Becoming Wise

Eve Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, performer, and activist. She is the author of “The Vagina Monologues” and “The Good Body.” Her memoir is “In the Body of the World.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Eve Ensler — The Body After Cancer.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Wisdom for how we can move and heal our society in our time as the Civil Rights Movement galvanized its own. Lucas Johnson is bringing the art and practice of nonviolence into a new century, for new generations. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons was an original Black Power feminist and a grassroots leader of the Mississippi Freedom Summer.

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons is assistant professor of religion at the University of Florida. She is also a member of the National Council of Elders. Her account of her work as an activist in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is featured in the book, “Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.” Lucas Johnson is international coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and an ordained Baptist minister. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons and Lucas Johnson — The Movement, Remembered Forward.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Courage is borne out of vulnerability, not strength. This finding of Brené Brown’s research on shame and “wholeheartedness” shook the perfectionist ground beneath her own feet. And now it’s inspiring millions to reconsider the way they live, parent, and navigate relations with members of the opposite gender.

Brené Brown is Research Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Her books include: “The Gifts of Imperfection” and “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Brené Brown — The Courage to Be Vulnerable.” Find more at onbeing.org.

In a probing and personal conversation, Reza Aslan opens a refreshing window on religion in the world and Islam in particular. It’s a longer view of history and humanity than news cycles invite — certainly when it comes to the Arab Spring, or to ISIS. His life is a kind of prism on the fluid story of religion in this century. But in a globalized world, we all have a personal stake in how this story unfolds.

Reza Aslan is the founder of Aslan Media, a social media network for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world. A scholar of religions, he is currently professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His books include “Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization,” “No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” and “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Reza Aslan — Islam’s Reformation.” Find more at onbeing.org.

Computer scientist Bernard Chazelle has an original take on what music works in us — especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Just as mathematicians talk about discovering rather than inventing great equations, so, he says, Bach set out to “discover” the musical rules behind the universe. After hearing this conversation, you may never listen to any piece of music — whether Bach or Jay-Z — in quite the same way again.

Bernard Chazelle is Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences. He’s authored an extensive collection of essays on music for A Tiny Revolution. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Bernard Chazelle — Discovering the Cosmology of Bach.” Find more at onbeing.org.

She’s the tattooed, Lutheran pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, a church where a chocolate fountain, a blessing of the bicycles, and serious liturgy come together. She’s a face of the Emerging Church — redefining what church is, with deep reverence for tradition.