Interdisciplinary Studies

Preschool teacher Linette Illastron returned to school after a decade and rediscovered her voice, her strength, and her passion for learning at CIIS.

Discover how degree completion programs offer flexible pathways for adult learners to finish their bachelor's degree.

What if the questions that draw us to learning could also reshape who we become? Across disciplines and life paths, curiosity emerges as sacred work, an opening into connection, healing, and transformation.

In this episode, 86th generation Zen master and Indigenous Hawaiian leader Rōshi Norma Wong is joined by CIIS Associate Professor Sonya Shah for an illuminating conversation exploring spiritual activism and how to envision co-creating new worlds from one in crisis.

They discuss Norma’s latest book, When No Thing Works, in which she inquiries into the ways we can live well and maintain our wholeness in an era of collective acceleration and explores ways we can step out of urgency to tend to our crises with wisdom, intention, and care.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 22nd, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Zara Zimbardo and Lily Stone collaborated on the new album Marsification: A tale of planetary grief, featured on Radio 4’s Short Cuts.

Alec MacLeod, long-time CIIS Professor, shares his thoughts about teaching, his students, and reflects on his recent retirement 

With over 20 years of experience practicing and teaching Kingian Nonviolence, leading trainer Kazu Haga offers a practical approach to resolving conflict first practiced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement. In his work, Kazu reclaims the energy and assertiveness of nonviolent practice and shows that a principled approach to nonviolence is the way to transform not only unjust systems, but broken relationships.

In this episode, Kazu Haga is joined by CIIS professor and restorative justice expert Sonya Shah for a conversation about his life, Kingian Nonviolence, and his book, Healing Resistance.

This episode contains explicit language. This episode was recorded at a live event in front of a live audience at CIIS in February 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

A discussion with Professor Charlotte María Sáenz about community education, collective responsibility, philosophy and imagining brighter futures for students.

Some adults struggle to communicate with students who have autism and try to “fix them.” But what if we found a way to help these students use their natural gifts to convey their thoughts and feelings?

Chris Martin, an award-winning poet and celebrated educator, works with non speaking autistic children and adults, teaching them to write poetry. In his latest book, May Tomorrow Be Awake, Chris introduces the techniques he uses in the classroom and celebrates an inspiring group of young neurodiverse thinkers and their electric verse.

In this episode, queer, transgender, autistic author and educator Nick Walker has a conversation with Chris about the mind, language, human potential, and the lessons we can learn from one another.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 18th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, mechanical engineer and author David Hu talks with Kat Snow from KQED Public Radio about how scientists are inspired by animals to develop cutting-edge technology.

This episode was recorded during an event on October 17, 2018 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Author, editor, and Baltimore native D. Watkins is joined by equity expert Y-Vonne Hutchinson for this conversation about the lessons D has learned navigating two very distinct worlds—the hood and the elite sanctums of prominent black thinkers and public figures.

This episode was recorded during an event in 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Author, Black feminist, and social justice activist adrienne maree brown has been talking, writing, and celebrating the intersection of pleasure and activism since her much-lauded 2019 book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good.

In this episode, CIIS professor and restorative justice expert sonya shah joins adrienne for a powerful and joyful conversation exploring how to tap into the full spectrum of our sensual desires and emotional needs while organizing for justice.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on February 12, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

As the effects of aggressive policing and mass incarceration harm historically marginalized communities and tear families apart, how do we define safety? In a time when the most powerful institutions in the United States are embracing repressive and racist systems that keep many communities struggling and in fear, we need to reimagine what safety means.

In this episode, community leader and lawyer Zach Norris is joined in a conversation with CIIS professor and restorative justice expert sonya shah about how we can shift our mindset and embrace a new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishment.

This episode contains mentions of violence and death by suicide. This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 23, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What makes cults so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Author and journalist Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has.

In this episode, CIIS professor, writer, and speaker Zara Zimbardo talks with author and journalist Amanda Montell about her latest book, Cultish, in which she argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. Zara and Amanda discuss influence, the social science of cults, and how to recognize the language of fanaticism all around us.

Many of the topics discussed on our podcast have the potential to bring up feelings and emotional responses. We hope that each episode provides opportunities for growth, and that our listeners will use them as a starting point for further introspection and growth.

If you or someone you know is in need of mental health care and support, here are some resources to find immediate help and future healing:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – Free, confidential support 24/7 for people in distress, prevention, and crisis resources for you or your loved ones.

