Recent Episodes

• Remembering Nikki Giovanni - ‘We Go Forward With a Sanity and a Love’

  The delightful Nikki Giovanni died on Dec. 9. It is a joy and a solace to relisten to this beloved conversation she had with Krista in 2016 – to experience her signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective, and insistent pleasure. Her words and...

• Joan Baez — "This Gift of a Voice"

  She is known as the voice of a generation. The Queen of Folk. A legend. An icon, the one who sang “We Shall Overcome” alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. As much as anyone, Joan Baez embodied the spirit of that decade of soar...

• adrienne maree brown — On Radical Imagination and Moving Towards Life

  The wonderful civil rights elder Vincent Harding liked to look around the world for what he called "live human signposts" — human beings who embody ways of seeing and becoming and who point the way forward to the world we want to inhabit. And adrienne mar...

• “The End of Poetry” by Ada Limón

  An impassioned plea, a yearning for connection — the poem U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote when she says all language failed her. Take in Ada's reading of her piece, “The End of Poetry” — and hear her read more of her work in the On Being episode, “To B...

• Atul Gawande — On Mortality and Meaning

  We are strange creatures. It is hard for us to speak about, or let in, the reality of frailty and death — the elemental fact of mortality itself. In this century, western medicine has gradually moved away from its understanding of death as a failure — whe...

• “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” by Elizabeth Alexander

  Today, a poem with a poignant question to live: “...and are we not of interest to each other?” Carry Elizabeth Alexander’s reading of her poem “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” with you — and hear Elizabeth read more of her poetry in the On Being episode, “Wo...

• Luis Alberto Urrea — On Our Belonging to Each Other

  We humans have this drive to erect barriers between ourselves and others, Luis Alberto Urrea says, and yet this makes us a little crazy. He is an exuberant, wise, and refreshing companion into the deep meaning and the problem of borders — what they are re...

• Ross Gay — On the Insistence of Joy

  In our world of so much suffering, it can feel hard or wrong to invoke the word "joy." Yet joy has been one of the most insistent, recurrent rallying cries in almost every life-giving conversation that Krista has had across recent months and years, even a...

• Janine Benyus and Azita Ardakani Walton — On Nature's Wisdom for Humanity

  In this all-new episode, Krista engages biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus in a second, urgent conversation, alongside creative biomimicry practitioner Azita Ardakani Walton. Together they trace precise guidance and applied wisdom from the natural world for...

• Befriend Your Body: A Compassionate Body Scan

  In a time of stress, uncertainty, and isolation, Christine Runyan turns our attention to what often evades our awareness — the response of our nervous systems. As part of On Being’s 2021 Midwinter Gathering, she offered this brief, practical, gently guide...

• Christine Runyan — On Healing Our Distressed Nervous Systems

  The years of pandemic and lockdown are still working powerfully on us from the inside. But we have trouble acknowledging this, much less metabolizing it. This conversation with Christine Runyan, which took place in the dark middle of those years, helps ma...

• “Joy is the Justice (We Give Ourselves)” by J. Drew Lanham

  We are overjoyed to share this heart-stirring performance with you, which transpired when we invited the ornithologist/poet/former On Being guest J. Drew Lanham to offer some poetry at a live On Being event in January 2024. We could not have imagined the...

• Lyndsey Stonebridge and Lucas Johnson — On Love, Politics, and Violence (Channeling Hannah Arendt)

  Here is a stunning sentence for you, written by Lyndsey Stonebridge, our guest this hour, channeling the 20th-century political thinker and journalist Hannah Arendt: "Loneliness is the bully that coerces us into giving up on democracy." This conversation...

• New From Poetry Unbound: A Series on Conflict and the Human Condition

  A taste of a special mini-season of Poetry Unbound — bringing contemplative curiosity and the life-nurturing tether of poetry to the very present matter of conflict in our world. In this first offering, Pádraig introduces the intriguing idea of poems as t...

• Colette Pichon Battle — On Knowing What We're Called To

  There is an ecological transformation unfolding in the places we love and come from. On a front edge of this reality, which will affect us all, Colette Pichon Battle is a singular model of brilliance and graciousness of mind and spirit and action. And to...

• Kate DiCamillo — On Nurturing Capacious Hearts

  In her writing, it is Kate DiCamillo's gift to make bearable the fact that joy and sorrow live so close, side by side, in life as it is (if not as we wish it to be). In this conversation, along with good measures of raucous laughter and a few tears, Kate...

• Wisdom, Solace, and Courage for 2024

  A special two-month season of On Being starts May 9. Freshly curated conversations from across the On Being archive. Big new conversations and extra offerings. To be present to the suffering and sorrow of this world from a place of love. To accompany each...

• Nick Cave — Loss, Yearning, Transcendence

  Here are some experiences to which Nick Cave gives voice and song: the "universal condition" of yearning, and of loss; a "spirituality of rigor"; and the transcendent and moral dimensions of what music is about. This Australian musician, writer, and actor...

• A Word from Krista

  A little musing on this season, the spectacular finale headed your way — and ways to stay connected in the time ahead.Subscribe to the The PauseFind our Starting PointsPeruse our LibrariesAnd on YouTube, grab a Poem to Carry in Your Pocket 

• Sara Hendren — Our Bodies, Aliveness, and the Built World

  Our built world is designed around something called "normal," and yet every single one of our bodies is mysterious, and constantly adapting for better or worse — and always, always changing. This is a fact so ordinary — and yet not something most of us ro...

• Christiana Figueres — Ecological Hope, and Spiritual Evolution

  The ecological crisis we are standing before is at once civilizational and personal — intimately close to each of us in the places we love and inhabit, and unfolding at a species level. And as much as anyone alive on the planet now, Christiana Figueres ha...

• Clint Smith — What We Know in the "Marrow of Our Bones"

  This phrase recurs throughout Clint Smith's writing: "in the marrow of our bones." It is an example of how words can hold encrypted wisdom — in this case, the reality that memory and emotion lodge in us physically. Words and phrases have carried this trut...

• “Dance Party” by Clint Smith

  Clint Smith reads his poem, “Dance Party.” This poem is featured in Clint’s On Being conversation with Krista, “What We Know in the ‘Marrow of Our Bones.’” Find more of his poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two decade...

• “Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep” by Clint Smith

  Clint Smith reads his poem, “Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep.” This poem is featured in Clint’s On Being conversation with Krista, “What We Know in the ‘Marrow of Our Bones.’” Find more of his poems, along with our ful...

• [Extended] Clint Smith with Krista Tippett

  This phrase recurs throughout Clint Smith's writing: "in the marrow of our bones." It is an example of how words can hold encrypted wisdom — in this case, the reality that memory and emotion lodge in us physically. Words and phrases have carried this trut...

• Three Skills for Staying Calm, Sane, and Open in a Chaotic World | Krista interviewed by Dan Harris for Ten Percent Happier

  From Krista: I loved being interviewed by Dan Harris as much as I've ever enjoyed being on the other side of the microphone (as the saying goes). He drew things out of me I didn't know I had to say. And I'm so impressed with him as a human being, and what...

• Latanya Sweeney — On Shaping Technology to Human Purpose

  You may not know Latanya Sweeney's name, but as much as any other single person — and with good humor and grace as well as brilliance — she has led on the frontier of our gradual understanding of how far from anonymous you and I are in almost any database...

• [Unedited] Latanya Sweeney with Krista Tippett

  You may not know Latanya Sweeney's name, but as much as any other single person — and with good humor and grace as well as brilliance — she has led on the frontier of our gradual understanding of how far from anonymous you and I are in almost any database...

• Matthew Sanford – The Body's Grace

  A wondrous, buried treasure from the 20-year On Being archive, with renowned yoga teacher Matthew Sanford. Be prepared, as you listen to what follows, to take in subtleties and gracefulness you've never before pondered — or tried to feel in yourself — in...

• Baratunde Thurston — How to Be a Social Creative

  Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, writer, and media entrepreneur. He has eyes open to the contradictions, strangeness, and beauty of being human. He looks for learning happening even amidst our hardest cultural tangles. And he intertwines all of this, inn...

• Reid Hoffman — AI, and What It Means to Be (More) Human

  In this season of On Being and those to come, we are going to train the core human questions on the emerging “generative AI.” Beyond the hype and the doom, what is this new technology calling us to as human beings? What is our agency to shape it to human...

• Kerry Washington — Acting as a Devotional Practice

  “Becoming other people” for a living, as Kerry Washington likes to describe her craft, turns out to be a revelatory lens on the high drama that is the human condition. As a “learning actor,” a kind of actor/anthropologist, she has brought elegance and mor...

• Kate Bowler — On Being in a Body

  We love the theologian Kate Bowler's allergy to every platitude and her wisdom and wit about the strange and messy fullness of what it means to be in a human body. She's best known for her 2018 book Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I've Lov...

• Kate Bowler — A Blessing for the Life You Didn't Choose

  This blessing is featured in Kate’s conversation with Krista, “On Being in a Body.” It's published in her book The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days. Kate Bowler's beloved books include Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lie...

• A New Season of On Being Is Coming

  A big conversation to live by starting NEXT WEEK — every Thursday — from September 21. Loss — and love. AI — and the intelligence that lives in our bodies. Kerry Washington, Kate Bowler, Reid Hoffman, Latanya Sweeney, Nick Cave, Baratunde Thurston … and m...

• "Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire."

  From Krista: I have been texting this exquisite poem from our archives to my beloveds. Perhaps it will touch you — hold you — as it is touching and holding me.ON ANOTHER PANEL ABOUT CLIMATE, THEY ASK ME TO SELL THE FUTURE AND ALL I'VE GOT IS A LOVE POEMTo...

• From Poetry Unbound: Benjamin Gucciardi — The Rungs

  Hello friends, it is a joy to introduce the new season of Poetry Unbound, which is underway. As Krista shares at the top, this episode has everything in it that makes Poetry Unbound such a gift in a noisy podcast world.If you enjoy this episode, subscribe...

• Patronage and Love: On Being's Becoming

  Pádraig makes an announcement, and we listen to a few lovely moments from the On Being season we've just brought into the world. We're inviting the beautiful humans who gather around On Being to partner in the vitality of the unfolding On Being Project in...

• Vivek Murthy — To Be a Healer

  We need a modicum of vitality to simply be alive in this time. And we're in an enduringly tender place. The mental health crisis that is invoked all around, especially as we look to the young, is one manifestation of the gravity of the post-2020 world. Ho...

• Vivek Murthy — A Meditation for Moments of Despair, and To Feel Less Alone

  An excerpt from the On Being episode, "To Be a Healer." The extraordinary physician and public servant stilled a raucous room full of storytellers and podcasters with this offering at the 2023 On Air Fest.Vivek Murthy is the 21st Surgeon General of the Un...

• [Unedited] Vivek Murthy with Krista Tippett

  We need a modicum of vitality to simply be alive in this time. And we're in an enduringly tender place. The mental health crisis that is invoked all around, especially as we look to the young, is one manifestation of the gravity of the post-2020 world. Ho...

• Barbara Brown Taylor — “This Hunger for Holiness”

  "I like it much better than ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ — to be a seeker after the sacred or the holy, which ends up for me being the really real."– Rev. Barbara Brown TaylorFrom Krista, about this week's show:It's fascinating to trace the arc of spiritual...

• [Unedited] Barbara Brown Taylor with Krista Tippett

  "I like it much better than ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ — to be a seeker after the sacred or the holy, which ends up for me being the really real."– Rev. Barbara Brown TaylorFrom Krista, about this week's show:It's fascinating to trace the arc of spiritual...

• Ruth Wilson Gilmore — “Where life is precious, life is precious.”

  To say that Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a geographer, which she is, is not to convey the vast and varied ways in which she is influencing the makings of the future. She's a mentor and teacher to a new generation of social activism and creativity. She's a visio...

• Janine Benyus — Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings

  There is a quiet, redemptive story of our time in this conversation — a radical way of approaching the gravest of our problems by attending to how original vitality functions. Biomimicry takes the natural world as mentor and teacher — for, as Janine Benyu...

• Rick Rubin — Magic, Everyday Mystery, and Getting Creative

  The flow and the ingredients by which an idea becomes an offering — and life practices which call that alchemy forth. The mystery of it all that can only be named and wondered at — and the ordinary mystery that creativity is a human birthright, a way of b...

• Isabel Wilkerson — "We all know in our bones that things are harder than they have to be."

  In this rich, expansive, and warm conversation between friends, Krista draws out the heart for humanity behind Isabel Wilkerson's eye on histories we are only now communally learning to tell — her devotion to understanding not merely who we have been, but...

• James Bridle — The Intelligence Singing All Around Us

  You might want to take a walk with this one. It is big and full of brain food and an enlivening opening of imagination to possibilities that are emergent now: the notion of the “broad commonwealth of life” that we are “inextricably entangled with and suff...

• [Unedited] James Bridle with Krista Tippett

  You might want to take a walk with this one. It is big and full of brain food and an enlivening opening of imagination to possibilities that are emergent now: the notion of the “broad commonwealth of life” that we are “inextricably entangled with and suff...

• Nick Offerman — Working with Wood, and the Meaning of Life

  Nick Offerman has played many great characters, most famously Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation, and he starred more recently in an astonishing episode of The Last of Us. But he is driven by passionate callings older and deeper than his public vocation...

• Ada Limón — “To Be Made Whole”

  An electric conversation with Ada Limón's wisdom and her poetry — a refreshing, full-body experience of how this way with words and sound and silence teaches us about being human at all times, but especially now. With an unexpected and exuberant mix of gr...

• “A New National Anthem” by Ada Limón

  Ada Limón reads her poem, “A New National Anthem.” This poem is featured in Ada’s On Being conversation with Krista, “To Be Made Whole.” Find more of her poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two decades of the show, at E...

• “Dead Stars” by Ada Limón

  Ada Limón reads her poem, “Dead Stars.” This poem is featured in Ada’s On Being conversation with Krista, “To Be Made Whole.” Find more of her poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two decades of the show, at Experience P...

• “The Quiet Machine” by Ada Limón

  Ada Limón reads her poem, “The Quiet Machine.” This poem is featured in Ada’s On Being conversation with Krista, “To Be Made Whole.” Find more of her poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two decades of the show, at Exper...

• Amanda Ripley — Stepping out of "the zombie dance" we're in, and into "good conflict" that is, in fact, life-giving

  Amanda Ripley began her life as a journalist covering crime, disaster, and terrorism. Then in 2018, she published a brilliant essay called “Complicating the Narratives,” which she opened by confessing a professional existential crisis. We journalists, she...

• Dacher Keltner — The Thrilling New Science of Awe

  One of the most fascinating developments of our time is that human qualities we have understood in terms of virtue — experiences we've called spiritual — are now being taken seriously by science as intelligence — as elements of human wholeness. Dacher Kel...

• Emergence: On Being Is Back!

  We are immensely grateful for your patience in our season of podcasting pause. But enough already. Starting Thursday, February 2, we'll come to you with three months of soaring new On Being conversations with Krista, with an eye towards emergence. The sci...

• Foundations 4: Calling and Wholeness

  In the modern western world, vocation was equated with work. But each of us has callings, not merely to be professionals, but to be friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, citizens, lovers of the world. Each of us imprints the people in the world around u...

• Foundations 3: Taking a Long View of Time, and Becoming “Critical Yeast”

  We inhabit a liminal time between what we thought we knew and what we can’t quite yet see. But time is more spacious than we imagine it to be, and it is more of a friend than we always know. Cracking time open, seeing its true manifold nature, expands a s...

• Foundations 2: Living the Questions

  We live in a world in love with the form of words that is an opinion, and the way with words that is an argument. Yet it is a deep truth in life — as in science — that each of us is shaped as much by the quality of the questions we are asking as by the an...

• Foundations 1: Seeing the Generative Story of Our Time

  The first of four short offerings, more wisdom practice than podcast: life-giving, hope-generating words, ideas and practices that can literally shape your experience of reality — and shape what can become possible. At this juncture in the life of the wor...

• A Listening Ritual for this Fall: Poetry Unbound

  Three years ago, Krista texted Pádraig Ó Tuama with a simple question: what if he were to start a poetry podcast that listened as much as it shared? Not long after, Poetry Unbound was born, and it keeps going from strength to strength. Pádraig likes to sa...

• A Season of Emergence with Krista

  Krista returns from her summer in Berlin, where her present-day self reunited with the 25-year-old of the 1980s, at large in the divided city. Hear the reflections that emerged from her season of creative rest, and her beloved practices of contemplative r...

• BONUS: An On Being Listening Party — Celebrating 20 Years

  A special offering from Krista Tippett and all of us at On Being: an incredible, celebratory event — listening back and remembering forwards across 20 years of this show in the good company of our beloved friend and former guest, Rev. Jen Bailey, and so m...

• [Unedited] adrienne maree brown with Krista Tippett

  The beloved civil rights elder Vincent Harding liked to look around the world for what he called "live human signposts" — human beings who embody ways of seeing and becoming and who point the way forward to the world we want to inhabit. And adrienne maree...

• Ocean Vuong – A Life Worthy of Our Breath

  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...

• [Unedited] Ocean Vuong with Krista Tippett

  We are in the final weeks as On Being evolves to its next chapter — in a world that is evolving, each of us changed in myriad ways we’ve only begun to process and fathom. So it felt right to listen again to one of our most beloved shows of this post-2020...

• Ayana Elizabeth Johnson — What If We Get This Right?

  Amidst all of the perspectives and arguments around our ecological future, this much is true: we are not in the natural world — we are part of it. The next-generation marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson would let that reality of belonging show us the...

• [Unedited] Ayana Elizabeth Johnson with Krista Tippett

  Amidst all of the perspectives and arguments around our ecological future, this much is true: we are not in the natural world — we are part of it. The next-generation marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson would let that reality of belonging show us the...

• Rachel Naomi Remen – How We Live With Loss

  The conversation of this hour always rises as an early experience that imprinted everything that came after at On Being. Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is one of the wise people in our world. She trained as a doctor in a generation that understood death as a fail...

• [Unedited] Rachel Naomi Remen with Krista Tippett

  The conversation of this hour always rises as an early experience that imprinted everything that came after at On Being. Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen is one of the wise people in our world. She trained as a doctor in a generation that understood death as a fail...

• David Whyte — Seeking Language Large Enough

  It has ever and always been true, David Whyte reminds us, that so much of human experience is a conversation between loss and celebration. This conversational nature of reality — indeed, this drama of vitality — is something we have all been shown, willin...

• "Everything is Waiting for You" by David Whyte

  David Whyte reads his poem, “Everything is Waiting for You.” This poem is featured in David’s On Being conversation with Krista, “Seeking Language Large Enough.” Find more of his poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two...

• "Working Together" by David Whyte

  David Whyte reads his poem, “Working Together.” This poem is featured in David’s On Being conversation with Krista, “Seeking Language Large Enough.” Find more of his poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two decades of th...

• "Sweet Darkness" by David Whyte

  David Whyte reads his poem, “Sweet Darkness.” This poem is featured in David’s On Being conversation with Krista, “Seeking Language Large Enough.” Find more of his poems, along with our full collection of poetry films and readings from two decades of the...

• [Unedited] David Whyte with Krista Tippett

  It has ever and always been true, David Whyte reminds us, that so much of human experience is a conversation between loss and celebration. This conversational nature of reality — indeed, this drama of vitality — is something we have all been shown, willin...

• BONUS: A Defining Moment from Krista — Celebrating Our First 20 Years

  As we approach nearly two decades of On Being, Krista shares a moment from the earliest years of the show that imprinted everything that followed. Hear Krista reflect on her 2005 conversation with Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen — and the wisdom she encountered th...

• Kimberley Wilson — Whole Body Mental Health

  The British psychologist Kimberley Wilson works in the emergent field of whole body mental health, one of the most astonishing frontiers we are on as a species. Discoveries about the gut microbiome, for example, and the gut-brain axis; the fascinating vag...

• [Unedited] Kimberley Wilson with Krista Tippett

  The British psychologist Kimberley Wilson works in the emergent field of whole body mental health, one of the most astonishing frontiers we are on as a species. Discoveries about the gut microbiome, for example, and the gut-brain axis; the fascinating vag...

• Robin Wall Kimmerer — The Intelligence of Plants

  Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Krista interviewed her in 2015, and it quickly became a much-loved show as her voice was just rising in common life....

• [Unedited] Robin Wall Kimmerer with Krista Tippett

  Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Krista interviewed her in 2015, and it quickly became a much-loved show as her voice was just rising in common life....

• Sylvia Boorstein – What We Nurture

  A few years ago, Krista hosted an event in Detroit — a city in flux — on the theme of raising children. The conversation that resulted with the Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Sylvia Boorstein has been a companion to her and to many from that...

• A Lovingkindness Meditation with Sylvia Boorstein

  The beloved Buddhist-Jewish teacher Sylvia Boorstein led this impromptu, short meditation as part of her On Being conversation with Krista Tippett (“What We Nurture”) at a gathering in Michigan in 2011. It was a magical experience in which the audience fu...

• [Unedited] Sylvia Boorstein with Krista Tippett

  A few years ago, Krista hosted an event in Detroit — a city in flux — on the theme of raising children. The conversation that resulted with the Jewish-Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Sylvia Boorstein has been a companion to her and to many from that...

• Pádraig Ó Tuama — “This fantastic argument of being alive”

  Pádraig Ó Tuama is a friend, teacher, and colleague to the work of On Being. But before that was true, Krista took a revelatory trip to meet him at his home in Northern Ireland, a place that has known sectarianism and violent fracture and has evolved, not...

• [Unedited] Pádraig Ó Tuama with Krista Tippett

  Pádraig Ó Tuama is a friend, teacher, and colleague to the work of On Being. But before that was true, Krista took a revelatory trip to meet him at his home in Northern Ireland, a place that has known sectarianism and violent fracture and has evolved, not...

• Ai-jen Poo and Tarana Burke — The Future of Hope 5

  The visionary, next-generation organizer Ai-jen Poo says this of Tarana Burke: “There are just so many layers of hope that she brings to the world and to people like me, to survivors, to all kinds of communities.” Ai-jen and Tarana are the conversation pa...

• Avivah Zornberg — Human Becoming, Between Biblical Lines

  You probably know the outline of the Exodus story and its main characters: Moses, the Pharaoh, the burning bush, the plagues, the parting of the sea. And, in another realm of the power of story, the words “let my people go” and the arc of liberation from...

