Netflix’s Popular Kids Podcast Drops New Episodes

Looking for an activity that will engage and entertain the whole family? Check-out Popcorn Brainstorm! Jokes & Trivia for Kids, the chart-topping Kids & Family podcast from Netflix. Featuring trivia, games and jokes from your kids’ favorite Netflix films and series, Popcorn Brainstorm explores and quizzes listeners on Leo, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, The Dragon Prince, and many others!

⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🤔 25 Things About Life I Wish I Had Known 10 Years Ago: Darius Foroux shares essential life lessons on embracing struggle, valuing relationships, practicing gratitude, and continuous learning. Read more here.

🌱 The Only Thing To Do: Exhaustion is essential for human development, requiring full commitment to the current stage until transformation through collapse occurs. Read more here.

👁️ A Responsibility to Wonder: Pioneering Neuroscientist Charles Scott Sherrington on the Spirituality of Nature. Read more here.

🎇 Image of The Week

“Pictured here are gigantic jets shooting up from a thunderstorm last week toward the Himalayan Mountains in China and Bhutan. The composite image captured four long jets that occurred only minutes apart. Gigantic jets, documented only in this century, are a type of lightning discharge that occurs between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them. They are an unusual type of lightning that is much different from regular cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. The bottoms of gigantic jets appear similar to a cloud-to-above strike called blue jets, while the tops appear similar to upper-atmosphere red sprites. Although the mechanism and trigger that cause gigantic jets remains a topic of research, it is clear that the jets reduce charge imbalance between different parts of Earth's atmosphere.” Taken by Li Xuanhua.

☀️ Rekindling Optimism

We live during a time where there is no short supply of things to be worried about.

Social media and broadcast news seem to be constantly flooding our minds with bickering and mudslinging.

It's a business model that profits from making you angry and anxious.

This information environment suffocates our sense of optimism in the harsh winds of digital chaos.

We cannot hear hope when it's drowned out by the noise of legions of lost souls shouting into the void of status boxes and comment sections.

There's an African proverb I quite like:

"A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest."

I remember it frequently. It invites me to listen more deeply. To sense into greater subtlety.

The spectacle and hysteria of the 24-hour news cycle are the trees falling. And if this was all you ever saw, you'd have a pretty wicked image of humanity.

Pessimism is the only logical conclusion.

But humanity is more than the cartoonish characters on your 2-dimensional screen telling you what the world is.

The world is so much bigger than hot takes and scandals.

The snow fell today. A baby learned to walk. A grandmother smiled.

A single bead of dew on a withering leaf shimmered in the light of the first morning's sun.

These simple "mundane" moments are the delicate and fleeting sounds of the whole forest growing.

There is more goodness in this world than you can fathom.

There's also a lot of bad. You know that already.

You might also know that shouting at how bad the bad is doesn't make it better.

That's like setting the fallen tree on fire and accidentally setting the forest ablaze.

In trying to eliminate the bad we destroy the good.

Instead, embody goodness and elevate beauty.

Be the beacon that reminds people that although this world is filled with tragedy and suffering, it is still a world worth cherishing and nurturing.

Give what matters your concentration and focus.

This is how you rekindle optimism.

Listen to the trees.

They are growing.

And so are you.

🏔️ Where The Edges Arise

Savor these poetic words from author Bayo Akomolafe:

“We make a mistake when we suppose that edges dwell at the outer limits of a form. Edges are never where we leave them. They never sit still. They leave the borderlands and saunter across the fields; they upset the designations we so heavily invest in, the ways we mark what is inner and what is outer, what is foreign and what is local, what is pure and what is impure, what is here and what is there. If you stuck a finger in the air, you might catch word of their drift, of their bovine songs, saying: "Don't trust the image so completely; soften your grip; meet the monster; travel far so you can be still, and be still so you can travel far; there is nothing to do now - and that takes a lot of getting to."

🤓 Learn This Word

Débrouillardise: A french word that refers to the quality of someone who is resourceful and lives with the ability to creatively improvise; someone who can make do and solve problems without much

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

A Poignant Comic on Why You Should Never, Never, Never Give Up

By Jon Brooks

When you were younger…

Did you ever have grand, ambitious dreams?

What happened?

Did you have fragile half-formed ideas that you felt would one day be strong enough to conquer the world?

What happened?

Did you ever experience that boundless sense of possibility?

What happened?

Do you still have those dreams, or did you leave them behind as you went forward through time?

The following comic illustrated by Zen Pencils and written by concert pianist James Rhodes features an exploration of that soul-piercing question we often feel when we nostalgically gaze into our past:

What happened?

This won’t be a pleasant read, but it will be cathartic.

As you go through each image in the comic, you’ll feel the razor drawing closer and closer to the threads that hold your excuses and rationalizations together.

When you’re done reading, you will feel a sense of lightness. To quote Tyler Durden from Fight Club, “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”

It’s time to let go of the things that prevented you to go after those things that used to be most important to you.

[Continue Reading]