Real Love

In her book Real Love, Sharon Salzberg—one of the world’s leading authorities on love—shows us it isn’t just an emotion we feel when we’re in a romantic relationship. It’s an ability we can nurture and cultivate. Also: The idea of “The Pause,” where medical caregivers take a moment together at the bedside of a patient who has died, began with emergency care nurse Jonathan Bartels at the University of Virginia hospital. This quiet moment honors the life of the person who has died and the efforts made by the caretakers. Later in the show: How do we go about creating a sense of self? Dr. Oliver Hill Jr. (Virginia State University) tells the story of his search for identity, first as a child caught up in a legal battle for school integration in the 1950s, then as a radical college student at a historically black university. After an unexpected connection at an ashram, he became a lifelong student of mindfulness and meditation practices he now brings into the lab and the classroom.