• [Unedited] Avivah Zornberg with Krista Tippett

  You probably know the outline of the Exodus story and its main characters: Moses, the Pharaoh, the burning bush, the plagues, the parting of the sea. And, in another realm of the power of story, the words “let my people go” and the arc of liberation from...

• Eugene Peterson — Answering God

  “Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.” These are words of the late legendary biblical interpreter and teacher Eugene Peterson. At the back of the church he pastored for nearly three decades, you’d be likely to find well-...

• [Unedited] Eugene Peterson with Krista Tippett

  “Prayers are tools not for doing or getting, but for being and becoming.” These are words of the late legendary biblical interpreter and teacher Eugene Peterson. At the back of the church he pastored for nearly three decades, you’d be likely to find well-...

• Mary Oliver — “I got saved by the beauty of the world.”

  The late poet Mary Oliver is among the most beloved writers of modern times. Amidst the harshness of life, she found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award among her many...

• [Unedited] Mary Oliver with Krista Tippett

  The late poet Mary Oliver is among the most beloved writers of modern times. Amidst the harshness of life, she found redemption in the natural world and in beautiful, precise language. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award among her many...

• BONUS: An Invitation from Pádraig and Krista

  What do poetry, songs, and prayer have in common? While preparing for the next season of Poetry Unbound, host Pádraig Ó Tuama sat down with Krista Tippett to wonder at this mystery: that poems land in our lives as though they knew us already, as if they w...

• J. Drew Lanham – Pathfinding Through the Improbable

  The ornithologist J. Drew Lanham is lyrical in the languages of science, humans, and birds. His celebrated books include The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and a collection of poetry and meditations called Sparrow Envy: Fie...

• [Unedited] J. Drew Lanham with Krista Tippett

  The ornithologist J. Drew Lanham is lyrical in the languages of science, humans, and birds. His celebrated books include The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature and a collection of poetry and meditations called Sparrow Envy: Fie...

• [Unedited] Kate DiCamillo with Krista Tippett

  In her writing, it is Kate DiCamillo's gift to make bearable the fact that joy and sorrow live so close, side by side, in life as it is (if not as we wish it to be). In this conversation, along with good measures of raucous laughter and a few tears, Kate...

• Mario Livio — Mathematics, Mystery, and the Universe

  The astrophysicist Mario Livio spent 24 years at the Space Telescope Science Institute working with the Hubble Telescope, which has revealed the reality and beauty of the Universe to scientists and citizens in whole new ways. The Hubble’s successor, the J...

• [Unedited] Mario Livio with Krista Tippett

  The astrophysicist Mario Livio spent 24 years at the Space Telescope Science Institute working with the Hubble Telescope, which has revealed the reality and beauty of the Universe to scientists and citizens in whole new ways. The Hubble’s successor, the J...

• [Unedited] Colette Pichon Battle with Krista Tippett

  There is an ecological transformation unfolding in the places we love and come from. On a front edge of this reality which will affect us all, Colette Pichon Battle is a singular model of brilliance and graciousness of mind and spirit and action. And to b...

• “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower” by Rainer Maria Rilke

  We’ve noticed that many people have been seeking out this poem by Rilke on our website this week. It feels like a meditation and a salve for this fraught, uncertain moment in the world. So, we’re sharing it here as well. Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-...

• Gal Beckerman — How Newness Enters the World

  When time becomes history, different dynamics come into focus than the ones that are at any moment screaming for attention. The title of Gal Beckerman’s book intrigues and compels: The Quiet Before. He’s a journalist with a special interest in history and...

• [Unedited] Gal Beckerman with Krista Tippett

  When time becomes history, different dynamics come into focus than the ones that are at any moment screaming for attention. The title of Gal Beckerman’s book intrigues and compels: The Quiet Before. He’s a journalist with a special interest in history and...

• Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman — Love Your Enemies? (Really?)

  It’s a piece of deep psychological acuity, carried in many religious traditions: that each of us is defined as much by who our enemies are and how we treat them as by whom and what we love. In this episode, two legendary Buddhist teachers shine a light on...

• [Unedited] Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman with Krista Tippett

  It’s a piece of deep psychological acuity, carried in many religious traditions: that each of us is defined as much by who our enemies are and how we treat them as by whom and what we love. In this episode, two legendary Buddhist teachers shine a light on...

• John O'Donohue – The Inner Landscape of Beauty

  No conversation we’ve ever done has been more beloved than this one. The 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 calle...

• [Unedited] John O'Donohue with Krista Tippett

  No conversation we’ve ever done has been more beloved than this one. The 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 calle...

• Trabian Shorters – A Cognitive Skill to Magnify Humanity

  Trabian Shorters is a visionary who has seen and named a task that is necessary for all healing and building, for every vision and plan, whether in a family or a world, to flourish. It’s called Asset Framing — and it works with both new understandings of...

• [Unedited] Trabian Shorters with Krista Tippett

  Trabian Shorters is a visionary who has seen and named a task that is necessary for all healing and building, for every vision and plan, whether in a family or a world, to flourish. It’s called Asset Framing — and it works with both new understandings of...

• Remembering Thich Nhat Hanh, Brother Thay

  The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, revered Zen master, teacher, and poet, died on January 22, 2022, in his native Vietnam. Brother Thay, as he was known by his community and students, transmuted what he had experienced of chaos and bloodshed in his country an...

• [Unedited] Thich Nhat Hanh with Krista Tippett

  The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, revered Zen master, teacher, and poet, died on January 22, 2022, in his native Vietnam. Brother Thay, as he was known by his community and students, transmuted what he had experienced of chaos and bloodshed in his country an...

• [Unedited] Larry Ward with Krista Tippett

  Krista interviewed Larry Ward around the edges of a retreat with revered Zen master, teacher, and poet Thich Nhat Hanh in 2003. Parts of this interview, as well as Krista’s conversation with Thich Nhat Hanh, appear in our show, Remembering Thich Nhat Hanh...

• [Unedited] Cheri Maples with Krista Tippett

  Krista interviewed Cheri Maples around the edges of a retreat with revered Zen master, teacher, and poet Thich Nhat Hanh in 2003. Parts of this interview, as well as Krista’s conversation with Thich Nhat Hanh, appear in our show, Remembering Thich Nhat Ha...

• Michael Pollan and Katherine May - The Future of Hope 4

  Michael Pollan is one of our most revelatory explorers of the interaction between the human and natural worlds — especially the plants with which we have, as he says, co-evolved — from food to caffeine to psychedelics. In this episode of our series, The F...

• Oliver Burkeman – Time Management for Mortals

  Journalist Oliver Burkeman has made a delightful and important philosophical, spiritual, and practical investigation of all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as “time management.” At this time of year, many of us are making plans and res...

• [Unedited] Oliver Burkeman with Krista Tippett

  Journalist Oliver Burkeman has made a delightful and important philosophical, spiritual, and practical investigation of all that is truly at stake in what we blithely refer to as “time management.” At this time of year, many of us are making plans and res...

• Remembering Desmond Tutu

  The remarkable Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Laureate died in the closing days of 2021. He helped galvanize South Africa's improbably peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. He was a leader in the religious drama that transfigured So...

• [Unedited] Desmond Tutu with Krista Tippett

  The remarkable Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Laureate died in the closing days of 2021. He helped galvanize South Africa's improbably peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy. He was a leader in the religious drama that transfigured So...

• Gordon Hempton — Silence and the Presence of Everything

  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...

• [Unedited] Gordon Hempton with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Jeff Chu — A Life of Holy Curiosity (In Friendship with Rachel Held Evans)

  Here we are in a religiously-infused season — and in a world in which more and more of us experience ourselves to be religious nomads, misfits, even refugees. This deep reality of our life together is often simplified in analyses of the decline of traditi...

• [Unedited] Jeff Chu with Krista Tippett

  Here we are in a religiously-infused season — and in a world in which more and more of us experience ourselves to be religious nomads, misfits, even refugees. This deep reality of our life together is often simplified in analyses of the decline of traditi...

• Jane Hirshfield – The Fullness of Things

  The esteemed writer Jane Hirshfield has been a Zen monk and a visiting artist among neuroscientists. She has said this: “It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this … It tells us that where ther...

• [Unedited] Jane Hirshfield with Krista Tippett

  The esteemed writer Jane Hirshfield has been a Zen monk and a visiting artist among neuroscientists. She has said this: “It’s my nature to question, to look at the opposite side. I believe that the best writing also does this … It tells us that where ther...

• Katherine May – 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...

• [Unedited] Katherine May with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Vivek Murthy and Richard Davidson – The Future of Well-being

  What if the future of well-being is about “tipping the scales in the world away from fear and toward love”? And what if it’s a surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, who talks this way? Krista draws him out with his friend, the groundbrea...

• [Unedited] Vivek Murthy and Richard Davidson with Krista Tippett

  What if the future of well-being is about “tipping the scales in the world away from fear and toward love”? And what if it’s a surgeon general of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, who talks this way? Krista draws him out with his friend, the groundbrea...

• Jane Goodall – What It Means to Be Human

  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. In honor of the publication of her 32nd book — The Bo...

• [Unedited] Jane Goodall with Krista Tippett

  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. In honor of the publication of her 32nd book — The Bo...

• Pico Iyer and Elizabeth Gilbert – The Future of Hope 3

  Pico Iyer is an esteemed journalist and essayist, and an explorer of inner life — for himself and in 21st-century society. For this episode in our Future of Hope series, he draws out writer Elizabeth Gilbert and “her sense of hope based not on a confidenc...

• Bessel van der Kolk – How Trauma Lodges in the Body, Revisited

  When Krista interviewed the psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk for the first time, his book The Body Keeps the Score was about to be published. She described him then as “an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences...

• [Unedited] Bessel van der Kolk with Krista Tippett

  Krista interviewed the psychiatrist and trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk for the first time in 2013, as his book The Body Keeps the Score was about to be published. He is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences. We call this...

• Bryan Stevenson – Finding the Courage for What's Redemptive

  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 in...

• [Unedited] Bryan Stevenson with Krista Tippett

  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 in...

• Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson – “So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars”

  Where to turn to find my place of standing when it feels like the world is on fire? This question surfaced in a public conversation Krista had just a couple of years ago with Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson, two poet-contemplatives. Pádraig weaves toge...

• [Unedited] Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson with Krista Tippett

  Where to turn to find my place of standing when it feels like the world is on fire? This question surfaced in a public conversation Krista had just a couple of years ago with Pádraig Ó Tuama and Marilyn Nelson, two poet-contemplatives. Pádraig weaves toge...

• Katharine Hayhoe – "Our future is still in our hands"

  Katharine Hayhoe is one of the most esteemed atmospheric scientists in the world. She’s made her mark by connecting dots between climate systems and weather patterns and the lived experience of human beings in their neighborhoods and communities. She’s al...

• [Unedited] Katharine Hayhoe with Krista Tippett

  Katharine Hayhoe is one of the most esteemed atmospheric scientists in the world. She’s made her mark by connecting dots between climate systems and weather patterns and the lived experience of human beings in their neighborhoods and communities. She’s al...

• Darnell Moore and dream hampton — The Future of Hope 2

  We’re in a time as thick with uncertainty as with possibility. Many of us are still, and again, exhausted — and yet opening, fitfully, to what we’ve learned and have been called to at this moment in the life of the world. Toward nourishing that, the secon...

• Mike Rose – The Deepest Meanings of Intelligence and Vocation

  “I grew up a witness,” Mike Rose wrote, “to the intelligence of the waitress in motion, the reflective welder, the strategy of the guy on the assembly line. This then is something I know: the thought it takes to do physical work.” Mike Rose died in August...

• [Unedited] Mike Rose with Krista Tippett

  “I grew up a witness,” Mike Rose wrote, “to the intelligence of the waitress in motion, the reflective welder, the strategy of the guy on the assembly line. This then is something I know: the thought it takes to do physical work.” Mike Rose died in August...

• Priya Parker — Remaking Gathering: Entering the Mess, Crossing the Thresholds

  Priya Parker has become the voice of what it means to gather in this world we inhabit now. She is helping remake the “how” of coming together — and more importantly, the “why.” Long before the pandemic, she points out, we had fallen into rote forms for st...

• [Unedited] Priya Parker with Krista Tippett

  Priya Parker has become the voice of what it means to gather in this world we inhabit now. She is helping remake the “how” of coming together — and more importantly, the “why.” Long before the pandemic, she points out, we had fallen into rote forms for st...

• Stephen Batchelor – Finding Ease in Aloneness

  One of the great challenges of life is to learn to be alone peaceably, at home in oneself. The pandemic forced many of us inside both physically and emotionally, even if we were not home on our own. We’ve been forced to work out the difference between lon...

• [Unedited] Stephen Batchelor with Krista Tippett

  One of the great challenges of life is to learn to be alone peaceably, at home in oneself. The pandemic forced many of us inside both physically and emotionally, even if we were not home on our own. We’ve been forced to work out the difference between lon...

• Kate Bowler and Wajahat Ali — The Future of Hope

  An irreverent conversation about hope between journalist Wajahat Ali and theologian Kate Bowler. They speak to this moment we’re in through the friendship they found on the edge of life and death that is cancer — Wajahat through his young daughter; and Ka...

• Suzanne Simard — Forests Are Wired For Wisdom

  Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who has proven, beyond doubt, that trees communicate with each other — that a forest is a single organism wired for wisdom and care. Simard found that the processes that make for a high-functioning forest mirror the...

• [Unedited] Suzanne Simard with Krista Tippett

  Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who has proven, beyond doubt, that trees communicate with each other — that a forest is a single organism wired for wisdom and care. Simard found that the processes that make for a high-functioning forest mirror the...

• Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn – Truth, Beauty, Banjo

  We are digging into the archives to celebrate some of the conversations listeners have loved the most and that have shaped this project. Béla Fleck is one of the greatest living banjo players. He’s followed what many experience as this quintessential Amer...

• [Unedited] Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn with Krista Tippett

  We are digging into the archives to celebrate some of the conversations listeners have loved the most and that have shaped this project. Béla Fleck is one of the greatest living banjo players. He’s followed what many experience as this quintessential Amer...

• [Unedited] Luis Alberto Urrea with Krista Tippett

  We humans have this drive to erect barriers between ourselves and others, Luis Alberto Urrea says, and yet this makes us a little crazy. He is an exuberant, wise, and refreshing companion into the deep meaning and the problem of borders — what they are re...

• Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem — Towards a Framework for Repair

  Through the ruptures of the past year and more, we’ve been given so much to learn, and callings to live differently. But how to do that, and where to begin? Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother's Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in...

• [Unedited] Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem with Krista Tippett

  Through the ruptures of the past year and more, we’ve been given so much to learn, and callings to live differently. But how to do that, and where to begin? Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother's Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in...

• Kevin Kling — The Losses We Grow Into

  We are digging into the archives to celebrate some of the conversations listeners have loved the most and that have shaped this project. Kevin Kling is part funny guy, part poet and playwright, part wise man — homegrown Minnesota meets Dante and Shakespea...

• Sharon Salzberg — The Healing Is In The Return

  As we reflect back on 2020 and look ahead, how do we keep walking forward, and even find renewal along the way? How can we hold to our sense of what is whole and true and undamaged even in the face of loss? Sharon Salzberg is one of the most esteemed medi...

• [Unedited] Sharon Salzberg with Krista Tippett

  As we reflect back on 2020 and look ahead, how do we keep walking forward, and even find renewal along the way? How can we hold to our sense of what is whole and true and undamaged even in the face of loss? Sharon Salzberg is one of the most esteemed medi...

• Jen Bailey — What We Inherit & What We Send Forth

  “I’m entering into this next phase… with a great deal of curiosity and perhaps tenderness, wanting to hold each other tight, because I think that there are ramifications of last year that have yet to be felt.” Rev. Jen Bailey is a wise young pastor and so...

• [Unedited] Jen Bailey with Krista Tippett

  “I’m entering into this next phase… with a great deal of curiosity and perhaps tenderness, wanting to hold each other tight, because I think that there are ramifications of last year that have yet to be felt.” Rev. Jen Bailey is a wise young pastor and so...

• Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach — ‘Courage is the presence of fear, and going anyway.’

  Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed has been a sensation of 2020 and beyond, and now she’s launched a new podcast titled with words of hers that have become a cultural force: We Can Do Hard Things. Meanwhile her wife, the soccer icon Abby Wambach, has her own be...

• [Unedited] Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach with Krista Tippett

  Glennon Doyle’s book Untamed has been a sensation of 2020 and beyond, and now she’s launched a new podcast titled with words of hers that have become a cultural force: We Can Do Hard Things. Meanwhile her wife, the soccer icon Abby Wambach, has her own be...

• Brian Greene — This Tiny Slice of Eternity

  If we didn’t have vast civilizational challenges upon us, we might be living in a constant state of wonder at what science in this century is learning and showing us about the cosmos and about ourselves — the new questions it’s giving us to live. We are t...

• [Unedited] Brian Greene with Krista Tippett – 2021 Conversation

  If we didn’t have vast civilizational challenges upon us, we might be living in a constant state of wonder at what science in this century is learning and showing us about the cosmos and about ourselves — the new questions it’s giving us to live. We are t...

• Esther Perel – The Erotic Is an Antidote to Death

  The psychotherapist Esther Perel has changed our discourse about sexuality and coupledom with her TED talks, her books, and her podcast, Where Should We Begin? Episode after episode lays bare the theater of relationship, which is also the drama of being h...

• [Unedited] Esther Perel with Krista Tippett

  The psychotherapist Esther Perel has changed our discourse about sexuality and coupledom with her TED talks, her books, and her podcast, Where Should We Begin? Episode after episode lays bare the theater of relationship, which is also the drama of being h...

• Jason Reynolds — Imagination and Fortitude

  Jason Reynolds is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature of the Library of Congress — and a magnificent source of wisdom for human society as a whole. He’s driven by compassion and the clear-eyed honesty that the young both possess and dema...

• [Unedited] Jason Reynolds with Krista Tippett

  Jason Reynolds is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature of the Library of Congress — and a magnificent source of wisdom for human society as a whole. He’s driven by compassion and the clear-eyed honesty that the young both possess and dema...

• Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows — ‘What a world you’ve got inside you.’

  A new translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet has been released in a world in which his voice and vision feel as resonant as ever before. In ten letters to a young person in 1903, Rilke touched on the enduring dramas of creating our li...

• [Unedited] Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows with Krista Tippett

  A new translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet has been released in a world in which his voice and vision feel as resonant as ever before. In ten letters to a young person in 1903, Rilke touched on the enduring dramas of creating our li...

• Alex Elle — Self-Care as Generational Healing

  Alex Elle complicates the idea of self-care, opening it up as community-care, as a way towards generational healing. And she’s revivifying the meaning of meeting one’s “inner child” for a new generation. Our colleague Lily Percy says she could not have su...

• [Unedited] Alex Elle with Liliana Maria Percy Ruiz

  Alex Elle complicates the idea of self-care, opening it up as community-care, as a way towards generational healing. And she’s revivifying the meaning of meeting one’s “inner child” for a new generation. Our colleague Lily Percy says she could not have su...

• Nicholas Christakis — How We’re Wired for Goodness

  Elemental human capacities like friendship and love, teaching and learning, have tremendous, constant, practical force. We don’t think of these in terms of what has given our species the grit to endure through hard times and even evolve in the long run. T...

• [Unedited] Nicholas Christakis with Krista Tippett

  Elemental human capacities like friendship and love, teaching and learning, have tremendous, constant, practical force. We don’t think of these in terms of what has given our species the grit to endure through hard times and even evolve in the long run. T...

• Robert Macfarlane — The Worlds Beneath Our Feet

  There’s dark matter in the cosmos, and inside us, and hidden beneath our feet. Robert Macfarlane is an explorer and linguist of landscape and his book, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, is an odyssey that’s full of surprises — from caves and catacombs under...

• [Unedited] Robert Macfarlane with Krista Tippett

  There’s dark matter in the cosmos, and inside us, and hidden beneath our feet. Robert Macfarlane is an explorer and linguist of landscape and his book, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, is an odyssey that’s full of surprises — from caves and catacombs under...

• Tracy K. Smith and Michael Kleber-Diggs — ‘History is upon us... its hand against our back.’

  The pandemic memoirs began almost immediately, and now comes another kind of offering — a searching look at the meaning of the racial catharsis to which the pandemic in some sense gave birth and voice and life. Tracy K. Smith co-edited the stunning book,...

• [Unedited] Tracy K. Smith and Michael Kleber-Diggs with Krista Tippett

  The pandemic memoirs began almost immediately, and now comes another kind of offering — a searching look at the meaning of the racial catharsis to which the pandemic in some sense gave birth and voice and life. Tracy K. Smith co-edited the stunning book,...

• Jill Tarter — 'It Takes a Cosmos to Make a Human'

  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 pioneer...

• [Unedited] Jill Tarter with Krista Tippett

  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 pioneer...

• Joy Harjo — The Whole of Time

  “Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world,” the extraordinary Joy Harjo has written, “nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm.” She is a saxophone player and performer, a visual arti...

• [Extended] Joy Harjo with Krista Tippett

  “Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world,” the extraordinary Joy Harjo has written, “nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm.” She is a saxophone player and performer, a visual arti...

• Daniel Kahneman – Why We Contradict Ourselves and Confound Each Other

  The classic economic theory embedded in western democracies holds an assumption that human beings will almost always behave rationally in the end and make logical choices that will keep our society balanced on the whole. Daniel Kahneman is the psychologis...

• [Unedited] Daniel Kahneman with Krista Tippett

  The classic economic theory embedded in western democracies holds an assumption that human beings will almost always behave rationally in the end and make logical choices that will keep our society balanced on the whole. Daniel Kahneman is the psychologis...

• Living the Questions — We’ve been enmeshed with our technologies. Tech Shabbat for everyone?

  Krista’s been in a conversation with Tiffany Shlain for several years about her practice of “Tech Shabbat.” For more than a decade, she and her family have taken a rest from screens sundown Friday to sundown Saturday; her book 24/6 is a kind of manual to...

• Hanif Abdurraqib — Moments of Shared Witnessing

  Hanif Abdurraqib’s writing is filled with lyricism, rhythm, people and precision. In his essays and poetry, he introduces readers to a soundscape of Black performance and Black joy: we hear hip-hop and jazz, we hear Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and Little...

