Listening to Children: In Conversation with Linguist Eve Clark
Dr. Eve V. Clark has spent a career in academia pursuing one seemingly simple question: How do children learn to talk? The theory in vogue at the beginning of her….
Category: Psychology
Minibabble: Creativity in Difficult Times
When writer and artist Patrice Vecchione found herself crippled by anxiety and despair in early 2025, she responded the only way a creative person can: she wrote. In this mini-episode,….
Holding the Inner Flame: On Creativity
What is creativity, how can we nurture it, and what can it do for us? In this conversation we speak about creativity from two directions: Dr. Joanne Foster researches and writes about creativity in education, and Patrice Vecchione teaches and practices creativity in her writing and visual art. Interviewed separately, Joanne and Patrice speak on the same topics through the lens each has developed in her own life and work.
Go ahead and pick those mushrooms
Living gently with nature Some thoughts by Babblery host Suki Wessling on how we have been taught to be almost too respectful of nature. We’ve forgotten how to live hard….
Minibabble: On hanging out with Harriet in the closet
…and wishing it was a dumbwaiter Some thoughts on the importance of children’s literature, and how we bring the books we read as children with us throughout life. Read the….
Minibabble: Extraordinary morning
It was an extraordinary morning in the redwood forest, an extraordinary morning on earth. Every morning is extraordinary when you live on this unique nursery for life.
ReBabble: Ramona at Midlife Watch Party
What happens when a group of midlife women watch a film about a group of midlife women? Well, we have thoughts! Host Suki Wessling gathered a group of friends who had watched the movie to talk about their reactions to this story, which is unusual in how it centers women’s lives and friendships.
Minibabble: Woman holds the knife on the sharp side
Some thoughts on the proverb, “Woman holds the knife on the sharp side.” Why would she do such a thing? Is it because she was given a knife without a sturdy handle?
Minibabble: Don’t look at the tree!
When I learned to ride a motorcycle, the instructor gave one of those specific pieces of advice that end up being applicable to life in general: “Your bike will go….
Minibabble: Making music together = moving toward the good
Making music together = keeping time together
We often talk about “spending” time with friends, but how about keeping time? When we make music together, we literally interact with the time that we’re “spending,” keeping it, beat by beat, as a shared resource. There’s really no other [public] activity that we can do with other humans that allows us to interact in this way: when we play music, our bodies move in sync, our mouths say words together or in response, we are literally joined together in time.