Two brothers chase one thread through many lanes: how meditation, language, craft, and city trees point to a more grounded life. We end with a simple tool for singing and everything else: ask how to enjoy it 10 percent more, and let the body lead.

• Nonduality and the Zen of simple attention
• Craft as presence through pottery and baskets
• Work and leadership as spiritual practice
• Self‑reliance, emotional fluidity, and team trust
• Reframing sin, repent, and mercy
• The Sopranos as a lens on grace and fear
• Urban forestry myths and real benefits
• Foraging, stewardship, and regulation
• Soil, gratitude, and interdependence
• Singing, primal sound, and active relaxation

Soil gets paid through love, through attention

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Ben interviews his brother Adam, also a grad student studying trees. Adam goes into how he's using cellular structure in oaks to reveal climate history. Along the way they talk grad school realities and other student job related stories.

• why oaks can extend climate reconstructions farther back in time
• sanding protocols, imaging, and AI for cell-level features
• grad school workloads, TA work, and lab culture
• work outside of grad school
• sponsor shoutout to Tiger Shark Industrial Abrasives

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We talk with Claire about moving from Minneapolis, how road trips to Taliesin and House on the Rock reshaped her eye, and why Kandinsky’s point-line-plane changed how she sees art, music, and daily life. Art theory turns into simple tools for empathy, spirit, and choosing what matters.

• moving from Minneapolis after 26 years and being closer to family
• Wisconsin travel memories of Taliesin and House on the Rock
• Kandinsky’s shift from law to color and meaning
• objective versus nonobjective art in plain language
• point to line to plane as a guide for choices
• art as therapy for self-knowledge and empathy
• spirit as everyday energy shaping words and actions
• music at the senior center and finding real color in performance
• heritage, work, and names connecting identity to craft
• small compositions in daily routines and aging with dignity

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