20. Enchanting miniature animal sculptures by Katie Doka.

21. Abandoned Materials Are Upcycled Into Charming Bug Sculptures.

22. ‘Please Be Seated’ by Paul Cocksedge. (Instagram reel) “‘This work was an instinctive response to the space and the rhythm of people through it, based on early sketches by hand. It solves the practical problem of creating an artwork that fills a public square and engages passersby, without obstructing the space.’ ‘Please Be Seated’ features 1,152 reclaimed scaffolding boards. Each one has been planed, sanded, and cut to become part of a series of huge curves and concentric circles.”

23. These wild animal encounters are crazy! (Facebook video)

24. Simple Anxiety Hacks for Dealing With Crowds.

25. Things I want to watch: SmartLess: On The Road | Official Trailer (video) and Dreamin’ Wild | Official Trailer (video).

26. Roller Kingdom Commercial. (Facebook video) So bad it’s hysterical. 

27. Modern Love: Kissing a Fellow Janitor Amid the Trash on The New York Times. “After two assaults, I sought healing on the coldest, driest and windiest continent on Earth.”

28. Obituary for a Quiet Life. “When the notable figures of our day pass away, they wind up on our screens, short clips documenting their achievements, talking heads discussing their influence. The quiet lives, though, pass on soundlessly in the background. And yet those are the lives in our skin, guiding us from breakfast to bed. They’re the lives that have made us, that keep the world turning.”

29. The Thread Vibes Are Off from Anne Helen Petersen. “This is pretty much what Threads feels like to me now: a place that’s ostensibly interesting (look, so many people are already here!) but is actually totally boring. It’s “fun,” but definitely not funny… It’s not entertaining or clever like TikTok. It’s just new and there, like a bowl of sub-par chips and store-bought guac at a party, asking “Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?””

30. PBS Short Film Festival 2023. “Since 2012, the PBS Short Film Festival (originally named PBS Online Film Festival) has been a platform and partner for promoting short films from independent filmmakers that are presented by public media partners and PBS member stations. Many of the films cover social issues that traditional film festivals tend to shy away from such as identity, culture, family, and race.”

31. The Tyranny of Good. “Good is an internal tornado and an external affair—you are working off an imagined external judge and jury, or as Anne Lamott once described—you are treating everyone in your life like a flight attendant trying to make all of the passengers happy. But if you can tolerate this messiness. If you can tolerate the terror of being what you have been calling ‘bad.’ You can come to understand something crucial: good is a very, very small world.”