We’re increasingly attentive to the many faces of depression and anxiety, and we’re fluent in the languages of psychology and medication. But depression is profound spiritual territory; and that is much harder to speak about. This is an On Being classic. Krista opens up about her own experience of depression and talks with Parker Palmer, Anita Barrows, and Andrew Solomon. We are putting this out on the air again because people tell us it has saved lives, and so many of us are struggling in whole...
Feb 04, 2021•51 min•Ep. 927
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 at onbeing.org. Parker J. Palmer is a teacher, author, and founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal . His many books include Healing the Heart of Democracy , Let Your Life Speak , and On the Brink of Everything: ...
Feb 04, 2021•55 min•Ep. 926
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 at onbeing.org. Andrew Solomon is a journalist and writer of epic books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression , and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity ....
Feb 04, 2021•46 min•Ep. 924
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 at onbeing.org. Anita Barrows is a psychologist, poet and translator. Her most recent poetry collection is We are the Hunger . She has translated several volumes of the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke together with Joanna Macy, including Rilke'...
Feb 04, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 925
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 .’
Feb 01, 2021•2 min•Ep. 923
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 Worship Every Bird that I See .’...
Feb 01, 2021•3 min•Ep. 922
This passage of Katherine May's book, read by her in our latest show, is so lovely that we decided to offer it up as its own meditation. There's also a beautiful video designed around it on our YouTube channel . And hear Krista's whole conversation with Katherine - and more reading - in the full episode How 'Wintering' Replenishes ....
Jan 25, 2021•3 min•Ep. 919
Our colleague Lucas Johnson catches up with one of his mentors, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons. Now a member of the National Council of Elders, she was a teenager when she joined the Mississippi Freedom Summer. She shares what she has learned about exhaustion and self-care, spiritual practice and community, while engaging in civil rights organizing and deep social healing. Dr. Simmons was raised Christian and later converted to the Sufi tradition of Islam. Lucas Johnson leads The On Being Project's w...
Jan 18, 2021•24 min•Ep. 916
It feels good and right this week to sit with the beloved writer Nikki Giovanni’s signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective, and insistent pleasure. In the 1960s, she was a poet of the Black Arts Movement that nourished civil rights. She’s also a professor at Virginia Tech, where she brought beauty and courage after the 2007 shooting there. And she’s an adored voice to a new generation — an enthusiastic elder to us all — at home in her body and in the world of her lifetime even whi...
Jan 14, 2021•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 914
“Having tasted beauty at the heart of the world, we hunger for more.” These are words from Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek in his book, A Beautiful Question . It’s a winsome, joyful meditation on the question: Do cosmic realities embody beautiful ideas? — probing the world, by way of science, as a work of art. He reminds us that time and space, mystery and order, are so much stranger and more generous than we can comprehend. He’s now written a wonderful new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality....
Jan 07, 2021•51 min•Ep. 913
“Having tasted beauty at the heart of the world, we hunger for more.” These are words from Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek in his book, A Beautiful Question . It’s a winsome, joyful meditation on the question: Do cosmic realities embody beautiful ideas? — probing the world, by way of science, as a work of art. He reminds us that time and space, mystery and order, are so much stranger and more generous than we can comprehend. He’s now written a wonderful new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality....
Jan 07, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 912
Underpinning all the great challenges of our time there is the human drama, the human condition. And as we move beyond 2020, we turn to Mary Catherine Bateson to help us understand the puzzle of being ourselves, of rising to our best capacities and gifts, in all of our complexity and strangeness. She is the daughter of the great anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and she is a linguist and anthropologist herself. Mary Catherine Bateson - is Professor Emerita at George Mason Univer...
Dec 31, 2020•51 min•Ep. 911
Underpinning all the great challenges of our time there is the human drama, the human condition. And as we move beyond 2020, we turn to Mary Catherine Bateson to help us understand the puzzle of being ourselves, of rising to our best capacities and gifts, in all of our complexity and strangeness. She is the daughter of the great anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and she is a linguist and anthropologist herself. Mary Catherine Bateson - is Professor Emerita at George Mason Univer...
Dec 31, 2020•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 910
Gaelynn Lea’s voice and violin land like a balm — an offering of both clarity and gladness that can still be mustered in this midwinter, this upended Christmas season. She first came to the attention of many when she won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016. This fiddler and singer-songwriter moves through the world in an electric wheelchair, and plays the violin like a cello because of the disability she was born with — a genetic condition that has made her bones more breakable. So much of wha...
Dec 23, 2020•51 min•Ep. 909
Gaelynn Lea’s voice and violin land like a balm — an offering of both clarity and gladness that can still be mustered in this midwinter, this upended Christmas season. She first came to the attention of many when she won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016. This fiddler and singer-songwriter moves through the world in an electric wheelchair, and plays the violin like a cello because of the disability she was born with — a genetic condition that has made her bones more breakable. So much of wha...
Dec 23, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 908
“We are indebted to one another and the debt is a kind of faith — a beautiful, difficult, strange faith. We believe each other into being.” That’s the message the philosopher, poet, and historian, Jennifer Michael Hecht, puts at the center of her unusual writing about suicide. She’s traced how Western civilization has, at times, demonized those who died by suicide, and, at times, celebrated it as a moral freedom. She has struggled with suicidal places in her life and lost friends to it. She prop...
