Lessons in Gratitude

With Nina Lesowitz and Emiliana Simon-Thomas

Airs Wednesday, April 15 2015

During this week’s radio show you will learn about:

Realizing your Greatest Longings through Cultivating Thankfulness
Tips and Practices for Gratefulness When We’re Feeling Anything But
The Scientific Definition of Gratitude
The Mechanisms, or Psychological Processes that Underlie the Beneficial Impact of Gratitude
Research-tested Ways to Practice Gratitude

Nina Lesowitz is an award-winning marketing professional who runs Spinergy Group, which represents authors, corporate clients, and nonprofits. She, along with Sammons, co-authored the best-selling Living Life as a Thank You, and What Would You Do if You Knew You Could Not Fail?: How to Transform Fear into Courage. She lives and sails in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, and produces events for Litquake, San Francisco’s literary festival.

You can learn more about Nina here.

Emiliana Simon-Thomas is the Science Director at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. She earned her doctorate at Berkeley, using behavioral and neuroscientific methods to examine how aversive states like fear affect thinking and decision-making. Emiliana transitioned to studying positive emotions and pro-social states like affiliation, love of humanity, compassion and awe during her postdoctoral research, and then served as Associate Director/Senior Scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford. Back at Berkeley, Emiliana recently co-led GG101x, The Science of Happiness, a Massive Open Online Course on the EdX platform with over 170K registered students. Her current scientific focus is on the biological underpinnings and advantages of pro-sociality. Looking at how connecting with others, being kind, grateful and cooperative benefits health, well-being, psychosocial functioning and performance, Emiliana’s work aims to fully explore the potential for – as well as the benefits of – living a more meaningful life.