7. Caverly Morgan: "I Am Not This Voice. I Am Not This Narrative."

Summary

People I (Mostly) Admire – Episode 7:

Caverly Morgan: "I Am Not This Voice. I Am Not This Narrative."

Podcast: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
Date: February 14, 2026
Host: Steve Levitt
Guest: Caverly Morgan (former Zen monk, mindfulness educator, founder of Peace in Schools)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Steve Levitt delves into the transformative world of mindfulness and presence with Caverly Morgan. A former Zen monk who spent eight years living in silence, Caverly is now devoted to bringing deep contemplative practices into mainstream education. The conversation explores her unlikely spiritual journey, her pioneering work with high school students through the Peace in Schools program, and the foundational belief that “I am not this voice, I am not this narrative.” The episode offers insights on mindfulness, the limitations of traditional education, transformative tools for self-awareness, and wrestles with deeper questions of identity, suffering, and the role of spiritual teachers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction to Caverly Morgan

• Background: Upper-middle-class upbringing in Charlottesville, Virginia, not particularly religious or spiritual as a child.
• Spiritual Spark: Moved by witnessing moments of surrender and connection in others, such as a man in church raising his arms in freedom from ego and narrative. (05:49)
• First Encounter with Zen: A friend gave her the book That Which You Are Seeking Is Causing You To Seek. Signed up for a silent Zen retreat, initially unaware of its requirements. (06:55)

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The Silent Retreat Experience

• Surprise and Resistance: At her first Zen retreat, expected relaxation and camaraderie with friends but was shocked by complete silence and lack of eye contact. Deep resistance arising from the “inner dialogue.” (08:43)

• First Major Insight: Developed distance from her thoughts for the first time, seeing them as a narrative rather than truth.

  “I am not this voice. I’m not this narrative. This narrative is something that I'm aware of and it was a radical perspective opener for me.”
  (09:41 - Caverly Morgan)

• Resulting Transformation: Left the retreat feeling "on fire" and awakened, seeking more retreats despite her friends' different reactions. (12:13)

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Training as a Zen Monk

• Path to Monasticism: Gradually transitioned from attending retreats to living in a Zen monastery in Northern California for eight years, despite initial resistance to "becoming a monk." (12:26)

• Letting Go: Did not initially cut all ties or possessions but gradually embraced more monastic structure.

• Defining Zen:

  “The best expression of Zen would probably be silence… but for me, it truly can be boiled down to the word presence.”
  (14:51 - Caverly Morgan)

• Presence Explained:

  “You can actually place your attention where you want it to be. And again, the result of that is empowerment.”
  (15:27 - Caverly Morgan)

• Daily Monastic Life: Structure, frequent sitting meditations, strict separation, sometimes not speaking to people for years.

  “I now see [that life] as not required in order to have a life of presence… so few people would hear this and be drawn to go have this experience.”
  (18:17–19:15 - Caverly Morgan)

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Leaving the Monastery

• Prompted by Her Teacher: Realized she could not reconcile monastic isolation with engaging in the wider world; forced to grapple with bringing mindfulness into everyday, non-monastic life. (19:42)
• Key Reconciliation:

  “…You either go to a place very dedicated to spiritual practice, remove yourself from the world and then you can have enlightenment and peace, or you live this worldly life that is just bound to all of this suffering… I was thrown into a deep reconciliation process.”
  (20:14 - Caverly Morgan)

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Mindfulness in Public Schools: Peace in Schools

• Genesis: Invited to teach mindfulness to high school students after a teacher experienced her adult workshop; immediate, organic interest from teens. (22:33)

• Why Teens?:

  “Teens were on fire. They were like sponges… For the kid… who thinks of themselves as the class outcast, to realize that they have the exact same voice as the popular cheerleader… was just profound.”
  (22:33 - Caverly Morgan)

• Program Structure:

  • Insisted on teaching during the school day for reach and equity. (24:31)
  • At Wilson High School, over 300 students wanted to take the class, resulting in an elective "Mindful Studies" course with 75+ hours of instruction—far more immersive than typical mindfulness interventions. (25:06)

• Curriculum Tools and Exercises:

  • Exploration of negative self-talk, making the internal critic external and visible.
  • Exercises on coping mechanisms and survival strategies—exploring the societal and personal narratives teens adopt. (29:01)
  • Encourages understanding that everyone—regardless of popularity—shares similar inner voices of self-doubt.