Dec 17, 2020•51 min•Ep. 907
“We are indebted to one another and the debt is a kind of faith — a beautiful, difficult, strange faith. We believe each other into being.” That’s the message the philosopher, poet, and historian, Jennifer Michael Hecht, puts at the center of her unusual writing about suicide. She’s traced how Western civilization has, at times, demonized those who died by suicide, and, at times, celebrated it as a moral freedom. She has struggled with suicidal places in her life and lost friends to it. She prop...
Dec 17, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 906
We’re in a tender spiritual moment, widely feeling our need for re-grounding both alone and together. By way of the Almighty force of Zoom, Krista engages a forward-looking conversation with two religious thinkers and spiritual leaders from very different places on the U.S. Christian and cultural spectrum: Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through their friendship as much as their words, they model what they preach. The Washington National Cathe...
Dec 10, 2020•51 min•Ep. 905
We’re in a tender spiritual moment, widely feeling our need for re-grounding both alone and together. By way of the Almighty force of Zoom, Krista engages a forward-looking conversation with two religious thinkers and spiritual leaders from very different places on the U.S. Christian and cultural spectrum: Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention. Through their friendship as much as their words, they model what they preach. The Washington National Cathe...
Dec 10, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 904
We’ve realized in 2020 that the way we’ve organized culture — from the economy to race to work — could be done radically differently. We’ve been modeling our life together on “survival of the fittest” long after science itself moved on from that. And we’re learning to see that in every sphere of life we inhabit ecosystems. Agustín Fuentes brings spacious insight into all of this as a biological and evolutionary anthropologist, exploring how humans behave, function, and change together. In this c...
Nov 25, 2020•51 min•Ep. 901
We’ve realized in 2020 that the way we’ve organized culture — from the economy to race to work — could be done radically differently. We’ve been modeling our life together on “survival of the fittest” long after science itself moved on from that. And we’re learning to see that in every sphere of life we inhabit ecosystems. Agustín Fuentes brings spacious insight into all of this as a biological and evolutionary anthropologist, exploring how humans behave, function, and change together. In this c...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 900
The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging — personal and communal. The most recent — and very resonant — question he’s asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? At Chautauqua, Krista invited him to speak and read from his books. Blanco’s wit, thoughtfulness, and elegance captivated the crowd. Richard Blanco – practiced civil engineering for more than 20 years. He is now an...
Nov 19, 2020•51 min•Ep. 899
The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging — personal and communal. The most recent — and very resonant — question he’s asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? At Chautauqua, Krista invited him to speak and read from his books. Blanco’s wit, thoughtfulness, and elegance captivated the crowd. Richard Blanco – practiced civil engineering for more than 20 years. He is now an...
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 898
Rabbi Sacks was one of the world’s deepest thinkers on religion and the challenges of modern life. He died last week after a short battle with cancer. When Krista spoke with him in 2010, he modeled a life-giving, imagination-opening faithfulness to what some might see as contradictory callings: How to be true to one’s own convictions while also honoring the sacred and civilizational calling to shared life — indeed, to love the stranger? Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congreg...
Nov 12, 2020•51 min•Ep. 897
Rabbi Sacks was one of the world’s deepest thinkers on religion and the challenges of modern life. He died last week after a short battle with cancer. When Krista spoke with him in 2010, he modeled a life-giving, imagination-opening faithfulness to what some might see as contradictory callings: How to be true to one’s own convictions while also honoring the sacred and civilizational calling to shared life — indeed, to love the stranger? Jonathan Sacks was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congreg...
Nov 12, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 896
We are called to consider who we want to be as a people and what kind of world we will build with and for our children. Karen Murphy has been gathering wisdom for this juncture, as she’s worked around the world with teachers and educators in societies moving toward repair after histories of violence. We learn from her about how to prepare ourselves in the U.S. for the civic healing that we are called to ahead. Karen Murphy creates curricula, trains teachers, and leads global gatherings for Facin...
Nov 05, 2020•51 min•Ep. 895
We are called to consider who we want to be as a people and what kind of world we will build with and for our children. Karen Murphy has been gathering wisdom for this juncture, as she’s worked around the world with teachers and educational systems in societies moving toward repair after histories of violence. We learn from her about how to prepare ourselves in the U.S. for the civic healing that we are called to ahead. Karen Murphy creates curricula, trains teachers, and leads global gatherings...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 894
Mary Oliver reads her poem, “ Wild Geese .” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify , which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Mary’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry ....
Oct 30, 2020•1 min
Elizabeth Alexander reads her poem, “ Ars Poetica #100: I Believe .” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify , which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Elizabeth’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry ....
Oct 30, 2020•1 min
Pádraig Ó Tuama reads his poem, “ The Facts of Life .” This poem is included in our “Taking the Long View” playlist on Spotify , which we created to get grounded in reflection that will be with us the day after the U.S. election and far beyond, whoever wins. Find more of Pádraig’s poems on our website, where we’ve recently launched an entirely new way to Experience Poetry ....
Oct 30, 2020•3 min
