On Being with Krista Tippett

To reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in life and society — this has been Michael Longley’s gift as one of Northern Ireland’s foremost living poets. He is known, in part, as a poet of “the Troubles” — the violent 30-year conflict between Protestants and Catholics, English and Irish. And he is a gentle voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the everyday, never-finished work of social healing.

Michael Longley has written more than 20 books of poetry including Collected Poems, Gorse Fires, The Stairwell and his most recent collection, The Candlelight Master. He was the professor of poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010 and is a winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. He was also the international winner of the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize — and that same year was honored with the Freedom of the City of Belfast.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired November 3, 2016.

To reassert the liveliness of ordinary things, precisely in the face of what is hardest and most broken in life and society — this has been Michael Longley’s gift as one of Northern Ireland’s foremost living poets. He is known, in part, as a poet of “the Troubles” — the violent 30-year conflict between Protestants and Catholics, English and Irish. And he is a gentle voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the everyday, never-finished work of social healing.

Michael Longley has written more than 20 books of poetry including Collected Poems, Gorse Fires, The Stairwell and his most recent collection, The Candlelight Master. He was the professor of poetry for Ireland from 2007 to 2010 and is a winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. He was also the international winner of the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize — and that same year was honored with the Freedom of the City of Belfast.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Michael Longley — The Vitality of Ordinary Things." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing - yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. We’re at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation - what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead.

Christine Runyan is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is a certified mindfulness teacher. She co-founded and co-leads Tend Health, a clinical consulting practice focused on the mental well-being of health care practitioners.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

The light at the end of the COVID tunnel is tenuously appearing - yet many of us feel as exhausted as at any time in the past year. Memory problems; short fuses; fractured productivity; sudden drops into despair. We’re at once excited and unnerved by the prospect of life opening up again. Clinical psychologist Christine Runyan explains the physiological effects of a year of pandemic and social isolation - what’s happened at the level of stress response and nervous system, the literal mind-body connection. And she offers simple strategies to regain our fullest capacities for the world ahead.

Christine Runyan is a clinical psychologist and professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She is a certified mindfulness teacher. She co-founded and co-leads Tend Health, a clinical consulting practice focused on the mental well-being of health care practitioners.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Christine Runyan — What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems?"

Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Krista interviewed the wise and wonderful writer Ocean Vuong on March 8, 2020 in a joyful, crowded room full of podcasters in Brooklyn. A state of emergency had just been declared in New York around a new virus. But no one guessed that within a handful of days such an event would become unimaginable. Most stunning is how presciently, exquisitely Ocean speaks to the world we have come to inhabit— its heartbreak, its poetry, and its possibilities of both destroying and saving. 

“I want to love more than death can harm. And I want to tell you this often: That despite being so human and so terrified, here, standing on this unfinished staircase to nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by the cold and starless night — we can live. And we will.”

Ocean Vuong is an associate professor of English in the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award; and a novel,  On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. He was a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired on April 30, 2020.

Krista interviewed the wise and wonderful writer Ocean Vuong on March 8, 2020 in a joyful, crowded room full of podcasters in Brooklyn. A state of emergency had just been declared in New York around a new virus. But no one guessed that within a handful of days such an event would become unimaginable. Most stunning is how presciently, exquisitely Ocean speaks to the world we have come to inhabit— its heartbreak, its poetry, and its possibilities of both destroying and saving. 

“I want to love more than death can harm. And I want to tell you this often: That despite being so human and so terrified, here, standing on this unfinished staircase to nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by the cold and starless night — we can live. And we will.”

Ocean Vuong is an associate professor of English in the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of the poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which won the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award; and a novel,  On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. He was a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ocean Vuong — A Life Worthy of Our Breath." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

It’s pretty intriguing to follow poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s idea that most of us actually “think in poems” whether we know it or not. Rarely, as she points out, do you hear anyone say they feel worse after writing things down. That, she says, can be a tool to survive in hard times like these, to anchor our days - and to get into a conversation and community with all of the selves that live on in each of us at any given moment - “your child self, your older self, your confused self, your self-that-makes-a-lot-of-mistakes.” We also hear her read her beloved poem “Kindness” and tell us the story behind it.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People's Poet Laureate through the Poetry Foundation and a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. Her recent books include The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Cast Away, and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. She received the 2019 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired on July 28, 2016.

 

It’s pretty intriguing to follow poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s idea that most of us actually “think in poems” whether we know it or not. Rarely, as she points out, do you hear anyone say they feel worse after writing things down. That, she says, can be a tool to survive in hard times like these, to anchor our days - and to get into a conversation and community with all of the selves that live on in each of us at any given moment - “your child self, your older self, your confused self, your self-that-makes-a-lot-of-mistakes.” We also hear her read her beloved poem “Kindness” and tell us the story behind it.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People's Poet Laureate through the Poetry Foundation and a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. Her recent books include The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners, Cast Away, and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. She received the 2019 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Naomi Shihab Nye — “Before You Know Kindness As the Deepest Thing Inside..." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired on July 28, 2016.

 

So many of us have been getting through this year by watching movies at home by ourselves, or with friends on Zoom, inventing new ways to grieve and to hope, to keep ourselves laughing, all through the simple act of watching stories unfold on our screens. Movies have the power to unearth the many layers of our identities; to help us answer the question: Who am I? And that is what we trace, by way of a few beloved movies including The Color Purple, The Fly, and Blockers, in this episode.

Danez Smith — is a Black, queer, HIV-positive writer and performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are the author of Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Tony Banout — is the Senior Vice President of Interfaith Youth Core. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, where he studied at the Divinity School and was a Martin Marty Center and Provost fellow.

Shea Serrano —  is an author, journalist, and former teacher whose work has been featured in The Ringer and Grantland. He’s the author of The Rap Year Book, Basketball (and Other Things), and Movies (and Other Things).

Emily VanDerWerff — is a writer and the Critic at Large for Vox.

Virgie Tovar — is an author, activist, and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat and The Self-Love Revolution, and hosts the podcast Rebel Eaters Club.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

There is a question rolling around even in the most secular of corners: What do religious people and traditions have to teach as we do the work ahead of repairing, renewing, and remaking our societies, our life together? Krista’s conversation this week with Rabbi Ariel Burger, a student of the late, extraordinary Elie Wiesel, delves into theological and mystical depths that are so much richer and more creative than is often imagined even when that question is raised.

Rabbi Ariel Burger is the author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom, and he’s the co-founder and senior scholar of The Witness Institute.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

There is a question rolling around even in the most secular of corners: What do religious people and traditions have to teach as we do the work ahead of repairing, renewing, and remaking our societies, our life together? Krista’s conversation this week with Rabbi Ariel Burger, a student of the late, extraordinary Elie Wiesel, delves into theological and mystical depths that are so much richer and more creative than is often imagined even when that question is raised.

Rabbi Ariel Burger is the author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom, and he’s the co-founder and senior scholar of The Witness Institute.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ariel Burger — Be a Blessing." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

As people, and as a culture, Alain de Botton says, we would be much saner and happier if we reexamined our very view of love. His New York Times essay, “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person,” is one of their most-read articles in recent years, and this is one of the most popular episodes we’ve ever created. We offer up the anchoring truths he shares amidst a pandemic that has stretched all of our sanity — and tested the mettle of love in every relationship.

Alain de Botton is the founder and chairman of The School of Life. His books include Religion for Atheists and How Proust Can Change Your Life. He’s also published many books as part of The School of Life’s offerings, including a chapbook created from his essay Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired on February 9, 2017.

As people, and as a culture, Alain de Botton says, we would be much saner and happier if we reexamined our very view of love. His New York Times essay, “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person,” is one of their most-read articles in recent years, and this is one of the most popular episodes we’ve ever created. We offer up the anchoring truths he shares amidst a pandemic that has stretched all of our sanity — and tested the mettle of love in every relationship.

Alain de Botton is the founder and chairman of The School of Life. His books include Religion for Atheists and How Proust Can Change Your Life. He’s also published many books as part of The School of Life’s offerings, including a chapbook created from his essay Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Alain de Botton — The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

A companion conversation to Parker Palmer’s reflections in this week’s On Being, about the soul in depression. Krista catches up with her friend and teacher in 2021. Plus, Parker learns to use QuickTime.

Parker J. Palmer is a teacher, author, and founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His many books include Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, and On the Brink of Everything. He’s also a contributor to the book, Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman as Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet. 

We’re increasingly attentive to the many faces of depression and anxiety, and we’re fluent in the languages of psychology and medication. But depression is profound spiritual territory; and that is much harder to speak about. This is an On Being classic. Krista opens up about her own experience of depression and talks with Parker Palmer, Anita Barrows, and Andrew Solomon. We are putting this out on the air again because people tell us it has saved lives, and so many of us are struggling in whole new ways right now.

Andrew Solomon is a journalist and writer of epic books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist  The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.

Anita Barrows is a psychologist, poet and translator. Her most recent poetry collection is We are the Hunger. She has translated several volumes of the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke together with  Joanna Macy, including Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

Parker J. Palmer is a teacher, author, and founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His many books include Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, and On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired January 17, 2003

We’re increasingly attentive to the many faces of depression and anxiety, and we’re fluent in the languages of psychology and medication. But depression is profound spiritual territory; and that is much harder to speak about. This is an On Being classic. Krista opens up about her own experience of depression and talks with Parker Palmer, Anita Barrows, and Andrew Solomon. We are putting this out on the air again because people tell us it has saved lives, and so many of us are struggling in whole new ways right now.

Andrew Solomon is a journalist and writer of epic books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist  The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "The Soul in Depression." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

We’re increasingly attentive to the many faces of depression and anxiety, and we’re fluent in the languages of psychology and medication. But depression is profound spiritual territory; and that is much harder to speak about. This is an On Being classic. Krista opens up about her own experience of depression and talks with Parker Palmer, Anita Barrows, and Andrew Solomon. We are putting this out on the air again because people tell us it has saved lives, and so many of us are struggling in whole new ways right now.

Parker J. Palmer is a teacher, author, and founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His many books include Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, and On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old. 

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "The Soul in Depression." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

We’re increasingly attentive to the many faces of depression and anxiety, and we’re fluent in the languages of psychology and medication. But depression is profound spiritual territory; and that is much harder to speak about. This is an On Being classic. Krista opens up about her own experience of depression and talks with Parker Palmer, Anita Barrows, and Andrew Solomon. We are putting this out on the air again because people tell us it has saved lives, and so many of us are struggling in whole new ways right now.

Anita Barrows is a psychologist, poet and translator. Her most recent poetry collection is We are the Hunger. She has translated several volumes of the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke together with  Joanna Macy, including Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "The Soul in Depression." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Ornithologist Drew Lanham reads his poem, “Love for a Song.” Krista’s conversation with him is our episode, ‘I Worship Every Bird that I See.’

This is an excerpt from a chapter called “New Religion” in 'The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature.'

There's also a video designed around this reading on our YouTube channel. Krista's conversation with Drew is our episode ‘I Worship Every Bird that I See.’

The ornithologist Drew Lanham is lyrical in the languages of science, humans, and birds. He’s a professor of wildlife ecology, a self-described “hunter-conservationist,” and author of the celebrated book The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature. His way of seeing and hearing and noticing the present and the history that birds traverse - through our backyards and beyond - is a revelatory way to be present to the world and to life in our time.

J. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Master Teacher, and Certified Wildlife Biologist at Clemson University. He’s the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and a forthcoming collection of poetry and meditations, Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The ornithologist Drew Lanham is lyrical in the languages of science, humans, and birds. He’s a professor of wildlife ecology, a self-described “hunter-conservationist,” and author of the celebrated book The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature. His way of seeing and hearing and noticing the present and the history that birds traverse - through our backyards and beyond - is a revelatory way to be present to the world and to life in our time.

J. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Master Teacher, and Certified Wildlife Biologist at Clemson University. He’s the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and a forthcoming collection of poetry and meditations, Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Drew Lanham — ’I Worship Every Bird that I See’." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

This passage of Katherine May's book, read by her in our latest show, is so lovely that we decided to offer it up as its own meditation. There's also a beautiful video designed around it on our YouTube channel. And hear Krista's whole conversation with Katherine - and more reading - in the full episode How 'Wintering' Replenishes. 

In so many stories and fables that shape us, cold and snow, the closing in of the light — these have deep psychological as much as physical reality. This is “wintering,” as the English writer Katherine May illuminates in her beautiful, meditative book of that title — wintering as at once a season of the natural world, a respite our bodies require, and a state of mind. It’s one way to describe our pandemic year: as one big extended communal experience of wintering. Some of us are laboring harder than ever on its front lines and also on its home front of parenting. All of us are exhausted. This conversation with Katherine May helps.

Katherine May is an author of fiction and memoir whose titles include Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, The Electricity of Every Living Thing, and Burning Out. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays about motherhood, called The Best, Most Awful Job.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

In so many stories and fables that shape us, cold and snow, the closing in of the light — these have deep psychological as much as physical reality. This is “wintering,” as the English writer Katherine May illuminates in her beautiful, meditative book of that title — wintering as at once a season of the natural world, a respite our bodies require, and a state of mind. It’s one way to describe our pandemic year: as one big extended communal experience of wintering. Some of us are laboring harder than ever on its front lines and also on its home front of parenting. All of us are exhausted. This conversation with Katherine May helps.

Katherine May – is an author of fiction and memoir whose titles include Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, The Electricity of Every Living Thing, and Burning Out. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays about motherhood, called The Best, Most Awful Job.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Katherine May — How ‘Wintering’ Replenishes.” Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Our colleague Lucas Johnson catches up with one of his mentors, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons. Now a member of the National Council of Elders, she was a teenager when she joined the Mississippi Freedom Summer. She shares what she has learned about exhaustion and self-care, spiritual practice and community, while engaging in civil rights organizing and deep social healing. Dr. Simmons was raised Christian and later converted to the Sufi tradition of Islam.

Lucas Johnson leads The On Being Project's work in social healing as Executive Director of Civil Conversations and Social Healing. He is a community organizer, writer, and a minister in the American Baptist Churches. Read his full bio here.

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons is assistant professor of religion at the University of Florida and a member of the National Council of Elders. Her account of her work as an activist in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is featured in the book, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.

 

It feels good and right this week to sit with the beloved writer Nikki Giovanni’s signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective, and insistent pleasure. In the 1960s, she was a poet of the Black Arts Movement that nourished civil rights. She’s also a professor at Virginia Tech, where she brought beauty and courage after the 2007 shooting there. And she’s an adored voice to a new generation — an enthusiastic elder to us all — at home in her body and in the world of her lifetime even while she sees and delights in the beyond of it.

Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor in the English department at Virginia Tech. She has written and edited numerous books of poetry and works for children, including Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgment, and The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Her latest work is Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired on March 17, 2016.

It feels good and right this week to sit with the beloved writer Nikki Giovanni’s signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective, and insistent pleasure. In the 1960s, she was a poet of the Black Arts Movement that nourished civil rights. She’s also a professor at Virginia Tech, where she brought beauty and courage after the 2007 shooting there. And she’s an adored voice to a new generation — an enthusiastic elder to us all — at home in her body and in the world of her lifetime even while she sees and delights in the beyond of it.

Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor in the English department at Virginia Tech. She has written and edited numerous books of poetry and works for children, including Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgment, and The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Her latest work is Make Me Rain: Poems & Prose.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode Nikki Giovanni — ‘We go forward with a sanity and a love’ Find more at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired on March 17, 2016.

“Having tasted beauty at the heart of the world, we hunger for more.” These are words from Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek in his book, A Beautiful Question. It’s a winsome, joyful meditation on the question: Do cosmic realities embody beautiful ideas? — probing the world, by way of science, as a work of art. He reminds us that time and space, mystery and order, are so much stranger and more generous than we can comprehend. He’s now written a wonderful new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

Frank Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, he received the Nobel Prize in physics. His books include A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design and The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. His new book is Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired June 14, 2018.

 

“Having tasted beauty at the heart of the world, we hunger for more.” These are words from Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek in his book, A Beautiful Question. It’s a winsome, joyful meditation on the question: Do cosmic realities embody beautiful ideas? — probing the world, by way of science, as a work of art. He reminds us that time and space, mystery and order, are so much stranger and more generous than we can comprehend. He’s now written a wonderful new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

Frank Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, he received the Nobel Prize in physics. His books include A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design and The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. His new book is Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Frank Wilczek — Beauty as a Compass for Truth." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Underpinning all the great challenges of our time there is the human drama, the human condition. And as we move beyond 2020, we turn to Mary Catherine Bateson to help us understand the puzzle of being ourselves, of rising to our best capacities and gifts, in all of our complexity and strangeness. She is the daughter of the great anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and she is a linguist and anthropologist herself.

Mary Catherine Bateson - is Professor Emerita at George Mason University. Her books include a memoir of her life with her parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson called With a Daughter's Eye, as well as her bestselling book Composing a Life. Most recently, she is the co-author of Thinking Race: Social Myths and Biological Realities, published nearly 50 years after her mother’s A Rap on Race with James Baldwin.

This show originally aired in October, 2015.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Underpinning all the great challenges of our time there is the human drama, the human condition. And as we move beyond 2020, we turn to Mary Catherine Bateson to help us understand the puzzle of being ourselves, of rising to our best capacities and gifts, in all of our complexity and strangeness. She is the daughter of the great anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and she is a linguist and anthropologist herself.

Mary Catherine Bateson - is Professor Emerita at George Mason University. Her books include a memoir of her life with her parents Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson called With a Daughter's Eye, as well as her bestselling book Composing a Life. Most recently, she is the co-author of Thinking Race: Social Myths and Biological Realities, published nearly 50 years after her mother’s A Rap on Race with James Baldwin.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Mary Catherine Bateson —Living as an Improvisational Art." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Gaelynn Lea’s voice and violin land like a balm — an offering of both clarity and gladness that can still be mustered in this midwinter, this upended Christmas season. She first came to the attention of many when she won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016. This fiddler and singer-songwriter moves through the world in an electric wheelchair, and plays the violin like a cello because of the disability she was born with — a genetic condition that has made her bones more breakable. So much of what she’s learned through life in her body lands as wisdom, right now.

Gaelynn Lea -- is a violinist and singer-songwriter from Duluth, Minnesota. Her albums include All the Roads that Lead Us Home, Learning How to Stay, and most recently, The Living Room Sessions: Gaelynn Lea LIVE.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Gaelynn Lea’s voice and violin land like a balm — an offering of both clarity and gladness that can still be mustered in this midwinter, this upended Christmas season. She first came to the attention of many when she won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016. This fiddler and singer-songwriter moves through the world in an electric wheelchair, and plays the violin like a cello because of the disability she was born with — a genetic condition that has made her bones more breakable. So much of what she’s learned through life in her body lands as wisdom, right now.

Gaelynn Lea -- is a violinist and singer-songwriter from Duluth, Minnesota. Her albums include All the Roads that Lead Us Home, Learning How to Stay, and most recently, The Living Room Sessions: Gaelynn Lea LIVE.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Gaelynn Lea’s Voice and Violin.” Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

“We are indebted to one another and the debt is a kind of faith — a beautiful, difficult, strange faith. We believe each other into being.” That’s the message the philosopher, poet, and historian, Jennifer Michael Hecht, puts at the center of her unusual writing about suicide. She’s traced how Western civilization has, at times, demonized those who died by suicide, and, at times, celebrated it as a moral freedom. She has struggled with suicidal places in her life and lost friends to it. She proposes a new cultural understanding based on our essential need for each other.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, Doubt: A History, and Who Said.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired on March 26, 2014.

“We are indebted to one another and the debt is a kind of faith — a beautiful, difficult, strange faith. We believe each other into being.” That’s the message the philosopher, poet, and historian, Jennifer Michael Hecht, puts at the center of her unusual writing about suicide. She’s traced how Western civilization has, at times, demonized those who died by suicide, and, at times, celebrated it as a moral freedom. She has struggled with suicidal places in her life and lost friends to it. She proposes a new cultural understanding based on our essential need for each other.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, Doubt: A History, and Who Said.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jennifer Michael Hecht — ‘We Believe Each Other Into Being’" Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

We’re in a tender spiritual moment, widely feeling our need for re-grounding both alone and together. By way of the Almighty force of Zoom, Krista engages a forward-looking conversation with two religious thinkers and spiritual leaders from very different places on the U.S. Christian and cultural spectrum: Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through their friendship as much as their words, they model what they preach. The Washington National Cathedral and the National Institute for Civil Discourse brought us all together.

The Most Rev. Michael Curry is Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church. He is the author of Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. He gained a global following after his sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. 

Dr. Russell Moore is President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency 
of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. He is the author of The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

We’re in a tender spiritual moment, widely feeling our need for re-grounding both alone and together. By way of the Almighty force of Zoom, Krista engages a forward-looking conversation with two religious thinkers and spiritual leaders from very different places on the U.S. Christian and cultural spectrum: Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through their friendship as much as their words, they model what they preach. The Washington National Cathedral and the National Institute for Civil Discourse brought us all together.

The Most Rev. Michael Curry is Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church. He is the author of Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. He gained a global following after his sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. 

Dr. Russell Moore is President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency 
of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. He is the author of The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Bishop Michael Curry & Dr. Russell Moore — Spiritual Bridge People." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

How to embrace what’s right and corrective, redemptive and restorative — and an insistence that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done — these are gifts Bryan Stevenson offers with his life. He’s brought the language of mercy and redemption into American culture in recent years, growing out of his work as a lawyer to people unfairly on death row, people who are mentally ill and incarcerated, and children tried as adults. Krista draws out his spirit and his moral imagination.

Bryan Stevenson  – is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama and Aronson Family Professor of Criminal Justice at New York University School of Law. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

How to embrace what’s right and corrective, redemptive and restorative — and an insistence that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done — these are gifts Bryan Stevenson offers with his life. He’s brought the language of mercy and redemption into American culture in recent years, growing out of his work as a lawyer to people unfairly on death row, people who are mentally ill and incarcerated, and children tried as adults. Krista draws out his spirit and his moral imagination.

Bryan Stevenson  – is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama and Aronson Family Professor of Criminal Justice at New York University School of Law. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Bryan Stevenson —Love is the Motive." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

We’ve realized in 2020 that the way we’ve organized culture — from the economy to race to work — could be done radically differently. We’ve been modeling our life together on “survival of the fittest” long after science itself moved on from that. And we’re learning to see that in every sphere of life we inhabit ecosystems. Agustín Fuentes brings spacious insight into all of this as a biological and evolutionary anthropologist, exploring how humans behave, function, and change together. In this conversation, he is full of refreshingly creative and practical fodder for the necessary reinvention ahead. 

Agustín Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He’s authored or edited more than 20 books, most recently Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We’ve realized in 2020 that the way we’ve organized culture — from the economy to race to work — could be done radically differently. We’ve been modeling our life together on “survival of the fittest” long after science itself moved on from that. And we’re learning to see that in every sphere of life we inhabit ecosystems. Agustín Fuentes brings spacious insight into all of this as a biological and evolutionary anthropologist, exploring how humans behave, function, and change together. In this conversation, he is full of refreshingly creative and practical fodder for the necessary reinvention ahead. 

Agustín Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He’s authored or edited more than 20 books, most recently Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Agustín Fuentes — This Species Moment" Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging — personal and communal. The most recent — and very resonant — question he’s asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? At Chautauqua, Krista invited him to speak and read from his books. Blanco’s wit, thoughtfulness, and elegance captivated the crowd. 

Richard Blanco  – practiced civil engineering for more than 20 years. He is now an associate professor of creative writing at his alma mater, Florida International University. His books of non-fiction and poetry include Looking for the Gulf Motel and, most recently, How to Love a Country.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in November, 2019.

The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging — personal and communal. The most recent — and very resonant — question he’s asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? At Chautauqua, Krista invited him to speak and read from his books. Blanco’s wit, thoughtfulness, and elegance captivated the crowd.

Richard Blanco  – practiced civil engineering for more than 20 years. He is now an associate professor of creative writing at his alma mater, Florida International University. His books of non-fiction and poetry include Looking for the Gulf Motel and, most recently, How to Love a Country.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Richard Blanco — How to Love a Country." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in November, 2019.

Rabbi Sacks was one of the world’s deepest thinkers on religion and the challenges of modern life. He died last week after a short battle with cancer. When Krista spoke with him in 2010, he modeled a life-giving, imagination-opening faithfulness to what some might see as contradictory callings: How to be true to one’s own convictions while also honoring the sacred and civilizational calling to shared life — indeed, to love the stranger?

Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for 22 years. He taught and spoke all over the world, with appointments at King’s College London and at New York University and Yeshiva University in the U.S. His many books include The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, and most recently, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in November, 2010.

Rabbi Sacks was one of the world’s deepest thinkers on religion and the challenges of modern life. He died last week after a short battle with cancer. When Krista spoke with him in 2010, he modeled a life-giving, imagination-opening faithfulness to what some might see as contradictory callings: How to be true to one’s own convictions while also honoring the sacred and civilizational calling to shared life — indeed, to love the stranger?

Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for 22 years. He taught and spoke all over the world, with appointments at King’s College London and at New York University and Yeshiva University in the U.S. His many books include The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, and most recently, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Remembering Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

We are called to consider who we want to be as a people and what kind of world we will build with and for our children. Karen Murphy has been gathering wisdom for this juncture, as she’s worked around the world with teachers and educators in societies moving toward repair after histories of violence. We learn from her about how to prepare ourselves in the U.S. for the civic healing that we are called to ahead.

Karen Murphy creates curricula, trains teachers, and leads global gatherings for Facing History and Ourselves, an organization that partners with over 100,000 teachers and their classrooms around the world. A hallmark of this work is trusting the moral and civic intelligence of middle and high school students. Karen has worked from Rwanda to Colombia, from South Africa to Northern Ireland, and she grew up in Illinois.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

We are called to consider who we want to be as a people and what kind of world we will build with and for our children. Karen Murphy has been gathering wisdom for this juncture, as she’s worked around the world with teachers and educational systems in societies moving toward repair after histories of violence. We learn from her about how to prepare ourselves in the U.S. for the civic healing that we are called to ahead.

Karen Murphy creates curricula, trains teachers, and leads global gatherings for Facing History and Ourselves, an organization that partners with over 100,000 teachers and their classrooms around the world. A hallmark of this work is trusting the moral and civic intelligence of middle and high school students. Karen has worked from Rwanda to Colombia, from South Africa to Northern Ireland, and she grew up in Illinois.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Karen Murphy — The Long View, II: On Who We Can Become." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

 

Mary Oliver reads her poem, “Wild Geese.” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify, which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Mary’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry.

Elizabeth Alexander reads her poem, “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe.” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify, which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Elizabeth’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry.

Pádraig Ó Tuama reads his poem, “The Facts of Life.” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify, which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Pádraig’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry.

Gregory Orr reads his poem, “This is what was bequeathed us.” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify, which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Gregory’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry.

Richard Blanco reads his poem, “America the Beautiful Again.” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify, which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Richard’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry.

