Resilience: What It Really Means & The “Ordinary Magic” It Takes to Build It w/ Professor Ann Masten
3/6/20261 hr
In today's episode I sit down with professor Ann Masten to unpack what resilience actually means—and why it’s so often misunderstood. We explore her powerful definition of resilience as the capacity of a system to adapt to serious challenges, not just a personality trait or inner toughness. From everyday stress to real adversity, we discuss the difference between harmful trauma and growth-building challenges, and why kids need support—not perfection—to thrive. We talk about the “ordinary magic” of caring relationships, schools, communities, and cultural traditions, and why resilience is built through connection across multiple systems.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAnn Masten· Guest0:01
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
Aliza Pressman· Host0:04
[on-hold music] Welcome to Raising Good Humans podcast. I'm Dr. Lisa Presman, and today we are talking about resilience, but the cool thing is that I got Professor Ann Masten to come on the podcast. You might not know her because she's very deep in academia, but she is the most exquisite pioneering researcher on resilience, and she has truly advanced the theory on positive outcomes for children and families. And she has every award you can possibly imagine. She's written gazillions of peer-reviewed articles, and she recently did a second edition of her extraordinary book, Ordinary Magic: Resilience in Development. And I cannot tell you what a contribution she's made to this field. In her book, Ordinary Magic, she k- kind of updates the research with key advances in theory and methods and research, and it is a landmark work. It was such a great honor to have Ann Masten. I wish I could tell you how major she is in this field. I'm like, she's kind of the Meryl Streep of resilience. How about that? [chuckles] So have a listen