• [Unedited] Hanif Abdurraqib with Pádraig Ó Tuama

  Hanif Abdurraqib’s writing is filled with lyricism, rhythm, people and precision. In his essays and poetry, he introduces readers to a soundscape of Black performance and Black joy: we hear hip-hop and jazz, we hear Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and Little...

• Layli Long Soldier — The Freedom of Real Apologies

  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...

• [Unedited] Layli Long Soldier with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Resmaa Menakem — ‘Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence’

  Across the past year, and now as the murder trial of Derek Chauvin unfolds with Minneapolis in fresh pain and turmoil, we return again to the grounding insights of Resmaa Menakem. He is a Minneapolis-based therapist and trauma specialist who activates the...

• [Unedited] Resmaa Menakem with Krista Tippett

  Across the past year, and now as the murder trial of Derek Chauvin unfolds with Minneapolis in fresh pain and turmoil, we return again to the grounding insights of Resmaa Menakem. He is a Minneapolis-based therapist and trauma specialist who activates the...

• Bryan Doerries — "You are not alone across time."

  “Remember,” Bryan Doerries likes to say in both physical and virtual gatherings, “you are not alone in this room — and you are not alone across time.” With his public health project, Theater of War, he is activating an old alchemy for our young century. A...

• [Unedited] Bryan Doerries with Krista Tippett

  “Remember,” Bryan Doerries likes to say in both physical and virtual gatherings, “you are not alone in this room — and you are not alone across time.” With his public health project, Theater of War, he is activating an old alchemy for our young century. A...

• Serene Jones — Grace in a Fractured World

  The glory that coexists in human life right alongside our weird propensity to choose what is not good for us; the difference between a place of sheer loss and a sacred space for mourning; grace as something muscular amidst the muck and mess of reality. Th...

• [Unedited] Serene Jones with Krista Tippett

  The glory that coexists in human life right alongside our weird propensity to choose what is not good for us; the difference between a place of sheer loss and a sacred space for mourning; grace as something muscular amidst the muck and mess of reality. Th...

• Michael Longley — The Vitality of Ordinary Things

  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...

• [Unedited] Michael Longley 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...

• [Unedited] Christine Runyan with Krista Tippett

  The years of pandemic and lockdown are still working powerfully on us from the inside. But we have trouble acknowledging this, much less metabolizing it. This conversation with Christine Runyan, which took place in the dark middle of those years, helps ma...

• Naomi Shihab Nye — “Before You Know Kindness As the Deepest Thing Inside...”

  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 t...

• [Unedited] Naomi Shihab Nye with Krista Tippett

  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 t...

• The Question “Who Am I,” and Movies We Love

  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....

• Ariel Burger — Be a Blessing

  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 wi...

• [Extended] Ariel Burger with Krista Tippett

  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 wi...

• Alain de Botton — The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships

  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...

• [Unedited] Alain de Botton with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Living the Questions — What's our communal equivalent of rubbing each other's feet?

  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 a...

• The Soul in Depression

  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....

• [Unedited] Andrew Solomon with Krista Tippett

  This is the unedited conversation Krista had with Andrew Solomon in 2002, which is excerpted within our produced episode “The Soul in Depression.” That episode also includes the voices of Anita Barrows and Parker Palmer.  Find the transcript for that show...

• [Unedited] Parker Palmer with Krista Tippett

  This is the unedited conversation Krista had with Parker Palmer in 2002, which is excerpted within our produced episode “The Soul in Depression.” That episode also includes the voices of Andrew Solomon and Anita Barrows.  Find the transcript for that show...

• [Unedited] Anita Barrows with Krista Tippett

  This is the unedited conversation Krista had with Anita Barrows in 2002, which is excerpted within our produced episode “The Soul in Depression.” That episode also includes the voices of Andrew Solomon and Parker Palmer.  Find the transcript for that show...

• J. Drew Lanham reads his poem “Love for a Song”

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

• J. Drew Lanham reads from his book.

  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 J. Drew is our episode ‘I...

• Katherine May Reads from 'Wintering'

  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 Ka...

• Living the Questions: A Civil Rights Elder on Exhaustion and Rest, Spiritual Practice, and the Necessity of Loving Community

  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...

• [Unedited] Nicki Giovanni with Krista Tippett

  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 a...

• Frank Wilczek — Beauty as a Compass for Truth

  “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? — pr...

• [Unedited] Frank Wilczek with Krista Tippett

  “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? — pr...

• Mary Catherine Bateson — Living as an Improvisational Art

  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,...

• [Unedited] Mary Catherine Bateson with Krista Tippett

  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,...

• Gaelynn Lea’s Voice and Violin

  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 2...

• [Unedited] Gaelynn Lea with Krista Tippett

  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 2...

• Jennifer Michael Hecht — 'We Believe Each Other Into Being'

  “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...

• [Unedited] Jennifer Michael Hecht with Krista Tippett

  “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...

• Bishop Michael Curry & Dr. Russell Moore — Spiritual Bridge People

  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...

• [Unedited] Bishop Michael Curry & Dr. Russell Moore with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Agustín Fuentes — This Species Moment

  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’r...

• [Unedited] Agustín Fuentes with Krista Tippett

  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’r...

• Richard Blanco — How to Love a Country

  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 poe...

• [Unedited] Richard Blanco with Krista Tippett

  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 poe...

• Remembering Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

  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 s...

• [Unedited] Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks with Krista Tippett

  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 s...

• Karen Murphy — The Long View, II: On Who We Can Become

  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 mov...

• [Unedited] Karen Murphy with Krista Tippett

  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 soc...

• Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

  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...

• Ars Poetica #100: I Believe by Elizabeth Alexander

  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,...

• The Facts of Life by Pádraig Ó Tuama

  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....

• This is what was bequeathed us by Gregory Orr

  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, whoe...

• America the Beautiful Again by Richard Blanco

  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, whoe...

• John Biewen — The Long View, I: On Being White

  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 Biewe...

• [Unedited] John Biewen with Krista Tippett

  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 Biewe...

• Rev. Otis Moss III — The Sound of the Genuine: Traversing 2020 with 'the Mystic of the Movement' Howard Thurman

  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 ca...

• [Unedited] Rev. Otis Moss III with Krista Tippett

  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 ca...

• Arlie Hochschild – The Deep Stories of Our Time

  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 t...

• [Unedited] Arlie Hochschild with Krista Tippett

  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 t...

• Jericho Brown – Small Truths and Other Surprises

  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 i...

• [Unedited] Jericho Brown with Krista Tippett

  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 i...

• From Poetry Unbound: Ada Limón — “Wonder Woman”

  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....

• ‘Poetry Unbound’ Returns, With Wisdom For Living Now

  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,...

• Craig Minowa & Cloud Cult — Music As Medicine

  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...

• [Unedited] Craig Minowa and Cloud Cult with Krista Tippett

  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...

• angel Kyodo williams – The World Is Our Field of Practice

  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 w...

• Living the Questions: Why 2020 hasn’t taken Rev. angel by surprise

  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 Bei...

• [Unedited] angel Kyodo williams with Krista Tippett

  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 w...

• Michael McCarthy — Nature, Joy, and Human Becoming

  “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 immobil...

• [Unedited] Michael McCarthy with Krista Tippett

  “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 immobil...

• Dario Robleto — Sculptor of Time and Loss

  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...

• [Unedited] Dario Robleto with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Marilyn Nelson — Communal Pondering in a Noisy World

  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...

• [Unedited] Marilyn Nelson with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Remembering John Lewis

  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...

• [Unedited] John Lewis with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Living the Questions: It’s really settling in now, the losses large and small

  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...

• Pauline Boss — Navigating Loss Without Closure

  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...

• [Unedited] Pauline Boss with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Vincent Harding — Is America Possible?

  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,” n...

• [Unedited] Vincent Harding with Krista Tippett

  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,” n...

• Isabel Wilkerson — This History is Long; This History Is Deep

  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...

• [Unedited] Isabel Wilkerson with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Eula Biss — Talking About Whiteness

  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...

• [Unedited] Eula Biss with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Race and Healing: A Body Practice

  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.”F...

• Living the Questions: When no question seems big enough

  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 o...

• Gregory Orr — Shaping Grief With Language

  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 gr...

• [Unedited] Gregory Orr with Krista Tippett

  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 gr...

• Jacqueline Novogratz — Towards a Moral Revolution

  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 inno...

• [Unedited] Jacqueline Novogratz with Krista Tippett 2020

  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 inno...

• Samar Jarrah, Wajahat Ali, Sahar Ullah, et al. — Revealing Ramadan

  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, recorde...

• Devendra Banhart — ‘When Things Fall Apart’

  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 wor...

• [Unedited] Devendra Banhart with Krista Tippett

  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 wor...

• Living the Questions: How can we balance connection with disconnection?

  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...

• Wendell Berry and Ellen Davis — The Art of Being Creatures

  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 ho...

• “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

  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.

• “How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” by Wendell Berry

  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.

• “Sabbaths – 1985, I” by Wendell Berry

  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.

• “Sabbaths – 1979, IV” by Wendell Berry

  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.

• “The Man Born to Farming” by Wendell Berry

  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.

• “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer” by Wendell Berry

  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.

• [Unedited] Ellen Davis with Krista Tippett

  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 poet...

• Living the Questions: How can I find my footing in a shifting world?

  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...

• David Steindl-Rast — How to Be Grateful in Every Moment (But Not for Everything)

  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...

• [Unedited] Brother David Steindl-Rast with Krista Tippett

  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...

• A Poem in Gratitude for Health Care Workers

  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,...

• Ai-jen Poo — This Is Our (Caring) Revolution

  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 c...

• [Unedited] Ai-jen Poo with Krista Tippett

  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 c...

• Living the Questions: At home, frustrated and stressed — is 'just being' worthy right now?

  “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 AngelesSo many of us are raised to believe that hard work is what makes us valuable; many of our professi...

• [Unedited] Ross Gay with Krista Tippett

  In our world of so much suffering, it can feel hard or wrong to invoke the word "joy." Yet joy has been one of the most insistent, recurrent rallying cries in almost every life-giving conversation that Krista has had across recent months and years, even a...

• Rebecca Solnit — Falling Together

  “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 c...

• [Unedited] Rebecca Solnit with Krista Tippett

  “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 c...

• Carlo Rovelli — All Reality Is Interaction

  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...

• [Unedited] Carlo Rovelli with Krista Tippett

  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...

• George Coyne and Guy Consolmagno — Asteroids, Stars, and the Love of God

  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 h...

• [Unedited] George Coyne and Guy Consolmagno with Krista Tippett

  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 h...

• Sandra Cisneros — A House of Her Own

  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...

• [Unedited] Sandra Cisneros with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Ezra Klein — How We Walked Into This and How We Can Walk Out

  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...

• [Unedited] Ezra Klein with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Introducing ‘Poetry Unbound’

  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 everyd...

• Alison Gopnik — The Evolutionary Power of Children and Teenagers

  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 ph...

• [Unedited] Alison Gopnik with Krista Tippett

  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 ph...

• Ruby Sales — Where Does it Hurt?

  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...

• [Unedited] Ruby Sales with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Joe Henry — Welcoming Flies at the Picnic

  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. Henr...

• [Unedited] Joe Henry with Krista Tippett

  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. Henr...

• Brené Brown — Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart

  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 wa...

• [Unedited] Brené Brown with Krista Tippett

  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 wa...

• Bessel van der Kolk — How Trauma Lodges in the Body

  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 experie...

• Greg Boyle — The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, and Kinship

  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 e...

• [Unedited] Greg Boyle with Krista Tippett

  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 e...

• "Close" by David Whyte read by Krista Tippett

  "Close" by David Whyte read by Krista TippettDavid 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 Solac...

• "América" (parts IV-V) by Richard Blanco

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

• Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser — The Mystery We Are

  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 th...

• [Unedited] Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser with Krista Tippett

  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 th...

• Joy Ladin — Finding a Home in Yourself

  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...

• [Unedited] Joy Ladin with Krista Tippett

  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...

• America Ferrera and John Paul Lederach — The Ingredients of Social Courage

  “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...

• [Unedited] America Ferrera and John Paul Lederach with Krista Tippett

  “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...

• Jennifer Bailey and Lennon Flowers — An Invitation to Brave Space

  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 pers...

• [Unedited] Jennifer Bailey and Lennon Flowers with Krista Tippett

  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 pers...

• David Treuer — Language Carries More Than Words

  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...

• [Unedited] David Treuer with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Derek Black and Matthew Stevenson — Befriending Radical Disagreement

  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 O...

• [Unedited] Derek Black and Matthew Stevenson with Krista Tippett

  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 O...

• Imani Perry — More Beautiful

  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 wo...

• [Unedited] Imani Perry with Krista Tippett - 2019

  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 wo...

• Erik Vance — The Drugs Inside Your Head

  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...

• [Unedited] Erik Vance with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Ta-Nehisi Coates — Imagining a New America

  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 a...

• [Unedited] Ta-Nehisi Coates with Krista Tippett

  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 a...

• ‘This Movie Changed Me’ Is Back

  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” an...

• Katy Payne — In the Presence of Elephants and Whales

  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...

• [Unedited] Katy Payne with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash — Called and Conflicted

  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 Uni...

• [Unedited] Shane Claiborne and Omar Saif Ghobash with Krista Tippett

  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 Uni...

• Darnell Moore — Self-Reflection and Social Evolution

  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...

• [Unedited] Darnell Moore with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Amichai Lau-Lavie — First Aid for Spiritual Seekers

  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 a...

• [Unedited] Amichai Lau-Lavie with Krista Tippett

  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 a...

• Jonathan Rowson — Integrating Our Souls, Systems, and Society

  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 g...

• [Unedited] Jonathan Rowson with Krista Tippett

  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 g...

• Annette Gordon-Reed and Titus Kaphar — Are We Actually Citizens Here?

  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...

• [Unedited] Annette Gordon-Reed and Titus Kaphar with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Indigo Girls — No Separation: On Music and Transcendence

  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...

• [Unedited] Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Jerry Colonna — Can You Really Bring Your Whole Self to Work?

  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...

• [Unedited] Jerry Colonna with Krista Tippett

  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...

• [Unedited] Richard Rohr with Krista Tippett

  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 formatio...

• Richard Rohr — Growing Up Men

  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 formatio...

• Abraham Verghese and Denise Pope — How Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

  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 becaus...

• [Unedited] Denise Pope and Abraham Verghese with Krista Tippett

  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 becaus...

• Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson — Community Organizing as a Spiritual Practice

  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 s...

• [Unedited] Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson with Krista Tippett

  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 s...

• [Unedited] Atul Gawande with Krista Tippett

  We are strange creatures. It is hard for us to speak about, or let in, the reality of frailty and death — the elemental fact of mortality itself. In this century, western medicine has gradually moved away from its understanding of death as a failure — whe...

• [Unedited] Joanna Macy with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Joanna Macy — A Wild Love for the World

  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...

• [Unedited] Wangari Maathai with Krista Tippett

  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 en...

• Wangari Maathai — Marching with Trees

  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 en...

• Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois and the American Soul

  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...

• [Unedited] Arnold Rampersad with Krista Tippett

  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...

• [Unedited] Whitney Battle-Baptiste with Krista Tippett

  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.

• [Unedited] Elizabeth Alexander with Krista Tippett

  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...

• [Unedited] Maya Angelou with Krista Tippett

  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...

• ‘Becoming Wise’ With Tools for the Art of Living

  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...

• [Unedited] Lawrence Kushner with Krista Tippett

  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 mi...

• Lawrence Kushner — Kabbalah and Everyday Mysticism

  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 mi...

• [Unedited] Sharon Olds with Krista Tippett

  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 import...

• Sharon Olds — Odes to the *****

  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 import...

• Jean Vanier — The Wisdom of Tenderness

  Editor’s note added 02/25/20: In February 2020, L’Arche International released the results of an independent investigation that it commissioned into Jean Vanier, who died in 2019. The investigation determined that the L’Arche founder, Catholic philosopher...

• [Unedited] Jean Vanier with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Teju Cole — Sitting Together in the Dark

  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 del...

• [Unedited] Teju Cole with Krista Tippett

  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 del...

• [Unedited] Richard Davidson with Krista Tippett

  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 genetic...

• Richard Davidson — A Neuroscientist on Love and Learning

  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 genetic...

• [Unedited] Maria Popova with Krista Tippett

  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-f...

• Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age

  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-f...

• [Unedited] Claudia Rankine with Krista Tippett

  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 bestsel...

• Claudia Rankine — How Can I Say This So We Can Stay in This Car Together?

  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 bestsel...

• Maira Kalman — Daily Things to Fall in Love With

  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 seriou...

• [Unedited] Maira Kalman with Krista Tippett

  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 lo...

• Walter Brueggemann — The Prophetic Imagination

  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.”...

• [Unedited] Walter Brueggemann with Krista Tippett

  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 Bruegg...

• Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein — #MeToo Through a Solutions Lens

  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 ar...

• [Unedited] Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein with Krista Tippett

  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 ar...

• Living the Questions: What does civility actually mean, and is it enough?

  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 some...

• [Unedited] Pico Iyer with Krista Tippett

  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 so...

• Pico Iyer — The Urgency of Slowing Down

  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 so...

• Anand Giridharadas — When the Market Is Our Only Language

  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 th...

• [Unedited] Anand Giridharadas with Krista Tippett

  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 t...

• James Doty — The Magic Shop of the Brain

  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...

• [Unedited] James Doty with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Tracy K. Smith — love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak

  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. T...

• [Unedited] Tracy K. Smith with Krista Tippett

  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. T...

• [Unedited] Mirabai Bush with Krista Tippett

  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. Mi...

• Mirabai Bush — Contemplation, Life, and Work

  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. Mi...

• David Whyte — Poetry from the On Being Gathering (Closing Words)

  “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 t...

• Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson — Relationship Across Rupture

  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 E...

• [Unedited] Sally Kohn and Erick Erickson with Krista Tippett

  “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 contr...

• Living the Questions: Can conversation make any difference at a moment like this?

  "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 adven...

• Poetry From the On Being Gathering — John Paul Lederach

  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, a...

• [Unedited] Frances Kissling with Krista Tippett

  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 foc...

• Frances Kissling — What Is Good in the Position of the Other

  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 foc...

• Poetry From the On Being Gathering — Marilyn Nelson

  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 companions...

• Seth Godin — Life, the Internet, and Everything

  “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 curiou...

• [Unedited] Seth Godin with Krista Tippett

  “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 curiou...

• Poetry from the On Being Gathering — Naomi Shihab Nye

  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 compani...

• Poetry From the On Being Gathering — David Whyte (Opening Night)

  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 companionshi...

• Mahzarin Banaji — The Mind Is a Difference-Seeking Machine

  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 implic...

• [Unedited] Mahzarin Banaji with Krista Tippett

  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...

• [Unedited] Alan Rabinowitz with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Alan Rabinowitz — We Are All Wildlife

  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...

• “Motherless Child” performed by Joe Carter

• “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen” performed by Joe Carter

• “Wade in the Water” performed by Joe Carter

• “Steal Away” performed by Joe Carter

• “Let the Work That I’ve Done Speak for Me” performed by Joe Carter

• “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” performed by Joe Carter

• [Unedited] Joe Carter with Krista Tippett

  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 ye...

• Joe Carter — The Spirituals

  “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 experie...

• Living the Questions with Krista Tippett — #4

  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 quest...

• Living the Questions with Krista Tippett — #3

   “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 mus...

• Cory Booker — Civic Spiritual Evolution

  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 rewa...

• [Unedited] Cory Booker with Krista Tippett

  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 a...

• Living the Questions with Krista Tippett — #2

  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...

• Living the Questions with Krista Tippett — #1

  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...

• Yo-Yo Ma — Music Happens Between the Notes

  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...

• [Unedited] Yo-Yo Ma with Krista Tippett

  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 improvi...

• The Moral World in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt for Now — Lyndsey Stonebridge

  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...

• [Unedited] Lyndsey Stonebridge with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Maria Shriver — Finding My “I Am”

  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....

• [Unedited] Maria Shriver with Krista Tippett

  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 es...

• [Unedited] Elizabeth Gilbert with Krista Tippett

  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. Creativit...

• Elizabeth Gilbert — Choosing Curiosity Over Fear

  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. Creativit...

• [Unedited] john a. powell with Krista Tippett

  “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 re...

• john a. powell — Opening to the Question of Belonging

  “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 re...

• Introducing The On Being Project

  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...

• This Is Your Brain on Sex

  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...

• [Unedited] Helen Fisher with Krista Tippett

  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...

• [Unedited] Maria Popova and Natalie Batalha with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Maria Popova and Natalie Batalha — Cosmic Imagining, Civic Pondering

  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...

• [Unedited] Parker Palmer with Krista Tippett

  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 dep...

• Naomi Shihab Nye — Your Life Is a Poem

  “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 gr...

• [Unedited] Nathalie Joachim with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Nathalie Joachim — Song of Haiti’s Women

  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 Joa...

• [Unedited] Stephen Batchelor with Krista Tippett 2018

  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 beli...

• Stephen Batchelor — Wondrous Doubt

  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 beli...

• [Unedited] Sylvia Earle with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Sylvia Earle — Her Deepness

  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...

• Rubén Blades, Ashley C. Ford, David Greene, et al. — This Movie Changed Me

  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 mo...

• Sarah Bassin and Abdullah Antepli — Holy Envy

  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 kno...

• [Unedited] Sarah Bassin and Abdullah Antepli with Krista Tippett

  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 kno...

• [Unedited] Mary Karr with Krista Tippett

  “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 childho...

• Mary Karr — Astonished by the Human Comedy

  “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 childho...

• Kevin Kelly — The Universe Is a Question

  “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 meani...

• [Unedited] Kevin Kelly with Krista Tippett

  “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 meani...

• Isabel Wilkerson — The Heart Is the Last Frontier

  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...

• [Unedited] Christian Wiman with Krista Tippett

  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 wit...

• Christian Wiman — How Does One Remember God?

  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 wit...

• Claire Danes, Ellen Burstyn, Tracy K. Smith, et al. — Stories About Mystery

  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, Jul...

• [Unedited] Adam Gopnik with Krista Tippett

  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 t...

