On Being

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of seven books, including "Eat Pray Love," the novel "The Signature of All Things," and most recently "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Elizabeth Gilbert — Choosing Curiosity Over Fear." Find more at onbeing.org.

Her name is synonymous with her fantastically best-selling memoir "Eat Pray Love." But through the disorienting process of becoming a global celebrity, Elizabeth Gilbert has also reflected deeply on the gift and challenge of inhabiting a creative life. Creativity, as she defines it, is about choosing curiosity over fear — not to be confused with the more familiar trope to "follow your passion,” but rather as something accessible to us all and good for our life together.

In life as in song, Joe Henry says "we're really called not to dispel mystery but to abide it, to engage it." He brings an inward wisdom to the art and craft of making music. Cherished by fans and fellow musicians alike, he’s produced a dozen albums of his own and for an array of artists, including Ani DiFranco, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Allen Toussaint, and Billy Bragg. And he’s written songs together with Rosanne Cash and Madonna. With Joe Henry, we probe the mystery and adventure of discovering life through music.

Joe Henry is a Grammy Award-winning producer and singer-songwriter. He's recorded 13 albums and produced dozens of other artists. He's the co-author of "Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him." His albums include "Invisible Hour" and the forthcoming "Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad" — a collaboration with Billy Bragg.

There is no such thing as closure. Family therapist Pauline Boss says that the idea of closure in fact leads us astray — it’s a myth we need to put aside, like the idea we’ve accepted that grief has five linear stages and we come out the other side done with it. She coined the term “ambiguous loss,” creating a new field in family therapy and psychology. And she has wisdom for the complicated griefs and losses in all of our lives and in how we best approach the losses of others — including those very much in our public midst right now.

Pauline Boss is Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of "Loss, Trauma and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss," "Loving Someone Who Has Dementia," and "Ambiguous Loss." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Pauline Boss — The Myth of Closure." Find more at onbeing.org.

Sixteen Muslims, in their own words, speak about the delights and gravity of Islam's holiest month. Through vivid memories and light-hearted musings, they reveal the richness of Ramadan — as a period of intimacy, and of parties; of getting up when the world is quiet for breakfast and prayers with one's family; of breaking the fast every day after nightfall in celebration and prayers with friends and strangers.

The emerging science of implicit bias is one of the most promising fields for animating the human change that makes social change possible. The social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is one of its primary architects. She understands the mind as a “difference-seeking machine” that helps us order and navigate the overwhelming complexity of reality. But this gift also creates blind spots and biases, as we fill in what we don’t know with the limits of what we do know. This is science that takes our grappling with difference out of the realm of guilt, and into the realm of transformative good.

Mahzarin Banaji is Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the department of psychology at Harvard University. She is the co-author of "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People," and co-founder of the implicit bias research organization Project Implicit. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Mahzarin Banaji — The Mind Is a Difference-Seeking Machine." Find more at onbeing.org.

It was supposed to be a discussion about "culture and conscience" with two social scientists, as part of a public gathering of the Center for Humans and Nature at the American Museum of Natural History. But Jonathan Haidt is studying the relationship between capitalism and moral evolution, and our conversation took off from there in surprising directions. The liberal view of capitalism as essentially exploitative may remain alive and well, Haidt says. But the ironic truth of history is that capitalism actually generates liberal values as it takes root in societies. Our conversation preceded this American cultural-political season but offers provocative perspective on it.