Friends, Levar eff-ing Burton has a new podcast in which he reads his favorite grown-up stories. Be still my heart!

If you, like me, grew up with Reading Rainbow, you are for sure going to want to give this a listen. Never forget that there is good in the world.

LEVAR BURTON READS

My sister Katrina, who works for me at Mindful Technology, has coined a new term that I love: "intervention tech."

It references technology that is designed to intervene at moments when we might be about to make a mistake, like leaving a nasty comment on Instagram, or picking up our phone for the five-thousandth time in a day. I like this a lot: it's not controlling us, but it is giving us a chance to check ourselves.

 Another example I like is how some people are training artificial intelligence to talk back to bigots on the web, saying things like, "The language used is highly offensive. All ethnicities and social groups deserve tolerance." 

It's nice to see examples of technology being used to elevate the best of our human impulses.

Speaking of artificial intelligence, I mentioned that I was going to sit on a panel about bias in AI last week. It ended up being, by far, the most eff-ed up panel I have ever been a part of.

It had both subtle and overt racism, one woman having what I suspect was a true mental health breakdown on stage, and the silencing of a transgender audience member's questions. It was horrible, and while I did my best to be an ally to the people who were being marginalized, I have no doubt I could have done more.

I'm proud of my response in a time of chaos, but it reiterated for me how important it is to educate myself to do the work of learning how to be an effective ally.

To that end, I'm planning to go to an event here in NYC on Monday put on by my friend Melissa Carter:

An Intimate Night with Layla Saad, author of "me and white supremacy."

As always, I don't know what the exact answers are, but I do know that the answer is not to do nothing!

This week's free meditation video is a 20-minute guided meditation for anxiety. (Spoiler alert: if you have anxiety, nothing is wrong with you. But there are ways to work with it!)

I was on The Gratitude Podcast this week talking about anxiety, simple gratitude practices, and talking a little smack about the wellness industrial complex. As I do.

Bookish named my book on of their fave books they read this week. Yay!

To be honest, the simplicity of the practices is turning out to be a little divisive: some people are complaining that they are too simple, and others are really resonating with how easy they are to do.🤷🏻🤷🏻

(I'm trying to let the criticism go, since I really did write the book to be as accessible as possible. But I am for sure having some first time author nerves and feelings about it. And if you feel like leaving an Amazon review, I would be super grateful!)

Okay, so listen: you know how we were taught in school that there were different theories about how the dinosaurs died out but we didn't know for sure?

Well, time marches on and as it turns out we DO know for sure now that it was a giant meteor, and we know exactly where it hit: Mexico! They know where the crater is. It's obviously enormous. The meteor crash and subsequent results are called the "Chicxulub event." (I recommend reading the entire Wikipedia page. I did, of course. As I do.)

And new news is that we are also now learning what that meteor did to the oceans as well: flash acidification. 

The Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Acidified the Ocean in a Flash | NYT

(Kids in school now are being taught this, they know it. I wish there was an annual publication for grown-ups to read called "Stuff Kids These Days Know That You Prolly Wanna Know Too"!)