• Adam Gopnik — Practicing Doubt, Redrawing Faith

  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 t...

• Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Kimball Coe — The Call to Community in a Changed World

  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...

• [Unedited] Anand Giridharadas and Whitney Kimball Coe with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Rachel Yehuda — How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations

  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...

• [Unedited] Rachel Yehuda with Krista Tippett

  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...

• [Unedited] Ellen Langer with Krista Tippett

  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 betwee...

• Ellen Langer — Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness

  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 betwee...

• [Unedited] Jonathan Haidt with Krista Tippett

  “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...

• Jonathan Haidt — The Psychology of Self-Righteousness

  “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...

• [Unedited] Joan Halifax with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Joan Halifax — Finding Buoyancy Amidst Despair

  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...

• [Unedited] Lisa Randall with Krista Tippett

  “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 ope...

• Lisa Randall — Dark Matter, Dinosaurs, and Extra Dimensions

  “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 ope...

• Arnold Eisen -- The Spiritual Audacity of Abraham Joshua Heschel

  “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...

• [Unedited] Arnold Eisen with Krista Tippett

  “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...

• [Unedited] Junot Díaz with Krista Tippett

  “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...

• Junot Díaz — Radical Hope Is Our Best Weapon

  “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...

• danah boyd — The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

  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...

• [Unedited] danah boyd with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Matthieu Ricard — Happiness As Human Flourishing

  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 exp...

• [Unedited] Matthieu Ricard with Krista Tippett

  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 exp...

• Billy Mills, Christina Torres, Ashley Hicks, et al. — Running as Spiritual Practice

  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 a...

• [Unedited] Martin Sheen with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Martin Sheen — Spirituality of Imagination

  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 an...

• [Unedited] Enrique Martínez Celaya with Krista Tippett

  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....

• Enrique Martínez Celaya — The Whisper of the Order of Things

  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....

• Hari Kondabolu, Lindy West, et al. — Humor as a Tool for Survival

  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...

• Brian Greene — Reimagining the Cosmos

  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 realit...

• [Unedited] Brian Greene with Krista Tippett

  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 realit...

• [Unedited] Patrisse Cullors and Robert Ross with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Patrisse Cullors and Robert Ross — The Spiritual Work of Black Lives Matter

  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...

• [Unedited] Glenn Beck with Krista Tippett

  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,...

• Glenn Beck — What You Do Will Be a Pivot Point

  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...

• Marie Howe — The Power of Words to Save Us

  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 an...

• [Unedited] Marie Howe with Krista Tippett

  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 an...

• [Unedited] Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

  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...

• Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant — Resilience After Unimaginable Loss

  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...

• Heather McGhee and Matt Kibbe — Repairing the Breach

  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...

• [Unedited] Heather McGhee and Matt Kibbe with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Joy Ladin — Transgender Amid Orthodoxy: I Am Who I Will Be

  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 tran...

• [Unedited] Margaret Wertheim with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Margaret Wertheim — The Grandeur and Limits of Science

  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 connec...

• Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne — How to Be a Christian Citizen: Three Evangelicals Debate

  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 abou...

• [Unedited] Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne with Krista Tippett

  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 Evange...

• [Unedited] Anil Dash with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Anil Dash — Tech's Moral Reckoning

  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 learn...

• Alice Parker — Singing Is the Most Companionable of Arts

  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 yea...

• [Unedited] Alice Parker with Krista Tippett

  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 e...

• James Martin — Finding God in All Things

  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...

• [Unedited] James Martin with Krista Tippett

  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:...

• [Unedited] Natasha Trethewey and Eboo Patel with Krista Tippett

  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 “Sa...

• Natasha Trethewey and Eboo Patel — How to Live Beyond This Election

  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 interfa...

• David Brooks and E.J. Dionne — Sinfulness, Hopefulness, and the Possibility of Politics

  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...

• [Unedited] David Brooks and E.J. Dionne with Krista Tippett

  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 Righ...

• Leonard Mlodinow — Randomness and Choice

  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 interpl...

• [Unedited] Leonard Mlodinow with Krista Tippett

  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: T...

• Alain de Botton — A School of Life for Atheists

  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 qu...

• [Unedited] Alain de Botton with Krista Tippett (2012)

  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 f...

• [Unedited] Parker Palmer and Courtney Martin with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Parker Palmer and Courtney Martin — The Inner Life of Rebellion

  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 bein...

• [Unedited] Jimmy Wales with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Jimmy Wales — The Sum of All Human Knowledge

  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 wit...

• [Unedited] Gustavo Santaolalla with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Gustavo Santaolalla — How Movie Music Moves Us

  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...

• [Unedited] Paulo Coelho with Krista Tippett

  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...

• Paulo Coelho — The Alchemy of Pilgrimage

  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,...

• [Unedited] Xavier Le Pichon with Krista Tippett

  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 feat...

• Xavier Le Pichon — The Fragility at the Heart of Humanity

  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...

• Jonathan Haidt and Melvin Konner — Capitalism and Moral Evolution: A Civil Provocation

  It was supposed to be a discussion about “culture and conscience” with two social scientists, as part of a public gathering of the Center for Humans and Nature at the American Museum of Natural History. But Jonathan Haidt is studying the relationship betw...

• [Unedited] Jonathan Haidt + Melvin Konner with Krista Tippett

  Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His books include “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” and, forthcoming in 2017, “Three Stories ab...

• [Unedited] Kevin Kling with Krista Tippett

  Kevin Kling is a performer and an advisory council member of Interact. His plays include “21A” and “Lloyd’s Prayer.” His books include “The Dog Says How.” The new PBS documentary about his life and work is called “Kevin Kling: Lost and Found.” This interv...

• David Isay — Listening as an Act of Love

  “The soul is contained in the human voice,” says David Isay, founder of StoryCorps. He sees the StoryCorps booth — a setting where two people ask the questions they’ve always wanted to ask each other — as a sacred space. He shares his wisdom about listeni...

• [Unedited] David Isay with Krista Tippett

  David Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant and 2015 TED Prize. His new StoryCorps book is “Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work”. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Bein...

• [Unedited] Krista Tippett with Pico Iyer

  Krista Tippett is a journalist and host of On Being. She is the New York Times bestselling author of “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living” and “Einstein’s God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit.” She won a Peabody A...

• Krista Tippett — An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

  This episode, a “theft of the dial.” Writer and traveler Pico Iyer turns the tables on our host Krista Tippett by asking her the questions. Her latest book, “Becoming Wise,” chronicles what she’s learned through her conversations with the most extraordina...

• Michelle Alexander — Who We Want to Become: Beyond the New Jim Crow

  The civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander is one of the people who is waking us up to history we don’t remember, and structures most of us can’t fathom intending to create. She calls the punitive culture that has emerged the “new Jim Crow,” and is making...

• [Unedited] Michelle Alexander with Krista Tippett

  Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, and has served as the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern Ca...

• Tiffany Shlain — Growing Up the Internet

  When Tiffany Shlain thinks of her favorite quote from naturalist John Muir, she thinks of the internet: “When you tug at a single thing in the universe, you find it’s attached to everything else.” As a filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards — the “Osca...

• [Unedited] Tiffany Shlain with Krista Tippett

  Tiffany Shlain is the founder of the Webby Awards and a co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. She has directed and co-written 28 films, some with accompanying books, including “The Science of Character,” “Brain Power: From...

• Nathan Schneider — The Wisdom of Millennials

  There’s a kind of brilliance that flashes up in early adulthood: an ability to see the world whole. Nathan Schneider has been able to articulate and sustain that far-seeing eye of young adulthood. He’s also a gifted writer, chronicling the world he and hi...

• [Unedited] Nathan Schneider with Krista Tippett

  Nathan Schneider is a scholar-in-residence of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of “God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet” and “Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse.” He i...

• Jean Berko Gleason — Unfolding Language, Unfolding Life

  Jean Berko Gleason is a living legend in the field of psycholinguistics — how language emerges, and what it tells us about how we think and who we are. She has helped to illustrate the remarkable ordinary human capacity to begin to speak, and she’s contin...

• [Unedited] Jean Berko Gleason with Krista Tippett

  Jean Berko Gleason is Professor Emerita of psychology at Boston University. This interview was edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jean Berko Gleason — Unfolding Language, Unfolding Life.” Find more at onbeing.org.

• B.J. Miller — Reframing Our Relationship to That We Don’t Control

  “Let death be what takes us,” Dr. BJ Miller has written, “not a lack of imagination.” As a palliative care physician, he brings a design sensibility to the matter of living until we die. And he’s largely redesigned his sense of own physical presence after...

• [Unedited] B.J. Miller with Krista Tippett

  B.J. Miller is executive director of the Zen Hospice Project, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an attending specialist for the Symptom Management Service of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive...

• [Unedited] Carrie Newcomer with Krista Tippett

  Carrie Newcomer is a singer-songwriter. Her albums include “Betty’s Diner,” “The Gathering of Spirits,” and “A Permeable Life,” which has an accompanying book of poetry and essays. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the...

• Carrie Newcomer — A Conversation with Music

  Something of a celebrity in Quaker circles, Carrie Newcomer is best known for her story-songs that get at the raw and redemptive edges of human reality. This week, a musical conversation with the Indiana-based and born folk singer-songwriter who’s been ca...

• Paul Muldoon — A Conversation with Verse

  The Irish poet and “New Yorker” poetry editor Paul Muldoon has won the Pulitzer Prize, written for other media from radio to song, and plays in a rock band. He visited us for a magical day at the On Being studios on Loring Park in Minneapolis, including a...

• [Unedited] Paul Muldoon with Krista Tippett

  Paul Muldoon holds the Howard G.B. Clark chair in the Humanities at Princeton University. He has served as the poetry editor at the The New Yorker since 2007. He is the author of 12 major collections of poetry, including “Horse Latitudes,” “Hay,” and “One...

• Mark Hyman, James Gordon, and Penny George — The Evolution of Medicine

  A transformation of medicine is underway, a transition from a science of treating disease to a science of health. Mark Hyman is a family physician and a pioneer in the new discipline of functional medicine. James Gordon is an expert in using mind-body med...

• [Unedited] Penny George, Mark Hyman, and James Gordon with Krista Tippett

  Mark Hyman is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He is also the founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center. He’s a practicing family physician and a best-selling author. James Gordon is the founder and execu...

• [Unedited] Ann Hamilton with Krista Tippett

  Ann Hamilton is a visual artist and self-described maker. She is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Art at Ohio State University. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Ann Hamilto...

• Ann Hamilton — Making, and the Spaces We Share

  The philosopher Simone Weil defined prayer as “absolutely unmixed attention.” The artist Ann Hamilton embodies this notion in her sweeping works of art that bring all the senses together. She uses her hands to create installations that are both visually a...

• Adam Grant — Successful Givers, Toxic Takers, and the Life We Spend at Work

  The organizational psychologist Adam Grant, who many know from his New York Times columns, describes three orientations of which we are all capable: the givers, the takers, and the matchers. These influence whether organizations are joyful or toxic for hu...

• [Unedited] Adam Grant with Krista Tippett

  Adam Grant is a professor of psychology at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the youngest tenured and highest rated professor. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times. He has consulted for numerous org...

• Nancy Cantor and Christopher Howard — Beyond the Ivory Tower

  When we talk about the relationship between colleges and the world, we tend to focus on economics. But what is the place of institutions of higher education in the communities they inhabit? How can and should they nurture students as citizens and leaders...

• [Unedited] Nancy Cantor and Christopher Howard with Krista Tippett

  Nancy Cantor is a social psychologist and the chancellor of Rutgers University–Newark, one of the most diverse institutions in the U.S. She is widely recognized for helping forge a new understanding of the role of universities in society that re-emphasize...

• Louis Newman — The Refreshing Practice of Repentance

  The High Holy Days create an annual ritual of repentance, both individual and collective. Louis Newman, who has explored repentance as an ethicist and a person in recovery, opens this up as a refreshing practice for every life, even beyond the lifetime of...

• [Unedited] Louis Newman with Krista Tippett

  Louis Newman is an Associate Dean of Carleton College and John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies. He is the author of several books on Jewish ethics and theology, including “Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah.” This i...

• Grace Lee Boggs — A Century in the World

  Chinese-American philosopher and civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs turned 100 this summer. She has been at the heart and soul of a largely hidden story inside Detroit’s evolution from economic collapse to rebirth. We traveled in 2011 to meet her and her...

• [Unedited] Grace Lee Boggs with Krista Tippett

  Grace Lee Boggs was a philosopher and a civil rights leader and a founder of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center. She authored the book “Living for Change: An Autobiography.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On B...

• [Unedited] Rex Jung and Krista Tippett

  Rex Jung is an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He’s a Distinguished Senior Advisor to the Positive Neuroscience Project, based at the University of Pennsylvania. This interview is edited and produced wit...

• Rex Jung — Creativity and the Everyday Brain

  Few features of humanity are more fascinating than creativity; and few fields are more dynamic now than neuroscience. Rex Jung is a neuropsychologist who puts the two together. He’s working on a cutting edge of science, exploring the differences and inter...

• Elizabeth Alexander — Words That Shimmer

  Poetry is something many of us seem to be hungry for these days. We’re hungry for fresh ways to tell hard truths and redemptive stories, for language that would elevate and embolden rather than demean and alienate. Elizabeth Alexander shares her sense of...

• [Unedited] Elizabeth Alexander with Krista Tippett

  Elizabeth Alexander is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. She’s the author of a new memoir, “The Light of the World.” She’s also the author of several books of essays an...

• Rami Nashashibi — A New Coming Together

  Rami Nashashibi uses graffiti, calligraphy, and hip-hop in his work as a healing force on the South Side of Chicago. A Palestinian-American, he started his activism with at-risk urban Muslim families, especially youth, while he was still a college student...

• [Unedited] Rami Nashashibi with Krista Tippett

  Rami Nashashibi is founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN). He is a visiting assistant professor of Sociology of Religion and Muslim Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary. This interview is edited and produced with...

• [Unedited] Simone Campbell with Krista Tippett

  Sr. Simone Campbell is the executive director of NETWORK. She is the author of “A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Simone Ca...

• Simone Campbell — How to Be Spiritually Bold

  She became a national figure as the face of the “Nuns on the Bus.” Sr. Simone Campbell is a lawyer, lobbyist, poet, and Zen contemplative working on issues such as “mending the wealth gap,” “enacting a living wage,” and “crafting a faithful budget that be...

• [Unedited] Jane Gross with Krista Tippett

  Jane Gross is the creator of “The New Old Age” blog at The New York Times and author of “A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents — and Ourselves.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Jane...

• Jane Gross — The Far Shore of Aging

  It is a story of our time — the new landscape of living longer, and of dying more slowly too. Jane Gross has explored this as a daughter and as a journalist, and as creator of the New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog. She has grounded advice and practical w...

• [Unedited] Mohammed Fairouz with Krista Tippett

  Mohammed Fairouz is a composer whose opera and symphonies have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and The Kennedy Center. His 11 albums include “Native Informant,” “In The Shadow of No Towers,” “Poems and Prayers,” and, most recently, “Follo...

• Mohammed Fairouz — The World in Counterpoint

  He’s been called a post-millennial Schubert. Mohammed Fairouz has composed four symphonies and an opera while still in his 20s. He invokes John F. Kennedy and Anwar Sadat, Seamus Heaney and Yehuda Amichai in his compositions. He sees “illustrious language...

• David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch — The Future of Marriage

  What would it take to make our national encounter with gay marriage redemptive rather than divisive? David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch came to the gay marriage debate from very different directions — but with a shared concern about the institution of m...

• [Unedited] David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch with Krista Tippett

  David Blankenhorn is founder and president of the Institute of American Values. He’s also co-director of The Marriage Opportunity Council. His books include “The Future of Marriage.” Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-di...

• [Unedited] Bruce Kramer with Krista Tippett

  Bruce Kramer was the creator of “The Dis Ease Diary” a blog about his life with ALS and “We Know How This Ends: Living While Dying.” He was the Dean of the College of Education, Leadership and Counseling at the University of St. Thomas, where he served on...

• Bruce Kramer — Forgiving the Body: Life with ALS

  From the moment of his diagnosis with ALS, Bruce Kramer began writing — openly, deeply, and spiritually — about his struggle, as he puts it, to live while dying. He died on March 23, 2015, while we were in production on this show. His words hold abiding j...

• [Unedited] Alan Dienstag with Krista Tippett

  Alan Dienstag is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City and Westchester County. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Alan Dienstag — Alzheimer’s and the Spiritual Terrain of Mem...

• Alan Dienstag — Alzheimer's and the Spiritual Terrain of Memory

  Alzheimer’s disease has been described as “the great unlearning.” But what does it reveal about the nature of human identity? What remains when memory unravels? Alan Dienstag is a psychologist who has led support groups with early Alzheimer’s patients, as...

• Arthur Zajonc and Michael McCullough — Mind and Morality: A Dialogue`

  For several hundred years, much of scientific advance has been about exploring human beings, including their actions and choices, in terms of mechanism — our bodies, our brains, physical processes. Research psychologist Michael McCullough believes that un...

• [Unedited] Arthur Zajonc and Michael McCullough

  Arthur Zajonc is president of the Mind and Life Institute. He is emeritus professor of physics at Amherst College, where he taught from 1978 to 2012. His books include “Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love” and “The Heart of High...

• Eve Ensler — The Body After Cancer

  Eve Ensler has helped women all over the world tell the stories of their lives through the stories of their bodies. Her play, “The Vagina Monologues,” has become a global force in the face of violence against women and girls. But she herself also had a vi...

• [Unedited] Eve Ensler with Krista Tippett

  Eve Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist. She is the author of “The Vagina Monologues” and “The Good Body.” Her memoir is “In the Body of the World.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the...

• Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons and Lucas Johnson — The Movement, Remembered Forward

  Wisdom for how we can move and heal our society in our time as the Civil Rights Movement galvanized its own. Lucas Johnson is bringing the art and practice of nonviolence into a new century, for new generations. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons was an original B...

• [Unedited] Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons and Lucas Johnson with Krista Tippett

  Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons is assistant professor of religion at the University of Florida. She is also 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 i...

• Brené Brown — The Courage to Be Vulnerable

  Courage is borne out of vulnerability, not strength. This finding of Brené Brown’s research on shame and “wholeheartedness” shook the perfectionist ground beneath her own feet. And now it’s inspiring millions to reconsider the way they live, parent, and n...

• [Unedited] Brené Brown with Krista Tippett (2013)

  Brené Brown is Research Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her books include: “The Gifts of Imperfection” and “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.” This...

• Reza Aslan — Islam's Reformation

  In a probing and personal conversation, Reza Aslan opens a refreshing window on religion in the world and Islam in particular. It’s a longer view of history and humanity than news cycles invite — certainly when it comes to the Arab Spring, or to ISIS. His...

• [Unedited] Reza Aslan with Krista Tippett

  Reza Aslan is the founder of Aslan Media, a social media network for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world. A scholar of religions, he is currently professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His books in...

• Bernard Chazelle — Discovering the Cosmology of Bach

  Computer scientist Bernard Chazelle has an original take on what music works in us — especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Just as mathematicians talk about discovering rather than inventing great equations, so, he says, Bach set out to “discover...

• [Unedited] Bernard Chazelle with Krista Tippett

  Bernard Chazelle is Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and a member of...

• [Unedited] Nadia Bolz-Weber with Krista Tippett

  Nadia Bolz-Weber is the pastor and founder of the Denver-based church the House for All Sinners and Saints. Her spiritual memoir is “Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other fe...

• Nadia Bolz-Weber — Seeing the Underside and Seeing God: Tattoos, Tradition, and Grace

  She’s the tattooed, Lutheran pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, a church where a chocolate fountain, a blessing of the bicycles, and serious liturgy come together. She’s a face of the Emerging Church — redefining what church is, wit...

• Scott Atran — Hopes and Dreams in a World of Fear

  For over a decade, the French-American anthropologist Scott Atran has been listening to the hopes and dreams of young people from Indonesia to Egypt. He explores the human dynamics of what we analyze as “breeding grounds for terrorism” — why some young pe...

• [Unedited] Scott Atran with Krista Tippett

  Scott Atran is director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, visiting professor at the University of Michigan, senior fellow at Harris Manchester College of Oxford University and research professor at the John Jay College o...

• [Unedited] Michel Martin with Krista Tippett

  Michel Martin is a journalist with NPR. She previously reported for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and ABC’s “Nightline.” She was the creator and host of the NPR program Tell Me More, which ran from 2007-2014. This interview is edited and p...

• Michel Martin — The Fabric of Our Identity

  If journalism is a primary way we tell the story of ourselves and our time, Michel Martin is a person helping us tell that story — and take part in it — more completely. Her daily NPR program “Tell Me More” was often labeled as “diversity” or “minority” p...

• His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Jonathan Sacks, Katharine Jefferts Schori, Et. Al. — Pursuing Happiness

  The XIV Dalai Lama seems to many to embody happiness — happiness against the odds, a virtue that is acquired and practiced. Before a live audience in Atlanta, Georgia, Krista had a rare opportunity to mull over the meaning of happiness in contemporary lif...

• [Unedited] The Dalai Lama, Jonathan Sacks, Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr with Krista Tippett

  His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet. He is the author of many books, including “Ethics for a New Millennium.” Jonathan Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwe...

• Richard Rodriguez — The Fabric of Our Identity

  After September 11, 2001, Richard Rodriguez traveled to the Middle East to explore his kinship, as a Roman Catholic, with the men who stepped onto airplanes and turned them into weapons of terror. What he learned illuminates some of the deepest paradox an...

• [Unedited] Richard Rodriguez with Krista Tippett

  Richard Rodriguez is a journalist and essayist. He won a Peabody Award for his original commentary on The NewsHour and received the National Humanities Medal in 1993. His books include “Hunger Of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez,” “Brown: The La...

• [Unedited] Imani Perry with Krista Tippett

  Imani Perry is a professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University. Her scholarly books include “Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop” and “More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality i...

• Imani Perry — The Fabric of Our Identity

  Imani Perry is a scholar of law, culture, race — and hip hop. She acknowledges wise voices who say that we will never get to the promised land of racial equality. She writes, “That may very well be true, but it is also true that extraordinary things have...

