In Leanne O’Sullivan’s poem “ Leaving Early ,” the poet writes to her ill husband, entrusting him into the care of a nurse named Fionnuala. As the novel coronavirus sweeps the globe, many of us can’t physically be there for loved ones who are sick. Instead, it is the health care workers — and all involved in the health care system — who are tirelessly present, caring for others in spite of exhaustion and the risk it brings to their own well being. We offer this episode of Poetry Unbound in profo...
Apr 03, 2020•12 min•Ep. 823
Ai-jen Poo is a next-generation labor organizer who co-founded a beautiful and muscular movement with caregivers and those who employ them: The National Domestic Workers Alliance. For over two decades, she has been reinventing policy and engaging a deep conversation that has now met its civilizational moment. This conversation was recorded before “coronavirus” was a word we all knew. But the many dimensions of the crisis now upon us have revealed Ai-jen Poo and her world of wisdom and action as ...
Apr 02, 2020•52 min•Ep. 822
Ai-jen Poo is a next-generation labor organizer who co-founded a beautiful and muscular movement with caregivers and those who employ them: The National Domestic Workers Alliance. For over two decades, she has been reinventing policy and engaging a deep conversation that has now met its civilizational moment. This conversation was recorded before “coronavirus” was a word we all knew. But the many dimensions of the crisis now upon us have revealed Ai-jen Poo and her world of wisdom and action as ...
Apr 02, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 821
“If I believe that we are all inherently worthy just by being human, how can I feel that way when I feel I’m doing ‘nothing?’” — Anna Bondoc from Los Angeles So many of us are raised to believe that hard work is what makes us valuable; many of our professions and even our identities as helpers are on hold. How does self-worth interact with just being when we feel we're doing nothing? Krista reflects on the problem with the phrase “just being” — and how settling inside ourselves right now, and ki...
Mar 31, 2020•10 min•Ep. 820
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 and especially with people on the front lines of humanity's struggles. Ross Gay helps illuminate this paradox and turn it into a muscle. We are good at fighting, as he puts it, and not as good at holding in our imaginations what is to be adored a...
Mar 26, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 818
“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers,” Rebecca Solnit writes. “And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” In this moment of global crisis, we’re returning to the conversations we’re longing to hear again and finding useful right now. A singular writer and thinker, Solnit celebrates the unpredictable and incalculable events that so often redeem our lives, both solitary and pu...
Mar 19, 2020•52 min•Ep. 817
“When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers,” Rebecca Solnit writes. “And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.” In this moment of global crisis, we’re returning to the conversations we’re longing to hear again and finding useful right now. A singular writer and thinker, Solnit celebrates the unpredictable and incalculable events that so often redeem our lives, both solitary and pu...
Mar 19, 2020•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 816
Physicist Carlo Rovelli says humans don’t understand the world as made by things, “we understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses — happenings.” This everyday truth is as scientific as it is philosophical and political, and it unfolds with unexpected nuance in his science. Rovelli is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity theory and author of the tiny, bestselling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time . Seeing the world through his eyes, we understand that...
Mar 12, 2020•52 min•Ep. 815
Physicist Carlo Rovelli says humans don’t understand the world as made by things, “we understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses — happenings.” This everyday truth is as scientific as it is philosophical and political, and it unfolds with unexpected nuance in his science. Rovelli is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity theory and author of the tiny, bestselling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time . Seeing the world through his eyes, we understand that...
Mar 12, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 814
The wise and beloved Vatican astronomer Father George Coyne died last week. Like most of the Vatican astronomers across history, he was a Jesuit. More than 30 objects on the moon are named after the Jesuits who mapped it, and ten Jesuits in history have had asteroids named after them. Father Coyne was one of the few with this distinction, alongside his friend and fellow Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno. In a conversation filled with laughter, we experience a spacious way to approach li...
Feb 20, 2020•52 min•Ep. 809
The wise and beloved Vatican astronomer Father George Coyne died last week. Like most of the Vatican astronomers across history, he was a Jesuit. More than 30 objects on the moon are named after the Jesuits who mapped it, and ten Jesuits in history have had asteroids named after them. Father Coyne was one of the few with this distinction, alongside his friend and fellow Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno. In a conversation filled with laughter, we experience a spacious way to approach li...
Feb 20, 2020•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 808
The House on Mango Street by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros has been taught in high schools across the U.S. for decades. A poetic writer of many genres, she’s received a MacArthur “genius grant,” a National Medal of Arts, and many other accolades. Cisneros grew up in an immigrant household where it was assumed she would marry as her primary destiny. In this warm and lively conversation with a room full of Latinx teens, she gives voice to the choice to be single — and, single or not, to ...
Feb 13, 2020•52 min•Ep. 807
The House on Mango Street by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros has been taught in high schools across the U.S. for decades. A poetic writer of many genres, she’s received a MacArthur “genius grant,” a National Medal of Arts, and many other accolades. Cisneros grew up in an immigrant household where it was assumed she would marry as her primary destiny. In this warm and lively conversation with a room full of Latinx teens, she gives voice to the choice to be single — and, single or not, to ...
Feb 13, 2020•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 806
Journalist Ezra Klein has been widely interviewed about his new book, Why We're Polarized . In this conversation, he's frank and reflective about what's at stake in human terms in this political moment. And he describes how we all — Democrat and Republican, journalist and citizen alike — walked into this as a way to trace our steps out of it. Ezra Klein is the co-founder and editor-at-large of Vox Media and host of two podcasts: The Weeds and The Ezra Klein Show . His book is Why We’re Polarized...
