Having grown up in Fairfield, Iowa, and practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique since childhood, award-winning journalist Jennie Rothenberg Gritz brings both a deeply personal perspective and a journalist’s eye to her forthcoming book, The Inward Trip: The Untold Story of Meditation in the West.

She talks about what she learned from three years’ research into the history of meditation in America—from yoga’s surprising popularity among 19th-century New England women to the transformation of Japanese Zen in San Francisco’s counterculture. She also discusses the latest scientific research and the unique role Fairfield’s TM community has played in the evolution of meditation in the West.

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine and a former senior editor at The Atlantic. She attended Maharishi School from first through twelfth grade, was the valedictorian of her graduating class at Maharishi International University, and is a teacher of the TM technique.

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz … discusses the latest scientific research and the unique role Fairfield’s TM community has played in the evolution of meditation in the West.

Ms. Rothenberg Gritz earned a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she received the Lewis Lapham Award for Outstanding Magazine Writing. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her two teenage children.

Christine Albers, host of TM Talks, interviewed Jennie Rothenberg Gritz. This interview was aired on August 30, 2026.