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Transformative Impact

• Powerful Testimony:

  “Mindful studies is the reason I'm alive. I wouldn't be sober without mindful studies. I wouldn't be coming to school at all without mindful studies. It is a lifeline for me.”
  (32:03 - Caverly Morgan quoting a student)

• Johns Hopkins Study: Found even greater impact among students with adverse childhood experiences. (33:01)

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Program Challenges & Scalability

• Organic Growth: Success came from adapting to the needs and interests of specific schools/teachers rather than trying to radically overhaul systems. (24:31)

• Startup Stories: Funding and teachers came through rapid, sometimes serendipitous means. (28:01)

• Costs: About $250 per semester per student—substantially less than many therapeutic interventions; justified by the depth of transformation. (34:16)

• On Expansion:

  “It's not something that will move quickly because it shouldn't, because we'll compromise that integrity if it does… The best way to train an instructor is they do several weeks of immersion… So it's quite expensive to onboard a new teacher.”
  (35:04 - Caverly Morgan)

• Ensuring Integrity: Only hires teachers with deep personal mindfulness experience; trains via immersion and shadowing, not quick certification.

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Mindfulness Beyond School—Children’s Book

• Motivation: Acts as a “lighthouse,” offering tools and conversations through multiple forms, including a children’s book aimed at ages 9 and up. (36:38)
• Book Reading Sample:

  “You are not your thoughts. You are not your likes and dislikes. You are not the things you worry about or even the things you believe. So if you’re not those things, who are you?... Mindfulness brings you to what’s real and true. It brings you to who you already are.”
  (38:18 - Caverly Morgan, reading)

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Deeper Reflections

• On Women as Spiritual Teachers:

  “We live in a society where we're deeply conditioned to experience patriarchy in a particular way… If it's coming out of the mouth of a man, it has more validity. I had to learn to see that conditioning for what it was so that I could let it go.”
  (39:38 - Caverly Morgan)

• Parenting Advice:

  “Even a parent who may never mention the word mindfulness… if they're being fully present, if they're not judging, if they're practicing acceptance of themselves and others, it will be felt.”
  (40:31 - Caverly Morgan)

• Advice for Youth:

  “…The veil that stands between who you're conditioned to believe you are and who you really are is very, very thin… [Empowering young people]… puts a young person in a position to have impact in our world.”
  (41:10 - Caverly Morgan)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On experiencing discomfort and inquiry:

  “When we inquire deeply into the nature of discomfort, we're freed to have a different relationship with what is… So what interests me is the practice that gives us the space to pause and inquire whether this discomfort is actually just a series of thoughts that doesn't even get questioned.”
  (03:45 - Caverly Morgan)

• On presence:

  “When the mind is busy with all of this conversation about the horrible things that are going to happen in the future… we're not present…”
  (15:27 - Caverly Morgan)

• On the hidden voice:

  “You are not your thoughts.”
  (16:56 - Caverly Morgan)

• On education’s focus:

  “Our education system was designed in the 19th century and these students were not being taught how to deal with uncertainty or how to be adaptable or how to access resilience…”
  (26:25 - Caverly Morgan)

• On modeling mindfulness as a parent:

  “We forget about the power of modeling… It will be felt.”
  (40:31 - Caverly Morgan)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:45 – Inquiry into discomfort and questioning the narrative
• 08:43 – The powerful impact and resistance experienced during the first silent retreat
• 09:41 – First experience of distance from inner narrative
• 14:51 – The essence of Zen and presence explained
• 19:42 – Why Caverly left the monastery
• 22:33 – Bringing mindfulness to high schoolers and their immediate engagement
• 29:01 – Specific tools and exercises used in the Peace in Schools curriculum
• 32:03 – Student testimony: “Mindful studies is the reason I’m alive.”
• 34:16 – Cost per student and rationale behind intensive training
• 35:04 – Why true scale and quality require patience and deep teacher immersion
• 38:18 – Reading from “A Kid’s Book About Mindfulness”
• 39:38 – Reflections on gender roles in spiritual teaching
• 40:31 – Advice for parents: modeling presence
• 41:10 – Advice on empowering young people

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a powerful blend of personal journey, practical application, and broader philosophical reflection. Caverly Morgan’s work points toward a future where inner awareness and emotional resilience take their rightful place in mainstream education, modeled by deeply present adults and empowered youth. The discussion is compelling for anyone interested in education, spirituality, psychology, or simply in understanding themselves with greater clarity.