Feb 06, 2020•52 min•Ep. 805
Journalist Ezra Klein has been widely interviewed about his new book, Why We're Polarized . In this conversation, he's frank and reflective about what's at stake in human terms in this political moment. And he describes how we all — Democrat and Republican, journalist and citizen alike — walked into this as a way to trace our steps out of it. Ezra Klein is the co-founder and editor-at-large of Vox Media and host of two podcasts: The Weeds and The Ezra Klein Show . His book is Why We’re Polarized...
Feb 06, 2020•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 804
We’re excited to share the first episode of our new podcast, Poetry Unbound . It’s your new ritual: Immerse yourself in a single poem, guided by Pádraig Ó Tuama . Short and unhurried; contemplative and energizing. Anchor your week by listening to the everyday poetry of your life, with new episodes on Monday and Friday during the season. This episode features Brad Aaron Modlin’s poem, “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade.” For more, subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Spotify , ...
Jan 30, 2020•8 min
Alison Gopnik understands babies and children as the R&D division of humanity. From her cognitive science lab at the University of California, -Berkeley, she investigates the “evolutionary paradox” of the long human childhood. When she first trained in philosophy and developmental psychology, the minds of children were treated as blank slates. But her research is helping us see how even the most mundane facts of a toddler or a teenager — from fantasy play to rebelliousness — tell us what it mean...
Jan 23, 2020•52 min•Ep. 801
Alison Gopnik understands babies and children as the R&D division of humanity. From her cognitive science lab at the University of California, -Berkeley, she investigates the “evolutionary paradox” of the long human childhood. When she first trained in philosophy and developmental psychology, the minds of children were treated as blank slates. But her research is helping us see how even the most mundane facts of a toddler or a teenager — from fantasy play to rebelliousness — tell us what it mean...
Jan 23, 2020•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 800
Civil rights legend Ruby Sales learned to ask “Where does it hurt?” because it’s a question that drives to the heart of the matter — and a question we scarcely know how to ask in public life now. Sales says we must be as clear about what we love as about what we hate if we want to make change. And even as she unsettles some of what we think we know about the force of religion in civil rights history, she names a “spiritual crisis of white America” as a calling of today. Ruby Sales is the founder...
Jan 16, 2020•52 min•Ep. 799
Civil rights legend Ruby Sales learned to ask “Where does it hurt?” because it’s a question that drives to the heart of the matter — and a question we scarcely know how to ask in public life now. Sales says we must be as clear about what we love as about what we hate if we want to make change. And even as she unsettles some of what we think we know about the force of religion in civil rights history, she names a “spiritual crisis of white America” as a calling of today. Ruby Sales is the founder...
Jan 16, 2020•2 hr 15 min•Ep. 798
Joe Henry faced his mortality in 2018 when he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and told he might only have months to live. Now in remission, the singer-songwriter and producer has created a gorgeous new album, The Gospel According to Water . Henry’s wisdom on living — and the loss that strangely defines it — ran all the way through this conversation, recorded before his cancer, in 2015. Beloved by fellow musicians as much as by his fans, he’s produced over a dozen albums of his own and...
Jan 09, 2020•52 min•Ep. 797
Joe Henry faced his mortality in 2018 when he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and told he might only have months to live. Now in remission, the singer-songwriter and producer has created a gorgeous new album, The Gospel According to Water . Henry’s wisdom on living — and the loss that strangely defines it — ran all the way through this conversation, recorded before his cancer, in 2015. Beloved by fellow musicians as much as by his fans, he’s produced over a dozen albums of his own and...
Jan 09, 2020•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 796
Brené Brown says our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten. Her research has reminded the world in recent years of the uncomfortable, life-giving link between vulnerability and courage. Now she’s turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it: with strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown End...
Jan 02, 2020•52 min•Ep. 795
Brené Brown says our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten. Her research has reminded the world in recent years of the uncomfortable, life-giving link between vulnerability and courage. Now she’s turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it: with strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation-Brené Brown End...
Jan 02, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 794
Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk is an innovator in treating the effects of overwhelming experiences. We call this “trauma” when we encounter it in life and news, and we tend to leap to address it by talking. But Bessel van der Kolk knows how some experiences imprint themselves beyond where language can reach. He explores state-of-the-art therapeutic treatments — including body work like yoga and eye movement therapy — and shares what he and others are learning on this edge of humanity about the...
Dec 26, 2019•52 min•Ep. 793
Fr. Greg Boyle makes amazingly winsome connections between things like service and delight, compassion and awe. He landed as an idealistic young Jesuit in a gang-heavy neighborhood of Los Angeles three decades ago. Now he heads Homeboy Industries , which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses from screen printing to a farmers’ market to a bakery. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship. Greg Boyle is founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries ...
Dec 19, 2019•53 min•Ep. 791
Fr. Greg Boyle makes amazingly winsome connections between things like service and delight, compassion and awe. He landed as an idealistic young Jesuit in a gang-heavy neighborhood of Los Angeles three decades ago. Now he heads Homeboy Industries , which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses from screen printing to a farmers’ market to a bakery. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship. Greg Boyle is founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries ...
Dec 19, 2019•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 790
"Close" by David Whyte read by Krista Tippett David Whyte is an associate fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His books include The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America , Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words and The Bell and The Blackbird . His latest collection is David Whyte: Essentials . Find more at onbeing.org...
Dec 12, 2019•3 min•Ep. 788
Richard Blanco reads parts IV and V from his poem “América”. Excerpted from the On Being episode “ Richard Blanco – How to Love a Country ”.
Nov 27, 2019•2 min
Novelist Marilynne Robinson and physicist Marcelo Gleiser are both passionate about the majesty of science, and they share a caution about what they call our modern “piety” toward science. They connect thrilling dots among the current discoveries about the cosmos and the new territory of understanding our own minds. We brought them together for a joyous, heady discussion of the mystery we are. Marcelo Gleiser is Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at...
Nov 21, 2019•52 min•Ep. 782
