An hour to sit with, and be filled. Two voices — one from the last century, one from ours — who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited , it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himsel...
Oct 15, 2020•51 min•Ep. 884
An hour to sit with, and be filled. Two voices — one from the last century, one from ours — who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited , it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himsel...
Oct 15, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 883
After Arlie Hochschild published her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right , just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient. And the conversation Krista had with her in 2018 has now come to point straight to the heart of 2020 — a year in which many of us might say we feel like strangers in our own land and in our own world. Hochschild created a field within sociology looking at the social impact of emotion. She explains how our stories and truths — ...
Oct 08, 2020•51 min•Ep. 882
After Arlie Hochschild published her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right , just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient. And the conversation Krista had with her in 2018 has now come to point straight to the heart of 2020 — a year in which many of us might say we feel like strangers in our own land and in our own world. Hochschild created a field within sociology looking at the social impact of emotion. She explains how our stories and truths — ...
Oct 08, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 881
The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Editor’s note: This interview disc...
Oct 01, 2020•51 min•Ep. 880
The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Editor’s note: This interview disc...
Oct 01, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 879
We’re happy to share the first episode of the new season of Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama. This poem by Ada Limón tells the story of a person living with invisible chronic pain who finds unexpected fortitude from a girl dressed as a superhero. Their encounter, “at the swell of the muddy Mississippi,” doesn’t have a fantasy ending, but instead finds strength and glory in bodies and myth. Subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Podcasts , Overcast , or wherever ...
Sep 28, 2020•16 min•Ep. 878
Poetry rises up in human societies in times of crisis when official words fail us and we lose sight of how to find our way back to one another; how to hear each other’s voices. This week we offer a preview of the next season of our Poetry Unbound podcast, which returns on Monday, Sept. 28. Each episode takes a single poem as its center, with host Pádraig Ó Tuama reading the poem and meditating on it. In this hour, we dwell with six poems that accompany the struggle, strangeness, and possibilitie...
Sep 24, 2020•51 min•Ep. 877
Music is a source of solace and nourishment in the best of times and the hardest of times. It has been for so many of us in this year of pandemic, and Cloud Cult is on every playlist Krista makes. Craig Minowa started the band in 1995. Its trajectory was cathartically changed the day he and his wife Connie woke up to find that their firstborn two-year-old son, Kaidin, had mysteriously died in his sleep. The music that has emerged ever since has spanned the human experience from the rawest grief ...
Sep 17, 2020•51 min•Ep. 876
Music is a source of solace and nourishment in the best of times and the hardest of times. It has been for so many of us in this year of pandemic, and Cloud Cult is on every playlist Krista makes. Craig Minowa started the band in 1995. Its trajectory was cathartically changed the day he and his wife Connie woke up to find that their firstborn two-year-old son, Kaidin, had mysteriously died in his sleep. The music that has emerged ever since has spanned the human experience from the rawest grief ...
Sep 17, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 875
This prophetic conversation, which Rev. angel Kyodo williams had with Krista in 2018, is an invitation to imagine and nourish the transformative potential of this moment — toward human wholeness. Rev. angel is an esteemed Zen priest and the second Black woman recognized as a teacher in the Japanese Zen lineage. She is one of our wisest voices on social evolution and the spiritual aspect of social healing. angel Kyodo williams is a Zen priest, activist, and teacher. She’s the author of Being Blac...
Sep 10, 2020•51 min•Ep. 874
A companion conversation to this week’s On Being episode — Krista catches up with Rev. angel Kyodo williams on how she’s keeping her fearlessness alive through pandemic and rupture. Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project and hosts the On Being radio show and podcast. She’s a National Humanities Medalist, and The New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living . Read her full bio here . angel Kyodo williams is a Zen priest, activist...
Sep 10, 2020•31 min•Ep. 873
This prophetic conversation, which Rev. angel Kyodo williams had with Krista in 2018, is an invitation to imagine and nourish the transformative potential of this moment — toward human wholeness. Rev. angel is an esteemed Zen priest and the second Black woman recognized as a teacher in the Japanese Zen lineage. She is one of our wisest voices on social evolution and the spiritual aspect of social healing. angel Kyodo williams is a Zen priest, activist, and teacher. She’s the author of Being Blac...
Sep 10, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 872
“The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us may well be the most serious business of all,” Michael McCarthy writes. He is a naturalist and journalist with a galvanizing call — that we stop relying on the immobilizing language of statistics and take up our joy in nature as our defense of it. And he reminds us that the natural world is where we first found our metaphors and similes and it is the resting place for our psyches. Michael McCarthy is a natura...
Aug 27, 2020•51 min•Ep. 869
“The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us may well be the most serious business of all,” Michael McCarthy writes. He is a naturalist and journalist with a galvanizing call — that we stop relying on the immobilizing language of statistics and take up our joy in nature as our defense of it. And he reminds us that the natural world is where we first found our metaphors and similes and it is the resting place for our psyches. Michael McCarthy is a natura...