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Transcript

[Kara Lee Morgan]

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[Kara Lee Morgan]

A student of mine came to speak at a school board meeting. I didn't know what he was going to say, but I've never forgotten it. He said, mindful studies gave me the tools so I could save my life. So these are the tools that give teens a very concrete way to move through the world with less suffering, with a deeper sense of knowing who they are and the capacity to deal with the inner critic, the voice that most of us don't ever even question.

[Steve Levitt]

I'm so excited to talk today with Kara Lee Morgan. She's quite different than the typical guest I have in this show in that she's devoted her life to spirituality. She spent eight years living in complete silence in a Zen monastery, and since she left the monastery she's done many interesting things. But the one that really caught my attention is a program called Peace in Schools that teaches mindfulness skills to high school students. I had a chance to observe that program firsthand and I was so impressed that I immediately signed up to be a donor.

[Podcast Host]

Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

[Steve Levitt]

Now, I've only talked with Calverly a few times at length, but I have to say every time I walked away from the conversation, I felt changed, I felt improved, I felt happy. So I really hope that today's conversation will be in that same spirit. I'm not quite sure Cavalier how to introduce you, so I just want to start with a story I've heard that I think says a lot about who you are. You were leading a retreat and a mosquito was buzzing around you and you waved your hand, shooing the mosquito away. But it was Persistent. And it kept on hovering around you. And this went on apparently for about 30 seconds. And then finally you just said, oh, well, let's get this over with. And you stood still and the mosquito landed on your cheek and it took a healthy dose of your blood until it finally was satisfied and it flew away. And you went back to your lecture without any comment. Do you understand how unusual that behavior is?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Well, I've not even recalled that experience until you said it. And I do recognize that what's unusual in our world today is for us to have such an interest in inquiry.

[Steve Levitt]

So when you say inquiry, I think most people wouldn't think of a mosquito sucking their blood as inquiry.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Well, when we inquire deeply into the nature of discomfort, we're freed to have a different relationship with what is. We forget to even ask, what is the nature of this discomfort? So what interests me is the practice that gives us the space to pause and inquire into whether this discomfort is actually just a series of thoughts that doesn't even get questioned.

[Steve Levitt]

Do you sometimes kill mosquitoes?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

You know, I actually have to confess that I don't. I.

[Steve Levitt]

You never do.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I never do. And I think that it's not because I am religious about that, but the taste for causing harm has actually left me at this point.

[Steve Levitt]

Great. Let's start at the beginning. I'm curious the kind of life path that leads you to where you are, which is clearly a very different place than where most people are. Were there any hints in your early childhood that you would follow this path of love and doing no harm? Were you an unusual kid?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I wasn't at all. I grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, you know, in an upper middle class family. My mother took us to church only when the University of Virginia students were in session because she thought the boys were so cute in bow ties. So this was not a deep spiritual emergence of a childhood. That said, I do have some specific memories of watching people be moved by something that they would call larger than themselves.

[Steve Levitt]

Can you give me an example of the bigger than themselves experiences that moved you as a child?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I just remember this moment when there was a man over in one of the pews nearby. And I remember watching him. Now, I would call it surrender, but I watched him be freed from that internal narrative that my life is about. I, me, mine. And that happened through him, releasing his arms into the air. And what was being released was this sense of isolation that comes from being identified with a narrative that keeps this illusion of I am the mask I wear in the world. In place. And that certainly has been a thread throughout my life. I wasn't versed in world religions. I didn't grow up knowing Buddhists, and I actually didn't feel particularly drawn to a religion.

