On Being

For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. Gender defines us from the moment we’re born. But how is that related to the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves? We explore this question through Joy Ladin's story of transition from male to female — in an Orthodox Jewish world.

For as far back as Joy Ladin can remember, her body didn’t match her soul. Gender defines us from the moment we’re born. But how is that related to the lifelong work of being at home in ourselves? We explore this question through Joy Ladin's story of transition from male to female — in an Orthodox Jewish world. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Joy Ladin —Transgender Amid Orthodoxy: I Am Who I Will Be." Find more at onbeing.org.

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. This physicist’s way of seeing the world helps make sense of what he calls "the huge wave of happenings" that is the human self.

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. This 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.

Human memory is a sensory experience, says psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. Through his longtime research and innovation in trauma treatment, he shares what he’s learning about how bodywork like yoga or eye movement therapy can restore a sense of goodness and safety. What he’s learning speaks to a resilience we can all cultivate in the face of the overwhelming events — which, after all, make up the drama of culture, of news, and of life.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. And Pádraig and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative, and joyful force far beyond their northern coast to people around the world. "Over cups of tea, and over the experience of bringing people together," Pádraig says, it becomes possible "to talk with each other and be in the same room with the people we talk about."

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian, and extraordinary healer in our world of fracture. He leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. And Pádraig and Corrymeela extend a quiet, generative, and joyful force far beyond their northern coast to people around the world. "Over cups of tea, and over the experience of bringing people together," Pádraig says, it becomes possible "to talk with each other and be in the same room with the people we talk about." This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Pádraig Ó Tuama — Belonging Creates And Undoes Us Both." Find more at onbeing.org.

Marilyn Nelson has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and to West Point cadets. She gives winsome voice to forgotten people from history, shining a light on the complicated ancestry that can help us in what she calls “communal pondering.” To sit with Marilyn Nelson is to gain a newly spacious perspective on what that might mean — and on why, in this troubled moment, Americans young and old are turning to poetry with urgency.

Marilyn Nelson has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and to West Point cadets. She gives winsome voice to forgotten people from history, shining a light on the complicated ancestry that can help us in what she calls “communal pondering.” To sit with Marilyn Nelson is to gain a newly spacious perspective on what that might mean — and on why, in this troubled moment, Americans young and old are turning to poetry with urgency. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Marilyn Nelson — Communal Pondering in a Noisy World." Find more at onbeing.org.

A passionate translator of the beauty and relevance of scientific questions, Margaret Wertheim is also wise about the limits of science to tell the whole story of the human self. Her Institute for Figuring in Los Angeles reveals evocative, visceral connections between high mathematics, crochet and other folk arts, and our love for the planet.