Becoming Wise

“Let death be what takes us,” Dr. BJ Miller has written, “not a lack of imagination.” As a palliative care physician, he brings a design sensibility to the matter of living until we die. And he’s largely redesigned his sense of own physical presence after an accident at college left him without both of his legs and part of one arm. He offers a transformative reframing on our imperfect bodies, the ways we move through the world, and all that we don’t control.

B.J. Miller is executive director of the Zen Hospice Project, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an attending specialist for the Symptom Management Service of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “B.J. Miller — Reframing Our Relationship to That We Don’t Control.” Find more at onbeing.org

Maya Angelou was a poet, educator, and activist. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. She is most well-known for her series of seven autobiographies, including “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

One of the most extraordinary minds of American and global history, W.E.B. Du Bois penned the famous line that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” He is a formative voice for many of the people who gave us the Civil Rights Movement. But his passionate, poetic words and intelligence continue to enliven 21st-century life on the color line and beyond it. We bring Du Bois’ life and ideas into relief — featuring one of the last interviews the great Maya Angelou gave before her death.

Elizabeth Alexander is the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies at Yale University. She wrote and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. Her memoir, “The Light of the World,” was published in 2015. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, & Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Arnold Rampersad is emeritus professor of English at Stanford University and author of The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2010. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, & Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Whitney Battle-Baptiste is a historical archaeologist and an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of “Black Feminist Archaeology.” This interview accompanies the On Being episode “Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, and Arnold Rampersad — W.E.B. Du Bois & the American Soul.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Something of a celebrity in Quaker circles, Carrie Newcomer is best known for her story-songs that get at the raw and redemptive edges of human reality. This week, a musical conversation with the Indiana-based and born folk singer-songwriter who’s been called a “prairie mystic.” She writes and sings about the grittiness of hope and the ease of cynicism.

Carrie Newcomer is a singer-songwriter. Her albums include “Betty’s Diner,” “The Gathering of Spirits,” and “A Permeable Life,” which has an accompanying book of poetry and essays. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Carrie Newcomer — A Conversation with Music.” Find more at onbeing.org.

The Irish poet and “New Yorker” poetry editor Paul Muldoon has won the Pulitzer Prize, written for other media from radio to song, and plays in a rock band. He visited us for a magical day at the On Being studios on Loring Park in Minneapolis, including a dinner salon and reading from his work.