[Steve Levitt]

What got you started on a spiritual path?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

You know, a friend of mine gave me a book called that which you are Seeking is Causing youg to Seek. And I actually had never read anything about Zen Buddhism. I can't say enough. I wasn't, like, drawn to learning more about religions per se. I read this book, however, and then I was on a mailing list. So I ended up on retreat. And I talked two girlfriends into going on the Zen retreat. And I had no idea what I was getting into. I mean, we had beer in the car because I thought, we'll get to unwind a little bit on this retreat. And we were playing music, and I had missed the fine print that it was a silent environment. And we show up and a woman comes over and bows to us and says, the retreat has actually begun, but I'll go ask the teacher whether it's okay for you to enter the group. And then she bowed again and left. And I turned to my girlfriends and I said, oh, man, they're bowing. And here we're out of here. Like, I just. I wanted nothing to do with any environment where someone I didn't know was going to bow to me.

[Steve Levitt]

I don't know what you mean when you say it's a silent environment. So what does that even mean?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

You know, I didn't know myself, and I think that's why I was in such a state of shock when I arrived. When I talk about a silent retreat, I mean it very literally. There not only was no talking, there wasn't eye contact, so meals are shared, but we were facing away from each other.

[Steve Levitt]

How long was the retreat?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

That silent retreat was a week. But we had only taken enough time off work to attend four days of it. And I think it was probably the longest four days of my life.

[Steve Levitt]

So for four days, you don't make eye contact, you don't talk. And did that change you? Did an epiphany hit you then, or what? What happened?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Yeah, it changed me deeply. I mean, first of all, I experienced tremendous resistance. The inner dialogue about how crazy this was was so loud. And I still look back in amazement that I didn't fall for that narrative. And I think the reason why is the practice that I was being dropped into in the deep end was a practice that invites you to pay attention to the narrative rather than to believe the narrative. So for the first time I had some distance. I heard this voice. It's the same voice that was creating panic attacks during a test in high school. It's the same voice of you're going to fail. You don't know what you're doing. Your life is going to be a shambles. It's that same voice at this retreat. These people are crazy. What are they doing here? I don't have the discipline for this. I can't handle this. But it was the first time I was being given a tool. I now call these tools contemplative technologies that allowed me to see I am not this voice. I'm not this narrative. This narrative is something that I'm aware of and it was a radical perspective opener for me.

[Podcast Host]

You're listening to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt and his conversation with educator, former Zen monk and founder of the organization Peace in Schools, Kaverly Morgan they'll return after this short break.

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[Steve Levitt]

So you left the silent retreat after four days. And I presume you drove home with your two girlfriends.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Yeah, who don't speak to me anymore, by the way.

[Steve Levitt]

Okay. And what was the conversation like? What was their experience?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I mean, I was on fire. They were a little bit more in the camp of that was a trippy experience. But I felt awakened. I didn't know how long, but I knew I was going to be going on another retreat.

[Steve Levitt]

And it took, I believe, three years after that first retreat. But you ended up making your way to a monastery in Northern California where you stayed for eight years. Yes.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Being on retreat became a huge passion. I found myself organizing what I was doing in my life around having the time off to be able to go on as many retreats as possible. And at one point the teacher said, you know, clearly this is something you're deeply called to. You know, you can come and train at the monastery. And I remember saying to her, as long as that doesn't make me a monk. I had been in a long term relationship with a truly wonderful man that everyone around me, including him, assumed we were heading towards marriage. And I couldn't reconcile a narrative in which I would move too deeply into a practice that requested a lot of letting go with the vision of what I thought my life was supposed to be.

[Steve Levitt]

And so you ended up signing up for six months in the Zen monastery, and there must have been a lot of letting go to do that. Did they ask you to shed all your possessions and your relationships?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Because I was very adamant that I was not going to become a monk. I had my things in storage. I wasn't so quick to let go. I didn't actually cut all ties. I did have a bi weekly phone call with my mother, who I'm very close to, but I had no cell phone. I really surrendered to this approach of training for six months.

[Steve Levitt]

Do they cut off all your hair when you get there or I trained.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

In a place where that actually wasn't a requirement. Now, I did choose at one point in time to shave my head. And that was motivated by my own inquiry around who am I without my hair?

