Laurie Santos talks about the power of a sabbatical, burn out, and her new online course titled: “The Science of Well-Being for Parents” —a direct result of discovering just how much pressure, stress and anxiety parents are under these days.

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, novelist and professor of modern poetry and poetics at New York University. Some of you may already be familiar with his best-selling debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which received a MacArthur “Genius” grant and was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019. Vuong’s award-winning poetry collections include, Time Is a Mother (2022) and Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016). His latest novel is “The Emperor of Gladness. A Novel.”

Pico Iyer, essayist and author of numerous books including “The Half Known Life:In Search of Paradise ” and most recently “Aflame: Learning from Silence,” reflects on the death of Pope Francis and highlights the extraordinary impact Pope Francis’s life had, despite Iyer’s non-Christian faith. Pope Francis’s humility, simplicity, and actions, Iyer says, which exemplified his teachings had and continue to have a great impacted over Iyer’s spiritual life. Paul Elie, religion scholar with the Berkley Center at Georgetown University, and author of “The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy in the 1980s” shares his first hand impressions of meeting Pope Francis and particularly how humble and unpretentious the Pope was. Elie says some of Pope Francis’s early experiences growing up in Argentina shaped his more progressive world views and reflects on the legacy that Pope Francis leaves behind on the world and on the Catholic Church.

Guests:

Pico Iyer

Travel writer and author of Aflame: Learning from Silence, The Art of Stillness : Adventures in Going Nowhere, and, Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells, “The Half Known Life:In Search of Paradise ”

Paul Elie

Senior Fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, and author of “The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy in the 1980s” May 27, 2025