In our youth-obsessed and technology-fixated culture, cultural anthropologist Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey (https://www.elizabethlindsey.com/)  believes we are starved for wisdom—about everything from the way nature works to how we should evaluate our self-worth. And she believes that wisdom can be found by turning to our elders, found in some of the most remote parts of the earth. 

 

Dr. Lindsey, the first Polynesian explorer and female Fellow in the history of the National Geographic Society, has spent her career traveling to the world’s most inaccessible, far-off regions documenting indigenous mastery and science. She has studied a tribe of South Pacific way finders (celestial navigators) who sail thousands of miles without the use of maps or instruments as well as a group of sea nomads who averted danger during the 2004 tsunami.  In this episode, the former Miss Hawaii (yeah, you heard us right…) shares some of her findings, including what she learned when she visited a small island off Micronesia and encountered a group of tribal women who had never seen a mirror.