Wonderstruck

About Wonderstruck

Wonderstruck® is a podcast about awe and wonder that includes the profoundly moving, the humbling, and the uncanny. Hosted by psychologist, yoga teacher, and seeker Elizabeth Rovere, it explores experiences that bring us to the very edges of what we can explain, and beyond. Join us every month for conversations with scientists and shamans, philosophers and poets, mystics and experiencers. We ask what we can learn from those moments that often lack explanations. We ask deeper questions about consciousness, being, and reality. We look at mystery not as something to solve, but as a place where transformation can occur. And along the way, we glimpse a world wilder, stranger, and more Real than we ever imagined. http://newsletter.wonderstruck.org (http://newsletter.wonderstruck.org/) https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod (https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod) https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ (https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/) https://wonderstruck.org (https://wonderstruck.org/) Presented by Creative Visions and Striking Wonder Productions™ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Publisher

Striking Wonder Productions

Category

health & fitness · religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Feb 2023

Latest episode

3 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 35 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   3 Nov 2026TRANSCRIPT

   34: Toko-pa Turner on the Forgotten Wisdom of Dreams

   Dream worker, author, and mystic Toko-pa Turner shares how dreams offer healing and guidance, inviting listeners to explore their deeper messages in this interview.

2. 

   12 May 2026

   33: Hiroko Yoda on What Japanese Spirituality Can Teach Us About Happiness

   When her mother died, Hiroko Yoda was brought to her knees. What pulled her back was something that had been there all along, the ancient spiritual traditions of her home country, Japan. What followed was a decade-long journey through shrines and temples, sacred mountains, and waterfalls, culminating in her latest book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness. The title comes from an ancient Japanese idea: that eight million spiritual beings inhabit everything around us. Not as a precise count, but as a way of saying the sacred is everywhere, in everything. Recorded inside an ancient Shinto shrine deep within the sacred mountains of Kumano, located at the end of a pilgrimage route walked for over a thousand years, Wonderstruck's host Elizabeth Rovere sits down with Hiroko to explore: ✦ How "kami" spirit exists in everything ✦ How the concept of "half-belief, half-disbelief" makes room for mystery without demanding certainty ✦ Why gratitude, not belief, is the core of Japanese spirituality and the seed of happiness ✦ The flexibility of Japanese spirituality and what it offers a world grown rigid in its certainties ✦ The spirituality found in your favourite anime Through Hiroko's journey, from grief to gratitude, from loss to a world where everything has a spirit, we begin to see that happiness isn't something to be chased or achieved. It's something to be noticed, in the smallest of things, in the spaces we walk past every day without looking. Chapters: 00:00:00 Welcome to the Kumano Shrine 00:01:54 Kami: 8 Million Spiritual Beings 00:05:19 Rigid Society, Flexible Spirituality 00:16:32 Walking Through Grief 00:20:35 Gratitude, Not Belief 00:25:07 Half-belief, Half-disbelief 00:27:50 Mysteries of the Waterfall 00:35:52 Itadakimasu: Spirituality in Everyday Words 00:39:03 Meeting Itako, The Blind Shamaness 00:45:15 Masakado: Anger and Love 00:51:15 Anime, Yokai, and Healing Follow Hiroko: Website: https://www.hirokoyoda.com/ Substack: https://blog.hirokoyoda.com/ Book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/eight-million-ways-to-happiness-9781526672162/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hi_yoda_1 Follow Wonderstruck: Website: (https://wonderstruck.org/)https://wonderstruck.org (https://wonderstruck.org) Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org (https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod (https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ (https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661) Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw (https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

3. 

   7 Apr 2026

   32: The Secret Lives of Plants and Fungi with Merlin Sheldrake and Zoë Schlanger

   If we understood the true complexity of the natural world, would we call it conscious? Would we begin to question the boundaries we put between ourselves and everything around us? We explore these questions with biologist Merlin Sheldrake and science journalist Zoë Schlanger. Their bestselling books, "Entangled Life" and "The Light Eaters", required monk-like study and deep immersion in the natural world. What they discovered quietly dismantles some of our most basic assumptions about intelligence, memory, and what individuality really means. Recorded during Harvard Divinity School's "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" conference, this special episode brings together Merlin, Zoë, host Elizabeth Rovere, and guest co-host Rachael Peterson, the "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" Initiative Program Lead at Harvard, to explore: ✦ Whether plants have personalities and why they might be kinder to kin ✦ How a brainless slime mold can navigate its way out of an IKEA faster than a human ✦ How flatworms put into question where memory actually lives ✦ Whether it's possible to ferment a book and drink it When we stop centering the individual and truly reckon with the entangled nature of all living things, something shifts. The question stops being how do we include more-than-human perspectives… it starts being whether that separation even makes sense to begin with. Chapters: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:10 How to Write About the Hidden World 00:04:45 The Myth of the Individual 00:09:53 We Are Polluting Our Own Home 00:15:14 The Problem Isn't Science. It's Language. 00:18:18 The Plant That Can Copy Anything 00:24:25 As Temperatures Rise, Fungi Are Evolving 00:28:31 Do Plants Have Personalities and Prefer Their Family? Follow Merlin Sheldrake: Website: https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/ (https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merlin.sheldrake (https://www.instagram.com/merlin.sheldrake) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/merlinsheldrake (https://www.youtube.com/user/merlinsheldrake) Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566795/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/ (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566795/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/) Follow Zoë Schlanger: Website: https://www.zoeschlanger.com/ (https://www.zoeschlanger.com/) Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zoeschlanger.bsky.social (https://bsky.app/profile/zoeschlanger.bsky.social) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeschlanger/ (https://www.instagram.com/zoeschlanger/) The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-light-eaters-zoe-schlanger?variant=41096248295458 (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-light-eaters-zoe-schlanger?variant=41096248295458) Follow Wonderstruck: Website: (https://wonderstruck.org/)https://wonderstruck.org (https://wonderstruck.org) Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org (https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod (https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ (https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661) Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw (https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy (https://acast.com/privacy) for more information.

Inside a recent episode

34: Toko-pa Turner on the Forgotten Wisdom of Dreams

Published 3 Nov 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] I feel so grateful to have dreamers come to me in my private practice, and they bring these dreams, and some of them are very difficult, and some of them are incredibly beautiful. Often what happens is people come to a session and they say, I had a little dream, but it's not much. There's nothing to it. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

2,788,581

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

23 ratings

Spotify

4.5 / 5

19 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 71 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

54

Social presence

97

YouTube

93

Engagement

77

Contact Wonderstruck

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

Shows with a similar audience

• 

  Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

• 

  Living Myth

• 

  Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

• 

  Phenomena Podcast: The Science & Stories of Energy Healing

• 

  Know Thyself

• 

  New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast

Questions about Wonderstruck