The Santa Fe psychiatrist explores how attachment, empathy, and belonging shape our capacity for kindness—and why understanding begins with asking what happened.

Are people innately good? For Santa Fe psychiatrist Dr. Zane Maroney, the most honest answer is also the most human: it depends.

In this episode of *Doing Good*, Dr. Maroney challenges the tidy division between “good people” and “bad people.” Human beings, he argues, are shaped by temperament, childhood, culture, security, trauma, and the relationships that teach us who we are. The moral compass begins forming early, when children absorb not only what caregivers say, but what they model. Labels that seem harmless—good, bad, lazy, clumsy—can become part of a child’s identity.

Dr. Maroney’s own path to psychiatry joined science with the humanities. Inspired by his father’s work at the Santa Fe Indian Hospital and his own experience at Albuquerque’s Casa de Salud, he came to see medicine as a universal language—and healing as an art grounded in people’s stories.

That understanding guides his work today. Therapy, he says, begins by walking “shoulder to shoulder” with another person, building trust and bearing witness to experiences often hidden by guilt or shame. “It’s the relationship that heals.”

The same principle reaches beyond the therapy room. Beneath anger, he often finds fear. Beneath harmful behavior, there may be injury, deprivation, or an unmet need. Asking “What happened to you?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?” does not erase accountability; it opens a path toward empathy, forgiveness, and change.

Kindness, in this view, is rooted in connection. People need skills, biological support, and—most importantly—other people. An act of care reminds both giver and receiver: I belong here. I can affect another life.

Perhaps goodness is not perfection at all. Sometimes it is helping a stranger. Sometimes it is reducing harm. And sometimes it is simply refusing to pass our hurt on to someone else.

For more information, or to tell the story of someone you know who's doing good, go to doinggood.fm

The Diné farmer, artist, and co-founder of Bidii Baby Foods draws from the same palette in his farming and sand painting: the earth itself.

For Zach Ben, farming and art are inseparable expressions of culture. A sixth-generation farmer and accomplished sand painter, Zach learned both practices from his father. Whether gathering natural pigments for a painting or planting heritage seeds, he works with the same essential material—the earth. Both practices carry memory, tell stories, and connect one generation to the next.

In this episode of Doing Good, Zach explains how becoming a father gave that connection a new purpose. He and his wife, Mary, founded Bidii Baby Foods after the birth of their first child in 2021. They planted two acres by hand, growing heritage varieties of corn, squash, and melon. Their son’s first food was corn they had raised themselves and steamed underground using a traditional process. What began as nourishment for one child grew into a mission to make culturally meaningful, healthy food accessible to children across the Navajo Nation.

The pandemic had exposed the vulnerability of national food systems, while local farmers continued feeding their communities. Zach saw an opportunity to rebuild something grounded in local land, knowledge, and relationships.

Bidii’s shelf-stable foods reflect the realities of families who may live far from grocery stores or without reliable electricity. The company primarily serves childcare centers, schools, and food banks, with plans to expand traditional food production from its new farm and facility near Aztec, New Mexico. Through the Ben Initiative, Zach also helps young people reconnect with farming and create livelihoods of their own.

Asked what seed he would place in the hands of the next generation, Zach chooses corn. It represents nourishment, ceremony, connection, and ancestral inheritance. Like his sand paintings, it emerges from the earth carrying a story—and the possibility of healing.

For more information, or to tell the story of someone you know who's doing good, go to doinggood.fm

At Moving Arts Española, creativity helps young people discover their gifts, carry their culture forward, and guide the next generation.

Roger Montoya’s life changed during the HIV/AIDS crisis. Returning to northern New Mexico after dancing in Los Angeles and New York, he expected his future to be short. Instead, loss clarified his purpose. He walked into Velarde Elementary School, asked how he could help, and began with a mural.

That offering grew into an arts-in-the-schools program and Moving Arts Española, the organization Montoya co-founded with Salvador Ruiz-Esquivel. For two decades, Moving Arts has given young people a place to dance, paint, cook, make films, play music, explore technology and discover abilities they hadn’t imagined.

Its belief is simple: art is medicine. Montoya inherited the phrase from his mother and grandmother, who understood creativity, community and love as forms of healing. He sees it in children moving from uncertainty to confidence, teenagers discovering their voice onstage, and students returning as teachers and mentors for those following behind them.

The organization’s impact reaches beyond expression. In a region shaped by cultural richness, economic hardship, addiction and generational loss, Moving Arts reconnects young people with language, land and tradition. Its production, El Agua es Vida, used theater, music, and dance to explore northern New Mexico’s acequia culture and the responsibility of carrying water knowledge forward. The goal is not to keep children home, but to ensure they know who they are wherever they go.

Moving Arts also gives young people responsibility. Alumni make up its staff, while teenagers earn wages as interns and assist younger students. Teaching becomes another form of self-discovery.

Montoya’s advice for anyone hoping to help is modest: begin by asking what you can offer. A mural can become a district-wide program. An abandoned building can become a vessel of love. One creative opportunity can ripple through a community—and into the next generation.

For more information, or to tell the story of someone you know who's doing good, go to doinggood.fm