“Our breath is a beautiful, healing, mysterious gift, and so is this book. I already feel like it’s going to change my life.” —  Elizabeth Gilbert

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

James Nestor is an award-winning author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside, The New York Times, and more. His latest book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was an instant New York Times and London Sunday Times bestseller.

Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo.

Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Nestor about his new book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly—and how to get it back.

About the Guest
James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside, The New York Times, and more. His latest book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was released in 2020 by Riverhead/Penguin Random House and was an instant New York Times and London Sunday Times bestseller. Breath explores how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly–and how to get it back. Breath will be translated into more than 35 languages and has so far sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Breath was awarded the Best General Nonfiction Book of 2020 by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a Finalist for Best Science Book of 2021 by the Royal Society. James Nestor lives and breathes in Bernal Heights, San Francisco. More at Mrjamesnestor.com.

About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.   

About The Forum 
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and you. Our guests range from artists, inventors, and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world.