Three for Thee!

I love Top 5 Things lists. Apparently lots of bloggers and their readers do. One of the best is Courtney Martin’s Sunday 5.

When I get together with friends, we almost always share our recent favorites in books, movies, and podcasts. Do you?

So, today I will share some recent faves in each of those three categories and invite you to add your own in the comments. If this idea proves useful to you, I will try to do a “Three for Thee” post once a week for a while.

Books

I attended a fitness class for the last five weeks. The teacher recommended the book The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. So I checked it out of the local public library.

The book has almost 44,000 reviews on Amazon! I have read many books about spirituality and mindfulness with similar themes and goals, and I wouldn’t choose to recommend this book as being superior to any of them — with one exception. I thought the short chapter about “Contemplating Death” packed a solid punch. [Someone else who read the book must have thought so too. I found numerous pencil check marks in the margins behind the most profound sentences 🙂 ]. Here are three quotes to whet your appetite:

“A wise being completely and totally embraces the reality, the inevitability, and the unpredictability of death.” (p. 157)

“It is death that makes life precious.” (p. 162)

“You really don’t need more time before death; what you need is more depth of experience during the time you’re given.” (p. 163)

Bonus question. What would you change about your life if you knew you only had one more week to live?

Movies

Instead of just one movie, I will recommend a source for many: PBS Passport!

You can sign up using the link above, or you can download the app for your phone or TV. For as little as $5 a month, you can have the whole archive of your favorite PBS shows to watch. I recommend that you give at least as much to PBS as the lowest amount Netflix charges for ad-free service (17.99/month). It’s a good way to support the high-quality broadcasts in a time when all public funds have been withdrawn. Stuart and I have two series running right now: The Forsyte Saga (Masterpiece Theater) and The West, a Ken Burns film, first broadcast in 1996.

We are getting ready to take a month-long road trip that ends in Phoenix, AZ, so The West is perfect for understanding the history of how Mexico, Spain, England, and the new United States all played their roles in the history of this magnificent landscape and how the Cheyanne, Kiowa, the Sioux, Navajo, and many other indigenous groups suffered as European settlers moved across the plains and the mountains to the ocean.

We also look forward to this series coming In March. A new version of the saga!:

Podcasts

I do a lot of walking, and usually I have the company of Ira Glass, Ezra Klein, Esther Perel, Krista Tippett, Padraig O’Tuama, Dani Shapiro, Joyce Vance, Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway, and others speaking to me on my favorite podcasts via ear buds.

I also listen to some lesser-known podcasts, including one called Callings, designed for educators in liberal arts colleges. The most recent episode features guest Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania famous for her study of grit and the Ted Talk she gave on the same subject. Even if you have never been an educator, I invite you to listen to Duckworth. Her enthusiasm and optimism were inspired by Howard Thurman and Viktor Frankl, and they might be just the inspiration you need for living in dark times.

So there they are: three for thee!

What are your own recommendations? Can you second any of these? What else would you like to know?