The U.S. election will be over soon but this year has surfaced deep human challenges that remain our callings — and possibilities for growth — for the foreseeable future. So this week and next, we’re taking the long view — first with journalist John Biewen, on the stories of our families and hometowns, what it means to be human, and what it means to be white. This conversation between Krista and John starts simply — tracing the racial story of our time through the story of a single life. It’s an exercise each of us can do. And it is a step toward a more whole and humane world, starting with ourselves.

John Biewen is audio program director at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and host of the audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. In that series, John has explored whiteness, masculinity, and democracy. During a 30-year career, he has told stories from 40 American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The U.S. election will be over soon but this year has surfaced deep human challenges that remain our callings — and possibilities for growth — for the foreseeable future. So this week and next, we’re taking the long view — first with journalist John Biewen, on the stories of our families and hometowns, what it means to be human, and what it means to be white. This conversation between Krista and John starts simply — tracing the racial story of our time through the story of a single life. It’s an exercise each of us can do. And it is a step toward a more whole and humane world, starting with ourselves.

John Biewen is audio program director at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and host of the audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. In that series, John has explored whiteness, masculinity, and democracy. During a 30-year career, he has told stories from 40 American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "John Biewen — The Long View, I: On Being White." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

How can we keep walking forward, and even find renewal along the way, in this year of things blown apart? How can we hold to our sense of what is whole and true and undamaged, even in the face of loss? These are some of the questions the renowned Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has been taking up in virtual retreats which have helped ground many — including Krista — through this year’s many hard days. She teaches how to stay present to the world while learning kindness toward yourself.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Sharon Salzberg is one of the most esteemed teachers of meditation in the world. As co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, she’s credited as one of the founding three who introduced Buddhist practices to mainstream Western culture in the 1970s — its psychological acuity, contemplative depths, and practical tools for living. Sharon helps far-flung people apply these in everyday life and at extreme edges of reality; she’s had a sustained presence to the families of Parkland, Florida since the school shooting there. 

Find her upcoming virtual retreat offerings with Joseph Goldstein at Dharma.org. Her newest book is Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World.

 

How can we keep walking forward, and even find renewal along the way, in this year of things blown apart? How can we hold to our sense of what is whole and true and undamaged, even in the face of loss? These are some of the questions the renowned Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has been taking up in virtual retreats which have helped ground many — including Krista — through this year’s many hard days. She teaches how to stay present to the world while learning kindness toward yourself.

Sharon Salzberg is one of the most esteemed teachers of meditation in the world. And she’s credited as one of the founding three who introduced Buddhist practices to mainstream Western culture in the 1970s — its psychological acuity, contemplative depths, and practical tools for living. Sharon helps far-flung people apply these in everyday life and at extreme edges of reality; she’s had a sustained presence to the families of Parkland, Florida since the school shooting there. 

Sharon Salzberg is co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. Find her upcoming virtual retreat offerings with Joseph Goldstein, her co-founder and another wonderful teacher, at Dharma.org. Her newest book is Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Sharon Salzberg — Shelter for the Heart and Mind." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org. 

An hour to sit with, and be filled. Two voices — one from the last century, one from ours — who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited, it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himself the son of one of those leaders, is a bridge to Thurman’s resonance in the present day, and between the Black freedom movements then and now.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Rev. Otis Moss III is senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He was born in 1970 and grew up with legendary civil rights figures in and out of his family home, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Andrew Young, and his parents were married by Martin Luther King Jr. His father, Otis Moss Jr., was an influential pastor and civil rights leader based in Cleveland. Otis Moss III is the author of several books and one of the voices in the documentary Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.

Howard Thurman was born in 1899 and died in 1981 in San Francisco, where he co-founded the first fully intentional cross-racial church in the U.S., the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Thurman insisted on a place for spiritual nurture at the heart of social activism, and he brought a searching theology of Jesus to that. He was, at the same time meditating in the early 20th century — traveling to India, bringing the teachings of Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh to the civil rights leaders, even influencing Jewish mysticism. Howard Thurman’s books include Jesus and the Disinherited. His meditations and sermons can be found at Morehouse College and Boston University.

 

An hour to sit with, and be filled. Two voices — one from the last century, one from ours — who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited, it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himself the son of one of those leaders, is a bridge to Thurman’s resonance in the present day, and between the Black freedom movements then and now.

Rev. Otis Moss III is senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He was born in 1970 and grew up with legendary civil rights figures in and out of his family home, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Andrew Young, and his parents were married by Martin Luther King Jr. His father, Otis Moss Jr., was an influential pastor and civil rights leader based in Cleveland. Otis Moss III is the author of several books and one of the voices in the documentary Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.

Howard Thurman was born in 1899 and died in 1981 in San Francisco, where he co-founded the first fully intentional cross-racial church in the U.S., the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Thurman insisted on a place for spiritual nurture at the heart of social activism, and he brought a searching theology of Jesus to that. He was, at the same time meditating in the early 20th century — traveling to India, bringing the teachings of Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh to the civil rights leaders, even influencing Jewish mysticism. Howard Thurman’s books include Jesus and the Disinherited. His meditations and sermons can be found at Morehouse College and Boston University.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Rev. Otis Moss III — The Sound of the Genuine: Traversing 2020 with ‘the Mystic of the Movement’ Howard Thurman." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

After Arlie Hochschild published her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient. And the conversation Krista had with her in 2018 has now come to point straight to the heart of 2020 — a year in which many of us might say we feel like strangers in our own land and in our own world. Hochschild created a field within sociology looking at the social impact of emotion. She explains how our stories and truths — what we try to debate as issues in our social and political lives — are felt, not merely factual. And she shares why, as a matter of pragmatism, we have to take emotion seriously and do what feels unnatural: get curious and caring about the other side.

Arlie Hochschild is professor emerita in the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of ten books including The Managed Heart, The Second Shift, and Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in October, 2018.

After Arlie Hochschild published her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient. And the conversation Krista had with her in 2018 has now come to point straight to the heart of 2020 — a year in which many of us might say we feel like strangers in our own land and in our own world. Hochschild created a field within sociology looking at the social impact of emotion. She explains how our stories and truths — what we try to debate as issues in our social and political lives — are felt, not merely factual. And she shares why, as a matter of pragmatism, we have to take emotion seriously and do what feels unnatural: get curious and caring about the other side.

Arlie Hochschild is professor emerita in the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of ten books including The Managed Heart, The Second Shift, and Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Arlie Hochschild — The Deep Stories of Our Time." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Editor’s note: This interview discusses sexual violence and rape.

Jericho Brown is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Creative Writing at Emory University, where he also directs the university’s creative writing program. His books of poetry are The New Testament, Please, and The Tradition, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in June 2019.

The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Editor’s note: This interview discusses sexual violence and rape.

Jericho Brown is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Creative Writing at Emory University, where he also directs the university’s creative writing program. His books of poetry are The New Testament, Please, and The Tradition, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jericho Brown — Small Truths and Other Surprises." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

 

We’re happy to share the first episode of the new season of Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama. This poem by Ada Limón tells the story of a person living with invisible chronic pain who finds unexpected fortitude from a girl dressed as a superhero. Their encounter, “at the swell of the muddy Mississippi,” doesn’t have a fantasy ending, but instead finds strength and glory in bodies and myth. 

Subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.

Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was named one of the best poetry books of the year by The Washington Post. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency MFA program.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Poetry rises up in human societies in times of crisis when official words fail us and we lose sight of how to find our way back to one another; how to hear each other’s voices. This week we offer a preview of the next season of our Poetry Unbound podcast, which returns on Monday, Sept. 28. Each episode takes a single poem as its center, with host Pádraig Ó Tuama reading the poem and meditating on it. In this hour, we dwell with six poems that accompany the struggle, strangeness, and possibilities of being alive in this time. 

Subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the staff poet and theologian at The On Being Project and hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast. He was formerly a leader of the Corrymeela community in Northern Ireland. His books include Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, Sorry for Your Troubles, and a poetic memoir, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.

Music is a source of solace and nourishment in the best of times and the hardest of times. It has been for so many of us in this year of pandemic, and Cloud Cult is on every playlist Krista makes. Craig Minowa started the band in 1995. Its trajectory was cathartically changed the day he and his wife Connie woke up to find that their firstborn two-year-old son, Kaidin, had mysteriously died in his sleep. The music that has emerged ever since has spanned the human experience from the rawest grief to the fiercest hope. We welcomed Craig and the whole Cloud Cult ensemble to On Being Studios in Minneapolis, for conversation and music, in 2016.

Craig Minowa is the founder, singer, and songwriter of Cloud Cult. Their albums include Light Chasers, the acoustic live album Unplug, and The Seeker. Craig holds a degree in environmental science from the University of Minnesota, and is the founder of the environmental nonprofit and record label Earthology.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in April 2016.

Music is a source of solace and nourishment in the best of times and the hardest of times. It has been for so many of us in this year of pandemic, and Cloud Cult is on every playlist Krista makes. Craig Minowa started the band in 1995. Its trajectory was cathartically changed the day he and his wife Connie woke up to find that their firstborn two-year-old son, Kaidin, had mysteriously died in his sleep. The music that has emerged ever since has spanned the human experience from the rawest grief to the fiercest hope. We welcomed Craig and the whole Cloud Cult ensemble to On Being Studios in Minneapolis, for conversation and music, in 2016.

Craig Minowa is the founder, singer, and songwriter of Cloud Cult. Their albums include Light Chasers, the acoustic live album Unplug, and The Seeker. Craig holds a degree in environmental science from the University of Minnesota, and is the founder of the environmental nonprofit and record label Earthology.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Craig Minowa & Cloud Cult — Music As Medicine." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

This prophetic conversation, which Rev. angel Kyodo williams had with Krista in 2018, is an invitation to imagine and nourish the transformative potential of this moment — toward human wholeness. Rev. angel is an esteemed Zen priest and the second Black woman recognized as a teacher in the Japanese Zen lineage. She is one of our wisest voices on social evolution and the spiritual aspect of social healing.

angel Kyodo williams is a Zen priest, activist, and teacher. She’s the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. In 2020, she created the first annual Great Radical Race Read.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in April 2018.

A companion conversation to this week’s On Being episode — Krista catches up with Rev. angel Kyodo williams on how she’s keeping her fearlessness alive through pandemic and rupture.

Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project and hosts the On Being radio show and podcast. She’s a National Humanities Medalist, and The New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Read her full bio here.

angel Kyodo williams is a Zen priest, activist, and teacher. She’s the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. In 2020, she created the first annual Great Radical Race Read.

 

This prophetic conversation, which Rev. angel Kyodo williams had with Krista in 2018, is an invitation to imagine and nourish the transformative potential of this moment — toward human wholeness. Rev. angel is an esteemed Zen priest and the second Black woman recognized as a teacher in the Japanese Zen lineage. She is one of our wisest voices on social evolution and the spiritual aspect of social healing.

angel Kyodo williams is a Zen priest, activist, and teacher. She’s the author of Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace and Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. In 2020, she created the first annual Great Radical Race Read.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "angel Kyodo williams — The World Is Our Field of Practice." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org. 

Amid the harshness of life, Mary Oliver found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. Oliver, who died in 2019, was one of the most beloved poets of modern times. She sat with Krista for a rare, intimate conversation in 2015.

Mary Oliver published over 25 books of poetry and prose, including Dream Work, A Thousand Mornings, and A Poetry Handbook. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for her book American Primitive. Her final work, Devotions, is a curated collection of poetry from her more than 50-year career. She died in 2019.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in February, 2015.

Amid the harshness of life, Mary Oliver found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. Oliver, who died in 2019, was one of the most beloved poets of modern times. She sat with Krista for a rare, intimate conversation in 2015.

Mary Oliver published over 25 books of poetry and prose, including Dream Work, A Thousand Mornings, and A Poetry Handbook. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for her book American Primitive. Her final work, Devotions, is a curated collection of poetry from her more than 50-year career. She died in 2019.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Mary Oliver — Listening to the World." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

“The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us may well be the most serious business of all,” Michael McCarthy writes. He is a naturalist and journalist with a galvanizing call — that we stop relying on the immobilizing language of statistics and take up our joy in nature as our defense of it. And he reminds us that the natural world is where we first found our metaphors and similes and it is the resting place for our psyches.

Michael McCarthy is a naturalist and writer. He was longtime environment editor of The Independent and environment correspondent of The Times. He is the recipient of the RSPB Medal from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Silver Medal from the Zoological Society of London. His books include The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy and The Consolation of Nature: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus, coming in October 2020.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in May, 2018.

“The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us may well be the most serious business of all,” Michael McCarthy writes. He is a naturalist and journalist with a galvanizing call — that we stop relying on the immobilizing language of statistics and take up our joy in nature as our defense of it. And he reminds us that the natural world is where we first found our metaphors and similes and it is the resting place for our psyches.

Michael McCarthy is a naturalist and writer. He was longtime environment editor of The Independent and environment correspondent of The Times. He is the recipient of the RSPB Medal from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Silver Medal from the Zoological Society of London. His books include The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy and The Consolation of Nature: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus, coming in October 2020.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Michael McCarthy — Nature, Joy, and Human Becoming." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

As a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer joins science’s ability to “polish the art of seeing” with her personal, civilizational lineage of listening to plant life and heeding the languages of the natural world. She's an expert in moss — a bryologist — who describes mosses as the “coral reefs of the forest.” And she says that as our knowledge about plant life unfolds, human vocabulary and imaginations must adapt.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is the State University of New York Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. She is founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her books include Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in February, 2016.

As a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer joins science’s ability to “polish the art of seeing” with her personal, civilizational lineage of listening to plant life and heeding the languages of the natural world. She's an expert in moss — a bryologist — who describes mosses as the “coral reefs of the forest.” And she says that as our knowledge about plant life unfolds, human vocabulary and imaginations must adapt.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is the State University of New York Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. She is founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her books include Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

This show originally aired in February, 2016.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Robin Wall Kimmerer — The Intelligence of Plants." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Dario Robleto has been called a sculptural artist, a philosopher, and a “materialist poet.” He works with unconventional materials — from dinosaur fossils and meteorites to pulverized vintage records — and has been a creative partner to an eclectic range of projects. At the heart of his work is a fascination with human survival and the creative response to loss.

Dario Robleto is an artist-at-large at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. His work has been displayed at galleries and museums across the U.S., and is held in collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in July 2014.

Dario Robleto has been called a sculptural artist, a philosopher, and a “materialist poet.” He works with unconventional materials — from dinosaur fossils and meteorites to pulverized vintage records — and has been a creative partner to an eclectic range of projects. At the heart of his work is a fascination with human survival and the creative response to loss.

Dario Robleto is an artist-at-large at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. His work has been displayed at galleries and museums across the U.S., and is held in collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Dario Robleto — Sculptor of Time and Loss." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.

Jane Goodall’s early research studying chimpanzees helped shape the self-understanding of our species and recalled modern western science to the fact that we are a part of nature not separate from it. From her decades studying chimpanzees in the Gombe forest to her more recent years attending to human poverty and misunderstanding, she reflects on the moral and spiritual convictions that have driven her, and what she is teaching and still learning about what it means to be human.

Jane Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and its youth program, Roots & Shoots. She has been the subject of many films and documentaries, including Jane Goodall: The Hope. Her books include In the Shadow of Man and Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Jane Goodall’s early research studying chimpanzees helped shape the self-understanding of our species and recalled modern western science to the fact that we are a part of nature not separate from it. From her decades studying chimpanzees in the Gombe forest to her more recent years attending to human poverty and misunderstanding, she reflects on the moral and spiritual convictions that have driven her, and what she is teaching and still learning about what it means to be human.

Jane Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and its youth program, Roots & Shoots. She has been the subject of many films and documentaries, including Jane Goodall: The Hope. Her books include In the Shadow of Man and Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jane Goodall on What it Means to Be Human" Find more at onbeing.org.

Marilyn Nelson is a storytelling poet who has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and West Point cadets. She brings a contemplative eye to ordinary goodness in the present and to complicated ancestries we’re all reckoning with now. And she imparts a spacious perspective on what “communal pondering” might mean.

Marilyn Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of the 2012 Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry,” and the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her books include The Fields of Praise and The Meeting House. Her upcoming children’s picture book about social justice and the power of introverts is called Lubaya’s Quiet Roar.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Marilyn Nelson is a storytelling poet who has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and West Point cadets. She brings a contemplative eye to ordinary goodness in the present and to complicated ancestries we’re all reckoning with now. And she imparts a spacious perspective on what “communal pondering” might mean.

Marilyn Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of the 2012 Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry,” and the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her books include The Fields of Praise and The Meeting House. Her upcoming children’s picture book about social justice and the power of introverts is called Lubaya’s Quiet Roar.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Marilyn Nelson — Communal Pondering in a Noisy World." Find more at onbeing.org.

An extraordinary conversation with the late congressman John Lewis, taped in Montgomery, Alabama, during a pilgrimage 50 years after the March on Washington. It offers a rare look inside his wisdom, the civil rights leaders’ spiritual confrontation within themselves, and the intricate art of nonviolence as “love in action.”

John Lewis was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. He is the author of Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, and March, a three-part graphic novel series. He died on July 17, 2020. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in March 2013.

An extraordinary conversation with the late congressman John Lewis, taped in Montgomery, Alabama, during a pilgrimage 50 years after the March on Washington. It offers a rare look inside his wisdom, the civil rights leaders’ spiritual confrontation within themselves, and the intricate art of nonviolence as “love in action.”

John Lewis was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. He is the author of Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, and March, a three-part graphic novel series. He died on July 17, 2020.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "John Lewis — Love in Action." Find more at onbeing.org.

Pauline Boss joins Krista to ponder what it means to be living through a collective experience of “ambiguous loss” right now. This is a companion to this week’s On Being rebroadcast of our conversation with Pauline Boss, a family therapist, on navigating loss where there is no closure. How does that work during a pandemic with no end in sight?

Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project and hosts the On Being radio show and podcast. She’s a National Humanities Medalist, and the New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Read her full bio here.

Pauline Boss is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of  Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia, and Loss, Trauma and Resilience.

Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” and invented a new field within psychology to name the reality that every loss does not hold a promise of anything like resolution. Amid this pandemic, there are so many losses — from deaths that could not be mourned, to the very structure of our days, to a sudden crash of what felt like solid careers and plans and dreams. This conversation is full of practical intelligence for shedding assumptions about how we should be feeling and acting as these only serve to deepen stress.

Pauline Boss is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of   Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia, and Loss, Trauma and Resilience.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in June 2016.

Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” and invented a new field within psychology to name the reality that every loss does not hold a promise of anything like resolution. Amid this pandemic, there are so many losses — from deaths that could not be mourned, to the very structure of our days, to a sudden crash of what felt like solid careers and plans and dreams. This conversation is full of practical intelligence for shedding assumptions about how we should be feeling and acting as these only serve to deepen stress.

Pauline Boss is professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of   Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia, and Loss, Trauma and Resilience.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Pauline Boss — Navigating Loss Without Closure." Find more at onbeing.org.

The show we released with Minneapolis-based trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem in the weeks after George Floyd’s killing has become one of our most popular episodes, and has touched listeners and galvanized personal searching. So we said yes when Resmaa proposed that he join On Being again, this time together with Robin DiAngelo. She is perhaps the foremost voice in our civilizational grappling with whiteness; her book, White Fragility, is one of the most widely read books in the world right now. Hearing the two of them together is electric — the deepest of dives into the calling of our lifetimes.

Resmaa Menakem offers therapy and coaching in Minneapolis and teaches across the U.S. He’s worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan as well as American communities and police forces. His bestselling book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, is part narrative, part workbook.

Robin DiAngelo is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington in Seattle and has been a consultant, educator, and facilitator for over 20 years on issues of racial and social justice. She’s the author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. And listen to Resmaa’s first conversation with Krista, “‘Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence.’”

The show we released with Minneapolis-based trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem in the weeks after George Floyd’s killing has become one of our most popular episodes, and has touched listeners and galvanized personal searching. So we said yes when Resmaa proposed that he join On Being again, this time together with Robin DiAngelo. She is perhaps the foremost voice in our civilizational grappling with whiteness; her book, White Fragility, is one of the most widely read books in the world right now. Hearing the two of them together is electric — the deepest of dives into the calling of our lifetimes.

Resmaa Menakem offers therapy and coaching in Minneapolis and teaches across the U.S. He’s worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan as well as American communities and police forces. His bestselling book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, is part narrative, part workbook.

Robin DiAngelo is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington in Seattle and has been a consultant, educator, and facilitator for over 20 years on issues of racial and social justice. She’s the author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism. 

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem: In Conversation" Find more at onbeing.org. 

Vincent Harding was wise about how the vision of the civil rights movement might speak to 21st-century realities. He reminded us that the movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. He pursued this through patient-yet-passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationships. And he posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible?

Vincent Harding was chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He authored the magnificent book Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement and the essay “Is America Possible?” He died in 2014.

This show originally aired in February 2011.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Vincent Harding was wise about how the vision of the civil rights movement might speak to 21st-century realities. He reminded us that the movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. He pursued this through patient-yet-passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationships. And he posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible?

Vincent Harding was chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He authored the magnificent book Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement and the essay “Is America Possible?” He died in 2014.

This show originally aired in February 2011.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Vincent Harding — Is America Possible?" Find more at onbeing.org.

Books that fortify the young also have a power to help heal adults; so, too, does this conversation with writer Jason Reynolds. He is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature of the Library of Congress and author of a new companion to Ibram X. Kendi’s history of racism, Stamped From the Beginning, for young readers.

Jason Reynolds was appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress in January 2020. His many award-winning books include Ghost, Long Way Down, and Look Both Ways. His most recent book is Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Books that fortify the young also have a power to help heal adults; so, too, does this conversation with writer Jason Reynolds. He is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature of the Library of Congress and author of a new companion to Ibram X. Kendi’s history of racism, Stamped From the Beginning, for young readers.

Jason Reynolds was appointed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress in January 2020. His many award-winning books include Ghost, Long Way Down, and Look Both Ways. His most recent book is Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jason Reynolds — Fortifying Imagination." Find more at onbeing.org.

You can’t think about something if you can’t talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in the New York Times, “White Debt.”

Eula Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her books include On Immunity: An Inoculation and Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org 
This show originally aired in January, 2017.

You can’t think about something if you can’t talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in the New York Times, “White Debt.”

Eula Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her books include On Immunity: An Inoculation and Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays. 

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Eula Biss — Talking About Whiteness." Find more at onbeing.org.

Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” “Your body — all of our bodies — are where changing the status quo must begin.”
Find a quiet place and experience this short, simple body practice offered in Resmaa’s conversation with Krista on the On Being episode, ‘Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence.’

With our colleague Rev. Lucas Johnson, Krista talks through the question of what questions matter for this moment. Can anyone use the word “we”?  And how to begin walking forward?

Living the Questions is an occasional  On Being segment where Krista muses on questions from our listening community. Submit your own at ltq@onbeing.org.

Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project and hosts the On Being radio show and podcast. She’s a National Humanities Medalist, and the New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Read her full bio here.

Lucas Johnson leads The On Being Project's work in social healing as Executive Director of Civil Conversations and Social Healing. He is a community organizer, writer, and a minister in the American Baptist Churches.

The best laws and diversity training have not gotten us anywhere near where we want to go. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” Krista sat down with him in Minneapolis, where they both live and work, before the pandemic lockdown began. In this heartbreaking moment, after the killing of George Floyd and the history it carries, Resmaa Menakem’s practices offer us the beginning to change at a cellular level.

Resmaa Menakem offers therapy and coaching in Minneapolis and teaches across the U.S. He’s worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan as well as American communities and police forces. His latest book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, is part narrative, part workbook.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

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The best laws and diversity training have not gotten us anywhere near where we want to go. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” Krista sat down with him in Minneapolis, where they both live and work, before the pandemic lockdown began. In this heartbreaking moment, after the killing of George Floyd and the history it carries, Resmaa Menakem’s practices offer us the beginning to change at a cellular level.

Resmaa Menakem offers therapy and coaching in Minneapolis and teaches across the U.S. He’s worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan as well as American communities and police forces. His latest book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, is part narrative, part workbook.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Resmaa Menakem — ’Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence’”. Find more at onbeing.org.

We often explore on this show the places in the human experience where ordinary language falls short. The poet Gregory Orr has wrested gentle, healing, life-giving words from extreme grief and trauma. And right now we are all carrying some magnitude of grief in our bodies.

Gregory Orr is the author of two books about poetry, Poetry as Survival and A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry, a memoir, The Blessing, and twelve collections of poetry, including How Beautiful the Beloved and The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write. He taught at the University of Virginia from 1975 to 2019, where he founded the university’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in May, 2019.

We often explore on this show the places in the human experience where ordinary language falls short. The poet Gregory Orr has wrested gentle, healing, life-giving words from extreme grief and trauma. And right now we are all carrying some magnitude of grief in our bodies.

Gregory Orr is the author of two books about poetry, Poetry as Survival and A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry, a memoir, The Blessing, and twelve collections of poetry, including How Beautiful the Beloved and The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write. He taught at the University of Virginia from 1975 to 2019, where he founded the university’s Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Gregory Orr — Shaping Grief With Language." Find more at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in May, 2019.

Moral reckonings are being driven to the surface of our life together: What are politics for? What is an economy for? Jacqueline Novogratz says the simplistic ways we take up such questions — if we take them up at all — is inadequate. Novogratz is an innovator in creative, human-centered capitalism. She has described her recent book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, as a love letter to the next generation.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a venture capital fund that serves some of the poorest people in the world. She’s also the author of a memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Moral reckonings are being driven to the surface of our life together: What are politics for? What is an economy for? Jacqueline Novogratz says the simplistic ways we take up such questions — if we take them up at all — is inadequate. Novogratz is an innovator in creative, human-centered capitalism. She has described her recent book, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, as a love letter to the next generation.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen, a venture capital fund that serves some of the poorest people in the world. She’s also the author of a memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World.

This year Muslims are experiencing a Ramadan like no other. The month is usually a period of both intimacy and great community. Now Muslims are improvising, as in many places the rituals of Ramadan must be experienced at home or online. This show, recorded in 2009, grew out of an invitation to Muslim listeners to reflect on what it means to be part of what often is referred to in the abstract as “the Muslim world.” We received responses from all over the world and were struck by the vivid stories about Ramadan itself, across a remarkable spectrum of life and spiritual sensibility.

Sixteen Muslims, in their own words, speak about the delights and gravity of Islam’s holiest month.

GUEST BIO
Allee Ramadhan is a retired federal prosecutor and the father of 11 children. He lives in Maryland.

Ilana Alazzeh is a multimedia artist, photographer, and activist. She is the founder of several interfaith, diversity, and economic justice groups, including Muslims Against Homophobia and LGBT Hate.

Nadia Sheikh Bandukda is an attorney specializing in labor and employment issues.

Nicole Queen is a photographer living in Dallas. She co-hosts the podcast, Salam, Girl!

Sabiha Shariff lives in Dallas, where she volunteers with the Texas Muslim Women’s Foundation.

Steven Longden is a Mancunian who converted to Islam in 1993.

Samar Jarrah is an author, journalist, and co-host of “True Talk”, a global affairs talk show on WMNF in Tampa. She grew up in Kuwait.

Wajahat Ali is a New York Times contributing op-ed writer, a playwright, an attorney, a public speaker, and a first-generation Pakistani American. 

