CIIS Public Programs
This is a podcast for people who are curious about the world and themselves featuring talks and conversations presented by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university in San Francisco. Listen here or on your favorite podcast app to a diverse array of visionaries, artists, and scholars sharing compelling experiences, offering new perspectives, and expanding creative horizons.
Episodes
August 7, 2025 • 58 mins
This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land.
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Shaped by her own experience with the death of her father and her time co-founding The Dinner Party, a leading peer-support organization for people who’ve experienced a major loss, author facilitator Carla Fernande...
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July 3, 2025 • 69 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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More than 10 million millennials are caring for aging parents before they've been able to fully launch their careers and consider starting their own families, and that's not including the incalculable numbers of people affected by long COVID. Writer and caregiver Jennifer N. Levin was 32 when h...
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June 5, 2025 • 64 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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A Black Feminist, activist, professor, and author, Loretta J. Ross has spent five remarkable decades in activism. She’s deprogrammed white supremacists and taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism and it’s worked because the power of her message comes from who she is and what she’s l...
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May 1, 2025 • 58 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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In challenging times, it can be important to access a multitude of healing pathways, and we can use astrology as a supportive tool to understand both the current moment and access our personal and collective agency.
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In this episode, Humanistic Astrologer, psychic medium, and author Jessica La...
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April 24, 2025 • 62 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Lifelong activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to decide that our interpersonal actions are not separate from our politics of liberation and resistance. Many activist projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultura...
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April 17, 2025 • 62 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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In her work, author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound ...
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April 2, 2025 • 60 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Generational silence is a term applied to families who have experienced suppressed thoughts or repressed emotions for at least two generations. Generational silence addresses both the cycle and impact of issues like substance abuse, religion, racism, education inequality, and parenting. In her ...
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April 1, 2025 • 88 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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This special episode features CIIS Professor Emeritus and cultural historian Richard Tarnas sharing illuminating insights into the nature of human consciousness and the cosmos. In this talk, Richard explores one of C. G. Jung’s most crucial contributions to psychology–the recognition that the u...
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Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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The Ten Oxherding Pictures is an image series that visualizes the Buddhist training path to enlightenment. The Ten Oxherding Pictures have served as a spiritual teaching tool for centuries, guiding seekers through the steps of awakening. But how are these images relevant today?
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In this episo...
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March 17, 2025 • 64 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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In this episode, 86th generation Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong is joined by CIIS Associate Professor Sonya Shah for an illuminating conversation exploring spiritual activism and how to envision co-creating new worlds from one in crisis.
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They discuss Norma’s lates...
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March 9, 2025 • 61 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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As we approach the first season change of the year, we are finding ourselves inclined to revisit this conversation centered on time and ritual featuring author Sasha Sagan and CIIS Interdisciplinary Arts professor Carolyn Cooke.
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Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl S...
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March 3, 2025 • 62 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Michelle Tea is best known for her book, Modern Tarot, which is now a cult classic. Her latest book, Modern Magic, explores her magical roots. Sharing how she crafted her own magical practice, Michelle offers a framework to tap into the distinctive magic that lies within each of us, a framework...
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February 25, 2025 • 58 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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For over 40 years somatic sex educator Dr. Betty Martin has explored the nuances of consent. In her framework and book, The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin traces the fundamental roots of consent back to our childhood conditioning. As children, many are taught that to be “good” we must ignore our ...
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February 20, 2025 • 62 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Talking about death is often deemed morbid or taboo, but to fully embrace life, scientists, psychologists, and spiritual leaders all agree—contemplating death is the key to living a life with meaning. In this episode, Joanna Ebenstein, author and founder of Morbid Anatomy—an organization explor...
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February 13, 2025 • 53 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Emerging research in psychological and philosophical circles is showing us that there is more to the good life than past or current conversations suggest. Psychological richness is the missing piece to the good life, and, Lorraine Besser, a founding investigator in these studies, shows how we c...
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February 6, 2025 • 60 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Each person has a unique, ever-changing relationship to hope. Hope alone can be transformational—but in moments of despair, or when you’re up against profound injustice—it isn’t enough on its own. As we enter a new year full of complicated hopeful feelings, we are finding this episode from our ...
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January 30, 2025 • 56 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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When a film touches us, makes us laugh, and has that feel-good spirit, we want more of it. We want a sequel! In this episode, psychotherapist and CIIS Assistant Professor in the Integral Counseling Psychology program Emily Marinelli is joined by therapist and activist DDS Dobson-Smith for a con...
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January 23, 2025 • 59 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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In the context of non-monogamy, compersion or the emotion of positive empathy is understood as sharing our partner’s joy regarding their other intimate relationship or relationships. Drawing upon her seminal research with consensually non-monogamous individuals, author and mindful dating and re...
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January 16, 2025 • 64 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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Majority cultural norms in the United States suppress our ability to truly feel our grief and each person’s experience with grief is as unique as the grief itself. Writer, somatic practitioner, and artist Camille Sapara Barton’s take on grief speaks directly to the ways that BIPOC and queer com...
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January 9, 2025 • 66 mins
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description.
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In anticipation of our upcoming workshop exploring shamanic tools for liberating our true longing with author and shamanic healer Langston Kahn, we are revisiting his conversation with energy worker and spiritual practitioner Maryam Hasnaa. In this deep conversation, Langston and Maryam discuss...
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