[Steve Levitt]

Honestly, I know very little about Zen. Are you able to describe Zen and its beliefs in a simple way that even somebody like me would be able to understand it?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Yes. The beautiful thing about Zen is that the best expression of Zen would probably be silence. There is, of course, religious form around Zen, but I actually ended up training in a monastery where there wasn't a lot of form. What that did, is it allowed? What I felt really was the Heart of Zen, in my experience, to shine forth. And that truly can be boiled down to the word presence.

[Steve Levitt]

And what does presence mean?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

So when the mind is busy with all of this conversation about the horrible things that are going to happen in the future, when the mind is fixed on that conversation, we're not here, we're not present. And when the mind is fixed on the regrets about what happened yesterday and last week, we're not here. You can actually place your attention where you want it to be. And again, the result of that is empowerment. So we start by getting present, and then as we get present, something opens. We get to explore what is presence, what's always the backdrop of our experience, even if the mind is very busy, what is the nature of our own being, even if the mind is focusing on regret or the past.

[Steve Levitt]

I had an interesting experience with my teenage kids when I talked to them about that voice inside their head. And what was interesting is that they weren't even really aware that there was a voice. They acknowledged it once I brought it up. But if I had said to them, is there chatter going on all the time in your head?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Is there?

[Steve Levitt]

I don't think they even were aware enough to understand that chatter. I think there's such a disconnect between our existence because people have never known anything except the chatter. They don't even understand it as chatter.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I couldn't agree more. When I was doing this small after school program here in Portland, one of the things that I would do in those demonstrations is I would drop that phrase, you are not your thoughts. And it was profound. The stillness and the silence and this notion of, well, then who the hell am I?

[Steve Levitt]

So is there a goal? When you're a Zen monk, are you striving towards a goal or is that the wrong way to think about it?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

You know, in the monastery where I trained, there would have been a lot of conversation about there is no goal. But I did see it as a goal to, quote, unquote, get better at having my attention be in the present moment, rather than focused on the future or focused on the past.

[Steve Levitt]

So tell me about a day in the monastery.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

The monastic way was extremely structured. There really wasn't, quote, unquote, downtime. Everything we were doing throughout the day, we were doing from the perspective that whatever it was was an opportunity to practice.

[Steve Levitt]

So specifically, would you get up at 5:00am? I mean, could you just walk me through the day?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

It wasn't quite as early as 5 on an average day, but it was dark and you'd have a Sitting meditation and then you'd have your breakfast and then you'd move into another seated meditation and then you'd have working meditation until lunch. I ended up training at this monastery for eight years and I trained alongside people that I never chatted with. There's one gentleman that I trained with and he trained there 18 years and we just had our first kind of heart to heart in a very personal way, sharing all of our experience conversation about a year ago because now he's left the monastery. So it was an extreme environment and it was an environment that I now see as not required in order to have a life of presence. And I really just want to underline that because I think so few people would hear this and be drawn to go have this experience.

[Steve Levitt]

So there would be many days when you literally would not speak.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Many, many, many, many, many.

[Steve Levitt]

And would you talk to yourself when you got back to your room to hear your own voice or no.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

You know, often by the end of the day I didn't necessarily feel compelled to talk to myself because I had gotten so present all day long to how much I talked to myself after.

[Steve Levitt]

So many years in the monastery. What made you leave?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

That's actually an incredibly involved answer. But the short version is that my teacher saw that it was time for me to go. I had been there eight years and there was something that I couldn't reconcile in the monastic structure. It had served me until it no longer served me and I couldn't bring myself to leave. But my teacher saw that there's something that I wasn't going to be able to get from within the gates. So I was asked to leave and it was the best thing that could have happened. In particular, what I was required to reconcile was, okay, you either go to a place very dedicated to spiritual practice, remove yourself from the world and then you can have enlightenment and peace, or you live this worldly life that is just bound to all of this suffering. So I was thrown into a deep reconciliation process.