Yanina Vaschenko emigrated from Russia to Dallas when she was eight years old. She is a bilingual elementary school teacher. She grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Maria Romero is Mexican American, an attorney working in legal services, and a mother. She lives in Seattle.

Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an associate professor of History at California State University in San Marcos. He has also taught in Turkey and Spain.

Sahar Ullah is an artist and academic. She’s a lecturer in Literature Humanities at Columbia University and the founder of the theater project, Hijabi Monologues.

Mary Hope Schwoebel is a former senior program officer in the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace. She is an associate professor of Conflict Resolution Studies at NOVA Southeastern University.

Adnan Onart is a poet. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is an active Muslim member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

Feruze Faison grew up in Istanbul and, when we spoke with her, was teaching elementary school in New York.

Tayyaba Syed is a Pakistani American author of children’s books, including The Blessed Bananas. She is also a freelance journalist and writing coach. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org 

This show originally aired in September 2009.

 

In this “spiritual book club” edition of the show, Krista and musician/artist Devendra Banhart read favorite passages and discuss When Things Fall Apart, a small book of great beauty by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön. It’s a work — like all works of spiritual genius — that speaks from the nooks and crannies and depths of a particular tradition, while conveying truths about humanity writ large. Their conversation speaks with special force to what it means to be alive and looking for meaning right now.

Devendra Banhart is a visual artist, musician, songwriter, and poet. His albums include Ma, Mala, What Will We Be, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, and Cripple Crow, among others. His book of poetry is Weeping Gang Bliss Void Yab-Yum.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

In this “spiritual book club” edition of the show, Krista and musician/artist Devendra Banhart read favorite passages and discuss When Things Fall Apart, a small book of great beauty by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön. It’s a work — like all works of spiritual genius — that speaks from the nooks and crannies and depths of a particular tradition, while conveying truths about humanity writ large. Their conversation speaks with special force to what it means to be alive and looking for meaning right now.

Devendra Banhart is a visual artist, musician, songwriter, and poet. His albums include Ma, Mala, What Will We Be, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, and Cripple Crow, among others. His book of poetry is Weeping Gang Bliss Void Yab-Yum.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Devendra Banhart — ‘When Things Fall Apart’." Find more at onbeing.org.

To a question from listener Vanessa Parfett in Melbourne, Krista reflects on "Zoomzaustion" and relearning the primacy of our bodies. Also, how this helps explain poetry's rise in our midst, and can make us more whole.

Living the Questions is an occasional On Being segment where Krista muses on questions from our listening community. Submit your own at ltq@onbeing.org.

Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project, hosts the On Being radio show and podcast, and curates The Civil Conversations Project. She received the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2014. She speaks widely and writes books including Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Read her full bio here.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

One of the great challenges of life is to learn to be alone peaceably, at home in oneself. And now, by way of a virus, we have been sent inside physically and emotionally, even if we’re not home on our own. We’re forced to work out the difference between isolation and loneliness or solitude. With teachers across the ages and drawing on his life from monasticism to marriage, Buddhist writer and scholar Stephen Batchelor teaches how to approach solitude as a graceful and life-giving practice.

Stephen Batchelor teaches seminars and leads meditation retreats worldwide. He’s a co-founder and faculty member of Bodhi College, which is focused on the study and practice of early Buddhism. His many books include Buddhism Without Beliefs, The Faith to Doubt, and most recently, The Art of Solitude. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

One of the great challenges of life is to learn to be alone peaceably, at home in oneself. And now, by way of a virus, we have been sent inside physically and emotionally, even if we’re not home on our own. We’re forced to work out the difference between isolation and loneliness or solitude. With teachers across the ages and drawing on his life from monasticism to marriage, Buddhist writer and scholar Stephen Batchelor teaches how to approach solitude as a graceful and life-giving practice.

Stephen Batchelor teaches seminars and leads meditation retreats worldwide. He’s a co-founder and faculty member of Bodhi College, which is focused on the study and practice of early Buddhism. His many books include Buddhism Without Beliefs, The Faith to Doubt, and most recently, The Art of Solitude.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Stephen Batchelor — Finding Ease in Aloneness." Find more at onbeing.org.

In this intimate conversation between Krista and one of her beloved teachers, we ponder the world and our place in it, through sacred text, with fresh eyes. We’re accompanied by the meditative and prophetic poetry of Wendell Berry, read for us from his home in Kentucky: “Stay away from anything / that obscures the place it is in. / There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places. / Accept what comes of silence."

Ellen Davis is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at the Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. She’s the author of Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. 

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 50 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in June, 2010

Wendell Berry reads his poem “The Peace of Wild Things”

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 40 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Wendell Berry reads his poem “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)”

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 40 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Wendell Berry reads his poem “Sabbaths – 1985, I”

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 40 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Wendell Berry reads his poem “Sabbaths – 1979, IV”

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 40 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Wendell Berry reads his poem “The Man Born to Farming”

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 40 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

Wendell Berry reads his poem “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer”

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 40 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

In this intimate conversation between Krista and one of her beloved teachers, we ponder the world and our place in it, through sacred text, with fresh eyes. In the edited version of this conversation, we’re accompanied by the meditative and prophetic poetry of Wendell Berry, read for us from his home in Kentucky: “Stay away from anything / that obscures the place it is in. / There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places. / Accept what comes of silence."

Ellen Davis is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at the Duke University Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. She’s the author of Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. 

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, and environmentalist who has published more than 50 books. He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky.

This show originally aired in June, 2010.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Wendell Berry & Ellen Davis — The Art of Being Creatures." Find more at onbeing.org.

To a question from listener Elena Rivera of Colorado Springs, Krista reflects on seeing this as a collective moment of transition (which is always stressful in human life) and ponders what we might integrate into the people we become on the other side of it. “To really, actively, accompany each other in holding that question — that might be a spiritual calling but also a civilizational calling for this very extraordinary transition,” she says. 

Living the Questions is an occasional On Being segment where Krista muses on questions from our listening community. Submit your own at ltq@onbeing.org.

Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project, hosts the On Being radio show and podcast, and curates The Civil Conversations Project. She received the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2014. She speaks widely and writes books including Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Read her full bio here.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

We’re in a season of renewal in the natural world and in spiritual traditions; both Easter and Passover this year are utterly transformed. It’s drawing us back to the wisdom of Br. David Steindl-Rast, who makes useful distinctions around experiences that are life-giving and resilience-making yet can feel absurd to speak of in a moment like this. A Benedictine monk for over 60 years, Steindl-Rast was formed by 20th-century catastrophes. He calls joy “the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” And his gratefulness is not an easy gratitude or thanksgiving — but a full-blooded, reality-based practice and choice.

Br. David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk and a beloved teacher and author on the subject of gratitude. He’s the founder and senior advisor for A Network for Grateful Living. His books include Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness, A Listening Heart, and an autobiography, i am through you so i. 

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in January 2016.

We’re in a season of renewal in the natural world and in spiritual traditions; both Easter and Passover this year are utterly transformed. It’s drawing us back to the wisdom of Br. David Steindl-Rast, who makes useful distinctions around experiences that are life-giving and resilience-making yet can feel absurd to speak of in a moment like this. A Benedictine monk for over 60 years, Steindl-Rast was formed by 20th-century catastrophes. He calls joy “the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” And his gratefulness is not an easy gratitude or thanksgiving — but a full-blooded, reality-based practice and choice.

Br. David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk and a beloved teacher and author on the subject of gratitude. He’s the founder and senior advisor for A Network for Grateful Living. His books include Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness, A Listening Heart, and an autobiography, i am through you so i.

This show originally aired in January 2016.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "David Steindl-Rast — How to Be Grateful in Every Moment (But Not for Everything)." Find more at onbeing.org.

In Leanne O’Sullivan’s poem “Leaving Early,” the poet writes to her ill husband, entrusting him into the care of a nurse named Fionnuala. As the novel coronavirus sweeps the globe, many of us can’t physically be there for loved ones who are sick. Instead, it is the health care workers — and all involved in the health care system — who are tirelessly present, caring for others in spite of exhaustion and the risk it brings to their own well being.

We offer this episode of Poetry Unbound in profound gratitude toward all who are working in health care right now.

“Leaving Early” comes from Leanne O’Sullivan’s book A Quarter of an Hour. Thank you to the publisher, Bloodaxe Books, who gave us permission to use Leanne’s poem. Read it on our website at onbeing.org.

Find the transcript for this episode at onbeing.org.

The original music in this episode was composed by Gautam Srikishan.

Ai-jen Poo is a next-generation labor organizer who co-founded a beautiful and muscular movement with caregivers and those who employ them: The National Domestic Workers Alliance. For over two decades, she has been reinventing policy and engaging a deep conversation that has now met its civilizational moment. This conversation was recorded before “coronavirus” was a word we all knew. But the many dimensions of the crisis now upon us have revealed Ai-jen Poo and her world of wisdom and action as teachers for our life together, in and beyond it.

Ai-jen Poo is executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the co-director of Caring Across Generations. Her book is The Age of Dignity. Her podcast, co-hosted with Alicia Garza, is Sunstorm.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Ai-jen Poo is a next-generation labor organizer who co-founded a beautiful and muscular movement with caregivers and those who employ them: The National Domestic Workers Alliance. For over two decades, she has been reinventing policy and engaging a deep conversation that has now met its civilizational moment. This conversation was recorded before “coronavirus” was a word we all knew. But the many dimensions of the crisis now upon us have revealed Ai-jen Poo and her world of wisdom and action as teachers for our life together, in and beyond it. 

Ai-jen Poo is executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the co-director of Caring Across Generations. Her book is The Age of Dignity. Her podcast, co-hosted with Alicia Garza, is Sunstorm.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ai-jen Poo — This Is Our (Caring) Revolution." Find more at onbeing.org.

“If I believe that we are all inherently worthy just by being human, how can I feel that way when I feel I’m doing ‘nothing?’” — Anna Bondoc from Los Angeles

So many of us are raised to believe that hard work is what makes us valuable; many of our professions and even our identities as helpers are on hold. How does self-worth interact with just being when we feel we're doing nothing? Krista reflects on the problem with the phrase “just being” — and how settling inside ourselves right now, and kindness towards ourselves, are gifts to the world we want to make beyond this crisis.

Living the Questions is an occasional On Being segment where Krista muses on questions from our listening community. Submit your own at ltq@onbeing.org.

Krista Tippett created and leads the On Being Project, hosts the On Being radio show and podcast, and curates the Civil Conversations Project. She received the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2014. She speaks widely and writes books including Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Read her full bio here.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

In this unsettled moment, we’re returning to the shows we’re longing to hear again. Among them is this 2019 conversation with writer Ross Gay. The ephemeral nature of our being allows him to find delight in all sorts of places (especially his community garden). To be with Gay is to train your gaze to see the wonderful alongside the terrible; to attend to and meditate on what you love, even in the midst of difficult realities and as part of working for justice.

Ross Gay lives in Bloomington Indiana, where he’s a professor of English at Indiana University. His books include the poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and a book of essays, The Book of Delights. He co-founded The Tenderness Project together with Shayla Lawson.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in July 2019.

 

In this unsettled moment, we’re returning to the shows we’re longing to hear again. Among them is this 2019 conversation with writer Ross Gay. The ephemeral nature of our being allows him to find delight in all sorts of places (especially his community garden). To be with Gay is to train your gaze to see the wonderful alongside the terrible; to attend to and meditate on what you love, even in the midst of difficult realities and as part of working for justice.

Ross Gay lives in Bloomington Indiana, where he’s a professor of English at Indiana University. His books include the poetry collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and a book of essays, The Book of Delights. He co-founded The Tenderness Project together with Shayla Lawson.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ross Gay — Tending Joy and Practicing Delight ." Find more at onbeing.org.

“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers,” Rebecca Solnit writes. “And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” In this moment of global crisis, we’re returning to the conversations we’re longing to hear again and finding useful right now. A singular writer and thinker, Solnit celebrates the unpredictable and incalculable events that so often redeem our lives, both solitary and public. She searches for the hidden, transformative histories inside and after events we chronicle as disasters in places like post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.   

Rebecca Solnit is a columnist at The Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub. Her many books include Hope in the Dark, A Paradise Built in Hell, and her most recent, Recollections of My Nonexistence.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in May 2016.

“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers,” Rebecca Solnit writes. “And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” In this moment of global crisis, we’re returning to the conversations we’re longing to hear again and finding useful right now. A singular writer and thinker, Solnit celebrates the unpredictable and incalculable events that so often redeem our lives, both solitary and public. She searches for the hidden, transformative histories inside and after events we chronicle as disasters in places like post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.   

Rebecca Solnit is a columnist at The Guardian and a regular contributor to Literary Hub. Her many books include Hope in the Dark, A Paradise Built in Hell, and her most recent, Recollections of My Nonexistence.

This show originally aired in May 2016.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Rebecca Solnit — Falling Together" Find more at onbeing.org.

 

Physicist Carlo Rovelli says humans don’t understand the world as made by things, “we understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses — happenings.” This everyday truth is as scientific as it is philosophical and political, and it unfolds with unexpected nuance in his science. Rovelli is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity theory and author of the tiny, bestselling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time. Seeing the world through his eyes, we understand that there is no such thing as “here” or “now.” Instead, he says, our senses convey a picture of reality that narrows our understanding of its fullness.

Carlo Rovelli is a professor of physics at Aix-Marseille University, where he is director of the quantum gravity group in the Center for Theoretical Physics. He is also director of the Samy Maroun Research Center for Time, Space, and the Quantum. His books include Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and, most recently, The Order of Time.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

This show originally aired in March 2017.

Physicist Carlo Rovelli says humans don’t understand the world as made by things, “we understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses — happenings.” This everyday truth is as scientific as it is philosophical and political, and it unfolds with unexpected nuance in his science. Rovelli is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity theory and author of the tiny, bestselling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time. Seeing the world through his eyes, we understand that there is no such thing as “here” or “now.” Instead, he says, our senses convey a picture of reality that narrows our understanding of its fullness.

Carlo Rovelli is professor of physics at Aix-Marseille University, where he is director of the quantum gravity group in the Center for Theoretical Physics. He is also director of the Samy Maroun Research Center for Time, Space, and the Quantum. His books include Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and, most recently, The Order of Time.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Carlo Rovelli — All Reality Is Interaction." Find more at onbeing.org.

Sociologist Nicholas Christakis says we come to social goodness as naturally as we come to our bloodier inclinations. Research out of his Human Nature Lab at Yale shows that capacities like friendship, love, teaching, and cooperation exert a tremendous and practical force on us — and yet we don’t think of those behaviors as grit for what’s helped humans evolve as a species. Christakis’ science — and the passion with which he shares and lives what he learns — put goodness in refreshing evolutionary perspective.

Nicholas Christakis is Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he’s also the director of the Human Nature Lab and co-director of the Institute for Network Science. He’s the author of Connected: How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do. His most recent book is Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Sociologist Nicholas Christakis says we come to social goodness as naturally as we come to our bloodier inclinations. Research out of his Human Nature Lab at Yale shows that capacities like friendship, love, teaching, and cooperation exert a tremendous and practical force on us — and yet we don’t think of those behaviors as grit for what’s helped humans evolve as a species. Christakis’ science — and the passion with which he shares and lives what he learns — put goodness in refreshing evolutionary perspective.

Nicholas Christakis is Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he’s also the director of the Human Nature Lab and co-director of the Institute for Network Science. He’s the author of Connected: How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do. His most recent book is Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Nicholas Christakis — How We’re Wired for Goodness." Find more at onbeing.org.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — or SETI — goes beyond hunting for E.T. and habitable planets. Scientists in the field are using telescopes and satellites looking for signs of outright civilizational intelligence. One of the founding pioneers in this search is astronomer Jill Tarter. She is a cofounder of the SETI Institute and was an inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact, based on the novel by Carl Sagan. To speak with Tarter is to begin to grasp the creative majesty of SETI and what’s relevant now in the ancient question: “Are we alone in the universe?”

Jill Tarter is the cofounder and chair emeritus for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. She currently serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array. She has been awarded two Exceptional Public Service medals from NASA and the Women in Aerospace Lifetime Achievement Award.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — or SETI — goes beyond hunting for E.T. and habitable planets. Scientists in the field are using telescopes and satellites looking for signs of outright civilizational intelligence. One of the founding pioneers in this search is astronomer Jill Tarter. She is a cofounder of the SETI Institute and was an inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact, based on the novel by Carl Sagan. To speak with Tarter is to begin to grasp the creative majesty of SETI and what’s relevant now in the ancient question: “Are we alone in the universe?”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jill Tarter — It Takes a Cosmos to Make a Human." Find more at onbeing.org.

The wise and beloved Vatican astronomer Father George Coyne died last week. Like most of the Vatican astronomers across history, he was a Jesuit. More than 30 objects on the moon are named after the Jesuits who mapped it, and ten Jesuits in history have had asteroids named after them. Father Coyne was one of the few with this distinction, alongside his friend and fellow Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno. In a conversation filled with laughter, we experience a spacious way to approach life, faith, and the universe.

Father George Coyne was the Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory from 1978 to 2006 and author of the book Wayfarers in the Cosmos: The Human Quest for Meaning. He died on February 11, 2020, at the age of 87.

Brother Guy Consolmagno was appointed Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory by Pope Francis in 2015. His books include Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist and Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: and Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-box at the Vatican Observatory.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

The wise and beloved Vatican astronomer Father George Coyne died last week. Like most of the Vatican astronomers across history, he was a Jesuit. More than 30 objects on the moon are named after the Jesuits who mapped it, and ten Jesuits in history have had asteroids named after them. Father Coyne was one of the few with this distinction, alongside his friend and fellow Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno. In a conversation filled with laughter, we experience a spacious way to approach life, faith, and the universe.

Father George Coyne was the Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory from 1978 to 2006 and author of the book Wayfarers in the Cosmos: The Human Quest for Meaning. He died on February 11, 2020, at the age of 87.

Brother Guy Consolmagno was appointed Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory by Pope Francis in 2015. His books include Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist and Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: and Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-box at the Vatican Observatory.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Guy Consolmagno and George Coyne — Asteroids, Stars, and the Love of God" Find more at onbeing.org.

The House on Mango Street by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros has been taught in high schools across the U.S. for decades. A poetic writer of many genres, she’s received a MacArthur “genius grant,” a National Medal of Arts, and many other accolades. Cisneros grew up in an immigrant household where it was assumed she would marry as her primary destiny. In this warm and lively conversation with a room full of Latinx teens, she gives voice to the choice to be single — and, single or not, to know solitude as sacred.

Sandra Cisneros is a writer and poet whose books include The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, and a memoir, A House of My Own. Her work has been lauded in many ways, including with a MacArthur “genius grant,” the Texas Medal of Arts, the National Medal of Arts, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for international literature.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

The House on Mango Street by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros has been taught in high schools across the U.S. for decades. A poetic writer of many genres, she’s received a MacArthur “genius grant,” a National Medal of Arts, and many other accolades. Cisneros grew up in an immigrant household where it was assumed she would marry as her primary destiny. In this warm and lively conversation with a room full of Latinx teens, she gives voice to the choice to be single — and, single or not, to know solitude as sacred.

Sandra Cisneros is a writer and poet whose books include The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, and a memoir, A House of My Own. Her work has been lauded in many ways, including with a MacArthur “genius grant,” the Texas Medal of Arts, the National Medal of Arts, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for international literature.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Sandra Cisneros — A House of Her Own." Find more at onbeing.org.

Journalist Ezra Klein has been widely interviewed about his new book, Why We're Polarized. In this conversation, he's frank and reflective about what's at stake in human terms in this political moment. And he describes how we all — Democrat and Republican, journalist and citizen alike — walked into this as a way to trace our steps out of it.

Ezra Klein is the co-founder and editor-at-large of Vox Media and host of two podcasts: The Weeds and The Ezra Klein Show. His book is Why We’re Polarized.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Journalist Ezra Klein has been widely interviewed about his new book, Why We're Polarized. In this conversation, he's frank and reflective about what's at stake in human terms in this political moment. And he describes how we all — Democrat and Republican, journalist and citizen alike — walked into this as a way to trace our steps out of it.

Ezra Klein is the co-founder and editor-at-large of Vox Media and host of two podcasts: The Weeds and The Ezra Klein Show. His book is Why We’re Polarized.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ezra Klein — How We Walked Into This and How We Can Walk Out." Find more at onbeing.org.

Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson are beloved teachers to many; to bring them together was a delight and a balm. Nelson is a poet and professor and contemplative, an excavator of stories that would rather stay hidden yet lead us into new life. Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, conflict mediator, and the host of our new podcast, Poetry Unbound. Together, they venture unexpectedly into the hospitable — and intriguingly universal — form of poetry that is prayer.

Editor’s note: This episode includes a preview from our new season of Poetry Unbound featuring a poem by Joy Harjo.

Marilyn Nelson is professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal “for distinguished lifetime achievement” and the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her most recent books include Mrs. Nelson’s Classroom and The Meeting House.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and conflict mediator, and was leader of the Corrymeela community until 2019. He is also the inaugural poet laureate of The On Being Project and hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast. His books include a prayer book, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, a book of poetry, Sorry for Your Troubles, and a memoir, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in September 2018.

We’re excited to share the first episode of our new podcast, Poetry Unbound. It’s your new ritual: Immerse yourself in a single poem, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Short and unhurried; contemplative and energizing. Anchor your week by listening to the everyday poetry of your life, with new episodes on Monday and Friday during the season.

This episode features Brad Aaron Modlin’s poem, “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade.”

For more, subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson are beloved teachers to many; to bring them together was a delight and a balm. Nelson is a poet and professor and contemplative, an excavator of stories that would rather stay hidden yet lead us into new life. Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, conflict mediator, and the host of our new podcast, Poetry Unbound. Together, they venture unexpectedly into the hospitable — and intriguingly universal — form of poetry that is prayer.

Marilyn Nelson is professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal “for distinguished lifetime achievement” and the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her most recent books include Mrs. Nelson’s Classroom and The Meeting House.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and conflict mediator, and was leader of the Corrymeela community until 2019. He is also the inaugural poet laureate of The On Being Project and hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast. His books include a prayer book, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, a book of poetry, Sorry for Your Troubles, and a memoir, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson — A New Imagination of Prayer." Find more at onbeing.org.

Alison Gopnik understands babies and children as the R&D division of humanity. From her cognitive science lab at the University of California, -Berkeley, she investigates the “evolutionary paradox” of the long human childhood. When she first trained in philosophy and developmental psychology, the minds of children were treated as blank slates. But her research is helping us see how even the most mundane facts of a toddler or a teenager — from fantasy play to rebelliousness — tell us what it means to be human.

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, -Berkeley, where she also heads the Cognitive Development and Learning Lab. She’s written more than 100 journal articles and several books, including The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, and, most recently, The Gardener and the Carpenter.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

Alison Gopnik understands babies and children as the R&D division of humanity. From her cognitive science lab at the University of California, -Berkeley, she investigates the “evolutionary paradox” of the long human childhood. When she first trained in philosophy and developmental psychology, the minds of children were treated as blank slates. But her research is helping us see how even the most mundane facts of a toddler or a teenager — from fantasy play to rebelliousness — tell us what it means to be human.

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, -Berkeley, where she also heads the Cognitive Development and Learning Lab. She’s written more than 100 journal articles and several books, including The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, and, most recently, The Gardener and the Carpenter.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Alison Gopnik — The Evolutionary Power of Children and Teenagers." Find more at onbeing.org.

Civil rights legend Ruby Sales learned to ask “Where does it hurt?” because it’s a question that drives to the heart of the matter — and a question we scarcely know how to ask in public life now. Sales says we must be as clear about what we love as about what we hate if we want to make change. And even as she unsettles some of what we think we know about the force of religion in civil rights history, she names a “spiritual crisis of white America” as a calling of today.

Ruby Sales is the founder and director of The Spirit House Project in Atlanta. She is included in an oral history of the Civil Rights Movement at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org

This show originally aired in September 2016.

Civil rights legend Ruby Sales learned to ask “Where does it hurt?” because it’s a question that drives to the heart of the matter — and a question we scarcely know how to ask in public life now. Sales says we must be as clear about what we love as about what we hate if we want to make change. And even as she unsettles some of what we think we know about the force of religion in civil rights history, she names a “spiritual crisis of white America” as a calling of today.

Ruby Sales is the founder and director of The Spirit House Project in Atlanta. She is included in an oral history of the Civil Rights Movement at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ruby Sales — Where Does It Hurt?" Find more at onbeing.org.

Joe Henry faced his mortality in 2018 when he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and told he might only have months to live. Now in remission, the singer-songwriter and producer has created a gorgeous new album, The Gospel According to Water. Henry’s wisdom on living — and the loss that strangely defines it — ran all the way through this conversation, recorded before his cancer, in 2015. Beloved by fellow musicians as much as by his fans, he’s produced over a dozen albums of his own and written and produced for other artists, from Elvis Costello to Madonna.

Joe Henry is a Grammy Award-winning producer and singer-songwriter. He's recorded 13 albums and produced dozens of other artists. He's the co-author of Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him. His albums include Invisible Hour, Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad, and, most recently, The Gospel According to Water.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in February 2015.

Joe Henry faced his mortality in 2018 when he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and told he might only have months to live. Now in remission, the singer-songwriter and producer has created a gorgeous new album, The Gospel According to Water. Henry’s wisdom on living — and the loss that strangely defines it — ran all the way through this conversation, recorded before his cancer, in 2015. Beloved by fellow musicians as much as by his fans, he’s produced over a dozen albums of his own and written and produced for other artists, from Elvis Costello to Madonna.

Joe Henry is a Grammy Award-winning producer and singer-songwriter. He's recorded 13 albums and produced dozens of other artists. He's the co-author of Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him. His albums include Invisible Hour, Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad, and, most recently, The Gospel According to Water.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Joe Henry — Welcoming Flies at the Picnic." Find more at onbeing.org.

Brené Brown says our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten. Her research has reminded the world in recent years of the uncomfortable, life-giving link between vulnerability and courage. Now she’s turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it: with strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts.  

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. Her books include The Gifts of Imperfection, Braving the Wilderness, and, most recently, Dare to Lead.  

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in February 2018.

Brené Brown says our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten. Her research has reminded the world in recent years of the uncomfortable, life-giving link between vulnerability and courage. Now she’s turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it: with strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts.

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. Her books include The Gifts of Imperfection, Braving the Wilderness, and, most recently, Dare to Lead.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Brené Brown — Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart." Find more at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in February 2018.

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments — including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy — and shares what he and others are learning on this edge of humanity about the complexity of memory, our need for others, and how our brains take care of our bodies.

Bessel van der Kolk is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s also a professor of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School. His books include Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on the Mind, Body, and Society and The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in July 2013.

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments — including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy — and shares what he and others are learning on this edge of humanity about the complexity of memory, our need for others, and how our brains take care of our bodies.

Bessel van der Kolk is the founder and medical director of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s also a professor of psychiatry at Boston University Medical School. His books include Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on the Mind, Body, and Society and The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Bessel van der Kolk — How Trauma Lodges in the Body." Find more at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in July 2013.

