This week on The Living Experiment, while Dallas is off on adventures, Pilar has a very special guest: Geneen Roth.

Geneen has written close to a dozen terrific books, including Lost and Found: One Woman's Story of Losing Her Money and Finding Her Life and When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair. She  also teaches life-changing workshops all over the country.

Most of Geneen's work explores the intricate, under-examined spaces between how we feel, think, act, and relate — to ourselves, to each other, and to the experience of being alive.

In this interview, a far-ranging conversation that stretches over two full episodes, Pilar delves into Geneen's new book, This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide. It's a work so rich in wisdom, feeling, and funny insights that it's kind of hard to categorize, and even harder to contain.

Get full show notes and resources at http://livingexperiment.com/messy-magnificent-1/

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Apologizing — the reasons it’s worth doing, and the art of doing it well.

We explore the value a good apology can have in healing conflict and shame, and the reasons our well-intended apologies sometimes don’t go as well as we’d like.

We talk about the characteristics of good and not-so-good apologies, about private apologies and public ones.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you evolve your own apologetic skills and sensitivities in ways that work for you.

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Friends — not the kind we call “friends” social media, but the real, meaningful, human kind we connect with in person. The kind we care about deeply. The kind we count on for hugs, empathy, perspective, emotional support and fun.

In a world where many of us feel painfully pressed for time, we’re barely connecting with our romantic partners and close family members, much less making time to forge and maintain meaningful connections beyond the walls of our own homes.

So here, we talk about the difference between various levels of friendship intimacy, and how relationships are deepened by time, proximity, shared experiences, vulnerability, and trust.

We explore the essential role friendships play in defining our lives, and how to go about evaluating and evolving the friendships in your life now.

Finally, we offer you some experiments to help you give your own friendships a little more of the energy and attention they deserve.   

This week on The Living Experiment, we’re talking about Reading — its potential for informing and enriching our lives, and its potential for becoming an escapist habit.

In a world dominated by a non-stop stream of mass media and clickbait, is there still a place in our lives for real, deep, intentional reading?

Is reading a paper book or long-form magazine article the same as reading on screen, or listening to books on tape?

Has the ability to read, and ready deeply, become endangered in our culture?

We address all these questions and more. We also share the role that reading — particularly book reading — plays in our lives, and the reasons we both read as much as we do.

Finally, we offer some guidance on making more discerning reading selections. And we suggest some experiments to help you reflect on how reading can enhance your wellbeing, your thinking, and your quality of life.