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[Steve Levitt]

So you leave the monastery. And what is the idea for bringing mindfulness into the public schools? How does that germinate?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I was doing a workshop for a group of adults, and a woman approached me at the end of the workshop day, and she said, my high school students have to learn what you just showed me. So I went in as a volunteer guest teacher. And this is the beauty of me being naive to, like, school systems and structures, because I just went in and basically did the same workshop about hearing that voice in your head. And teens were on fire. They were like sponges for the kid in the class that thinks of themselves as like, the class outcast. To realize that they have the exact same voice as the popular cheerleader then for teens to share an experience that is normally invisible was just profound. And I actually saw the teens were more ready to be unburdened from the conditioning that they'd been downloading, that they're still in the process of downloading. People that are our age, you know, we're kind of crusty at this point in time. Like, our conditioning is more solidified. We got to really peel it back in some cases. And these teens weren't quick to defend their conditioning.

[Steve Levitt]

People who've never tried to change public education probably have no idea how difficult and slow and frustrating the process can be. What I find really amazing about this whole story is that I have tried on 5, 10 different occasions to make change in the public schools, and not once has anything organic ever happened. I mean, it's been nothing but fighting and pushback and disappointment and failure. But somehow or another, you managed to get what the program came to be called Peace in Schools, a foothold can you describe that process?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Yes, it's been beautifully organic. I wasn't trying to do something really radical, but I knew that mindfulness as a short term, quick intervention wasn't going to be the answer. So I said, I've got to be during the school day. I can't be just like a one off after school thing where I'm not reaching the kids who have jobs or play soccer. The principal at Wilson High School, you know, he said, if you get 25 teens to say they want to take this class, I'll figure out how to get it during the school day. So we forecasted it and over 300 teens said that they wanted to take the class.

[Steve Levitt]

Wow.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

So he said, we've created a monster. I want to hire you full time. I said, I don't have any intention of being a full time high school teacher, thank you very much. But I am interested in seeing what's possible with this. So let's do a pilot year. He gave me $10,000, which at the time I thought was just awesome. And it was the first time that we know of where in a public school setting there was this course called Mindful Studies. And I got to be with the same set of teens for over 75 hours in one semester. So it really got to be an immersion. Most interventions of mindfulness come in and do maybe six hours with the same set of teams, maybe 12 hours. And those are great, but they're not going to have the kind of lasting effects that we see.

[Steve Levitt]

Yeah, I'm deeply interested in peace in schools because I feel that our schools just don't teach the right subjects. Imagine we started from scratch and we tried to build the best possible educational experience, ignoring constraints and ignoring history. I suspect we'd put much more emphasis on mental health, on knowing oneself, on developing the skills needed to deal with loss or anxiety or abuse.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

You know, our education system was designed in the 19th century and these students were not being taught how to deal with uncertainty or how to be adaptable or how to access resilience. I live into the vision that at some point this kind of inner curriculum that we offer is going to be as valued as the way we think about physical education and public education. I mean, that was only introduced, what, 100 years ago or something. So it doesn't seem to me to be an outlandish vision that at some point we'll think it's crazy to have an educational structure that doesn't include, well, being tools of resilience, social, emotional, learning, healthy coping mechanisms that are so Significant now.

[Steve Levitt]

So you taught this course yourself the first time?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I taught it myself. But here's the funny part of the story. I had also been doing some volunteer work at a school called Rosemary Anderson here in Portland. And Rosemary Anderson, caught with that Wilson High School, was going to bring me in for three sections of mindful study. And so the principal at Rosemary Anderson called and said, well, that's not very fair. Our school should get to have this too then. And I said, well, first of all, I'd need more money and, you know, school budgets. I. I'm sure you don't have money. And second of all, I can't be in two places at once. So she said, I'll be back in touch within a week. And I didn't think too much of it, but within a week she called me back and said, I just got $24,000 from the city of Gresham. Who's ever heard of getting a grant that quickly?

[Steve Levitt]

That's very surprising. Yeah, but that's just the money part. Where did you find the teachers?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I called the longest term student at the time that was here in Portland, who had been somewhat disenchanted by her sort of experience of clocking in and clocking out of a job that was centered around architecture. And I said, I actually have this vision of teaching this class over at Wilson High School, having you sit in on the class, then you go and do the exact same thing down at this other high school. But I'd need you to put in your two weeks notice by the end of today. And she did. You got to give credit to the millennials for being so, like, willing to just drop everything and try something wild.