Fr. Greg Boyle makes amazingly winsome connections between things like service and delight, compassion and awe. He landed as an idealistic young Jesuit in a gang-heavy neighborhood of Los Angeles three decades ago. Now he heads Homeboy Industries, which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses from screen printing to a farmers’ market to a bakery. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship.

Greg Boyle is founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. His books include “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion” and, more recently, “Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in February 2013.

Fr. Greg Boyle makes amazingly winsome connections between things like service and delight, compassion and awe. He landed as an idealistic young Jesuit in a gang-heavy neighborhood of Los Angeles three decades ago. Now he heads Homeboy Industries, which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses from screen printing to a farmers’ market to a bakery. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship.

Greg Boyle is founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. His books include “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion” and, more recently, “Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the

On Being

episode "Greg Boyle — The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, and Kinship." Find more at onbeing.org

. This show originally aired in February 2013.

 

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.” David Whyte is a poet and philosopher who believes in the power of a “beautiful question” amid the drama of work as well as the drama of life and the ways the two overlap. He shared a deep friendship with the late Irish philosopher John O’Donohue. They were, David Whyte says, like “two bookends.” More recently, he’s written about the consolation, nourishment, and underlying meaning of everyday words.

David Whyte is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His books include The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words and The Bell and The Blackbird. His latest collection is David Whyte: Essentials.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in April 2016.

"Close" by David Whyte read by Krista Tippett

David Whyte is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His books include The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words and The Bell and The Blackbird. His latest collection is David Whyte: Essentials.

Find more at onbeing.org

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.” David Whyte is a poet and philosopher who believes in the power of a “beautiful question” amid the drama of work as well as the drama of life and the ways the two overlap. He shared a deep friendship with the late Irish philosopher John O’Donohue. They were, David Whyte says, like “two bookends.” More recently, he’s written about the consolation, nourishment, and underlying meaning of everyday words.

David Whyte is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His books include The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words and The Bell and The Blackbird. His latest collection is David Whyte: Essentials.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "David Whyte — The Conversational Nature of Reality." Find more at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in April 2016. 

Serene Jones describes theology as the place and story you think of when you ask yourself about the meaning of your life, the world, and the possibility of God. For her, that place is a “dusty piece of land” on the plains of Oklahoma where she grew up. “I go there to find my story — my theology. I go there to be born again; to be made whole; to unite with what I was, what I am, and what I will become.” In her work as a public theologian, Jones explores theology as clarifying lens on the present — from grace to repentance to the importance of moving from grieving to mourning.

Serene Jones is a minister ordained in the Disciples of Christ and the United Church of Christ. She currently serves as the 16th president — and the first female president — of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Her books include Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace, and, most recently, Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Serene Jones describes theology as the place and story you think of when you ask yourself about the meaning of your life, the world, and the possibility of God. For her, that place is a “dusty piece of land” on the plains of Oklahoma where she grew up. “I go there to find my story — my theology. I go there to be born again; to be made whole; to unite with what I was, what I am, and what I will become.” In her work as a public theologian, Jones explores theology as clarifying lens on the present — from grace to repentance to the importance of moving from grieving to mourning.

Serene Jones is a minister ordained in the Disciples of Christ and the United Church of Christ. She currently serves as the 16th president — and the first female president — of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Her books include Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace, and, most recently, Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Serene Jones — On Grace" Find more at onbeing.org.

Richard Blanco reads parts IV and V from his poem “América”. Excerpted from the On Being episode “Richard Blanco – How to Love a Country”.

Novelist Marilynne Robinson and physicist Marcelo Gleiser are both passionate about the majesty of science, and they share a caution about what they call our modern “piety” toward science. They connect thrilling dots among the current discoveries about the cosmos and the new territory of understanding our own minds. We brought them together for a joyous, heady discussion of the mystery we are.

Marcelo Gleiser is Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He’s the author of The Dancing Universe, A Tear at the Edge of Creation, and, most recently, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. He was awarded the 2019 Templeton Prize.

Marilynne Robinson is a professor emeritus of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s the author of several novels, including Housekeeping, Home, and Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her works of nonfiction include Absence of Mind and, most recently, What Are We Doing Here?

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This show originally aired in January 2012.

Novelist Marilynne Robinson and physicist Marcelo Gleiser are both passionate about the majesty of science, and they share a caution about what they call our modern “piety” toward science. They connect thrilling dots among the current discoveries about the cosmos and the new territory of understanding our own minds. We brought them together for a joyous, heady discussion of the mystery we are.

Marcelo Gleiser is Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. He’s the author of The Dancing Universe, A Tear at the Edge of Creation, and, most recently, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything. He was awarded the 2019 Templeton Prize.

Marilynne Robinson is a professor emeritus of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s the author of several novels, including Housekeeping, Home, and Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Her works of nonfiction include Absence of Mind and, most recently, What Are We Doing Here?

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the 

On Being

 episode "Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser — The Mystery We Are." Find more at

 onbeing.org

. This show originally aired in January 2012.

Robert Macfarlane is an explorer and linguist of landscape. His newest book, “Underland: A Deep Time Journey,” is an odyssey that’s full of surprises — from caves and catacombs under land, under cities, and under forests to the meltwater of Greenland. “Since before we were Homo sapiens,” he writes, “humans have been seeking out spaces of darkness in which to find and make meaning.” Darkness in the natural world and in human life, he suggests, is a medium of vision and descent, a movement toward revelation.

Robert Macfarlane is a reader in literature and the geohumanities at the University of Cambridge. His books include “Mountains of the Mind,” “The Old Ways,” “Landmarks,” “The Lost Words,” and, most recently, “Underland: A Deep Time Journey.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Robert Macfarlane is an explorer and linguist of landscape. His newest book, “Underland: A Deep Time Journey,” is an odyssey that’s full of surprises — from caves and catacombs under land, under cities, and under forests to the meltwater of Greenland. “Since before we were Homo sapiens,” he writes, “humans have been seeking out spaces of darkness in which to find and make meaning.” Darkness in the natural world and in human life, he suggests, is a medium of vision and descent, a movement toward revelation.

Robert Macfarlane is a reader in literature and the geohumanities at the University of Cambridge. His books include “Mountains of the Mind,” “The Old Ways,” “Landmarks,” “The Lost Words,” and, most recently, “Underland: A Deep Time Journey.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the 

On Being

 episode "Robert Macfarlane — The Hidden Human Depths of the Underland." Find more at

 onbeing.org

.

For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. In her mid-40s, Ladin transitioned from male to female identity and later became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution. She admits the pain this caused for people and institutions she loved. And she knows what it is to move through the world with the assumed authority of a man and the assumed vulnerability of a woman. We take in what she’s learned about gender and the very syntax of being.

Joy Ladin is the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at the Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York. Her memoir is called “Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders.” She’s also the author of nine collections of poetry and most recently published the book “The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in June 2013.

For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. In her mid-40s, Ladin transitioned from male to female identity and later became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution. She admits the pain this caused for people and institutions she loved. And she knows what it is to move through the world with the assumed authority of a man and the assumed vulnerability of a woman. We take in what she’s learned about gender and the very syntax of being.

Joy Ladin is the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at the Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York. Her memoir is called “Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders.” She’s also the author of nine collections of poetry and most recently published the book “The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the 

On Being

 episode "Joy Ladin — Finding a Home in Yourself." Find more at

 onbeing.org

. This interview originally aired in June 2013.

“Our discomfort and our grappling is not a sign of failure,” America Ferrera says, “it’s a sign that we’re living at the edge of our imaginations.” She is a culture-shifting actor and artist. John Paul Lederach is one of our greatest living architects of social transformation. From the inaugural On Being Gathering, a revelatory, joyous exploration of the ingredients of social courage and how change really happens in generational time.

John Paul Lederach is a senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the co-founder and first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. In 2019 he won the Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize.

America Ferrera is an Emmy Award-winning actor and producer. She’s known for the movies Real Women Have Curves and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and for the TV series Ugly Betty. She also stars in and co-produces the current NBC series Superstore. She’s the co-founder of Harness, a grassroots organization for social healing.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in June 2018.

“Our discomfort and our grappling is not a sign of failure,” America Ferrera says, “it’s a sign that we’re living at the edge of our imaginations.” She is a culture-shifting actor and artist. John Paul Lederach is one of our greatest living architects of social transformation. From the inaugural On Being Gathering, a revelatory, joyous exploration of the ingredients of social courage and how change really happens in generational time.

John Paul Lederach is a senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the co-founder and first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. In 2019 he won the Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize.

America Ferrera is an Emmy Award-winning actor and producer. She’s known for the movies Real Women Have Curves and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and for the TV series Ugly Betty. She also stars in and co-produces the current NBC series Superstore. She’s the co-founder of Harness, a grassroots organization for social healing.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "America Ferrera and John Paul Lederach — The Ingredients of Social Courage." Find more at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in June 2018.

Lennon Flowers and Rev. Jennifer Bailey embody a particular wisdom of millennials around grief, loss, and faith. Together they created The People’s Supper, which uses shared meals to build trust and connection among people of different identities and perspectives. Since 2017, they have hosted more than 1,500 meals. In the words they use, the practices they cultivate (some of which we’ve collected on onbeing.org), and the way they think, Flowers and Bailey issue an invitation not to safe space, but to brave space.

Rev. Jennifer Bailey is co-founder of The People’s Supper and the founder and executive director of Faith Matters Network. She is also an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and her writing appears regularly in publications including Sojourners and The Huffington Post.

Lennon Flowers is co-founder of The People’s Supper and the co-founder and executive director of The Dinner Party. She is also an Ashoka Fellow and an Aspen Ideas Scholar. She has written for CNN,YES!, Forbes, Open Democracy, EdWeek, and Fast Company.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Lennon Flowers and Rev. Jennifer Bailey embody a particular wisdom of millennials around grief, loss, and faith. Together they created The People’s Supper, which uses shared meals to build trust and connection among people of different identities and perspectives. Since 2017, they have hosted more than 1,500 meals. In the words they use, the practices they cultivate (some of which we’ve collected on onbeing.org), and the way they think, Flowers and Bailey issue an invitation not to safe space, but to brave space.

Rev. Jennifer Bailey is co-founder of The People’s Supper and the founder and executive director of Faith Matters Network. She is also an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and her writing appears regularly in publications including Sojourners and The Huffington Post.

Lennon Flowers is co-founder of The People’s Supper and the co-founder and executive director of The Dinner Party. She is also an Ashoka Fellow and an Aspen Ideas Scholar. She has written for CNN,YES!, Forbes, Open Democracy, EdWeek, and Fast Company.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jennifer Bailey and Lennon Flowers — An Invitation to Brave Space." Find more at onbeing.org.

Writer David Treuer’s work tells a story that is richer and more multi-dimensional than the American history most of us learned in school. Treuer grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. At the time of our conversation with him in 2008, he was part of an ongoing project to document the grammar and usage of the Ojibwe language. He says the recovery of tribal languages and names is part of a fuller recovery of our national story — and the human story. And it holds unexpected observations altogether about language and meaning that most of us express unselfconsciously in our mother tongues.

David Treuer divides his time between the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. His books include “Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual,” “The Translation of Dr. Apelle,” and most recently, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present.” His writing has also appeared in the “New York Times,” the “Los Angeles Times,” and “The Washington Post.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in June 2008.

Writer David Treuer’s work tells a story that is richer and more multi-dimensional than the American history most of us learned in school. Treuer grew up on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. At the time of our conversation with him in 2008, he was part of an ongoing project to document the grammar and usage of the Ojibwe language. He says the recovery of tribal languages and names is part of a fuller recovery of our national story — and the human story. And it holds unexpected observations altogether about language and meaning that most of us express unselfconsciously in our mother tongues.

David Treuer divides his time between the Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. His books include “Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual,” “The Translation of Dr. Apelle,” and most recently, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present.” His writing has also appeared in the “New York Times,” the “Los Angeles Times,” and “The Washington Post.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "David Treuer — Language Carries More Than Words." Find more at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in June 2008.

We’d heard Derek Black, the former white-power heir apparent, interviewed before about his past, but never about the college friendships that changed him. After Derek’s ideology was outed at the New College of Florida, Matthew Stevenson (one of the only Orthodox Jews on campus) invited him to Shabbat dinner. What happened next is a roadmap for navigating some of the hardest and most important territory of our time.

Matthew Stevenson was born and raised in South Florida. He graduated from the New College of Florida, the state's honors college, with degrees in mathematics and economics. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and currently works as an investment analyst at T. Rowe Price.

Derek Black is a PhD student in history at the University of Chicago, where he’s examining how the legacy of the medieval European worldview influenced the development of ideas about race in the early-modern Atlantic. He is the subject of the recent book “Rising Out of Hatred” by Eli Saslow.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in May 2018.

We’d heard Derek Black, the former white-power heir apparent, interviewed before about his past, but never about the college friendships that changed him. After Derek’s ideology was outed at the New College of Florida, Matthew Stevenson (one of the only Orthodox Jews on campus) invited him to Shabbat dinner. What happened next is a roadmap for navigating some of the hardest and most important territory of our time.

Matthew Stevenson was born and raised in South Florida. He graduated from the New College of Florida, the state's honors college, with degrees in mathematics and economics. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and currently works as an investment analyst at T. Rowe Price.

Derek Black is a PhD student in history at the University of Chicago, where he’s examining how the legacy of the medieval European worldview influenced the development of ideas about race in the early-modern Atlantic. He is the subject of the recent book “Rising Out of Hatred” by Eli Saslow.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Derek Black and Matthew Stevenson — Befriending Radical Disagreement." Find more at onbeing.org.

This interview originally aired in May 2018.

James Baldwin said, “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” Imani Perry embodies that prism. For the past few years, Perry has been pondering the notions of slow work and resistant joy as she writes about what it means to raise her two black sons — as a thinker and writer at the intersection of law, race, culture, and literature. This live conversation was recorded at the Chautauqua Institution.

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her books include More Beautiful and More Terrible, Prophets of the Hood, Looking for Lorraine, and, most recently, Breathe.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

James Baldwin said, “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” Imani Perry embodies that prism. For the past few years, Perry has been pondering the notions of slow work and resistant joy as she writes about what it means to raise her two black sons — as a thinker and writer at the intersection of law, race, culture, and literature. This live conversation was recorded at the Chautauqua Institution.

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her books include More Beautiful and More Terrible, Prophets of the Hood, Looking for Lorraine, and, most recently, Breathe.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Imani Perry – More Beautiful." 

Find more at onbeing.org

.

Science writer and reporter Erik Vance says today’s brain scientists are like astronomers of old: They’ve unsettled humanity’s sense of itself by redrawing our picture of the cosmos within our own heads. Vance has investigated the healing power of stories and the “theater of medicine” (white coats included). It turns out that the things that make us feel better are often more closely connected to what we believe and fear than to the efficacy of some treatments. In fact, most drugs that go to trial can’t beat what we’ve dismissively called the “placebo effect,” which is actually nothing less than an unleashing of the brain’s superpowers.

Erik Vance is a Pulitzer Center grantee and the author of “Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal.” His work has appeared in several publications, including the “New York Times,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “Scientific American,” and “National Geographic.“

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Science writer and reporter Erik Vance says today’s brain scientists are like astronomers of old: They’ve unsettled humanity’s sense of itself by redrawing our picture of the cosmos within our own heads. Vance has investigated the healing power of stories and the “theater of medicine” (white coats included). It turns out that the things that make us feel better are often more closely connected to what we believe and fear than to the efficacy of some treatments. In fact, most drugs that go to trial can’t beat what we’ve dismissively called the “placebo effect,” which is actually nothing less than an unleashing of the brain’s superpowers.

Erik Vance is a Pulitzer Center grantee and the author of “Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal.” His work has appeared in several publications, including the “New York Times,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “Scientific American,” and “National Geographic.“ 

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the 

On Being

 episode "Erik Vance — The Drugs Inside Your Head." Find more at onbeing.org.

 

Ta-Nehisi Coates says we must love our country the way we love our friends — and not spare the hard truths. “Can you get to a place where citizens are encouraged to see themselves critically, where they’re encouraged to see their history critically?” he asks. Coates is a poetic journalist and a defining voice of our times. He’s with us in a conversation that is joyful, hard, kind, soaring, and down-to-earth all at once. He spoke with Krista as part of the 2017 Chicago Humanities Festival.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a distinguished writer in residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His books include “Between the World and Me,” “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy,” and the novel “The Water Dancer.” He’s also the current writer of the Marvel comics “The Black Panther” and “Captain America.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This episode originally aired in November 2017.

Ta-Nehisi Coates says we must love our country the way we love our friends — and not spare the hard truths. “Can you get to a place where citizens are encouraged to see themselves critically, where they’re encouraged to see their history critically?” he asks. Coates is a poetic journalist and a defining voice of our times. He’s with us in a conversation that is joyful, hard, kind, soaring, and down-to-earth all at once. He spoke with Krista as part of the 2017 Chicago Humanities Festival.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a distinguished writer in residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His books include “Between the World and Me,” “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy,” and the novel “The Water Dancer.” He’s also the current writer of the Marvel comics “The Black Panther” and “Captain America.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Ta-Nehisi Coates — Imagining a New America." Find more at onbeing.org.

This interview originally aired in November 2017.

Movies can be whimsical, terrifying, life-altering, culture-changing experiences where the big ideas we take up at “On Being” show up in the heart of our lives. This hour we experience this through seven lives and seven movies — from “The Wizard of Oz” and “Black Panther” to “The Exorcist.” Get out the popcorn for this upcoming flavor of the new season of our On Being Studios podcast “This Movie Changed Me” — a love letter to movies and their power to teach, connect, and transform us.

Naomi Alderman is a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University. Her books include “The Power” and “Disobedience,” which was adapted into a feature film starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams. She's also a game writer whose work includes the alternate-reality game “Perplex City” and the fitness game “Zombies, Run!”

Drew Hammond is an English teacher at Eagan High School in Eagan, Minnesota. He’s also an award-winning public speaking coach, a published playwright, and a former stand-up comedian. He is featured in the documentary “Figures of Speech,” which is out on Netflix.

Mark Kermode is the chief film critic for “The Observer,” host of the podcast “Kermode On Film,” and co-host of “Kermode & Mayo's Film Review” on BBC Radio 5 Live. His books on film include “Hatchet Job,” “It’s Only A Movie,” and “How Does It Feel? A Life of Musical Misadventures.”

Zahida Sherman is the director of the Multicultural Resource Center at Oberlin College. She was formerly the assistant director of black student success at University of the Pacific. Find her writings on race, gender, and adulthood in “Bustle and Blavity.”

Seth Godin writes the wildly popular daily, “Seth’s Blog.” His podcast is “Akimbo.” He’s the author of many best-selling books, online and in print, including “This is Marketing,” “Purple Cow,” “The Dip,” and “Linchpin.” In 2018 he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.

Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton collects sounds from around the world. He’s recorded inside Sitka spruce logs in the Pacific Northwest, thunder in the Kalahari Desert, and dawn breaking across six continents. An attentive listener, he says silence is an endangered species on the verge of extinction. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound but an absence of noise. We take in the world through his ears.

Gordon Hempton is the founder of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, which recently expanded to become Quiet Parks International with the mission to “save quiet for the benefit of all life.” His books include One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, co-authored with John Grossmann, and Earth Is A Solar Powered Jukebox: A Complete Guide to Listening, Recording, and Sound Designing with Nature. He’s also produced more than 60 albums of vanishing natural soundscapes. Despite a dramatic loss in hearing in recent years, he’s been able to release a collection of soundscapes called Global Sunrise: The Musical Sounds of Dawn and a podcast, Sound Escapes.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in May 2012.

Gordon Hempton is the founder of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, which recently expanded to become Quiet Parks International with the mission to “save quiet for the benefit of all life.” His books include One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, co-authored with John Grossmann, and Earth Is A Solar Powered Jukebox: A Complete Guide to Listening, Recording, and Sound Designing with Nature. He’s also produced more than 60 albums of vanishing natural soundscapes. Despite a dramatic loss in hearing in recent years, he’s been able to release a collection of soundscapes called Global Sunrise: The Musical Sounds of Dawn and a podcast, Sound Escapes.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything." Find more at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in May 2012.

We were made and set here, the writer Annie Dillard once wrote, “to give voice to our astonishments.” Katy Payne is a renowned acoustic biologist with a Quaker sensibility. She’s found her astonishment — and many life lessons — in listening to two of the world’s largest creatures. From the wild coast of Argentina to the rainforests of Africa, she discovered that humpback whales compose ever-changing songs and that elephants communicate across long distances by infrasound

Katy Payne is a researcher in the bioacoustics research program of Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology and part of the research team that produced the original recording “Songs of the Humpback Whale.” Her book is Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in February 2007.

We were made and set here, the writer Annie Dillard once wrote, “to give voice to our astonishments.” Katy Payne is a renowned acoustic biologist with a Quaker sensibility. She’s found her astonishment — and many life lessons — in listening to two of the world’s largest creatures. From the wild coast of Argentina to the rainforests of Africa, she discovered that humpback whales compose ever-changing songs and that elephants communicate across long distances by infrasound.

Katy Payne is a researcher in the bioacoustics research program of Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology and part of the research team that produced the original recording “Songs of the Humpback Whale.” Her book is Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Katy Payne — In the Presence of Elephants and Whales." Find more at onbeing.org. This interview originally aired in February 2007.

Spiritual border-crossing and social creativity were themes in a conversation between Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash, two people who have lived with some discomfort within the religious groups they continue to love. Ghobash is a diplomat of the United Arab Emirates and author of Letters to a Young Muslim. One of his responses to the politicization of Islam has been to bring a new art gallery culture to Dubai, creating spaces for thought and beauty. Claiborne is a singular figure in Evangelical Christianity as co-founder of The Simple Way, an intentional neighborhood-based community in North Philadelphia. One of the things he’s doing now is a restorative justice project inspired by a Bible passage — to transform guns into garden tools. This conversation took place at the invitation of Interfaith Philadelphia, which hosted a year of civil conversations modeled after the work of On Being’s Civil Conversations Project.

Shane Claiborne is the founder of The Simple Way, an intentional community in North Philadelphia. He’s recently written a book, Beating Guns, about the movement he co-leads to transform America’s guns into garden tools. His other books include The Irresistible Revolution.

His Excellency Omar Saif Ghobash is now the assistant minister for cultural affairs in the Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates. He was formerly UAE ambassador to France and Russia. His book is Letters to a Young Muslim.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Spiritual border-crossing and social creativity were themes in a conversation between Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash, two people who have lived with some discomfort within the religious groups they continue to love. Ghobash is a diplomat of the United Arab Emirates and author of Letters to a Young Muslim. One of his responses to the politicization of Islam has been to bring a new art gallery culture to Dubai, creating spaces for thought and beauty. Claiborne is a singular figure in Evangelical Christianity as co-founder of The Simple Way, an intentional neighborhood-based community in North Philadelphia. One of the things he’s doing now is a restorative justice project inspired by a Bible passage — to transform guns into garden tools. This conversation took place at the invitation of Interfaith Philadelphia, which hosted a year of civil conversations modeled after the work of On Being’s Civil Conversations Project.

Shane Claiborne is the founder of The Simple Way, an intentional community in North Philadelphia. He’s recently written a book, Beating Guns, about the movement he co-leads to transform America’s guns into garden tools. His other books include The Irresistible Revolution.

His Excellency Omar Saif Ghobash is now the assistant minister for cultural affairs in the Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates. He was formerly UAE ambassador to France and Russia. His book is Letters to a Young Muslim.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash — Called and Conflicted." Find more at onbeing.org.

Darnell Moore says honest, uncomfortable conversations are a sign of love — and that self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with culture shift and social evolution. A writer and activist, he’s grown wise through his work on successful and less successful civic initiatives, including Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to remake the schools of Newark, New Jersey, and he is a key figure in the ongoing, under-publicized, creative story of The Movement for Black Lives. This conversation was recorded at the 2019 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England.

Darnell Moore is the U.S. head of strategy and programs at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization. He is a civic media fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and a writer-in-residence at Columbia University’s Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice. His book is “No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Darnell Moore says honest, uncomfortable conversations are a sign of love — and that self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with culture shift and social evolution. A writer and activist, he’s grown wise through his work on successful and less successful civic initiatives, including Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to remake the schools of Newark, New Jersey, and he is a key figure in the ongoing, under-publicized, creative story of The Movement for Black Lives. This conversation was recorded at the 2019 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, England.

Darnell Moore is the U.S. head of strategy and programs at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization. He is a civic media fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and a writer-in-residence at Columbia University’s Center on African-American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice. His book is “No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Darnell Moore — Self-Reflection and Social Evolution." Find more at onbeing.org.

Forms of religious devotion are shifting — and there’s a new world of creativity toward crafting spiritual life while exploring the depths of tradition. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a fun and forceful embodiment of this evolution. Born into an eminent and ancient rabbinical lineage, as a young adult he moved away from religion towards storytelling, theater, and drag. Today he leads a pop-up synagogue in New York City that takes as its tagline “everybody-friendly, artist-driven, God-optional.” It’s not merely about spiritual community but about recovering the sacred and reinventing the very meaning of “we.”

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a rabbi and founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul in New York City. He’s also the founding director of Storahtelling.

This interview originally aired in July 2017. Find the transcript and more at onbeing.org.

Forms of religious devotion are shifting — and there’s a new world of creativity toward crafting spiritual life while exploring the depths of tradition. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a fun and forceful embodiment of this evolution. Born into an eminent and ancient rabbinical lineage, as a young adult he moved away from religion towards storytelling, theater, and drag. Today he leads a pop-up synagogue in New York City that takes as its tagline “everybody-friendly, artist-driven, God-optional.” It’s not merely about spiritual community but about recovering the sacred and reinventing the very meaning of “we.”

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is a rabbi and founding spiritual leader of Lab/Shul in New York City. He’s also the founding director of Storahtelling.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Amichai Lau-Lavie — First Aid for Spiritual Seekers." Find more at onbeing.org.

Applied philosopher Jonathan Rowson insists on holding a deeper appreciation for how our inner worlds influence our outer worlds. His research organization, Perspectiva, examines how social change happens across “systems, souls, and society.” “If we can get better and more nimble and more generous about how we move between those worlds, then the chance of creating a hope that makes sense for all of us is all the greater,” he says. We engage his broad spiritual lens on the great dynamics of our time, from social life to the economy to the climate.

Jonathan Rowson is co-founder and director of the research institute Perspectiva based in London. He is also the former director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and is a chess grandmaster and three-time British Chess Champion. His books include “The Seven Deadly Chess Sins,” “Chess for Zebras,” and, most recently, “Spiritualize: Cultivating Spiritual Sensibility to Address 21st Century Challenges.” His forthcoming book, “The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life,” will be published in November 2019.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Applied philosopher Jonathan Rowson insists on holding a deeper appreciation for how our inner worlds influence our outer worlds. His research organization, Perspectiva, examines how social change happens across “systems, souls, and society.” “If we can get better and more nimble and more generous about how we move between those worlds, then the chance of creating a hope that makes sense for all of us is all the greater,” he says. We engage his broad spiritual lens on the great dynamics of our time, from social life to the economy to the climate. Jonathan Rowson is co-founder and director of the research institute Perspectiva based in London. He is also the former director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts and is a chess grandmaster and three-time British Chess Champion. His books include “The Seven Deadly Chess Sins,” “Chess for Zebras,” and, most recently, “Spiritualize: Cultivating Spiritual Sensibility to Address 21st Century Challenges.” His forthcoming book, “The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life,” will be published in November 2019. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jonathan Rowson — Integrating Our Souls, Systems, and Society." Find more at onbeing.org.