San Francisco Suicide Prevention – A local nonprofit offering crisis intervention, grief support, and education programs.

CIIS Counseling & Acupuncture Clinics – Affordable integrative mental health services provided by supervised graduate students at CIIS.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 14th, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. Examining the complexities of disability issues with wisdom, humor, and honesty, author and disability advocate Rebekah Taussig seeks to normalize the lived experience of disabled persons while also advocating for improvements and a paradigm shift—something that we all play a necessary part in.

In this episode, self-proclaimed queer, Black, biracial Glamputee Alex Locust joins writer, teacher, and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty, Rebekah Taussig for a conversation about her book, also titled Sitting Pretty, as well as her life and her work.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 22nd, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Journalist Celeste Headlee is joined by CIIS professor Zara Zimbardo to discuss ways to have meaningful conversations in a politically and socially polarized time.

This episode was originally recorded live with an in-person audience on February 22nd, 2018.  A transcript is available below.

In these pandemic times, and times of racial justice uprising and reckoning, the failure of U.S. and global health care systems to meet human need or to even ensure the basic safety of health care providers continues to be revealed. How did we get here?

In this episode, CIIS faculty and multi-sector social justice organizer Mordecai Ettinger offers an exploration of the hidden history of white supremacy and colonization embedded in the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC)—a web of institutions—from hospitals, dialysis centers, and nursing homes, to health insurers, big pharma, and the corporate polluters that they are entangled with.

Mordecai addresses the myriad ways in which the MIC generates, perpetuates, and upholds ableism—particularly racialized medical ableism—as among the most dangerously violent and destructive forces of our times. Finally, Mordecai offers a vision for hope, a path forward for transforming the MIC and creating alternatives for health and healing, a crucial part of humanity’s collective liberation in which we all have a role to play.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on September 30, 2020. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

According to renowned political economist Raj Patel and physician and activist Rupa Marya, our bodies, our societies, and our planet are inflamed. In their recent book, Inflamed, Raj and Rupa reveal the links between health and structural injustices—and offer a new deep medicine that can heal our bodies and our world.

In this episode, Raj and Rupa are joined in a rich, unique conversation with CIIS professor Charlotte María Sáenz as they illuminate the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 8th, 2022. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Over the past 17 years, queer autistic author and educator Nick Walker has played a key role in the emergence of the neurodiversity paradigm—a framework for scholarship, practice, and social justice work where treating human neurocognitive variations such as autism, dyslexia, and ADHD as medical disorders is understood to be a form of systemic oppression along the same lines as the pathologizing of homosexuality in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In this episode, Dr. Walker is joined by writer Dan Glenn in an uplifting conversation exploring her newest book, Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. They also discuss the edges and intersections of neurodiversity, gender, Queer Theory, embodiment, creativity, somatic psychology, and the human capacity for transformation.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on February 16th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Through his yoga teaching and writing, Jacoby Ballard explores the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. He offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations and sequences for processing and healing from trauma both individually and in community.

In this episode, queer, transgender, autistic author and educator Nick Walker talks with Jacoby about his latest book, A Queer Dharma and the possibilities for finding an unapologetically queer path towards true healing and transformation.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on November 18th, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

As the first Latinx person to direct national domestic policy issues, Cecilia Muñoz knows the difficulties of getting ahead without trailblazers to follow.

In her latest book, More than Ready, she offers lessons inspired by both the challenges she faced and the victories she achieved in the White House. Cecilia’s own life and work taught her tactical tools, tools that women of color can look to, and be inspired by, to reach unprecedented levels of power and success—without compromising who they are.

In this episode, Sonia Mañjon, Executive Director of LeaderSpring Center, talks with Cecilia about working through fear, overcoming injustices, facing down detractors, and more.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 9, 2020. You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Chani Nicholas is a beloved astrologer and queer feminist activist with a loyal online following. For her, astrology isn’t about passively accepting our fate, it’s about action. In her inspirational and socially conscious weekly horoscopes, she encourages her devotees to take control—to confront themselves, their desires, and their needs—to fulfill their potential using the power of the stars.

Recorded live on February 20, 2020 at the Herbst Theatre shortly after the release of her book You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance, this episode features Chani in three parts. Beginning with a chart-reading and conversation with Fania E. Davis, a leading national voice on restorative justice, followed by a conversation with CIIS Professor Sonya Shah, and finishing with questions submitted by the audience.