• [Unedited] Dan Barber with Krista Tippett

  Dan Barber is chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. He’s received James Beard Awards for best chef in 2006 and 2009, and was named one of the world’s most influential people by Time. This interview is edited and produced with music...

• Dan Barber — Driven By Flavor

  Dan Barber is a celebrated young chef — but his passionate ethics and intellect have made him much more. He’s out to restore food to its rightful place vis-à-vis our bodies, our ecologies and our economies. And he would do this by resurrecting our natural...

• Adele Diamond — The Science of Attention

  What Adele Diamond is learning about the brain challenges basic assumptions in modern education. Her work is scientifically illustrating the educational power of things like play, sports, music, memorization, and reflection. What nourishes the human spiri...

• [Unedited] Adele Diamond with Krista Tippett

  Adele Diamond is a professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Adele Diamond — The Science of Attention.” Find more a...

• Anita Desai and Andrew Robinson — The Modern Resonance of Rabindranath Tagore

  He bestowed the title “Mahatma” on Gandhi. He debated the deepest nature of reality with Einstein. He was championed by Yeats and Pound to become the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Rabindranath Tagore was a polymath — a...

• [Unedited] Andrew Robinson with Krista Tippett

  Andrew Robinson is a biographer and writer. He is the co-author of “The Myriad-Minded Man,” a biography of Rabindranath Tagore. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anita Desai and Andrew Robinson —...

• [Unedited] Anita Desai with Krista Tippett

  Anita Desai is an Indian novelist of Bengali descent. Her novels include “Clear Light of Day,” “The Village by the Sea,” and “Fasting, Feasting.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Anita Desai and...

• [Unedited] Seane Corn with Krista Tippett

  Seane Corn is the National Yoga Ambassador for YouthAIDS and cofounder of “Off the Mat, Into the World.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Seane Corn — Yoga, Meditation in Action.” Find more at on...

• Seane Corn — Yoga, Meditation in Action

  Yoga has infiltrated law schools and strip malls, churches and hospitals. This 5,000-year-old spiritual technology is converging with 21st-century medical science and with many religious and philosophical perspectives. Seane Corn takes us inside the pract...

• [Unedited] Steven Waldman with Krista Tippett

  Steven Waldman is the author of “Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty.” He is the founder and former editor of Beliefnet and now heads Daily Bridge Media. This interview is edited and produced with mu...

• Philip Hamburger and Steven Waldman — The Long Experiment of American Democracy

  For the Fourth of July, a refreshing reality check about the long road of American democracy. We remember forgotten but fascinating, useful history as we contemplate how we might help young democracies on their own tumultuous paths now.

• [Unedited] Stuart Brown with Krista Tippett

  Stuart Brown is founder and president of the National Institute for Play near Monterey, California. He is co-author of “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.” This interview is edited and produced with music and o...

• Stuart Brown — Play, Spirit, and Character

  Who knew that we learn empathy, trust, irony, and problem solving through play — something the dictionary defines as “pleasurable and apparently purposeless activity.” Dr. Stuart Brown suggests that the rough-and-tumble play of children actually prevents...

• Rosanne Cash, Time Traveler

  As the daughter of Johnny Cash, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash describes her life as “circumscribed by music.” But, it’s through her love of language and quantum mechanics that she’s finding new sources of creativity and mathematical ways to think about t...

• [Unedited] Rosanne Cash with Krista Tippett

  Rosanne Cash is a Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter and author of several books. Her latest album is “The River & the Thread.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Rosanne Cash — Time Travel...

• [Unedited] Maria Tatar with Krista Tippett

  Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where she also chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology. Her books include “Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood” and “The Annotated...

• Maria Tatar — The Great Cauldron of Story: Why Fairy Tales are for Adults Again

  Fairy tales don’t only belong to the domain of childhood. Their overt themes are threaded throughout hit TV series like “Game of Thrones” and “True Blood,” “Grimm” and “Once Upon a Time.” These stories survive, says Maria Tatar, by adapting across culture...

• [Unedited] Jaroslav Pelikan With Krista Tippett

  Jaroslav Pelikan was professor of history at Yale University for four decades. He authored many books “Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine” and “Credo.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the O...

• Jaroslav Pelikan — The Need for Creeds

  The idea of reciting an unchanging creed sounds suspicious to modern ears. But the late, great historian Jaroslav Pelikan illuminated ancient tradition in order to enliven faith in the present and the future. He insisted that strong statements of belief w...

• Janna Levin — Mathematics, Purpose, and Truth

  An astrophysicist who studies the shape of the universe, Janna Levin has also explored her science by writing a novel about two pivotal 20th-century mathematicians, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. Both men pushed at boundaries where mathematics presses on gra...

• [Unedited] Janna Levin with Krista Tippett

  Janna Levin is an astrophysicist and writer. She has contributed to an understanding of black holes, the cosmology of extra dimensions, and gravitational waves in the shape of spacetime. She is the author of “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines,” which won...

• Desmond Tutu — A God of Surprises

  “There’s no question about the reality of evil, of injustice, of suffering, but at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love.” South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu on how his understanding of God and humanity has unfolded through...

• Brian McLaren — The Equation of Change

  “Let’s go back and look at our faith before it was reduced to a system, before it was reduced to a system of abstractions and beliefs. How can we rediscover our faith as a series of stories and as a series of encounters?” Brian McLaren on the evolution of...

• [Unedited] Brian McLaren with Krista Tippett

  Brian McLaren is a leading Evangelical pastor and author of several books including “A Generous Orthodoxy,” “Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?,” and the forthcoming “We Make the Road by Walking.” This interview is edited and p...

• [Unedited] Sherwin Nuland with Krista Tippett

  Sherwin Nuland was a clinical professor of surgery at Yale University, where he also taught bioethics and medical history. His books include “How We Die,” “Lost in America,” “Maimonides,” and “How We Live: The Wisdom of the Body.” This interview is edited...

• Sherwin Nuland — The Biology of the Spirit

  Dr. Sherwin Nuland died this week at the age of 83. He became well-known for his first book, “How We Die,” which won the National Book Award. For him, pondering death was a way of wondering at life — and the infinite variety of processes that maintain hum...

• Bobby McFerrin — Catching Song

  He is a genius of improvisation; a genre-bending vocal magician and conductor. And he sings the territory between music, mystery, and spirit. Who better to contemplate the human voice — its delights, its revelations, and its mystery — than Bobby McFerrin?...

• [Unedited] Bobby McFerrin with Krista Tippett

  Bobby McFerrin is a ten-time Grammy Award winner. He is one of the world’s best-known vocal innovators and improvisers, a world-renowned classical conductor, and a passionate spokesman for music education. This interview is edited and produced with music...

• [Unedited] Paul Elie with Krista Tippett

  Paul Elie is a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the director of the American Pilgrimage Project. His books include “The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage” and “Reinventing Bach.” This int...

• Paul Elie — Faith Fired by Literature

  The writers Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy, social activist Dorothy Day, and the Trappist monk Thomas Merton — all four shared a complex Catholic faith. Paul Elie takes us on a kind of literary pilgrimage through a Catholic imagination that still reso...

• David Hartman — Hope in a Hopeless God

  David Hartman died a year ago this week. The Orthodox rabbi was a charismatic and challenging figure in Israeli society, called a “public philosopher for the Jewish people” and a “champion of adaptive Judaism.” We remember his window into the unfolding of...

• [Unedited] David Hartman with Krista Tippett

  David Hartman was an Orthodox rabbi and founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He authored many books, including “A Heart of Many Rooms” and “The God Who Hates Lies.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in th...

• [Unedited] Ursula King with Krista Tippett

  Ursula King is Professor Emerita of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Ursula King, Andrew Revkin, and David Sloan Wilson — Teilhard de...

• Ursula King, Andrew Revkin, and David Sloan Wilson — Teilhard de Chardin's Planetary Mind and Our Spiritual Evolution

  The coming stage of evolution, Teilhard de Chardin said, won’t be driven by physical adaptation but by human consciousness, creativity, and spirit. We visit with his biographer Ursula King, and we experience his ideas energizing New York Times Dot Earth b...

• [Unedited] Patrick Bellegarde-Smith with Krista Tippett

  Patrick Bellegarde-Smith is a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and author of many books about Vodou. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Patrick Bellegarde-Smith — Living Vodou....

• Patrick Bellegarde-Smith — Living Vodou

  The word “Vodou” evokes images of sorcery and sticking pins into dolls. In fact, it’s a living tradition wherever Haitians are found based on ancestral religions in Africa. We walk through this mysterious tradition — one with dramatic rituals of trances a...

• Phil Donahue — Transformation, On-Screen and Off

  Talk show pioneer Phil Donahue opens up on his remarkable perspective on the last half century of America and who we are now. He shares his personal transformations on race, gender roles, and parenting in the dramatic era he captured on television.

• [Unedited] Interview with Phil Donahue and Krista Tippett

  In this unedited interview, talk show pioneer Phil Donahue opens up on his remarkable perspective on the last half century of America and who we are now. He shares with Krista Tippett his personal transformations on race, gender roles, and parenting in th...

• [Unedited] Vincent Harding and Phyllis Tickle with Krista Tippett

  This is the unedited version of On Being’s produced show, “Racial Identity in the Emerging Church and the World.” Emerging church elder Phyllis Tickle and civil rights veteran Vincent Harding in an honest and sometimes politically incorrect conversation o...

• Vincent Harding and Phyllis Tickle — Racial Identity in the Emerging Church and the World

  What might words like repentance or forgiveness mean, culturally, in this moment? These are questions of the emerging church, a loosely-defined movement that crosses generations, theologies and social ideologies in the hope of reimagining Christianity. Wi...

• Martin Rees — Cosmic Origami and What We Don't Know

  Parallel realities and the deep structure of space-time sound like science fiction. These are matters of real scientific inquiry. Lord Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and self-professed atheist who paints a fascinating picture of how we might be changed...

• [Unedited] Lord Martin Rees with Krista Tippett

  Some of the biggest philosophical and ethical questions of this century may be raised on scientific frontiers — as we gain a better understanding of the deep structure of space and time and the wilder “microworld.” Astrophysicist Martin Rees paints a fasc...

• Ira Byock — Contemplating Mortality

  What if we understand death as a developmental stage — like adolescence or mid-life? Dr. Ira Byock is a leading figure in palliative care and hospice in the United States. He says we lose sight of “the remarkable value” of the time of life we call dying i...

• [Unedited] Ira Byock with Krista Tippett

  What if we understand death as a developmental stage — like adolescence or mid-life? Dr. Ira Byock shares how we can understand dying as a time of learning, repair, and completion of our lives. Krista Tippett interviewed Dr. Ira Byock on March 2, 2012. Th...

• [Unedited] Esther Sternberg with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett spoke with immunologist Esther Sternberg on March 30, 2012. This unedited interview is included in our show, “The Science of Healing Places.” Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

• Esther Sternberg — The Science of Healing Places

  The light and smells in places like hospitals can often depress us. And, our favorite room at home keeps us sane. But why? Immunologist Esther Sternberg explains the scientific research revealing how physical spaces create stress and make us sick — and ho...

• [Unedited] David Sloan Wilson with Krista Tippett

  David Sloan Wilson believes that evolution is not just a description of how we got here. He says it can also be a tool kit for improving how we live together. He’s taken what he’s learned in studying evolution in animals and is now applying it to the beha...

• David Sloan Wilson — Evolving a City

  David Sloan Wilson believes that evolution is not just a description of how we got here. He says it can also be a tool kit for improving how we live together. He’s taken what he’s learned in studying evolution in animals and is now applying it to the beha...

• Keith Devlin — The Joy of Math: Learning and What It Means To Be Human

  Mathematical equations are like sonnets says Keith Devlin. What most of us learn in school, he says, doesn’t begin to convey what mathematics is. And technology may free more of us to discover the wonder of mathematical thinking — as a reflection of the i...

• [Unedited] Keith Devlin with Krista Tippett

  Keith Devlin is a mathematician and executive director of H-STAR at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Krista Tippett spoke with him on July 11, 2013. This interview is included in our show “The Joy of Math.” Download the mp3 of the produced sh...

• [Unedited] Arthur Zajonc with Krista Tippett

  What happens when you bring together science and poetry on something like color or light? Arthur Zajonc is a physicist and contemplative. And he says we can all investigate life as vigorously from the inside as from the outside. This is Krista Tippett’s u...

• Arthur Zajonc — Holding Life Consciously

  What happens when you bring together science and poetry on something like color or light? Arthur Zajonc is a physicist and contemplative. And he says we can all investigate life as vigorously from the inside as from the outside.

• Natalie Batalha — Exoplanets and Love: Science That Connects Us to One Another

  A mission scientist with NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, Natalie Batalha hunts for exoplanets — Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system that might harbor life. She speaks about unexpected connections between things like love and dark energy, science an...

• [Unedited] Natalie Batalha with Krista Tippett

  Natalie Batalha is a research astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center and a mission scientist with the Kepler Space Telescope. Krista Tippett spoke with her on December 13, 2012 via ISDN. This interview is included in our show “On Exoplanets and Love: Nat...

• [Unedited] Kwame Anthony Appiah with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett’s unedited interview with Kwame Anthony Appiah was recorded in 2011 and is included in our show, “Kwame Anthony Appiah — Sidling Up to Difference.” See more at http://onbeing.org/program/sidling-difference/175

• Kwame Anthony Appiah — Sidling Up to Difference: Social Change and Moral Revolutions

  How can unimaginable social change happen in a world of strangers? Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher who studies ethics and his parents’ marriage helped inspire the movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” In a tense moment in American life, he has refre...

• David Montgomery — Reading the Rocks: Flood Stories and Deep Time

  The push and pull between religion and science has shaped advances in geology from the beginning. David Montgomery set out to debunk Noah’s Flood; instead he discovered this biblical story was the plate tectonics of its day. He tells us how the evolution...

• [Unedited] David Montgomery with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett interviewed geologist David R. Montgomery on July 3, 2013. This interview is included in the show ‘Reading the Rocks.’ Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

• David Gushee and Frances Kissling — Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Dialogue

  No issue is more intractable than abortion. Or is it? Most Americans fall somewhere between the absolute poles of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” A Christian ethicist who advocates a “consistent ethic of life” and an abortion-rights activist reveal what they...

• [Unedited] David Gushee and Frances Kissling with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett spoke with Christian ethicist David P. Gushee and abortion-rights activist Frances Kissling on September 26, 2012 in front of a live, public audience at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Minneapolis, MN.

• [Unedited] Meredith Monk and Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett’s unedited interview with Meredith Monk, award-winning, composer, singer, director and choreographer. She spoke with her on January 11, 2012 from the studios of APM in St. Paul, Minnesota. Meredith Monk was in a private recording studio in...

• Meredith Monk's Voice

  A kind of archeologist of the human voice, singer and composer Meredith Monk says that “the voice could be like the body” — flexible and fluid with practice. Through music as through meditation, the longtime Buddhist practitioner pushes the boundaries of...

• [Unedited] Sarah Kay and Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett interviewed spoken word poet Sarah Kay on April 12, 2012. This interview is included in the show ‘Sarah Kay’s Way with Words.’ Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

• Sarah Kay's Way with Words

  Sarah Kay says that listening is the better part of speaking. A spoken word poet who’s become a role model for teenagers around the world, she shares how she works with words to make connections — inside people and between them.

• [Unedited] S. James Gates Jr. and Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett interviewed S. James Gates Jr., Toll Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland in College Park, on January 25, 2012 from the studios of APM in St. Paul, MN. Gates was in the...

• S. James Gates — Uncovering the Codes for Reality

  Are we in the matrix? Physicist James Gates reveals why string theory stretches our imaginations about the nature of reality. Also, how failure makes us more complete, and imagination makes us more knowledgeable.

• [Unedited Tami Simon with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett interviewed entrepreneur Tami Simon on April 4, 2013 via ISDN. Ms. Simon is publisher, CEO, and founder of Sounds True. This interview is included in the show “Inner Life at Work: Tami Simon on Business, Meditation, and Technology.” Downloa...

• Tami Simon — Inner Life at Work: Business, Meditation, and Technology

  You might call Tami Simon a spiritual entrepreneur. She’s built a successful multimedia publishing company with a mission to disseminate “spiritual wisdom” by diverse teachers and thinkers like Pema Chödrön and Eckhart Tolle, Daniel Goleman and Brené Brow...

• Andrew Zolli — A Shift to Humility: Resilience and Expanding the Edge of Change

  Disruption is around every corner by way of globally connected economies, inevitable superstorms, and technology’s endless reinvention. But most of us were born into a culture which aspired to solve all problems. How do we support people and create system...

• Lawrence Krauss — Our Origins and the Weight of Space

  One of the values of science is to make us uncomfortable says Lawrence Krauss. The particle physicist explains why we should all care about dark energy and the Higgs Boson particle. Science literacy matters, and, more importantly, he suggests we should ta...

• Lawrence Krauss with Krista Tippett [Unedited Interview]

  This is Krista Tippett’s unabridged interview with physicist Lawrence Krauss. One of the values of science is to make us uncomfortable says Lawrence Krauss. The particle physicist explains why we should all care about dark energy and the Higgs Boson parti...

• [Unedited] Thupten Jinpa with Krista Tippett

  Esoteric teachings on reincarnation and consciousness; simple teachings on compassion and ethics. Geshe Thupten Jinpa is a man who finishes the Dalai Lama’s English sentences. Meet this philosopher and former monk, now a husband and father of two daughter...

• Thupten Jinpa — Translating the Dalai Lama

  Esoteric teachings on reincarnation and consciousness; simple teachings on compassion and ethics. Geshe Thupten Jinpa is a man who finishes the Dalai Lama’s English sentences. Meet this philosopher and former monk, now a husband and father of two daughter...

• [Unedited] Kabat-Zinn and Krista Tippett

  Jon Kabat-Zinn has learned, through science and experience, about mindfulness as a way of life. This is wisdom with immediate relevance to the ordinary and extreme stresses of our time — from economic peril, to parenting, to life in a digital age. See mor...

• Jon Kabat-Zinn — Opening to Our Lives

  Jon Kabat-Zinn has learned, through science and experience, about mindfulness as a way of life. This is wisdom with immediate relevance to the ordinary and extreme stresses of our time — from economic peril, to parenting, to life in a digital age.

• [Unedited] Kate Braestrup with Krista Tippett

  Kate Braestrup is a chaplain to game wardens, often on search and rescue missions, in the wilds of Maine. She works, as she puts it, at hinges of human experience when lives alter unexpectedly — where loss, disaster, decency and beauty intertwine. Hear he...

• Kate Braestrup — A Presence in the Wild

  Kate Braestrup is a chaplain to game wardens, often on search and rescue missions, in the wilds of Maine. She works, as she puts it, at hinges of human experience when lives alter unexpectedly — where loss, disaster, decency and beauty intertwine. Hear he...

• Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad — No More Taking Sides

  Robi Damelin lost her son David to a Palestinian sniper. Ali Abu Awwad lost his older brother Yousef to an Israeli soldier. But, instead of clinging to traditional ideologies and turning their pain into more violence, they’ve decided to understand the oth...

• [Unedited] Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad with Krista Tippett

  Robi Damelin is an Israeli who lives in Tel Aviv. She speaks with community groups about her experiences as part of the Parents Circle – Families Forum. Ali Abu Awwad is a Palestinian who lives in the West Bank. He is a spokesman and project manager for t...

• Sherry Turkle — Alive Enough? Reflecting on Our Technology

  Each of us, in our everyday interactions, chooses between letting technology shape us and shaping it towards human purposes, even towards honoring what we hold dear. Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, is full of usable i...

• [Unedited] Sherry Turkle with Krista Tippett

  Each of us, in our everyday interactions, chooses between letting technology shape us and shaping it towards human purposes, even towards honoring what we hold dear. Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, is full of usable i...

• [Unedited] Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin with Krista Tippett

  A veteran Republican senator and Democratic economist are political bridge people who’ve brought differing approaches and shared love of country to generations of economic policy. In this tense political moment, they offer straight talk and wise perspecti...

• Sen. Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin — Political Bridge People

  A veteran Republican senator and Democratic economist are political bridge people who’ve brought differing approaches and shared love of country to generations of economic policy. In this tense political moment, they offer straight talk and wise perspecti...

• Jim Daly and Gabe Lyons — The Next Christians

  Two Christian leaders are working to restore Christian engagement in the world. Gabe Lyons and Jim Daly discuss how they who are reshaping their part in common life, and the common good. This often surprising conversation addresses subjects like gay marri...

• [Unedited] Jim Daly and Gabe Lyons with Krista Tippett

  Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family. He’s also a Christian radio broadcaster and author of several books, including ReFocus: Living a Life that Reflects God’s Heart. Gabe Lyons is founder of Q: Ideas for Common Good and author of The Next Christi...

• [Unedited] Joanna Brooks with Krista Tippett

  Joanna Brooks is chair and associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. She’s also blogs at Religion Dispatches and Ask Mormon Girl.

• Joanna Brooks — Mormons Demystified

  From “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” to CNN, Joanna Brooks has become a go-to voice during our national inspection of Mormonism in this presidential campaign. As Mitt Romney makes history, we revisit our personal and revealing conversation with the Ask...

• [Unedited] Fr. Alberto Ambrosio with Krista Tippett

  Fr. Alberto Ambrosio is a Dominican friar and scholar of Sufism. Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis is the Metropolitan of Bursa in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

• Fr. Alberto Ambrosio and Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis — Spiritual Boundaries in Modern Turkey

  The second show from our recent trip to Istanbul. We meet a Dominican friar whose Christianity is inspired by the mystical tradition of Islam. And, an Eastern Orthodox bishop is creating what he calls a “dialogue of life” as a religious minority in this c...

• Terry Tempest Williams — The Vitality of the Struggle

  Terry Tempest Williams is a naturalist and writer, a biologist by training with a literary mind, who comes from a long Mormon lineage in Utah. She draws political, spiritual, and creative inspiration from her experience of the interior American West. She...

• [Unedited] Terry Tempest Williams with Krista Tippett

  Terry Tempest Williams is a naturalist and writer, a biologist by training with a literary mind, who comes from a long Mormon lineage in Utah. She draws political, spiritual, and creative inspiration from her experience of the interior American West. She...

• [Unedited] Mustafa Akyol with Krista Tippett

  Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish columnist for the English-language Hürriyet Daily News. He’s also the author of “Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Mu...