Therapist Esther Perel has changed our discourse about sexuality and coupledom with her TED talks, books, and singular podcast, “Where Should We Begin?”, in which listeners are invited into emotionally raw therapy sessions she conducts with couples she’s never met before. For Perel, eroticism is a key ingredient to life — and it’s more than just a description of sexuality. “It is about how people connect to this quality of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality, of renewal,” she says. “It is actually a spiritual, mystical experience of life.”

Esther Perel has a private couples and family therapy practice in New York. She is executive producer and host of the podcast “Where Should We Begin?” She has also given two TED talks and is the author of the books “Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence” and “The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the “On Being” episode “Esther Perel — The Erotic Is an Antidote to Death.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Therapist Esther Perel has changed our discourse about sexuality and coupledom with her TED talks, books, and singular podcast, “Where Should We Begin?”, in which listeners are invited into emotionally raw therapy sessions she conducts with couples she’s never met before. For Perel, eroticism is a key ingredient to life — and it’s more than just a description of sexuality. “It is about how people connect to this quality of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality, of renewal,” she says. “It is actually a spiritual, mystical experience of life.”

Esther Perel has a private couples and family therapy practice in New York. She is executive producer and host of the podcast “Where Should We Begin?” She has also given two TED talks and is the author of the books “Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence” and “The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We must shine a light on the past to live more abundantly now. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed and painter Titus Kaphar lead us in an exploration of that as a public adventure in this conversation at the Citizen University annual conference. Gordon-Reed is the historian who introduced the world to Sally Hemings and the children she had with President Thomas Jefferson, and so realigned a primary chapter of the American story with the deeper, more complicated truth. Kaphar collapses historical timelines on canvas and created iconic images after the protests in Ferguson. Both are reckoning with history in order to repair the present.

Titus Kaphar is an artist whose work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions from the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Seattle Art Museum to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His 2014 painting of Ferguson protesters was commissioned by “TIME” magazine. He has received numerous awards including the Artist as Activist Fellowship from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the 2018 Rappaport Prize.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her books include “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, and “‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Annette Gordon-Reed and Titus Kaphar — Are We Actually Citizens Here?” Find more at onbeing.org.

We must shine a light on the past to live more abundantly now. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed and painter Titus Kaphar lead us in an exploration of that as a public adventure in this conversation at the Citizen University annual conference. Gordon-Reed is the historian who introduced the world to Sally Hemings and the children she had with President Thomas Jefferson, and so realigned a primary chapter of the American story with the deeper, more complicated truth. Kaphar collapses historical timelines on canvas and created iconic images after the protests in Ferguson. Both are reckoning with history in order to repair the present.

Titus Kaphar is an artist whose work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions from the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Seattle Art Museum to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His 2014 painting of Ferguson protesters was commissioned by “TIME” magazine. He has received numerous awards including the Artist as Activist Fellowship from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the 2018 Rappaport Prize.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her books include “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, and “‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.”

This interview originally aired in June 2017. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The folk-rock duo Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been making music for over 25 years. They’re known for their social activism on-stage and off, but long before they became the Indigo Girls, they were singing in church choirs. They see music as a continuum of human existence, intertwined with spiritual life in a way that can’t be pinned down.

Amy Ray is a singer-songwriter who is one half of the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. Her latest solo album, “Holler,” was released in September 2018.

Emily Saliers is a singer-songwriter who is one half of the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. She is also the co-author of “A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as a Spiritual Practice.” Her debut album, “Murmuration Nation,” was released in 2017.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Indigo Girls — No Separation: On Music and Transcendence” Find more at onbeing.org.

The folk-rock duo Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been making music for over 25 years. They’re known for their social activism on-stage and off, but long before they became the Indigo Girls, they were singing in church choirs. They see music as a continuum of human existence, intertwined with spiritual life in a way that can’t be pinned down.

Amy Ray is a singer-songwriter who is one half of the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. Her latest solo album, “Holler,” was released in September 2018.

Emily Saliers is a singer-songwriter who is one half of the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls. She is also the co-author of “A Song to Sing, A Life to Live: Reflections on Music as a Spiritual Practice.” Her debut album, “Murmuration Nation,” was released in 2017.

This interview originally aired in October 2013. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We still work with the old idea that we should check the messy parts of ourselves at the door of our professional lives. But Jerry Colonna says doing so cuts us off from the source of our creativity. “The result is that our organizations are actually less productive, less imaginative; not just poor workplaces for individuals to be, but poor places for collaboration … and spontaneity and laughter and humor.” Colonna is a former venture capitalist who now coaches CEOs. He says undoing the old model starts with radical self-inquiry and asking ourselves questions like “Who is the person I’ve been all my life?” — and that it’s only after we sort through the material of our personal lives that we can become better leaders.

Jerry Colonna is the co-founder and CEO of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm. He also hosts the “Reboot” podcast and is the author of “Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up.” And if you want to hear Jerry in action, he’s featured in several episodes of Gimlet media’s podcast “StartUp.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We still work with the old idea that we should check the messy parts of ourselves at the door of our professional lives. But Jerry Colonna says doing so cuts us off from the source of our creativity. “The result is that our organizations are actually less productive, less imaginative; not just poor workplaces for individuals to be, but poor places for collaboration … and spontaneity and laughter and humor.” Colonna is a former venture capitalist who now coaches CEOs. He says undoing the old model starts with radical self-inquiry and asking ourselves questions like “Who is the person I’ve been all my life?” — and that it’s only after we sort through the material of our personal lives that we can become better leaders.

Jerry Colonna is the co-founder and CEO of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm. He also hosts the “Reboot” podcast and is the author of “Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up.” And if you want to hear Jerry in action, he’s featured in several episodes of Gimlet media’s podcast “StartUp.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jerry Colonna — Can You Really Bring Your Whole Self to Work?” Find more at onbeing.org.

Men of all ages say Richard Rohr has given them a new way into spiritual depth and religious thought through his writing and retreats. This conversation with the Franciscan spiritual teacher delves into the expansive scope of his ideas: from male formation and what he calls “father hunger” to why contemplation is as magnetic to people now, including millennials, as it’s ever been.

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan writer, teacher, and the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His many books include “Falling Upward,” “Divine Dance,” and most recently, “The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe.”

This interview originally aired in April 2017. It is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Richard Rohr — Growing Up Men.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Men of all ages say Richard Rohr has given them a new way into spiritual depth and religious thought through his writing and retreats. This conversation with the Franciscan spiritual teacher delves into the expansive scope of his ideas: from male formation and what he calls “father hunger” to why contemplation is as magnetic to people now, including millennials, as it’s ever been.

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan writer, teacher, and the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His many books include “Falling Upward,” “Divine Dance,” and most recently, “The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe.”

This interview originally aired in April 2017. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Today young people are trying to balance the question of “What do I want to do when I grow up?” with the question of “Who and how do I want to be in the world?” Physician and writer Abraham Verghese and education researcher Denise Pope argue that’s because the way we educate for success doesn’t support the creation of full, well-rounded humans. And they see the next generation challenging our cultural view of success by insisting that a deeply satisfying life is one filled with presence, vulnerability, and care for others.

Abraham Verghese is a professor of medicine, vice chair of the Department of Medicine, and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor at Stanford University. His books of fiction and non-fiction include “My Own Country,” “The Tennis Partner,” and the novel “Cutting for Stone.” He received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2016.

Denise Pope is a senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education and the co-founder of the non-profit organization Challenge Success. She’s the author of “Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students;” and a co-author of “Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Abraham Verghese and Denise Pope — How Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” Find more at onbeing.org.

Today young people are trying to balance the question of “What do I want to do when I grow up?” with the question of “Who and how do I want to be in the world?” Physician and writer Abraham Verghese and education researcher Denise Pope argue that’s because the way we educate for success doesn’t support the creation of full, well-rounded humans. And they see the next generation challenging our cultural view of success by insisting that a deeply satisfying life is one filled with presence, vulnerability, and care for others.

Abraham Verghese is a professor of medicine, vice chair of the Department of Medicine, and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor at Stanford University. His books of fiction and non-fiction include “My Own Country,” “The Tennis Partner,” and the novel “Cutting for Stone.” He received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2016.

Denise Pope is a senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education and the co-founder of the non-profit organization Challenge Success. She’s the author of “Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students;” and a co-author of “Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Community organizers Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson have much to teach us about using love — the most reliable muscle of human transformation — as a practical public good. Nashashibi is the founder of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a force for social healing on Chicago’s South Side. Johnson is the newly-named executive director of The On Being Project’s Civil Conversations Project. In a world of division, they say despair is not an option — and that the work of social healing requires us to get “proximate to pain.”

Rami Nashashibi is founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) in Chicago. He was named a MacArthur fellow in 2017 and an Opus Prize laureate in 2018.

Lucas Johnson is the executive director of The On Being Project’s Civil Conversations Project. He was previously international coordinator for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, a century-old peace-building organization. Lucas is also a community organizer, writer, and a minister in the American Baptist Churches.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson — Community Organizing as a Spiritual Practice.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Community organizers Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson have much to teach us about using love — the most reliable muscle of human transformation — as a practical public good. Nashashibi is the founder of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a force for social healing on Chicago’s South Side. Johnson is the newly-named executive director of The On Being Project’s Civil Conversations Project. In a world of division, they say despair is not an option — and that the work of social healing requires us to get “proximate to pain.”

Rami Nashashibi is founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) in Chicago. He was named a MacArthur fellow in 2017 and an Opus Prize laureate in 2018.

Lucas Johnson is the executive director of The On Being Project’s Civil Conversations Project. He was previously international coordinator for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, a century-old peace-building organization. Lucas is also a community organizer, writer, and a minister in the American Baptist Churches.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Sylvia Boorstein says spirituality doesn’t have to look like sitting down and meditating. A Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, Boorstein says spirituality can be as simple as “folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in [your] family even though you’ve had a long day.” And she insists that nurturing our inner lives in this way is not a luxury but something we can do in the service of others — from our children to strangers in the checkout line at the grocery store.

Sylvia Boorstein is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Her books include “That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist” and “Making Friends with the Present Moment.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Sylvia Boorstein says spirituality doesn’t have to look like sitting down and meditating. A Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist, Boorstein says spirituality can be as simple as “folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in [your] family even though you’ve had a long day.” And she insists that nurturing our inner lives in this way is not a luxury but something we can do in the service of others — from our children to strangers in the checkout line at the grocery store.

Sylvia Boorstein is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Her books include “That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist” and “Making Friends with the Present Moment.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sylvia Boorstein — What We Nurture.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“What does a good day look like?” That question — when asked of both terminally-ill and healthy people — has transformed Atul Gawande’s practice of medicine. A citizen physician and writer, Gawande is on the frontiers of human agency and meaning in light of what modern medicine makes possible. For the millions of people who have read his book “Being Mortal,” he’s also opened new conversations about the ancient human question of death and what it might have to do with life.

Atul Gawande practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He’s also Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He was recently named the CEO of Haven, a healthcare venture spearheaded by the leaders of Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway. He’s been a staff writer for “The New Yorker” magazine since 1998 and is the author of four books, including “The Checklist Manifesto” and “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

“What does a good day look like?” That question — when asked of both terminally-ill and healthy people — has transformed Atul Gawande’s practice of medicine. A citizen physician and writer, Gawande is on the frontiers of human agency and meaning in light of what modern medicine makes possible. For the millions of people who have read his book “Being Mortal,” he’s also opened new conversations about the ancient human question of death and what it might have to do with life.

Atul Gawande practices general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He’s also Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He was recently named the CEO of Haven, a healthcare venture spearheaded by the leaders of Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway. He’s been a staff writer for “The New Yorker” magazine since 1998 and is the author of four books, including “The Checklist Manifesto” and “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Atul Gawande — What Matters in the End” Find more at onbeing.org.

A Buddhist philosopher of ecology, Joanna Macy says we are at a pivotal moment in history with the possibility to unravel or create a life-sustaining human society. Now entering her 90s, Macy has lived adventurously by any definition. She worked with the CIA in Cold War Europe and the Peace Corps in post-colonial India and was an early environmental activist. She brings a poetic and spiritual sensibility to her work that’s reflected in her translations of the early-20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke. We take that poetry as a lens on her wisdom on the great dramas of our time: ecological, political, personal.

Joanna Macy is an activist, author, and a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Her 13 books include translations of Rilke’s “Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,” “A Year with Rilke,” and “In Praise of Mortality.” She is the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, a framework and workshop for personal and social change. Her new translation of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet,” together with Anita Barrows, is upcoming in 2020.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A Buddhist philosopher of ecology, Joanna Macy says we are at a pivotal moment in history with the possibility to unravel or create a life-sustaining human society. Now entering her 90s, Macy has lived adventurously by any definition. She worked with the CIA in Cold War Europe and the Peace Corps in post-colonial India and was an early environmental activist. She brings a poetic and spiritual sensibility to her work that’s reflected in her translations of the early-20th-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke. We take that poetry as a lens on her wisdom on the great dramas of our time: ecological, political, personal.

Joanna Macy is an activist, author, and a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Her 13 books include translations of Rilke’s “Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,” “A Year with Rilke,” and “In Praise of Mortality.” She is the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, a framework and workshop for personal and social change. Her new translation of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet,” together with Anita Barrows, is upcoming in 2020.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Joanna Macy — A Wild Love for the World.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The late Wangari Maathai was a biologist, environmentalist, and the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. She was born under British colonial occupation and schooled by Catholic missionaries. But when she looked back on her childhood near the end of her life, she realized her family’s Kikuyu culture had imparted her with an intuitive sense of environmental balance. Maathai was steadfast in her determination to fight for the twin issues of conservation and human rights — and planting trees was a symbol of defiance.

Wangari Maathai founded the global Green Belt Movement, which has contributed today to the planting of over 52 million trees. She was the 2004 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Her books include the memoir “Unbowed” and “Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World.” She’s also one of the 100 heroic women featured in the book “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.” She died in 2011 at the age of 71.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The late Wangari Maathai was a biologist, environmentalist, and the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. She was born under British colonial occupation and schooled by Catholic missionaries. But when she looked back on her childhood near the end of her life, she realized her family’s Kikuyu culture had imparted her with an intuitive sense of environmental balance. Maathai was steadfast in her determination to fight for the twin issues of conservation and human rights — and planting trees was a symbol of defiance.

Wangari Maathai founded the global Green Belt Movement, which has contributed today to the planting of over 52 million trees. She was the 2004 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Her books include the memoir “Unbowed” and “Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World.” She’s also one of the 100 heroic women featured in the book “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.” She died in 2011 at the age of 71.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Wangari Maathai — Marching with Trees.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Ó Tuama and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative, and joyful force far beyond their northern coast to people around the world. Over cups of tea and the experience of bringing people together, he says it becomes possible to talk with each other and be in the same room with the people we talk about.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the community leader of Corrymeela, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. He finishes his five-year term in 2019. His books include a prayer book, “Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community,” a book of poetry, “Sorry for Your Troubles,” and a memoir, “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Ó Tuama and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative, and joyful force far beyond their northern coast to people around the world. Over cups of tea and the experience of bringing people together, he says it becomes possible to talk with each other and be in the same room with the people we talk about.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the community leader of Corrymeela, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organization. He finishes his five-year term in 2019. His books include a prayer book, “Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community,” a book of poetry, “Sorry for Your Troubles,” and a memoir, “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Pádraig Ó Tuama — Belonging Creates and Undoes Us.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A prolific writer on sociology, history, economics, and politics, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most extraordinary minds of American and global history. His life traced an incredible arc; he was born three years after the end of the Civil War and died on the eve of the March on Washington. In 1903, he penned the famous line that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois was a formative voice for many of the people who gave us the Civil Rights Movement and for all of us navigating the still-unfolding, unfinished business of civil rights now. We bring his life and ideas into relief through three conversations with people who were inspired by him.

Maya Angelou was a poet, educator, and activist. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. She is most well-known for her series of seven autobiographies, including “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois and the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A prolific writer on sociology, history, economics, and politics, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most extraordinary minds of American and global history. His life traced an incredible arc; he was born three years after the end of the Civil War and died on the eve of the March on Washington. In 1903, he penned the famous line that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois was a formative voice for many of the people who gave us the Civil Rights Movement and for all of us navigating the still-unfolding, unfinished business of civil rights now. We bring his life and ideas into relief through three conversations with people who were inspired by him.

Maya Angelou was a poet, educator, and activist. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. She is most well-known for her series of seven autobiographies, including “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

Elizabeth Alexander is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her books include “Crave Radiance” and her memoir, “The Light of the World.”

Arnold Rampersad is emeritus professor of English at Stanford University and author of “The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois.” He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2010.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A prolific writer on sociology, history, economics, and politics, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most extraordinary minds of American and global history. His life traced an incredible arc; he was born three years after the end of the Civil War and died on the eve of the March on Washington. In 1903, he penned the famous line that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois was a formative voice for many of the people who gave us the Civil Rights Movement and for all of us navigating the still-unfolding, unfinished business of civil rights now. We bring his life and ideas into relief through three conversations with people who were inspired by him.

Arnold Rampersad is emeritus professor of English at Stanford University and author of “The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois.” He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2010.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois and the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

This interview accompanies the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A prolific writer on sociology, history, economics, and politics, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the most extraordinary minds of American and global history. His life traced an incredible arc; he was born three years after the end of the Civil War and died on the eve of the March on Washington. In 1903, he penned the famous line that “the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.” Du Bois was a formative voice for many of the people who gave us the Civil Rights Movement and for all of us navigating the still-unfolding, unfinished business of civil rights now. We bring his life and ideas into relief through three conversations with people who were inspired by him.

Elizabeth Alexander is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her books include “Crave Radiance” and her memoir, “The Light of the World.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois and the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Over the years, listeners have asked for shorter-form distillations of On Being — something to listen to while making a cup of tea. Becoming Wise is this offering, designed to help you reset your day and replenish your sense of yourself and the world, ten minutes at a time. A taste of the second season, which launched this week, curated from hundreds of big conversations Krista has had with wise and graceful lives — including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, astronomer Natalie Batalha, and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.

To receive an episode every Monday morning, subscribe at onbeing.org or wherever podcasts are found.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a long-time student and articulator of the mysteries and messages of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. Kushner says mysticism tends to appear when religion — whatever the tradition — becomes too formal and logical. “The minute mysticism becomes permissible, acceptable, possible, it’s an immediate threat to organized religious structures,” he says. “Because what mysticism does is it gives everybody direct unmediated personal access to God.” He is influenced by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem, who resurrected Kabbalah from obscurity in the 20th century and made it accessible to modern people.

Lawrence Kushner is the Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. He served for 28 years as the rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He has been an adjunct faculty member at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and also a commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered. His many books include God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know, Kabbalah: A Love Story, and I’m God; You’re Not: Observations on Organized Religion & Other Disguises of the Ego.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Lawrence Kushner — Kabbalah and Everyday Mysticism.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a long-time student and articulator of the mysteries and messages of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. Kushner says mysticism tends to appear when religion — whatever the tradition — becomes too formal and logical. “The minute mysticism becomes permissible, acceptable, possible, it’s an immediate threat to organized religious structures,” he says. “Because what mysticism does is it gives everybody direct unmediated personal access to God.” He is influenced by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem, who resurrected Kabbalah from obscurity in the 20th century and made it accessible to modern people.

Lawrence Kushner is the Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. He served for 28 years as the rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He has been an adjunct faculty member at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and also a commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered. His many books include God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know, Kabbalah: A Love Story, and I’m God; You’re Not: Observations on Organized Religion & Other Disguises of the Ego.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

When the wise and whimsical Sharon Olds started writing poetry over 40 years ago, she explored the subjects that interested her most — like diaphragms. “The politeness and the prudity of the world I grew up in meant that there were things that were important to me and interesting to me, [but] I had never read a poem about,” she once said. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for her collection Stag’s Leap about walking through the end of a long marriage. Her most recent book, Odes, pays homage to the human body and experience.

Sharon Olds is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. She is the author of Satan Says, The Dead and the Living, Odes, and Stag’s Leap — for which she also won the T.S. Eliot Prize. She helped found NYU’s outreach program for residents of Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island and for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sharon Olds — Odes to the *****.” Find more at onbeing.org.

When the wise and whimsical Sharon Olds started writing poetry over 40 years ago, she explored the subjects that interested her most — like diaphragms. “The politeness and the prudity of the world I grew up in meant that there were things that were important to me and interesting to me, [but] I had never read a poem about,” she once said. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for her collection Stag’s Leap about walking through the end of a long marriage. Her most recent book, Odes, pays homage to the human body and experience.

Sharon Olds is the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. She is the author of Satan Says, The Dead and the Living, Odes, and Stag’s Leap — for which she also won the T.S. Eliot Prize. She helped found NYU’s outreach program for residents of Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island and for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Editor’s note added 02/25/20: In February 2020, L’Arche International released the results of anindependent investigation that it commissioned into Jean Vanier, who died in 2019. The investigation determined that the L’Arche founder, Catholic philosopher and humanitarian engaged in manipulative sexual relationships with at least six women from 1970-2005. None of the women had disabilities. The report also concluded that Vanier was complicit in covering up similar sexual abuse by his mentor, the late Father Thomas Philippe. In this response, Krista reflects on the moral questions and meaning raised by these discoveries.

*****

A philosopher and Catholic social innovator, Jean Vanier is one of the great elders in our world today. The L’Arche movement, which he founded, centers around people with mental disabilities. The dozens of L’Arche communities around the world have become places of pilgrimage and are transformative for those involved and for the world around them. He has devoted his life to the practical application of Christianity’s most paradoxical teachings — that there’s power in humility, strength in weakness, and light in the darkness of human existence.

 

Jean Vanier was a philosopher and the founder of L'Arche. He was also the recipient of the 2015 Templeton Prize. His books included Befriending the Stranger, An Ark for the Poor, and A Cry Is Heard: My Path to Peace. He died on May 7, 2019.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

 

 

Editor’s note added 02/25/20: In February 2020, L’Arche International released the results of anindependent investigation that it commissioned into Jean Vanier, who died in 2019. The investigation determined that the L’Arche founder, Catholic philosopher and humanitarian engaged in manipulative sexual relationships with at least six women from 1970-2005. None of the women had disabilities. The report also concluded that Vanier was complicit in covering up similar sexual abuse by his mentor, the late Father Thomas Philippe. In this response, Krista reflects on the moral questions and meaning raised by these discoveries.

*****

A philosopher and Catholic social innovator, Jean Vanier is one of the great elders in our world today. The L’Arche movement, which he founded, centers around people with mental disabilities. The dozens of L’Arche communities around the world have become places of pilgrimage and are transformative for those involved and for the world around them. He has devoted his life to the practical application of Christianity’s most paradoxical teachings — that there’s power in humility, strength in weakness, and light in the darkness of human existence.

 

Jean Vanier was a philosopher and the founder of L'Arche. He was also the recipient of the 2015 Templeton Prize. His books included Befriending the Stranger, An Ark for the Poor, and A Cry Is Heard: My Path to Peace. He died on May 7, 2019.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jean Vanier — The Wisdom of Tenderness.” Find more at onbeing.org.

 

 

Writer and photographer Teju Cole says he is “intrigued by the continuity of places, by the singing line that connects them all.” He attends to the border, overlap and interplay of things — from Brahms and Baldwin to daily technologies like Google. To delve into his mind and his multiple arts is to meet this world with creative raw materials for enduring truth and quiet hope.

Teju Cole is a photography critic for The New York Times and the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard. His books are Blind Spot, a book of photography and writing; a collection of essays, Known and Strange Things; and two novels: Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Teju Cole — Sitting Together in the Dark.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Writer and photographer Teju Cole says he is “intrigued by the continuity of places, by the singing line that connects them all.” He attends to the border, overlap and interplay of things — from Brahms and Baldwin to daily technologies like Google. To delve into his mind and his multiple arts is to meet this world with creative raw materials for enduring truth and quiet hope.

Teju Cole is a photography critic for The New York Times and the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard. His books are Blind Spot, a book of photography and writing; a collection of essays, Known and Strange Things; and two novels: Open City and Every Day Is for the Thief.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Béla Fleck is one of the greatest living banjo players in the world. He’s followed what many experience as this quintessential American roots instrument back to its roots in Africa, and he’s taken it where no banjo has gone before. Abigail Washburn is a celebrated banjo player and singer, both in English and Chinese. These two are partners in music and in life — recovering something ancient and deeply American all at once, bringing both beauty and meaning to what they play and how they live.

Béla Fleck has recorded over 40 albums, most famously with The Flecktones and New Grass Revival. His albums include Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, UFO Tofu, and Rocket Science. His first full album collaboration with Abigail Washburn, Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn, was awarded the 2016 Grammy for Best Folk Album. Their most recent album is Echo in the Valley.

Abigail Washburn is a clawhammer banjo player and singer. Her albums include Song of the Traveling Daughter, City of Refuge, and The Sparrow Quartet EP. She is a Carolina Performing Arts DisTil Fellow, former TED Fellow, and was the first U.S.-China Fellow at Vanderbilt University.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn — Truth, Beauty, Banjo.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Béla Fleck is one of the greatest living banjo players in the world. He’s followed what many experience as this quintessential American roots instrument back to its roots in Africa, and he’s taken it where no banjo has gone before. Abigail Washburn is a celebrated banjo player and singer, both in English and Chinese. These two are partners in music and in life — recovering something ancient and deeply American all at once, bringing both beauty and meaning to what they play and how they live.

Béla Fleck has recorded over 40 albums, most famously with The Flecktones and New Grass Revival. His albums include Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, UFO Tofu, and Rocket Science. His first full album collaboration with Abigail Washburn, Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn, was awarded the 2016 Grammy for Best Folk Album. Their most recent album is Echo in the Valley.

Abigail Washburn is a clawhammer banjo player and singer. Her albums include Song of the Traveling Daughter, City of Refuge, and The Sparrow Quartet EP. She is a Carolina Performing Arts DisTil Fellow, former TED Fellow, and was the first U.S.-China Fellow at Vanderbilt University.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is one of the central people who’s helped us begin to see inside our brains. His work has illuminated the rich interplay between things we saw as separate not that long ago: body, mind, spirit, emotion, behavior and genetics. He is applying what he’s learning about imparting qualities of character — like kindness and practical love — in lives and in classrooms. This live conversation was recorded at the Orange County Department of Education in Costa Mesa, California.

Richard Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He founded and directs the Center for Healthy Minds there. He is the co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain and Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. He was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine in 2017.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is one of the central people who’s helped us begin to see inside our brains. His work has illuminated the rich interplay between things we saw as separate not that long ago: body, mind, spirit, emotion, behavior and genetics. He is applying what he’s learning about imparting qualities of character — like kindness and practical love — in lives and in classrooms. This live conversation was recorded at the Orange County Department of Education in Costa Mesa, California.