Mari Andrew is an author and illustrator who shares her work daily on Instagram with over 1 million devoted fans around the world. Her first book, Am I There Yet? debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list.

In this episode, Mari is joined by fellow author and illustrator Nicole J. Georges for a conversation about finding personal healing by creating work that shines a light on feelings we all have, but don’t always reveal.

This episode was recorded during an event on October 31, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

In this episode, bioethics professor Osagie K. Obasogie talks with author George Estreich about what he has learned as the father of a young woman with Down syndrome exploring the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 19, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

In this episode, diversity and inclusion specialist Denise Boston has a conversation with author and academic DaMaris B. Hill that spans poetry, history, and current events to illuminate the lives of extraordinary women, and examines the impact they have had on our society today.

This episode was recorded during an event on July 25, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. 

Author Lynne Twist is joined in conversation by Liz Beaven to discuss the power money wields over our lives and how we can empower ourselves to re-conceptualize it.

This episode was recorded during an event on March 22, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Artificial intelligence research scientist Julie Carpenter, and human sexuality researcher Brianna Booth explore the future of human-robot sexual interaction, considering the subject from both robot and human perspectives.

This episode was recorded during an event on January 24, 2019 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

The authors of Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, are joined in conversation by Joseph Subbiondo to explore how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives. This conversation is part of our Technology and Consciousness Series.

This episode was recorded during an event on April 27, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Civil rights activist, former Black Panther leader, and educator Ericka Huggins is joined in conversation by CIIS professor and restorative justice expert Sonya Shah. 

This episode is presented in collaboration with Bioneers and the 2016 National Bioneers Conference.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 8, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

One of the leading thinkers in the emergent field of neurodiversity, CIIS faculty member Nick Walker, discusses the benefits of a more neurodiverse world. This talk was part of the Big Ideas at CIIS series.

This episode was recorded during an event on October 13, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Frank Warren, the creator of the wildly popular website, PostSecret, talks about how he holds the one million plus secrets he has received in the decade since starting his site.

This episode was recorded during an event on August 20, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this episode, Integrative Health Studies Professor Meg Jordan explores some of the most compelling new ideas in health from the world of science that are shaking up our notions of how to recover from trauma and illness. This talk was part of the Big Ideas at CIIS series.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 29, 2016 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

CIIS faculty Zara Zimbardo explores our enduring interest in zombies, and examines what this increasingly normalized pop culture obsession points to. This talk was part of the Big Ideas at CIIS series.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 21, 2016.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Comedian, writer, and actress Zahra Noorbakhsh is joined by CIIS faculty member Zara Zimbardo for a conversation that explores being Muslim in America today, and how to counter discrimination with comedy.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 25, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, robotics engineer turned consciousness hacker Mikey Siegel is joined in conversation by Alexander Reben, an artist and roboticist. The two discuss the ethical implications of recent developments in artificial intelligence and technology.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 24, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Author and journalist Jo Piazza is joined in conversation by CIIS professor Nicolle Zapien to explore wedding and marriage rituals, customs, and traditions throughout the world.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 31, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

This episode features Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian and founder of the Internet Archive, and Wikimedia Foundation Creative Director Heather Walls in conversation about the Internet and how its systems exhibit impermanence as well as permanence over time.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on September 21, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Indie game developer turned social activist Zoë Quinn is joined by CIIS faculty Zara Zimbardo for a rare public conversation about her experience at the center of the Gamergate controversy and her journey to overcome it by working to make the internet a better, safer place for everyone.

This episode was recorded during an event on September 27, 2017 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

Pioneering Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Magdalena Yesil came to the United States in 1976 with two suitcases and $43, unaware of the challenges she would face as an immigrant woman. 

In this episode, Magdalena is joined by CIIS professor Sara Salazar for a conversation about her life and the lessons she learned breaking glass ceilings to rise to the top in Silicon Valley and beyond.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on December 14, 2017.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, historian and author Leslie Berlin is joined in conversation by hacker and inventor Mitch Altman to explore how hippies and hackers built the largest center for innovation in the history of the planet - and why it can’t be replicated elsewhere.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on January 31, 2018.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, Doug Vakoch, CIIS professor and President of Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (METI), examines the social and cultural aspects of extraterrestrial contact.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 22, 2018.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

A student's mom writes about the unique and transformative degree.

Scholarship assisted workforce in San Francisco