[Steve Levitt]

So you created from scratch, essentially overnight, this semester long curriculum. Can you describe the types of tools that you were teaching the teens?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

The first thing we do in the class is we explore the negative self talk that we all have. You have that voice that I've made reference to in this conversation in your head that is judging yourself or judging others or judging the world. And we go through a process that allows the teens to get in touch with that voice in which they're writing down what they hear. And I won't give every detail of the exercise, but there are some things that happen that allow each teen to end up with another person's inner dialogue. They don't know whose it is. But then we do role plays where we're acting out the experience of that dialogue. We're letting what's normally hidden and internalized and quiet become loud and externalized. And embodied. And then teens are in relationship with each other around that voice. Another thing we explore in the class are coping mechanisms. When I'm stressed, what behaviors do I engage in that actually lead towards suffering rather than away from it? We explore survival strategies. Survival strategy might be I've learned that as long as I do everything well and always cross my T's and dot my I's, and if I focus on being a perfectionist, society will reward me, and then I suffer deeply trying to meet those standards. So again, it's not that there's anything wrong with wanting to do something well. But we explore what happens when it becomes a strategy to survive rather than an expression of, I'm excited about this project, so I want to do it well. We explore how we get stuck in the mind of I'm always the center of the universe, so what does it mean to go outside, to get beyond the that. I mean, my mind.

[Steve Levitt]

So being so close to these students, you must have seen and heard amazing stories about how your teaching was affecting things in their life, actions, activities they were doing, how they reacted to their relationship with their parents. Are there stories that spring to mind?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

The first one that came to mind when you said, that is a student that I'll call Emanuel. Emmanuel had been in my class three times in a row. It was obvious to me that he was a bit of a troublemaker in school, but he loved the class. He always showed up, he was always on time. And I'll never forget the principal came in one day and said, hey, I need to talk to you in the hall here. You know, Emanuel's failing economics. And I said, well, I'm sorry to hear that. I don't know much about Emmanuel's classes outside of mine. Well, he never went to economics, and he was just consistently coming to my class. So I went up to the office with Emanuel, and we met with the school counselor. And the school counselor said, you've taken this class three times. You're failing economics because you're not going to economics. Why are you, in a sense, crashing mindful studies? And this student paused and said, mindful studies is the reason I'm alive. I wouldn't be sober without mindful studies. I wouldn't be coming to school at all without mindful studies. It is a lifeline for me. This is way beyond teaching teens how to, like, you know, there's that mindfulness exercise, eating a raisin and just focusing on the taste of the raisin. And that's kind of a traditional mindfulness exercise. Nothing wrong with that exercise. But in our class, we go so far beyond what I think of as Mindfulness 101. We're really offering social, emotional, learning that is deeply transformative for these teens. We were just studied by Johns Hopkins, and one of the things that came forward in that study is that students who have very high levels of adverse childhood experiences experience greater benefits.

[Steve Levitt]

Has there been parental resistance? I would think there's a chunk of the population that would feel this is too esoteric or New Agey for their comfort level.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Well, it likely wouldn't have started in the way it started if I weren't in Portland, Oregon. I happen to be in a setting where the average parent is not going to be scared of the word mindfulness in a course description, especially when it's very clear. And I should say this, it's very important to me that this class is an elective. I do not believe mindfulness should be a required course. I think students should be able to choose whether they'd like to have this exploration. And what we tend to see is that students who need this experience will be drawn.

[Steve Levitt]

I'd like to pause and ask some tougher questions that more skeptical listeners probably have echoing through their mind. So please so how much does it cost per student, fully loaded to deliver this material?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Last time I did the math, it was about $250 per semester ahead. And if you consider cost of, let's say, therapy or therapeutic interventions for students with high levels of trauma, it's just astronomical. But $250 per student per semester, that's actually really reasonable, especially for what we get out of it.

[Steve Levitt]

So as an economist, when I see a good local program, I want it to be universal. And I really wonder, though, as much as I like your program, is it really scalable and to what extent, if you made this, say, a course for every kid in the US how you would be able to maintain anything like.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

The quality, you know, it's not something that will move quickly because it shouldn't, because we'll compromise that integrity if it does. The PSA school's philosophical approach has to be a deep immersion training experience. It can't be that someone just does one online course and then is certified as a peace in school's instructor. The best way to train an instructor is they do several weeks of immersion in the philosophical approach, understanding the tools, having their own experience of the tools. So they're actually always teaching from direct experience. Then we move into an experience where we're paying them to shadow another teacher for a full semester. So right now it's quite expensive to onboard a new teacher. And we're not even hiring teachers who don't already have years of mindfulness experience under their belt. It's not our job to teach them mindfulness. In other words.