Richard Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He founded and directs the Center for Healthy Minds there. He is the co-author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain and Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. He was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine in 2017.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Richard Davidson — A Neuroscientist on Love and Learning.” Find more at onbeing.org.

She has called Brain Pickings, her invention and labor of love, a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.” What Maria Popova really delivers, to hundreds of thousands of people each day, is wisdom of the old-fashioned sort, presented in new-fashioned digital ways. She cross-pollinates — between philosophy and design, physics and poetry, the intellectual and the experiential. We explore her gleanings on what it means to lead a good life — intellectually, creatively, and spiritually.

Maria Popova is the creator and presence behind BrainPickings.org, which is included in the Library of Congress’s permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She is the author of Figuring and hosts “The Universe in Verse” — an annual celebration of science through poetry — at the interdisciplinary cultural institute Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age.” Find more at onbeing.org.

She has called Brain Pickings, her invention and labor of love, a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.” What Maria Popova really delivers, to hundreds of thousands of people each day, is wisdom of the old-fashioned sort, presented in new-fashioned digital ways. She cross-pollinates — between philosophy and design, physics and poetry, the intellectual and the experiential. We explore her gleanings on what it means to lead a good life — intellectually, creatively, and spiritually.

Maria Popova is the creator and presence behind BrainPickings.org, which is included in the Library of Congress’s permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials. She is the author of Figuring and hosts “The Universe in Verse” — an annual celebration of science through poetry — at the interdisciplinary cultural institute Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

With his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman emerged as one of the most intriguing voices on the complexity of human thought and behavior. He is a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics for helping to create the field of behavioral economics — and is a self-described “constant worrier.” It’s fun, helpful, and more than a little unnerving to apply his insights into why we think and act the way we do in this moment of social and political tumult.

Daniel Kahneman is best known for his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” He’s the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, professor of psychology and public affairs emeritus at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Daniel Kahneman — Why We Contradict Ourselves and Confound Each Other.” Find more at onbeing.org.

With his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” Daniel Kahneman emerged as one of the most intriguing voices on the complexity of human thought and behavior. He is a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in economics for helping to create the field of behavioral economics — and is a self-described “constant worrier.” It’s fun, helpful, and more than a little unnerving to apply his insights into why we think and act the way we do in this moment of social and political tumult.

Daniel Kahneman is best known for his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” He’s the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, professor of psychology and public affairs emeritus at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The topic of the day was “courage,” with two singular, admired women (who happen to be married to each other): soccer icon Abby Wambach and writer/philanthropist Glennon Doyle. Abby is an Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion. Glennon entered the American imagination with the label “Christian mommy blogger.” Now she ignites millions of followers through initiatives like “Love Flash Mobs,” as she says “to turn heartbreak into action.” What follows is a conversation about courage that is both serious and playful, as it turns up in their lives apart and together — from addiction to social activism to blended family parenting. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach — Un-becoming” Find more at onbeing.org.

The topic of the day was “courage,” with two singular, admired women (who happen to be married to each other): soccer icon Abby Wambach and writer/philanthropist Glennon Doyle. Abby is an Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion. Glennon entered the American imagination with the label “Christian mommy blogger.” Now she ignites millions of followers through initiatives like “Love Flash Mobs,” as she says, “to turn heartbreak into action.” What follows is a conversation about courage that is both serious and playful, as it turns up in their lives apart and together — from addiction to social activism to blended family parenting.

Glennon Doyle is the author of the bestselling books “Love Warrior” and “Carry On, Warrior. ” She is also the founder and president of Together Rising, a nonprofit that has raised more than $15 million for women and children in crisis.

Abby Wambach is a two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, and six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of Year Award. Her books include “Forward: A Memoir” and the forthcoming “WOLFPACK.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine says every conversation about race doesn’t need to be about racism. But she says all of us — and especially white people — need to find a way to talk about it, even when it gets uncomfortable. Her bestselling book, “Citizen: An American Lyric,” catalogued the painful daily experiences of lived racism for people of color. Claudia models how it’s possible to bring that reality into the open — not to fight, but to draw closer. And she shows how we can do this with everyone, from our intimate friends to strangers on airplanes.

Claudia Rankine is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University and founder of The Racial Imaginary Institute. She is the author of five collections of poetry including “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” Her plays include “The Provenance of Beauty” and “The White Card.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Claudia Rankine — How Can I Say This so We Can Stay in This Car Together?” Find more at onbeing.org.

The poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine says every conversation about race doesn’t need to be about racism. But she says all of us — and especially white people — need to find a way to talk about it, even when it gets uncomfortable. Her bestselling book, “Citizen: An American Lyric,” catalogued the painful daily experiences of lived racism for people of color. Claudia models how it’s possible to bring that reality into the open — not to fight, but to draw closer. And she shows how we can do this with everyone, from our intimate friends to strangers on airplanes.

Claudia Rankine is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University and founder of The Racial Imaginary Institute. She is the author of five collections of poetry including “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” Her plays include “The Provenance of Beauty” and “The White Card.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Writer and illustrator Maira Kalman is well known for her books for children and adults, her love of dogs, and her “New Yorker” covers. Her words and pictures bring life’s intrinsic quirkiness and whimsy into relief right alongside life’s intrinsic seriousness. As a storyteller, she is contemplative and inspired by the stuff of daily life — from fluffy white meringues to well-worn chairs. “There’s never a lack of things to look at,” she says. “And there’s never a lack of time not to talk.”

Maira Kalman is the author and illustrator of over 20 books for adults and children. She is well known for her “New York Times” blogs that have become books like “And the Pursuit of Happiness” and “The Principles of Uncertainty.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

To be in conversation with Maira Kalman is like wandering into one of her cartoons in The New Yorker. Millions have been prompted to smile and think by her illustrated revision of Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style” or a “New York Times” blog or her lovely books and her drawings about dogs. Her words and pictures bring life’s whimsy and quirkiness into relief right alongside its intrinsic seriousness, its most curious truths.

Maira Kalman is the author and illustrator of over 20 books for adults and children. She is well known for her “New York Times” blogs that have become books like “And the Pursuit of Happiness” and “The Principles of Uncertainty.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maira Kalman — Daily Things to Fall in Love With.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The great scholar and preacher. “Reframing so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle.” The disarming use of language. “A society finally cannot live without the quality of mercy.”

Walter Brueggemann is one of the world’s great teachers about the prophets who both anchor the Hebrew Bible and have transcended it across history. He translates their imagination from the chaos of ancient times to our own. He somehow also embodies this tradition’s fearless truth-telling together with fierce hope – and how it conveys ideas with disarming language. “The task is reframing,” he says, “so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle.”

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia. He is the author of “The Prophetic Imagination,” “Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann,” and “Tenacious Solidarity: Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Walter Brueggemann — The Prophetic Imagination.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The great scholar and preacher. “The task is reframing so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle.” Prophets are also always poets. “A society finally cannot live without the quality of mercy.”

Walter Brueggemann is one of the world’s great teachers about the prophets who both anchor the Hebrew Bible and have transcended it across history. He translates their imagination from the chaos of ancient times to our own. He somehow also embodies this tradition’s fearless truth-telling together with fierce hope – and how it conveys ideas with disarming language. “The task is reframing,” he says, “so that we can re-experience the social realities that are right in front of us, from a different angle.”

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia. He is the author of “The Prophetic Imagination,” “Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann,” and “Tenacious Solidarity: Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The feminist journalist and the psychotherapist. “It’s partners and lovers and spouses…fathers and brothers and sons and friends.” The difference between apology and forgiveness. “Men are used to trying to fix things.” Trauma, and also healing.

What we are naming with the impetus of #MeToo is, at best, an opening to a long-term cultural reckoning to grow up humanity; to make our society more whole. We explore this with psychotherapist Avi Klein, who works with men and couples, and feminist journalist Rebecca Traister. In a room full of journalists, at the invitation of the Solutions Journalism Network, we explored how to build the spaces, the imaginative muscle, and the pragmatic forms to support healing for women and men, now and in time.

Rebecca Traister is a writer for “New York Magazine” and a contributing editor at “Elle.” She is the author of “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “All the Single Ladies,” and “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.”

Avi Klein is a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker. He practices in Manhattan. His 2018 “New York Times” Op-Ed piece is titled “What Men Say About #MeToo in Therapy.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein — #MeToo Through a Solutions Lens.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The feminist journalist and the psychotherapist. “It’s partners and lovers and spouses…fathers and brothers and sons and friends.” The difference between apology and forgiveness. “Men are used to trying to fix things.” Trauma, and also healing.

What we are naming with the impetus of #MeToo is, at best, an opening to a long-term cultural reckoning to grow up humanity; to make our society more whole. We explore this with psychotherapist Avi Klein, who works with men and couples, and feminist journalist Rebecca Traister. In a room full of journalists, at the invitation of the Solutions Journalism Network, we explored how to build the spaces, the imaginative muscle, and the pragmatic forms to support healing for women and men, now and in time.

Rebecca Traister is a writer for “New York Magazine” and a contributing editor at “Elle.” She is the author of “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “All the Single Ladies,” and “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.”

Avi Klein is a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker. He practices in Manhattan. His 2018 “New York Times” Op-Ed piece is titled “What Men Say About #MeToo in Therapy.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A question from Kevin: “I have been hearing a lot of deconstruction of the word ‘civility.’ The debate around this word has become, like so many other things, binary. ‘Civility’ is either a tool of oppressors to silence those on the margins, or it is something that is necessary for every single conversation and dialogue. I’d love to hear something about this word — what it actually means, in what contexts can it be helpful, in what contexts can it be used as a tool to silence anger.”

Takeaways from the podcast:

• What is the inner work of civility that goes deeper than the surface of our encounters with each other?
• What is the goal of civility?
• “My concern for a while has been that the word is too meek; that it’s about being nice and tame and safe, and I don’t think stepping into any of the dark places and the fraught places right now can be nice or tame or safe. I always reach for other words to attach, like ‘muscular’—it has to be muscular, it has to be robust—this language we use in the Grounding Virtues, ‘adventurous civility.’ It needs to be an adventure.”
• “To use civility to silence anger is using a simplistic, binary understanding of civility as a kind of passive-aggressive weapon. And that’s not what I mean when I use the word.”
• “Civility is internal work that each of us needs to do.”
• “A question we fail to ask, so much, in American life is not just, what do I want to happen here; what do I have to say; what do I care about; what is at stake? But, what is the most effective way that my words can be heard? What is the most emotionally intelligent way, which is also going to be a productive way, that I can embody and represent and give voice to what I care deeply about?”
• “Creating spaces and experiences of robust, adventurous civility is actually very strategically effective because what you’re doing is you’re creating a space in which it is reasonable to ask people, smart people, complicated people who’ve been through complicated things, to let themselves get uncomfortable in the presence of a stranger.”
• “I am passionate about what I am passionate about. I’m scared about what I’m scared about, or I’m angry about what I’m angry about. And I know there are things I don’t understand, and I don’t want to stay this way forever, and I don’t want us to stay stuck here forever. So, I want to change and grow, and I invite you to be with me in that spirit too, and let’s see what happens.”

About the Living the Questions series, from Krista Tippett:

“I think of a good conversation as an adventure. You create a generous and trustworthy space for it, and prepare hospitably for it, so the other person will feel so welcome and understood that they will put words around something they have never put words around quite that way before. They will give voice to something they didn’t know they knew — and you will be a witness to thinking, revelation, in real time. This is one reason that radio/podcasting is such a magical medium: Everyone who listens joins that room, becomes a witness, the moment they push ‘play.’ They are also there for the revelation. It’s a form of time travel. And if the conversation is edifying (one of my favorite, underused words), we all sync up in some mysterious way across time and space and grow a little together.

In recent years, I’ve discovered that I really like being on the other side of a conversation too. Maybe because I’ve experienced that thrill of revelation so many times, I approach someone asking questions of me with great anticipation of what they will draw out of me that I can’t draw out of myself. So, last summer on social media, my colleagues and I asked for questions you’d want to throw at me. We received, and continue to receive, such a bounty.”

Find more at onbeing.org/series/living-the-questions/.

Absorption as a definition of happiness. “To bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.” Traveling not in order to move around but in order to be moved. His friend Leonard Cohen. Stillness & silence as a recharging station for the soul.

Pico Iyer is one of our most eloquent explorers of what he calls the “inner world” — in himself and in the 21st century world at large. The journalist and novelist travels the globe from Ethiopia to North Korea and lives in Japan. But he also experiences a remote Benedictine hermitage as his second home, retreating there many times each year. In this intimate conversation, we explore the discoveries he’s making and his practice of “the art of stillness.”

Pico Iyer is a journalist and writer. He’s written over a dozen books including “The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home,” “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” and “The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere.” He has two books on Japan upcoming in 2019: “Autumn Light” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Japan.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Pico Iyer — The Urgency of Slowing Down.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Absorption as a definition of happiness. “To bring that calm into the motion, the commotion of the world.” Traveling not in order to move around but in order to be moved. His friend Leonard Cohen. Stillness & silence as a recharging station for the soul.

Pico Iyer is one of our most eloquent explorers of what he calls the “inner world” — in himself and in the 21st century world at large. The journalist and novelist travels the globe from Ethiopia to North Korea and lives in Japan. But he also experiences a remote Benedictine hermitage as his second home, retreating there many times each year. In this intimate conversation, we explore the discoveries he’s making and his practice of “the art of stillness.”

Pico Iyer is a journalist and writer. He’s written over a dozen books including “The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home,” “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” and “The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere.” He has two books on Japan upcoming in 2019: “Autumn Light” and “A Beginner’s Guide to Japan.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The wise physician and lyrical author. How our losses actually help us to live. Perfection as the booby prize in life. “Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.” “Stories are the flesh we put on the bones of the facts of our lives.” Listening Generously.

Rachel Naomi Remen’s lifelong struggle with Crohn’s disease has shaped her practice of medicine, and she in turn is helping to reshape the art of healing. “The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else,” she says. And each of us, with our wounds and our flaws, has exactly what’s needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is founder of the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (RISHI), clinical professor of family medicine at UCSF School of Medicine, and professor of family medicine at the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University. Her beloved books “Kitchen Table Wisdom” and “My Grandfather’s Blessings” have been translated into 24 languages.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rachel Naomi Remen — The Difference Between Fixing and Healing.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The wise physician and lyrical author. How our losses actually help us to live. Perfection as the booby prize in life. “Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.” “Stories are the flesh we put on the bones of the facts of our lives.” Listening generously.

Rachel Naomi Remen’s lifelong struggle with Crohn’s disease has shaped her practice of medicine, and she in turn is helping to reshape the art of healing. “The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else,” she says. And each of us, with our wounds and our flaws, has exactly what’s needed to help repair the part of the world that we can see and touch.

Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is founder of the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (RISHI), clinical professor of family medicine at UCSF School of Medicine, and professor of family medicine at the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University. Her beloved books “Kitchen Table Wisdom” and “My Grandfather’s Blessings” have been translated into 24 languages.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

We Americans revere the creation of wealth. Anand Giridharadas wants us to examine this and how it shapes our life together. This is a challenging conversation but a generative one: about the implicit moral equations behind a notion like “win-win” — and the moral compromises in a cultural consensus we’ve reached, without reflecting on it, about what and who can save us.

Anand Giridharadas is a journalist and writer. He is a former columnist and foreign correspondent for “The New York Times” and a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. He is the author of “India Calling,” “The True American,” and “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anand Giridharadas — When the Market Is Our Only Language.” Find more at onbeing.org.

We Americans revere the creation of wealth. Anand Giridharadas wants us to examine this and how it shapes our life together. This is a challenging conversation but a generative one: about the implicit moral equations behind a notion like “win-win”— and the moral compromises in a cultural consensus we’ve reached, without reflecting on it, about what and who can save us.

Anand Giridharadas is a journalist and writer. He is a former columnist and foreign correspondent for “The New York Times” and a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. He is the author of “India Calling,” “The True American,” and “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A brain surgeon. “The brain is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.” The science of compassion. The baggage of evolution. The two way street of “neural innovation that comes from the brain stem into the heart.”

Brain surgeon James Doty is on the cutting edge of our knowledge of the brain and the heart: how they talk to each other; what compassion means in the body and in action; and how we can reshape our lives and perhaps our species through the scientific and human understanding we are now gaining.

James Doty is a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University and founding director of CCARE, the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. His book is “Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart.” He is also the senior editor of the “Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A brain surgeon. “The brain is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.” The science of compassion. The baggage of evolution. The two way street of “neural innovation that comes from the brain stem into the heart.”

Brain surgeon James Doty is on the cutting edge of our knowledge of the brain and the heart: how they talk to each other; what compassion means in the body and in action; and how we can reshape our lives and perhaps our species through the scientific and human understanding we are now gaining.

James Doty is a clinical professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University and founding director of CCARE, the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. His book is “Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart.” He is also the senior editor of the “Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The U.S. Poet Laureate. “There’s this whole other narrative unfolding.” How history “which once felt so remote, feels closer and active and unresolved.” Listening for the spaces that are under-imagined. “Little leaps of imagination” that can restore us.

Tracy K. Smith has a deep interest in “the kind of silence that yields clarity” and “the way our voices sound when we dip below the decibel level of politics.” She’s a welcome voice on the little leaps of the imagination that can restore us. She’s spent the past year traversing our country, listening for all of this and drawing it forth as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Krista spoke with her at the invitation of New York’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, which has been in communal exploration on creating a just and redeemed social fabric.

Tracy K. Smith is the 22nd United States Poet Laureate and the director of Princeton University’s creative writing program. Her works of poetry include include “Wade in the Water,” “Life on Mars,” and “Duende.” Her memoir is “Ordinary Light.” She’s written the introduction to a new book, “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time,” and she’s launching a new podcast called The Slowdown.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The U.S. Poet Laureate. “There’s this whole other narrative unfolding.” How history “which once felt so remote, feels closer and active and unresolved.” Listening for the spaces that are under-imagined. “Little leaps of imagination” that can restore us.

Tracy K. Smith has a deep interest in “the kind of silence that yields clarity” and “the way our voices sound when we dip below the decibel level of politics.” She’s a welcome voice on the little leaps of the imagination that can restore us. She’s spent the past year traversing our country, listening for all of this and drawing it forth as the U.S. poet laureate. Krista spoke with her at the invitation of New York’s B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, which has been in communal exploration on creating a just and redeemed social fabric.

Tracy K. Smith is the 22nd United States Poet Laureate and the director of Princeton University’s creative writing program. Her works of poetry include include “Wade in the Water,” “Life on Mars,” and “Duende.” Her memoir is “Ordinary Light.” She’s written the introduction to a new book, “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time,” and she’s launching a new podcast called The Slowdown.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Tracy K. Smith — love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Co-creator of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. “There is a calming, quieting, centering practice that leads to insight in every tradition.” Contemplative practice and social change. Mindful emailing. Creative, relational, ritual, cyclical.

Mirabai Bush works at an emerging 21st century intersection of industry, social healing, and diverse contemplative practices. Raised Catholic with Joan of Arc as her hero, she is one of the people who brought Buddhism to the West from India in the 1970s. She is called in to work with educators and judges, social activists and soldiers. She helped create Google’s popular employee program, Search Inside Yourself. Mirabai Bush’s life tells a fascinating narrative of our time: the rediscovery of contemplative practices, in many forms and from many traditions, in the secular thick of modern culture.

Mirabai Bush co-founded the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is the author of Contemplative Practices in Higher Education and has written two books with Ram Dass: Compassion in Action and Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Co-creator of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. “There is a calming, quieting, centering practice that leads to insight in every tradition.” Contemplative practice and social change. Mindful emailing. Creative, relational, ritual, cyclical.

Mirabai Bush works at an emerging 21st century intersection of industry, social healing, and diverse contemplative practices. Raised Catholic with Joan of Arc as her hero, she is one of the people who brought Buddhism to the West from India in the 1970s. She is called in to work with educators and judges, social activists and soldiers. She helped create Google’s popular employee program, Search Inside Yourself. Mirabai Bush’s life tells a fascinating narrative of our time: the rediscovery of contemplative practices, in many forms and from many traditions, in the secular thick of modern culture.

Mirabai Bush co-founded the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. She is the author of Contemplative Practices in Higher Education and has written two books with Ram Dass: Compassion in Action and Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Mirabai Bush — Contemplation, Life, and Work.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“The sense of having walked from far inside yourself / out into the revelation, to have risked yourself / for something that seemed to stand both inside you / and far beyond you, that called you back”

David Whyte sent us out into the world at the end of the first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California.

David Whyte is a poet and an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. He is the author of “The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America” and “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.” His most recent book is “The Bell and The Blackbird.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

“People believe things that are mutually contradictory; I think we all do. I know I do.” — Erick Erickson

Earlier this year, the University of Montana invited On Being to attempt an outside the box civil conversation between two political pundits on contrasting ends of the U.S. political spectrum. It became a sold-out, public event in the spirit of Montana’s Senator Mike Mansfield, who famously modeled integrity, courage, and humility across the partisan aisle in the tumult of 1960s and 70s. Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson are both controversial, lightning-rod figures, yet neither of them fits neatly into a partisan mold. The reaction of the youngest people in the room is what compelled us to put this on the air. They said they had not witnessed or imagined a political conversation like this possible: one marked at once by bedrock difference — and good will, humor, and a willingness to bring our questions as well as our arguments, our humanity as well as our positions, into the room, if only for an evening. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson — Relationship Across Rupture.” Find more at onbeing.org.

What happens when you call your Internet trolls. The peril of forgetting our next door neighbors. “You don’t have to love people to not hate them.”

“People believe things that are mutually contradictory; I think we all do. I know I do.” — Erick Erickson

Earlier this year, the University of Montana invited On Being to attempt an outside the box civil conversation between two political pundits on contrasting ends of the U.S. political spectrum. It became a sold-out, public event in the spirit of Montana’s Senator Mike Mansfield, who famously modeled integrity, courage, and humility across the partisan aisle in the tumult of 1960s and 70s. Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson are both controversial, lightning-rod figures, yet neither of them fits neatly into a partisan mold. The reaction of the youngest people in the room is what compelled us to put this on the air. They said they had not witnessed or imagined a political conversation like this possible: one marked at once by bedrock difference — and good will, humor, and a willingness to bring our questions as well as our arguments, our humanity as well as our positions, into the room, if only for an evening.

Sally Kohn is a progressive columnist and political commentator for CNN. She’s also contributed to Fox News. She hosts the podcast, “State of Resistance.” She’s the author of “The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity.”

Erick Erickson is editor of the conservative blog, “The Resurgent,” host of “The Erick Erickson Show” on WSB Radio in Atlanta, and contributor to Fox News. He’s also contributed to CNN. He’s the author of “Before You Wake: Life Lessons from a Father to His Children.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

"Conversation is not just about words passing between mouths and ears. It’s about shared life. Listening is about bringing our lives into conversation.”

 

About the Living the Questions series, from Krista Tippett:

“I think of a good conversation as an adventure. You create a generous and trustworthy space for it, and prepare hospitably for it, so the other person will feel so welcome and understood that they will put words around something they have never put words around quite that way before. They will give voice to something they didn’t know they knew — and you will be a witness to thinking, revelation, in real time. This is one reason that radio/podcasting is such a magical medium: Everyone who listens joins that room, becomes a witness, the moment they push “play.” They are also there for the revelation. It’s a form of time travel. And if the conversation is edifying (one of my favorite, underused words), we all sync up in some mysterious way across time and space and grow a little together.

In recent years, I’ve discovered that I really like being on the other side of a conversation too. Maybe because I’ve experienced that thrill of revelation so many times, I approach someone asking questions of me with great anticipation of what they will draw out of me that I can’t draw out of myself. So, last summer on social media, my colleagues and I asked for questions you’d want to throw at me. We received, and continue to receive, such a bounty.”

Find more at onbeing.org/series/living-the-questions/.

The Oglala Lakota poet. “I wanted as much as possible to avoid this nostalgic portraiture of a Native life.” The reward and joy of patience. The difference between guilt, shame, and freedom from denial. When apologies are done well.

Layli Long Soldier is a writer, a mother, a citizen of the United States, and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. She has a way of opening up this part of her life, and of American life, to inspire self-searching and tenderness. Her award-winning first book of poetry, WHEREAS, is a response to the U.S. government’s official apology to Native peoples in 2009, which was done so quietly, with no ceremony, that it was practically a secret. Layli Long Soldier offers entry points for us all — to events that are not merely about the past, and to the freedom real apologies might bring.

Layli Long Soldier is the recipient of the 2015 Lannan Fellowship for Poetry and a 2015 National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her first book of poetry, WHEREAS, is a winner of the multiple awards including the Whiting Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The Oglala Lakota poet. “I wanted as much as possible to avoid this nostalgic portraiture of a Native life.” The reward and joy of patience. The difference between guilt, shame, and freedom from denial. When apologies are done well.

Layli Long Soldier is a writer, a mother, a citizen of the United States, and a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. She has a way of opening up this part of her life, and of American life, to inspire self-searching and tenderness. Her award-winning first book of poetry, WHEREAS, is a response to the U.S. government’s official apology to Native peoples in 2009, which was done so quietly, with no ceremony, that it was practically a secret. Layli Long Soldier offers entry points for us all — to events that are not merely about the past, and to the freedom real apologies might bring.

Layli Long Soldier is the recipient of the 2015 Lannan Fellowship for Poetry and a 2015 National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her first book of poetry, WHEREAS, is a winner of the multiple awards including the Whiting Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A series of haikus from peacemaker John Paul Lederach on the fourth day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Peacemaker and poet John Paul Lederach opened Monday with a series of haikus.

John Paul Lederach is a senior fellow at Humanity United, a project of the Omidyar Foundation, and professor emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

From abortion activist to bridge person. Questions to break out of intractable polarization. Wisdom beyond the news cycle. “What is it in your own position that gives you trouble? What is it in the position of the other that you are attracted to?”

The focus of our national fight over abortion may change, but this hasn’t changed for decades: We collapse this most intimate and complex of human dilemmas to two sides. We’ve been looking yet again for wisdom away from the turbulent news cycle and keep returning to this conversation Krista had with Frances Kissling. She is a “bridge person” in the abortion debate: a long-time pro-choice activist who has sought to come into relationship with her political opposites. Now she’s controversial on both sides, but speaks from a place that many of us would like to map out between the poles. She has experienced something more powerful, as she tells it, than defining common ground — and this has lessons for other issues in our common life and our struggles with people with whom we disagree the most.

Frances Kissling is president of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy. She was the president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

From abortion activist to bridge person. Questions to break out of intractable polarization. Wisdom beyond the news cycle. “What is it in your own position that gives you trouble? What is it in the position of the other that you are attracted to?”

The focus of our national fight over abortion may change, but this hasn’t changed for decades: we collapse this most intimate and complex of human dilemmas to two sides. We’ve been looking yet again for wisdom away from the turbulent news cycle and keep returning to this conversation Krista had with Frances Kissling. She is a “bridge person” in the abortion debate: a long-time pro-choice activist who has sought to come into relationship with her political opposites. Now she’s controversial on both sides, but speaks from a place that many of us would like to map out between the poles. She has experienced something more powerful, as she tells it, than defining common ground — and this has lessons for other issues in our common life and our struggles with people with whom we disagree the most.

