On Being

Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, and has served as the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. Her book is "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Michelle Alexander — Who We Want to Become: Beyond the New Jim Crow." Find more at onbeing.org.

“Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.”

David Whyte is a poet and philosopher who believes in the power of a “beautiful question” amidst the drama of work as well as the drama of life — amidst the ways the two overlap, whether we want them to or not. He shared a deep friendship with the late Irish philosopher John O’Donohue. They were, David Whyte says, like “two bookends.” More recently, he’s written about the consolation, nourishment, and underlying meaning of everyday words.

David Whyte is an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His books include "The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America," "River Flow: New & Selected Poems," and "Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "David Whyte — The Conversational Nature of Reality." Find more at onbeing.org.

When Tiffany Shlain thinks of her favorite quote from naturalist John Muir, she thinks of the internet: "When you tug at a single thing in the universe, you find it's attached to everything else." As a filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards — the "Oscars of the internet" — she is committed to reframing technology as an expression of the best of what humanity is capable, with all the complexity that entails. With her young family, she has helped popularize the practice of the "tech shabbat" — 24 unplugged hours each week. Her perspective on our technology-enhanced lives is ultimately a purposeful and enriching one: the internet is our global brain, towards which we can apply all the wisdom we are gaining about the brains in our heads and the character in our lives.

Tiffany Shlain is the founder of the Webby Awards and a co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. She has directed and co-written 28 films, some with accompanying books, including “The Science of Character,” “Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks,” and the feature-length documentary “Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology.” This interview is produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Tiffany Shlain — Growing Up the Internet." Find more at onbeing.org.

There’s a kind of brilliance that flashes up in early adulthood: an ability to see the world whole. Nathan Schneider has been able to articulate and sustain that far-seeing eye of young adulthood. He’s also a gifted writer, chronicling the world he and his compatriots are helping to make — spiritual, technological, and communal. At the Chautauqua Institution, we explore the wisdom of a millennial generation public intellectual on the emerging fabric of human identity.

Nathan Schneider is a scholar-in-residence of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of "God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet" and "Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse." He is a regular columnist for Vice magazine and America, the national Catholic weekly. He is currently co-editing a book on democratic business models for online platforms. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Nathan Schneider — The Wisdom of Millennials." Find more at onbeing.org.

The Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah is a rich, magnetic world of thought and teaching. It has resonance with modern understandings of reality — and describes a cosmic significance to the practical moral call to "tikkun olam," "repair the world." Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is a long-time student and articulator of the mysteries and messages of Kabbalah. We speak with him in honor of the 20th-century historian Gershom Scholem, who resurrected this tradition from obscurity and made it accessible to modern people.

Lawrence Kushner is a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco. His many books include "God Was In This Place & I, i Did Not Know," "Kabbalah: A Love Story," and "I’m God, You’re Not." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Lawrence Kushner — Kabbalah and the Inner Life of God." Find more at onbeing.org.

Yo-Yo Ma has won 17 Grammy Awards, and has received the National Medal of Arts, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the 2014 Fred Rogers Legacy Award. He's also the founder of the Silk Road Project. His new album with the Silk Road Ensemble, Sing Me Home, will be released in April 2016. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Yo-Yo Ma — Music Happens Between the Notes." Find more at onbeing.org.