Becoming Wise

“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 reminds us. It’s as much about whiteness as about color. He takes new learnings from the science of the brain as forms of everyday power. “We don’t have to imagine doing things one at a time,” he says. “It’s not, ‘how do we get there?’ It’s, ‘how do we live?’” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “john a. powell — Opening to the Question of Belonging.” Find more at onbeing.org.

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 lives together. As we begin a new chapter, the leadership team — CEO and founder Krista Tippett, executive producer Lily Percy, COO Erinn Farrell, and the executive director of the new Impact Lab, Casper ter Kuile — sits down to update you on what’s next for The On Being Project.

“The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us,” Michael McCarthy writes, “may well be the most serious business of all.” He is a naturalist and journalist, and this is his delightful and galvanizing call — that we can stop relying on the immobilizing language of statistics and take up our joy in the natural world as our civilizational defense of it. With a perspective equally infused by science, reportage, and poetry, he reminds us that the natural world is where we evolved, where we found our metaphors and similes, and it is the resting place for our psyches.

“The sudden passionate happiness which the natural world can occasionally trigger in us,” Michael McCarthy writes, “may well be the most serious business of all.” He is a naturalist and journalist, and this is his delightful and galvanizing call — that we can stop relying on the immobilizing language of statistics and take up our joy in the natural world as our civilizational defense of it. With a perspective equally infused by science, reportage, and poetry, he reminds us that the natural world is where we evolved, where we found our metaphors and similes, and it is the resting place for our psyches. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Nature, Joy, and Human Becoming.” Find more at onbeing.org.

“We don’t understand the world as made by stones — by things. We understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses: happenings.” Carlo Rovelli offers vast, complex ideas beyond most of our imagining — “quanta,” “grains of space,” “time and the heat of black holes” — and condenses them into spare, beautiful words that render them newly explicable and moving. He is the scientist behind the global bestseller “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics,” and for him, all of reality is interaction — an everyday truth as scientific as it is philosophical and political. His physicist’s way of seeing the world helps make sense of what he calls “the huge wave of happenings” that is the human self.

“We don’t understand the world as made by stones — by things. We understand the world made by kisses, or things like kisses: happenings. Carlo Rovelli offers vast, complex ideas beyond most of our imagining — “quanta,” “grains of space,” “time and the heat of black holes” — and condenses them into spare, beautiful words that render them newly explicable and moving. He is the scientist behind the global bestseller “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics,” and for him, all of reality is interaction — an everyday truth as scientific as it is philosophical and political. His physicist’s way of seeing the world helps make sense of what he calls “the huge wave of happenings” that is the human self. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Carlo Rovelli — All Reality is Interaction.” Find more at onbeing.org.

She’s one of our wisest voices on social evolution and the spiritual aspect of social healing. angel Kyodo williams is an esteemed Zen priest and the second black woman ever recognized as a teacher in the Japanese Zen lineage. To sink into conversation with her is to imagine and nourish a transformative potential of this moment towards human wholeness.

She’s one of our wisest voices on social evolution and the spiritual aspect of social healing. angel Kyodo williams is an esteemed Zen priest and the second black woman ever recognized as a teacher in the Japanese Zen lineage. To sink into conversation with her is to imagine and nourish a transformative potential of this moment towards human wholeness. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “angel Kyodo williams — The World Is Our Field of Practice.” Find more at onbeing.org

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 to Northern Ireland as one of its foremost living poets. He is a voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the force of words in a society that has moved away from sectarianism in living memory. The Good Friday Agreement was signed 20 years ago this month, and social healing is ongoing work to this day.

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 to Northern Ireland as one of its foremost living poets. He is a voice for all of us now, wise and winsome about the force of words in a society that has moved away from sectarianism in living memory. The Good Friday Agreement was signed 20 years ago this month, and social healing is ongoing work to this day. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “The Vitality of Ordinary Things.” Find more at onbeing.org.