Frances Kissling is president of the Center for Health, Ethics and Social Policy. She was the president of Catholics for Choice from 1982 until 2007.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Frances Kissling — What Is Good in the Position of the Other.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A morning of poetry with Marilyn Nelson from the third day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Here is how Marilyn Nelson opened our Sunday morning.

Marilyn Nelson is professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the 2012 recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.” Her books include “The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems,” “Mrs. Nelson’s Class,” and “The Meeting House.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

“We are flying too low. We built this universe, this technology, these connections, this society, and all we can do with it is make junk? All we can do with it is put on stupid entertainments? I’m not buying it.”

Seth Godin is wise and infectiously curious about life, the internet, and everything. He was one of the first people to name the “connection economy.” And even as we’re seeing its dark side, he helps us hold on to the highest human potential the digital age still calls us to. His daily blog is indispensable reading for many of us. He’s a long-time mentor to Krista. This interview happened in 2012. Seth now has a new podcast, “Akimbo,” and a new book coming out, “This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.”

Seth Godin writes the wildly popular daily, Seth’s Blog. He’s the author of many best-selling books, online and in print, including “Purple Cow,” “The Dip,” and “Linchpin.” In 2018 he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Seth Godin — Life, the Internet, and Everything.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“We are flying too low. We built this universe, this technology, these connections, this society, and all we can do with it is make junk? All we can do with it is put on stupid entertainments? I’m not buying it.”

Seth Godin is wise and infectiously curious about life, the internet, and everything. He was one of the first people to name the “connection economy.” And even as we’re seeing its dark side, he helps us hold on to the highest human potential the digital age still calls us to. His daily blog is indispensable reading for many of us. He’s a long-time mentor to Krista. This interview happened in 2012. Seth now has a new podcast, “Akimbo,” and a new book coming out, “This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.”

Seth Godin writes the wildly popular daily, Seth’s Blog. He’s the author of many best-selling books, online and in print, including “Purple Cow,” “The Dip,” and “Linchpin.” In 2018 he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.

A morning of poetry with Naomi Shihab Nye from the second day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Here is how Naomi Shihab Nye began our Saturday morning.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a visiting poet all over the world and a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. Her books include “19 Varieties of Gazelle,” “A Maze Me: Poems for Girls,” and “Transfer.” Her most recent book is “Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

An evening of poetry with David Whyte from the first day of our On Being Gathering.

This year, we were thrilled to host our very first On Being Gathering — a four-day coming-together of the On Being community for reflection, conversation, and companionship — at the 1440 Multiversity in the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. We greeted each day with verse from some of our most beloved poets — and now we’d like to share these delightful moments with all of you. Here is how David Whyte opened for us on Friday night.

David Whyte is a poet and an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. He is the author of “The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America” and “Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.” His most recent book is “The Bell and The Blackbird.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

A beloved pastor and biblical interpreter. The poetry of the Bible as what keeps it alive to the world. The spirituality of loving books. Reimagining God. Prayers as tools not for doing and getting but for being and becoming.

“Prayers are tools not for doing or getting but for being and becoming.” These are words of the legendary pastor and writer Eugene Peterson, whose biblical imagination has formed generations of preachers. At the back of the church he led for nearly three decades, you’d be likely to find well-worn copies of books by Wallace Stegner or Denise Levertov. Frustrated with the unimaginative way he found his congregants treating their Bibles, he translated it himself, and that translation has sold millions of copies around the world. Eugene Peterson’s down-to-earth faith hinges on a love of metaphor and a commitment to the Bible’s poetry as what keeps it alive to the world.

Eugene Peterson served as the pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church for 29 years. He is the author of over 30 books, including “Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer,” “The Pastor: A Memoir,” “The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language,” and “As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God.” His new book, “Every Step an Arrival: A 90-Day Devotional for Exploring God’s Word,” will be published in October 2018.

A beloved pastor and biblical interpreter. The poetry of the Bible as what keeps it alive to the world. The spirituality of loving books. Reimagining God. Prayers as tools not for doing and getting but for being and becoming.

“Prayers are tools not for doing or getting but for being and becoming.” These are words of the legendary pastor and writer Eugene Peterson, whose biblical imagination has formed generations of preachers. At the back of the church he led for nearly three decades, you’d be likely to find well-worn copies of books by Wallace Stegner or Denise Levertov. Frustrated with the unimaginative way he found his congregants treating their Bibles, he translated it himself, and that translation has sold millions of copies around the world. Eugene Peterson’s down-to-earth faith hinges on a love of metaphor and a commitment to the Bible’s poetry as what keeps it alive to the world.

Eugene Peterson served as the pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church for 29 years. He is the author of over 30 books, including “Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer,” “The Pastor: A Memoir,” “The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language,” and “As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God.” His new book, “Every Step an Arrival: A 90-Day Devotional for Exploring God’s Word,” will be published in October 2018.

The science of implicit bias is one of the most promising fields for animating the human change that makes social change possible. The social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is one of its primary architects. She understands the mind as a “difference-seeking machine” that helps us order and navigate the overwhelming complexity of reality. But this gift also creates blind spots and biases as we fill in what we don’t know with the limits of what we do know. This is science that takes our grappling with difference out of the realm of guilt and into the realm of transformative good. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Mahzarin Banaji — The Mind Is a Difference-Seeking Machine.” Find more at onbeing.org.

An architect of the science of implicit bias. How our conscious minds are ahead of our less conscious minds. Letting go of “I’m a bad human being” — moving out of the realm of guilt, into the realm of good. How fast can we lose fear?

The science of implicit bias is one of the most promising fields for animating the human change that makes social change possible. The social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is one of its primary architects. She understands the mind as a “difference-seeking machine” that helps us order and navigate the overwhelming complexity of reality. But this gift also creates blind spots and biases as we fill in what we don’t know with the limits of what we do know. This is science that takes our grappling with difference out of the realm of guilt and into the realm of transformative good.

Mahzarin Banaji is Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the department of psychology at Harvard University and a 2018 inductee into the National Academy of Sciences. She is the co-author of “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People” and co-founder of Project Implicit, an organization aimed at educating the public on implicit bias.

How to get to the heart of the human experience without speaking? This question drove Alan Rabinowitz, after a childhood with a severe stutter, to become a wildlife biologist and explorer — “the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation.” He died this month at age 64. He was known for his work with big cats, his discovery of new animal species, and for documenting human cultures believed to be lost. Alan Rabinowitz took our understanding of the animal-human bond to new places, while also being wise about the wilderness of the human experience. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Alan Rabinowitz — We Are All Wildlife.” Find more at onbeing.org.

How to get to the heart of the human experience without speaking? This question drove Alan Rabinowitz, after a childhood with a severe stutter, to become a wildlife biologist and explorer — “the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation.” He died this month at age 64. He was known for his work with big cats, his discovery of new animal species, and for documenting human cultures believed to be lost. Alan Rabinowitz took our understanding of the animal-human bond to new places, while also being wise about the wilderness of the human experience. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Alan Rabinowitz — We Are All Wildlife.” Find more at onbeing.org.

An exuberant experience of conversation and singing. There are nearly 5,000 spirituals in existence. Their organizing concept is not the melody of Europe, but the rhythm of Africa. They were composed by slaves, bards whose names we will never know, and yet gave rise to gospel, jazz, blues, and hip-hop. Joe Carter lived and breathed the universal appeal and hidden stories, meanings, and hope in what were originally called “sorrow songs.” This was one of our first weekly shows, and it’s still one of our most beloved. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Joe Carter — The Spirituals.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“Magic, shining songs.” Reaching back to the ancestors. How do we survive when the worst happens? Transcendence and code: “Steal Away,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Music as a secret door. The roots of gospel, jazz, hip-hop, the blues.

An exuberant experience of conversation and singing. There are nearly 5,000 spirituals in existence. Their organizing concept is not the melody of Europe, but the rhythm of Africa. They were composed by slaves, bards whose names we will never know, and yet gave rise to gospel, jazz, blues, and hip-hop. Joe Carter lived and breathed the universal appeal and hidden stories, meanings, and hope in what were originally called “sorrow songs.” This was one of our first weekly shows, and it’s still one of our most beloved.

Joe Carter was a singer, performer, teacher, and traveling humanitarian. He performed for more than 25 years in opera and musical theater, portrayed Paul Robeson in a one-man musical, and introduced people around the world to the spiritual. He died of leukemia at age 57, on June 26, 2006.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

How can we embrace vulnerability in ourselves and in our culture?

Krista reflects on how vulnerability can bring us closer to ourselves and each other. The fourth installment of “Living the Questions” this summer. We’ll be back to answer more of your questions in the fall.

 

“If my kids ever said ‘I’m bored,’ I would say, ‘That is great. I’m so glad to hear that. Maybe you’re gonna get creative right now.’”

On mental downtime as a place of rest and refuge.

Living the Questions is an occasional On Being segment where Krista muses on questions from our listening community.

The U.S. Senator. From merely tolerating each other to manifesting love. “Hope confronts.” Self-care in a world “so elegantly designed to distract you.” Making your bed as a spiritual practice. “We’re all more fragile than we let on.”

We don’t really reward or allow our politicians, good or bad, to be searching, or to change their minds and grow — to admit their human frailty. So it’s surprising to hear Cory Booker say that the best thing that’s happened to him is “being broken, time and time again.” He’s taken flack for talking about politics as “manifesting love.” He speaks with Krista about the inadequacy of tolerance, strengthening the “muscle” of hope, and making your bed as a spiritual practice.

Cory Booker is a senator for New Jersey and the former mayor of Newark. He serves the U.S. Senate committees on Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works, the Judiciary, and Small Business and Entrepreneurship. He was a varsity football player for Stanford University and a Rhodes Scholar. He’s the author of “United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good.”

We don’t really reward or allow our politicians, good or bad, to be searching, or to change their minds and grow — to admit their human frailty. So it’s surprising to hear Cory Booker say that the best thing that’s happened to him is “being broken, time and time again.” He’s taken flack for talking about politics as “manifesting love.” He speaks with Krista about the inadequacy of tolerance, strengthening the “muscle” of hope, and making your bed as a spiritual practice. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Cory Booker — Civic Spiritual Evolution.” Find more at onbeing.org.

How can we help young people feel like they have a voice in the world?

Krista reflects on the voice and agency of young people and the importance of fostering intergenerational relationships. The second installment of “Living the Questions” — a new feature of the On Being podcast where Krista responds to questions from you.

How can we stay present to what’s happening in the world without giving in to despair and hopelessness?

Good conversation is an adventure. A few weeks ago, Krista asked on social media for the questions you’ve been asking in your own lives. Your responses were beautiful and delved into so many facets of life — from boredom and vulnerability to compassionate conversation. Here, she responds to what’s on your mind. The first installment of “Living the Questions,” a new feature of the On Being podcast.

The wonderful writer Luis Alberto Urrea says that a deep truth of our time is that “we miss each other.” We have this drive to erect barriers between ourselves and yet this makes us a little crazy. He is singularly wise about the deep meaning and the problem of borders. The Mexican-American border, as he likes to say, ran straight through his parents’ Mexican-American marriage and divorce. His works of fiction and non-fiction confuse every dehumanizing caricature of Mexicans — and of U.S. border guards. The possibility of our time, as he lives and witnesses with his writing, is to evolve the old melting pot to the 21st-century richness of “us” — with all the mess and necessary humor required. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Luis Alberto Urrea — What Borders Are Really About, and What We Do With Them.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A border as liminal space, an imposed metaphor on the family, a place of crossing, a place of pressure. “There is no them. There is only us.” The fullness of what it is to be Mexican (and American). Evolving into enjoying each other more.

The wonderful writer Luis Alberto Urrea says that a deep truth of our time is that “we miss each other.” We have this drive to erect barriers between ourselves and yet this makes us a little crazy. He is singularly wise about the deep meaning and the problem of borders. The Mexican-American border, as he likes to say, ran straight through his parents’ Mexican-American marriage and divorce. His works of fiction and non-fiction confuse every dehumanizing caricature of Mexicans — and of U.S. border guards. The possibility of our time, as he lives and witnesses with his writing, is to evolve the old melting pot to the 21st-century richness of “us” — with all the mess and necessary humor required.

Luis Alberto Urrea is an English professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published in nearly every genre, including nonfiction, memoir, short stories, historical novels, poetry, and even an award-winning mystery story, and has been called a “literary badass.” His many books include “Into the Beautiful North,” “The Devil’s Highway,” “The Hummingbird’s Daughter,” “The Tijuana Book of the Dead and The House of Broken Angels.”

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

The great cellist shares his philosophy of living. Turning fear into joy. Performance as hospitality and communal witnessing. Beauty as a transfer of life. Sound as visual. How music makes us better. And being a firm believer in accidental meetings.

Yo-Yo Ma is a citizen artist and a forensic musicologist, decoding the work of musical creators across time and space. In his art, Yo-Yo Ma resists fixed boundaries, and would like to rename classical music just “music” — born in improvisation, and traversing territory as vast and fluid as the world we inhabit. In this generous and intimate conversation, he shares his philosophy of curiosity about life, and of performance as hospitality.

Yo-Yo Ma has won 18 Grammy Awards and is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the inaugural Fred Rogers Legacy Award. His newest album is “Brahms: The Piano Trios,” released with Emanuel Ax and Leonidas Kavakos. His most recent release with the Silk Road Ensemble is featured on the soundtrack to Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary “The Vietnam War.”

The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a citizen artist and a forensic musicologist, decoding the work of musical creators across time and space. In his art, Yo-Yo Ma resists fixed boundaries, and would like to rename classical music just “music” — born in improvisation, and traversing territory as vast and fluid as the world we inhabit. In this generous and intimate conversation, he shares his philosophy of curiosity about life, and of performance as hospitality. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Yo-Yo Ma — Music Happens Between the Notes.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Nothing is helping us more right now, as we watch human tragedies unfold on the U.S.-Mexican border and elsewhere, than a conversation Krista had last year with literary historian Lyndsey Stonebridge — on thinking and friendship in dark times. She applies the moral clarity of the 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt to now — an invitation to dwell on the human essence of events we analyze as political and economic. Our dramas of exile and displacement are existential, she says — about who we will all be as people and political community. What Arendt called the “banality of evil” was at root an inability to hear another voice. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Nothing is helping us more right now, as we watch human tragedies unfold on the U.S.-Mexican border and elsewhere, than a conversation Krista had last year with literary historian Lyndsey Stonebridge — on thinking and friendship in dark times. She applies the moral clarity of the 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt to now — an invitation to dwell on the human essence of events we analyze as political and economic. Our dramas of exile and displacement are existential, she says — about who we will all be as people and political community. What Arendt called the “banality of evil” was at root an inability to hear another voice. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “The Moral World in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt for Now — Lyndsey Stonebridge.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“Our discomfort and our grappling is not a sign of failure,” America Ferrera says, “it’s a sign that we’re living at the edge of our imaginations.” She is a culture-shifting artist. John Paul Lederach is one of our greatest living architects of social transformation. From the inaugural On Being Gathering, a revelatory, joyous exploration of the ingredients of social courage — and how change really happens in generational time.

“Our discomfort and our grappling is not a sign of failure,” America Ferrera says, “it’s a sign that we’re living at the edge of our imaginations.” She is a culture-shifting artist. John Paul Lederach is one of our greatest living architects of social transformation. From the inaugural On Being Gathering, a revelatory, joyous exploration of the ingredients of social courage — and how change really happens in generational time. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “America Ferrera and John Paul Lederach — How Change Happens, In Generational Time.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Maria Shriver’s life is often summarized in fairy tale terms. A child of the Kennedy clan in the Camelot aura of the early 1960s. Daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics, and Sargent Shriver, who founded the Peace Corps. An esteemed broadcast journalist. First lady of California. This hour, she opens up about having a personal history that is also public history — and how deceptive the appearance of glamour can be. We experience the legendary toughness of the women in Maria Shriver’s family — but also the hard-won tenderness and wisdom with which she has come to raise her own voice. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maria Shriver — Finding My ‘I Am'”. Find more at onbeing.org.

Maria Shriver’s life is often summarized in fairy tale terms. A child of the Kennedy clan in the Camelot aura of the early 1960s. Daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the Special Olympics, and Sargent Shriver, who helped found the Peace Corps. An esteemed broadcast journalist. First lady of California. This hour, she opens up about having a personal history that is also public history — and how deceptive the appearance of glamour can be. We experience the legendary toughness of the women in Maria Shriver’s family — but also the hard-won tenderness and wisdom with which she has come to raise her own voice. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Her name is synonymous with her fantastically best-selling memoir “Eat Pray Love.” But through the disorienting process of becoming a celebrity, Elizabeth Gilbert has also reflected deeply on the gift and challenge of inhabiting a creative life. Creativity, as she defines it, is about choosing curiosity over fear — not to be confused with the more familiar trope to “follow your passion,” but rather as something accessible to us all and good for our life together.

Her name is synonymous with her fantastically best-selling memoir “Eat Pray Love.” But through the disorienting process of becoming a celebrity, Elizabeth Gilbert has also reflected deeply on the gift and challenge of inhabiting a creative life. Creativity, as she defines it, is about choosing curiosity over fear — not to be confused with the more familiar trope to “follow your passion,” but rather as something accessible to us all and good for our life together. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Elizabeth Gilbert — Choosing Curiosity Over Fear.” Find more at onbeing.org

Derek Black grew up the heir apparent of a prominent white nationalist family. David Duke was his godfather. When Derek was 11, he designed the kids’ page for what is known as the first major internet hate site, created by his father. But after his ideology was outed in college, one of the only Orthodox Jews on campus — Matthew Stevenson — invited Derek to his weekly Shabbat dinners. What happened over the next two years, as the two of them became friends, is a roadmap for navigating some of the hardest territory of our time.

Derek Black grew up the heir apparent of a prominent white nationalist family. David Duke was his godfather. When Derek was 11, he designed the kids’ page for what is known as the first major internet hate site, created by his father. But after his ideology was outed in college, one of the only Orthodox Jews on campus — Matthew Stevenson — invited Derek to his weekly Shabbat dinners. What happened over the next two years, as the two of them became friends, is a roadmap for navigating some of the hardest territory of our time. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “How Friendship and Quiet Conversations Transformed a White Nationalist.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“Race is a little bit like gravity,” john powell says: experienced by all, understood by few. He is a refreshing, redemptive thinker who counsels all kinds of people and projects on the front lines of our present racial longings. Race is relational, he reminds us. It’s as much about whiteness as about color. He takes new learnings from the science of the brain as forms of everyday power. “We don’t have to imagine doing things one at a time,” he says. “It’s not, ‘how do we get there?’ It’s, ‘how do we live?’” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “john a. powell — Opening to the Question of Belonging.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“Race is a little bit like gravity,” john powell says: experienced by all, understood by few. He is a refreshing, redemptive thinker who counsels all kinds of people and projects on the front lines of our present racial longings. Race is relational, he reminds us. It’s as much about whiteness as about color. He takes new learnings from the science of the brain as forms of everyday power. “We don’t have to imagine doing things one at a time,” he says. “It’s not, ‘how do we get there?’ It’s, ‘how do we live?’”

What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? Who will we be to each other? These questions have been at the heart of On Being from the start — as it grew from a radio project into a thriving public space for delving into the big questions of our lives together. As we begin a new chapter, the leadership team — CEO and founder Krista Tippett, executive producer Lily Percy, COO Erinn Farrell, and the executive director of the new Impact Lab, Casper ter Kuile — sits down to update you on what’s next for The On Being Project.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher explores the biological workings of our intimate passions, the brew of chemicals, hormones, and neurotransmitters that make the thrilling and sometimes treacherous realms of love and sex. In the research she does for match.com and her TED Talks that have been viewed by millions of people, she wields science as an entertaining, if sobering, lens on what feel like the most meaningful encounters of our lives. In this deeply personal conversation, she shows how it is possible to take on this knowledge as a form of wisdom and power. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “This Is Your Brain on Sex.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Anthropologist Helen Fisher explores the biological workings of our intimate passions, the brew of chemicals, hormones, and neurotransmitters that make the thrilling and sometimes treacherous realms of love and sex. In the research she does for match.com and her TED Talks that have been viewed by millions of people, she wields science as an entertaining, if sobering, lens on what feel like the most meaningful encounters of our lives. In this deeply personal conversation, she shows how it is possible to take on this knowledge as a form of wisdom and power.

A literary thinker with a “telescopic view of time”; an astrophysicist with an eye to “cultural evolution towards good.” What unfolds between these two is joyous, dynamic, and unexpectedly vulnerable — rich with cosmic imagining, civic pondering, and even some fresh definitions of the soul. A live taping from the inaugural On Being Gathering at the 1440 Multiversity in California.

A literary thinker with a “telescopic view of time”; an astrophysicist with an eye to “cultural evolution towards good.” What unfolds between these two is joyous, dynamic, and unexpectedly vulnerable — rich with cosmic imagining, civic pondering, and even some fresh definitions of the soul. A live taping from the inaugural On Being Gathering at the 1440 Multiversity in California. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maria Popova and Natalie Batalha — Cosmic Imagining, Civic Pondering.” Find more at onbeing.org.

We’re fluent in the languages of psychology and medication, but the word “depression” does not do justice to this human experience. Depression is also spiritual territory. It is a shadow side of human vitality and as such teaches us about vitality. Is depression possible for the same reason that love is possible? This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “The Soul in Depression.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“When you’re in a very quiet place, when you’re remembering, when you’re savoring an image, when you’re allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another, that’s a poem.” Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness” has traveled around the world. She grew up between Ferguson, Missouri, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. She insists that language must be a way out of cycles of animosity. She’d have us notice “petite discoveries” that embolden us to choose human nourishment over division. “Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things.”

Flutist and vocalist Nathalie Joachim is a magnetic voice of one of the unexpected aspects of our globalized world — new generations reclaiming and falling in love anew with the places their parents left. In an odyssey through songs of women, Nathalie Joachim is immersing in Haiti’s ecological and political traumas, as well as its beauty and its promise. She is co-founder of the urban art pop duo Flutronix and is based in Brooklyn.

Flutist and vocalist Nathalie Joachim is a magnetic voice of one of the unexpected aspects of our globalized world — new generations reclaiming and falling in love anew with the places their parents left. In an odyssey through the songs of women, Nathalie Joachim is immersing in Haiti’s ecological and political traumas, as well as its beauty and its promise. She is co-founder of the urban art pop duo Flutronix and is based in Brooklyn. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Nathalie Joachim — Song of Haiti’s Women.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Stephen Batchelor’s secular Buddhism speaks to the mystery and vitality of spiritual life in every form. For him, secularism opens to doubt and questioning as a radical basis for spiritual life. Above all, he understands Buddhism without transcendent beliefs like karma or reincarnation to become something urgent to do, not to believe in.

Stephen Batchelor’s secular Buddhism speaks to the mystery and vitality of spiritual life in every form. For him, secularism opens to doubt and questioning as a radical basis for spiritual life. Above all, he understands Buddhism without transcendent beliefs like karma or reincarnation to become something urgent to do, not to believe in. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Stephen Batchelor — Wondrous Doubt.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle was the first person to walk solo on the bottom of the sea, under a quarter mile of water. She has watched humanity’s enduring fascination with “outer space” while she has delighted in “inner space” — the alien and increasingly endangered worlds beneath earth’s waters. These frontiers, as Sylvia Earle points out, are our very life-support system. She takes us inside the knowledge she’s gathered from a lifetime of research and literally swimming with sharks. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sylvia Earle — Her Deepness.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Oceanographer Sylvia Earle was the first person to walk solo on the bottom of the sea, under a quarter mile of water. She has watched humanity’s enduring fascination with “outer space” while she has delighted in “inner space” — the alien and increasingly endangered worlds beneath earth’s waters. These frontiers, as Sylvia Earle points out, are our very life-support system. She takes us inside the knowledge she’s gathered from a lifetime of research and literally swimming with sharks.

Movies delight and inspire and repel. They’re places the big questions we take up at On Being land in the heart of our lives. They change our lives and our life together. Get out the popcorn for this show, and immerse yourself in film scores and iconic movie moments — with David Greene on how “Star Wars” changed him, Ashley C. Ford on “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Rubén Blades on the 1943 noir Western “The Ox-Bow Incident,” and more.

The tensions of our time are well-known. But there are stories that are not being told, because they are not violent and not shouting to be heard. One of them is that all over this country, synagogues and mosques, Muslims and Jews, have been coming to know one another. There is friendship. There are initiatives that are patiently, and at human scale, planting the seeds for new realities across generational time. As part of the Civil Conversations Project, a live conversation at the Union for Reform Judaism’s General Assembly in Boston between Imam Abdullah Antepli and Rabbi Sarah Bassin.

The tensions of our time are well-known. But there are stories that are not being told, because they are not violent and not shouting to be heard. One of them is that all over this country, synagogues and mosques, Muslims and Jews, have been coming to know one another. There is friendship. There are initiatives that are patiently, and at human scale, planting the seeds for new realities across generational time. As part of the Civil Conversations Project, a live conversation at the Union for Reform Judaism’s General Assembly in Boston between Imam Abdullah Antepli and Rabbi Sarah Bassin. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sarah Bassin and Abdullah Antepli — Holy Envy.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” Mary Karr has a captivating ability to give voice to what is funny in life’s most heartbreaking moments. She is beloved for her salty memoirs in which she traces her harrowing childhood in southeast Texas — with a mother who once tried to kill her with a butcher’s knife and her own adult struggles with alcoholism and breakdown. Mary Karr embodies this wryness and wildness in her lesser-known spiritual practice as a devout Catholic — an unexpected move she made in mid-life. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Mary Karr — Astonished by the Human Comedy.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” Mary Karr has a captivating ability to give voice to what is funny in life’s most heartbreaking moments. She is beloved for her salty memoirs in which she traces her harrowing childhood in southeast Texas — with a mother who once tried to kill her with a butcher’s knife and her own adult struggles with alcoholism and breakdown. Mary Karr embodies this wryness and wildness in her lesser-known spiritual practice as a devout Catholic — an unexpected move she made in mid-life.

“It’s very likely that the universe is really a kind of a question, rather than the answer to anything,” says philosopher technologist Kevin Kelly. He was the founding editor of WIRED and is an original thinker on shaping the character and spiritual meaning of technology. He says our role as good askers of questions will remain the most important contribution of our species in a coming world of AI.

“It’s very likely that the universe is really a kind of a question, rather than the answer to anything,” says philosopher technologist Kevin Kelly. He was the founding editor of WIRED and is an original thinker on shaping the character and spiritual meaning of technology. He says our role as good askers of questions will remain the most important contribution of our species in a coming world of AI. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Kevin Kelly — The Universe Is a Question.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Go to the doctor and they won’t begin to treat you without taking your history — and not just yours, but that of your parents and grandparents before you. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson points this out as she reflects on her epic work of narrative non-fiction, The Warmth of Other Suns. She’s immersed herself in the stories of the Great Migration, the diaspora of six million African Americans to the north of the U.S. in the 20th century. It’s a carrier of untold histories and truths that help make sense of human and social challenges newly visible at the heart of our life together.