Aug 27, 2020•2 hr 37 min•Ep. 868
Dario Robleto has been called a sculptural artist, a philosopher, and a “materialist poet.” He works with unconventional materials — from dinosaur fossils and meteorites to pulverized vintage records — and has been a creative partner to an eclectic range of projects. At the heart of his work is a fascination with human survival and the creative response to loss. Dario Robleto is an artist-at-large at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. His work has been displayed at g...
Aug 13, 2020•51 min•Ep. 865
Dario Robleto has been called a sculptural artist, a philosopher, and a “materialist poet.” He works with unconventional materials — from dinosaur fossils and meteorites to pulverized vintage records — and has been a creative partner to an eclectic range of projects. At the heart of his work is a fascination with human survival and the creative response to loss. Dario Robleto is an artist-at-large at the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University. His work has been displayed at g...
Aug 13, 2020•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 864
Marilyn Nelson is a storytelling poet who has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and West Point cadets. She brings a contemplative eye to ordinary goodness in the present and to complicated ancestries we’re all reckoning with now. And she imparts a spacious perspective on what “communal pondering” might mean. Marilyn Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of...
Jul 30, 2020•51 min•Ep. 861
Marilyn Nelson is a storytelling poet who has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and West Point cadets. She brings a contemplative eye to ordinary goodness in the present and to complicated ancestries we’re all reckoning with now. And she imparts a spacious perspective on what “communal pondering” might mean. Marilyn Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of...
Jul 30, 2020•2 hr 55 min•Ep. 861
An extraordinary conversation with the late congressman John Lewis, taped in Montgomery, Alabama, during a pilgrimage 50 years after the March on Washington. It offers a rare look inside his wisdom, the civil rights leaders’ spiritual confrontation within themselves, and the intricate art of nonviolence as “love in action.” John Lewis was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. He is the author of Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Mo...
Jul 23, 2020•51 min•Ep. 860
An extraordinary conversation with the late congressman John Lewis, taped in Montgomery, Alabama, during a pilgrimage 50 years after the March on Washington. It offers a rare look inside his wisdom, the civil rights leaders’ spiritual confrontation within themselves, and the intricate art of nonviolence as “love in action.” John Lewis was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia’s 5th Congressional District. He is the author of Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Mo...
Jul 23, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 859
Pauline Boss joins Krista to ponder what it means to be living through a collective experience of “ambiguous loss” right now. This is a companion to this week’s On Being rebroadcast of our conversation with Pauline Boss, a family therapist, on navigating loss where there is no closure. How does that work during a pandemic with no end in sight? Krista Tippett created and leads The On Being Project and hosts the On Being radio show and podcast. She’s a National Humanities Medalist, and the New Yor...
Jul 17, 2020•27 min•Ep. 858
Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” and invented a new field within psychology to name the reality that every loss does not hold a promise of anything like resolution. Amid this pandemic, there are so many losses — from deaths that could not be mourned, to the very structure of our days, to a sudden crash of what felt like solid careers and plans and dreams. This conversation is full of practical intelligence for shedding assumptions about how we should be feeling and acting as these o...
Jul 16, 2020•51 min•Ep. 857
Pauline Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss” and invented a new field within psychology to name the reality that every loss does not hold a promise of anything like resolution. Amid this pandemic, there are so many losses — from deaths that could not be mourned, to the very structure of our days, to a sudden crash of what felt like solid careers and plans and dreams. This conversation is full of practical intelligence for shedding assumptions about how we should be feeling and acting as these o...
Jul 16, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 856
Vincent Harding was wise about how the vision of the civil rights movement might speak to 21st-century realities. He reminded us that the movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. He pursued this through patient-yet-passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationships. And he posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible? Vincent Harding was ch...
Jul 02, 2020•51 min•Ep. 853
Vincent Harding was wise about how the vision of the civil rights movement might speak to 21st-century realities. He reminded us that the movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. He pursued this through patient-yet-passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationships. And he posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible? Vincent Harding was ch...
Jul 02, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 852
Go to the doctor and they won’t begin to treat you without taking your history — and not just yours, but that of your parents and grandparents before you. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson points this out as she reflects on her epic work of narrative nonfiction, The Warmth of Other Suns . She’s immersed herself in the stories of the Great Migration, the movement of six million African Americans to northern U.S. cities in the 20th century. The book is a carrier of histories and t...
Jun 18, 2020•51 min•Ep. 849
Go to the doctor and they won’t begin to treat you without taking your history — and not just yours, but that of your parents and grandparents before you. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson points this out as she reflects on her epic work of narrative nonfiction, The Warmth of Other Suns . She’s immersed herself in the stories of the Great Migration, the movement of six million African Americans to northern U.S. cities in the 20th century. The book is a carrier of histories and t...
Jun 18, 2020•2 hr 50 min•Ep. 848
You can’t think about something if you can’t talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in the New York Times , “ White Debt .” Eula Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her books include On Immunity: An Inoculation and Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays . Find the transcript for this show at onbeing....
Jun 11, 2020•51 min•Ep. 847
You can’t think about something if you can’t talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in the New York Times , “ White Debt .” Eula Biss teaches writing at Northwestern University. Her books include On Immunity: An Inoculation and Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays . This interview is edited and produced with mu...
Jun 11, 2020•2 hr•Ep. 846
