On the 148th episode of What is a Good Life?, I welcome Leigh Marz, a collaboration and leadership coach for major universities, corporations, and federal agencies. She has led training programs to promote an experimental mindset among teams at NASA and a decade-long cross-sector collaboration to reduce toxic chemicals in products, in partnership with Green Science Policy Institute, Harvard University, IKEA, Google, and Kaiser Permanente. Leigh coauthored Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise and cofounded Astrea Strategies, helping leaders bridge contemplation and action.
In this conversation we explore silence as a living presence—how inquiry, pauses, and shared quiet unlock better thinking, connection, and wellbeing. We cover mapping noise (auditory, informational, internal), flow states, and why slowing down in groups (even at work) sparks novel solutions.
04:03 – Origins of the silence inquiry & HBR article
09:00 – “What’s the deepest silence you’ve known?”
12:41 – Freedom moment: “Silence teems with life”
16:41 – Quiet together: practices beyond meditation
24:44 – Mapping noise: auditory, informational, internal
29:33 – Antidote: signals you need silence & “positive distractions”
35:00 – Designing retreats for novel thinking
38:21 – “Slow down, there isn’t much time.”
46:13 – Silence & the nervous system
52:00 - How the inquiry into silence has shaped Leigh
58:12 – Leigh’s response to “What is a good life?”