The poet Christian Wiman is giving voice to the hunger and challenge of being religious now. He had a charismatic Texas Christian upbringing, and was later agnostic. He became actively religious again as he found love in his mid 30s, and was diagnosed with cancer. He’s written, “How does one remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one’s life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life?” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Christian Wiman — How Does One Remember God?” Find more at onbeing.org.

The poet Christian Wiman is giving voice to the hunger and challenge of being religious now. He had a charismatic Texas Christian upbringing, and was later agnostic. He became actively religious again as he found love in his mid 30s, and was diagnosed with cancer. He’s written, “How does one remember God, reach for God, realize God in the midst of one’s life if one is constantly being overwhelmed by that life?”

We often find ourselves talking to poets and writers about the vivid connections between art and faith. This special hour came out of a live collaboration between On Being and Selected Shorts at Symphony Space in New York. Claire Danes, Ellen Burstyn, Julie White, and U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith joined us with stories and poems about meaning and mystery.

The wise and lyrical writer Adam Gopnik muses on the ironies of spiritual life in a secular age through the lens of his many fascinations — from parenting, to the arts, to Darwin. He touches on all these things in a conversation inspired by his foreword to “The Good Book,” in which novelists, essayists, and activists who are not known as religious thinkers write about their favorite biblical passages. Our ancestors acknowledged doubt while practicing faith, he says; we moderns are drawn to faith while practicing doubt. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Adam Gopnik — Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The wise and lyrical writer Adam Gopnik muses on the ironies of spiritual life in a secular age through the lens of his many fascinations — from parenting, to the arts, to Darwin. He touches on all these things in a conversation inspired by his foreword to “The Good Book,” in which novelists, essayists, and activists who are not known as religious thinkers write about their favorite biblical passages. Our ancestors acknowledged doubt while practicing faith, he says; we moderns are drawn to faith while practicing doubt.

No challenge before us is more important — and more potentially life-giving — than that we come to see and know our fellow citizens, our neighbors, who have become strangers. Journalist Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Kimball Coe of the Rural Assembly have two very different histories and places in our life together. But they are both stitching relationship across the ruptures that have made politics thin veneers over human dramas of power and frailty, fear and hope. We spoke at the Obama Foundation’s inaugural summit in Chicago.

No challenge before us is more important — and more potentially life-giving — than that we come to see and know our fellow citizens, our neighbors, who have become strangers. Journalist Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Kimball Coe of the Rural Assembly have two very different histories and places in our life together. But they are both stitching relationship across the ruptures that have made politics thin veneers over human dramas of power and frailty, fear and hope. We spoke at the Obama Foundation’s inaugural summit in Chicago. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Kimball Coe —The Call to Community in a Changed World.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The new field of epigenetics sees that genes can be turned on and off and expressed differently through changes in environment and behavior. Rachel Yehuda is a pioneer in understanding how the effects of stress and trauma can transmit biologically, beyond cataclysmic events, to the next generation. She has studied the children of Holocaust survivors and of pregnant women who survived the 9/11 attacks. But her science is a form of power for flourishing beyond the traumas large and small that mark each of our lives and those of our families and communities. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rachel Yehuda — How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The new field of epigenetics sees that genes can be turned on and off and expressed differently through changes in environment and behavior. Rachel Yehuda is a pioneer in understanding how the effects of stress and trauma can transmit biologically, beyond cataclysmic events, to the next generation. She has studied the children of Holocaust survivors and of pregnant women who survived the 9/11 attacks. But her science is a form of power for flourishing beyond the traumas large and small that mark each of our lives and those of our families and communities.

Her unconventional studies have long suggested what neuroscience is now revealing: Our experiences are formed by the words and ideas we attach to them. Naming something play rather than work — or exercise rather than labor — can mean the difference between delight and drudgery, fatigue or weight loss. What makes a vacation a vacation is not only a change of scenery, but the fact that we let go of the mindless everyday illusion that we are in control. Ellen Langer says mindfulness is achievable without meditation or yoga. She defines it as “the simple act of actively noticing things.”

Her unconventional studies have long suggested what neuroscience is now revealing: our experiences are formed by the words and ideas we attach to them. Naming something play rather than work — or exercise rather than labor — can mean the difference between delight and drudgery, fatigue or weight loss. What makes a vacation a vacation is not only a change of scenery, but the fact that we let go of the mindless everyday illusion that we are in control. Ellen Langer says mindfulness is achievable without meditation or yoga. She defines it as “the simple act of actively noticing things.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Ellen Langer — Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“When it comes to moral judgments, we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.” The surprising psychology behind morality is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research. He explains “liberal” and “conservative” not narrowly or necessarily as political affiliations, but as personality types — ways of moving through the world. His self-described “conservative-hating, religion-hating, secular liberal instincts” have been challenged by his own studies.

“When it comes to moral judgments, we think we are scientists discovering the truth, but actually we are lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.” The surprising psychology behind morality is at the heart of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s research. He explains “liberal” and “conservative” not narrowly or necessarily as political affiliations, but as personality types — ways of moving through the world. His self-described “conservative-hating, religion-hating, secular liberal instincts” have been challenged by his own studies. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jonathan Haidt — The Psychology of Self-Righteousness.” Find onbeing.org.

It’s easy to despair at all the bad news and horrific pictures that come at us daily. But Roshi Joan Halifax say this is a form of empathy that works against us. There’s such a thing as pathological altruism. This zen abbot and medical anthropologist has nourishing wisdom as we face suffering in the world. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Joan Halifax — Buoyancy Rather Than Burnout in Our Lives.” Find more at onbeing.org.

It’s easy to despair at all the bad news and horrific pictures that come at us daily. But Roshi Joan Halifax says this is a form of empathy that works against us. There’s such a thing as pathological altruism. This zen abbot and medical anthropologist has nourishing wisdom as we face suffering in the world.

“When it comes to the world around us,” Lisa Randall has written, “is there any choice but to explore?” As one of the most influential theoretical physicists working today, she’s interested in the interconnectedness between fields that have previously operated more autonomously: astronomy, biology, and paleontology. She’s pursuing a theory that “dark matter” might have created the cosmic event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs — and hence humanity’s rise as a species. We learn what she’s discovering, as well as the human questions and takeaways her work throws into relief. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Lisa Randall — Dark Matter, Dinosaurs, and Extra Dimensions.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“When it comes to the world around us,” Lisa Randall has written, “is there any choice but to explore?” As one of the most influential theoretical physicists working today, she’s interested in the interconnectedness between fields that have previously operated more autonomously: astronomy, biology, and paleontology. She’s pursuing a theory that “dark matter” might have created the cosmic event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs — and hence humanity’s rise as a species. We learn what she’s discovering, as well as the human questions and takeaways her work throws into relief.

“In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” A mystic, a 20th-century religious intellectual, a social change agent, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., famously saying afterwards that he felt his legs were praying. Heschel’s poetic theological writings are still read and widely studied today. His faith was as much about “radical amazement” as it was about certainty. And he embodied the passionate social engagement of the prophets, drawing on wisdom at once provocative and nourishing.

“In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” A mystic, a 20th-century religious intellectual, a social change agent, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., famously saying afterwards that he felt his legs were praying. Heschel’s poetic theological writings are still read and widely studied today. His faith was as much about “radical amazement” as it was about certainty. And he embodied the passionate social engagement of the prophets, drawing on wisdom at once provocative and nourishing.

“From the bottom will the genius come that makes our ability to live with each other possible. I believe that with all my heart.” These are the words of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz. His hope is fiercely reality-based, a product of centuries lodged in his body of African-Caribbean suffering, survival, and genius.

“From the bottom will the genius come that makes our ability to live with each other possible. I believe that with all my heart.” These are the words of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz. His hope is fiercely reality-based, a product of centuries lodged in his body of African-Caribbean suffering, survival, and genius.

No conversation we’ve ever done has been more beloved than this one. This Irish poet, theologian, and philosopher insisted on beauty as a human calling. He had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with the inner landscape of our lives and with what he called “the invisible world” that is constantly intertwining what we can know and see. This was one of the last interviews he gave before his unexpected death in 2008. But John O’Donohue’s voice and writings continue to bring ancient mystical wisdom to modern confusions and longings. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “John O’Donohue — The Inner Landscape of Beauty.” Find more at onbeing.org.

No conversation we’ve ever done has been more beloved than this one. This Irish poet, theologian, and philosopher insisted on beauty as a human calling. He had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with the inner landscape of our lives and with what he called “the invisible world” that is constantly intertwining what we can know and see. This was one of the last interviews he gave before his unexpected death in 2008. But John O’Donohue’s voice and writings continue to bring ancient mystical wisdom to modern confusions and longings.

Steeped in cutting edge research around the social lives of networked teens, danah boyd demystifies technology while being wise about the changes it’s making to life and relationship. She has intriguing advice on the technologically-fueled generation gaps of our age — that our children’s immersion in social media may offer a kind of respite from their over-structured, overscheduled analog lives. And that cyber-bullying is an online reflection of the offline world, and blaming technology is missing the point. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “danah boyd — The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Steeped in cutting edge research around the social lives of networked teens, danah boyd demystifies technology while being wise about the changes it’s making to life and relationship. She has intriguing advice on the technologically-fueled generation gaps of our age — that our children’s immersion in social media may offer a kind of respite from their over-structured, overscheduled analog lives. And that cyber-bullying is an online reflection of the offline world, and blaming technology is missing the point.

A French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk and a central figure in the Dalai Lama’s dialogue with scientists, Matthieu Ricard was dubbed “The Happiest Man in the World” after his brain was imaged. But he resists this label. In his writing and in his life, he explores happiness not as a pleasurable feeling but as a way of being that gives you the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life and that encompasses many emotional states, including sadness. We take in Matthieu Ricard’s practical teachings for cultivating inner strength, joy, and direction.

A French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk and a central figure in the Dalai Lama’s dialogue with scientists, Matthieu Ricard was dubbed “The Happiest Man in the World” after his brain was imaged. But he resists this label. In his writing and in his life, he explores happiness not as a pleasurable feeling but as a way of being that gives you the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life and that encompasses many emotional states, including sadness. We take in Matthieu Ricard’s practical teachings for cultivating inner strength, joy, and direction. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Matthieu Ricard — Happiness As Human Flourishing.” Find more at onbeing.org.

We explore a topic our listeners have called out as a passionate force and a connector across all kinds of boundaries in American culture: running. Not just as exercise, or as a merely physical pursuit, but running as a source of bonding between parents and children and friends; running as an interplay between competition and contemplation; running and body image and survival and healing.

The renowned actor as you’ve never heard him before. He has appeared in over 100 films, including Apocalypse Now. He’s best known on television as President Bartlet in “The West Wing.” But Martin Sheen, born and still legally named Ramón Estévez, has had another lesser-known life as a spiritual seeker and activist. He returned to a deep and joyful Catholic faith after a crisis at the height of his fame in mid-life. He’s been arrested over 60 times in vigils and protests. “Piety is something you do alone,” he says. “True freedom, spirituality, can only be achieved in community.”This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Martin Sheen — Spirituality of Imagination.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The renowned actor as you’ve never heard him before. He has appeared in over 100 films, including Apocalypse Now. He’s best known on television as President Bartlet in The West Wing. But Martin Sheen, born and still legally named Ramón Estévez, has had another lesser-known life as a spiritual seeker and activist. He returned to a deep and joyful Catholic faith after a crisis at the height of his fame in mid-life. He’s been arrested over 60 times in vigils and protests. “Piety is something you do alone,” he says. “True freedom, spirituality, can only be achieved in community.”

A philosopher’s questioning and a scientist’s eye shape Enrique Martínez Celaya’s original approach to art and to life. A world-renowned painter who trained as a physicist, he’s fascinated by the deeper order that “whispers” beneath the surface of things. Works of art that endure, he says, possess their own form of consciousness. And a quiet life of purpose is a particular form of prophecy. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Enrique Martínez Celaya — The Whisper of the Order of Things.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A philosopher’s questioning and a scientist’s eye shape Enrique Martínez Celaya’s original approach to art and to life. A world-renowned painter who trained as a physicist, he’s fascinated by the deeper order that “whispers” beneath the surface of things. Works of art that endure, he says, possess their own form of consciousness. And a quiet life of purpose is a particular form of prophecy.

Humor lifts us up but it also underscores what’s already great; it connects us with others and also brings us home to ourselves. And like everything meaningful, it’s complex and nuanced — it can be fortifying or damaging, depending on how we wield it. But as a tool for survival, humor is elemental. We explore this idea with a rabbi who started out in drag, comedians, an NPR host, writers of sci-fi/fantasy, social commentary, and the TV show Veep.

A thrilling, mind-bending view of the cosmos and of the human adventure of modern science. In a conversation ranging from free will to the multiverse to the meaning of the Higgs boson particle, physicist Brian Greene suggests the deepest scientific realities are hidden from human senses and often defy our best intuition.

A thrilling, mind-bending view of the cosmos and of the human adventure of modern science. In a conversation ranging from free will to the multiverse to the meaning of the Higgs boson particle, physicist Brian Greene suggests the deepest scientific realities are hidden from human senses and often defy our best intuition. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Brian Greene — Reimagining the Cosmos.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Black Lives Matter co-founder and artist Patrisse Cullors presents a luminous vision of the spiritual core of Black Lives Matter and a resilient world in the making. She joins Dr. Robert Ross, a physician and philanthropist on the cutting edge of learning how trauma can be healed in bodies and communities. A cross-generational reflection on evolving social change.

Black Lives Matter co-founder and artist Patrisse Cullors presents a luminous vision of the spiritual core of Black Lives Matter and a resilient world in the making. She joins Dr. Robert Ross, a physician and philanthropist on the cutting edge of learning how trauma can be healed in bodies and communities, on the evolving nature of social change. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Patrisse Cullors and Robert Ross — The Spiritual Work of Black Lives Matter.” Find more at onbeing.org.

If we’re going to create the world we want our children to inhabit, we’re going to have to find ways to hold more complexity peaceably, and probably uncomfortably, just to soften what is possible between us. We need to be ready to let others surprise us, offer forgiveness, and ask hard questions of our own part in this moment. This doesn’t happen often in politics. But it is essential in life, and it must be part of common life, too. As part of our ongoing Civil Conversations Project, Krista draws out Glenn Beck in this generosity of spirit. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Glenn Beck — What You Do Will Be a Pivot Point.” Find more at onbeing.org.

We need to be ready to let others surprise us, offer forgiveness, and ask hard questions of our own part in this moment. This doesn’t happen often in politics. But it is essential in life, and it must be part of common life, too. If we’re going to create the world we want our children to inhabit, we’re going to have to find ways to hold more complexity peaceably, and probably uncomfortably, just to soften what is possible between us. As part of our ongoing Civil Conversations Project, Krista draws out Glenn Beck in this generosity of spirit.

The moral life, Marie Howe says, is lived out in what we say as much as what we do. She became known for her poetry collection “What the Living Do,” about her brother’s death at 28 from AIDS. Now she has a new book, “Magdalene.” Poetry is her exuberant and open-hearted way into the words and the silences we live by. She works and plays with a Catholic upbringing, the universal drama of family, the ordinary rituals that sustain us — and how language, again and again, has a power to save us. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Marie Howe — The Power of Words to Save Us.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The moral life, Marie Howe says, is lived out in what we say as much as what we do. She became known for her poetry collection “What the Living Do,” about her brother’s death at 28 from AIDS. Now she has a new book, “Magdalene.” Poetry is her exuberant and open-hearted way into the words and the silences we live by. She works and plays with a Catholic upbringing, the universal drama of family, the ordinary rituals that sustain us — and how language, again and again, has a power to save us.

Sheryl Sandberg is synonymous with Facebook, and Silicon Valley success, and she’s the voice of “Lean In.” She joins us, frank and vulnerable, together with the psychologist Adam Grant. His friendship — and his research on resilience — helped her survive the shocking death of her husband while on vacation. They share what they’ve learned about planting deep resilience in ourselves and our children, and even reclaiming joy. There is so much learning here, on facing the unimaginable when it arrives in our lives and being more practically caring towards the losses woven into lives all around us. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant — Resilience After Unimaginable Loss.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Sheryl Sandberg is synonymous with Facebook, and Silicon Valley success, and she’s the voice of “Lean In.” She joins us, frank and vulnerable, together with the psychologist Adam Grant. His friendship — and his research on resilience — helped her survive the shocking death of her husband while on vacation. They share what they’ve learned about planting deep resilience in ourselves and our children, and even reclaiming joy. There is so much learning here, on facing the unimaginable when it arrives in our lives and being more practically caring towards the losses woven into lives all around us.

It’s hard to imagine honest, revelatory, even enjoyable conversation between people on distant points of American life right now. But in this public conversation at the Citizen University annual conference, Matt Kibbe and Heather McGhee show us how. He’s a libertarian who helped activate the Tea Party. She’s a millennial progressive leader. They are bridge people for this moment — holding passion and conviction together with an enthusiasm for engaging difference, and carrying questions as vigorously as they carry answers.

It’s hard to imagine honest, revelatory, even enjoyable conversation between people on distant points of American life right now. But in this public conversation at the Citizen University annual conference, Matt Kibbe and Heather McGhee show us how. He’s a libertarian who helped activate the Tea Party. She’s a millennial progressive leader. They are bridge people for this moment — holding passion and conviction together with an enthusiasm for engaging difference, and carrying questions as vigorously as they carry answers. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Matt Kibbe and Heather McGhee — Repairing the Breach.” Find more at onbeing.org.

For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. Gender defines us from the moment we’re born. But how is that related to the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves? We explore this question through Joy Ladin’s story of transition from male to female — in an Orthodox Jewish world.

A passionate translator of the beauty and relevance of scientific questions, Margaret Wertheim is also wise about the limits of science to tell the whole story of the human self across history and culture. Her Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles reveals evocative, visceral connections between high mathematics, crochet and other folk arts, and our love for the planet. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Margaret Wertheim — The Grandeur and Limits of Science” Find more at onbeing.org.

A passionate translator of the beauty and relevance of scientific questions, Margaret Wertheim is also wise about the limits of science to tell the whole story of the human self. Her Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles reveals evocative, visceral connections between high mathematics, crochet and other folk arts, and our love for the planet.

White Evangelical Christians helped secure the election of President Trump. Many said that his views on abortion were decisive, overriding concerns they had on other matters. But to be Evangelical is not one thing, even on abortion. This conversation about Christianity and politics with three generations of Evangelical leaders — Shane Claiborne, Greg Boyd, and the late Chuck Colson — feels more relevant in the wake of the 2016 election than it did when we first recorded it. We offer this searching dialogue, which is alive anew, to a changed political landscape.

This conversation about Christianity and politics with three generations of evangelical leaders — Shane Claiborne, Greg Boyd, and the late Chuck Colson – feels more relevant in the wake of the 2016 election than it did when we first taped it. White Evangelical Christians helped secure the election of President Trump. Many said that his views on abortion were decisive, overriding concerns they had on other matters. But to be Evangelical is not one thing, even on abortion. We offer this searching dialogue, which is alive anew, to a changed political landscape. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne — How to Be a Christian Citizen: Three Evangelicals Debate.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Anil Dash is the CEO of Fog Creek Software. He also founded Makerbase, Activate, and the non-profit Expert Labs, a research initiative backed by the MacArthur Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which collaborated with the Obama White House and federal agencies. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anil Dash — Tech’s Moral Reckoning.” Find more at onbeing.org.

A wildly popular blogger, tech entrepreneur, and Silicon Valley influencer, Anil Dash has been an early activist for moral imagination in the digital sphere — an aspiration which has now become an urgent task. We explore the unprecedented power, the learning curves ahead, and how we can all contribute to the humane potential of technology in this moment.

Gordon Hempton is founder and vice president of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, based in Joyce, Washington. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Silence is an endangered species, says Gordon Hempton. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth, as he knows it, is a “solar-powered jukebox.” Quiet is a “think tank of the soul.” We take in the world through his ears.

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher and the cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She is the co-author of “Love Your Enemies.” Her other books include “Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation” and “Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace.” Robert Thurman is professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. He’s also the president of the Tibet House U.S. He is the co-author of “Love Your Enemies.” His other books include “Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within and Inner Revolution.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman — Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Two legendary Buddhist teachers shine a light on the lofty ideal of loving your enemies and bring it down to Earth. How can that be realistic, and what do we have to do inside ourselves to make it more possible? In a conversation filled with laughter and friendship, Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman share much practical wisdom on how we relate to that which makes us feel embattled from without, and from within.

Alice Parker is the artistic director of the non-profit Melodious Accord and is the author of “Melodious Accord: Good Singing in Church.” She collaborated with the Robert Shaw Chorale for 20 years and has composed operas, cantatas and suites for chamber ensembles, as well as hundreds of anthems and songs. CDs of her compositions and arrangements include “My Love and I” and “Take Me to the Water.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Alice Parker — Singing Is the Most Companionable of Arts.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Singing is able to touch and join human beings in ways few other arts can. Alice Parker is a wise and joyful thinker and writer on this truth, and has been a hero in the universe of choral music as a composer, conductor, and teacher for most of her 90 years. She began as a young woman, studying conducting with Robert Shaw at Juilliard, and collaborated with him on arrangements of folk songs, spirituals, and hymns that are still performed around the world today.

James Martin is a Jesuit priest and editor at large of America magazine. His books include “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything,” “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life,” and most recently “Jesus: A Pilgrimage.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “James Martin — Finding God in All Things.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Before Pope Francis, James Martin was perhaps the best-loved Jesuit in American life. He’s followed the calling of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, to “find God in all things” — and in 21st-century forms. To delve into Fr. Martin’s way of being in the world is to discover the “spiritual exercises” St. Ignatius designed to be accessible to everyone more than six centuries ago. Also his thoughts on the “un-taming” Christmas.

Natasha Trethewey was the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate. Her books include “Domestic Work,” “Native Guard,” and “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.” Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core. His books include “Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America” and “Interfaith Leadership: A Primer.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Natasha Trethewey and Eboo Patel — How to Live Beyond This Election.” Find more at onbeing.org.

This political season has surfaced our need to reimagine and re-weave the very meaning of common life and common good. We take a long, nourishing view of the challenge and promise of this moment with former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey and interfaith visionary Eboo Patel. This is the second of two public conversations convened by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis on the eve of the 2016 presidential debate on that campus.

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times. His books include “The Social Animal” and “The Road to Character.” E.J. Dionne is a columnist for The Washington Post. His books include “Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith in Politics after the Religious Right” and “Why The Right Went Wrong.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Sinfulness, Hopefulness and the Possibility of Politics.” Find more at onbeing.org.

This is a strange, tumultuous political moment. With columnists David Brooks and E.J. Dionne, we step back from the immediate political gamesmanship. We take public theology as a lens on the challenge and promise we will all be living as citizens, whoever our next president might be. This public conversation was convened by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis, the day before the second presidential debate on that campus.

Leonard Mlodinow is a physicist, and the author of several books including “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” and “Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life.” He’s also written for television, including “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Leonard Mlodinow — Randomness and Choice.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Fundamental forces of physics somehow determine everything that happens, “from the birth of a child to the birth of a galaxy.” Yet physicist Leonard Mlodinow has an intriguing perspective on the gap between theory and reality — and the fascinating interplay between a life in science and life in the world. As the child of two Holocaust survivors, he asks questions about our capacity to create our lives, while reflecting on extreme human cruelty — and courage.

Alain de Botton is the founder and chairman of The School of Life. His books include “Religion for Atheists” and “How Proust Can Change Your Life.” His new book is a novel, “The Course of Love.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Alain de Botton — A School of Life for Atheists ” Find more at onbeing.org.

Alain de Botton is a philosopher who likes the best of religion, but doesn’t believe in God. He says that the most boring question you can ask of any religion is whether it is true. But how to live, how to die, what is good, and what is bad — these are questions religion has sophisticated ways of addressing. So he’s created The School of Life — where people young and old explore ritual, community, beauty, and wisdom. He explains why these ideas shouldn’t be reserved just for believers.

The history of rebellion is rife with excess and burnout. But new generations have a distinctive commitment to be reflective and activist at once, to be in service as much as in charge, and to learn from history while bringing very new realities into being. Quaker wise man Parker Palmer and journalist and entrepreneur Courtney Martin come together for a cross-generational conversation about the inner work of sustainable, resilient social change.

Parker Palmer is founder and Senior Partner of the Center for Courage and Renewal. He’s the author of bestselling books including “Let Your Life Speak,” “The Courage to Teach,” “A Hidden Wholeness,” and “Healing the Heart of Democracy.” Courtney Martin is the co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network and a strategist for the TED Prize. She’s the author of six books including “Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists” and most recently, “The New Better Off.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Parker Palmer and Courtney Martin — The Inner Life of Rebellion” Find more at onbeing.org.

In the 15 years since its inception, Wikipedia has become as much a global community as a business venture — a living organism with a mission statement to make “the sum of all human knowledge available to every person in the world.” And a conversation with co-founder Jimmy Wales — one of the architects of that philosophy and the world-changing project that has grown up around it — is full of surprises. What Wikipedia is learning has resonance for our wider public life — about the imperfect but gratifying work of navigating truth amidst difference, ongoing learning, and dynamic belonging.

Jimmy Wales is the co-founder and promoter of Wikipedia and chair emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jimmy Wales — The Sum of All Human Knowledge” Find more at onbeing.org.

Movies, for some of us, are a form of modern church. The Argentinian composer and musician Gustavo Santaolalla creates cinematic landscapes — movie soundtracks that become soundtracks for life. He’s won back-to-back Academy Awards for his original scores for “Brokeback Mountain” and “Babel.” We experience his humanity and creative philosophy behind a kind of music that moves us like no other.

Gustavo Santaolalla has composed film scores for over a dozen features including “Amores Perros,” “The Motorcycle Diaries,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “Babel,” “On the Road,” and “Wild Tales.” His latest solo album is called “Camino.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Gustavo Santaolalla — How Movie Music Moves Us.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The Brazilian lyricist Paulo Coelho is best known for his book “The Alchemist” — which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over 400 weeks. His fable-like stories turn life, love, writing, and reading into pilgrimage. In a rare conversation, we meet the man behind the writings and explore what he’s touched in modern people.

Paulo Coelho is the author of many books including “The Pilgrimage,” “Veronika Decides to Die” and “The Alchemist.” His new book is “Adultery.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Paulo Coelho — The Alchemy of Pilgrimage.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Xavier Le Pichon is Honorary Professor at Collège de France in Paris. He founded La Maison Thomas Philippe that provides retreats for families, including those struggling with mental illness. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Xavier Le Pichon — The Fragility at the Heart of Humanity.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Xavier Le Pichon, one of the world’s leading geophysicists, helped create the field of plate tectonics. A devout Catholic and spiritual thinker, he raised his family in intentional communities centered around people with mental disabilities. He shares his rare perspective on the meaning of humanity — a perspective equally informed by his scientific and personal encounters with fragility as a fundament of vital, evolving systems. Le Pichon has come to think of caring attention to weakness as an essential quality that allowed humanity to evolve.

The Vietnamese Zen master, whom Martin Luther King nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, is a voice of power and wisdom in this time of tumult in the world. We visited Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat attended by police officers and other members of the criminal justice system; they offer stark gentle wisdom for finding buoyancy and “being peace” in a world of conflict, anger, and violence.