• Mustafa Akyol — Religion, Democracy, and the New Turkey

  There’s a country between Europe’s debt crisis and the Arab Spring, where democracy is valued and the economy is growing. It’s Turkey. Mustafa Akyol gives a fresh perspective on this new model of religion and democracy.

• [Unedited] Jacob Needleman with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett speaks with philosopher Jacob Needleman. As new democracies are struggling around the world, it’s easy to forget that U.S. democracy was shaped by trial and error. A conversation about the “inward work” of democracy — the conscience that sh...

• Jacob Needleman — The Inward Work of Democracy

  Krista Tippett speaks with philosopher Jacob Needleman. As new democracies are struggling around the world, it’s easy to forget that U.S. democracy was shaped by trial and error. A conversation about the “inward work” of democracy — the conscience that sh...

• Richard Davidson — Investigating Healthy Minds

  Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is revealing that the choices we make can actually “rewire” our brains. He’s studied the brains of meditating Buddhist monks, and now he’s using his research with children and adolescents to look at things like ADHD, autism...

• [Unedited] Richard Davidson with Krista Tippett

  Neuroscientist Richard Davidson is revealing that the choices we make can actually “rewire” our brains. He’s studied the brains of meditating Buddhist monks, and now he’s using his research with children and adolescents to look at things like ADHD, autism...

• Michael McCullough — Getting Revenge and Forgiveness

  Michael McCullough describes science that helps us comprehend how revenge came to have a purpose in human life. At the same time, he stresses, science is also revealing that human beings are more instinctively equipped for forgiveness than we’ve perhaps g...

• [Unedited] Michael McCullough with Krista Tippett

  Michael McCullough describes science that helps us comprehend how revenge came to have a purpose in human life. At the same time, he stresses, science is also revealing that human beings are more instinctively equipped for forgiveness than we’ve perhaps g...

• Ernie LaPointe and Cedric Good House — Reimagining Sitting Bull, Tatanka Iyotake

  As some Lakota make an annual pilgrimage on horseback to Wounded Knee in memory of Sitting Bull’s death, we’ll pull out some of the lesser known threads of the legacy of this complex leader and American icon. And we’ll explore why his spiritual character...

• [Unedited] Ernie LaPointe with Krista Tippett

  As some Lakota make an annual pilgrimage on horseback to Wounded Knee in memory of Sitting Bull’s death, we’ll pull out some of the lesser known threads of the legacy of this complex leader and American icon. And we’ll explore why his spiritual character...

• [Unedited] Vigen Guroian with Krista Tippett

  An understanding of Easter from inside the Armenian Orthodox tradition that is at once mystical and literally down to earth. Vigen Guroian is a theologian who experiences Easter as a call to our senses. He is passionate about the meaning of grand ideas li...

• Vigen Guroian — Restoring the Senses: Gardening and Orthodox Easter

  An understanding of Easter from inside the Armenian Orthodox tradition that is at once mystical and literally down to earth. Vigen Guroian is a theologian who experiences Easter as a call to our senses. He is passionate about the meaning of grand ideas li...

• Fatemeh Keshavarz — The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

  The 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet Rumi has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. Rumi created a new language of love within the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism. We hear his poetry as we delve into his worl...

• [Unedited] Fatemeh Keshavarz with Krista Tippett

  The 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet Rumi has long shaped Muslims around the world and has now become popular in the West. Rumi created a new language of love within the Islamic mystical tradition of Sufism. We hear his poetry as we delve into his worl...

• [Unedited] Nicholas Kristof with Krista Tippett

  Can journalism be a humanitarian art? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has learned that reportage can deaden rather than awaken the consciousness, much less the hearts, of his readers. He shares his wide ethical lens he’s gained on human life in...

• Nicholas Kristof — Journalism and Compassion

  Can journalism be a humanitarian art? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has learned that reportage can deaden rather than awaken the consciousness, much less the hearts, of his readers. He shares his wide ethical lens he’s gained on human life in...

• Tiya Miles — Toward Living Memory

  For Black History Month: a MacArthur “genius” who’s unearthing an especially painful chapter of the American experience — the intersecting history of African-Americans and Native Americans, and the little-known narratives that Cherokee landowners held bla...

• [Unedited] Tiya Miles with Krista Tippett

  Krista Tippett’s unedited interview with Tiya Miles, Chair and Professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She spoke with her on November 16, 2011 from the studios of APM in St. Paul, MN. Tiy...

• John Paul Lederach — The Art of Peace

  What happens when people transcend violence while living in it? John Paul Lederach has spent three decades mediating peace and change in 25 countries — from Nepal to Colombia and Sierra Leone. He shifts the language and lens of the very notion of conflict...

• [Unedited] John Paul Lederach with Krista Tippett

  What happens when people transcend violence while living in it? John Paul Lederach has spent three decades mediating peace and change in 25 countries — from Nepal to Colombia and Sierra Leone.. He shifts the language and lens of the very notion of conflic...

• [Unedited] Scott-Martin Kosofsky with Krista Tippett

  Scott-Martin Kosofsky is a book composer, typographer, and author of “The Book of Customs.” Krista Tippett spoke with him on November 2, 2004 from the studios of APM in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Mr. Kosofsky was in a studio of WGBH in Boston. This interview...

• Scott-Martin Kosofsky — Legends to Live By

  Could a Yiddish text from the Middle Ages serve as a guide to living now? Book composer and typographer Scott-Martin Kosofsky revives unlikely sources of “customs” for leading a modern life and marking sacred time. For Hanukkah and all the seasons upon us...

• Diane Winston — Monsters We Love: TV's Pop Culture Theodicy

  Amoral zombies. Loving vampires. Righteous serial killers. And lots of God. That’s all in the new TV season — a place where great writers and actors are telling the story of our time — playfully, violently, soulfully.

• [Unedited] Diane Winston with Krista Tippett

  Diane Winston is the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication + Journalism at the University of Southern California. Krista Tippett spoke with her on November 2, 2011 from the studios of APM in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Di...

• [Unedited] Paul Raushenbush with Krista Tippett

  Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is the Senior Religion Editor for the Huffington Post. Krista Tippett spoke with him on October 5, 2011 from the studios of APM in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Paul Brandeis Raushenbush was in the Argot Studios in New York City. This i...

• Paul Raushenbush — Occupying the Gospel

  Paul Brandeis Raushenbush opens up a hidden but possibly re-emerging influence in the DNA of American Christianity, reaching back to the Social Gospel movement at the turn of the 20th century. And, the Huffington Post religion editor shares what he’s lear...

• [Unedited] Avivah Zornberg with Krista Tippett_2011

  Avivah Zornberg is a celebrated, literary teacher of the Torah. We spoke with her on April 7, 2005, from the studios of American Public Media in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was in a private recording studio in Jerusalem. This interview is included in our sho...

• Avivah Zornberg — The Genesis of Desire

  What may one of the great literary teachers of Torah and midrash — the Jewish tradition of reading between the lines of the Bible to uncover hidden layers of meaning — teach us about our own human longings? Hear what happens when she takes on Noah and the...

• [Unedited] Sari Nusseibeh with Krista Tippett

  We experience a vision of caution and hope planted in a long view of Arab and Palestinian history, culture, and time in Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh. His personal story is steeped in layers of identity and, as he says, living legend, which shape...

• Sari Nusseibeh — The Evolution of Change

  We experience a vision of caution and hope planted in a long view of Arab and Palestinian history, culture, and time in Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh. His personal story is steeped in layers of identity and, as he says, living legend, which shape...

• Hendrik Hertzberg, Pankaj Mishra and Serene Jones — Remembering Forward Ten Years after 9/11

  In the days and months after 9/11, St. Paul’s Chapel became the hub where thousands of volunteers and rescue workers received round-the-clock care. It was a moving setting to explore how 9/11 changed us as a people — and to ponder the inward work of livin...

• [Unedited] Hendrik Hertzberg, Serene Jones, and Pankaj Mishra with Krista Tippett

  In the days and months after 9/11, St. Paul’s Chapel became the hub where thousands of volunteers and rescue workers received round-the-clock care. It was a moving setting to explore how 9/11 changed us as a people — and to ponder the inward work of livin...

• Richard Mouw — Restoring Political Civility: An Evangelical View

  Richard Mouw challenges his fellow conservative Christians to civility in public discourse. He offers historical as well as spiritual perspective on American Evangelicals’ navigation of disagreement, fear, and truth.

• [Unedited] Richard Mouw with Krista Tippett (Restoring Political Civility)

  Richard Mouw challenges his fellow conservative Christians to civility in public discourse. He offers historical as well as spiritual perspective on American Evangelicals’ navigation of disagreement, fear, and truth. See more at http://onbeing.org/program...

• [Unedited] Paul Collins and Jennifer Elder with Krista Tippett

  One child in every 110 in the U.S. is now diagnosed to be somewhere on the spectrum of autism. We step back from public controversies over causes and cures and explore the mystery and meaning of autism in one family’s life, and in history and society. Our...

• Paul Collins and Jennifer Elder — Autism and Humanity

  One child in every 110 in the U.S. is now diagnosed to be somewhere on the spectrum of autism. We step back from public controversies over causes and cures and explore the mystery and meaning of autism in one family’s life, and in history and society. Our...

• [Unedited] Amahl Bishara with Krista Tippett

  Did you know that the sacred city of Bethlehem lies within the West Bank? And, inside its borders, you’ll find something unexpected — a close-knit neighborhood where generations of people have created a new life for themselves. Amahl Bishara and Nidal Al-...

• [Unedited] Nidal Al-Azraq with Krista Tippett

  Did you know that the sacred city of Bethlehem lies within the West Bank? And, inside its borders, you’ll find something unexpected — a close-knit neighborhood where generations of people have created a new life for themselves. Amahl Bishara and Nidal Al-...

• Amahl Bishara and Nidal Al-Azraq — Pleasure More Than Hope

  Did you know that the sacred city of Bethlehem lies within the West Bank? And, inside its borders, you’ll find something unexpected — a close-knit neighborhood where generations of people have created a new life for themselves. Amahl Bishara and Nidal Al-...

• [Unedited] Anthea Butler with Krista Tippett

  A look back at the closest thing the early 20th century may have had to Oprah Winfrey. The flamboyant Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson was a multimedia sensation and a powerful female religious leader long before most of Christianity considered...

• Anthea Butler and Arlene Sánchez-Walsh — Reviving Sister Aimee

  A look back at the closest thing the early 20th century may have had to Oprah Winfrey. The flamboyant Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson was a multimedia sensation and a powerful female religious leader long before most of Christianity considered...

• [Unedited] Arlene Sanchez-Walsh with Krista Tippett

  A look back at the closest thing the early 20th century may have had to Oprah Winfrey. The flamboyant Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson was a multimedia sensation and a powerful female religious leader long before most of Christianity considered...

• [Unedited] Margaret Paloma with Krista Tippett

  A look back at the closest thing the early 20th century may have had to Oprah Winfrey. The flamboyant Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson was a multimedia sensation and a powerful female religious leader long before most of Christianity considered...

• Yossi Klein Halevi — Thin Places, Thick Realities

  A new show from Jerusalem with American-Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, who says Jerusalem is a place where the essential human story plays itself out with particular intensity.

• [Unedited] Yossi Klein Halevi with Krista Tippett

  A new show from Jerusalem with American-Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, who says Jerusalem is a place where the essential human story plays itself out with particular intensity. This is the unedited interview of the produced show “Thin Places, Thic...

• Mohammad Darawshe — Children of Both Identities

  Mohammad Darawshe is Arab with an Israeli passport — a Muslim Palestinian citizen of the Jewish state. Like 20 percent of Israel’s population, he is, as he puts it, a child of both identities. He brings an unexpected way of seeing inside the Middle Easter...

• [Unedited] Mohammad Darawshe with Krista Tippett

  Mohammad Darawshe is Arab with an Israeli passport — a Muslim Palestinian citizen of the Jewish state. Like 20 percent of Israel’s population, he is, as he puts it, a child of both identities. He brings an unexpected way of seeing inside the Middle Easter...

• John Polkinghorne — Quarks and Creation

  Science and religion are often pitted against one another; but how do they complement, rather than contradict, one another? We learn how one man applies the deepest insights of modern physics to think about how the world fundamentally works, and how the u...

• [Unedited] John Polkinghorne with Krista Tippett

  This unedited interview with John Polkinghorne was recorded in 2005 and is included in our show, “Quarks and Creation.” Science and religion are often pitted against one another; but how do they complement, rather than contradict, one another? Physicist a...

• Evolving "Faith"

  At the turn of the year, we look at how American culture’s encounter with religious ideas and people has evolved in the past decade — and this radio project with it.

• [Unedited] Darius Rejali with Krista Tippett

  One of the world’s leading experts on torture, Iranian-American political scientist Darius Rejali discusses, in particular, how democracies change torture and are changed by it. In the wake of Wikileaks revelations about torture in U.S.-occupied Iraq, we...

• Darius Rejali — The Long Shadow of Torture

  One of the world’s leading experts on torture, Iranian-American political scientist Darius Rejali discusses, in particular, how democracies change torture and are changed by it. In the wake of Wikileaks revelations about torture in U.S.-occupied Iraq, we...

• Doris Taylor — Stem Cells, Untold Stories

  Using stem cells, Doris Taylor brought the heart of a dead animal back to life and might one day revolutionize human organ transplantation. She takes us beyond lightning rod issues and into an unfolding frontier where science is learning how stem cells wo...

• [Unedited] Doris Taylor with Krista Tippett

  Using stem cells, Doris Taylor brought the heart of a dead animal back to life and might one day revolutionize human organ transplantation. She takes us beyond lightning rod issues and into an unfolding frontier where science is learning how stem cells wo...

• Sharon Brous — Days of Awe

  We delve into the world and meaning of the Jewish High Holy Days — ten days that span the new year of Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur’s rituals of atonement. A young rabbi in L.A. is one voice in a Jewish spiritual renaissance that is taking many forms a...

• [Unedited] Sharon Brous with Krista Tippett

  We’ll delve into the world and meaning of the approaching Jewish High Holy Days — ten days that span the new year of Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur’s rituals of atonement. Sharon Brous, a young rabbi in L.A., is one voice in a Jewish spiritual renaissan...

• Jacqueline Novogratz — A Different Kind of Capitalism

  The devastation of the Haiti earthquakes and the lack of infrastructure for responding to the disaster have deepened an ongoing debate over foreign aid, international development, and helping the poorest of the world’s poor. Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Ac...

• [Unedited] Jacqueline Novogratz with Krista Tippett

  The devastation of the Haiti earthquakes and the lack of infrastructure for responding to the disaster have deepened an ongoing debate over foreign aid, international development, and helping the poorest of the world’s poor. Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Ac...

• Bill McKibben — The Moral Math of Climate Change

  A conversation about climate change and moral imagination with a leading environmentalist and writer who has been ahead of the curve on this issue since he wrote The End of Nature in 1989. We explore his evolving perspective on human responsibility in a c...

• [Unedited] Bill McKibben with Krista Tippett

  We had to cut some great segments from Krista’s conversation with Bill McKibben. Here you can listen to it all, and tell us what you think of our edits from our produced show “Bill McKibben on The Moral Math of Climate Change.” A conversation about climat...

• [Unedited] Barbara Kingsolver with Krista Tippett

  Barbara Kingsolver describes an adventure her family undertook to spend one year eating primarily what they could grow or raise themselves. As a citizen and mother more than an expert, she turned her life towards questions many of us are asking. Food, she...

• Barbara Kingsolver — The Ethics of Eating

  Kingsolver describes an adventure her family undertook to spend one year eating primarily what they could grow or raise themselves. As a citizen and mother more than an expert, she turned her life towards questions many of us are asking. Food, she says, i...

• [Unedited] Shane Claiborne with Krista Tippett

  Shane Claiborne is a leading spirit in a gathering movement of young people known as the New Monastics. Emerging from the edges of Evangelical Christianity, they are patterning their lives in response to the needs of the poor — and the detachment they see...

• Shane Claiborne — A Monastic Revolution

  Shane Claiborne is a leading spirit in a gathering movement of young people known as the New Monastics. Emerging from the edges of Evangelical Christianity, they are patterning their lives in response to the needs of the poor — and the detachment they see...

• Sandy Eisenberg Sasso — The Spirituality of Parenting

  More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of...

• [Unedited] Sandy Eisenberg Sasso with Krista Tippett

  More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, or find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children’s natures and wonder...

• Andrew Freear — An Architecture of Decency

  Auburn’s Rural Studio in western Alabama draws architectural students into the design and construction of homes and public spaces in some of the poorest counties. They’re creating beautiful and economical structures that are not only unique but nurture su...

• [Unedited] Andrew Freear with Krista Tippett

  Auburn’s Rural Studio in western Alabama draws architectural students into the design and construction of homes and public spaces in some of the poorest counties. They’re creating beautiful and economical structures that are not only unique but nurture su...

• Mercedes Doretti — Laying the Dead to Rest

  With an Argentinean scientist, we explore the human landscape of forensic sciences and its emergence as a tool for human rights. Doretti has unearthed bones and stories of the dead and “the disappeared” in more than 30 countries, including victims of Arge...

• [Unedited] Mercedes Doretti with Krista Tippett

  Mercedes Doretti is co-founder and senior researcher of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF). She received a MacArthur “genius” grant for her work in 2007.

• [Unedited] Mayfair Yang with Krista Tippett

  Mayfair Yang is Director of the East Asia Center at the University of California in Santa Barbara. She has produced two films about China and is the author of Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation.

• Mayfair Yang — China's Hidden Spiritual Landscape

  A filmmaker and scholar gives us a parallel story to the ubiquitous news of China’s economy and politics. Mayfair Yang discusses the ancient and reemerging traditions of reverence and ritual — revealing background to its approach to Tibet. And, she tells...

• [Unedited] Robert Wright with Krista Tippett

  Robert Wright charts an intellectual path beyond the faith versus reason debate. He takes a relentlessly logical look at the history of religion, exposing its contradictions. Yet Wright also traces something “revelatory” moving through human history. In t...

• Robert Wright — The Evolution of God

  Robert Wright charts an intellectual path beyond the faith versus reason debate. He takes a relentlessly logical look at the history of religion, exposing its contradictions. Yet Wright also traces something “revelatory” moving through human history. In t...

• [Unedited] Paul Davies with Krista Tippett

  Albert Einstein’s quip that “God does not play dice with the universe,” was about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did ponder the relationship between science and religion and his sense of “the order deeply hidden behind everything.” With...

• [Unedited] Priyamvada Natarajan With Krista Tippett

  Albert Einstein’s quip that “God does not play dice with the universe,” was about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did ponder the relationship between science and religion and his sense of “the order deeply hidden behind everything.” With...

• [Unedited] Freeman Dyson with Krista Tippett

  Albert Einstein’s quip that “God does not play dice with the universe,” was about quantum physics, not a statement of faith. But he did ponder the relationship between science and religion and his sense of “the order deeply hidden behind everything.” With...

• Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies — Einstein's God

  Part two of this series delves into Einstein’s Jewish identity, his passionate engagement around issues of war and race, and modern extensions of his ethical and scientific perspectives.

• E. Ethelbert Miller — Black and Universal

  A poet and self-described literary activist, E. Ethelbert Miller attended Howard University in 1968 — the age in which Black Power was finding its voice. He has remained there ever since, observing and making sense of the trajectory of black history and c...

• [Unedited] E. Ethelbert Miller with Krista Tippett

  A poet and self-described literary activist, E. Ethelbert Miller attended Howard University in 1968 — the age in which Black Power was finding its voice. He has remained there ever since, observing and making sense of the trajectory of black history and c...

• Ed Husain — Reflections of a Former Islamist Extremist

  British activist Ed Husain was seduced, at the age of 16, by revolutionary Islamist ideals that flourished at the heart of educated British culture. Yet he later shrank back from radicalism after coming close to a murder and watching people he loved becom...

• [Unedited] Ed Husain with Krista Tippett

  British activist Ed Husain was seduced, at the age of 16, by revolutionary Islamist ideals that flourished at the heart of educated British culture. Yet he later shrank back from radicalism after coming close to a murder and watching people he loved becom...

• [Unedited] Anoushka Shankar with Krista Tippett

  In this Unheard Cut, Krista speaks with musician Anoushka Shankar from a Minneapolis hotel while she was touring in 2002. This interview is included in our program Approaching Prayer. Americans are religious and non-religious, devout and irreverent. But i...

• Anoushka Shankar, Stephen Mitchell, and Roberta Bondi — Approaching Prayer

  Americans are religious and non-religious, devout and irreverent. But in astonishing numbers, across that spectrum, most of us say that we pray. We explore the subject of prayer, how it sounds, and what it means in three different traditions and lives.

• [Unedited] Roberta Bondi with Krista Tippett

  In this Unheard Cut, Krista speaks with Roberta Bondi, a professor of Church History Emeritus at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Krista interviewed her in April 2002 in a New York City hotel where they were both attending a conference....

• [Unedited] Stephen Mitchell with Krista Tippett

  In this Unheard Cut, Krista speaks with author and translator Stephen Mitchell. She interviewed him on April 22, 2002 from the studios of American Public Media in St. Paul, Minnesota; he was at his home in California. This interview is included in our pro...

• Karen Armstrong — Freelance Monotheism

  Karen Armstrong speaks about her progression from a disillusioned and damaged young nun into, in her words, a “freelance monotheist.” She’s a formidable thinker and scholar, but as a theologian she calls herself an amateur — noting that the Latin root of...

• [Unedited] Karen Armstrong with Krista Tippett

  In this unedited conversation, Krista speaks with Karen Armstrong, a best-selling author, scholar, and Catholic nun. Hear their complete conversation as Armstrong tells the story behind her developing ideas about God. Karen Armstrong speaks about her prog...

• [Unedited] Malka Haya Fenyvesi and Aziza Hasan with Krista Tippett

  We shine a light on two young leaders of a new generation of grassroots Muslim-Jewish encounter in Los Angeles. They’re innovating templates of practical relationship that work with reality, acknowledge questions and conflict, yet resolve not to be enemie...

• Malka Haya Fenyvesi and Aziza Hasan — Curiosity Over Assumptions

  We shine a light on two young leaders of a new generation of grassroots Muslim-Jewish encounter in Los Angeles. They’re innovating templates of practical relationship that work with reality, acknowledge questions and conflict, yet resolve not to be enemie...