[Steve Levitt]

Now we just got done talking about how with 75 hours of time in a classroom with teens, you can hugely impact their lives and the importance of having that time. But now you've taken a different path also by writing a children's book in which you're trying, I think, to get to the same goals but through a very different medium. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I've never framed it this way before, but I might say that it's, you know, my calling is just to be a lighthouse. So offering whatever comes through this lighthouse is what I'm committed to. It might be a children's book, it might be a deep semester long course, it might be a retreat I'm offering. And my hope is that this children's book, it's for ages 9 and up, that it ignites conversation, that it gets dialogue happening between parent and child.

[Steve Levitt]

Have you tried the book out with 9 year olds?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I have. It's actually that's probably been my greatest delight about it is to do these public readings for adults and young people and to watch the in the moment, like sometimes wrestling, sometimes excitement, sometimes just engagement and curiosity with the questions that are put forward.

[Steve Levitt]

My reaction to the book was that you've tried to boil down everything you've learned in your life into something that is the length of a Dr. Seuss book, more or less. I don't know. If you have a copy of the book, would you want to read just a few pages of it?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Oh, sure, sure. So it's called a kid's book about mindfulness. Who are you? Have you ever asked yourself that question? You might answer by saying, I am tall, I am from New York, or how would you answer, but is that who you are? Or are those just descriptions? You might also answer by saying, I like dancing, I don't like trying new foods. Or how would you answer? But is that who you are? Or are those just likes and dislikes? You might even answer by saying, I'm the best at soccer, I'm the worst at math. Or how would you answer, but is that who you are? Or are those just thoughts? You are not your thoughts. You are not your likes and dislikes. You are not the things you worry about or even the things you believe. So if you're not those things, who Are you? Did you know that there's something that can help you discover who you are? Is called mindfulness. Mindfulness is something you can practice any time, anywhere. Mindfulness is a way of being here right now. Mindfulness brings you to what's real and true. It brings you to who you already are. It brings you here. It brings you now.

[Steve Levitt]

That was beautiful. A beautiful reading. It really brought it to life. I just have a couple more questions. So you're a deeply respected, widely loved spiritual teacher and most prominent spiritual teachers are men. Why do you think that is?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Oh my goodness. That is a really great question. And I think it's actually incredibly important question. We've talked quite a bit about the conditioned mind, about how powerful it is. We live in a society where we're deeply conditioned to experience patriarchy in a particular way. And I can speak to my own experience of being conditioned to assume that if it's coming out of the mouth of a man, it has more validity. I had to learn to see that conditioning for what it was so that I could let it go.

[Steve Levitt]

This relates back to your book, but do you have advice for parents who are trying to raise happy, well adjusted.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

Children to be a happy, well adjusted adult? We forget about the power of modeling. I think even a parent who may never mention the word mindfulness or social emotional learning to a young person, if they're being fully present, if they're not judging, if they're practicing acceptance of themselves and others, it will be felt.

[Steve Levitt]

Do you have advice for happy, well adjusted children who want to help their miserable, closed off parents?

[Kara Lee Morgan]

I do. I do. Actually. My experience of being around teens and young people is that the veil that stands between who you're conditioned to believe you are and who you really are is very, very thin. And so we have a lot to learn from the way in which young people can often so easily see through that veil. And so I think by creating environments where teens are empowered and are given voice and leadership and honored, that puts a young person in a position to have impact in our world.

[Podcast Host]

People I mostly admire is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network network and is produced by Freakonomics Radio and Stitcher. Matt Hickey is the producer and Dan Dezulla was the engineer of this episode. All of the music you heard on today's show was composed by Luis Guerra. We can be [e-mail] thanks for listening.

[Kara Lee Morgan]

The Freakonomics Radio Network the Hidden side of Everything. Stitcher.

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