Maya Shankar
speaker
1,518 appearances
8 recordings
7 series
first heard Oct 2025
last heard 5 Jul
Maya Shankar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 5.
Appearances
this man was making a point to say, this is who I am, right?
He was transcending what Dwayne thought was possible for a prisoner.
And it was with that empowered mindset that when Dwayne encounters a book of poetry and reads a poem that speaks to the experience of young boys in the prison system, Dwayne for the first time thinks, well, maybe I could be
a poet.
I can't care for the younger boys by teaching them how to box because I'm not strong and that's not my lane, but I can record and dignify their experiences.
And fast forward, Dwayne today is a Yale Law School graduate, MacArthur Genius winner.
He writes some of the most stirring poetry I've ever heard.
And it's all thanks to this one encounter of moral beauty.
And so I
I would urge everyone to try to invite these moments into their lives because they can actually be life-changing.
Another thing that people can do actually is to read fiction.
So researchers call fiction an identity laboratory.
And that's because when you're reading about someone else, the mind effortlessly blends
that character and you into a single entity, and you're able to freely try on new ways of being or new personality types or take risks or make decisions that you might not have felt the courage to do in real life.
And so it's in this really rich exploratory space.
And so those are just two examples.
I outline a bunch of other techniques you can use to try to conjure up new and more hopeful possible selves.
Ooh, that's a great question.
I just feel so much wiser as a result of the people that I...
had the great fortune of interviewing.
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