• [Unedited] Eckhart Tolle With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Eckhart Tolle comes from our produced show “Eckhart Tolle on the Power of Now.” One of today’s most influential spiritual teachers shares his youthful experience of depression and despair — suffering that led him to his own...

• Eckhart Tolle — The Power of Now

  One of today’s most influential spiritual teachers shares his youthful experience of depression and despair — suffering that led him to his own spiritual breakthrough, and ultimately, freedom and peace of mind. He also explicates his view of what he calls...

• Living Islam

  Nine Muslims, in their own words, reveal a creative convergence of Islamic spirituality and American identity that is unfolding, largely unnoticed, in the United States. A lawyer turned playwright, a teacher who’s a lesbian, a retired federal prosecutor —...

• [Unedited] Binyavanga Wainaina With Krista Tippett

  We explore the complex ethics of global aid with a young writer from Kenya, Binyavanga Wainaina. He is among a rising generation of African voices who bring a cautionary perspective to the morality and efficacy behind many Western initiatives to abolish p...

• Binyavanga Wainaina — The Ethics of Aid: One Kenyan's Perspective

  We explore the complex ethics of global aid with a young writer from Kenya, Binyavanga Wainaina. He is among a rising generation of African voices who bring a cautionary perspective to the morality and efficacy behind many Western initiatives to abolish p...

• [Unedited] David Brooks And E.J. Dionne With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with David Brooks and E.J. Dionne comes from our produced show “David Brooks and E. J. Dionne on Obama’s Theologian: Neibuhr and the American Present.” President Obama has cited Reinhold Niebuhr’s teachings as significant in sha...

• David Brooks and E.J. Dionne — Obama's Theologian: Reinhold Niebuhr and the American Present

  President Obama has cited Reinhold Niebuhr’s teachings as significant in shaping his ideas about politics and governance. In a public conversation, we discuss the great public theologian’s legacy and ideas — and what influence they may play in the future...

• [Unedited] Majora Carter with Krista Tippett (Repossessing Virtue: Being More Deliberately Joyful)

  Activist Majora Carter says she doesn’t think of her work at Sustainable South Bronx as a moral endeavor, but a pragmatic one. Nevertheless she looks on this period of economic tumult as a chance for being happy and passing that on to others. Last fall we...

• [Unedited] Sharon Salzberg with Krista Tippett (On Repossessing Virtue)

  The Buddhist teacher and author Sharon Salzberg reflects on our current culture and its inability to acknowledge the inevitability of suffering. We hide from it, and hide it from others. She argues that we need not fear this, but look to others for compas...

• [Unedited] Anchee Min with Krista Tippett (Repossessing Virtue: Repairing the American Individual)

  Novelist Anchee Min grew up during the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China. Living in the United States for several decades, she offers a challenging assessment of American reactions to these times based on her harsher experiences. Last fall we began to co...

• Repossessing Virtue: Wise Voices from Religion, Science, Industry, and the Arts

  As the global economic crisis began to unfold this past fall, we wanted to respond immediately, in our way. We began to conduct an online conversation parallel to but distinct from our culture’s more sustained focus on economic scenarios. For in each of o...

• [Unedited] Rachel Naomi Remen (On Repossessing Virtue: Economic Crisis as Spiritual Journey)

  Our SOF First Person series continues with physician Rachel Naomi Remen, author of “Kitchen Table Wisdom.” She sees these fiscally hard times as an opportunity to find our way back to the largeness of our collective story, which is part of the spiritual p...

• [Unedited] Esther Sternberg with Krista Tippett (On the Economic Crisis in Biological Terms)

  SOF First Person continues its series on the economic downturn with Dr. Esther Sternberg, a rheumatologist and stress researcher. She doesn’t see the financial crisis in moral terms in so much as biological ones. She elaborates on these scientific points...

• [Unedited] Martin Marty with Krista Tippett (On Repossessing Virtue: Trust in Uncertain Times)

  The SOF First Person project kicks off with our search for fresh ways to talk about the current economic crisis — beginning with reflections from an acclaimed historian and theologian. He shares a good deal of his “lived theology” — the personal, daily ac...

• [Unedited] Prabhu Guptara with Krista Tippett (On Repossessing Virtue)

  As promised, we continue our SOF First Person project by turning to Swiss banking expert, Prabhu Guptara. Several years ago, Krista spoke with Guptara when the fallout of the Enron scandal was wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy and shaking investor confid...

• Parker Palmer — Repossessing Virtue: Economic Crisis, Morality, and Meaning

  We explore human and spiritual aspects of economic downturn with a wise public intellectual of our time, the Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer. He works with people from all walks of life at the intersection of spiritual, professional, and social c...

• [Unedited] Parker Palmer With Krista Tippett (On Repossessing Virtue)

  This unedited conversation with Parker Palmer comes from our produced show “Parker Palmer on Repossessing Virtue: Economic Crisis, Morality, and Meaning.” We explore human and spiritual aspects of economic downturn with a wise public intellectual of our t...

• Diane Winston — TV and Parables of Our Time

  Diane Winston appreciates good television, studies it, and brings many of its creators into her religion and media classes at the University of Southern California. In what some have called a renaissance in television drama, we examine how TV is helping u...

• [Unedited] Diane Winston with Krista Tippett

  Diane Winston holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her media and religion blog is called “the SCOOP.”

• [Unedited] Paul Zak with Krista Tippett

  Paul Zak is professor of Economics and director of the Center for Neuroeconomic Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California. He’s editor of Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy.

• Paul Zak — The Science of Trust: Economics and Virtue

  In a few breathtaking months, we’ve culturally moved from seeing Wall Street as an icon of thriving civil society to discussing its workings with book titles like “House of Cards” and “Animal Spirits.” As part of our ongoing Repossessing Virtue series, we...

• Joshua DuBois — Obama's Faith-Based Office

  The very words “faith-based” became controversial during the Bush administration, yet Barack Obama has retained the faith-based centers in 11 federal agencies that his predecessor created. And within weeks of assuming the presidency, he announced priority...

• [Unedited] Joshua DuBois With Krista Tippett

  In this unedited conversation, we meet Joshua DuBois, the 26-year-old political strategist, Pentecostal minister, and trusted associate of the president who will lead this charge. The very words “faith-based” became controversial during the Bush administr...

• Vali Nasr — The Sunni-Shia Divide and the Future of Islam

  We seek fresh insight into the history and the human and religious dynamics of Islam’s Sunni-Shia divide. Our guest says that it is not so different from dynamics in periods of Western Christian history. But he says that by bringing the majority Shia to p...

• [Unedited] Vali Nasr with Krista Tippett

  In this unedited conversation, we seek fresh insight into the history and the human and religious dynamics of Islam’s Sunni-Shia divide. Our guest says that it is not so different from dynamics in periods of Western Christian history. See more at onbeing....

• Repossessing Virtue: Living Differently, Beyond Economic Crisis

  We’re bringing the voices of our listeners into the conversation we’ve been building online and on-air since the economic downturn began last year. Many are grappling with the shame that comes in American culture with the loss of a job, and many are seeki...

• [Unedited] James Moore with Krista Tippett

  In this unedited conversation with James Moore, we’ll take a fresh and thought-provoking look at Darwin’s life and ideas. He did not argue against God but against a simple understanding of the world — its beauty, its brutality, and its unfolding creation....

• James Moore — Evolution and Wonder: Understanding Charles Darwin

  We’ll take a fresh and thought-provoking look at Darwin’s life and ideas. He did not argue against God but against a simple understanding of the world — its beauty, its brutality, and its unfolding creation.

• Mary Doria Russell — The Novelist as God

  Our guest has grappled with large moral and religious questions on and off the page. We discover what she discerned — in the act of creating a new universe — about God and about dilemmas of evil, doubt, and free will. The ultimate moral of any life and an...

• [Unedited] Mary Doria Russell With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Mary Doria Russell comes from our produced show “Mary Doria Russell on the Novelist as God.” Mary Doria Russell has grappled with large moral and religious questions on and off the page. We discover what she discerned — in...

• [Unedited] Pankaj Mishra On The Backdrop Of The Buddha

  This unheard cut on “The Backdrop of the Buddha” comes from our produced show ‘Pankaj Mishra on the Buddha in the World.” See more at onbeing.org/program/buddha-world/186

• [Unedited] Pankaj Mishra With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation comes from the produced show “Pankaj Mishra on the Buddha in the World.” Journalist Pankaj Mishra pursued the social relevance of the Buddha’s thought across India and Europe, Afghanistan and America. He emerged with a startling...

• Pankaj Mishra — The Buddha in the World

  A few years ago, journalist Pankaj Mishra pursued the social relevance of the Buddha’s thought across India and Europe, Afghanistan and America. He emerged with a startling critique of Western political economy that is even more resonant today as he pursu...

• [Unedited] Fr. Columba Stewart with Krista Tippett

  Columba Stewart is the executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John’s Abbey and University. Getatchew Haile is a MacArthur Fellow and the curator of the Ethiopian Study Center at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at...

• [Unedited] Getatchew Haile with Krista Tippett

  Columba Stewart is the executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John’s Abbey and University. Getatchew Haile is a MacArthur Fellow and the curator of the Ethiopian Study Center at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at...

• Columba Stewart and Getatchew Haile — Preserving Words and Worlds

  Saint John’s University and Abbey in rural Minnesota houses a monastic library that rescues writings from across the centuries and across the world. There are worlds in this place on palm leaf and papyrus, in microfilm and pixels. And the relevance of the...

• Jennifer Michael Hecht — A History of Doubt

  Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht says that as a scholar she always noticed the “shadow history” of doubt out of the corner of her eye. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shaped the world’s great religious...

• Unedited Interview with Jennifer Michael Hecht

  In this unedited conversation poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht says that as a scholar she always noticed the “shadow history” of doubt out of the corner of her eye. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shap...

• Robert Coles — The Inner Lives of Children

  Psychiatrist Robert Coles has spent his career exploring the inner lives of children. He says children are witnesses to the fullness of our humanity; they are keenly attuned to the darkness as well as the light of life; and they can teach us about living...

• [Unedited] Robert Coles With Krista Tippett

  Psychiatrist Robert Coles has spent his career exploring the inner lives of children. In this unedited interview, he says children are witnesses to the fullness of our humanity; they are keenly attuned to the darkness as well as the light of life; and the...

• Studs Terkel — Life, Faith, and Death

  We remember Studs Terkel, who recently died at the age of 96. The legendary interviewer chronicled decades of ordinary life and tumultuous change in U.S. culture. We visited him in his Chicago home in 2004 and drew out his wisdom and warmth on large exist...

• [Unedited] Studs Terkel with Krista Tippett

  We remember Studs Terkel, who recently died at the age of 96. The legendary interviewer chronicled decades of ordinary life and tumultuous change in U.S. culture. We visited him in his Chicago home in 2004 and drew out his wisdom and warmth on large exist...

• [Unedited] Steven Waldman with Krista Tippett (On Liberating the Founders)

  In this unedited conversation, Krista interviewed Steve Waldman, journalist and founder of Beliefnet, for the produced show “Steven Waldman on Liberating the Founders.” Listen to their complete, unedited conversation. Here’s your chance to observe the edi...

• Steven Waldman — Liberating the Founders

  Americans remain divided about how much religion they want in their political life. As we elect a new president, we return to an evocative, relevant conversation from earlier this year with journalist Steven Waldman. From his unusual study of the American...

• Vashti McKenzie — African American, Woman, Leader

  The current U.S. presidential election has illustrated how gender, race, and religion can become lightning rods, and may be seen as potential stumbling blocks to leadership. Vashti McKenzie is a pioneering figure on all these fronts. When she became the f...

• [Unedited] Vashti McKenzie with Krista Tippett

  In this unedited conversation Krista Tippett interviews Vashti McKenzie, first female bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for the produced show “Vashti McKenzie: African American. Woman. Leader.” The current U.S. presidential election has il...

• Rod Dreher — The Faith Life of the Party: Part II, The Right

  The second part of our examination of religious energies below the surface of the 2008 presidential campaign. Conservative columnist Rod Dreher is an outspoken critic of mainstream Republican economic and environmental ideas and the conduct of the Iraq wa...

• [Unedited] Rod Dreher with Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Rod Dreher comes from the second part of our series “The Faith Life of the Party.” A conservative columnist, Rod Dreher is an outspoken critic of mainstream Republican economic and environmental ideas and the conduct of the...

• [Unedited] Amy Sullivan with Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Amy Sullivan comes from the first part of our series “The Faith Life of the Party.” She’s a national corespondent for Time magazine, an Evangelical Christian, and an observer of the Democratic Party. The Religious Right has...

• Amy Sullivan — The Faith Life of the Party: Part I, The Left

  The Religious Right has gotten a fair amount of coverage in recent years, while the political Left has rarely been represented with a religious sensibility. Our guest, a national correspondent for Time magazine is a political liberal and an Evangelical Ch...

• Mel Robeck — Spiritual Tidal Wave: The Origins and Impact of Pentecostalism

  The birth of the Pentecostal movement began 100 years ago on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. We’ll be taking our show on the road to cover this global gathering and revival that is reshaping Christianity, culture, and politics worldwide.

• [Unedited] Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. took place on April 22, 2006 at The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles and comes from our produced show Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. and Arlene Sanchez-Walsh on The Origins and Impact of Pentecostalism, Spiritual Ti...

• [Unedited] Esther Sternberg With Krista Tippett (On Stress And The Balance Within)

  This unedited conversation with Esther Sternberg comes from our produced show “Esther Sternberg on the Balance Within.” The American experience of stress has spawned a multi-billion dollar self-help industry. Wary of this, Esther Sternberg says that, unti...

• Esther Sternberg — Stress and the Balance Within

  The American experience of stress has spawned a multi-billion dollar self-help industry. Wary of this, Esther Sternberg says that, until recently, modern science did not have the tools or the inclination to take emotional stress seriously. She shares fasc...

• James Prosek — Fishing with Mystery

  James Prosek is an artist, fly-fisher, author, and environmental activist who has always, as he puts it, found God “through the theater of nature.” From a young age he has been fascinated by trout and now eel – which he sees as “mystical creatures” – and...

• [Unedited] James Prosek With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation is part of the radio program, “James Prosek on Fishing with Mystery.” James Prosek is an artist, fly-fisher, author, and environmental activist who has always, as he puts it, found God “through the theater of nature.” From a you...

• Rick and Kay Warren — At Saddleback

  In this program we revisit a 2007 conversation with evangelical leaders Rick and Kay Warren — exploring where they came from and what motivates them. Rick Warren hosted the first post-primary joint appearance of Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleb...

• [Unedited] Jonathan Greenblatt with Krista Tippett

  The news has been marked in recent years, at regular intervals, by the moral and practical downfall of prominent businesses. Jonathan Greenblatt is among a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to lead a fundamental shift in corporate culture as well a...

• Jonathan Greenblatt — The Business of Doing Good

  The news has been marked in recent years, at regular intervals, by the moral and practical downfall of prominent businesses. Jonathan Greenblatt is among a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to lead a fundamental shift in corporate culture as well a...

• [Unedited] Adrian Ivakhiv with Krista Tippett

  An environmentalist who pursued the ecological impulse of Paganism, from its ancient roots to its modern revival in Europe and North America, discusses his observations about the spirit of Paganism and its influence on everyday Western culture — and even...

• Adrian Ivakhiv — Pagans, Ancient and Modern

  An environmentalist who pursued the ecological impulse of Paganism, from its ancient roots to its modern revival in Europe and North America, discusses his observations about the spirit of Paganism and its influence on everyday Western culture — and even...

• [Unedited] Susan Cheever with Krista Tippett

  Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson once said that the program he helped create is, “utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery.” Our guests reflect on the Twelve Steps and how they resonate in their personal stories and in Buddhist and Chr...

• Susan Cheever and Kevin Griffen — The Spirituality of Addiction and Recovery

  Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson once said that the program he helped create is, “utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery.” Our guests reflect on the Twelve Steps and how they resonate in their personal stories and in Buddhist and Chr...

• [Unedited] Fr. Donald Senior With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Fr. Donald Senior comes from our produced show “The Beauty and Challenge of Being Catholic: Hearing the Faithful” We received hundreds of essays in response to our query about what anchors and unsettles our Catholic audienc...

• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Catholic - Hearing the Faithful

  We received hundreds of essays in response to our query about what anchors and unsettles our Catholic audience. So we asked some of you to speak about your tradition. The moving reflections we heard prompted us to depart from our usual format and bring yo...

• Greg Epstein — Exploring a New Humanism

  In a recent Pew poll, 16 percent of Americans identified themselves as “unaffiliated” — atheist, agnostic, or most prominently “nothing in particular.” Greg Epstein, a Humanist chaplain at Harvard, described himself that way until he discovered the tradit...

• [Unedited] Ingrid Mattson With Krista Tippett

  Ingrid Mattson, the first woman and first convert to lead the Islamic Society of North America, describes her experience of Islamic spirituality, which she discovered in her twenties after a Catholic upbringing. We probe her unusual perspective on a tumul...

• Ingrid Mattson — A New Voice for Islam

  Ingrid Mattson, the first woman and first convert to lead the Islamic Society of North America, describes her experience of Islamic spirituality, which she discovered in her twenties after a Catholic upbringing. We probe her unusual perspective on a tumul...

• Robert Millet — Inside Mormon Faith

  Americans have been hearing a lot about Mormonism in the context of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But much of the public discussion of this faith of 13 million people has focused on controversies in the church’s history. We’ll avoid well-trodden gr...

• [Unedited] Robert Millet With Krista Tippett

  Americans have been hearing a lot about Mormonism in the context of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But much of the public discussion of this faith of 13 million people has focused on controversies in the church’s history. We’ll avoid well-trodden gr...

• [Unedited] Interview with Majora Carter

  Environmentalism and climate change are hot topics; yet they’re still often imagined as the territory of scientists, expert activists, and those who can afford to be environmentally conscious. We discover two people who are transforming the ecology of the...

• Cal DeWitt and Majora Carter — Discovering Where We Live: Reimagining Environmentalism

  Environmentalism and climate change are hot topics; yet they’re still often imagined as the territory of scientists, expert activists, and those who can afford to be environmentally conscious. We discover two people who are transforming the ecology of the...

• [Unedited] Cal DeWitt With Krista Tippett

  Environmentalism and climate change are hot topics; yet they’re still often imagined as the territory of scientists, expert activists, and those who can afford to be environmentally conscious. We discover two people who are transforming the ecology of the...

• Douglas Johnston — Diplomacy and Religion in the 21st Century

  The greatest threat in the post-Cold War world, says Douglas Johnston, is the prospective marriage of religious extremism with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the U.S. spends most of its time, resources, and weapons fighting the symptoms of this threat,...

• [Unedited] Douglas Johnston with Krista Tippett

  In this unedited conversation, Krista interviews Douglas Johnston, president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. We’re making the entire, unedited conversation available for the first time. Here’s your chance to observe the...

• Rick and Kay Warren — The New Evangelical Leaders, Part II

  The second program in our series on guiding figures in what some are calling the “post Religious Right era.” This program’s guests are conservative Evangelicals who are increasingly being watched by a new generation of Christian and secular leaders. They...

• [Unedited] Rick and Kay Warren with Krista Tippett

  Evangelical Christianity has no single, central authority, but it does have guiding figures in every generation. Progressive social activist Jim Wallis has become something of a national celebrity, proposing a new agenda for religion in politics in what h...

• [Unedited] Jim Wallis With Krista Tippett

  Evangelical Christianity has no single, central authority, but it does have guiding figures in every generation. Progressive social activist Jim Wallis has become something of a national celebrity, proposing a new agenda for religion in politics in what h...

• Jim Wallis — The New Evangelical Leaders, Part I

  The first in a two-part series on influential leaders who are reshaping Evangelical Christianity from within progressive and conservative circles. Jim Wallis founded “Sojourners” and now advises presidential candidates and world leaders in what he calls t...

• Varadaraja V. Raman — The Heart's Reason: Hinduism and Science

  U.S. culture’s clash between religion and science is almost exclusively driven by Christian instincts and arguments. Hindu physicist V.V. Raman offers another view of religion, the universe, and the complementarity of the questions of science and faith.

• [Unedited] Varadaraja V. Raman With Krista Tippett

  U.S. culture’s clash between religion and science is almost exclusively driven by Christian instincts and arguments. Hindu physicist V.V. Raman offers another view of religion, the universe, and the complementarity of the questions of science and faith. S...

• [Unedited] Ingrid Jordt With Krista Tippett

  Former Burmese Buddhist nun and anthropologist Ingrid Jordt takes us inside the spiritual culture of Burma, exploring the meaning of monks taking to the streets there in September, the way in which religion and military rule are intertwined, and how Buddh...

• Ingrid Jordt — Burma: Buddhism and Power

  A look inside the spiritual culture of Burma, exploring the meaning of monks taking to the streets there in September, the way in which religion and military rule are intertwined, and how Buddhism remains a force in and beyond the current crisis.

• Paul Elie, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Robin Lovin — Moral Man and Immoral Society: Rediscovering Reinhold Niebuhr

  We explore the ideas and present-day relevance of 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential, boundary-crossing voice in American public life. Niebuhr created the term “Christian realism:” a middle path between religious idealism and arrogan...

• Harvey Cox, Jr. — Beyond the Atheism-Religion Divide

  In 1965, a young Harvard professor became the best-selling voice of secularism in America with his book The Secular City. He sees the old thinking in the “new atheism” of figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The either/or debates between...

• [Unedited] Sister Joan Chittister With Krista Tippett

  In over 50 years as a Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister has emerged as a powerful and uncomfortable voice in Roman Catholicism and in global politics. If women were ordained in the Catholic Church in our lifetime, some say, Joan Chittister would be...

• Sister Joan Chittister — Obedience and Action

  In over 50 years as a Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister has emerged as a powerful and uncomfortable voice in Roman Catholicism and in global politics. If women were ordained in the Catholic Church in our lifetime, some say, Joan Chittister would be...

• [Unedited] Eboo Patel With Krista Tippett

  We revisit Krista’s 2005 conversation with Eboo Patel, who calls al-Qaeda the most effective youth organization in the world. But contrary to the wisdom of secular society, he’s working to deepen rather than tame the religious energies of the young across...

