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Spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and poetry.
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With a 20-year archive featuring luminaries like Mary Oliver, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Desmond Tutu, each episode brings a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. Hosted by Krista Tippett,
Learn more about the On Being Project’s work in the world at onbeing.org.
Copyright: © 2019 The On Being Project. All rights reserved.
The U.S. election will be over soon but this year has surfaced deep human challenges that remain our callings — and possibilities for growth — for the foreseeable future. So this week and next, we’re taking the long view — first with journalist John Biewen, on the stories of our families and hometowns, what it means to be human, and what it means to be white. This conversation between Krista and John starts simply — tracing the racial story of our time through the story of a single life. It’s an exercise each of us can do. And it is a step toward a more whole and humane world, starting with ourselves.
John Biewen is audio program director at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and host of the audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. In that series, John has explored whiteness, masculinity, and democracy. During a 30-year career, he has told stories from 40 American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
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The U.S. election will be over soon but this year has surfaced deep human challenges that remain our callings — and possibilities for growth — for the foreseeable future. So this week and next, we’re taking the long view — first with journalist John Biewen, on the stories of our families and hometowns, what it means to be human, and what it means to be white. This conversation between Krista and John starts simply — tracing the racial story of our time through the story of a single life. It’s an exercise each of us can do. And it is a step toward a more whole and humane world, starting with ourselves.
John Biewen is audio program director at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and host of the audio documentary podcast, Scene on Radio. In that series, John has explored whiteness, masculinity, and democracy. During a 30-year career, he has told stories from 40 American states and from Europe, Japan, and India.
This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "John Biewen — The Long View, I: On Being White." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.
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An hour to sit with, and be filled. Two voices — one from the last century, one from ours — who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited, it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himself the son of one of those leaders, is a bridge to Thurman’s resonance in the present day, and between the Black freedom movements then and now.
Rev. Otis Moss III is senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He was born in 1970 and grew up with legendary civil rights figures in and out of his family home, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Andrew Young, and his parents were married by Martin Luther King Jr. His father, Otis Moss Jr., was an influential pastor and civil rights leader based in Cleveland. Otis Moss III is the author of several books and one of the voices in the documentary Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.
Howard Thurman was born in 1899 and died in 1981 in San Francisco, where he co-founded the first fully intentional cross-racial church in the U.S., the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Thurman insisted on a place for spiritual nurture at the heart of social activism, and he brought a searching theology of Jesus to that. He was, at the same time meditating in the early 20th century — traveling to India, bringing the teachings of Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh to the civil rights leaders, even influencing Jewish mysticism. Howard Thurman’s books include Jesus and the Disinherited. His meditations and sermons can be found at Morehouse College and Boston University.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
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An hour to sit with, and be filled. Two voices — one from the last century, one from ours — who inspire inward contemplation as an essential part of meeting the challenges in the world. Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited, it was said, was carried by Martin Luther King Jr. alongside the Bible and the U.S. Constitution. Thurman is remembered as a philosopher and theologian, a moral anchor, a contemplative, a prophet, and pastor to the civil rights leaders. Rev. Otis Moss III, himself the son of one of those leaders, is a bridge to Thurman’s resonance in the present day, and between the Black freedom movements then and now.
Rev. Otis Moss III is senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He was born in 1970 and grew up with legendary civil rights figures in and out of his family home, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Andrew Young, and his parents were married by Martin Luther King Jr. His father, Otis Moss Jr., was an influential pastor and civil rights leader based in Cleveland. Otis Moss III is the author of several books and one of the voices in the documentary Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.
Howard Thurman was born in 1899 and died in 1981 in San Francisco, where he co-founded the first fully intentional cross-racial church in the U.S., the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Thurman insisted on a place for spiritual nurture at the heart of social activism, and he brought a searching theology of Jesus to that. He was, at the same time meditating in the early 20th century — traveling to India, bringing the teachings of Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh to the civil rights leaders, even influencing Jewish mysticism. Howard Thurman’s books include Jesus and the Disinherited. His meditations and sermons can be found at Morehouse College and Boston University.
This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Rev. Otis Moss III — The Sound of the Genuine: Traversing 2020 with ‘the Mystic of the Movement’ Howard Thurman." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.
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After Arlie Hochschild published her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient. And the conversation Krista had with her in 2018 has now come to point straight to the heart of 2020 — a year in which many of us might say we feel like strangers in our own land and in our own world. Hochschild created a field within sociology looking at the social impact of emotion. She explains how our stories and truths — what we try to debate as issues in our social and political lives — are felt, not merely factual. And she shares why, as a matter of pragmatism, we have to take emotion seriously and do what feels unnatural: get curious and caring about the other side.
Arlie Hochschild is professor emerita in the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of ten books including The Managed Heart, The Second Shift, and Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
This show originally aired in October, 2018.
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After Arlie Hochschild published her book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, just before the 2016 election, it came to feel prescient. And the conversation Krista had with her in 2018 has now come to point straight to the heart of 2020 — a year in which many of us might say we feel like strangers in our own land and in our own world. Hochschild created a field within sociology looking at the social impact of emotion. She explains how our stories and truths — what we try to debate as issues in our social and political lives — are felt, not merely factual. And she shares why, as a matter of pragmatism, we have to take emotion seriously and do what feels unnatural: get curious and caring about the other side.
Arlie Hochschild is professor emerita in the sociology department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of ten books including The Managed Heart, The Second Shift, and Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award.
This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Arlie Hochschild — The Deep Stories of Our Time." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Editor’s note: This interview discusses sexual violence and rape.
Jericho Brown is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Creative Writing at Emory University, where he also directs the university’s creative writing program. His books of poetry are The New Testament, Please, and The Tradition, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
This show originally aired in June 2019.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The poet Jericho Brown reminds us to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience, to interrogate the proximity of violence to love, and to look and listen closer so that we might uncover the small truths and surprises in life. His presence is irreverent and magnetic, as the high school students who joined us for this conversation experienced firsthand at the 2018 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. And now he’s won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Editor’s note: This interview discusses sexual violence and rape.
Jericho Brown is Winship Distinguished Research Professor in Creative Writing at Emory University, where he also directs the university’s creative writing program. His books of poetry are The New Testament, Please, and The Tradition, for which he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize.
This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Jericho Brown — Small Truths and Other Surprises." Find the transcript for that show at onbeing.org.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
We’re happy to share the first episode of the new season of Poetry Unbound with host Pádraig Ó Tuama. This poem by Ada Limón tells the story of a person living with invisible chronic pain who finds unexpected fortitude from a girl dressed as a superhero. Their encounter, “at the swell of the muddy Mississippi,” doesn’t have a fantasy ending, but instead finds strength and glory in bodies and myth.
Subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.
Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was named one of the best poetry books of the year by The Washington Post. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency MFA program.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
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Poetry rises up in human societies in times of crisis when official words fail us and we lose sight of how to find our way back to one another; how to hear each other’s voices. This week we offer a preview of the next season of our Poetry Unbound podcast, which returns on Monday, Sept. 28. Each episode takes a single poem as its center, with host Pádraig Ó Tuama reading the poem and meditating on it. In this hour, we dwell with six poems that accompany the struggle, strangeness, and possibilities of being alive in this time.
Subscribe to Poetry Unbound on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, or wherever you listen.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
Pádraig Ó Tuama is the staff poet and theologian at The On Being Project and hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast. He was formerly a leader of the Corrymeela community in Northern Ireland. His books include Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, Sorry for Your Troubles, and a poetic memoir, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World.
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