"How our experiences as parents can become the path to transcendence"--

A spiritual and scientific surf quest. After spending two years in bed with Lyme disease, Steven Kotler had lost everything: his health, his job, his girl, and, he was beginning to suspect, his mind. Kotler, not a religious man, suddenly found himself drawn to the sport of surfing as if it were the cornerstone of a new faith. Why, he wondered, when there was nothing left to believe in, could he begin to believe in something as unlikely as surfing. What was belief anyway? How did it work in the body, the brain, our culture, and human history? Into this mix came a strange story. In 2003, on a surf trip through Mexico, Kotler heard of "the conductor," a mythical surfer who could control the weather. He'd heard this same tale eight years earlier, in Indonesia, but this time something clicked. With the help of everyone from rebel surfers to rocket scientists, Kotler undertakes a three year globetrotting quest for the origins of this legend. The results are a startling mix of big waves and bigger ideas: a surfer's journey into the biological underpinnings of belief itself.

"Upgrade your metaphysics" with funny yet profound insights into science, religion, and meaning.

For millennia, the teachings of Kabbalah were available only to men. In fact, women were literally forbidden from studying the subject. Karen Berg has spent her life trying to change that. As the cofounder of the Kabbalah Centre International and the author of the groundbreaking God Wears Lipstick, in which she revealed for the first time how women could use Kabbalah’s timeless tools to improve their lives and find greater fulfillment, Berg is arguably the world’s best known and most beloved female Kabbalist. But both women and men respond to Berg’s clear, honest, and forthright manner of speaking and writing — and, indeed, of being. Her new book, Simple Light, is a collection of thoughts, meditations, advice, stories, and life lessons that capture the author’s very essence and give readers tools to learn from and live by. Through her unique perspective, readers gain fresh insight into an ancient spiritual science.