• Eboo Patel — Religious Passion, Pluralism, and the Young

  A 30-year-old, Indian-American Muslim and former Rhodes Scholar is setting out to change the way young people relate to their own religious traditions and those of others. Al-Qaeda is the most effective youth program in the world, he says, and we neglect...

• Jean Vanier and Jo Anne Horstmann — L'Arche: A Community of Brokenness and Beauty

  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...

• Krista Tippett — Remembering Forward

  Before a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, Krista reads from her book, “Speaking of Faith.” She traces the intersection of human experience and religious ideas in her own life, just as she asks her guests to do each week. Kri...

• [Unedited] Krista Tippett — Remembering Forward

  Before a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, Krista reads from her book, “Speaking of Faith.” She traces the intersection of human experience and religious ideas in her own life, just as she asks her guests to do each week. Kri...

• John Morris — The Soul of War

  With Iraq veteran and chaplain Major John Morris, we explore how war challenges the human spirit and the core tenets of a life of faith. The War on Terror, he says, presents its own spiritual challenges. He is working to support the reintegration of Natio...

• George F. R. Ellis — Science and Hope

  Our guest straddles the worlds of cosmology and social activism. During a live audience interview in Philadelphia, he tells us how he unites his convictions about faith, ethics, and cosmology.

• The Private Faith of Jimmy Carter

  Jimmy Carter — former president and Nobel Laureate, author and global humanitarian — speaks of his born-again faith with a directness that is striking even in today’s political culture. He reflects on being commander in chief while following, as he says,...

• Richard Cizik — The Evolution of American Evangelicalism

  Last month, conservative Christian leaders demanded that Richard Cizik be silenced or removed from his post. They charged that his concerns about climate change and torture have shifted attention away from moral issues such as gay marriage and abortion. B...

• Charles Villa-Vicencio and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela — Truth and Reconciliation

  South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) held public sessions from 1996 to 1998, and concluded its work in 2004. In an attempt to rebuild its society without retribution, the Commission created a new model for grappling with a history of e...

• S. James Gates and Thomas Levenson — Einstein's Ethics

  Part one of this series takes Einstein’s science as a starting point for exploring the great physicist’s perspective on ideas such as mystery, eternity, and the mind of God.

• [Unedited] S. James Gates with Krista Tippett (On Einstein's Ethics)

  Part one of this series takes Einstein’s science as a starting point for exploring the great physicist’s perspective on ideas such as mystery, eternity, and the mind of God. See more at www.onbeing.org/program/einsteins-ethics/89

• [Unedited] Thomas Levenson with Krista Tippett (On Einstein's Ethics)

  Part one of this series takes Einstein’s science as a starting point for exploring the great physicist’s perspective on ideas such as mystery, eternity, and the mind of God. See more at www.onbeing.org/program/einsteins-ethics/89

• Leila Ahmed — Muslim Women and Other Misunderstandings

  Is there such a thing as the Muslim world? Is the “veil” a sign of submission or courage? Is our Western concern about women in Islam really a concern for the well-being of women? Our guest, Egyptian-American Leila Ahmed, challenges current thought on the...

• Nathan Dungan — Money and Moral Balance

  The sales are starting, the stores are open late, and many of us are gearing up to spend more money than we actually have in a holiday season with deep roots in religion. We explore the turmoil many of us experience with money in our day-to-day lives — an...

• [Unedited] Martin Marty With Krista Tippett (On America's Changing Religious Landscape)

  A great public theologian and historian, Martin Marty offers personal and historical perspective on religion in modern life — including the nature of fundamentalism, and the decline of America’s mainline Protestant majority as Evangelical Christianity gai...

• Martin Marty — America's Changing Religious Landscape

  A great public theologian and historian, Martin Marty offers personal and historical perspective on religion in modern life — including the nature of fundamentalism, and the decline of America’s mainline Protestant majority as Evangelical Christianity gai...

• John Danforth — Conservative Politics and Moderate Religion

  Politics driven by a religious agenda, Danforth says, is true neither to his understanding of Christian faith nor to the traditional values of the Republican party. This veteran politician speaks about the values that have helped him navigate the line bet...

• Seyyed Hossein Nasr — Hearing Muslim Voices Since 9/11

  An Iranian man sits on the ground after weekly Friday prayers at Tehran University in the Iranian capital, 02 June 2006. An Iranian cleric today dismissed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s warning that the Islamic republic would incur ‘great costs’...

• David Hilfiker — Seeing Poverty After Katrina

  Hurricane Katrina brought urban poverty in America into all of our living rooms. In this program, David Hilfiker tells the story of how poverty and racial isolation came to be in cities across America. He lives creatively and realistically with questions...

• Basil Brave Heart and Susan Cheever — Spirituality and Recovery

  Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson once said that the program he helped create is, “utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery.” Our guests reflect on the Twelve Steps and how they resonate in their personal stories and in Buddhist and Chr...

• Elie Wiesel — The Tragedy of the Believer

  A survivor of the Holocaust, in which he lost most of his family, Wiesel was a seminal chronicler of that event and its meaning. Wiesel shares some of his thoughts on modern-day Israel and Germany, his understanding of God, and his practice of prayer afte...

• Dan and Sue Hanson — Room for J: One Family's Struggle with Schizophrenia

  Joel Hanson has schizophrenia and believes he is God. His parents reflect on living with their son and how they have learned to see mental illness, normalcy, and religion differently. Is there room in our culture to consider a schizophrenic personality as...

• Mohammed Abu-Nimer + Sami Adwan — Two Narratives, Reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian Present (part 2)

  As Israel prepares for a critical election and Hamas forms a Palestinian cabinet, we explore the difficulty of reaching resolution in a land that its inhabitants, on both sides of the conflict, consider holy. Our guests in this two-part series, Israeli an...

• Yossi Klein Halevi — Reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian Present, Part 1

  As Israel prepares for a critical election and Hamas forms a Palestinian cabinet, we explore the difficulty of reaching resolution in a land that its inhabitants, on both sides of the conflict, consider holy. Our guests in this two-part series, Israeli an...

• Prabhu Guptara — The Gods of Business

  In an age of Enron and WorldCom, how can we imagine a place for business ethics, much less religious virtue, in the global economy? We speak with a Hindu international business analyst who offers learned, fascinating observations about how the world’s myr...

• Vincent Cornell — The Face of the Prophet: Cartoons and Chasm

  Our guest, an American Muslim and religious scholar, helps untangle the knot of violent and bewildered reactions to cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

• Isabel Mukonyora — Sacred Wilderness, An African Story

  Isabel Mukonyora has followed and studied a religious movement of her Shona people, the Masowe Apostles, that embraces Christian tradition while addressing the drama of African life and history. The founder of this movement, Johane Masowe, emphasized an a...

• Martin Doblmeier — Ethics and the Will of God: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose life spanned the rise and fall of Hitler’s Germany, offers us a model of personal morality and conscience in the most troubled and immoral of times. His resistance of Nazi ideology, while much of the German church succumbed, is...

• Manuel Vasquez — Latino Migrations and the Changing Face of Religion in the Americas

  Vásquez believes that in the global age, religious dynamics may have a boomerang effect across the Americas with dramatic consequences. We explore how religion will shape the increasing Hispanic population and how religion itself might be changed.

• [Unedited] Marie Friedmann Marquardt With Krista Tippett

  This unedited conversation with Marie Friedmann Marquardt comes from our produced show “Marie Friedmann Marquardt and Manuel A. Vasquez on Latino Migrations and the Changing Face of Religion in the Americas.” See more at onbeing.org/program/latino-migrati...

• Joan Halifax — A Midwife to the Dying

  The Terri Schiavo case earlier this year raised ethical and medical issues that remain with us today. But missing in that debate was a real attention to the quality and the meaning of death. Joan Halifax tells us what she’s learned and how she lives diffe...

• Don Saliers and Edward Foley — The Meaning of Communion: At the Table

  What are the origins of communion, and what is its deepest social relevance? Two leading theologians of communion describe a ritual that is not just personally meaningful for the believer, but also collectively and ethically challenging for Christians.

• Joan Brown Campbell and Thomas Hoyt, Jr. — Living Reconciliation: Two Ecumenical Pioneers

  Two people with unique perspectives both discovered ecumenism — the movement to reconcile Christian churches — during the Civil Rights era. They’ll describe what they’ve learned about grappling with vexing clashes of difference, and why reconciliation amo...

• James Smith and Nancey Murphy — Evangelicals, Out of the Box

  Stereotypes tell us this: Evangelical Christians are politically conservative, closed-minded, morally judgmental, and anti-science. We speak with two creative members of a new generation of Evangelical thinkers and teachers, who defy stereotypes and revea...

• Miroslav Volf — Religion and Violence

  Religious extremism drives some of the most intractable conflicts around the world. Our guest knows this shadow side of the Christian faith in his personal history. We’ll speak about what goes wrong when religion turns violent, and why, he believes, the c...

• Kecia Ali, Omid Safi, Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, and Michael Wolfe — Progressive Islam in America

  In the years since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, scrutiny of the religion of Islam has become part and parcel of our public life. In forums of all kinds, often guided by non-Muslim pundits, we ask, what does terrorism have to do with the...

• Khaled Abou El Fadl and Harold M. Schulweis — Religion and Our World in Crisis

  In this personal exchange between a Jewish rabbi and Islamic scholar, host Krista Tippett explores the integrity of religious faith and openness to the faiths of others. In a world in which religious experience is implicated in violence, two thinkers disc...

• Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad — Serving Country, Serving Allah

  There are an estimated 4,000 Muslim soldiers in the U.S. military, though some counts place that number much higher. We’ll speak with the first Muslim imam in the US Army Chaplaincy — Major Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad — about Iraq, faith, and military service....

• Peter Berger and Rosabeth Moss Kanter — Globalization and the Rise of Religion

  Experts once predicted that as the world grew more modern, religion would decline. Precisely the opposite has proven true; religious movements are surging and driving “alternative globalizations” across the world. Two leading thinkers offer a penetrating...

• Helen Prejean, Debbie Morris, and Elie Spitz — Reflections on the Death Penalty in America

  The American public supports the principle of capital punishment, but there is a growing consensus among Jewish and Christian thinkers — across traditional liberal/conservative lines — that it should be abolished in this country or suspended while the sys...

• Jelle De Boer and Ursula Goodenough — The Morality of Nature

  We explore the human and religious implications of natural disasters through the eyes of two scientists steeped in the workings of the natural world. We approach the morality of nature from a non-theological angle, tracing how natural disasters have somet...

• Joel Marcus — The Jewish Roots of the Christian Story

  New Testament writings about Jews may sound inflammatory in modern ears. A New Testament scholar with ties to both Judaism and Christianity helps us put these writings in context and look for meaning in the Passion that Hollywood and popular culture can’t...

• Steven Waldman — The Future of Moral Values

  We deconstruct the phrase “moral values,” which has confused and divided Americans since November’s election. As the second term of George W. Bush commences, political analyst Steven Waldman helps explore what these words do and do not convey to liberals...

• Omid Safi and Seemi Bushra Ghazi — The Spirit of Islam

  We experience the religious thought and the spiritual vitality of two Muslims—male and female—both American and both with roots in ancient Islamic cultural, intellectual, and spiritual traditions. Their stories and ideas, music, and readings, evoke a sens...

• Dr. Oz — Heart and Soul

  The word “healing” means “to make whole.” But historically, Western medicine has taken a divided view of human health. It has stressed medical treatments of biological ailments. That may be changing. Mehmet Oz, a cardiovascular surgeon, is part of a new g...

• [Unedited] Mehmet Oz with Krista Tippett

  The word “healing” means “to make whole.” But historically, Western medicine has taken a divided view of human health. It has stressed medical treatments of biological ailments. That may be changing — Mehmet Oz, a cardiovascular surgeon, is part of a new...

• Muqtedar Khan and Cheryl Sanders — The Other Religious America in Election 2004

  In this show, we speak with an African American Christian and an American Muslim and explore the perspectives of two religious communities which defy the broad stereotypes of this election year. We’ll seek to gain a deeper understanding of the way in whic...

• Carl Feit, Anne Foerst, and Lindon Eaves — Science and Being

  Many of history’s greatest scientists considered their work to be a religious endeavor, a direct search for God. Pioneers like Newton, Copernicus, and Galileo believed that their discoveries told humanity more about God’s nature than had been known. Begin...

• Steven Waldman — Beyond the God Gap

  The theory of the “God gap”—often broadly suggesting that religious Americans are conservative and will vote Republican while non-religious Americans are liberal and will vote Democratic—has been prominent in press reporting and political maneuvering in t...

• Joseph L. Price — In Praise Of Play

  If sport is an American religion, is that bad for us? What is the metaphysic of baseball? In this show, we’ll speak with a theologian and sports fan who has spent much of his career studying the religious character of rituals in sporting events and the sp...

• Phyllis Tickle and Lynn Schofield Clark — A Return to the Mystery: Religion, Fantasy, and Entertainment

  During the past decade, there has been an explosion of films and television programs containing religious and spiritual themes. Mel Gibson’s The “Passion of the Christ” was only the tip of the iceberg. As new generations of Americans work out their spirit...

• Joseph Califano — Religion and Politics

  We speak with Washington insider Joseph Califano, a devout, lifelong Catholic, who held key positions inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter administrations. Califano provides frank insight into the practical difficulties of applying religious ideals in...

• Anchee Min — Surviving the Religion of Mao

  Author Anchee Min has won acclaim for her memoir of growing up in China under Mao Zedong. She’s also written several works of fiction in which she explores the human hunger to survive against extreme social brutality. In this conversation, Anchee Min tell...

• [Unedited] Anchee Min With Krista Tippett (On Surviving The Religion Of Mao)

  Anchee Min has recently published the second book in her fictional account of the last Chinese imperial court and its empress. In her personal story and in her writing, Anchee Min offers a window into spiritual instincts and experiences that mark a rapidl...

• Robert Franklin and Margaret Poloma — Pentecostalism in America (June 10, 2004)

  Pentecostalism began on the American frontier, and it has become one of the largest expressions of global Christianity. In less than a century, it has grown to hundreds of millions of adherents. Today, Pentecostalism is pan-denominational. There are chari...

• Richard Mouw and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott — Gay Marriage: Broken or Blessed? Two Evangelical Views

  Our culture’s acrimonious debate on the morality of gay marriage has been framed in religious — largely conservative Christian — terms. We go behind the rhetoric to explore the human confusion, hopes, and fears this subject arouses. We’ll name hard questi...

• [Unedited] Mariane Pearl With Krista Tippett

  In this close-up look at the human dynamics of the war on terror, our guest speaks about her husband, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Pakistan shortly after 9/11. She talks about Buddhism, her ethic of spiritual defiance, and her hopes for th...

• Mariane Pearl — A Spirit of Defiance

  In this close-up look at the human dynamics of the war on terror, our guest speaks about her husband, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Pakistan shortly after 9/11. She talks about Buddhism, her ethic of spiritual defiance, and her hopes for th...

• Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, Richard Hays, and Linda Loving — Passover and Easter

  In the coinciding seasons of Passover and Easter, two world religions celebrate their core stories in ritual and worship. Each of these sacred holidays is based on a key biblical story of suffering and deliverance. The Christian Holy Week commemorates the...

• Ahmed H. al-Rahim — A Perspective on Islam in Iraq

  The religious landscape of Iraq is complex and somewhat enigmatic to the western world. Nearly 97% of Iraq’s 25 million people are Muslim, and a majority of Iraqis are Shiite rather than Sunni. What does that mean? And how powerful is the prominent cleric...

• Luke Timothy Johnson and Bernadette Brooten — Deciphering the Da Vinci Code

  The wildly popular novel turned movie reimagines the New Testament, in part, as a cover-up. What really happened in the fluid early years of Christianity? What is the truth about Mary Magdalene? We separate fact from fiction in the story’s plot with two N...

• Michael Cromartie and E. J. Dionne — Religion on the Campaign Trail

  Religious pronouncements seem to have become mandatory for the Democratic candidates in this election. Yet it’s been easy to deride the resulting sound bites that are widely repeated—such as Howard Dean’s proclamation of his favorite book of the New Testa...

• Sylvia Poggioli, Donald Cozzens, and Margaret A. Farley — The Religious Legacy of John Paul II

  John Paul II’s papacy was dramatic and historic on many fronts. We explore some of the critical religious issues of his 26 years as pontiff and discusses the great and contradictory impact he made on the Catholic Church in America and abroad.

• Roberta Bondi, Gregory Plotnikoff, Michele Balamani, Anoushka Shankar, and Stephen Mitchell — Patterns of Prayer

  In recent years, the practices of prayer have been evolving for many religious traditions. Even western medicine is looking at prayer as it expands its concept of healing. In this program, we consult several people from a variety of practices about the ro...

• Laurie Zoloth — A Theological Perspective on Cloning

  Dr. Jing Kang, from the Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School sits in his lab in Boston, Massachusetts. He collaborated in a study with other scientists from three U.S. universities to create cloned pigs that...

• Coleen Rowley and Tim McGuire — Work and Conscience

  Host Krista Tippett explores the practical implications of spirituality at work with Federal Bureau of Investigations special agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley and syndicated columnist Tim McGuire. In May 2002, Rowley wrote a now-famous 13-page letter...

• John Lipscomb and Catherine Roskam — Homosexuality and the Divided Church

  The General Convention of the Episcopal Church has sharpened our culture’s intensifying focus on homosexuality. In a year of political and religious milestones for gays and lesbians, Gene Robinson became the first openly gay man to be elected an Episcopal...

• Rebecca Chopp, Kecia Ali, and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen — Women, Marriage, and Religion

  Over the last four decades, women’s roles have changed dramatically — at home, in the work force and in religious institutions as well. In America, resistance to this is often couched in religious terms. Where there is a backlash against feminism and its...

• [Unedited] Luke Timothy Johnson With Krista Tippett (On Marriage, Family, And Divorce)

  American ideals of courtship and marriage echo with Biblical imagery — “bone of my bones” “flesh of my flesh.” But what does the Bible really say, and how has it been taught across the centuries in which the institution of marriage has changed dramaticall...

• [Unedited] Elliot Dorff With Krista Tippett

  American ideals of courtship and marriage echo with Biblical imagery — “bone of my bones” “flesh of my flesh.” But what does the Bible really say, and how has it been taught across the centuries in which the institution of marriage has changed dramaticall...

• Elliot Dorff and Luke Timothy Johnson — Marriage, Family, and Divorce

  American ideals and rituals of marriage, family, and divorce are infused with biblical messages. But what does the Bible really say, and how has it been taught across the centuries as the institution of marriage has changed dramatically and often? A rabbi...

• Charles Haynes, Philip Hamburger, and Cheryl Crazy Bull — Religious Liberty in America: The Legacy of Church and State

  At the center of our history of church and state is a troublesome irony. What began as an attempt to guarantee religious tolerance in the new world has at various times been commandeered by the most chauvinistic movements America has known. In spite of th...

• David Fox and Bruce Weigl — Sacrifice and Reconciliation

  In remembering the legacy of four World War II chaplains — Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish — who went down together with their torpedoed ship in 1943, we speak with David Fox, nephew of one of the chaplains. We also hear interviews with surviving veteran...

• Sharon Salzberg, Lawrence Kushner, Anne Lamott, and Omid Safi — The Meaning of Faith

  In our time, some associate the word “religion” with rigid dogma and the excesses of institutions. The word “spirituality” on the other hand can seem to have little substance or form. The word “faith” can appear as a compromise of sorts, pointing to the c...

• Bruce Feiler — Children of Abraham

  The sacred story of Abraham traverses the geography of the most bitter political conflict in the modern world — beginning in what is now southern Iraq and ending in the West Bank city of Hebron. Yet Abraham is the common patriarch of Judaism, Islam, and C...

• Peter J. Gomes, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Chris Hedges — Religion in a Time of War

  More than any crisis in modern memory, the War on Terror—including the current U.S. military presence in Iraq—is being debated in religious, usually Christian, terms. We explore the nuances of that debate with a former war correspondent, a political theor...

• Mario Cuomo and Mark Souder — Faith and Politics in America

  Even among deeply religious Americans, there’s no consensus on the proper role of religion in politics. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington, D.C., recently invited two veteran politicians to address this issue: former New York Governor...

• Thomas Moore, Debra Haffner, and Anthony Ugolnik — Spirituality and Sexuality

  Christian scripture and tradition have overwhelmingly shaped American attitudes toward sexuality. And in the past year, our national attention has been riveted on sexual scandal within the Catholic Church. In this program, we crack open the difficult subj...

• Parker Palmer, Phyllis Tickle, and Ingrid Mattson — The Spiritual Fallout of 9/11

  In this program, we delve into uncomfortable religious and moral questions that the September 2001 terrorist attacks raised—questions of meaning that Americans have only begun to ponder one year later. This hour also features the riveting first-person acc...

• Khaled Abou El Fadl, Richard J. Mouw, and Yossi Klein Halevi — The Power of Fundamentalism (Aug 19, 2004)

  Religious fundamentalism has reshaped our view of world events. In this show, host Krista Tippett explores the appeal of fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, as experienced from the inside. Three accomplished men, who were religious extremi...

• Robert Pollack, Rami Nashashibi, Lisa Lampman, Leon Weinstein, and M. Scott Peck — The Problem of Evil

  Many around the world labeled the events of September 11 as “evil.” President Bush in his recent State of the Union speech described “an axis of evil.” But what does the word mean? It is a subject of enduring theological debate, even of scientific argumen...

• Robert Coles, Diane Komp, and Carol Dittberner — Children and God (Dec 16, 2004)

  Maria Montessori, the great 20th-century educational pioneer, observed that children have an intuition for religious life at an early age that is matched only by their capacity to acquire language. During this holiday season, Speaking of Faith explores th...

• Jean Bethke Elshtain, John Paul Lederach, and Michael Orange — Justice and a Just War

  Just-war theory was set in motion in the 5th century as St. Augustine agonized over how to reconcile Christianity’s high ethical ideals with the devastating world realities which were bringing about the fall of Rome. For 1,600 years, theologians, ethicist...

• Where Was God?

  Great religious minds reflect on tragedies surrounding September 11, 2001. As America moves beyond raw emotion and religious sentiment, this program explores theological and spiritual reflection for the long haul. A gathering of provocative reflections ac...